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'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years
- jeeringmole 18y agoAh, yes.... The collectivists controlled the Presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives and used their power to regulate the credit derivatives market out of existence. How much better things would have been if the Chairman of the Federal Reserve had heard of Objectivism! Even the off-hand pop culture references are crapulous: "A Confederacy of Dunces" surely counts as a "classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie", and it is a lot funnier than anything Ayn Rand ever wrote.
- dgordon 18y agoYou're right about A Confederacy of Dunces, but it seems to me that Ayn Rand wasn't exactly going for funny. But I am, so -- uh-oh, I said "it seems to me." Better dodge that falling giant copy of Atlas Shrugged that's aimed for my head.
- unalone 18y agoAyn Rand thought she had something important to say about society. And I've seen interviews with her on the media, where she's seemingly invited in just to be mocked and called greedy. So frankly, I think she had - and still has - a point. I think the writer's being over-the-top, but I also think that the bailout is going vastly over-the-top and I think that Obama's plan to continue it isn't helping things at all.
- bstadil 18y ago"Chairman of the Federal Reserve had heard of Objectivism!" FYI Greenspan was a friend of Ayn Rand and was part of her inner circles. http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/greenspan-time.html http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/greenspan-time.html
- jorgeortiz85 18y agoYes, I think that was intended to be part of the irony.
- Eliezer 18y agoHe knows that; that's the joke.
- maxharris 18y agoGreenspan turned his back on Objectivism during the 70s.
- walterk 18y agoHe did? In what way? (Genuinely curious.) My understanding is that, despite some of his views being at odds with her own, Rand was happy to have him in her inner circle anyway.
- muerdeme 18y agoBefore: http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north204.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north204.html After: Central banker That's the gist of the argument. I'm not going to pretend to know where the line between Objectivism's general ideals and economic ideals lies.
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- ellyagg 18y agoDon't understand your first sentence totally. You do admit that collectivists have controlled the Presidency and House and Senate for the last 8 years, yes? Bush, in particular, is no anti-collectivist. Some people get confused by labels, e.g., Republican, so I just want to make sure. Asset bubbles always happen. They probably always will happen. Now that the bubble is bursting, the collectivist mismanagement over the last several years is making us extra vulnerable. Even more horribly, the current and coming response is dooming the recovery to a much longer period than if the economy were allowed to reach equilibrium on its own.
- andreyf 18y agoDon't understand your first sentence totally. You do admit... Adjust your sarcasm detector.
- jules 18y ago> readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.
- olefoo 18y agoAnd for many of the same reasons, it gives a sense of surety in an uncertain world, it provides a sense of tribal belonging and ready-made membership in a like-minded community. That said, I find it somewhat creepy to base one's life around a work of fiction.
- ojbyrne 18y agoIt's a little sensationalist, and probably shouldn't say it, but your last sentence immediately brought the Bible to mind.
- frisco 18y agohttp://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html
- ojbyrne 18y agoActually my fear was of pandering to the common culture here. You seem to be suggesting the opposite.
- frisco 18y agoCalling the bible fiction is something I'd consider taboo in a lot of the world still, unfortunately. Your, "I probably shouldn't say this" just reminded me of the essay.
- dmix 18y agoAtlas Shrugged, was fortunate enough not to have centuries where you were ostracized (and possibly killed) if you disagreed. Although both sides have some hardcore followers who blindly defend their side regardless of practicality, they both offer value if approached with rationality... and countless opportunities to enter arguments online that go absolutely nowhere.
- prospero 18y agoI have striking insights into totalitarianism. The left, naturally, hates me.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- rw 18y agoThe right, naturally, hates you.
- GavinB 18y agoAbsolutism: Simple. Satisfying. Wrong.
- ellyagg 18y agoWell, you have to realize that up until Ayn Rand, the only popular absolutism was Marxism. People were pretty excited to have an absolutism that promoted striving for excellence rather than striving for grey sameness.
- davidw 18y agoGood point. If you read Rand in that spirit, it makes for an interesting point of view. The important thing is to avoid getting caught up in it and think that "Objectivism" is a sensible or even possible way of running the world. People are neither 100% collectivist oriented, nor 100% individual oriented, and going in either direction too far is to go against how we function (but please note that I'm not arguing for splitting the difference right down the middle - obviously modern capitalist societies are far better than various attemps at communism).
- mmmurf 18y agoYour comment suggests that you believe the world needs to be "run" by a wise planner of some sort.
