Ayn Rand's objectivism and laissez-faire capitalism

sephir0th

I've started reading and studying some of Ayn Rand's philosophies recently. I will admit, at this point, I am not well-read on the subject but have read a few articles and understand the core concepts. I intend to read Atlas Shrugged, or at least give it a go

I'm wondering if anyone here has studied it and has valid criticisms of her philosophy or where it is flawed?

sephir0th

sephir0th wrote: »

I've started reading and studying some of Ayn Rand's philosophies recently. I will admit, at this point, I am not well-read on the subject but have read a few articles and understand the core concepts. I intend to read Atlas Shrugged, or at least give it a go

I'm wondering if anyone here has studies it and has valid criticisms of her philosophy or where it is flawed?

I thought atlas shrugged was great tbh, was very glad I read it. Fairly good reflection of a lot of human nature
Not such a fan of fountainhead


... and now I'm out of here before robin has a fit

Branch Meeting

loda pish tbh

fitz0

It's a poorly written book full of 2 dimensional characters and shallow insinuations that the poor are subhuman. Rand's philosophy denied all the irrationality inherent in everyday human interaction for a romanticised view of creative genius being the pinnacle of humanity. Everyone that wasn't one of the creative and productive select were either enablers, workers or 'moochers'.

It's worth bearing in mind that for all of Rand's philosophising and opining the objective human ideal, the woman herself was anything but rational. Adam Curtis examines her as part of his series 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.'

The book is worth reading for the effect the philosophy has had on the late 20th century, particularly politicians. I read it as an impressionable teen and was utterly convinced by it's arguments but on a reread the arguments and scenarios are utterly ridiculous. The characters are pretty awful people mostly and thoroughly unlikeable.

Dades

Check out the Atlas Shrugged mega-thread for reference.

Maybe this one will go better.

sephir0th

I'm finding it difficult to see how this could work with regards education. If I'm born into a really poor family, am I well... just screwed if all educational institutions are privately owned?

sephir0th

sephir0th wrote: »

I'm finding it difficult to see how this could work with regards education. If I'm born into a really poor family, am I well... just screwed if all educational institutions are privately owned?

Not at all. In many countries, private education is cheap enough that poor families can and will save to send their children there. It's not quite the same as here! Especially if there is a lot of competition

http://www.economist.com/node/21550251

It's interesting to note that making state education free was the spark to drive up to 80% of families to send their children to fee paying schools

In India, for example, between a quarter and a third of pupils attend private schools, according to the OECD, a Paris-based think-tank (and others have private tutors). In cities the proportion is more like 85%, reckons Geeta Kingdon, who conducts research in Mumbai and elsewhere for the Institute of Education in London.

A government decision in 2007 to make primary schooling compulsory and free boosted private-school numbers.

http://www.nextbillion.net/blogpost.aspx?blogid=736


http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/policy-report/2005/9/cpr-27n5-1.pdf
n I have found private schools
in battle-scarred buildings in Somaliland
and Sierra Leone; in the shanty town of
Makoko built on stilts above the Lagos
lagoons in Nigeria; scattered among the
tin and cardboard huts of Africa’s largest
slum, Kibera, Kenya; in the teeming townships perched on the shoreline of Accra,
Ghana; in slums and villages across India;
among the “floating population” in Beijing; and in remote Himalayan villages in
China. Indeed, I have yet to find a developing country environment where private schools for the poor don’t exist.

. But
in other countries—China and Ghana, for
instance—where public schools charge low
fees or “levies,” we find that sometimes
the private schools are undercutting public schools, because the really poor can’t
afford the public option. What makes
the private schools financially attractive is
that they allow the parents to pay on a daily basis—perhaps 10 cents a day—rather
than to pay for the full term up-front as
they must for the public schools

That last article is a fascinating read, actually

Nodin

I've always thought it an attempt to intellectualise a deep love for the notion of Russian feudalism, meself.

robindch

sephir0th wrote: »

I'm wondering if anyone here has studied it and has valid criticisms of her philosophy or where it is flawed?

Rand's view is that being a self-obsessed bastard is good and she demonstrated the falsehood of that by her own troubled life.

