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The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
- homarp 9y agoThe book is available here: http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm Previous HN Discussions: "Land-value tax: Why Henry George had a point" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10442929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10442929 How I Used Eve Online to Predict the Great Recession - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158868
- dnautics 9y agoon the other hand, nobody built a world-changing global repository of information based on Henry George's principles, so as much I dislike her, empirically speaking Ayn Rand has that going for her.
- notahacker 9y agoAyn Rand's principles invented the internet? Someone should write the history of how all those government-funded research institutes weren't really involved.
- noobermin 9y agoFrom government research to the Great Depression, the only way libertarian economics escapes unscathed is by ignorance of history.
- dnautics 9y agoif you didn't know that wikipedia was created after Randian principles, then it is you who is ignorant.
- dnautics 9y agowikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
- notahacker 9y agoYes, I've heard of Wikipedia. Also heard of this little thing called the World Wide Web and computers, invented by people working for government-funded research institutions, the sort of thing that Rand considered Stadler the most evil character in Atlas Shrugged for deigning to participate in. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that ignoring Rand has done far more for computer-based sharing of knowledge than taking her seriously ever would. (I doubt Rand would have been a fan of Wikipedia FWIW, no matter how much Jimbo loved her books. Actually, scratch that, I'm certain she'd have despised Wikipedia even without reading it and realising how liberal the average contributor is. Not too much virtuous selfishness in collaborative, pseudo-democratic editing of a reward-free commons or indeed the Wikipedia begging bowl) Poor old Henry George has to settle for being admired by the likes of Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Sun Yat Sen, and Rand's own architectural muse Frank Lloyd Wright (some of them were nearly as bad at being Georgists as Jimmy Wales was at being an Objectivist). So as overtly simplistic as I think his economics was, I'd guess he had that going for him.
- dnautics 9y agobeing admired by someone is categorically different from being the philosophical root of something. The principle of individual self-interest being naturally channeled towards common goods is at the core of objectivist philosophy. However much Wales has personally failed at being an objectivist is irrelevant, because the key insight behind wikipedia (to be flippant: that clans of neckbeards obsessed with correctness would in aggregate create an eventually consistent, curated infomation store) would not have come about in its existing form without Randism. The connection between Ayn Rand and wikipedia is not just a casual association, wikipedia was STARTED as a proof of concept after a debate between Wales and Larry Sanger about objectivism. As for wikipedia happening to be on the internet, well whatever. You could make the same argument about money in general, since that is backed by the state. Moreover, your argument that ignoring rand has done more for X is not inconsistent with the fact that using rand's philosophy has done more than using george's philosophy.
- kashkhan 9y ago> When you work for an hour, you increase society’s wealth (and your own) by an hour’s worth of wages. true. > When you save a dollar rather than spending it, you increase society’s (and your own) wealth by a dollar um no. spending only transfers the dollars, and normally you trade the dollar for something worth more to you than the dollar & vice versa, and society's wealth increases due to trade.
- _0ffh 9y agoYeah, this is total bs. The economy needs the money to circulate, then everybody gets richer. Money has no value but as a share of the economies' production. When money flows, production goes up. The problem is when some people who are so rich that they can barely spend a few per cents of their income. Instead of getting spent, the money gets invested. But that's not really circulation, it's the opposite: Stuck money used to stick more money. Edit: This is not to say that there isn't any merit in Georges' other ideas.
- dantheman 9y agoMoney not spent/deferred means that the person producing basically volunteered their time. Money invested is spent - it's spent by people who it's given to. There is no such thing as "stuck" money.
