5 ms·

"atlas shrugged, performatively"

fatbird 6y ago
This is beautiful.
bpodgursky 6y ago
Perforative shrugging would be shutting down production for a week, just to show the impact, but restarting before any damage was done. Elon is, by the book, refusing to shrug.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Depends on what you think he’s performatively shrugging about, profits or risks to his workers. The context makes it pretty clear that they were talking about legal risks to the workers, while you’re referencing profits.
krick 6y ago
I know that I must be missing a great joke here, so can somebody be so kind to translate this post for me?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- typon 6y ago
  It's a reference to Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. It's sort of a libertarian bible. The Atlas in that book title refers to people like Elon Musk (industrialists, capitalists etc.) who want to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders (like the Greek Titan Atlas), but can't because of terrible government policies. So they "shrug" it off. OP is suggesting that Musk is doing the same thing, but performatively, in other words he's pretending to be super concerned with "getting back to work" but really he cares about making profits
  - richardbrevig 6y ago
    Is this response not accurate? I'm familiar with the book by title only, really. I've read The Fountainhead. Could someone downvoting typon please provide a better explanation?
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      That book elicits extremely strong feelings on both sides of the economic spectrum, expect a lot of poorly explained downvoting from here on downward.
  - utopcell 6y ago
    Not sure why this is getting downvoted, this seems like a good description of the book reference.
    - alexpetralia 6y ago
      For some reason coronavirus threads attract the downvote brigades. It is a very inflammatory issue.
    - throwlaplace 6y ago
      >Not sure why this is getting downvoted because people are defensive when their own character flaws are reflected back at them.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't break the site guidelines by posting like this. It usually (not always) happens that fair-minded users come along and give the unfairly downvoted comment a corrective upvote. That happened here. Complaints like this add noise to threads and don't garbage-collect themselves, hence that rule. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - nickff 6y ago
    As something of a nit-pick, Ayn Rand did not self-identify as a libertarian, and most libertarians are not followers of hers, thus "Atlas Shrugged" is not really a 'libertarian bible'. Rand self-identified as an 'objectivist', but she and her followers are often identified as 'Randians', though the latter may be seen as pejorative.

This is beautiful.

Perforative shrugging would be shutting down production for a week, just to show the impact, but restarting before any damage was done. Elon is, by the book, refusing to shrug.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Depends on what you think he’s performatively shrugging about, profits or risks to his workers. The context makes it pretty clear that they were talking about legal risks to the workers, while you’re referencing profits.

krick 6y ago

I know that I must be missing a great joke here, so can somebody be so kind to translate this post for me?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
typon 6y ago
It's a reference to Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. It's sort of a libertarian bible. The Atlas in that book title refers to people like Elon Musk (industrialists, capitalists etc.) who want to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders (like the Greek Titan Atlas), but can't because of terrible government policies. So they "shrug" it off. OP is suggesting that Musk is doing the same thing, but performatively, in other words he's pretending to be super concerned with "getting back to work" but really he cares about making profits
- richardbrevig 6y ago
  Is this response not accurate? I'm familiar with the book by title only, really. I've read The Fountainhead. Could someone downvoting typon please provide a better explanation?
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    That book elicits extremely strong feelings on both sides of the economic spectrum, expect a lot of poorly explained downvoting from here on downward.
- utopcell 6y ago
  Not sure why this is getting downvoted, this seems like a good description of the book reference.
  - alexpetralia 6y ago
    For some reason coronavirus threads attract the downvote brigades. It is a very inflammatory issue.
  - throwlaplace 6y ago
    >Not sure why this is getting downvoted because people are defensive when their own character flaws are reflected back at them.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't break the site guidelines by posting like this. It usually (not always) happens that fair-minded users come along and give the unfairly downvoted comment a corrective upvote. That happened here. Complaints like this add noise to threads and don't garbage-collect themselves, hence that rule. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nickff 6y ago
  As something of a nit-pick, Ayn Rand did not self-identify as a libertarian, and most libertarians are not followers of hers, thus "Atlas Shrugged" is not really a 'libertarian bible'. Rand self-identified as an 'objectivist', but she and her followers are often identified as 'Randians', though the latter may be seen as pejorative.