Otherwise, well, what Jim Wright said:

http://www.stonekettle.com/2011/11/who-is-john-galt-that-was-bumper.html

magicbastarder

a friend's comment on facebook recently:

Dear right-wing America. Ayn Rand died on welfare, of obsessive smoking caused, in part, by her inability to loved or be loved by another human being. Ayn Rand had no friends. Ayn Rand is what humanity looks like when it tries to live in the airless vacuum of selfishness. A cancer-riddled, friendless, childless woman, dying alone on the charity that she spent her life decrying for others. And if that isn't an absolute picture of the word failure, then I don't know what is.

Chuck Stone

sephir0th wrote: »

If I'm born into a really poor family, am I well... just screwed if all educational institutions are privately owned?

In libertopia (they say) there would be all sorts of providers of education; churches, charities, private, home schooling, community based - just not anything by the damn gubberment. Moreover, the well manicured hidden hand of the fabled free market (FFM) would drive down the costs of getting a good education because the FFM would see to it that scarce resources reach their true price without government interference which invariably inflates the cost.

True extrication of 'the state' from education would, of course, mean that the government would have to stop rigging the game in favour of the stake-holders of society and start dismantling the state created societal structures from the 'business' end (no pun intended). No more socialised education costs providing graduates for the private sector. No more over-paid under-performing educators insulated from the FFM magnifying glass. No more iron-clad pensions. No more job security for state educators. No more socialised cost hobby degrees that tend to channel people towards a steady PbS/CvS job.

Will this happen in my lifetime in Ireland or anywhere resembling it? Lol, no.

pH

It seems to be mainly concerned with the fact that people like Bill Gates and Ingvar Kamprad aren't quite as rich as they deserve to be and that's the no 1 problem facing the world today.

Brian Shanahan

sephir0th wrote: »

I'm wondering if anyone here has studied it and has valid criticisms of her philosophy or where it is flawed?

It is not a philosophy, and Rand was bat-guano insane.

Objectivism boils down to "two fingers to you I've got mine. Oh, and that house you built with your own two hands, that's now mine. Why? Because I'm better than you."

The only thing you need to know about Ayn Rand is that she formed a large part of her "thinking" based of her admiration of a serial killer, and what she thought were his good qualities (the same ones which lead to him becoming, at the time, the most prolific murderer in the US).

Is this all just going to be ad hominems?

Brian Shanahan

bluewolf wrote: »

Is this all just going to be ad hominems?

Detailing the fact that Rand was an insane worshipper of psychopathy who wouldn't even follow the tenets of her philosophy is not ad hominem, it is a valid line of attack.

Ad hominem only applies when the attack on the person has no relevance to the validity to their argument.

Brian Shanahan

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Ad hominem only applies when the attack on the person has no relevance to the validity to their argument.

As indeed it doesn't here - either it makes sense on its own merits or it doesn't.

robindch

bluewolf wrote: »

Is this all just going to be ad hominems?

Well, before posting, I removed my ad-homs

But more seriously, is there anything inaccurate in my view that Rand believed that being utterly selfish is right and proper?

Brian Shanahan

bluewolf wrote: »

As indeed it doesn't here - either it makes sense on its own merits or it doesn't.

And one of any philosophy's merits is that its author is not bat-guano insane and basing a large part of his/her system off the morals of a psychopathic serial killer.

Objectivism fails that part of the test hard (it also fails all the other tests, including the one about whether it can work in reality).

oldrnwisr

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Detailing the fact that Rand was an insane worshipper of psychopathy who wouldn't even follow the tenets of her philosophy is not ad hominem, it is a valid line of attack.

Ad hominem only applies when the attack on the person has no relevance to the validity to their argument.

No, neither of your claims about Rand in this post are valid arguments.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

It is not a philosophy, and Rand was bat-guano insane.

This is an example of the ad-hominem fallacy. You haven't attempted to demonstrate a flaw in objectivism, you've merely attacked the person making the claim. That's playing the man, not the ball.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

The only thing you need to know about Ayn Rand is that she formed a large part of her "thinking" based of her admiration of a serial killer, and what she thought were his good qualities (the same ones which lead to him becoming, at the time, the most prolific murderer in the US).

This is an example of Poisoning the Well. You are presenting unfavourable information for the purposes of undermining the claim being made, i.e. Objectivism.

Neither of these are valid critiques of objectivism. There are valid criticsms to be made though.

Let's look at this quote from Rand for example:

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

In so much as this quote is a summary of objectivism, the highlighted section shows why it is a poor idea. We are social animals. The evolutionary path that we have taken makes us highly dependent on the concept of society in order to make individual progress. As John Donne once said: No man is an island, entire of itself.

