11 ms·

The new age of Ayn Rand

32 points by spking 10y ago

hprotagonist 10y ago
>There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. -- John Rogers
- e40 10y ago
  I never get tired of reading that quote.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  We read Anthem freshman year. It's been a long time, but that seems like a good piece of fiction that covers similar themes without getting bogged down in plot and/or dogmatism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)
  - matwood 10y ago
    Speaking of her other books, I found The Fountainhead to be a much better story with less preaching than Atlas Shrugged. The ideas I took from it were to work hard, and expect to be compensated for your efforts. The lead character was also very much an idealist, doing things the 'right' way in his mind and going through periods of wealth and poverty because of it.
    - sevensor 10y ago
      Even better, read We the Living. Rand is at her best as a critic of Soviet Communism, the system under which she came of age. Despite her stated love for the United States and its economic system, I don't think she ever really understood it at the level she understood Soviet Communism. This is why her novels set in the U.S. don't really feel like any version of the U.S. you know of, historical or current. It's not so much the real United States as it is an idealized not-the-Soviet-Union. Maybe it's a place you want to live, and maybe it's not.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Rand is at her best as a critic of Soviet Communism Huh. The idea of Rand as kind of a weird mirror image of Marx, much better as a critic of a particular system than a prescriber of solutions (though, even with his problems in this regard, Marx is much better than Rand here), is interesting.
- jjtheblunt 10y ago
  that's pretty funny
- IsaacL 10y ago
  Did John Rogers meet many Ayn Rand fans before forming this opinion? Did you? I'm been an active Objectivist for the last two years and I've met dozens of others. They're a diverse bunch (I know Objectivist actors, Objectivist musicians, Objectivist academics, Objectivist finance guys, tons of Objectivist programmers), but in general, I'd say they're way more friendly, less cynical and more optimistic than the majority of people I meet. They're fun to be around and are usually working towards some personally meaningful life goals. I do think that teenagers probably shouldn't read Atlas Shrugged -- they're too likely to take away a shallow understanding of the message. I first read it just before my 25th birthday, and I think it's best read in your mid-20s, when your youthful idealism starts crashing into practical reality.
  - IsaacL 10y ago
    I posted these links elsewhere in the thread, but I think they'll be of special interest to HN readers, who might want to know about the more technical aspects of her philosophy. An index of her thoughts on many topics: http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html A graduation speech which summarises her views on philosophy in general: http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html Her most technical work, her theory of concept-formation (and the book that sold me on her ideas): https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second-ebook/dp/B002OSXD8C https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology...
  - cam_l 10y ago
    I think it fair to judge objectivism by the actions of its most infamous followers, say the koch Bros. Same as I judge communism by the actions of lenin or mao, or capitalism by, oh I don't know, Madoff. But yeah, garden variety objectivists, just like garden variety communists or people generally really, are good people.
DArcMattr 10y ago
If only this were true. I worked at the Ayn Rand Institute, and still keep tabs with their activities and their progress. If Ayn Rand's ideas were as widespreadly acknowledged and held, then we'd see a distortion free economy, not a series of spin jobs all geared towards acquiring political power.
- res0nat0r 10y ago
  It seems her philosophy these days has been converted to: screw everyone else and how can I get as rich as possible? Which is no wonder why most of the CEOs and politicians in the article adore her so.
  - ffk 10y ago
    Can you describe what her philosophy was originally?
    - xiphias 10y ago
      Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally. (From Wikipedia)
      - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
        Which is obviously wrong, because it presupposes - against all the evidence of history - that humans are rational enough to understand the consequences of their own actions well enough to maximise their own contentment. In reality "the pursuit of happiness" could mean working in a soup kitchen, meditating full-time, moving into the rain forest and living with a primitive tribe, or buying a farm and working towards becoming self-sufficient. (Does this sound hypothetical? I know people who did some of these things, and some of them reported their happiness increased significantly.) In reality it always seems to mean the narrow and small-mindedly unimaginative pursuit of money, power, and social status for the purposes of physical comfort, childish short-term ego gratification, self-importance, and conspicuous wealth/status display. Sometimes a rare individual will produce something worthwhile as a side-effect. But don't confuse cause and effect - plenty of individuals chase these goals and produce absolutely nothing of value at all. So there is no deep insight there. It's just a transparent exhortation to work, spend, manipulate, and consume in a very public way, instead of doing something more challenging with your life.
