6 ms·

It's got some flaws, but it's one of the most pro-individualism, pro-production, pro-creativity, pro-persistence, pro-hard work, anti-politicking, anti-corrupti

It's got some flaws, but it's one of the most pro-individualism, pro-production, pro-creativity, pro-persistence, pro-hard work, anti-politicking, anti-corruption works of all time. Her characterization of the people she's opposed to is a bit juvenile, but there's a lot of really good and valid stuff in there too - it's the only book I know of that acknowledges the phenomenon where a man works really hard to provide for a bunch of people who think he's not doing enough (Hank Rearden). Also, the opening chapter where everyone is looking to cover their ass and Dagny says she'll accept responsibility if something goes wrong introduces a very strong female protagonist who does business, travels, and lives her life in a strong way. It's not high literature, it's got some flaws, but it's got some great messages - it'd be a shame people who have contradictory politics just throw all those great messages out.

jbooth 16y ago
Ecch. Let's stick with the Lord of the Rings comparison. If Ayn Rand wrote it, Aragorn and Gandalf would have just hopped the first boat west and let the world fend for itself, because hey, what's the world done for them? If you were born in America with access to a good education, you're in the luckiest 1% of anyone who ever lived anywhere, and that's all before your 10th birthday. The message of Atlas Shrugged, that these people are 100% self-made and the world owes them something for their hard work, is entitled bullshit.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  The message of Atlas Shrugged, that these people are 100% self-made and the world owes them something for their hard work... As I understood it, the message of Atlas Shrugged is that no one owes anyone else anything except by voluntary agreement. The only people who owe Dagny anything are her passengers, and they owe her only train fare. (The only exception being that everyone owes a small amount of tax money to pay for public goods, e.g. police protection.) You should really read a book before criticizing it.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Well, first off, yeah, so if you're born into the situation that I described above (which I was and I'm pretty most HNers were), I think it's pretty entitled and childish to pretend that your accomplishments are yours alone and you have no obligation to the society that produced you. But sure, technically, you don't legally owe anybody anything. Second off -- if you're the boss, you take responsibility. Any CEO who wants to "go galt" can go right ahead -- they'll be replaced easily enough. There's a fundamental misunderstanding about capitalism -- someone's always ready to replace you. If you're the type of guy to whine about not being appreciated and "go galt" to teach people a lesson, you probably didn't deserve responsibility in the first place -- responsibility is all about being under appreciated.
    - grandalf 16y ago
      You've seriously misunderstood the book if you have actually read it. Before I respond in detail I have to ask you bluntly if you've read Atlas Shrugged in full.
      - jbooth 16y ago
        I've only read passages. I'm mostly concerned with the "Going Galt" bit, which I'm either understanding as originally conveyed or every summary I've read from both ends of the political spectrum was egregiously wrong. So if you'd like to correct me on what "Going Galt" means, please feel free. It looks to me like a total cop-out abdication of responsibility that would change precisely nothing - because everyone's replaceable.
        grandalf 16y ago
        You're taking the "Going Galt" concept out of context. In the context of the book it's at the end of a long dystopian spiral. The significance of it is that the characters have already been broken by the time they arrive there. Frankly, the ending is a bit unsatisfactory on a few levels. First, it's not a prescription for how to run a society (it's a small utopian community in the mountains) and yet the book ends quickly at that point so we're left wondering how it turned out. It was necessary as a plot element, but it's really the denouement rather than the climax of the book. I recommend you buy the unabridged audio version of the book and give it a read while driving, commuting, etc. It has fairly good production quality and is a fairly effortless read on audio. When I re-read it my reaction was that Rand uses some hyperbole in places where I (if I were the editor) would have recommended a slightly softer touch... but of course she is writing to the first time the reader encounters the story and she wants to be sure to lay down a solid plot foundation early so that the rest of the book can progress. What I found remarkable about the book was that it's a pure novel of ideas. One can only imagine (while drooling) how amazing it would be if all the world's great thinkers had written a few books of quality fiction to help illustrate their ideas. So in my opinion Rand should get points added for the fiction work, not points subtracted.
