This is one of my favorite speeches from that book. It doesn't make false assumptions like many of the other speeches and plots do - it stays focused on debunking the idea of money as bad, and as such while a lot of the rest of the book seems slightly ridiculous, this speech remains quite powerful.
What about the rest of the book seems ridiculous to you? The first time I read it, I thought that everything in Atlas Shrugged was perfect. Even with repeated readings, I never once thought anything was ridiculous. Be specific in your answer.
Ayn Rand often overstates her case for the sake of art (her evil characters, for example, are mostly shallow caricatures). I find that people who don't share her views often mock her works and call her "ridiculous" because she treats some ideas that they hold completely without nuance or sympathy.
I can see why they do this, but I think Ayn's detractors overstate their case. She is valuable because she is the only major author that writes from her point of view. I read many books in high school with a feminist or socialist moral, I read many literary triumphs that exposed the "failure" of capitalism, only Ayn dared to be different. I think every teenager should have a run-in with Rand, if only to begin the process of developing critical thinking.
However, I do think her complete philosophical system has many more flaws then she would care to admit (the one laid out in the "BFS", "Big Frackin' Speech", at the end of Atlas Shrugged). She tries to lay out a case for the absolute, unassailable truth of her ethics, but absolute truth shall ever elude humans in this complex world.
She did veer a bit too much into philosophy after Atlas Shrugged, but I think she was pretty clear her writing should be taken as a romanticized work of fiction. I think she went as far as she did assuming the reader understands this, and trying to take things literally is a bit foolish.
Granted, having been told she is right so many times she may have believed it later, but I remember the edition I read had pretty much a disclaimer in this sense somewhere.
I agree with that, and it's why I still like her. However, even then she gets very preachy. Her scene where the people in the train all die because they believe in these ideals is pretty edgy, and not in a good way.
That said: The Fountainhead is a great read, and so is Atlas Shrugged, even if it's not the absolute masterpiece she intended.
That's a great quote, and it's got a wonderful ring to it, but she's erecting a straw man. "It is extremely unlikely that anything complex can be understood in any entirety" is essentially "There are no absolutes", and it's more absolutely true.
"but absolute truth shall ever elude humans in this complex world."
Why?
Do you think a grand unified field theory is impossible? Do you think that quantum mechanics is the final word in physics? Do you suppose that that truth is knowable to some hypothetical race of aliens? (You specifically say that humans can't attain any absolute truth.) Or do you simply think that some truths are unknowable, such as distant historical events?
Do you hold any superstitions (religious or otherwise)? (You probably don't, but it helps to cover all the bases.)
Physics is the crown jewel of human knowledge. But even there, the theories of Physics are mere approximations to the actual phenomena that occur in the world. If you are familiar with Physics, then you know how almost-correct theories have been discarded for even more almost-correct theories throughout history.
If our knowledge of as objective a field as Physics is so uncertain, then it makes sense that the state of knowledge in a much more nuanced field like Ethics is near hopeless.
I suspect aliens would run into the same problems as we do, even if they were much smarter than us. I suspect perfect knowledge is unattainable.
Lastly,
>"Do you hold any superstitions (religious or otherwise)? (You probably don't, but it helps to cover all the bases.)"
I don't think the religious would appreciate your reference to their beliefs as "superstition". And no, I am not religious.
However, I don't appreciate your last parenthetical, which implies that I would be offended if you assumed that I was religious. Just yesterday I discovered among Donald Knuth's publications an illustrated book of Bible versus. I have thick enough skin to be lumped among simpletons like Donald Knuth.
Our knowledge of physics is uncertain, but it is not inaccurate. Perhaps absolute truth is unattainable, but we can achieve enough truth that it becomes practically equivalent to absolute truth. I haven't read any of Rand's arguments, so it is difficult for me to understand the context, but dismissing an argument on the basis of absolute truth not existing seems a little too convenient.
Because the world is complicated :) Thankfully. And by the time we get to understand significantly more then we do (not even close to everything) we won't be humans anymore. And this whole point will probably be obsolete.
Sure, the world is complicated. But how does that make an "absolutist" moral system impossible?
I think that with regard to morality (as it applies to humans, on earth), absolute truths and rules are not only possible to know (and make), but necessary. Without this, human actions are no longer guided by reason, and that is a very bad situation.
Discuss morality with intelligent people, and study evolutionary psychology, and it will not take you long to realize that every moral system has some edge cases where obeying it will lead to stomach-turning results. Our moral intuitions are lumpy, inconsistent, and contradictory. This is to be expected because we were designed by blind evolution, and not by any sort of logical process.
Ethical systems serve as great guidelines, but it is impossible to find one simple set of consistent ideas to capture everything that an average person feels is right. It is even more impossible (for a non-theist) to find some sort of objective measure of value by which to determine morality.
>"Without this, human actions are no longer guided by reason, and that is a very bad situation."
Human actions are guided by reason, but never solely by reason. We have a lot of innate biases left over from our 3 billion year evolution.
Talk to more people that disagree with you, I'm sure you can find someone that can present you with an objectivist-flavored ethical dilemma.
Also, you should examine your axioms. There are many self-consistent moral systems starting with different axioms that produce different results. None of these systems is better than the others. Rather, each of these axioms represent something that humans value. They produce contradictory results, but this is not unexpected for reasons previously stated.
For what it's worth, I bought pretty much everything Rand ever wrote and quite a few things by Peikoff. I used to hand out copies of Anthem to friends. It was ideas such as I stated above that lead me away from objectivism. Roughly, I have a different idea of what kind of a beast a human is, and what kind of structure morality is.
Also, I think what the average person feels is right is very pertinent to the discussion of ethics. Attempts to find an objective standard of moral value beyond what humans actually value are usually flimsy and involve a lot of purposeful ignoring of flaws.
"None of these systems is better than the others."
Not if your standard of value is your life, lived as well and for as long as possible.