awptimus 10y ago
I love articles like these because it's nothing but regurgitated BS by people who don't get Rand, about people who aren't really 'devotees'. Writing caricatures of people and ideas and how those caricatures of people ideas relate to each other is great. Here's an honest sentence "Paul Ryan, who has never really done anything the protagonists of Rand's novels would, is said to have liked the book a lot"
- 0xCMP 10y ago
  Devil's Advocate: Kind of goes with the idea that the characters are unrealistic right?
  - arkis22 10y ago
    People have argued that, but I don't buy it. We have captains of industry that we hero worship today. Devil's Advocate: Jesus was the son of God, but we don't ignore his ideals as unrealistic.
  - awptimus 10y ago
    Yes, the characters are intended to be one dimensional. You'll notice all the characters have differences from each other in important ways, because they are meant to show how certain beliefs (and contradictions in beliefs) interact and have consequences. Dagny and Rearden have internal contradictions, and it's not the point to find relation to them as people, but how their contradictions affect them. The one sided villains aren't meant to be rich characters full of life, but people who carry out principles you here uttered in real life to their extreme conclusions. The purpose is to take people at what they claim their values are and illustrate their implications.
- CalChris 10y ago
  Similarly, I hate articles like this because she will always be defended by people who don't quote her atrocious writing or summarize her mediocre ideas. Instead we are told that we don't get what you won't say.
  - 10y ago
duckingtest 10y ago
Villains in Atlas Shrugged may appear ridiculously one-dimensional and simplified, but then one look at Venezuela today should convince anyone they are indeed realistic. That's not accidental - after all she lived in the early USSR and seen it all with her own eyes. That's how life under socialism really is - envy and brutality combined with breathtaking incompetence.
- kesselvon 10y ago
  Too bad no one is really advocating socialism, most people want capitalism with guardrails (aka Scandinavian social democracy)
  - ue_ 10y ago
    >Too bad no one is really advocating socialism I am (on the Internet at least).
- aniro 10y ago
  Funny, because i see the current US corporate+political sphere as being a far better repesentation of her anti-heroes. There are far more Tooheys in the upper echelon of American society than there are Galts. Venezula looks a lot more like Animal Farm.
- vslira 10y ago
  I really like this quote: "In this respect, Rand was a merely half-great writer: her villains were real, but her heroes were fake. There is no Galt’s Gulch." - Peter Thiel
- s_kilk 10y ago
  > envy and brutality combined with breathtaking incompetence. For a moment there I thought you were describing Capitalism.
- ue_ 10y ago
  >That's how life under socialism really is - envy and brutality combined with breathtaking incompetence. Why do you think these are core to the ideas of Socialism? If by envy you are referring to envy of private property holders, have you considered that it could be something else? The Marxian and indeed anarchist analysis of capitalism brings in the ideas of exploitation, commodity fetishism and alienation. I think it is quite incorrect to characterise Socialism as envy of the wealthy. With regard to incompetence and brutality, I don't want to get into a match of Whataboutism, though it should be pointed out that capitalism exhibits these qualities too, in the state defence of private property all the way to sweatshop labour and overproduction.
arkis22 10y ago
I would like to recommend Atlas Shrugged to anyone who has not read it. It is long, and it is indeed preachy, but she nails so much about the human condition. I do think that most people that complain about her don't really understand her work. In her eyes capitalism is an intrinsically _personal_ system, individuals helping each other. The heroes of the story all have their companies named after themselves, while the "bad companies" are bland things like associated steel. Her point is that as soon as you divorce the individuality from capitalism, you get these bad outcomes. At the end of the day companies aren't companies, they're people. To drive this home, the USSR treated people as interchangable inputs. If that's your policy you are completely ignoring people's individuality. Are they lazy? smart? work hard? People are not interchangable, and by respecting that the US outspent the USSR. This "personal" capitalism is far different from the way our multinationals, governments, or even people, act today.
- ue_ 10y ago
