10 ms·

The world is socialist

82 points by moonlighter 13y ago

mindslight 13y ago
Why do people get so intensely attracted to Ayn Rand's philosophy, even if for just a short time? Because it resonates with their attempting to understanding of the world. The necessary social systems that interlink us all have become overly complex and maladapted in their treatment of individual people, and by stepping back from "must" and asking "why" one begins to see this everywhere. But the only blessed means of change is democracy, and nuanced intellect doesn't win mob consensus - vague feel-something arguments do. So the idea of taking one's ball and going home becomes very attractive - even if it's just a single croquet ball - because it's the final option available to avoid supporting the broken game. And morally, systems should be setup to make this base case as easy as possible, even if it initially increases costs for the remaining players, for if the system is truly beneficial then it is still in most people's interest to participate. But the mob has no concern for individuals, so our social systems lack this capability. Going against the grain is tiresome and unproductive, so most people eventually conform to what is demanded of them. And once you've given in, you're likely to stop dwelling on the faults of the systems you support and instead view them in a positive light for what they do accomplish.
tokenadult 13y ago
Since almost all the comments in this thread are about Ayn Rand rather than about other details of the submitted article, I may as well share here from Kung Fu Monkey "Ephemera 2009 (7)" http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html a quotation I may have learned about first here on HN: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
mumbi 13y ago
I like the part about how nobody is great.
- bdcravens 13y ago
  It's popular to read Bill Gates mentioned in the "nobody is great" bit, but if the author had instead said Steve Jobs ..
INTPenis 13y ago
Valar Morghulis.
dmfdmf 13y ago
I have it on good word that Rand was pro health insurance.
- lkrubner 13y ago
  "Her books provided wide-ranging parables of "parasites," "looters" and "moochers" using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes' labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor)." http://www.alternet.org/story/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against_government_benefits,_but_grabbed_social_security_and_medicare_when_she_needed_them http://www.alternet.org/story/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against...
  - dnskw 13y ago
    >Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits If you pay into it then why would you not take the money? You are being ridiculous.
  - dmfdmf 13y ago
    This is a common smear spread by Rand's haters. She explained the principle in this article which the haters conveniently ignore; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_scholarships.html#order_3 http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_scho...
    - scarmig 13y ago
      So, her principle is basically "it's always bad to accept government handouts, unless you're an Objectivist, in which case it's fine so long as you complain very loudly while receiving them." I wish I were kidding.
      - foobarbazqux 13y ago
        I don't agree with her on the specific point, but I actually agree with her more broadly. If your everyday life doesn't match up with your ideals, you don't have to martyr yourself to be a good person. Hypocrisy is a normal state of affairs. For example, it's okay for me to complain about sweatshops but still buy running shoes that are made in them. It's okay for me to send my kids to a private school because the public schools in my area are terrible, even though I believe in raising taxes to support a high quality public education for everyone and making private schools obsolete.
unhe 13y ago
well as Rafael Correa says "If you are poor, 90% of the chances are that you will die poor no matter how smart and efficient you are to society. And if you are rich,90% percent of the chances are that you will die rich, no matter how useless and stupid you are"... and like the article says .. "If you want to go back to the point where we decided to be socialist and try to undo it, you're going to have to kill most of the people on the planet who depend on the current system for sustenance"
glesica 13y ago
If you want to go back to the point where we decided to be socialist and try to undo it, you're going to have to kill most of the people on the planet who depend on the current system for sustenance. And like it or not, that probably includes you. It certainly includes most of the idiots running around preaching Ayn Rand these days. This is my favorite part. So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration from Rand would, in fact, be "bad guys" in Atlas Shrugged. A nice example is Paul Ryan, who has spent his entire life in politics instead of actually creating anything useful. There are also a number of nice examples of people who would almost certainly be "good guys", but who are Democrats in real life (not that a Democrat can't be selfish, but the GOP seems to have claimed Rand lately). Bill Gates is the most obvious example, right down to getting blind-sided by government regulators in the 90s (whether the regulators were right or wrong, legally speaking, is immaterial here BTW).
- gnosis 13y ago
  "So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration from Rand would, in fact, be "bad guys" in Atlas Shrugged." Case in point: Rand hated Libertarians.[1] Some typical examples from the article: - She called Libertarianism "a mockery of philosophy and ideology" - She accused Libertarians of "slinging slogans and trying to ride on two bandwagons" Later, she accuses them of entertaining "amateur political notions" and "rushing into politics in order to get publicity". She says that Libertarians - are based on "half-baked ideas, and in part on borrowed ideas". - "spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas". - "are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable." - would "like to have an amoral political program" [1] - http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=113321 http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=113321
  - KaiserPro 13y ago
    Rand hated everyone apart from tall, arrogant & selfish men.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      And those only if she could convince to have sex with her or obey her otherwise. Else, she hated them too. Basically, she hated everyone apart from herself.
marris 13y ago
"Disease is socialist" but most cures come out of commercial drug companies cure them. Weird. I think the reader has a healthy aversion to Rand, but there is certainly a difference between great acts and mediocre ones.
- intopieces 13y ago
  And many cures come from publicly funded research universities. And even those commercial drug companies benefit greatly from government subsidies, patents issued by the government, roads built by the government, and a population educated in public universities. It's disingenuous to pretend those "commercial" drug companies forged their own universe and created these products benevolently.
  - thelastuser 13y ago
    I suppose that would be disingenuous... if anyone were to suggest it. You have no idea, of those government provisions you listed, what the actual costs are. You won't be able to get the most efficient allocation of resources, because it's not a market allocation (people freely paying), but a political allocation. Oh, and I don't care if a drug company is benevolent. Just that they are free to offer me the goods at a price that isn't rigged (as by regulation of competitors, for example).
- cstross 13y ago
  The existing medical regulatory regime administered by the FDA requires shedloads of clinical trial results to be filed before a medicine can receive a product license, allowing it to be prescribed or sold to the public. There's a good reason for this (the Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/ProductRegulation/SulfanilamideDisaster/ http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/ProductRegulati... ) but the way the system works makes it prohibitively expensive to gain such regulatory approval for a new medicine, thus pricing non-profits, academia, and small companies out of the market and restricting new developments in pharmaceuticals to a small privileged elite not-quite-a-cartel of large corporations. 'Twas not ever thus. Indeed, as late as the late 1970s, small companies were still producing new and interesting pharmaceuticals. Moreover, drugs aren't the only source of cures. Certainly surgical interventions don't generally come from commercial drug companies. And some categories of useful product don't come out of commercial drug companies at all -- their record on new antibiotic development in the past three decades is dismal to the point of near-criminality.
jessriedel 13y ago
> All these people who are so great aren't really that much greater than the average schmuck on the subway. There really isn't that much range in the smartness or fitness of human beings. Whelp, you've lost me. The difference in productivity and smartness---as measured by the consistent ability to impact the world---of people is enormous (the additional importance of luck notwithstanding). I'm not sure why you thought you were going to make progress on these deep philosophical issues with a 400 word blog post, but you're even more sunk if you throw in empirical claims that contradict both intuition and the data.
- briancaw2 13y ago
  Productivity and smartness are measured by the consistent ability to impact the world? And there is data linking "productivity", "smartness", and "consistent impact on the world"? Does Will Hunting abandoning math to go see about a girl make him an idiot?
- GuiA 13y ago
  I've taught programming to kids from very poor classes of society who grokked it and excelled at it. But, guess what– a lot of them will be stuck working at McDonald's because they can't go to college, or because even if they could go to public universities their family didn't understand why they should spend 4+ years not bringing in any money when they could work at McDonald's right away. I've also taught/privately tutored CS students from some of the US's best universities. The range in intellectual capacity between the two groups is shockingly consistent. I've had students who attended Stanford who would have been put to shame by some of my "first of the family to finish high school but can't go to college" students. If Bill Gates hadn't been born to lawyers and bankers, data says he would likely be part of the "average schmucks on the subway". Successful people consistently underestimate how lucky they are.
  - jorgecastillo 13y ago
