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Wow. Are people impressed by that article because of the sonorous prose? Because the content definitely isn't impressive. Rand's first mistake is not realizing

• jacoblyles 18y ago
  There is some cleverness in there, and, I believe, some truth. Here is a quote that I liked: "Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it." Besides, wealth is often demonized by egalitarians. They see its distribution as a random function of the universe, and not as a function of the productive efforts of the earners. For one person to have more money than another is considered unjust. We hear so much about how the wealthy are evil, it is nice for a different point of view to be aired every now and then. >"The saddest thing I've ever heard was from a friend who told me that his main goal in life was making money" It would not be so sad if he said that his goal was producing something of value, which often results in making money. As Ayn says, "Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values". > "Are people impressed by that article because of the sonorous prose?" Yes, I do think the prose is quite nice. When Ayn hits a good stride, she reaches a style that is all her own. I think her talents are often under-appreciated because the literary establishment is very much opposed to her political views.
  • andreyf 18y ago
    It would not be so sad if he said that his goal was producing something of value, which often results in making money. If one's goal is to maximize the value humanity creates, she should probably become an elementary school teacher. If one's goal is to make money, she should get an MBA or financial degree. The former, to me, is significantly nobler.
    • allocativeeffic 18y ago
      Care to back that up?
      • andreyf 18y ago
        Which part - that making money is not equivalent to creating value, or the specific example of teachers creating more value than MBA's?
        • unalone 18y ago
          The latter.
          • andreyf 18y ago
            I guess you're right that it isn't cut-and-dry, but my hypothesis would be that a great X-er can most of the time inspire children to be great X-ers themselves. Hence, whatever she would accomplish on her own, she can accomplish tenfold by inspiring her students.
            • unalone 18y ago
              What about "teach by example"?
    • jacoblyles 18y ago
      It is less sexy and less popular, but the engineer that invents a more efficient manufacturing or distribution process that slightly reduces the resources used in products enjoyed by millions of people, perhaps becoming rich in the process, does far more good for the world than an elementary school teacher. Sam Walton did more good for humanity than any thousand average teachers combined.
  • MaysonL 18y ago
    Best argument for the inheritance tax I've seen lately.
    • dpatru 18y ago
      A theme in Atlas Shrugged is that wealth properly belongs to the people who make it. This includes the right to give it away or pass it to one's family. The fact that inherited wealth may ruin an heir who is not worthy of it does not entitle others to take the wealth by force, contrary to the will of the true owner. Rand's argument does not justify the inheritance tax; it's a warning to the wealthy.
      • MaysonL 18y ago
        Well - I would argue that anyone inheriting wealth should pay tax on that inheritance, just like on any other income. Wealth is created as much, if not more, by society as by the owner.
        • colins_pride 18y ago
          You can say that the owner would not have been able to create the wealth without the system. And if you've seen enough of the world, you know that this is fair. But when the wealth is taken from the owner, it does not go to the system. It goes to the politicians, who redistribute it to other individuals who did not create the wealth. That's the rub.
        • 3pt14159 18y ago
          The rich do NOT pay inheritance tax (unless they want to) the middle class pay inheritance tax. I come from a semi well off family on my father's side and have many well off friends. We all have either trust funds (family trusts) or our parents and grandparents just give us the money outright before they die or we get non-voting shares in our parents holding corporations that own 99% of the company or we get physical gold and silver before they pass. The list goes on and on. The only people I have ever heard paying real inheritance tax were from the middle class. Rich enough to tax, poor enough to lack a good tax attorney. There is no real way you can stop it. Even if you prevent parents from giving money to their children (!) then the rich can just turn it into gold chains and give them gifts of jewelry, or turn their wealth into priceless art and then give it to their children, or offshore bank accounts co-owned by father-son.
• radu_floricica 18y ago
  We are on Hacker News, aren't we? Most people here value the material world more then the spiritual world. This doesn't mean they completely ignore the latter, of course. But between discussing spirituality and creating something, I'd say most would choose creating. As for making money, this is how our success is measured. Yes, you can do things for your soul, of for your friends, or for your family or for the society at large, but to be an entrepreneur means to accept to be judged, indeed, to judge yourself by your material success: money. It is not an easy thing to do. Money does not lie to you, does not tell you you're ok as you are now, that things will be better or that it will love you no matter what. Failure is clear to see, and so is success. I probably needn't say it, but all this is worthless if you do not apply complete honesty to your work. Money is not an end in itself, it is the measure of your skill. To steal or cheat in any way makes it useless for this purpose.
  • abstractbill 18y ago
    Most people here value the material world more then the spiritual world ... between discussing spirituality and creating something, I'd say most would choose creating. The urge to create things is very spiritual for me, just fwiw. It doesn't have to be material things either - these days it's mostly software and occasionally robots, and in the past it's been mathematics and music. But I must create things - it's a fundamental part of the person I am.
    • jacoblyles 18y ago
      I wish that were me. I try to create because I admire creators. However, the drive to create is not innate to my personality. Rather, it is a struggle. Fortunately, I am learning to hack my personality to drive myself to do what I want. For example, I surround myself with creative people and I work on team projects where a sense of duty will drive me to do good work. But it is hard, and I must trick myself to do what I desire.
      • deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
  • 18y ago
• thaumaturgy 18y ago
  | An individual who loves the material world more than the spiritual world (not god necessarily, maybe just the world inside his own head), is pitiable. Then pity me, though I wish you wouldn't. I do not find that I can believe in any world other than the material world, at least enough to sacrifice my efforts in this world. If I am going to make a difference, I want to make a difference in the material world, not a spiritual one. If I am going to become wealthy, I want to do so in the material world. If I am going to produce art, I would do so in the material world. Any spirituality that I do have, exists in the material world. I work in this world, I trade in this world, I appreciate in this world, I love in this world. So what's so wrong with that? And if my goals in this world demand that I create money, and if I pursue that goal aggressively, why would you pity me? Your friend wants able means. Even if he doesn't know now what he would do with those means, it is enough for him to know that he wants them. He is already leagues ahead of the aimless majority that do not know at all what they want. If he wants money, then he should pursue that, and once he has it, he can decide what to do with it ... but at least he will have pursued and attained a goal, which is a claim shared by too few. I think your pity is misplaced.
  • Ardit20 18y ago
    "If I am going to produce art, I would do so in the material world." Great works of art make one feel beauty. Is feeling beauty a spiritual event? I do not know what one may mean by spirituality. Perhaps they regard spirituality in the religious sense, such as a belief in a god and that he will take care of them. However I consider spirituality to be something intrinsic in all human being and quite detached from religion. Much as intellectual stimulation is the food of the brain so too beauty is the food of the heart and I believe it is in the heart where spirituality, as I see such term, reigns. If spirituality is what I see it to be, then your argument seems to be flawed as you consider spirituality to be detached from the material world. I do not see how one can distinguish easily the material world from the spiritual one. If the act of helping out a poor person is considered to be spiritual, such act is still carried out in the material world. It is a material act as you are helping him with material things. Same argument can be used when helping an old lady pass the road. So too the act of feeling beauty is experienced in the material world however the act itself is spiritual. For some even making a difference in the material world is a spiritual act and certainly love is spiritual however facilitated through the material world.
• vixen99 18y ago
  Bernard Shaw's dictum may seem a little trite but it's true nonetheless "Money is the most important thing in the world until you have enough of it". Yes! - 'enough' begs a slew of questions.
• dk 18y ago
  Where do you (and others) get the idea that Rand is responding to the Bible? She's speaking to/of those who say that money is evil, love of money is evil, and related thoughts. This seems clear from the very first sentence of the speech: "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" Later, "But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak?", "Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil?", etc. I would challenge you to cite the part of the speech or anything else Rand ever wrote arguing that money should be the most important thing in one's life. The statement "Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit," indicates what's more explicit elsewhere in the book, namely Rand's conviction that the material and (secular) spiritual are both of great importance in life and that neither trumps the other. Rather, one should seek to integrate them. Having read Rand extensively when I was younger, I can't imagine she'd consider your friend's approach to life, as described, anything but sad as well.
  • mistermann 18y ago
    Rand had serious issues with religion, she wrote about it in her nonfiction. I happen to agree with her by the way.
    • dk 18y ago
      To be clear, I made no reference to religion. And I agree with her too.
• dualogy 18y ago
  Actually the content is incredibly impressive. There are quite a few problems with Rand and her writing, but its not to do with content or presentation imo. It depends a lot on how the individual reader deals with it. For one, she doesn't care of her readers' definitions, concepts or connotations of words like reason, egoism/egotism, rationality, which have developed, maybe manipulated, maybe not, over generations but which she kind of redefines, trying to be as exacting and smart as possible about it but coming to definitely other (in my mind more sensible, but other) concepts/connotations/definitions than the more blurred ones people think they share. So take a quote or passage of one of her works out of the context of the book and just present it to someone who has never read her from start to finish and applies their own, learned connotations, concepts and definitions, and they will cry how in-humane and pitiable it seems. Her heroes, herself and her argument is that there shouldn't be a conflict between the material and the spiritual in the first place --- i.e. the 'ideal spiritual being' (in her literature) is the creator and individual of independent thought, for whom money is 'merely' the 'material manifestation of their spiritual height', a spirit that is, unlike others, admittedly celebrating this-life on this-world (not an otherworldly afterlife), 'reason' (she defines it for herself and her story characters, agreeing or disagreeing with that one is a different matter) and 'rational choice'. While we're at it, when she's advocating 'rational selfishness', she's also not advocating the 'mindless brute going over corpses or a plundering thug' but rather implies that ultimately it is in your self-interest to create, and the best and most useful you can, then trade that voluntarily. This is pretty consistent with the YC/PG idea of wealth creation where ideally in the marketplace (except maybe for crass bubble markets) you make a lot of money most likely when you create even more wealth/value for those who choose to pay you. (Whether that's freemium subscribers, advertisers or a big corp buying you is beside the point of the argument -- in the end, the principle applies regardless of that.) So I think the 'pitiable individual' you had in mind and the one she had in mind might well be the same or very similar --- there's unthinking zealots (MBA or not ;) who strive for money not knowing what to use it for, deal in personal connections and think it's all about 'striking deals with the right buddies' --- and then there's what in the 30s were 'the great industrialists' who started from nowhere (or since the 70s started in garages) and had a grand vision of something immensely useful they wanted to see in the world, then went ahead 'against all odds' to build it. Of course, she's using the heroism rhetoric of old warrior tales immensely, and I think she just did it for fun and maybe because her heroes (in books and real life) needed that 'missionary sense of urgency' to actually do what they set out to do. Maybe for insanely great stuff you do actually need a reality distortion field. Although in another way she was all about 'facing, not blanking out reality and seeing it in the eye all the time'. But thats physical reality and basic laws like you cannot consume more than you produce etc. I'd actually say, to ultimately disrupt and reshape reality, you need to distort it first. Some of reality is ours to reshape, but that doesnt mean wishing-will-it-so. Hmm. Mindboggling. There was a time when I could express such thoughts less confusingly. Guess I've been working too much lately and not doing enough intellectual reading/talking/writing. Gotta take that daily bike-ride now before getting to work -- laters!