  >This "personal" capitalism is far different from the way our multinationals, governments, or even people, act today. As a Socialist myself, I have wondered: how does capitalism become personal? Is it possible to achieve this? Let's assume for a moment that Marx was wrong about exploitation; how does wage labour, unexploitative, take the form of personal relation? From my point of view, I was thinking that the division of labour will create an impersonal relationship, so much so that the worker will not see his own labour in the final product. How does personal capitalism fare with division of labour and automation? I want to keep an open mind rather than to steer this ideologically, so I hope you are not put off by my differing viewpoint.
  - Danihan 10y ago
    How is capitalism, or any financial system, ever not personal? At its core, capitalism is simply the codification of a win-win transaction between two or more parties. I work for your company, you pay me X salary. Whereas socialism is the codification of a win-lose, non-consensual transaction. You're doing well, give me your money so I can give it to a third party, or else. Of course there are negative externalities to worry about, contractual enforcement, etc. But those don't change the core philosophies.
moomin 10y ago
I'm always disappointed at how many "fans" of Ayn Rand seem to have read Atlas Shrugged and decided to emulate James rather than Dagny. They're all in favour of small government when it suits their rent-seeking interests, but watch their favoured industry crash and all of a sudden Something Must Be Done For The Good Of The Country.
theseatoms 10y ago
Her detractors tend to assume too narrow a definition of "selfishness". They tend to read "selfish" as "self-centered", by projecting their own utility functions onto others. :P Altruistic acts can be, and often are, done selfishly.
- awptimus 10y ago
  bump
- undersuit 10y ago
  Isn't that one of the arguments made in The Fountainhead?
  - theseatoms 10y ago
    Probably is. It's been a while since I read it.
RangerScience 10y ago
I've been thinking about "failure modes" and "overlapping systems" a lot recently. It really started with utilitarianism and Utility Monsters, which I highly recommend looking up real quick. At first glance, objectivism makes a lot of sense: In one simple situation, how much easier is it to deal with people when they're clear and certain about what they want? But then you start to notice the ways that value system fails (it seems easy to miss how indirect aid of others helps you). That stage set - All systems have failure modes. The trick seems to be layering your systems so that the failure modes don't overlap; the failure mode of utility monster could be covered by functioning objectivism; the short-sightedness of objectivism could be covered by the broad view of patriotism, etc etc. (Not saying this particular stack works, but trying to suggest an example of what I'm getting at)
hirundo 10y ago
The social virtue of capitalist selfishness is illustrated by the most rapid drop in poverty in history: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/amazing-chart-shows-thanks-to-capitalism-global-poverty-is-at-its-lowest-rate-in-history/article/2562224 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/amazing-chart-shows-thanks... https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_... This massive decline in misery is far more the influence of markets than bureaucracies. We should be so lucky as to be in a new age of Ayn Rand.
forbin_meet_hal 10y ago
I find Rand tragic. She had a real opportunity to educate people about a proper relationship between people and their government, during a time of creeping totalitarianism and collectivism. Sadly, she also wanted to create a cult. The chapter about her in Brian Doherty's "Radicals for Capitalism" most certainly bore this out. My favorite part was when she sat her husband down and informed him that the Objectivist philosophy dictated that she should be allowed to bang her assistant.
kapauldo 10y ago
Most "Objectivists" use the philosophy to justify turning a cruel eye toward those who need help, by equating their own lot in life to hard work. Its self elevating and impossibe to penetrate.
mchlmllr 10y ago
htaunay et al, do not be so quick to discount Rand’s solutions. It is way too easy to make false assumptions about the nature of “Capitalism" as she defines it. First you have to realize that Politics is but one of a philosophy’s necessary 5 interdependent branches: 1. Metaphysics, which answers the question “what is the fundamental nature of everything?” 2. Epistemology, which answers the question “how do I know that or anything else?" 3. Ethics, which answers the question “given #1 & #2, how should I act in order to achieve the fulfillment of my nature?” 4. Politics, which answers the question “what kind of relationship consistent with #3 should there be between me and others when living in a society?” 