I have not yet come across an ethical dilemma that would trouble an Objectivist that really knew and understood the philosophy. I can't count the number of times I've heard questions about whether or not you should try to rescue people drowning in a river during your trip to visit your dying parent(s) in the hospital, should you come across them. If that's the kind of thing that's dissuaded you from Objectivism, you didn't have a very good command of it in the first place.
What the average person feels is right is just a grab bag of altruistic junk handed down to them over the millenia. It's not necessarily true, and it's only important to understand because it's an obstacle to the betterment of man.
Many people hold the highest moral good to be the elimination of suffering. They believe that we should work to improve the material conditions of the world's least-well-off humans.
Ayn believes these people are evil. However, talking to them, I do not believe these people are evil. I believe they are good people.
Their instincts are human. It is human nature to be made sad by the suffering of others.
Alleviating the suffering of others is one of many things that human value. However, holding this as your highest moral value can lead you to do things that others dislike. For example, you may be motivated to pass laws that take the property from one person and give it to another that needs it more.
Now, humans ALSO value property rights, and some notion of property rights seems just to most people. I am sure you place some value on property rights.
These two instincts drive people to take actions that contradict each other. It is the nature of humanity.
Now, the true believer will insist that there is one right answer and no real contradiction, but their arguments get flimsy and tired after awhile.
I was never "dissuaded" from Objectivism. Rather, I grew away from it over time. I guess I got tired of looking up the answers to tough questions in a book, instead of puzzling them out for myself. Also, the logic just gets thin and unconvincing over time, as when Ayn tries to prove that one moral axiom is better than another. You can't do it. They are axioms. You can't say that a person is wrong for feeling sad at other people's misfortunes (well, Ayn can). It is just a fact.
"Many people hold the highest moral good to be the elimination of suffering. They believe that we should work to improve the material conditions of the world's least-well-off humans. Ayn believes these people are evil. "
I don't have a quote to disprove you, but I'm fairly certain you are incorrect. Ayn's problem was moreso with any moral code that obliges you to help those in need, and with any financial or political system that forces you, at the point of a gun, to do so. If you want to make it your life's work to help the underprivileged, good on you, and I would be glad to help with an extra I may have, but forcing me to do it is another story. This is a common misinterpretation of her philosophy, but she writes so harshly that it isn't surprising, to me.
You will find, in real life situations, where freedom and personal property rights are protected, that almost everyone within that society has a higher standard of living than in countries that do not protect these rights. Most humans are compassionate and generous to the less well off. But if you restrict freedoms, and force compassion, I think its fair to say that you can see the real world consequences of that.
If her philosophy was to never help anyone under any circumstances without them earning it (which I don't think it was, this is often I think unjustly presumed by people), then I would disagree with her, and history shows that in free, affluent countries, most people do.
I am fully aware of the nuance in Randian/libertarian thought regarding the difference between compelled and voluntary action. In an essay, I believe in "The Virtue of Selfishness", Ayn mocks the "maximin" principle (maximizing the welfare of the least well-off) and somewhat cheekily advocates the "maximax" principle (maximizing the welfare of the most well-off). So, no, I don't think she supports living a life of charity, even if it is voluntary.
I am also aware that societies which protect property rights and refrain from excessive public welfare programs have higher economic growth rates than others. In the long run, economic growth surely benefits the least well-off as well as the most well-off.
However, many people's moral feelings lead them to choose a society with lower economic growth if it would benefit the least well-off in the short term. I can't think of any reason a priori to say that their feelings are wrong.
Steve Jobs creates beautiful products with gorgeous logic, and as a result is subjected to a lot of controversy regarding his designs. He's almost the archetypal Rand hero.
Bill Gates, however, has managed to spread technology to the world. His version of it is flawed - it's nowhere near as good as Jobs's creation - but at the same time, he managed to innovate and create system that could be used to help millions of people in corporations and at home, and he made it affordable in a way Jobs never could. But Microsoft has slowed progress in fields for a decade by being tyrannical, and more than that, wrong.
The question is, which is the Randian model? They both changed the world, while at the same time doing it using logic that negates the other person's mindset. The answer is that neither one is necessarily a better person, or is following a necessarily better model, than the other one. They've each done marvelous things and made the world a better place. But there is no "truer" accomplishment.
I'd argue that Jobs is more of a "Randian hero", by far, since it seems that Apple refuses to release hacks, only good and solid code, products, etc. It also has infinitely better customer service than Microsoft, which can be seen on Consumerist.com as well as just interacting with the company.
I also get the feeling that Gates falls more to the altruistic side of things.
Ayn repeatedly spoke about open competition, and how it was wrong/immoral to not be willing to compete on an even playing field. Its been way over a decade since I read Atlas Shrugged, but I know for a fact that I could pull a quote out of the book that would show she disagreed in principle with Microsoft's "anti-competitive" practices.
"Not if your standard of value is your life, lived as well and for as long as possible."
Please define 'lived as well as possible' with out reference to objectivist concepts or philosophies.
Also please demonstrate objectively which is better, a life well lived or a one lived as long as possible, and in the the situation which maximizing both are impossible, the ratio which maximizes the value of life.
Alternatively please refrain from stating opinions as unqualified fact.
That's for you to decide, based on your other values.
Some people value adventure and risk-taking in order to bring about new rewards and feel proud of them. They accept the risks which could shorten their life.
Other people want to live a long time and see a lot of things. They would not be risk-takers and thus would be happier with a longer life.
> Not if your standard of value is your life, lived as well and for as long as possible.
Replace "standard of value" with axiom and re-read what he just said to you, he suggested you examine your "standard of value" and see that others are possible and just as self consistent as yours.
Your reply thus makes no sense in response to his statement; you simply restate your axiom and tried to justify it again.
Even Ayn Rand didn't think that Objectivism was applicable to all situations; she said somewhere that lifeboat situations didn't count, and I think this applies more generally to all extreme situations: neither reason nor evolutionary psychology is guaranteed to help you decipher the ethics of actions in situations which are extremely unlikely to occur.