- aswanson 18y agoI didn't get that out of the comment. I read that as neither collectivism or objectivism is a completely flawless method, and we should take from each as the situation, rather than the ideology, dictates. I also read that as capitalism seems to have been obviously more successfull than communism, so solutions most often will be derived from objective philosophy.
- davidw 18y agoClose: solutions will most often be derived from the real world (trial and error), and real economics, which says that capitalism is the best system, albeit an imperfect one, and therefore needs some tweaking now and then. How much and what tweaking is of course a matter of ongoing debate between reasonable people, and probably depends a lot on what various communities and peoples prefer. I.e. most people in Sweden are happy with a more collectivist version of capitalism, most people in the US are happier with another sort of system, and so on.
- dgordon 18y agoI was saying this in the summer of 2007, partly inspired by the fact that a Mr. Thompson (Fred) seemed to have a good chance of becoming a presidential candidate. It's interesting to see people and organizations repeating it around me now. By the way, this guy needs to pull out his copy of the book, or at least the Cliff's Notes, on a few counts. Notably, the appropriation of Rearden Metal was hardly immediate.
- gills 18y agoI read this book for the first time, last summer. It was actually a little bit spooky -- OK, very spooky -- to read basically the same thing (metaphorically) in the book and the news most days of the week.
- unalone 18y agoVery! I had the same experience when I read The Fountainhead for the first time, in the middle of an ego clash happening at my school. It's important, I've found, not to mistake Rand's works for wholesale reality. She makes some incredibly good points, and I love her concept of the virtue of selfishness, but things are more complex than she writes about. She was aware of this too: her books are deliberately overstated in order to drive her points home. The economy, along with people in general, is more complex than headlines might make it seem.
- jonny_noog 18y agoIf more of Rand's proponents were apparently aware of this fact that "things are more complex than she writes about" nor, might I add, are things as absolute, I would have less of a problem with Objectivism.
- unalone 18y agoYeah. The problem, which I still find sad, is that Rand's main message, above the stuff she writes about, is that you should always believe in objective reality, which means picking logic over dogma, and treating the world as a constantly-evolving thing that requires your own thought. Her followers throw out that message more often than not, and follow an incredibly dogmatic belief system that disregards logical statements for catch-phrases.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agosuch is the fate of any popular message. if you would see your ideals widely disseminated you must be prepared to have them so radically misinterpreted that people arrive at beliefs that are diametrically opposed to your original message.
- nomoresecrets 18y agohttp://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
- dmix 18y agoI'm more on the less-government side but that comic always bothered me. There are many instances in Ayn Rands writing where she praised the laborers for their hard work. My impression was that she didn't believe that only a few "men of the mind" should be at the top and everyone else does the hard work for them. It was more about valuing the laborer who works harder then everyone else instead of the one who believes he deserves higher compensation without contributing anything more then the minimum requirements.
- joe_bleau 18y agoAgree that she respected manual labor: after all, the heroic Howard Roark character worked in a granite quarry for a time in "The Fountainhead".
- walterk 18y agoDon't forget the philosopher who made burgers.
- unalone 18y agoOr the physicist who worked as a low-level railroad operator. I hate that most of the detractors of Atlas Shrugged misread the message. There are things to criticize, but the ones that do get criticized (Ayn Rand is a Nazi, she ignores the common laborer, she dares include a pirate as a character) are the ones that don't really matter regarding the main theme/are entirely wrong.
- dgordon 18y ago"I hate that most of the detractors of Atlas Shrugged misread the message." You assume they read it at all.
- jderick 18y agoThe movie is in production: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/ Maybe this is just a veiled promo?
- benzim 18y agoI certainly see parts of Atlas Shrugged becoming reality in the current financial crisis. If failing businesses continue to be propped up on a large scale it won't be too many years before the US economy grinds to a halt. If the productive are constantly taxed to help the unproductive the incentive to create wealth will disappear.
- vitaminj 18y agoWow, this article has some very tenuous links between Atlas Shrugged and real life. I'm going to just pick on one: The appropriation of Rearden metal by the government in Atlas Shrugged was compared to Hank Paulson's insistence that the banks (which the government would bail out) had to hand over a percentage of their future profits back to the government. Apparently, these situations are eerily similar because in both cases the government did it for the "public interest". Notwithstanding the fact that in Atlas Shrugged, Rearden actually invented something of value (which the govt appropriated), whereas in real life, the bankers fucked up their own balance sheets and were coming to the government cap in hand for help. As far as I'm aware, one is theft, the other is repaying a favour. The only thing eerily similar about these two situations is that they both have a guy named Hank involved.