    I have another real life anecdote of my own. My younger brother and I grew up more or less under the same conditions barring our individual personalities. Yet he is way smarter than me, he is about to finish college in two years, while I just got into college this season. I don't even know how well I will do, I might fail this semester who knows. We have already had two very different life trajectories and they might diverge further, even though we are brothers. Some decades ago the per capita income of South Korea was on par with some of the poorest nations in the world. Today South Korea is a rich nation. Japan was devastated after the WWII, but it experienced an economic miracle afterwards. China was an under achiever in the last century, but in the next decades it will become a superpower. We can talk all day about how equal we are, but not everyone thrives equally, even under the best of conditions. I can not but held the believe that among individuals, families, nations and ethnic groups, there are innate differences. Differences that are deeply rooted within our genes, we're all thinking beings but not everyone can be Newton, I sure can't. Of course you may beg to differ with me, after all individuals tend to distort the reality to their views. I might have a distorted view of reality, though I doubt it.
johnnyg 13y ago
1. Can we agree that both full socialism and full rand style capitalism end in tears? 2. Token rebuttals. a. Someone lives irresponsibly, I live responsibly. The sick that comes for us all devastates them early and I'm told "since we all get sick, they got sick much earlier due to all the crack and booze, they can't pay because they were grasshoppering it up while you worked, so now you pay". This is an extreme example, but I work in healthcare and I think I'm no stable ground saying that you can substitute cheeseburger for crack and get a majority. Is this how we want to set things up and call it just? b. Snow comes. I get out my shovel and go help my neighbor. I don't think doing this flies in the face of Rand. I do it because it is right to do in my gut because I know I'm fit to do it and they aren't. I don't think Rand says not to shovel, I think she says it is MY CHOICE to shovel or not and I own that moral choice after I make it. There's still a right and a wrong choice.
- scarmig 13y ago
  With regard to 2.b.) Rand, however, also condemned voluntary communal activities, depending on individual participants' motivations. E.g. on charity: "To view the question in its proper perspective, one must begin by rejecting altruism’s terms and all of its ugly emotional aftertaste—then take a fresh look at human relationships. It is morally proper to accept help, when it is offered, not as a moral duty, but as an act of good will and generosity, when the giver can afford it (i.e., when it does not involve self-sacrifice on his part), and when it is offered in response to the receiver’s virtues, not in response to his flaws, weaknesses or moral failures, and not on the ground of his need as such." If it were truly merely a matter of voluntary choice, there would be no moral blame on me if I chose to help someone, regardless of my motivations as such. If I were giving handouts out of the apparently perverse reason that someone needs it, Rand would condemn that; in contrast, a libertarian emphasis on choice would mean it's as valid as any other motivation, so long as it's non-coercive. (In the same line of argument, she would condemn me for advocating communitarian policies, because speech, even though it's inherently non-coercive, can be morally stained.) Overall, though, I like the concepts you're pushing for in 2, though I don't think Ayn Rand would have embraced them. You're looking for someone closer to Elinor Ostrom, who is much less inflammatory and not at all focused on moral questions but also much more thoughtful and interesting.
pearkes 13y ago
Ayn Rand's philosophy is widely criticized for being contradictory. This seems pretty accurate to me. But I don't think modern readers of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, et al., are listening to her as a preacher, to apply her ideas to the entirety of their lives, but rather as inspiration for their own philosophy. That is, after all, one reason to read literature that challenges your opinions. That's why I read and appreciate Rand. It's not because the American Libertarian movement made her a mascot. Take her introduction to The Fountainhead that she wrote in 1968, years after it was published and became successful: > It is not in the nature of man--nor of any living entity--to start out by giving up, by spitting in one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential. There are very few guideposts to find. The Fountainhead is one of them. This is one of the cardinal reasons of The Fountainhead's lasting appeal: it is a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming man's glory, showing how much is possible. By posting this I hope to defend Rand in the sense of helping people realize she does more then what the modern political landscape has created for her. I was certainly inspired by her approach to self, as I imagine countless others have been.
- pron 13y ago
  I love that quote. So pure; so childish. Ayn Rand was, at heart, a little girl (and who of us isn't at heart a small child?). Of course Rand is inspiring, just like "Jack and the Beanstalk". Inspiring children is easy. I just hope that as her readers mature, they come to realize that Dr Seuss's work, has more sophistication and truth to it than Rand's writing, while being no less inspiring.
nmi32 13y ago
I don't think I've ever read such a patronising dismissal of objectivism. >It's a beautiful story for a person caught between childhood and adulthood I could say the same thing about every religion, I doubt it would get a warm response.
- dreamfactory 13y ago
  Taoism?
- gnaritas 13y ago
  But it'd be just as true.
ef4 13y ago
When you attack capitalism by attacking Ayn Rand, you are attacking a terrible straw man. You'll notice that people rarely start by attacking the works of von Mises or Hayek or Rothbard, because those guys were actual serious academics who knew what they were talking about. Much easier to poke holes in the eccentric philosophy of one novelist.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  I doubt the point was attacking capitalism. Capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive in a society.
  - kungfooguru 13y ago
    They are. Socialism is an economy where production is owned and run by the workers for the benefit of the working class, which would be the ruling class at that time. Simply having a welfare state or some nationalized industries is not socialism. The source of power and ownership of production is still in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Mises as serious? Hah. But yes, he and the others are attacked less but only because they are less famous. Their ideas are as worthless.
    - dnskw 13y ago
      Socialism and capitalism can be occurring at the same time in the same city. If one company was worker controlled and one company was hierarchically controlled then it would be fine. As long as nobody is forcing somebody into a different system both could work together.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        Socialism is more than the worker's ownership of the means of production. http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch06.htm http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch06.ht...
        13y ago
taylodl 13y ago
John Galt never made it past adolescence. He ultimately used his talents to make the world suffer, all along possessing the wherewithal to make the world a better place. But HE didn't think THEY deserved it. I shudder to think people wanted a John Galt admirer for U.S. Vice President (and were supporting him for that very reason).
- dantheman 13y ago
  I believe your misremembering the story - they aren't withdrawing from the world to punish evil doers, it clearly states they are withdrawing to stop enabling the evil doers. It's like an intervention on society. And it's a story.
- solistice 13y ago
  I'm assuming your points are: 1. John Galt used his talents to make the world suffer. 2. John Galt is obligated to use those talents for the common good. 1. In the sense of actively destroying things, nowhere in the book. Maybe he goes kicking around puppies somewhere off the pages, but he does nothing of the sort anywhere in the book. Ragnar Danneskjöd does, but that situation is hard to judge given the details in the book. Galt did know that he had (assuming you mean the motor), the wherewithal to make the world a better place. But, a. He believed that doing so would only improve conditions in the short term, since the system in place was naturally errosive. Changing the system and then bringing forth his idea would provide longer term benefits. b. That assumes he was out for the common good. He wasn't. Doing what you proposed, namely comercializing his invention and "making the world a better place" would have led him through the same agony that Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart went through, trying to keep things together when they were clearly falling apart. 2. I disagree with you that anybody is obligated to do that.
aetherson 13y ago
We all get hungry, but we buy food from farmers on the market. We all need shelter, but we're buy our rent our homes. We all need clothing, but we clothing manufacturers are for profit. There are a variety of good arguments for socialized health care, but "we all get sick" is not among them. This article is banal in the extreme, and I'm not sure why it's on the front page.
- GuiA 13y ago
  Do you feel the same about housing projects, food banks, soup kitchens, food stamps, battered women's shelters, etc.?
  - aetherson 13y ago
    Do I feel that there are good arguments for them, but "we all need X" is not a good argument for them? Sure I do. Don't you? That said, note the difference between, say, housing projects or food stamps and a traditional vision of socialized healthcare: it is not expected that 90%+ of the population get most or all of their food from food stamps.
- drewblaisdell 13y ago
  > There are a variety of good arguments for socialized health care, but "we all get sick" is not among them. I disagree. The more specific "we all can get very sick, and being very sick is very expensive" is a very good argument for pooling our resources to make sure that we all get help when we need it.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Playing Devil's advocate, there are other ways of pooling resources, such as insurance or mutual-aid societies, the latter of which were mostly crowded out by state provided healthcare. There was a recent Econtalk podcast which touched on these issues: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/07/michael_lind_on.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/07/michael_lind_on.htm...
thelastuser 13y ago
I admit, I'm not sure what the argument is exactly. Nature is chaotic, therefore socialism? I cannot speak for Randians or Objectivists, but an advocate of a private property society does not have a problem with insurance. Insurance is a perfectly legitimate good that can be provided in markets. It's the whole pay-us-or-go-to-prison monopoly thing that doesn't sit well. Further, many rich business people are rich precisely because of government privilege, including protections of so-called intellectual property. You'd be hard pressed to name a successful person in modern times who hasn't made or at least maintained his riches because of some special privilege.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