5. Aesthetics, which answers the question: “how can I experience concretely the the product of my abstract conclusions in #1-#4 before they are actual, and of what value would that be?” The validity of any philosophy depends on 1) consistency of conclusions drawn within and between each of the branches and 2) consistency of those conclusions with the actual facts of reality. So, half of the task in grasping Rand’s radical Capitalism is understanding what its principles are vs. all the other versions of Capitalism. The other half requires understanding how they rest on and derive from her Ethics. While it is easy to inform yourself of her political principles, you can neither validate them nor argue successfully against them without dealing with the ethical principles from which they are derived. For instance, a Capitalist government, in Rand’s view, may not fund itself through taxation. 99% of her critics will argue that is impractical; but her Ethics, recognizing human fallibility, demands individual autonomy in the pursuit of one’s life, and inherent in claiming the right to autonomy is the obligation to grant it reciprocally to all others. Therefore, the only job allowed or required of the government is to secure that autonomy for all by forbidding/preventing/punishing the use of force by anyone against others for gain. Since taxation is the use of force by one group against another group for gain, it is inherently immoral, and the immoral may never be argued to be “practical” under any circumstances. If you cannot devise a way to fund the government without using force, you don’t get a government! If you want to know how to fund a massive worldwide service like Rand’s minimalist government in which those with money pay for it voluntarily while the poorest get it for free, just ask Google or Facebook, who have been there and done that. Here are 13 fact based conclusions supporting radical laissez-faire Capitalism as the only moral form of government: the metaphysics: 1) The existence of living organisms is conditional on self-generated selection and exercise of certain actions consistent with their specific nature in the face of alternatives. 2) The most fundamental of all alternatives for all living creatures is life or death. the epistemology: 3) Of all living creatures, only a volitional human can initiate the selection of which alternative to pursue and how to pursue it. the ethics: 4) The choice (deliberate or implied in all other choices) to pursue the fundamental alternative of life over death implicitly establishes one’s life as one's fundamental and primary goal. 5) One's fundamental goal is implicitly the standard of measure for all values one acts to gain or keep in its pursuit. 6) Therefore, that which contributes to one's life (consistent with one's nature, as opposed to mere vegetative existence) is necessarily "the ethical good", and that which detracts from it is "the ethical bad". 7) Since the identification and evaluation of goals/values is slow and deliberative while everyday life is spontaneous, the long run pursuit of life necessitates a hierarchical code of values in principle (ethics) to guide (by programming emotions) one's spontaneous choices in any alternative faced, and it requires one to opt, in each concrete instance, for that which is the higher value per that code in lieu of the lower one (the morality of egoism). 8) Man's singular means to fulfill these requirements of his nature in the pursuit of life is by applying the product of his reason to his actions in the production and exchange of values needed to survive and flourish consistent with the nature of the human being he is. the politics: 9) The extension of that individual ethic to the social context of an individual living in a society of other volitional (and therefore fallible) men requires that one seek to preserve one's own autonomy over the application of one's own reason to one's own action in the pursuit of one's own life ( = freedom from the fallibility of others). 10) The only threat to a man's pursuit of his life in that context would be the initiation or threat of physical force by others to coerce certain choices of action against his will thus diminishing or negating the above defined individual autonomy. 11) The single most fundamental political alternative is therefore not left vs. right, or liberal vs. conservative, but rather: freedom vs. force (autonomy vs. coercion). 12) Therefore, it is morally imperative that each individual human being living in a society of men advocate and sustain, to the best of his efforts and extent possible, a third party institution authorized to remove the use of aggressive force from all human interactions within its jurisdiction. 13) A moral government must therefore guarantee that: No person shall initiate the use of physical force or threat thereof to take, withhold, damage or destroy any tangible or intangible value of another person who either created it or acquired it in a voluntary exchange, nor impede any other person's non-coercive actions. Note that every interrelationship, every exchange of values, tangible or intangible among those who are acting in their own rational self interest must be voluntary. Further, in every voluntary exchange of values, both parties profit. Each gives up something he values less to get something he values more, and they do it without using force. That is the essence of a free market! Thus, no one can oppose Ayn Rand’s politics without sooner or later embracing the use of force against others for their own gain.