As I understand it, "absolute truth" refers to when all actors in all interactions know and understand everything relevant to their interactions - and that will obtain the theoretical optimal equilibrium.
Problem is, to know everything relevant, you must know everything - otherwise, how do you know that what you don't know isn't relevant? Since this is obviously not possible, you strive for the best approximation. Sovjet-style communism attempted to set up a political system to handle all this knowledge, and failed miserably. Free market capitalism, with free price formation and supply and demand seems to be an orders-of-magnitude better approximation.
Truth is unknowable because it is so vast. To comprehend even a single human in their entirety would take more than an entire life of somebody externally.
The closest we can come is an approximation - and Objectivism hits a lot of the right chords, and as such it's a great starting point for people. However, assuming it's perfect only works if you ignore the flaws.
I think you're right about the whole of her philosophy. I think she has a firm grasp of epistemology, but fails to lay out a well reasoned metaphysical and ethical philosophy.
Other people have responded in other ways, so I won't respond regarding her philosophy. I'll respond in a purer way that nobody else has: she writes bad prose. Her sentences are ugly, overlong, and lack concise flow. So by the definition of literature as the beauties of language, her work is imperfect and, in the case of Atlas Shrugged, actively bad.
I daresay I've read Atlas Shrugged more times than you have. Furthermore, though I could be wrong, I would argue that I've memorized more of the central concepts and analyzed them more thoroughly than you have. Judging from how you've written on this thread, you're still operating from a very shallow interpretation of her works, which is antithetical to her own ideas.
The central flaw of Atlas Shrugged is that it denies external possibility. Given her own hypothetical world, it follows impressive logic. However, it ignores the fact that people are not so easily judged. A former girlfriend of mine was an Objectivist and simultaneously an irrationalist. She believed in man as an end unto himself, but also that everything was subjective, there was no absolute truth - and she was a believing Christian on the side. The problem with Ayn Rand's writing is that the two are not necessarily incompatible. You can believe in what she writes and still think that things are subjective, and that truth is difficult to find, and while she would argue that that is a corruption of her ideas, and it is, Atlas Shrugged does not define itself well enough.
Part of the problem is the nature of language, which is subjective. If I tell you that I'm nice, it could mean that I am "kind" or that I am "accurate". If I call my friend a "motherfucker" it means something different to him than it does to Oedipus. Similar, "objectivity" does not have an objective interpretation. Neither does "selfishness". People will never agree over these definitions. Objectivists don't agree over them in their entirety. By that nature, yes, everything is subjective.
But that's beside the point. To give a quick summary of other flaws, I'd say that her writing is preachy, her characters are one-sided, there's no observation of physical stimuli (which is to say, the nature of bad things happening to good people on grounds other than human interference, which leads to questions of philosophy that she neatly ignores), and her book is about three hundred pages too long, drags in the opening, in the latter half of the second part, and John Galt's speech is wholly unnecessary as part of the work. Feel free to respond.
Just happening to be reading the book at the time. There's so many pathetic pieces of prose. "He lighted his cigarette."
Just to chime in on all the other stuff, Francisco inherited all his wealth, and spent his life quite literally destroying it (rather than give some of it up to the "looters"). I can't think of a better allegory for crony capitalism.
To defend Rand a little - I do like her quite a lot - Francisco's idea is that by doing so he's eliminating the "looters" from society. It's entirely fantasy, but it's very fun fantasy.
Worse, he didn't just piss away his own wealth. By running D'Anconia Copper into the ground, he violated his fiduciary responsibility to the company's investors.
That is beside the point. He is protecting the wealth from the looters.
He uses his family's fame to bring in looting investors to his mine in Mexico, then it is revealed that there isn't anything of value there. The investors were looters, so D'Anconia succeeds with his goal.
Are you saying that it's OK to violate a contract if the other party to the contract is a "looter"? Why not just avoid making contracts with "looters" in the first place? (D'Anconia, after all, could have simply cashed out all of his holdings and let his successors decide how to deal with the threat of nationalization.)
Hmm, in general I agree that the proper action would be to simply not do buisness with those who cannot add value (the looters), but within the logic of the book it is clear that this is not an option. As someone has pointed out, it is a given that the looters are waiting till the mine is producing to nationalize it and the railroad to it.
D'Anconia has agreed with Galt to stop carrying the looters and so he plays the spoiled playboy. Sure, he has a certain duty, but that goes both ways, and if the investors are not adding value then what duty does he have to them other than to do as he pleases? They are trusting that they can make money off of him based on his family history, nothing else. That is, there agreement amounts to: "Go make money as you always have. We would like a share, but you do the work."
I agree with the comments of unalone and guiles. They point out what I don't like about the book, but I didn't see anything wrong with this subplot within the logic of the book.
The investors added value by providing D'Anconia with capital. Once D'Anconia accepts their money, his duty is to manage it in good faith. Whatever character flaws the investors have (e.g., excessive faith in D'Anconia's management skills) do not excuse him from his fiduciary duty. If he doesn't like owing a share of his profits to people who don't contribute any effort to the company, he is free to liquidate his own shares so he can start a privately-held enterprise.
The company was going to be nationalized, essentially stolen from him, anyway. Thus, investors didn't matter in his decision to give the nation nothing in return for stealing his company.
If I tear your wallet out of your pocket and set it on fire, I can't escape prosecution for theft by saying "there was this guy coming down the street who was going to mug us anyway, so you haven't really lost anything".
I liked Atlas Shrugged quite a lot, but there were a few parts that seemed ridiculous. Specifically the idea that everything was about money. In the model society near the end the banker loans Dagny a car and says that it isn't free he's charging her for it. As he shows Dagny around he explains how they charge each other for everything. Even husbands and wives pay each other one way or another. I wouldn't want to live in a society like that. Making personal or even business relationships primarily about money causes all sorts of problems. People need to be paid fairly, but focusing too much on money destroys intrinsic motivation. I'll fix my parents computer for free because I want to help them, but I wouldn't do the same thing just for money. Even trying to keep track of how many favors I've done for my friends would cause too many problems. I help them when they need it and they help me, but no one expects that things be exactly equal.