trimbo 13y ago
I think I must be the only person ever who read Atlas Shrugged and thought it was a very entertaining book, but didn't either love it or hate it because of the politics. Is there anyone else out there who just loves the book like I do without applying the politics in real life?
- rdouble 13y ago
  As the book is so poorly written, those who enjoy it as literature are indeed in a small club.
  - trimbo 13y ago
    Heh. More along the lines of a good story. Though I have to admit, I had to skim John Galt's 50 page monologue.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    As a writer, Rand gets better as she gets shorter. I'd say she never gets to the point where she could be called a good writer, but she does sometimes reach for and achieve passable.
- gnaritas 13y ago
  She's a bad writer who tells bad stories with unrealistic and poorly written characters. The politics are the only reason the book is read by anyone rather than forgotten as bad writing as they should have been.
pron 13y ago
Ayn Rand was a strange and interesting woman who, among other things, sexually abused her most devoted fans and manipulated them in horrible ways. She was never considered an important, serious, or good writer, and her works were ridiculed pretty much as soon as people first first laid eyes on them. But, her novels are, to this day, bestsellers, especially popular, as you write yourself, with teenagers. They are meant to spark a feeling of grandeur, which they effectively do as the task is not hard by any means in people of that age. Refuting her claims and observations may be a bit redundant as they've never been taken seriously outside a very specific circle, but since her ideas have been influential inside that circle, and because said circle is not small in the US, where, quite amazingly, Rand's works are liked even by some adults (it's hard to believe but it's true), you can always shoot some more arrows into that corpse, for whatever good that would do. She does make an easy, and fun, target, and there are all those teenagers you can upset, which is always fun to watch. As to those American adults still fond of her works well into their mid-twenties and even beyond, well, it's best to keep a safe distance from them. Once you do, you might want to go back for a more sober look at Ayn Rand because she was a fascinating person, and her ideas have influenced some of the more colorful branches of American politics. Here's a famous interview she gave Mike Wallace in 1959: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouBZ-YqOnsU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouBZ-YqOnsU
- valtron 13y ago
  > sexually abused her most devoted fans Source?
  - pron 13y ago
    Sources aplenty. There are probably other authors who could claim the same, but I doubt there are any women among them :) An interesting character, indeed.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Check any biography or article on her life.
  - solistice 13y ago
    Nathaniel Branden for example.
rogerthis 13y ago
Everyday I wonder if people still read Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.
pandaman 13y ago
I wonder why some people cannot stop saying how wrong Ayn Rand had been in general and how wrong is Atlas Shrugged in particular. If it's a book of lies then why do you care so much? Don't you think for the book to have any effect on you it has to be true, at least in your own opinion.
- briancaw2 13y ago
  People care about books not only for their truths but also for the lies that influence others. The former should be lauded while the latter needs to be combatted.
  - pandaman 13y ago
    I don't see every other liberal blogger going on and on against the whole host of lying books (e.g. astrology, esoteric etc). And please don't tell me they are not influential. Much more people know their astrological sign and how bad is to hurt one's Karma than people who know who is John Galt.
    - briancaw2 13y ago
      When you say liberal you are referring to a political leaning. Rand's growing influence is on politics. If people started electing astrological evangelist preachers to government positions and it resulted in policies that they disagreed with, then people would spend a lot more time combatting the phony astrology that the movement is based on. That focus wouldn't make astrology any truer.
      - pandaman 13y ago
        Thanks, this is the point I am trying to make. If you are opposing an ideology then have balls to attack the ideology straight on. I don't see people often attacking Marxism on the basis that Karl Marx was hiding from child support obligations and that Lenin had syphilis. Yet it's par for the course to dismiss whatever ideology Rand is representing just by attacking her character.
muyuu 13y ago
So we have political circlejerks in HN's front page now? This is getting more like Reddit by the minute.
Allower 13y ago
And this is where we see the clowns who don't understand economics. Snow removal is handled by the folks who have a greater vested financial interest in having roads clear. And if you seriously can't imagine a nation with private roads, than you simply haven't tried very hard.
- thelastuser 13y ago
  It is strange how well conditioned people are to regard roads as this Great Social Problem even as they go about buying cheaper and cheaper stuff that does more and more everyday thanks to capitalism.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Not everything is made of transistors.
wissler 13y ago
The heart of the matter is this question: should the community violate the consent of the individual or not? Coming at it from the utilitarian point of view (for sake of argument -- I am not a utilitarian[1]), does it really need to be argued that every humane person should naturally wish to respect individual consent to the fullest extent possible? The only remaining question should be to determine to what extent this is possible. Is there a way to get the road clearing paid for without violating the consent of those who don't care if it's cleared or not? It turns out that we can form systems whereby this is possible. For example, take a home owners association (HOA). It violates no consent to have contracts that stipulate that you must pay a yearly fee (or "tax") to join the HOA. So there you go, the snowplowing problem is solved, all without any violation of consent. If you're creative, it turns out that you can solve all of these dilemmas, without resorting to government fiat, which of course can only be implemented by being willing to point a gun at your neighbor's head. No humane person would prefer this, ergo actually humane people would seek more creative solutions. [1] https://leanpub.com/reasonandliberty https://leanpub.com/reasonandliberty
- briancaw2 13y ago
  What happens when that HOA needs to make a new rule? From what you described it sounds like any person on the losing end of an argument is being violated, and an HOA that has to deal with anything but some basic set of agreed upon rules will not satisfy the non-violation requirements.
  - thelastuser 13y ago
    I cannot speak for the parent, but disagreements can be resolved by independent, third-party arbitration (which may have also been agreed upon by the HOA). This is not to be confused with a territorial monopoly on final arbitration, viz. a government court.
    - briancaw2 13y ago
      http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m43fenS4rJ1rqfhi2o1_250.gif http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m43fenS4rJ1rqfhi2o1_250.gi...
WalterBright 13y ago
Socialism is forced cooperation, as opposed to voluntary cooperation.
- dnskw 13y ago
  You can have voluntary socialism...
- briancaw2 13y ago
  There's no such thing as voluntary cooperation when all of the land is already owned.
  - thelastuser 13y ago
    Why not?
    - thomasz 13y ago
      1. Because the majority does not possess the means of survival by subsistence and are forced to cooperate with proprietors. 2. "Property" cannot exist without enforcement. If you own land and I don't, chances are that I can find another poor bastard who will help me to take it from you.
      - thelastuser 13y ago
        I just want to note first that it is not clear that all land is currently owned. Natural owners (homesteaders) have been displaced many times by state violence and the threat of state violence keeps people from homesteading available space. I had sidestepped this earlier because, even if all land has legitimate private owners, that does not preclude voluntary cooperation. 1. Your body is your property, and you have the right to contract (i.e. agree with another person to use your property in a particular way, for instance as a condition of transfer of property). So the filthy rich person who owns a country--which by the way I don't think is possible, since he probably just planted a flag and yelled that he owns it, which does not make a homestead... but for the sake of argument let's say he does own the country--this guy excludes thousands of people who only have the standing room on which they were born. Do tell me how this guy will eat. I will bet that, through the magic of self interest, the landowner will be happy to contract with the impoverished majority, say, for farming. Now if you're thinking ahead, you already see that the poor folk, if their private property rights are respected, can save their income and trade and sell among themselves, maybe even buy some of that land from the country owner. The historic problem is not that ownership of land existed, but that it was never treated as a private property, or that the individual right to self-ownership and contract were not universally respected. 2. So people can be crooks? I don't disagree.
bdcravens 13y ago
These discussions on HN are a bit ironic to me. HN seems to cut across several areas of discussion, and a large one is the startup world (principally the SF one). In general, the culture seems to be very liberal and sympathetic to socialism. Socialism isn't necessary mutually exclusive with capitalism, but it tends to be opposed. At the very least, it aims to level out the bell curve a bit, eliminating capitalistic excess. Today's startup scene: Talk about capitalistic excess. Everyone's running around with MacBook Airs and Pros, iPhones, and iPads. The true "rebels" running Android: they're cheerleading for a phone that's backed by a mega-corp with a $300B market cap, so from an excess perspective, not much different. The culture wants home runs. 9 or 10 figure exits. Built a photo sharing app or game moving blocks around on the your phone? Is $1B for your company really the best way for society to allocate its resources? VC's throw money away everyday on dumb companies that they know will fail; they're just keeping skin in the game knowing that if they do, they'll inevitably hit some home runs. tl;dr Went all meta on the idea that startup culture that drives HN is capitalistic excess, opposite of socialism edit "opposite of capitalism" should have been "opposite of socialism"; some grammar
yummyfajitas 13y ago