32 points by spking 10y ago

>There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. -- John Rogers

e40 10y ago
I never get tired of reading that quote.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
We read Anthem freshman year. It's been a long time, but that seems like a good piece of fiction that covers similar themes without getting bogged down in plot and/or dogmatism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)
- matwood 10y ago
  Speaking of her other books, I found The Fountainhead to be a much better story with less preaching than Atlas Shrugged. The ideas I took from it were to work hard, and expect to be compensated for your efforts. The lead character was also very much an idealist, doing things the 'right' way in his mind and going through periods of wealth and poverty because of it.
  - sevensor 10y ago
    Even better, read We the Living. Rand is at her best as a critic of Soviet Communism, the system under which she came of age. Despite her stated love for the United States and its economic system, I don't think she ever really understood it at the level she understood Soviet Communism. This is why her novels set in the U.S. don't really feel like any version of the U.S. you know of, historical or current. It's not so much the real United States as it is an idealized not-the-Soviet-Union. Maybe it's a place you want to live, and maybe it's not.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Rand is at her best as a critic of Soviet Communism Huh. The idea of Rand as kind of a weird mirror image of Marx, much better as a critic of a particular system than a prescriber of solutions (though, even with his problems in this regard, Marx is much better than Rand here), is interesting.
jjtheblunt 10y ago
that's pretty funny
IsaacL 10y ago
Did John Rogers meet many Ayn Rand fans before forming this opinion? Did you? I'm been an active Objectivist for the last two years and I've met dozens of others. They're a diverse bunch (I know Objectivist actors, Objectivist musicians, Objectivist academics, Objectivist finance guys, tons of Objectivist programmers), but in general, I'd say they're way more friendly, less cynical and more optimistic than the majority of people I meet. They're fun to be around and are usually working towards some personally meaningful life goals. I do think that teenagers probably shouldn't read Atlas Shrugged -- they're too likely to take away a shallow understanding of the message. I first read it just before my 25th birthday, and I think it's best read in your mid-20s, when your youthful idealism starts crashing into practical reality.
- IsaacL 10y ago
  I posted these links elsewhere in the thread, but I think they'll be of special interest to HN readers, who might want to know about the more technical aspects of her philosophy. An index of her thoughts on many topics: http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html A graduation speech which summarises her views on philosophy in general: http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html Her most technical work, her theory of concept-formation (and the book that sold me on her ideas): https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second-ebook/dp/B002OSXD8C https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology...
- cam_l 10y ago
  I think it fair to judge objectivism by the actions of its most infamous followers, say the koch Bros. Same as I judge communism by the actions of lenin or mao, or capitalism by, oh I don't know, Madoff. But yeah, garden variety objectivists, just like garden variety communists or people generally really, are good people.

DArcMattr 10y ago

If only this were true. I worked at the Ayn Rand Institute, and still keep tabs with their activities and their progress. If Ayn Rand's ideas were as widespreadly acknowledged and held, then we'd see a distortion free economy, not a series of spin jobs all geared towards acquiring political power.

res0nat0r 10y ago
It seems her philosophy these days has been converted to: screw everyone else and how can I get as rich as possible? Which is no wonder why most of the CEOs and politicians in the article adore her so.
- ffk 10y ago
  Can you describe what her philosophy was originally?
  - xiphias 10y ago
    Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally. (From Wikipedia)
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      Which is obviously wrong, because it presupposes - against all the evidence of history - that humans are rational enough to understand the consequences of their own actions well enough to maximise their own contentment. In reality "the pursuit of happiness" could mean working in a soup kitchen, meditating full-time, moving into the rain forest and living with a primitive tribe, or buying a farm and working towards becoming self-sufficient. (Does this sound hypothetical? I know people who did some of these things, and some of them reported their happiness increased significantly.) In reality it always seems to mean the narrow and small-mindedly unimaginative pursuit of money, power, and social status for the purposes of physical comfort, childish short-term ego gratification, self-importance, and conspicuous wealth/status display. Sometimes a rare individual will produce something worthwhile as a side-effect. But don't confuse cause and effect - plenty of individuals chase these goals and produce absolutely nothing of value at all. So there is no deep insight there. It's just a transparent exhortation to work, spend, manipulate, and consume in a very public way, instead of doing something more challenging with your life.