I agree....it's this type of over the top stuff that turns me off her writing. Atlas Shrugged should be rewritten, "now with 50% less cheese!"
But actually, can you see her point? Its quite true in real life, that you are constantly being evaluated by your peers to maintain some sort of a balance between reciprocation of favors. I think what she was warning about was excessive power of the state, so that favors were distributed primarily from them, as the result can be an entire society with a dependent personality and no sense of personal responsibility. Does that remind you of anything we see currently?
Ironically, I'm in the middle of writing an ethics paper on Aristotle. We will be considering Ayn Rand's position starting next class.
On point, there is a flaw in her speech. Many people produce money for themselves at the expense of other things of value. The problem is that money is not valued as a medium of exchange, but as an end in itself.
For people that not only say, but act, in the proper way, Ayn Rand is right. In the real world, it falls apart. Not everyone is a philosopher, and they will be tricked by hollow artifacts of social acceptance and material wealth.
I like pg's position where people produce because they like to build and solve problems using their reason ( A position much like Aristotle's I'm finding. ) Material things lose their fun after enough time and you have interacted with the static object enough. People are interesting because they can be dynamic because of their reason.
If money is valued as an end in itself, it is only valued that way in abstract, because money itself is worthless, but it is a reliable substitute for other things... things one may wish to exchange it for at some point in the future.
So money is fine as an abstract end, because it allows the end to be "time shifted" nicely.
I read _AS_ when I was 18 and I've thought about this quotation a lot through the last 20 months, as Reddit frothed about Ron Paul, Gold Standard, Banking collapse, etc.
As I've thought more and more about it, something seems off about Francisco's speech, namely: Money is _no longer_ the representation of value in green paper; no, it is the representation of transferrable obligation, i.e. debt.
Rand's philosophical position, expressed through D'Anconia, is that money is an expression of _value_, created by a man through his labor and that through its exchange, a rational process, a rational means for motivating and directing men's labor exists, "their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun."
I don't think this works quite as cleanly if you start consider that you're selling tokens of servitude, or indebtedness.
I got about 20 minutes into that "Money as Debt" video -- that's when he starts departing from, let's say, generally accepted theories of money. I don't have time to watch the whole thing, but I gather from other descriptions of the video that he advocates a policy of fiat money and repayment of debt via deliberate inflation, which is exactly the theory of the old Social Credit movement in Western Canada. That self-destructed.
He's correct that banks create money through loans. He's totally wrong when he says that money represents servitude.
He's ignoring that the purpose of debt is to create value, specifically to be able to do things today that make us all wealthier in the future. Yes, banks create money from nothing. That's because things of value - real wealth - are being created all the time, "from nothing", or at least, from nothing that is represented in the economy. They're mined out of the ground or grown from the sun, soil, and rain, or some complex permutation of all the above. Which is why we allow banks to grow the amount of money to represent it. When we take out a loan, we are saying something like "I'm pretty sure I can mine some copper out of that hill. So give me some capital now because I need to get a shovel." Rather than say money is debt you might as well say that money is certitude of present or future wealth.
By the way, this is the hidden truism of Paul Graham's mantra, "make something people want". Because "something people want" is another name for "wealth", and "wealth" is, under normal circumstances, easy to turn into money. So someone who says "make something people want and you'll make money" is expressing a near-tautology. (One that escapes most people, so it is good that he says it.)
I'm not totally in favor of our current systems, but that's another topic. And you have to know how the system works now to change it.
I agree, and I should have said this, “Money as Debt” takes a conspiracy turn at about halfway. I'm a reminded of Adam Savage's "Do you mean Tesla the inventor of AC power, the genius or Tesla the nut-job?".
I very much liked your explanation in the third paragraph, but under this model what does interest represent? If I step through your logic here.....
1. I believe there is copper in that hill which has a value ( say of 60K ).
2. I ask the bank for 10K to get started
3. Thus 10K has been added to the economy, recognizing that raw materials will be brought to the economy and growing the pie of wealth
4. I go into them thar hills, mine out the copper for 60K.
5. I pay back the bank, who now has 10K actual cash in their reserves, against which they may lend. I have also put 50K of my sale of this copper in their bank, giving them 60K against which to lend.
6. At this point, I think we're balanced in terms of what's been added to the value pie.
7. OK, so what does interest represent? The opportunity cost on the hope that I would find the copper? And, alternatively, say I found nothing in those hills, what happens to that 10K that was created? Shouldn't that be destroyed?
I'm not disagreeing, but I'm trying to understand your model better.
I'm not much of an economist, but I think interest basically represents risk. So it's insurance against being wrong. If we average it out over all the loans made by everybody, I don't think this is necessarily inflationary.
Even if the miner doesn't find copper, he's still obligated to pay back his loans. Maybe the bank seizes his property or he pays it off slowly from some regular job where he generates some other value. Either way it will work out in the end, although perhaps the effect is slightly inflationary until he pays off his loan.
And you have to take into consideration all the other loans made. If there is some other miner whose enterprise works out, then, if risk estimation techniques are good, it balances the one that failed.
When the techniques that everyone is using to estimate risk are totally wrong, you get the USA in 2009.
While I'm not a marxist, I think she goes too far in her opposition to this. All of the protagonists are capitalists (mostly with inherited money) and those who actually work to advance the cause of the "great men" - i.e. Eddie Willers - are given short shrift, and little chance to advance. Instead we have great men with inherited fortunes, doing very little actual work, preferring whining about "looters" and in one case (Hank Rearden) spending a month flying a plane over the Rockies looking for another great person.
"who actually work to advance the cause of the 'great men' - i.e. Eddie Willers - are given short shrift, and little chance to advance"
That's because he's never advancing much by himself beyond that which he is 'given'. Eddie is definitely an interesting character in the book. Like the 'man of not so great ambition' who still knows that he will, materially and spiritually, be better off by not looting those who made their fortunes exclusively through voluntary exchanges of their own successful products, efforts and work.