- grandalf 16y ago
  Not sure where you're getting that. Atlas Shrugged addresses the morality of capitalism. If you want to criticize it, you should be clear what you're criticizing. You seem to have an axe to grind with some subset of Americans, but I'm not sure how that relates to Atlas Shrugged. In my opinion, legitimate criticism would take the form of an argument against capitalism or an argument that shows how some other economic system is actually far better from a moral standpoint (not just in intention but in results).
  - jbooth 16y ago
    It addresses the morality of crybabies. The major theme of the book is that these titans of industry were such a bunch of whiners who didn't get enough respect and love from people, so they peaced out to show the world who was really important. Guess what? If you do that, I'll just take your job. 4 weeks of transition and we'll be rolling again. That's called being the boss. You're accountable and the people who are smaller than you can snipe, you can be bigger than that or you can be one of them. I find it hard to believe that anybody who's actually had any responsibility in their life would ever get behind taking your ball and going home to spite people.
    - brg 16y ago
      You missed or ignore a good portion of the book. No hero of the book was a crybaby; no one whined to their parents, friends, or authorities to get their way. Every hero of the book took it upon them self to better their own situation at the expense of no one else. They saw it was full of crybabies, and removed themselves by their own volition. I can't see why anyone has a problem with someone else just asking to be left alone.
    - grandalf 16y ago
      You seem to think that someone whose passion is business (in the case of Atlas Shrugged mechanical engineering) should somehow feel a strong obligation to create on behalf of others. Nobody expects this of painters, poets, or writers because it is understood that their creative acts are done with love and personal importance. But creation is creation, whether it's an alloy or a painting or a poem. Rand's point was that it is the same driving force that moves humanity forward. The question is whether you think of it as something that should be coveted and respected (like, say, the musings of a Poet) or if you simply look at the distribution of wealth and declare that all that is unimportant, that the creative person should care more about helping others than about pursuing his/her work. The point of the book was not to suggest that people leave, but to show how the morality described in the book could stand alone as first principles of an improved society. The book is a novel of ideas and not (as you seem to have taken it) as a literal prescription for how individuals in society should act.
mhd 16y ago
> where a man works really hard to provide for a bunch of people who think he's not doing enough Isn't that the plot of every Charles Dickens novel ever?
- aaronbrethorst 16y ago
  That and Arrested Development.
LargeWu 16y ago
If that's all you took from her philosophy - being an individual is good, working hard is good, etc. - then you missed a lot of the detail. To Rand, the ultimate measure of one's self worth is how much money you are making vs. how much you could be making. Building a company up, then offshoring all of your labor to China is more moral than keeping your operations local, because it will lower your costs, and therefore increase profits. And profits, to Rand, is the only thing that matters, as long as you aren't stealing from somebody else. Similarly, in Rand's book it would be moral for, say, hedge fund managers to make risky bets on bad mortgage-backed securities, even if such a house of cards would eventually cause huge harm to the world economy, as long as the hedge fund managers make money doing so. In Rand's world, there are no such things as externalities. There is only black and white, good and evil. It is a fairy tale land where everybody is always capable of making rational decisions with perfect information. Markets are always perfectly efficient. Within the context of her writings, her philosophy works because she gets to define the axioms. But it all falls apart when one realizes that the world is far more complex than she imagines it to be.
- davidw 16y ago
  > It is a fairy tale land where everybody is always capable of making rational decisions with perfect information. Markets are always perfectly efficient. Well, just as the Marx fairy tail is studied, I think the Rand fairy tail (and it is) is good for thought too.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  To Rand, the ultimate measure of one's self worth is how much money you are making vs. how much you could be making. Rand gave up $0.07/copy in royalties to make sure Galt's speech was included in the book. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/189415/word-count/nicole-gelinas http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/189415/word-count/nicol... Roark, in the Fountainhead, also turns down money (and shuts down his company) to preserve his artistic vision. I really don't know where you got this idea from.