awptimus 10y ago

I love articles like these because it's nothing but regurgitated BS by people who don't get Rand, about people who aren't really 'devotees'. Writing caricatures of people and ideas and how those caricatures of people ideas relate to each other is great. Here's an honest sentence "Paul Ryan, who has never really done anything the protagonists of Rand's novels would, is said to have liked the book a lot"

0xCMP 10y ago
Devil's Advocate: Kind of goes with the idea that the characters are unrealistic right?
- arkis22 10y ago
  People have argued that, but I don't buy it. We have captains of industry that we hero worship today. Devil's Advocate: Jesus was the son of God, but we don't ignore his ideals as unrealistic.
- awptimus 10y ago
  Yes, the characters are intended to be one dimensional. You'll notice all the characters have differences from each other in important ways, because they are meant to show how certain beliefs (and contradictions in beliefs) interact and have consequences. Dagny and Rearden have internal contradictions, and it's not the point to find relation to them as people, but how their contradictions affect them. The one sided villains aren't meant to be rich characters full of life, but people who carry out principles you here uttered in real life to their extreme conclusions. The purpose is to take people at what they claim their values are and illustrate their implications.
CalChris 10y ago
Similarly, I hate articles like this because she will always be defended by people who don't quote her atrocious writing or summarize her mediocre ideas. Instead we are told that we don't get what you won't say.
- 10y ago

duckingtest 10y ago

Villains in Atlas Shrugged may appear ridiculously one-dimensional and simplified, but then one look at Venezuela today should convince anyone they are indeed realistic. That's not accidental - after all she lived in the early USSR and seen it all with her own eyes. That's how life under socialism really is - envy and brutality combined with breathtaking incompetence.

kesselvon 10y ago
Too bad no one is really advocating socialism, most people want capitalism with guardrails (aka Scandinavian social democracy)
- ue_ 10y ago
  >Too bad no one is really advocating socialism I am (on the Internet at least).
aniro 10y ago
Funny, because i see the current US corporate+political sphere as being a far better repesentation of her anti-heroes. There are far more Tooheys in the upper echelon of American society than there are Galts. Venezula looks a lot more like Animal Farm.
vslira 10y ago
I really like this quote: "In this respect, Rand was a merely half-great writer: her villains were real, but her heroes were fake. There is no Galt’s Gulch." - Peter Thiel
s_kilk 10y ago
> envy and brutality combined with breathtaking incompetence. For a moment there I thought you were describing Capitalism.
ue_ 10y ago
>That's how life under socialism really is - envy and brutality combined with breathtaking incompetence. Why do you think these are core to the ideas of Socialism? If by envy you are referring to envy of private property holders, have you considered that it could be something else? The Marxian and indeed anarchist analysis of capitalism brings in the ideas of exploitation, commodity fetishism and alienation. I think it is quite incorrect to characterise Socialism as envy of the wealthy. With regard to incompetence and brutality, I don't want to get into a match of Whataboutism, though it should be pointed out that capitalism exhibits these qualities too, in the state defence of private property all the way to sweatshop labour and overproduction.

arkis22 10y ago

I would like to recommend Atlas Shrugged to anyone who has not read it. It is long, and it is indeed preachy, but she nails so much about the human condition. I do think that most people that complain about her don't really understand her work. In her eyes capitalism is an intrinsically _personal_ system, individuals helping each other. The heroes of the story all have their companies named after themselves, while the "bad companies" are bland things like associated steel. Her point is that as soon as you divorce the individuality from capitalism, you get these bad outcomes. At the end of the day companies aren't companies, they're people. To drive this home, the USSR treated people as interchangable inputs. If that's your policy you are completely ignoring people's individuality. Are they lazy? smart? work hard? People are not interchangable, and by respecting that the US outspent the USSR. This "personal" capitalism is far different from the way our multinationals, governments, or even people, act today.