Yeah, in the book he lacks their talent but shares their code of value. He's like the character introduced just so that you can't complain 'there's only great men in this book, how unrealistic'.
How does he "lack their talent?" I see little talent on display. Though perhaps that's Rand's poor writing ability - not much is ever described to the reader, she just says "talented" or "great" about her protagonists, and expects us to accept it.
It's a work of fiction, by the way. But each of the characters has their own sets of talents and strengths and they are described rather than asserted throughout the book.
The question of whether these descriptions are 'true' is quite pointless in an entirely fictional setting.
> not much is ever described to the reader
> she just says "talented" or "great" about
> her protagonists
It's only fair to say you failed to sum up these 1000 pages accurately.
It's not the best written work of fiction, by the way. I'm around page 900 or so, and most of it seems to be thinly disguised rants by the author, interspersed with laughable descriptions of sex, and a really nasty strain of Social Darwinism. If this had been written by a German in 1934 it would probably be recognized as thinly disguised National Socialist Party propaganda.
That's a pretty silly thing to say. The prose may not suit your literary tastes, fine. But you will still agree that the Nazis and the Soviets were both the real templates for her 'evil collectivists'.
And collectivists they were, not just in their party name ('national socialists'). They more or less nationalized most of Germany's industrial private properties, some of it sooner, the rest of it later. They implemented most bullet points of the Communist Manifesto, only in a brown flavour and with a lot of add-on horrors on top of it.
Yeah, her 'heroic romanticism' style may resemble some of the red and brown 'romantic' literature. But her content is vastly opposed to theirs. If anything, she took a style that appealed to the masses in the 30s and 40s (including America) and showed that the same devices can be used to convey the opposite message, radical individualism and libertarian capitalism.
I would like to see how she would explain commodity valorization. If she does not subscribe to the Labor Theory of Value, how is that extra value imparted, if not from the labor (variable) acting on constant capital? It's a mistake to attribute it all to money. Even she say money is an expression of this value.
> how is that extra value imparted, if not from the labor (variable) acting on constant capital?
It depends on the value and the valuer. A thing's value and the labor spent on it are not intrinsically related at all: a wild flower may be very valuable to someone while having required no labor at all. Similarly, digging a hole in your back yard does not automatically increase the value of your property; the labor has no value of its own.
Value is entirely subjective, and can only be measured or assigned by people.
I read the full article, understand the point, and get its relevance to today's circumstances.
That said, I have to admit (and I'm sorry for being way off topic here) I found myself being drawn instead to the overall simplicity of the layout and ease of readability than to the actual message.
It's probably because I'm working on my own stuff and appreciate it when pages are done well (i.e. hacker news).
I looked at the style sheet and it's also very concise.
I know they're using .asp but I'm led to believe capmag.com is fairly easy to maintain.
Please continue using Hacker News to discuss Ayn Rand if you like, but as a developer I thought I'd throw a couple of pennies into the design fountain.
Private property is the foundation of peace. Without it who gets what can only be decided by force and coercion. Allowing people to keep the fruit of their labor is a necessary condition for those people to bother producing anything that they don't need immediately (consumable goods).
If this is supposed to be a rebuttal to the quote from the new testament, then it's a major strawman. The quote from Timothy 6:10 is "the love of money is the root of all evil." (my italics)
The quote from Timothy 6:10 is actually something like "ριζα γαρ παντων των κακων εστιν η φιλαργυρια ης τινες ορεγομενοι απεπλανηθησαν απο της πιστεως και εαυτους περιεπειραν οδυναις πολλαις", if you're going to get technical.
The New American Standard Bible renders the relevant piece of that quote as "For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil".
Please note this is by way of information. If a thing is to be damned or praised, let it be damned or praised for what it truly is, not for what is left after a three-level Telephone game. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_game)
The "love of money" is also dealt with in the article:
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it."
To see men perform the most immoral of acts for money, it becomes easy to believe money to be a wretched thing.
Thus, it's not a far leap to consider the love (or insane lust) of money as evil.
Hence, the quote from the bible is there to protect men from performing acts of evil in the search for or in the name of money.
"[T]he love of traditional capitalist values"! The meaning of money, which she explained, is the same quite apart from your "traditional capitalist values" -- didn't want to let that rhetorical slap zip by unchallenged.
If you can understand the meaning of money and claim that love of money, which embodies that meaning, is the root of all evil, fine. But then, you might as well say that love of ANYTHING that's good is the root of all evil. In the same way that this maxim exaggerates its claim, I can plausibly argue that love of sex with women is the root of all evil, because men commit most evil and, one way or another, most of it has its roots in pursuing women.
Note that the heroes of Atlas Shrugged all voluntarily give up their monetary fortunes. The book's central theme is the reason that would cause them to do that.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the love of money, morally or otherwise. If you were to make an argument against money, perhaps the best you could do would be to criticize what a person _chooses to do_ with money. Do they choose to impoverish others, or do they choose to move society forward?
Besides, I do not think that religion has a pedestal to stand upon when criticizing the love of money. What clothes does the pope wear? Are cathedrals built for free by those who want them, and then donated to their community? Are statues, and relics, and other icons made and distributed for free?
There are very few religious centers -- either individual or geographical -- that do not bundle themselves up in the comforts of wealth.
Wow! Using your corporate blog to dispense your opinions on economics (which I share!) is rather 'heroic' in Ayn Rand's sense of the word. I'm not sure I'd do it, but now I wonder why... ;)
THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG by Jack London
http://www.trussel.com/prehist/strength.htm
Basically, the story tells that a tribe figured out that the basic "law" was that no man should use his strength to abuse others, so whenever one would abuse his strength, the others would kill him as to not weaken the tribe. Much later in the story, they figured out that money (among other things) also was a strength that you can use to abuse others.