jbooth 16y ago

Ecch. Let's stick with the Lord of the Rings comparison. If Ayn Rand wrote it, Aragorn and Gandalf would have just hopped the first boat west and let the world fend for itself, because hey, what's the world done for them? If you were born in America with access to a good education, you're in the luckiest 1% of anyone who ever lived anywhere, and that's all before your 10th birthday. The message of Atlas Shrugged, that these people are 100% self-made and the world owes them something for their hard work, is entitled bullshit.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
yummyfajitas 16y ago
The message of Atlas Shrugged, that these people are 100% self-made and the world owes them something for their hard work... As I understood it, the message of Atlas Shrugged is that no one owes anyone else anything except by voluntary agreement. The only people who owe Dagny anything are her passengers, and they owe her only train fare. (The only exception being that everyone owes a small amount of tax money to pay for public goods, e.g. police protection.) You should really read a book before criticizing it.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Well, first off, yeah, so if you're born into the situation that I described above (which I was and I'm pretty most HNers were), I think it's pretty entitled and childish to pretend that your accomplishments are yours alone and you have no obligation to the society that produced you. But sure, technically, you don't legally owe anybody anything. Second off -- if you're the boss, you take responsibility. Any CEO who wants to "go galt" can go right ahead -- they'll be replaced easily enough. There's a fundamental misunderstanding about capitalism -- someone's always ready to replace you. If you're the type of guy to whine about not being appreciated and "go galt" to teach people a lesson, you probably didn't deserve responsibility in the first place -- responsibility is all about being under appreciated.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    You've seriously misunderstood the book if you have actually read it. Before I respond in detail I have to ask you bluntly if you've read Atlas Shrugged in full.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      I've only read passages. I'm mostly concerned with the "Going Galt" bit, which I'm either understanding as originally conveyed or every summary I've read from both ends of the political spectrum was egregiously wrong. So if you'd like to correct me on what "Going Galt" means, please feel free. It looks to me like a total cop-out abdication of responsibility that would change precisely nothing - because everyone's replaceable.
      - grandalf 16y ago
        You're taking the "Going Galt" concept out of context. In the context of the book it's at the end of a long dystopian spiral. The significance of it is that the characters have already been broken by the time they arrive there. Frankly, the ending is a bit unsatisfactory on a few levels. First, it's not a prescription for how to run a society (it's a small utopian community in the mountains) and yet the book ends quickly at that point so we're left wondering how it turned out. It was necessary as a plot element, but it's really the denouement rather than the climax of the book. I recommend you buy the unabridged audio version of the book and give it a read while driving, commuting, etc. It has fairly good production quality and is a fairly effortless read on audio. When I re-read it my reaction was that Rand uses some hyperbole in places where I (if I were the editor) would have recommended a slightly softer touch... but of course she is writing to the first time the reader encounters the story and she wants to be sure to lay down a solid plot foundation early so that the rest of the book can progress. What I found remarkable about the book was that it's a pure novel of ideas. One can only imagine (while drooling) how amazing it would be if all the world's great thinkers had written a few books of quality fiction to help illustrate their ideas. So in my opinion Rand should get points added for the fiction work, not points subtracted.
grandalf 16y ago
Not sure where you're getting that. Atlas Shrugged addresses the morality of capitalism. If you want to criticize it, you should be clear what you're criticizing. You seem to have an axe to grind with some subset of Americans, but I'm not sure how that relates to Atlas Shrugged. In my opinion, legitimate criticism would take the form of an argument against capitalism or an argument that shows how some other economic system is actually far better from a moral standpoint (not just in intention but in results).
- jbooth 16y ago
  It addresses the morality of crybabies. The major theme of the book is that these titans of industry were such a bunch of whiners who didn't get enough respect and love from people, so they peaced out to show the world who was really important. Guess what? If you do that, I'll just take your job. 4 weeks of transition and we'll be rolling again. That's called being the boss. You're accountable and the people who are smaller than you can snipe, you can be bigger than that or you can be one of them. I find it hard to believe that anybody who's actually had any responsibility in their life would ever get behind taking your ball and going home to spite people.
  - brg 16y ago
    You missed or ignore a good portion of the book. No hero of the book was a crybaby; no one whined to their parents, friends, or authorities to get their way. Every hero of the book took it upon them self to better their own situation at the expense of no one else. They saw it was full of crybabies, and removed themselves by their own volition. I can't see why anyone has a problem with someone else just asking to be left alone.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    You seem to think that someone whose passion is business (in the case of Atlas Shrugged mechanical engineering) should somehow feel a strong obligation to create on behalf of others. Nobody expects this of painters, poets, or writers because it is understood that their creative acts are done with love and personal importance. But creation is creation, whether it's an alloy or a painting or a poem. Rand's point was that it is the same driving force that moves humanity forward. The question is whether you think of it as something that should be coveted and respected (like, say, the musings of a Poet) or if you simply look at the distribution of wealth and declare that all that is unimportant, that the creative person should care more about helping others than about pursuing his/her work. The point of the book was not to suggest that people leave, but to show how the morality described in the book could stand alone as first principles of an improved society. The book is a novel of ideas and not (as you seem to have taken it) as a literal prescription for how individuals in society should act.

mhd 16y ago

> where a man works really hard to provide for a bunch of people who think he's not doing enough Isn't that the plot of every Charles Dickens novel ever?

aaronbrethorst 16y ago
That and Arrested Development.

LargeWu 16y ago

If that's all you took from her philosophy - being an individual is good, working hard is good, etc. - then you missed a lot of the detail. To Rand, the ultimate measure of one's self worth is how much money you are making vs. how much you could be making. Building a company up, then offshoring all of your labor to China is more moral than keeping your operations local, because it will lower your costs, and therefore increase profits. And profits, to Rand, is the only thing that matters, as long as you aren't stealing from somebody else. Similarly, in Rand's book it would be moral for, say, hedge fund managers to make risky bets on bad mortgage-backed securities, even if such a house of cards would eventually cause huge harm to the world economy, as long as the hedge fund managers make money doing so. In Rand's world, there are no such things as externalities. There is only black and white, good and evil. It is a fairy tale land where everybody is always capable of making rational decisions with perfect information. Markets are always perfectly efficient. Within the context of her writings, her philosophy works because she gets to define the axioms. But it all falls apart when one realizes that the world is far more complex than she imagines it to be.

davidw 16y ago
> It is a fairy tale land where everybody is always capable of making rational decisions with perfect information. Markets are always perfectly efficient. Well, just as the Marx fairy tail is studied, I think the Rand fairy tail (and it is) is good for thought too.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
yummyfajitas 16y ago
To Rand, the ultimate measure of one's self worth is how much money you are making vs. how much you could be making. Rand gave up $0.07/copy in royalties to make sure Galt's speech was included in the book. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/189415/word-count/nicole-gelinas http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/189415/word-count/nicol... Roark, in the Fountainhead, also turns down money (and shuts down his company) to preserve his artistic vision. I really don't know where you got this idea from.