ue_ 10y ago
>This "personal" capitalism is far different from the way our multinationals, governments, or even people, act today. As a Socialist myself, I have wondered: how does capitalism become personal? Is it possible to achieve this? Let's assume for a moment that Marx was wrong about exploitation; how does wage labour, unexploitative, take the form of personal relation? From my point of view, I was thinking that the division of labour will create an impersonal relationship, so much so that the worker will not see his own labour in the final product. How does personal capitalism fare with division of labour and automation? I want to keep an open mind rather than to steer this ideologically, so I hope you are not put off by my differing viewpoint.
- Danihan 10y ago
  How is capitalism, or any financial system, ever not personal? At its core, capitalism is simply the codification of a win-win transaction between two or more parties. I work for your company, you pay me X salary. Whereas socialism is the codification of a win-lose, non-consensual transaction. You're doing well, give me your money so I can give it to a third party, or else. Of course there are negative externalities to worry about, contractual enforcement, etc. But those don't change the core philosophies.

moomin 10y ago

I'm always disappointed at how many "fans" of Ayn Rand seem to have read Atlas Shrugged and decided to emulate James rather than Dagny. They're all in favour of small government when it suits their rent-seeking interests, but watch their favoured industry crash and all of a sudden Something Must Be Done For The Good Of The Country.

theseatoms 10y ago

Her detractors tend to assume too narrow a definition of "selfishness". They tend to read "selfish" as "self-centered", by projecting their own utility functions onto others. :P Altruistic acts can be, and often are, done selfishly.

awptimus 10y ago
bump
undersuit 10y ago
Isn't that one of the arguments made in The Fountainhead?
- theseatoms 10y ago
  Probably is. It's been a while since I read it.

RangerScience 10y ago

I've been thinking about "failure modes" and "overlapping systems" a lot recently. It really started with utilitarianism and Utility Monsters, which I highly recommend looking up real quick. At first glance, objectivism makes a lot of sense: In one simple situation, how much easier is it to deal with people when they're clear and certain about what they want? But then you start to notice the ways that value system fails (it seems easy to miss how indirect aid of others helps you). That stage set - All systems have failure modes. The trick seems to be layering your systems so that the failure modes don't overlap; the failure mode of utility monster could be covered by functioning objectivism; the short-sightedness of objectivism could be covered by the broad view of patriotism, etc etc. (Not saying this particular stack works, but trying to suggest an example of what I'm getting at)

hirundo 10y ago

The social virtue of capitalist selfishness is illustrated by the most rapid drop in poverty in history: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/amazing-chart-shows-thanks-to-capitalism-global-poverty-is-at-its-lowest-rate-in-history/article/2562224 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/amazing-chart-shows-thanks... https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_... This massive decline in misery is far more the influence of markets than bureaucracies. We should be so lucky as to be in a new age of Ayn Rand.

forbin_meet_hal 10y ago

I find Rand tragic. She had a real opportunity to educate people about a proper relationship between people and their government, during a time of creeping totalitarianism and collectivism. Sadly, she also wanted to create a cult. The chapter about her in Brian Doherty's "Radicals for Capitalism" most certainly bore this out. My favorite part was when she sat her husband down and informed him that the Objectivist philosophy dictated that she should be allowed to bang her assistant.

kapauldo 10y ago

Most "Objectivists" use the philosophy to justify turning a cruel eye toward those who need help, by equating their own lot in life to hard work. Its self elevating and impossibe to penetrate.