How so? 'Abusing others' was certainly nothing she was advocating. Her point was that simply earning money or being good ('strong') is not at all an abuse of poorer or 'weaker' people. While one may get 'rich' by abusing 'weaker' people (i.e. robbers or slave drivers), that is exactly the kind of person she is up against. More specifically, against the kind of robber or potential slave driver who seeks to gain support and assistence of one group to rob or enslave another -- by denouncing the latters as the 'actual robbers and slave drivers' when all they did was voluntary exchanges and independent creation etc etc. Now, that I'm sure we can agree on, does exist and did happen in reality and history. Anything I'm missing?
How do you feel about things like sweatshops and sharecropping? (Personally, I'd rather be a debt slave than starve to death, but many people see these sorts of businesses as abusive.)
Rand excessively spoke about freedom, and free competition. "Sweatshops", as we see them today, would not occur in an ideal Randian world, as, in free economies, competitors inevitably arise and are more than happy to take your underpaid employees off your hands.
The fact that sweatshops do exist does not prove this false...you'll notice that almost all sweatshops exist in third world countries that are notorious for government corruption. When Rand spoke of freedom, she wasn't joking, she meant real freedom, meaning politicians that are not on the take, that couldn't yank an operating license from a competitor who chose to offer better working conditions.
If you want to speculate and say honesty is literally impossible in human society, feel free, but that is something entirely different than saying that freedom leads to sweatshops.
but the world is not ideal, and if money is a strength that can be abused, should you allow anything, without restriction, to be done with it?
I believe totaly free economies lead to abuses. It happened in the past.
No need to, anyone who believes this crap isn't looking to be converted. Humans don't tend make decisions logically, they make them emotionally and then use logic to justify those decisions.
I've yet to meet a Rand follower who wasn't really just a selfish emotionally stunted ego maniac who thought they were totally self sufficient and society was mooching off them, especially those lazy poor people. Generally a complete lack of awareness of the interdependence of all men on our societies and forms of government.
You can't get past the first paragraph without noticing that Rand doesn't even know what the phrase "money is the root of all evil" means. It certainly doesn't mean money is evil which is how she interprets it and spends the whole rest of the article knocking down this absurd strawman.
Anyone with half a brain knows "money is the root of all evil" means the love of material possessions has caused much evil in the world.
Wow. Are people impressed by that article because of the sonorous prose? Because the content definitely isn't impressive.
Rand's first mistake is not realizing that the love of money quote speaks to individuals and not to societies. An individual who loves the material world more than the spiritual world (not god necessarily, maybe just the world inside his own head), is pitiable.
The saddest thing I've ever heard was from a friend who told me that his main goal in life was making money -- he wanted that more than anything. I asked him if I wanted the money for anything in particular, and he couldn't answer me.
There is some cleverness in there, and, I believe, some truth. Here is a quote that I liked:
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it."
Besides, wealth is often demonized by egalitarians. They see its distribution as a random function of the universe, and not as a function of the productive efforts of the earners. For one person to have more money than another is considered unjust. We hear so much about how the wealthy are evil, it is nice for a different point of view to be aired every now and then.
>"The saddest thing I've ever heard was from a friend who told me that his main goal in life was making money"
It would not be so sad if he said that his goal was producing something of value, which often results in making money. As Ayn says, "Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values".
> "Are people impressed by that article because of the sonorous prose?"
Yes, I do think the prose is quite nice. When Ayn hits a good stride, she reaches a style that is all her own. I think her talents are often under-appreciated because the literary establishment is very much opposed to her political views.
It would not be so sad if he said that his goal was producing something of value, which often results in making money.
If one's goal is to maximize the value humanity creates, she should probably become an elementary school teacher. If one's goal is to make money, she should get an MBA or financial degree.
It is less sexy and less popular, but the engineer that invents a more efficient manufacturing or distribution process that slightly reduces the resources used in products enjoyed by millions of people, perhaps becoming rich in the process, does far more good for the world than an elementary school teacher. Sam Walton did more good for humanity than any thousand average teachers combined.
Had Sam Walton been a teacher, teaching thousands of children throughout his life, what are the chances he would have inspired some them to be great engineers?
If becoming a teacher is the ultimate instrumental good, then we would all become teachers, then nothing would get done.
Since that is obviously the worst of all worlds, it tells me that teachers do a good thing, but not the greatest thing.
However, without teachers, few things would get done as everyone would reinvent the wheel. This is also, while not the worst scenario, it is far from the best.
Thus, the best scenario seems to be that people should try to accomplish something, then go back and teach the next generation. The bonus is that these people will know how to get to the top.
However, people who are good at getting things done are not necessarily the best teachers, and for the people that are...
Perhaps, like we have today, those who are good at teaching and want to should teach, and those who want to produce should produce (and then later teach). The whole system relies on there being a good balance between the two. How to calculate the balance is very hard.
Well, of course you are right that everyone can't be a teacher. However, realistically, I think we are very much on the opposite end of number-of-great-people-who-are-teachers spectrum.
Also worth pointing out that this isn't necessarily true for secondary education - Universities are institutions which allow great teachers to both do great work and teach. I'd hypothesize that if the same were extended to other institutions, and also to younger students, much value would come of it.
Lower than the chances that people have been influenced by him as the creator of one of the greatest modern companies. He has far more reach where he is.
As a side note, this approach made him richer, too.
The book specifically mentions making money, not earning it. The difference is that I can earn money by creating something that lacks value, and by having money change hands. If I create something of meaning, then by giving it to other people I lose nothing, and the money I earn is money made by the creation of value for reward.
"significantly nobler" is a means-nothing phrase. Nobility as a word is meaningless without backup. I would argue, to counter your point, that Steve Jobs has inspired more people to create beautiful, meaningful things than most teachers ever do. Teachers serve a purpose, but theirs is not the only noble trade in the world.
Interesting. Maybe it's a dialect distinction, but to my ear, you have reversed the meanings of make and earn. A counterfeiter makes money, but a laborer earns it.