This essay is attacking a straw man, not Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was not an anarchist and did not oppose government entirely: http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand... I'm a having a little trouble believing the author actually read Atlas Shrugged - in it, one of the productive characters (Ragnar, if I remember right) explicitly lists many legitimate functions of government. One of them is maintaining public roads. The author also deliberately fails to acknowledge the difference between public goods (blizzard cleanup) and private goods (medicine and financial services).
- czr80 13y ago
  Medical care is not unequivocally a private good.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    True, but epidemic prevention is an extremely small problem (and a very cheap one to address), at least in the US. Virtually no one across the political spectrum (including most libertarians) opposes it. Near as I can tell, the OP wasn't talking about it either.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      But the same morals and 'ethical guideposts' apply throughout, do they not? By way logic does a libertarian say that e.g. government coercing people to obey quarantines is acceptable, but that the government coercing people to pay for cheap public preventive care (before expensive specialist treatments become necessary) is not?
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        Quarantine prevents others from getting sick, while preventative care only prevents you from getting sick. For comparison, compare laws against punching other people to laws against punching yourself.
ls6 13y ago
As I have spent (too) many years living in such a system, let me explain what I've observed in practice. First of all there would be, in principle, differences per culture but it will level down when troubles strike -- then it is universally everyone for himself. The only difference being how big the trouble must be for this to trigger. Generic problems observed in practice: - ownership by everyone means in practice ownership by no one as proven every single day by comparing the same business run by a state or a city or privately -- it is always worse and more expensive - maybe it is strictly separate subject but in socialism somehow people are expected to be equal; since this is obviously a wrong assumption people will be forced to be equal which is never pleasant for the "better" onces (whatever that means); economically it will include taking from richer and giving to poorer (again, regardless whether these differences would be labeled fair or not and whether the reacher earned it by working hard or the poorer was just lazy) So, unless your culture isn't aready "trained" in putting the good of the group above individual and, believe me, US population is not, socialsim will not work for you on a long run. P.S. I wouldn't write this if this article wasn't so painfully stupid -- I'm not calling the author stupid, only this idealistic view. Socialism is NOT about dishing the same stuff to everyone like a storm or a disease. It is a much more complex system that is incompatible with human beings. Maybe permanently, maybe just not right now. It is not wrong, it is not bad on its own. It just doesn't work today for most of us. In addition any stystem that attaches an adjective to the word "justice" -- as in "social justice" -- needs a very, very careful investigation. At least.
jeffdavis 13y ago
The article conflates social institutions with government (and possibly conflates the various levels of government) which is a common theme among many political ideas. On the "Right", people often conclude that, because their religion is good, it should be enforced by the federal government. In reality, people can (generally) practice their religion freely through their church so long as the government policies aren't too overbearing. On the "Left", people often conclude that, because charitable giving and safety nets and community projects are good, those things should be enforced and run by the federal government. In reality, there are many social institutions and mechanisms by which those things might happen (families and communities do many of these things already, and local governments can do many more), and the federal government is only one option and may only be suitable in specific circumstances.
aero142 13y ago
Sometimes I feel like there are two different versions of Atlas Shrugged out in the world and different people read different ones. I just don't understand how someone can read the book I read and think that "snowplow drivers" is a complete rebuttal. The book has a lot of themes and I don't agree with all of them but lets hit a few that I took away. Rand is best viewed as a reaction to the abuses of Russian Communism. Atlas Shrugged is extreme in the opposite direction but offers some good critiques of collectivism as she saw it practiced. Communism was always at the point of a gun, so one of her primary complaints was the the use of force by the incapable to demand things from the capable was immoral. So, it's immoral to force those who have snow plows to plow your road just because you have a gun. Using a snowstorm is a funny example because I think that is exactly one of her main points. Nature doesn't care about your feelings or what you think you deserve. You will either use you mind to find solutions to problems or you will die. If you choose not to think for yourself, you don't have a right to take from those who do just because you have a gun. So, to answer the article's question, "Who is supposed plow the streets during the snowpocalypse?" Whoever the hell has a snowplow and has the ability to drive it. Probably in exchange for money. That's some crazy talk right there. Did I just blow your mind? It's not "a detail she never seemed to have gotten to", it's just a stupid question. You don't plow streets with Rearden metal. You plow it with a snow plow. Rand's point was that streets didn't get plowed by moochers and people who claimed they "deserved it". It got plowed by every great person that designed a combustable engine and metal and manufacturing processes and ultimately applied their mind to the challenges of nature(snow storms) and created an f'ing snow plow. The point is that it is the human mind is what makes the world work, not whining about your "rights". As for "great individuals", yes, I think she over sold it a bit. However, very focused productive people applying their minds to problems have more influence and leverage today than ever before. She also spends a lot of time talking about "teaching men to think". So she talked a lot about everyone using their talents to create things, not just the John Galts. There are lots of characters who play bit parts in Atlas Shrugged that are respected in the book. Same for the fountain head. Lets talk about the exceptional though. No Bill Gates may not be francisco d'anconia, but he did have a big influence on the world. Now he is using his money to have an even bigger influence. Just for fun, and in the spirit of Rand, think about the difference between how Gates is spending his money, vs the way the Government has spent it. Compare the way a person that earned his money is spending it vs "looters" that took it from others. Plus, Gates seems less John Galt than someone like Von Neumann or Newton. I just get really sick and tired of people knocking down Rand strawmen. No, she didn't offer the solution all the hard problems of balancing individual liberty and collective action, but if you read it with some context and think about it for yourself, you may find that she did offer some good ideas about the perils of collectivism and the potential of human ability. If you are curious about Rand, go read Fransico' Money Speech, http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/ http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speec... and skip this stupid, pointless blog post.
Vektorweg 13y ago
found this quote in the german wikipedia: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Atlas Shrugged'. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” – John Rogers
dollar 13y ago
All of the typicsl straw man arguments about roads and healthcare are nonsense. Rand believed that any way society chose to organize itself to benefit its members was perfectly acceptable, as long as that organization was rooted in individual freedom of choice, and not extracted from individuals with violence - the tyranny of the majority.
kamaal 13y ago
Rand is always popular among people, who get cheated. Kind of people among whom resentment(Bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly) is high. If you look at it closely these are generally the kind of people who do everything right, and then only find some not even 1/10th the worth take away fruits of their work. These are generally the kind of hard working working people who get cheated due to office politics, or an unfair boss, or the people who score less marks because the teacher wanted to reward her otherwise favorite pupil. One of the top reasons why people want to have their own business is because 'working for others' ultimately leads to a situation where you do all the work, while not getting nearly the atom worth the due rewards you deserve. Its not selfish or arrogant or even wrong that such people ultimately take things into their own hands and refuse to put up with being treated unfairly. When I first read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The philosophy of it looked straight obvious and something that I myself have gone through. Rand's philosophy is not the case, but rather a effect of a deep rooted malaise where some people find it perfectly fine to cheat. And expect the person to be fine being cheated. On a side note, I attended a Start up conference a years back here Bangalore. At the end there was open panel discussion as to what makes a better career option 'Start up or a Job at a Megacorp' a middle manager from representing a mega corp called start up founders are impatient, greedy and selfish. This is how bad the situation gets when you put up with unfair treatment, the person cheating thinks it's perfectly ok to treat you unfairly. And more, it is unfair to him that you refuse to get cheated. Want to prevent the Rand philosophy from spreading, do something that triggers its flow and adoption at the first place. But we all already know that's not going to happen.
demachina 13y ago
Pretty flawed writing on Dave Winer's, like this part right here: "Ayn Rand's philosophy might have worked in an agrarian society when people lived far apart, and couldn't pool their resources." Agricultural coops were some of the earliest, most intense and long lived Socialism in the U.S. in fact some of them are still going. Building grain elevators, pooling expensive machinery, getting fertilizer and seed in bulk and at a reasonable price, shipping crops to market and trying to avoid getting screwed by middlemen, are things were Socialism had its place. Atlas Shugged was written for and about railroad barons, industrialist and to a lesser extent Wall Streeters. Classic Dave, say something that has no basis in fact, and hope no one calls him on the B.S. because he's Dave Winer.