mchlmllr 10y ago

htaunay et al, do not be so quick to discount Rand’s solutions. It is way too easy to make false assumptions about the nature of “Capitalism" as she defines it. First you have to realize that Politics is but one of a philosophy’s necessary 5 interdependent branches: 1. Metaphysics, which answers the question “what is the fundamental nature of everything?” 2. Epistemology, which answers the question “how do I know that or anything else?" 3. Ethics, which answers the question “given #1 & #2, how should I act in order to achieve the fulfillment of my nature?” 4. Politics, which answers the question “what kind of relationship consistent with #3 should there be between me and others when living in a society?” 5. Aesthetics, which answers the question: “how can I experience concretely the the product of my abstract conclusions in #1-#4 before they are actual, and of what value would that be?” The validity of any philosophy depends on 1) consistency of conclusions drawn within and between each of the branches and 2) consistency of those conclusions with the actual facts of reality. So, half of the task in grasping Rand’s radical Capitalism is understanding what its principles are vs. all the other versions of Capitalism. The other half requires understanding how they rest on and derive from her Ethics. While it is easy to inform yourself of her political principles, you can neither validate them nor argue successfully against them without dealing with the ethical principles from which they are derived. For instance, a Capitalist government, in Rand’s view, may not fund itself through taxation. 99% of her critics will argue that is impractical; but her Ethics, recognizing human fallibility, demands individual autonomy in the pursuit of one’s life, and inherent in claiming the right to autonomy is the obligation to grant it reciprocally to all others. Therefore, the only job allowed or required of the government is to secure that autonomy for all by forbidding/preventing/punishing the use of force by anyone against others for gain. Since taxation is the use of force by one group against another group for gain, it is inherently immoral, and the immoral may never be argued to be “practical” under any circumstances. If you cannot devise a way to fund the government without using force, you don’t get a government! If you want to know how to fund a massive worldwide service like Rand’s minimalist government in which those with money pay for it voluntarily while the poorest get it for free, just ask Google or Facebook, who have been there and done that. Here are 13 fact based conclusions supporting radical laissez-faire Capitalism as the only moral form of government: the metaphysics: 1) The existence of living organisms is conditional on self-generated selection and exercise of certain actions consistent with their specific nature in the face of alternatives. 2) The most fundamental of all alternatives for all living creatures is life or death. the epistemology: 3) Of all living creatures, only a volitional human can initiate the selection of which alternative to pursue and how to pursue it. the ethics: 4) The choice (deliberate or implied in all other choices) to pursue the fundamental alternative of life over death implicitly establishes one’s life as one's fundamental and primary goal. 5) One's fundamental goal is implicitly the standard of measure for all values one acts to gain or keep in its pursuit. 6) Therefore, that which contributes to one's life (consistent with one's nature, as opposed to mere vegetative existence) is necessarily "the ethical good", and that which detracts from it is "the ethical bad". 7) Since the identification and evaluation of goals/values is slow and deliberative while everyday life is spontaneous, the long run pursuit of life necessitates a hierarchical code of values in principle (ethics) to guide (by programming emotions) one's spontaneous choices in any alternative faced, and it requires one to opt, in each concrete instance, for that which is the higher value per that code in lieu of the lower one (the morality of egoism). 8) Man's singular means to fulfill these requirements of his nature in the pursuit of life is by applying the product of his reason to his actions in the production and exchange of values needed to survive and flourish consistent with the nature of the human being he is. the politics: 9) The extension of that individual ethic to the social context of an individual living in a society of other volitional (and therefore fallible) men requires that one seek to preserve one's own autonomy over the application of one's own reason to one's own action in the pursuit of one's own life ( = freedom from the fallibility of others). 10) The only threat to a man's pursuit of his life in that context would be the initiation or threat of physical force by others to coerce certain choices of action against his will thus diminishing or negating the above defined individual autonomy. 11) The single most fundamental political alternative is therefore not left vs. right, or liberal vs. conservative, but rather: freedom vs. force (autonomy vs. coercion). 12) Therefore, it is morally imperative that each individual human being living in a society of men advocate and sustain, to the best of his efforts and extent possible, a third party institution authorized to remove the use of aggressive force from all human interactions within its jurisdiction. 13) A moral government must therefore guarantee that: No person shall initiate the use of physical force or threat thereof to take, withhold, damage or destroy any tangible or intangible value of another person who either created it or acquired it in a voluntary exchange, nor impede any other person's non-coercive actions. Note that every interrelationship, every exchange of values, tangible or intangible among those who are acting in their own rational self interest must be voluntary. Further, in every voluntary exchange of values, both parties profit. Each gives up something he values less to get something he values more, and they do it without using force. That is the essence of a free market! Thus, no one can oppose Ayn Rand’s politics without sooner or later embracing the use of force against others for their own gain.