I guess you're right that it isn't cut-and-dry, but my hypothesis would be that a great X-er can most of the time inspire children to be great X-ers themselves. Hence, whatever she would accomplish on her own, she can accomplish tenfold by inspiring her students.
A theme in Atlas Shrugged is that wealth properly belongs to the people who make it. This includes the right to give it away or pass it to one's family. The fact that inherited wealth may ruin an heir who is not worthy of it does not entitle others to take the wealth by force, contrary to the will of the true owner. Rand's argument does not justify the inheritance tax; it's a warning to the wealthy.
Well - I would argue that anyone inheriting wealth should pay tax on that inheritance, just like on any other income. Wealth is created as much, if not more, by society as by the owner.
You can say that the owner would not have been able to create the wealth without the system. And if you've seen enough of the world, you know that this is fair. But when the wealth is taken from the owner, it does not go to the system. It goes to the politicians, who redistribute it to other individuals who did not create the wealth. That's the rub.
The rich do NOT pay inheritance tax (unless they want to) the middle class pay inheritance tax.
I come from a semi well off family on my father's side and have many well off friends. We all have either trust funds (family trusts) or our parents and grandparents just give us the money outright before they die or we get non-voting shares in our parents holding corporations that own 99% of the company or we get physical gold and silver before they pass.
The list goes on and on. The only people I have ever heard paying real inheritance tax were from the middle class. Rich enough to tax, poor enough to lack a good tax attorney.
There is no real way you can stop it. Even if you prevent parents from giving money to their children (!) then the rich can just turn it into gold chains and give them gifts of jewelry, or turn their wealth into priceless art and then give it to their children, or offshore bank accounts co-owned by father-son.
We are on Hacker News, aren't we? Most people here value the material world more then the spiritual world. This doesn't mean they completely ignore the latter, of course. But between discussing spirituality and creating something, I'd say most would choose creating.
As for making money, this is how our success is measured. Yes, you can do things for your soul, of for your friends, or for your family or for the society at large, but to be an entrepreneur means to accept to be judged, indeed, to judge yourself by your material success: money. It is not an easy thing to do. Money does not lie to you, does not tell you you're ok as you are now, that things will be better or that it will love you no matter what. Failure is clear to see, and so is success.
I probably needn't say it, but all this is worthless if you do not apply complete honesty to your work. Money is not an end in itself, it is the measure of your skill. To steal or cheat in any way makes it useless for this purpose.
Most people here value the material world more then the spiritual world ... between discussing spirituality and creating something, I'd say most would choose creating.
The urge to create things is very spiritual for me, just fwiw. It doesn't have to be material things either - these days it's mostly software and occasionally robots, and in the past it's been mathematics and music. But I must create things - it's a fundamental part of the person I am.
I wish that were me. I try to create because I admire creators. However, the drive to create is not innate to my personality. Rather, it is a struggle.
Fortunately, I am learning to hack my personality to drive myself to do what I want. For example, I surround myself with creative people and I work on team projects where a sense of duty will drive me to do good work. But it is hard, and I must trick myself to do what I desire.
We are on Hacker News, aren't we? ... [skipped] ... As for making money, this is how our success is measured.
No it is not. I love HN, but most people here accept the distorted definition of a hacker.
Hacker culture had nothing to do with money, only lately, and PG is partially guilty of this, "hacker" started to associate with "21 year old internet millionaire" in the minds of many.
"Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money. This isn't quite true. It is true that all they really care about is doing interesting work. But if you make enough money, you get to work on whatever you want, and for that reason hackers are attracted by the idea of making really large amounts of money. But as long as they still have to show up for work every day, they care more about what they do there than how much they get paid for it."
"So no, there's nothing particularly grand about making money. That's not what makes startups worth the trouble. What's important about startups is the speed. By compressing the dull but necessary task of making a living into the smallest possible time, you show respect for life, and there is something grand about that."
Don't you think there's something of an opportunity cost, though? If someone like Linus had dedicated all his time to a startup (he did spend some time at Transmeta, but still had time for Linux), perhaps he would have never accomplished what he did. Perhaps similar arguments could be made about people like Guido van Rossum. Obviously there are various paths to success, but how many people made their cash, and then went on to do a seriously successful open source project? I'm sure there are one or two out there, but I think mostly it's a one or the other situation.
The relevant section is called "Two Routes."
Linus seems to have taken organic route, gradually
arranging his life so he could spend more time
on Linux. Startups are usually an instance
of the other strategy, the two-job route, of
which they are the most extreme form.
(For a few very lucky people, a startup can
also be one's life's work. But it's usually
all one can do to make a startup succeed without
also satisfying that constraint.)
Yes, I've read that essay, and liked it. What I'm getting at, though, is that isn't it possible that by taking the startup route, by the time you 'get there', yes, you have time to do whatever you want, but you've blown your chance to do something else?
You could say that those guys went straight to step 2: Work on something they find interesting, ignoring money. It probably is a one or the other situation, but the results end up being the same -- living life as one sees fit.
Both making a lot of money and doing a "seriously successful" open source project are pretty rare, so even if the two are independent, you shouldn't expect many people to succeed at both of them.
I don't think PG is responsible for this any more than the rise of the tech sector (and he defended himself quite sufficiently in his reply). When a new industrial sector emerges, people will get rich, and, well... welcome to the information age.
I think that hackers, however, have an appreciation for the system. Hackers want to learn about complex systems work, but they have a profound respect for those complex systems. Thus, they're not engaged in the business of getting rich no matter what the cost to others.
All the people I know who only want to get rich end up in jobs that promise that. But they are all jobs that reek of unsustainability, like wall street traders and dot-com-type startups with a lot of hype and no business model or valuable contribution to society. These people are selfish and as we're seeing (and have seen during a thousand years of business cycles) their money is gone as quickly as it came.