82 points by moonlighter 13y ago

Why do people get so intensely attracted to Ayn Rand's philosophy, even if for just a short time? Because it resonates with their attempting to understanding of the world. The necessary social systems that interlink us all have become overly complex and maladapted in their treatment of individual people, and by stepping back from "must" and asking "why" one begins to see this everywhere. But the only blessed means of change is democracy, and nuanced intellect doesn't win mob consensus - vague feel-something arguments do. So the idea of taking one's ball and going home becomes very attractive - even if it's just a single croquet ball - because it's the final option available to avoid supporting the broken game. And morally, systems should be setup to make this base case as easy as possible, even if it initially increases costs for the remaining players, for if the system is truly beneficial then it is still in most people's interest to participate. But the mob has no concern for individuals, so our social systems lack this capability. Going against the grain is tiresome and unproductive, so most people eventually conform to what is demanded of them. And once you've given in, you're likely to stop dwelling on the faults of the systems you support and instead view them in a positive light for what they do accomplish.

tokenadult 13y ago

Since almost all the comments in this thread are about Ayn Rand rather than about other details of the submitted article, I may as well share here from Kung Fu Monkey "Ephemera 2009 (7)" http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html a quotation I may have learned about first here on HN: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

mumbi 13y ago

I like the part about how nobody is great.

bdcravens 13y ago
It's popular to read Bill Gates mentioned in the "nobody is great" bit, but if the author had instead said Steve Jobs ..

INTPenis 13y ago

Valar Morghulis.

dmfdmf 13y ago

I have it on good word that Rand was pro health insurance.

lkrubner 13y ago
"Her books provided wide-ranging parables of "parasites," "looters" and "moochers" using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes' labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor)." http://www.alternet.org/story/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against_government_benefits,_but_grabbed_social_security_and_medicare_when_she_needed_them http://www.alternet.org/story/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against...
- dnskw 13y ago
  >Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits If you pay into it then why would you not take the money? You are being ridiculous.
- dmfdmf 13y ago
  This is a common smear spread by Rand's haters. She explained the principle in this article which the haters conveniently ignore; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_scholarships.html#order_3 http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_scho...
  - scarmig 13y ago
    So, her principle is basically "it's always bad to accept government handouts, unless you're an Objectivist, in which case it's fine so long as you complain very loudly while receiving them." I wish I were kidding.
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      I don't agree with her on the specific point, but I actually agree with her more broadly. If your everyday life doesn't match up with your ideals, you don't have to martyr yourself to be a good person. Hypocrisy is a normal state of affairs. For example, it's okay for me to complain about sweatshops but still buy running shoes that are made in them. It's okay for me to send my kids to a private school because the public schools in my area are terrible, even though I believe in raising taxes to support a high quality public education for everyone and making private schools obsolete.

unhe 13y ago

well as Rafael Correa says "If you are poor, 90% of the chances are that you will die poor no matter how smart and efficient you are to society. And if you are rich,90% percent of the chances are that you will die rich, no matter how useless and stupid you are"... and like the article says .. "If you want to go back to the point where we decided to be socialist and try to undo it, you're going to have to kill most of the people on the planet who depend on the current system for sustenance"

glesica 13y ago

If you want to go back to the point where we decided to be socialist and try to undo it, you're going to have to kill most of the people on the planet who depend on the current system for sustenance. And like it or not, that probably includes you. It certainly includes most of the idiots running around preaching Ayn Rand these days. This is my favorite part. So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration from Rand would, in fact, be "bad guys" in Atlas Shrugged. A nice example is Paul Ryan, who has spent his entire life in politics instead of actually creating anything useful. There are also a number of nice examples of people who would almost certainly be "good guys", but who are Democrats in real life (not that a Democrat can't be selfish, but the GOP seems to have claimed Rand lately). Bill Gates is the most obvious example, right down to getting blind-sided by government regulators in the 90s (whether the regulators were right or wrong, legally speaking, is immaterial here BTW).

gnosis 13y ago
"So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration from Rand would, in fact, be "bad guys" in Atlas Shrugged." Case in point: Rand hated Libertarians.[1] Some typical examples from the article: - She called Libertarianism "a mockery of philosophy and ideology" - She accused Libertarians of "slinging slogans and trying to ride on two bandwagons" Later, she accuses them of entertaining "amateur political notions" and "rushing into politics in order to get publicity". She says that Libertarians - are based on "half-baked ideas, and in part on borrowed ideas". - "spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas". - "are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable." - would "like to have an amoral political program" [1] - http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=113321 http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=113321
- KaiserPro 13y ago
  Rand hated everyone apart from tall, arrogant & selfish men.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    And those only if she could convince to have sex with her or obey her otherwise. Else, she hated them too. Basically, she hated everyone apart from herself.

marris 13y ago

"Disease is socialist" but most cures come out of commercial drug companies cure them. Weird. I think the reader has a healthy aversion to Rand, but there is certainly a difference between great acts and mediocre ones.

intopieces 13y ago
And many cures come from publicly funded research universities. And even those commercial drug companies benefit greatly from government subsidies, patents issued by the government, roads built by the government, and a population educated in public universities. It's disingenuous to pretend those "commercial" drug companies forged their own universe and created these products benevolently.
- thelastuser 13y ago
  I suppose that would be disingenuous... if anyone were to suggest it. You have no idea, of those government provisions you listed, what the actual costs are. You won't be able to get the most efficient allocation of resources, because it's not a market allocation (people freely paying), but a political allocation. Oh, and I don't care if a drug company is benevolent. Just that they are free to offer me the goods at a price that isn't rigged (as by regulation of competitors, for example).
cstross 13y ago
The existing medical regulatory regime administered by the FDA requires shedloads of clinical trial results to be filed before a medicine can receive a product license, allowing it to be prescribed or sold to the public. There's a good reason for this (the Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/ProductRegulation/SulfanilamideDisaster/ http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/ProductRegulati... ) but the way the system works makes it prohibitively expensive to gain such regulatory approval for a new medicine, thus pricing non-profits, academia, and small companies out of the market and restricting new developments in pharmaceuticals to a small privileged elite not-quite-a-cartel of large corporations. 'Twas not ever thus. Indeed, as late as the late 1970s, small companies were still producing new and interesting pharmaceuticals. Moreover, drugs aren't the only source of cures. Certainly surgical interventions don't generally come from commercial drug companies. And some categories of useful product don't come out of commercial drug companies at all -- their record on new antibiotic development in the past three decades is dismal to the point of near-criminality.

jessriedel 13y ago

> All these people who are so great aren't really that much greater than the average schmuck on the subway. There really isn't that much range in the smartness or fitness of human beings. Whelp, you've lost me. The difference in productivity and smartness---as measured by the consistent ability to impact the world---of people is enormous (the additional importance of luck notwithstanding). I'm not sure why you thought you were going to make progress on these deep philosophical issues with a 400 word blog post, but you're even more sunk if you throw in empirical claims that contradict both intuition and the data.

briancaw2 13y ago
Productivity and smartness are measured by the consistent ability to impact the world? And there is data linking "productivity", "smartness", and "consistent impact on the world"? Does Will Hunting abandoning math to go see about a girl make him an idiot?
GuiA 13y ago
I've taught programming to kids from very poor classes of society who grokked it and excelled at it. But, guess what– a lot of them will be stuck working at McDonald's because they can't go to college, or because even if they could go to public universities their family didn't understand why they should spend 4+ years not bringing in any money when they could work at McDonald's right away. I've also taught/privately tutored CS students from some of the US's best universities. The range in intellectual capacity between the two groups is shockingly consistent. I've had students who attended Stanford who would have been put to shame by some of my "first of the family to finish high school but can't go to college" students. If Bill Gates hadn't been born to lawyers and bankers, data says he would likely be part of the "average schmucks on the subway". Successful people consistently underestimate how lucky they are.
- jorgecastillo 13y ago
  I have another real life anecdote of my own. My younger brother and I grew up more or less under the same conditions barring our individual personalities. Yet he is way smarter than me, he is about to finish college in two years, while I just got into college this season. I don't even know how well I will do, I might fail this semester who knows. We have already had two very different life trajectories and they might diverge further, even though we are brothers. Some decades ago the per capita income of South Korea was on par with some of the poorest nations in the world. Today South Korea is a rich nation. Japan was devastated after the WWII, but it experienced an economic miracle afterwards. China was an under achiever in the last century, but in the next decades it will become a superpower. We can talk all day about how equal we are, but not everyone thrives equally, even under the best of conditions. I can not but held the believe that among individuals, families, nations and ethnic groups, there are innate differences. Differences that are deeply rooted within our genes, we're all thinking beings but not everyone can be Newton, I sure can't. Of course you may beg to differ with me, after all individuals tend to distort the reality to their views. I might have a distorted view of reality, though I doubt it.