- natrius 18y agoSome banks didn't want to take the government's money but were basically forced to. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2008/oct/15/banking http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2008/oct/15/banking
- nazgulnarsil 18y agoIt's called nationalizing and any serious business concern would like to avoid it.
- jhancock 18y agosometimes I won't click on a link simply because to do so may encourage writing more content of its nature. this is one of those times ;)
- unalone 18y agoSo you're saying that you think that closedmindedness on your part is a good way of stopping other people from discovering ideas? Even if those ideas are closedminded, you do better to critique the actual article rather than avoid it. Criticism is the quickest way to kill a bad idea.
- jhancock 18y agouh no. I'm saying exactly what I said. And I disagree that criticism is the quickest way to kill an idea. I'm not out to :kill: ;).
- jwesley 18y agoAtlas Shrugged is propaganda masquerading as art. The characters are thin shells used to promote Rand's thinking and in no way reflect reality. The idea that unbridled self interest leads to the greatest good guided Greenspan's monetary policy and got us into this mess. There is certainly a lot to be said for enlightened self interest and personal freedom, but the absolutism of objectivism is just as wrong as communism.
- seehafer 18y ago"The characters are thin shells used to promote Rand's thinking and in no way reflect reality." Well, whose thinking do you think they should have promoted, exactly? And why do characters in a novel necessarily need to exactly reflect reality? I haven't run into any elves, dwarves, or immortal wizards, but that didn't stop me from enjoying Tolkien. "The idea that unbridled self interest leads to the greatest good guided Greenspan's monetary policy and got us into this mess." Really? How do artificially low interest rates translate into unbridled self interest?
- jwesley 18y ago1. If a novel is intended to be realistic fiction, it should reflect reality, not the author's philosophical agenda. (My opinion, but I think this is the only way serious art reveals truth. Imagine if Marx had written a novel.) This is distinct from fantasy. I'm a Tolkien fan too, but I don't think anyone would turn to LOTR for economic guidance. 2. Artificially low interest rates reflect Greenspan's belief that given enough liquidity, markets will be self correcting. He thought banks were in the best position to protect themselves from risk because they bear the greatest consequences of failure. (He has since admitted the failure of this belief.) Clearly they were not, as the low interest rates lead to further inflation of the credit bubble.
- unalone 18y agoYou could say the same thing about every character ever written. They're all extensions of the author. Even a character as complex as, say, Stephen Dedalus, is in the end a product entirely of his creator's mind. One of the catches of reading fiction is that you always need to remember that they are the product of a single mind. > There is certainly a lot to be said for enlightened self interest and personal freedom, but the absolutism of objectivism is just as wrong as communism. But which concept is better? When you subscribe to an idea you do it for the practical idea of it. Communism says that you should put everybody in front of you, and do what everybody else thinks you should. (Or rather, subjectivism does, since that's the true opposite of Objectivism; Communism rather states that the community is more important than the individual, which is closer to subjectivism.) Objectivism says that you should rely on yourself to do what's right. The one is much healthier mentally, and that's a good sign.
- awfabian 18y agoHmm. I tend to think that Rand's philosophy misses some important points, like: 1. Humans hate inequality, esp. those who are on the losing end, but it seems to make everyone unhappier in general. Inequality is useful, but probably needs some managing. 2. Massive wealth generated in modern societies, though it tends to fall into the hands of a few (exponentially so), is generated by having a society/collective. If you have more wealth than you could ever generate with your own two hands, then you're benefitting from society in a major way, regardless of how much society takes back. (Even this is not strictly true--what you can generate with your own two hands depends on education, inventions society has given to you (like language), etc. It's hard to calculate one's debt to society.)
- JeffL 18y agoI think (1) is a really interesting point, but don't you think that humans also strive for inequality? People don't just want to keep up with the Jones's, they derive great satisfaction from being ahead of the Jones's. 2) I think society benefits more from the generators of massive wealth than they do from the society. Obviously it is mutually beneficial, but the fountains of wealth would probably do fine with or without society.
- dgordon 18y ago"Massive wealth generated in modern societies, though it tends to fall into the hands of a few (exponentially so), is generated by having a society/collective. If you have more wealth than you could ever generate with your own two hands, then you're benefitting from society in a major way, regardless of how much society takes back. (Even this is not strictly true--what you can generate with your own two hands depends on education, inventions society has given to you (like language), etc. It's hard to calculate one's debt to society.)" You know, if you replace every instance of "society" in that sentence with "people throughout history who were left free to create things that make life easier, without having the product of their effort stolen from them," you'd get something Ayn Rand might have written herself.