- kashkhan 9y agodepends on how that money is "produced". Is it obtained by labor or by extracting rent. When labor is added (get paid for building a house) real value is generated. In comparison having a piece of land go up in price, no real value is created for society. In a society with 100 dollars, having zero velocity of money means trade using money is stopped. That's "stuck". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
- true_religion 9y agoThe purpose of money isnt' wholly to create value for society; its also to serve as a medium with which to measure the allocation of scarce resources. If land prices go up, the resources associated with them then get allocated to those who find the greatest utility, and the money goes to other who will then spend it on other things. If you force prices to stay static, you just get the Bay Area where whoever plopped themselves on the land first gets to keep it, like some kind of landed aristocracy.
- mnm1 9y ago"Chances are that will be Ayn Rand and her extreme form of capitalism, which she called objectivism." Rand's views on capitalism are only a small part of her philosophy and not at all the most interesting or compelling by far. By reducing objectivism to a form of capitalism, the author and most contemporary Rand proponents show they know little to nothing about objectivism and understand little to nothing of Rand's philosophy. It's sad that this aspect of her writings is so emphasized over everything else when it's the least interesting and least compelling of her writings about the human condition and the self. Most people using Rand's philosophy as a justification for their exploits of others would be considered looters by Rand, the exact opposite of what she espouses.
- tim333 9y ago> You’ve got to think of “land” as a metaphor for all unproductive forms of capitalism... Goldman... Banking existed in George's day too and when he said land I think he meant land. Land issues are still relevant today - in SF/silicon valley much of the value created by the tech industry has ended up with landlords who did nothing to produce it. You could make an argument for taxing that and spending it on social stuff. Also places like Monaco and Hong Kong have been successful in having low / zero taxes on wages etc by the government keeping ownership of much of the land and getting income from that.
- sparkzilla 9y agoThe author of the piece says Rand "rationalizes greed," which is false, as there are many forms of greed, not just financial. My understanding is that she says that society is most moral when people are able to trade without coercion, and therefore the wealth generated from free trade cannot be classified as "greed".
- notacoward 9y agoI have a lot of respect for Georgists and geolibertarians, unlike the much more common Randroids and propertarians (which one geolibertarian author quite rightly calls "royal libertarians" both because of where their wealth came from and the role they aspire to). The central Georgist/geolib idea of a land value tax has been tried quite a few times, generally with quite positive economic effects even before factoring in the moral effect of taxing rents instead of productive enterprise. The author's right that these ideas deserve more exposure than the melange of crappy fiction and crappier ideology that is Ayn Rand.
- british_india 9y agoThe author of the piece, Michael Kinsley, is a flat out genius. That is and has been apparent going back to his both incisive and funny comments on Crossfire. I started reading the article and was blown away within the first paragraph by the quality of the writing and I scrolled up to see the author and.... Michael Kinsley.
- mindcrash 9y ago"According to James Stewart (the prominent business journalist, not the even more prominent actor), writing in The New York Times, President Trump says Ayn Rand is his favorite writer and that The Fountainhead, her pulmonary embolism of a book, is his favorite novel. Travis Kalanick, the onetime Übermensch of Uber, is on board, as is (liberal foodies, please note) John Mackey, co-founder and C.E.O. of Whole Foods." Or the actual reason why the author thinks Ayn Rand should be "dumped", in case you are wondering. President Trump is a fan of Ayn Rand. Travis Kalanick likes her books. John Mackey likes her books aswell. This proofs that Ayn Rand is evil and therefore her ideas are evil. Guilty by association. Someone who somehow survived the atrocities of communism and dedicated the rest of her life to make sure nobody would face the same atrocities like she did again. And this person is considered to be evil. Well, you know what, author over at Vanity Fair? Maybe Ayn Rand had some points which are debatable but YOU have unmasked yourself as a far left "liberal" ideologue. So fuck off, and take your ideological bullshit with you.
- dang 9y ago> YOU have unmasked yourself as a far left "liberal" ideologue. So fuck off, and take your ideological bullshit with you. Please don't post ideological rants to HN. Regardless of how lousy an article or a comment may be, all this does is poison the commons and degrade the discourse further. We're trying to avoid those things here. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html.