johnnyg 13y ago

1. Can we agree that both full socialism and full rand style capitalism end in tears? 2. Token rebuttals. a. Someone lives irresponsibly, I live responsibly. The sick that comes for us all devastates them early and I'm told "since we all get sick, they got sick much earlier due to all the crack and booze, they can't pay because they were grasshoppering it up while you worked, so now you pay". This is an extreme example, but I work in healthcare and I think I'm no stable ground saying that you can substitute cheeseburger for crack and get a majority. Is this how we want to set things up and call it just? b. Snow comes. I get out my shovel and go help my neighbor. I don't think doing this flies in the face of Rand. I do it because it is right to do in my gut because I know I'm fit to do it and they aren't. I don't think Rand says not to shovel, I think she says it is MY CHOICE to shovel or not and I own that moral choice after I make it. There's still a right and a wrong choice.

scarmig 13y ago
With regard to 2.b.) Rand, however, also condemned voluntary communal activities, depending on individual participants' motivations. E.g. on charity: "To view the question in its proper perspective, one must begin by rejecting altruism’s terms and all of its ugly emotional aftertaste—then take a fresh look at human relationships. It is morally proper to accept help, when it is offered, not as a moral duty, but as an act of good will and generosity, when the giver can afford it (i.e., when it does not involve self-sacrifice on his part), and when it is offered in response to the receiver’s virtues, not in response to his flaws, weaknesses or moral failures, and not on the ground of his need as such." If it were truly merely a matter of voluntary choice, there would be no moral blame on me if I chose to help someone, regardless of my motivations as such. If I were giving handouts out of the apparently perverse reason that someone needs it, Rand would condemn that; in contrast, a libertarian emphasis on choice would mean it's as valid as any other motivation, so long as it's non-coercive. (In the same line of argument, she would condemn me for advocating communitarian policies, because speech, even though it's inherently non-coercive, can be morally stained.) Overall, though, I like the concepts you're pushing for in 2, though I don't think Ayn Rand would have embraced them. You're looking for someone closer to Elinor Ostrom, who is much less inflammatory and not at all focused on moral questions but also much more thoughtful and interesting.

pearkes 13y ago

Ayn Rand's philosophy is widely criticized for being contradictory. This seems pretty accurate to me. But I don't think modern readers of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, et al., are listening to her as a preacher, to apply her ideas to the entirety of their lives, but rather as inspiration for their own philosophy. That is, after all, one reason to read literature that challenges your opinions. That's why I read and appreciate Rand. It's not because the American Libertarian movement made her a mascot. Take her introduction to The Fountainhead that she wrote in 1968, years after it was published and became successful: > It is not in the nature of man--nor of any living entity--to start out by giving up, by spitting in one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential. There are very few guideposts to find. The Fountainhead is one of them. This is one of the cardinal reasons of The Fountainhead's lasting appeal: it is a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming man's glory, showing how much is possible. By posting this I hope to defend Rand in the sense of helping people realize she does more then what the modern political landscape has created for her. I was certainly inspired by her approach to self, as I imagine countless others have been.

pron 13y ago
I love that quote. So pure; so childish. Ayn Rand was, at heart, a little girl (and who of us isn't at heart a small child?). Of course Rand is inspiring, just like "Jack and the Beanstalk". Inspiring children is easy. I just hope that as her readers mature, they come to realize that Dr Seuss's work, has more sophistication and truth to it than Rand's writing, while being no less inspiring.

nmi32 13y ago

I don't think I've ever read such a patronising dismissal of objectivism. >It's a beautiful story for a person caught between childhood and adulthood I could say the same thing about every religion, I doubt it would get a warm response.

dreamfactory 13y ago
Taoism?
gnaritas 13y ago
But it'd be just as true.

ef4 13y ago

When you attack capitalism by attacking Ayn Rand, you are attacking a terrible straw man. You'll notice that people rarely start by attacking the works of von Mises or Hayek or Rothbard, because those guys were actual serious academics who knew what they were talking about. Much easier to poke holes in the eccentric philosophy of one novelist.

guard-of-terra 13y ago
I doubt the point was attacking capitalism. Capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive in a society.
- kungfooguru 13y ago
  They are. Socialism is an economy where production is owned and run by the workers for the benefit of the working class, which would be the ruling class at that time. Simply having a welfare state or some nationalized industries is not socialism. The source of power and ownership of production is still in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Mises as serious? Hah. But yes, he and the others are attacked less but only because they are less famous. Their ideas are as worthless.
  - dnskw 13y ago
    Socialism and capitalism can be occurring at the same time in the same city. If one company was worker controlled and one company was hierarchically controlled then it would be fine. As long as nobody is forcing somebody into a different system both could work together.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Socialism is more than the worker's ownership of the means of production. http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch06.htm http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch06.ht...
      - 13y ago

taylodl 13y ago

John Galt never made it past adolescence. He ultimately used his talents to make the world suffer, all along possessing the wherewithal to make the world a better place. But HE didn't think THEY deserved it. I shudder to think people wanted a John Galt admirer for U.S. Vice President (and were supporting him for that very reason).

dantheman 13y ago
I believe your misremembering the story - they aren't withdrawing from the world to punish evil doers, it clearly states they are withdrawing to stop enabling the evil doers. It's like an intervention on society. And it's a story.
solistice 13y ago
I'm assuming your points are: 1. John Galt used his talents to make the world suffer. 2. John Galt is obligated to use those talents for the common good. 1. In the sense of actively destroying things, nowhere in the book. Maybe he goes kicking around puppies somewhere off the pages, but he does nothing of the sort anywhere in the book. Ragnar Danneskjöd does, but that situation is hard to judge given the details in the book. Galt did know that he had (assuming you mean the motor), the wherewithal to make the world a better place. But, a. He believed that doing so would only improve conditions in the short term, since the system in place was naturally errosive. Changing the system and then bringing forth his idea would provide longer term benefits. b. That assumes he was out for the common good. He wasn't. Doing what you proposed, namely comercializing his invention and "making the world a better place" would have led him through the same agony that Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart went through, trying to keep things together when they were clearly falling apart. 2. I disagree with you that anybody is obligated to do that.

aetherson 13y ago

We all get hungry, but we buy food from farmers on the market. We all need shelter, but we're buy our rent our homes. We all need clothing, but we clothing manufacturers are for profit. There are a variety of good arguments for socialized health care, but "we all get sick" is not among them. This article is banal in the extreme, and I'm not sure why it's on the front page.

GuiA 13y ago
Do you feel the same about housing projects, food banks, soup kitchens, food stamps, battered women's shelters, etc.?
- aetherson 13y ago
  Do I feel that there are good arguments for them, but "we all need X" is not a good argument for them? Sure I do. Don't you? That said, note the difference between, say, housing projects or food stamps and a traditional vision of socialized healthcare: it is not expected that 90%+ of the population get most or all of their food from food stamps.
drewblaisdell 13y ago
> There are a variety of good arguments for socialized health care, but "we all get sick" is not among them. I disagree. The more specific "we all can get very sick, and being very sick is very expensive" is a very good argument for pooling our resources to make sure that we all get help when we need it.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Playing Devil's advocate, there are other ways of pooling resources, such as insurance or mutual-aid societies, the latter of which were mostly crowded out by state provided healthcare. There was a recent Econtalk podcast which touched on these issues: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/07/michael_lind_on.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/07/michael_lind_on.htm...

thelastuser 13y ago

I admit, I'm not sure what the argument is exactly. Nature is chaotic, therefore socialism? I cannot speak for Randians or Objectivists, but an advocate of a private property society does not have a problem with insurance. Insurance is a perfectly legitimate good that can be provided in markets. It's the whole pay-us-or-go-to-prison monopoly thing that doesn't sit well. Further, many rich business people are rich precisely because of government privilege, including protections of so-called intellectual property. You'd be hard pressed to name a successful person in modern times who hasn't made or at least maintained his riches because of some special privilege.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

trimbo 13y ago

I think I must be the only person ever who read Atlas Shrugged and thought it was a very entertaining book, but didn't either love it or hate it because of the politics. Is there anyone else out there who just loves the book like I do without applying the politics in real life?