Blowfish

oldrnwisr wrote: »

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

[/I]In so much as this quote is a summary of objectivism, the highlighted section shows why it is a poor idea. We are social animals. The evolutionary path that we have taken makes us highly dependent on the concept of society in order to make individual progress. As John Donne once said: No man is an island, entire of itself.

The two are by no means mutually exclusive though.

The pursuit of happiness for the vast majority of people includes social and societal interaction, precisely because of the mutual benefit involved.

sephir0th

oldrnwisr wrote: »

We are social animals. The evolutionary path that we have taken makes us highly dependent on the concept of society in order to make individual progress. As John Donne once said: No man is an island, entire of itself.

Rand doesn't deny that though? She has no issue with social relationships, mutual friendships, gift giving etc. Her issue as far as I can gather is with pure altruism (sacrifice of your own self-interest) being deemed as a morally good thing. This would surely coincide with gene centric evolution - as Dawkins described in The Selfish Gene.

oldrnwisr

Blowfish wrote: »

The two are by no means mutually exclusive though.

The pursuit of happiness for the vast majority of people includes social and societal interaction, precisely because of the mutual benefit involved.

Agreed, it's not necessarily mutually exclusive. It's just that the degree to which self-interest trumps all other considerations under Rand's view which is troubling.

sephir0th wrote: »

Rand doesn't deny that though? She has no issue with social relationships, mutual friendships, gift giving etc. Her issue as far as I can gather is with pure altruism (sacrifice of your own self-interest) being deemed as a morally good thing. This would surely coincide with gene centric evolution - as Dawkins described in The Selfish Gene.

Self-interest can be complicated from an evolutionary perspective since it is genetic self-interest rather than individual self-interest that is often important. So you have parents sacrificing themselves for their offspring, salmon and mantises dying through the act of reproduction, the propagation of homosexuality as a means of female fecundity etc.

Altruism is rarely pure in any context, but Rand's interpretation of pure altruism leads her to draw bad conclusions. As I said to Blowfish above though, it all depends on the degree to which self-interest is prioritised. Altruism to varying degrees has serious benefits:

The evolution of reciprocal altruism

The Origins of Virtue

Brian Shanahan

oldrnwisr wrote: »

This is an example of the ad-hominem fallacy. You haven't attempted to demonstrate a flaw in objectivism, you've merely attacked the person making the claim. That's playing the man, not the ball.

No, I think that you'll find the fact that Rand was insane very relevant to the usefulness of Objectivism as a philosophy.

Just because something is a personal attack, does not automatically make it ad hominem. To achieve that, you have to ensure the personal attack is also irrelevant to the substantive matter. And a person's sanity is completely relevant to their philosophy's utility.

This is an example of Poisoning the Well. You are presenting unfavourable information for the purposes of undermining the claim being made, i.e. Objectivism.

She made him one of the central heros in one of her novels detailing her philosophy of Objectivism. She undermined the philosophy long before I was born.

sephir0th

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Self-interest can be complicated from an evolutionary perspective since it is genetic self-interest rather than individual self-interest that is often important.

That's a good point, I wonder does Rand address this. i.e. when she speaks of self-interest does she take shared genes into account.

oldrnwisr

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

No, I think that you'll find the fact that Rand was insane very relevant to the usefulness of Objectivism as a philosophy.

Just because something is a personal attack, does not automatically make it ad hominem. To achieve that, you have to ensure the personal attack is also irrelevant to the substantive matter. And a person's sanity is completely relevant to their philosophy's utility.

OK, to deal with the second paragraph first, remember it is you who in making a counterargument has the burden of proof in this situation. It is encumbent on you to show how a personal attack is linked to the validity of the proposition being presented.

What you have said is this:

1. Ayn Rand was insane (a point you have not supported with evidence)

2. Therefore, objectivism is bollocks.

Even if we grant the first statement as true, there is no logical continuation from the premise to the conclusion. You at no point, with reference to examples of objectivist philosophy, show how the sanity of the author attaches to the integrity of the idea.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

She made him one of the central heros in one of her novels detailing her philosophy of Objectivism. She undermined the philosophy long before I was born.

Again like the insanity quip, you have made no attempt to show how her admiration of a serial killer undermines her philosophy. What you have esseentially said is: Well this person thinks that Stalin was great so therefore their idea that grass is green must be wrong. You haven't attacked the philosophy you have attacked the person proposing it. That's a bad foundation for an argument. Let's look at this visually.