- fauigerzigerk 18y agoI think it's important what kind of inequality we're talking about. Are we talking inequality between two people with similar opportunities and education, one lazy and unimaginative and the other a creative risk taker? Or are we talking inequality between joe the dock worker, son of a dock worker, working the dock reasonably well, but never looking beyond, and jack the corporate lawyer, son of a corporate lawyer, working the legal docs reasonably well, but never looking beyond? Inequality throughout history was rarely down to merit. I very much sympathise with Rand's point of view, but after having lived in one of the most run-down parts of the UK, I know that poverty breeds poverty. Yes the superstars rise from poverty through their own work and they should not be punished for it. But for every superstar there are 100 joe/jack pairs and the difference between their income is based on little else than class. [edit] Jill the waitress might have been a better example since dock workers have a powerful trade union in some countries.
- Tangurena 18y agoI came across an interesting analogy about how Atlas Shrugged was the first book in a trilogy. And how Anthem was the 3rd book (the second book, "shrug harder" not having been written or released). > Then [John Galt] went further and, in a fit of offended pique, promised to "stop the motor of the world," to kill 90% or so of Earth's population by intentionally wrecking the economy. Which he then did. How? By finding every other competent engineer or manager in the US and persuading them to be just as selfish as him, just as unwilling to pay back or protect their country; he declared a covert "strike of the mind," as he called it. He hid them all in a secretive compound in the Rocky Mountains, protected by force field and invisibility cloak, and waited for the US economy to collapse, which, obligingly, it did -- because John Galt had carefully sabotaged the bridges and railroads that made it possible for fuel and seeds to make it from the coastal cities to inland farms, and make it possible for food grown on inland farms to make it to the coastal cities. And as chaos was breaking out, he and his fellow inventors hijacked every radio transmitter in the US to broadcast his manifesto: You all deserve to die, for asking us to pay you back even one nickel, because we are all so selfish we don't consider any of the things you all paid for out of your taxes and that you did with your labor to have been at all helpful to us as entirely self-sufficient brilliant inventors and managers. So die. > And that's where the series is interrupted. But from where the third book picks up, and by applying a little common sense, we can outline the main plot points, if not the characterizations, from the untitled middle volume, the one I'm whimsically calling Atlas Shrugged 2: Shrug Harder. When the previous book ran out, America was winding down to what was clearly going to be the last harvest, ever, and the Strikers were planning for the day that they, as the only people possessing any high tech or any capability of mass production of food or anything else, would ride out of their hidden Colorado fortress as humanity's saviors. They were pledging to themselves to build a new world based, as John Galt's manifesto had promised all Americans, on the virtue of selfishness. They assumed that a grateful (or at least desperately needy) and vastly reduced in number population would welcome them as liberators, chastened and having learned their lesson. Except that we know from the third book that that's not what happened, and anybody who knows human nature should have been able to predict that. > Outside the valley, the conversion to local subsistence farming and the work of scavenging the dead cities for any usable metal would have been rough. No time or energy would have been available to save even minimal technology. We're looking at a collapse all the way back to (at best) early iron age levels, maybe even all the way back to the bronze age, and nobody will even have time to teach the next generation to read and write. But one thing very clearly did happen, in every survivor's village, and became world-wide policy as soon as even minimal travel and communication made it possible for the chiefs of the scattered villages of survivors began to reunite society into any kind of a civilization, and that is a fierce determination to make sure that the next generation remembered who had done this to them, and why they had done it. They would have educated their children to remember the names and descriptions of every one of the hated Strikers who had personally murdered four and a half billion people for a political point. And they would have educated their children that one idea, one idea in the Strikers' twisted minds, had lead to those four and a half billion deaths, the greatest act of genocide in human history: selfishness. How far did they go to eradicate selfishness? They went so far as to eradicate the first person pronoun from the language. > Anthem is actually the best book of the three. And it's a credit to Rand that she realized just how monstrous the real results of the Strike would be. Many, many so-called Objectivists and Libertarians, who only read the first book, thought they were supposed to cheer for the Strikers, believed the Strikers' personal delusion that the Strike, and the resulting mass genocide, would usher in a techno-libertarian paradise on earth. No, in Anthem we get a view of John Galt's Earth from the viewpoint of someone who grew up in the next generation, never having known a technological world, knowing only a world in which selfishness is labeled the ultimate sin. http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/393124.html http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/393124.html
- mattmaroon 18y agoSo because government programs in a work of fiction caused more harm than good, all government programs in the non-fiction world must be bad. Good logic.
