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Economics in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged [pdf]
- daughart 11y agoI got to the third sentence: "Based on an analysis of reality, it is well-informed on economics..." Funny, I remember it as a comedy about petulant capitalists.
- toehead2000 11y agoI also read just far enough in to find something to sneer at so I could post a comment!
- notahacker 11y agoIt's basically the reductio ad absurdum version of arguments in favour of capitalism. For those that haven't read it, it involves rugged, noble and pure capitalist innovators getting so upset at government overreach and not being able to enforce patents on their genius they go and form a commune. (which isn't really a commune, because when a billionaire industry titan offers you a lift, you pay him a taxi fare to prevent him from feeling guilty about his altruism) Which is a bit of a shame really, because a satire about entrepreneurs vs corrupt governments could have been really powerful in the grasp of someone that actually understood enterprise.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoNot necessarily a contradiction for capitalist-entrepreneurs to advocate communes. After all, the mutualists and 19th-century individualist anarchists were pro-market, though coming at it from a labor theory of value. Then again, it depends on how you've loaded your definition of capitalism.
- applecore 11y agoI can't wait to read the comments. Don't you know Ayn Rand is verboten here?
- calibraxis 11y agoAfter all, Ayn Rand would call Silicon Valley libertarians "moochers" off the tech welfare state. http://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/ http://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/
- Kiro 11y agoIt has already begun and if someone against all odds posts a pro-Rand comment it will be downvoted to oblivion. The HN hive mind is strong.
- vignesh_m 11y agothis is a totally unbiased article in the The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies.
- mortehu 11y ago... which has an impact factor of 0.00: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1526-1018_Journal_of_Ayn_Rand_Studies_The https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1526-1018_Journal_of_Ay... For comparison: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0033-5533_Quarterly_Journal_of_Economics https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0033-5533_Quarterly_Jou...
- forgetsusername 11y agoDo you claim that the journal has never published a criticism of Rand? Does it shock you that the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies studies Ayn Rand?
- forgotpwtomain 11y agoI find very little merit or pleasure in reading fiction where the author has an underlying agenda which they constantly grind as the novel progresses (I find some of Le Guin's otherwise good novels marred by this trend). Ayn Rand is absolutely the worst offender though, her characters are shallow to the point of ridiculousness, the plot is obvious 100 pages in for the next 500 - but she's going to serve up 'profound world changing philosophy' to you for the next 500 pages anyways. But hey - America's answer to communist ideology!
- dschiptsov 11y agoIt seems that you have no idea what you're talking about.) Her philosophy is sound and so are her principles of free market economy, while, perhaps, her plot is idealized and naive and some characters too sophisticated to be true.) Edit: I have tried to explain it better in a separate comment. Hint: this is a fiction based on philosophy, not a philosophic treatise based on fiction.
- andrepd 11y agoI don't think her philosophy is sound. You cannot advocate unregulated capitalism in a society where people don't start on equal footing.
- BinaryAcid 11y agoIt's intrinsic to existence that no two people start on equal footing. One will be smarter, another will be a harder worker. Your rule would mean no form of capitalism is permissible at any point. I think at some point parents must have stopped informing their children that life isn't fair and deal with it.
- andrepd 11y agoThat's very easy to swallow when you are born on the upper end of the scale. Not so much when you are born to a single mother on a Flint MI ghetto or when you are born gay in Nigeria, or a girl on war-torn Sudan. Just because you are comfortable on middle-upper class doesn't mean you can't be objective about this things. That some kids are born into wealthy families and some are born in sub-Saharan Africa and forced to mine minerals for the former's iPad until they are 15 and keel over is undeniably wrong. But it's what arises from capitalism.
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- roymurdock 11y agoAtlas shrugged and catch 22 are the only two books that I have been unable to finish. In atlas shrugged, Rand takes the most incredibly boring, one-dimensional, unbelievable, cliched, cement-mixed characters and starts beating you over the head with them right out of the gate. I saw her singular point 10 pages into the book, and could not bear the pain of the next 300 of the manifesto. While I can see how the "trader of justice" ideal that is mentioned in the article might appeal to some, it's simply not applicable to real life economic/social governance. Humans aren't spawned directly from market processes, they have parents and friends and communities and their relationships extend beyond the reach of the free market mechanisms.
- dschiptsov 11y agoHave it ever occurred to you, that the problem might be not with these works of art?)
- andrepd 11y agoFor what's worth, I also haven't been able to finish Atlas Shrugged for those very same reasons.
- Johnny_Brahms 11y agoWhat? Her persondescriptions are less than one-dimensional. The entrepreneurs are all the most perfect and beautiful people there are. They have no fault and they don't even have to struggle. The only people that can identify with any of the main characters are people that completely lack any kind of self distance.
- forgetsusername 11y agoThe worst part of Atlas Shrugged, for me, was the cringe-worthy romantic scenes. Other than those, I thought it was an okay read. It's interesting in a historical social context.
- tamana 11y agoThe Fountainhead has similar romance, so you know it's not an accidental writing flub.