rdouble 13y ago
As the book is so poorly written, those who enjoy it as literature are indeed in a small club.
- trimbo 13y ago
  Heh. More along the lines of a good story. Though I have to admit, I had to skim John Galt's 50 page monologue.
- scarmig 13y ago
  As a writer, Rand gets better as she gets shorter. I'd say she never gets to the point where she could be called a good writer, but she does sometimes reach for and achieve passable.
gnaritas 13y ago
She's a bad writer who tells bad stories with unrealistic and poorly written characters. The politics are the only reason the book is read by anyone rather than forgotten as bad writing as they should have been.

pron 13y ago

Ayn Rand was a strange and interesting woman who, among other things, sexually abused her most devoted fans and manipulated them in horrible ways. She was never considered an important, serious, or good writer, and her works were ridiculed pretty much as soon as people first first laid eyes on them. But, her novels are, to this day, bestsellers, especially popular, as you write yourself, with teenagers. They are meant to spark a feeling of grandeur, which they effectively do as the task is not hard by any means in people of that age. Refuting her claims and observations may be a bit redundant as they've never been taken seriously outside a very specific circle, but since her ideas have been influential inside that circle, and because said circle is not small in the US, where, quite amazingly, Rand's works are liked even by some adults (it's hard to believe but it's true), you can always shoot some more arrows into that corpse, for whatever good that would do. She does make an easy, and fun, target, and there are all those teenagers you can upset, which is always fun to watch. As to those American adults still fond of her works well into their mid-twenties and even beyond, well, it's best to keep a safe distance from them. Once you do, you might want to go back for a more sober look at Ayn Rand because she was a fascinating person, and her ideas have influenced some of the more colorful branches of American politics. Here's a famous interview she gave Mike Wallace in 1959: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouBZ-YqOnsU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouBZ-YqOnsU

valtron 13y ago
> sexually abused her most devoted fans Source?
- pron 13y ago
  Sources aplenty. There are probably other authors who could claim the same, but I doubt there are any women among them :) An interesting character, indeed.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Check any biography or article on her life.
- solistice 13y ago
  Nathaniel Branden for example.

rogerthis 13y ago

Everyday I wonder if people still read Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

pandaman 13y ago

I wonder why some people cannot stop saying how wrong Ayn Rand had been in general and how wrong is Atlas Shrugged in particular. If it's a book of lies then why do you care so much? Don't you think for the book to have any effect on you it has to be true, at least in your own opinion.

briancaw2 13y ago
People care about books not only for their truths but also for the lies that influence others. The former should be lauded while the latter needs to be combatted.
- pandaman 13y ago
  I don't see every other liberal blogger going on and on against the whole host of lying books (e.g. astrology, esoteric etc). And please don't tell me they are not influential. Much more people know their astrological sign and how bad is to hurt one's Karma than people who know who is John Galt.
  - briancaw2 13y ago
    When you say liberal you are referring to a political leaning. Rand's growing influence is on politics. If people started electing astrological evangelist preachers to government positions and it resulted in policies that they disagreed with, then people would spend a lot more time combatting the phony astrology that the movement is based on. That focus wouldn't make astrology any truer.
    - pandaman 13y ago
      Thanks, this is the point I am trying to make. If you are opposing an ideology then have balls to attack the ideology straight on. I don't see people often attacking Marxism on the basis that Karl Marx was hiding from child support obligations and that Lenin had syphilis. Yet it's par for the course to dismiss whatever ideology Rand is representing just by attacking her character.

muyuu 13y ago

So we have political circlejerks in HN's front page now? This is getting more like Reddit by the minute.

Allower 13y ago

And this is where we see the clowns who don't understand economics. Snow removal is handled by the folks who have a greater vested financial interest in having roads clear. And if you seriously can't imagine a nation with private roads, than you simply haven't tried very hard.

thelastuser 13y ago
It is strange how well conditioned people are to regard roads as this Great Social Problem even as they go about buying cheaper and cheaper stuff that does more and more everyday thanks to capitalism.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Not everything is made of transistors.

wissler 13y ago

The heart of the matter is this question: should the community violate the consent of the individual or not? Coming at it from the utilitarian point of view (for sake of argument -- I am not a utilitarian[1]), does it really need to be argued that every humane person should naturally wish to respect individual consent to the fullest extent possible? The only remaining question should be to determine to what extent this is possible. Is there a way to get the road clearing paid for without violating the consent of those who don't care if it's cleared or not? It turns out that we can form systems whereby this is possible. For example, take a home owners association (HOA). It violates no consent to have contracts that stipulate that you must pay a yearly fee (or "tax") to join the HOA. So there you go, the snowplowing problem is solved, all without any violation of consent. If you're creative, it turns out that you can solve all of these dilemmas, without resorting to government fiat, which of course can only be implemented by being willing to point a gun at your neighbor's head. No humane person would prefer this, ergo actually humane people would seek more creative solutions. [1] https://leanpub.com/reasonandliberty https://leanpub.com/reasonandliberty

briancaw2 13y ago
What happens when that HOA needs to make a new rule? From what you described it sounds like any person on the losing end of an argument is being violated, and an HOA that has to deal with anything but some basic set of agreed upon rules will not satisfy the non-violation requirements.
- thelastuser 13y ago
  I cannot speak for the parent, but disagreements can be resolved by independent, third-party arbitration (which may have also been agreed upon by the HOA). This is not to be confused with a territorial monopoly on final arbitration, viz. a government court.
  - briancaw2 13y ago
    http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m43fenS4rJ1rqfhi2o1_250.gif http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m43fenS4rJ1rqfhi2o1_250.gi...

WalterBright 13y ago

Socialism is forced cooperation, as opposed to voluntary cooperation.

dnskw 13y ago
You can have voluntary socialism...
briancaw2 13y ago
There's no such thing as voluntary cooperation when all of the land is already owned.
- thelastuser 13y ago
  Why not?
  - thomasz 13y ago
    1. Because the majority does not possess the means of survival by subsistence and are forced to cooperate with proprietors. 2. "Property" cannot exist without enforcement. If you own land and I don't, chances are that I can find another poor bastard who will help me to take it from you.
    - thelastuser 13y ago
      I just want to note first that it is not clear that all land is currently owned. Natural owners (homesteaders) have been displaced many times by state violence and the threat of state violence keeps people from homesteading available space. I had sidestepped this earlier because, even if all land has legitimate private owners, that does not preclude voluntary cooperation. 1. Your body is your property, and you have the right to contract (i.e. agree with another person to use your property in a particular way, for instance as a condition of transfer of property). So the filthy rich person who owns a country--which by the way I don't think is possible, since he probably just planted a flag and yelled that he owns it, which does not make a homestead... but for the sake of argument let's say he does own the country--this guy excludes thousands of people who only have the standing room on which they were born. Do tell me how this guy will eat. I will bet that, through the magic of self interest, the landowner will be happy to contract with the impoverished majority, say, for farming. Now if you're thinking ahead, you already see that the poor folk, if their private property rights are respected, can save their income and trade and sell among themselves, maybe even buy some of that land from the country owner. The historic problem is not that ownership of land existed, but that it was never treated as a private property, or that the individual right to self-ownership and contract were not universally respected. 2. So people can be crooks? I don't disagree.

bdcravens 13y ago

These discussions on HN are a bit ironic to me. HN seems to cut across several areas of discussion, and a large one is the startup world (principally the SF one). In general, the culture seems to be very liberal and sympathetic to socialism. Socialism isn't necessary mutually exclusive with capitalism, but it tends to be opposed. At the very least, it aims to level out the bell curve a bit, eliminating capitalistic excess. Today's startup scene: Talk about capitalistic excess. Everyone's running around with MacBook Airs and Pros, iPhones, and iPads. The true "rebels" running Android: they're cheerleading for a phone that's backed by a mega-corp with a $300B market cap, so from an excess perspective, not much different. The culture wants home runs. 9 or 10 figure exits. Built a photo sharing app or game moving blocks around on the your phone? Is $1B for your company really the best way for society to allocate its resources? VC's throw money away everyday on dumb companies that they know will fail; they're just keeping skin in the game knowing that if they do, they'll inevitably hit some home runs. tl;dr Went all meta on the idea that startup culture that drives HN is capitalistic excess, opposite of socialism edit "opposite of capitalism" should have been "opposite of socialism"; some grammar

yummyfajitas 13y ago

This essay is attacking a straw man, not Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was not an anarchist and did not oppose government entirely: http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand... I'm a having a little trouble believing the author actually read Atlas Shrugged - in it, one of the productive characters (Ragnar, if I remember right) explicitly lists many legitimate functions of government. One of them is maintaining public roads. The author also deliberately fails to acknowledge the difference between public goods (blizzard cleanup) and private goods (medicine and financial services).