I have been a bit imprecise in my comment. Yes, hacker and entrepreneur are different concepts. It's just that here there is a much greater density of people who are both then anywhere I know. Hacker culture is old, and I respect it. One of my dreams in high school has been to write open source software. But still, here you are more likely to find hackers interested in a startup then in OS. This is what my comment was about - this is a place I love _because_ it's one of the few where smart people openly want to make money (in the randian sense). And to see the highest modded comment praising spirituality over materialism - I really didn't like it.
| An individual who loves the material world more than the spiritual world (not god necessarily, maybe just the world inside his own head), is pitiable.
Then pity me, though I wish you wouldn't. I do not find that I can believe in any world other than the material world, at least enough to sacrifice my efforts in this world.
If I am going to make a difference, I want to make a difference in the material world, not a spiritual one. If I am going to become wealthy, I want to do so in the material world. If I am going to produce art, I would do so in the material world.
Any spirituality that I do have, exists in the material world. I work in this world, I trade in this world, I appreciate in this world, I love in this world.
So what's so wrong with that?
And if my goals in this world demand that I create money, and if I pursue that goal aggressively, why would you pity me?
Your friend wants able means. Even if he doesn't know now what he would do with those means, it is enough for him to know that he wants them. He is already leagues ahead of the aimless majority that do not know at all what they want. If he wants money, then he should pursue that, and once he has it, he can decide what to do with it ... but at least he will have pursued and attained a goal, which is a claim shared by too few.
"If I am going to produce art, I would do so in the material world."
Great works of art make one feel beauty. Is feeling beauty a spiritual event?
I do not know what one may mean by spirituality. Perhaps they regard spirituality in the religious sense, such as a belief in a god and that he will take care of them. However I consider spirituality to be something intrinsic in all human being and quite detached from religion.
Much as intellectual stimulation is the food of the brain so too beauty is the food of the heart and I believe it is in the heart where spirituality, as I see such term, reigns.
If spirituality is what I see it to be, then your argument seems to be flawed as you consider spirituality to be detached from the material world.
I do not see how one can distinguish easily the material world from the spiritual one. If the act of helping out a poor person is considered to be spiritual, such act is still carried out in the material world. It is a material act as you are helping him with material things. Same argument can be used when helping an old lady pass the road. So too the act of feeling beauty is experienced in the material world however the act itself is spiritual.
For some even making a difference in the material world is a spiritual act and certainly love is spiritual however facilitated through the material world.
Where do you (and others) get the idea that Rand is responding to the Bible? She's speaking to/of those who say that money is evil, love of money is evil, and related thoughts. This seems clear from the very first sentence of the speech: "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" Later, "But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak?", "Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil?", etc.
I would challenge you to cite the part of the speech or anything else Rand ever wrote arguing that money should be the most important thing in one's life. The statement "Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit," indicates what's more explicit elsewhere in the book, namely Rand's conviction that the material and (secular) spiritual are both of great importance in life and that neither trumps the other. Rather, one should seek to integrate them.
Having read Rand extensively when I was younger, I can't imagine she'd consider your friend's approach to life, as described, anything but sad as well.
Actually the content is incredibly impressive. There are quite a few problems with Rand and her writing, but its not to do with content or presentation imo. It depends a lot on how the individual reader deals with it. For one, she doesn't care of her readers' definitions, concepts or connotations of words like reason, egoism/egotism, rationality, which have developed, maybe manipulated, maybe not, over generations but which she kind of redefines, trying to be as exacting and smart as possible about it but coming to definitely other (in my mind more sensible, but other) concepts/connotations/definitions than the more blurred ones people think they share. So take a quote or passage of one of her works out of the context of the book and just present it to someone who has never read her from start to finish and applies their own, learned connotations, concepts and definitions, and they will cry how in-humane and pitiable it seems.
Her heroes, herself and her argument is that there shouldn't be a conflict between the material and the spiritual in the first place --- i.e. the 'ideal spiritual being' (in her literature) is the creator and individual of independent thought, for whom money is 'merely' the 'material manifestation of their spiritual height', a spirit that is, unlike others, admittedly celebrating this-life on this-world (not an otherworldly afterlife), 'reason' (she defines it for herself and her story characters, agreeing or disagreeing with that one is a different matter) and 'rational choice'.
While we're at it, when she's advocating 'rational selfishness', she's also not advocating the 'mindless brute going over corpses or a plundering thug' but rather implies that ultimately it is in your self-interest to create, and the best and most useful you can, then trade that voluntarily. This is pretty consistent with the YC/PG idea of wealth creation where ideally in the marketplace (except maybe for crass bubble markets) you make a lot of money most likely when you create even more wealth/value for those who choose to pay you. (Whether that's freemium subscribers, advertisers or a big corp buying you is beside the point of the argument -- in the end, the principle applies regardless of that.)
So I think the 'pitiable individual' you had in mind and the one she had in mind might well be the same or very similar --- there's unthinking zealots (MBA or not ;) who strive for money not knowing what to use it for, deal in personal connections and think it's all about 'striking deals with the right buddies' --- and then there's what in the 30s were 'the great industrialists' who started from nowhere (or since the 70s started in garages) and had a grand vision of something immensely useful they wanted to see in the world, then went ahead 'against all odds' to build it. Of course, she's using the heroism rhetoric of old warrior tales immensely, and I think she just did it for fun and maybe because her heroes (in books and real life) needed that 'missionary sense of urgency' to actually do what they set out to do.
Maybe for insanely great stuff you do actually need a reality distortion field. Although in another way she was all about 'facing, not blanking out reality and seeing it in the eye all the time'. But thats physical reality and basic laws like you cannot consume more than you produce etc. I'd actually say, to ultimately disrupt and reshape reality, you need to distort it first. Some of reality is ours to reshape, but that doesnt mean wishing-will-it-so.
Hmm. Mindboggling. There was a time when I could express such thoughts less confusingly. Guess I've been working too much lately and not doing enough intellectual reading/talking/writing. Gotta take that daily bike-ride now before getting to work -- laters!
Bernard Shaw's dictum may seem a little trite but it's true nonetheless "Money is the most important thing in the world until you have enough of it". Yes! - 'enough' begs a slew of questions.