- andrewclunn 11y agoI'm a fan of Rand's ideas, more or less, but come on. Atlas Shrugged has some interesting ideas, which were very novel and taboo in their day (some might say still somewhat taboo). Like all works of fiction though, the author had complete control over the narrative, the world, the characters. As social commentary and criticism of frequently promoted religious and neo-marxist ideas, it has value. As literature, it needed an editor. But as a realistic model for economics? Usually I'm pissed off by the anti-Rand flaming by people who prefer to misrepresent her ideas. But if you are going to play right into the cult of personality Rand worship with stuff like this, then you kind of brought it on yourself.
- forgotpwtomain 11y agoYou know it's a funny thing, there were Maxim Gorky statues all over the Soviet Union - so of course post-perestroika most young people avoid him like the plague. But Gorky at his worst is a far more honest and talented writer than Ayn Rand ever was - just pick up a collection of his short stories. It's strange that a similar thing actually hasn't happened here and instead there is a Journal of Ayn Rand Studies and really at best a mediocre writer in terms of literary merit and talent has been well-preserved for posterity; which is not to say that she didn't have historical significance, she did of course, as did Lenin's writing I'm sure - but no one is praising the high literary merits of Lenin's 30+ tomes of writing today. I guess that's the difference between a defeated ideological system and one whose existence has continued to this day.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoActually Lenin's writings on imperialism are still considered relevant and influential to this day by historical commentators and left-wing movements alike.
- tamana 11y agoIf Objectivism ever won society and then collapsed, it would be reviled. Instead, it is championed by a small to lingering few who still believe is deserves a chance.
- anotheryou 11y agowant's to be a paper and begins with declaring the subject a "masterpiece". Very objective....
- jkxyz 11y agoI agree with Ayn Rand's theory of economics insofar as it would work great if everyone only ever acted in their own self-interest. But there will always be exploitation if there are people who choose to act in ways that damage themselves, so the theory is impracticable in the real world. There's also no treatment in the book of, for instance, how disabled or ill people should be treated by an economic system where no one is available to provide support. But the book is genuinely a great read; she's a fantastic writer with a powerful and gripping style. I did, however, have to skip a 50 page chapter which was the third monologue speech explaining the details of her theory.
- IsaacL 11y agoObjectivist here. (For what it's worth: I don't hate poor people, nor do I think all rich people deserve their wealth, nor do I think the free market is a universal panacea for all ills. What Rand actually says is that there are good people and there are bad people, and the defining characteristic of good people, the essence of virtue is not altruism, but productive work. People rarely mention that there were truck drivers and manual workers in Galt's Gulch, and that half of the villains in the novel are unscrupulous businessmen). Rand didn't actually say that much that's original about economics per se. This leads people on both left and right to dismiss her as a simplistic thinker. This ignores what is original is what she's saying. Unlike many libertarians, she doesn't argue that the free market is good because it leads to good results for society. She says that a capitalist society is good because it's the only society which fully protects individual rights. It's not a coincidence that capitalist societies are more prosperous -- however, when this is used as the justification for capitalism, the logical conclusion is to have a semi-free market where the government tries to manage the economy and optimise different variables (GDP, employment, inflation, etc), i.e. the system in almost every western country today. I'd argue the constant financial crises and ballooning sovereign debt show that this system cannot possibly be sustained. Also: the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies is not respected in official Objectivist circles. It's one of a number of organisations which attempt to water down Rand's message to appeal to more people, but as a result put off both Objectivists and non-Objectivists.
- tamana 11y agoThis is the nut of it: >She says that a capitalist society is good because it's the only society which fully protects individual rights Any theory of society that ignores that it's defining characteristic is that it is NOT fully individual is fundamentally flawed. That is what is broken about Objectivism.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoWe used to have some stability. We didn't have constant financial crises for a long time. But then the regulations got tossed in the interest of enterprise. So capitalism can work.
- dschiptsov 11y agoAs a student of philosophy and, it seems, having a slightly autistic mentality, she had strong emphasis on the underlying principles - philosophic, economical and social around which she has invented her characters and the plot. The characters and the settings could be criticized (usually by idiots who couldn't see the whole) for being too idealized and artificial but there is not a single major flaw with principles of free market economy (as a self-sustained and self-healing ecosystem), democracy (as an evolved "immune system" of a civilized society against social parasites and cancer-like corruption of authoritarian regimes) the operating selection on the basis of best performance, which is one of the principles behind evolution itself, etc, etc. Ask any decent evolutionary biologist, and he would tell you that diversity, specialization, cooperation, selection on the best performance, fairness (as in a coin toss) and law of big numbers (averages) is what is behind life itself. Verbosity, perhaps, is the only major flaw, but as a work of art it should be placed next to 1984 and Brave New World.
- tamana 11y agoThose of us with an interest in humanity aren't looking for a perfect description of how humans can organize a society around the principles of animal evolution. You also seem confused when you say that Democracy is part of the Objectivist vision. Democracy is mob rule, not individual liberty.
- dschiptsov 11y agoIt is not mob rule, of course. It is a set of mechanisms to remove corrupted or failed officials from power by replacing them with better performers. At least in theory. Are you trying to say that humans are not subjects to "animal evolution" or ecological laws?
- officer_gotcha 11y agoThere's none, it's a bad science fiction book.
- lostmsu 11y agoA commie here. I actually liked Atlas a lot. It still inspires me to do work, rather than sit on my ass. For that I recommend it to people. It is great in that. No so much in 'honest - then, and only then - capitalist' part. Long speeches never bothered though - you can always skip them, because you kinda know what they are talking about for 10 pages.