czr80 13y ago
Medical care is not unequivocally a private good.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  True, but epidemic prevention is an extremely small problem (and a very cheap one to address), at least in the US. Virtually no one across the political spectrum (including most libertarians) opposes it. Near as I can tell, the OP wasn't talking about it either.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    But the same morals and 'ethical guideposts' apply throughout, do they not? By way logic does a libertarian say that e.g. government coercing people to obey quarantines is acceptable, but that the government coercing people to pay for cheap public preventive care (before expensive specialist treatments become necessary) is not?
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      Quarantine prevents others from getting sick, while preventative care only prevents you from getting sick. For comparison, compare laws against punching other people to laws against punching yourself.

ls6 13y ago

As I have spent (too) many years living in such a system, let me explain what I've observed in practice. First of all there would be, in principle, differences per culture but it will level down when troubles strike -- then it is universally everyone for himself. The only difference being how big the trouble must be for this to trigger. Generic problems observed in practice: - ownership by everyone means in practice ownership by no one as proven every single day by comparing the same business run by a state or a city or privately -- it is always worse and more expensive - maybe it is strictly separate subject but in socialism somehow people are expected to be equal; since this is obviously a wrong assumption people will be forced to be equal which is never pleasant for the "better" onces (whatever that means); economically it will include taking from richer and giving to poorer (again, regardless whether these differences would be labeled fair or not and whether the reacher earned it by working hard or the poorer was just lazy) So, unless your culture isn't aready "trained" in putting the good of the group above individual and, believe me, US population is not, socialsim will not work for you on a long run. P.S. I wouldn't write this if this article wasn't so painfully stupid -- I'm not calling the author stupid, only this idealistic view. Socialism is NOT about dishing the same stuff to everyone like a storm or a disease. It is a much more complex system that is incompatible with human beings. Maybe permanently, maybe just not right now. It is not wrong, it is not bad on its own. It just doesn't work today for most of us. In addition any stystem that attaches an adjective to the word "justice" -- as in "social justice" -- needs a very, very careful investigation. At least.

jeffdavis 13y ago

The article conflates social institutions with government (and possibly conflates the various levels of government) which is a common theme among many political ideas. On the "Right", people often conclude that, because their religion is good, it should be enforced by the federal government. In reality, people can (generally) practice their religion freely through their church so long as the government policies aren't too overbearing. On the "Left", people often conclude that, because charitable giving and safety nets and community projects are good, those things should be enforced and run by the federal government. In reality, there are many social institutions and mechanisms by which those things might happen (families and communities do many of these things already, and local governments can do many more), and the federal government is only one option and may only be suitable in specific circumstances.

aero142 13y ago

Sometimes I feel like there are two different versions of Atlas Shrugged out in the world and different people read different ones. I just don't understand how someone can read the book I read and think that "snowplow drivers" is a complete rebuttal. The book has a lot of themes and I don't agree with all of them but lets hit a few that I took away. Rand is best viewed as a reaction to the abuses of Russian Communism. Atlas Shrugged is extreme in the opposite direction but offers some good critiques of collectivism as she saw it practiced. Communism was always at the point of a gun, so one of her primary complaints was the the use of force by the incapable to demand things from the capable was immoral. So, it's immoral to force those who have snow plows to plow your road just because you have a gun. Using a snowstorm is a funny example because I think that is exactly one of her main points. Nature doesn't care about your feelings or what you think you deserve. You will either use you mind to find solutions to problems or you will die. If you choose not to think for yourself, you don't have a right to take from those who do just because you have a gun. So, to answer the article's question, "Who is supposed plow the streets during the snowpocalypse?" Whoever the hell has a snowplow and has the ability to drive it. Probably in exchange for money. That's some crazy talk right there. Did I just blow your mind? It's not "a detail she never seemed to have gotten to", it's just a stupid question. You don't plow streets with Rearden metal. You plow it with a snow plow. Rand's point was that streets didn't get plowed by moochers and people who claimed they "deserved it". It got plowed by every great person that designed a combustable engine and metal and manufacturing processes and ultimately applied their mind to the challenges of nature(snow storms) and created an f'ing snow plow. The point is that it is the human mind is what makes the world work, not whining about your "rights". As for "great individuals", yes, I think she over sold it a bit. However, very focused productive people applying their minds to problems have more influence and leverage today than ever before. She also spends a lot of time talking about "teaching men to think". So she talked a lot about everyone using their talents to create things, not just the John Galts. There are lots of characters who play bit parts in Atlas Shrugged that are respected in the book. Same for the fountain head. Lets talk about the exceptional though. No Bill Gates may not be francisco d'anconia, but he did have a big influence on the world. Now he is using his money to have an even bigger influence. Just for fun, and in the spirit of Rand, think about the difference between how Gates is spending his money, vs the way the Government has spent it. Compare the way a person that earned his money is spending it vs "looters" that took it from others. Plus, Gates seems less John Galt than someone like Von Neumann or Newton. I just get really sick and tired of people knocking down Rand strawmen. No, she didn't offer the solution all the hard problems of balancing individual liberty and collective action, but if you read it with some context and think about it for yourself, you may find that she did offer some good ideas about the perils of collectivism and the potential of human ability. If you are curious about Rand, go read Fransico' Money Speech, http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/ http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speec... and skip this stupid, pointless blog post.

Vektorweg 13y ago

found this quote in the german wikipedia: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Atlas Shrugged'. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” – John Rogers

dollar 13y ago

All of the typicsl straw man arguments about roads and healthcare are nonsense. Rand believed that any way society chose to organize itself to benefit its members was perfectly acceptable, as long as that organization was rooted in individual freedom of choice, and not extracted from individuals with violence - the tyranny of the majority.

kamaal 13y ago

Rand is always popular among people, who get cheated. Kind of people among whom resentment(Bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly) is high. If you look at it closely these are generally the kind of people who do everything right, and then only find some not even 1/10th the worth take away fruits of their work. These are generally the kind of hard working working people who get cheated due to office politics, or an unfair boss, or the people who score less marks because the teacher wanted to reward her otherwise favorite pupil. One of the top reasons why people want to have their own business is because 'working for others' ultimately leads to a situation where you do all the work, while not getting nearly the atom worth the due rewards you deserve. Its not selfish or arrogant or even wrong that such people ultimately take things into their own hands and refuse to put up with being treated unfairly. When I first read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The philosophy of it looked straight obvious and something that I myself have gone through. Rand's philosophy is not the case, but rather a effect of a deep rooted malaise where some people find it perfectly fine to cheat. And expect the person to be fine being cheated. On a side note, I attended a Start up conference a years back here Bangalore. At the end there was open panel discussion as to what makes a better career option 'Start up or a Job at a Megacorp' a middle manager from representing a mega corp called start up founders are impatient, greedy and selfish. This is how bad the situation gets when you put up with unfair treatment, the person cheating thinks it's perfectly ok to treat you unfairly. And more, it is unfair to him that you refuse to get cheated. Want to prevent the Rand philosophy from spreading, do something that triggers its flow and adoption at the first place. But we all already know that's not going to happen.

demachina 13y ago

Pretty flawed writing on Dave Winer's, like this part right here: "Ayn Rand's philosophy might have worked in an agrarian society when people lived far apart, and couldn't pool their resources." Agricultural coops were some of the earliest, most intense and long lived Socialism in the U.S. in fact some of them are still going. Building grain elevators, pooling expensive machinery, getting fertilizer and seed in bulk and at a reasonable price, shipping crops to market and trying to avoid getting screwed by middlemen, are things were Socialism had its place. Atlas Shugged was written for and about railroad barons, industrialist and to a lesser extent Wall Streeters. Classic Dave, say something that has no basis in fact, and hope no one calls him on the B.S. because he's Dave Winer.