- fauigerzigerk 18y agoOh, don't interfere with the beautiful ways of ideology ;-) But seriously, government programs are in great danger of failing because _all_ big projects are in great danger of failing. I think you would easily find evidence of that. Taking a centralised decision on how to spend over a trillion dollars within a year or two, allowing no time for readjustment or seeing what actually works, is a very high risk business, no matter if it's government or anyone else who does it. Granted, a lot of that money is not going to be spent on new projects but will be used to speed up existing ones.
- mattmaroon 18y agoThat's at least a valid argument. I just don't think it's a good idea to base opinions on government programs on any work of fiction. Many treat Atlas the way the religious right treats the Bible.
- electromagnetic 18y agoThere has been great success in large-scale projects in the past. It's just that back in the 1950's and earlier when they were spending vast amounts of money on single projects, people had been talking about them for over a decade. Perhaps today we don't need 10 years to come up with a plan on how to build a network of highways, perhaps all our computers and better analytical models help greatly in predictions. However, it's hard to tell if software is giving you a good prediction until you begin getting results and I don't think many people would have felt comfortable betting on Deep Blue before it publicly won its first game of chess.
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoIt's called a thought experiment.
- Rawsock 18y agoI think Marx's "The Capital" explains better the current economical situation. But meanwhile, in Fantasyland ...
- davidw 18y agoI think there is a middle ground between Marx and Rand that is much better at explaining the current situation: serious economics.
- electromagnetic 18y agoPersonally I find this article stupidly hilarious. > "Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism..." I'm sorry, I thought it was capitalism that just fudged the butter causing this economic crisis. I mean there was the whole mortgage deal (that only happened in the largely non-socialist US) that started screwing the economy up because the US doesn't have enough legal protections in place to stop people who physically don't have the money to pay a loan to get a loan in the first place. I mean there used to be the day in the US where if you had no money you'd get a credit check and then be refused like everywhere else in the world. The subprime mortgage fiasco caused the big swathe of mortgages defaulting. Basically this made the banks need to get their money back or face bankruptcy, then the NYSE went down the crap hole, gas went through the roof and then the mixture of shit vehicles, crappy prices, high gas price/low mileage and big debts caused chaos for the big 3 automakers in the US. I'm sorry, but correct me if I'm wrong, but that little summarization (essentially thanks to wikipedia) never once mentioned a country other than the largely non-socialist US. The US's major butter fudging caused all the economic problems in the more socialist countries like the UK. The funny thing is, is that if the US had nationalised health care (like the UK) they would pay approximately half what they currently do for health care and would result in them being twice as healthy. Ironically this would mean more americans would have more money to spend and would have less reasons to not spend it, which is exactly what the economy needs right now. On the side of Ayn Rand's background, she came from soviet Russia, which completely fucked up the whole socialism thing by preventing anyone losing a job or being unemployed. They avoided buying combine harvesters for farms because it would make some people unemployed not realising that those very people would become reemployed in other jobs... like fixing the combine harvesters. Now I have a cute little pet bunny balled up in a blanket in between my legs whom, much like me, cares little about Atlas Shrugged and any misconceived links to the current financial crisis and he only cares that the prices of his food and hay and treats have all gone up a couple of dollars thanks to the US.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago1) Plenty of other countries are having real estate bubbles bursting, for instance Ireland and Spain. 2) It has long been a goal of the government to increase home ownership and inflate the bubble. Regarding down payments, the government tried to help people unable to come up with downpayments to get a loan anyway. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.html http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.h... (Scroll down past the "hunt down terrorists" part.) http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/home/addi/ http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/ho... Our top free market politician warned us about the bubble-producing effects of this in 2002, and tried to put an end to it. http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing-bubble-july-2002/ http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing-bu... (Sorry for the paulspam, but it might be the one time it's relevant.)
- smydsmyd 18y agoRand already failed. Old News.
- AlexeyMK 18y agoLibertarians and Objectivists are so good at being half-right. Yes, public money should not be used to help mediocre businesses, but the way to prevent that from having to happen is to impose restrictions on company market share in certain industries (Banking, specifically) to make sure that no one is 'too big to fail'. Regulation is a necessary component of any business environment. Businesses need to either follow strict regulations or be limited by size and investors such that their failure would not be acceptable.
- chadmalik 18y agoRemind me of how Moore was opposing the Greenspan monetary policies and Bush fiscal policies? Oh, right, he didn't. It defies parody that a Rand protege (Greenspan) and Rand supporters like Moore basically created this mess.