Right now, you're languishing in the orange zone. If you want to attack objectivism and show how it is misguided or flawed fine, but attacking Rand in the hope of undermining objectivism isn't going to work. Certainly not here anyway.

magicbastarder

i didn't think a debate on whether ayn rand is as crazy as a ****house rat would turn into a lesson on how to argue.

Zillah

Objectivism sounds awesome and is wonderfully appealing on many levels until you spend a few minutes thinking about how society might look if it was implemented. I'm all for rewarding the creative drivers of society, for limiting our mandatory obligations to each other, but you really need a minimum social net supported by reasonable taxes.

sephir0th

robindch wrote: »

But more seriously, is there anything inaccurate in my view that Rand believed that being utterly selfish is right and proper?

So is Rand's objectivism based on the premise that rational self-interest is at the core of our nature? She is not a biologist so is it possible that she just basically got it wrong and never took genetic self interest into account?

I'm not sure if her vision is to create a happier human race or an optimal one in terms of productive output and advancement.

Permabear

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Mark Hamill

Permabear wrote: »

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I dont really see much difference in these two situations. The problem with the top down rule from government bureaucrats is when you get a bunch of self interested idiots in charge who don't quite understand that their stability is reliant on everyone else being stable enough to support their jobs and lifestyle. The problem with the spontaneous social order of freely interacting individuals is the same thing. Anyone who gets into a position of power (political, financial etc.) but forgets that such power is reliant on the rest of the population being able to support the economy that defines that power is going to cause everyone problems.

Permabear

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The Mad Hatter

Permabear wrote: »

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Quoting The Beatles to support Ayn Rand - that's a new one! And it's worth noting that Lindgren remained a member of the Social Democrat party all her life, in spite of her briefly absurd tax rate. I don't think many people here would argue that George Harrison or Astrid Lindgren were paying too little tax in those instances.

Though for what it's worth, my favourite quote on this subject was Orson Welles' quip, when told by a couple of henchmen of Joseph McCarthy that a communist was someone who gave all their money to the government: "Then I'm 86% communist! But the rest of me is all capitalist!"

The eager Rand-bashing in this particular forum always surprises me — because quite apart from her political views, Rand was an ardent proponent of rigorously rational thought (hardly a hallmark of insanity, we should note) and a committed adversary of supernaturalism and religion in all their forms. She perceived that churches, just like states, used their allegedly God-derived authority to make people submit to a diminished life of self-sacrifice and self-denial, all in the interest of some so-called "morality" or "greater good." She argued fiercely for the primacy of individual intellect and free choice over all of the above, rejecting the inherent authority of priest and bureaucrat alike. One would think atheists, of all people, might find something there worth celebrating!

I think the reaction against Randian ideas here is partly due to a distaste here for any kind of extremism, left or right. And I think it's disingenuous to say that because she was opposed to religion we should find other points of agreement, or indeed that because she promoted rationality that she was rational herself.

For me personally, I think that even if Rand's ideas hold up economically (I'm not convinced that they do, nor am I convinced that they don't), that alone doesn't necessarily justify them; while they may make it easier for small businesses, it seems to me that it would also make it easier for large businesses to control politics and propaganda. We have already seen what powerful corporations and corporate groups can do to control and manipulate information and, frankly, spread lies and misinformation for the sake of protecting themselves. The PR groups and lobbies of the tobacco industry, for instance, for years suppressed and denied the adverse effect that smoking has on health; likewise the fossil fuel industry, using many of the same PR groups and lobbyists, is now actively trying to suppress and discredit climate science. To an extent, that's fair because those companies are working for themselves, but if this is how they behave under relatively restrictive regulation, how are we to believe that under less or no regulation we would benefit?

Permabear

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Mark Hamill

Permabear wrote: »

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I am not going to deny that the public sector has protected its lifestyle to the detriment of every one else (and itself, in the long run), but the notion that a society of freely interacting individuals would end up better is ludicrous.
We wouldn't be in a recession in the first place if it wasn't for unregulated banking. People in power will always try to protect that power, be they high paid civil servants deflecting the effects of recession onto everyone else or high paid CEOs deflecting the effects of a company liquidation onto its lower paid staff. Lots of till workers lost their jobs in Irish banks, not so many CEOs.

The scale of those protecting themselves to the detriment of everyone and the delay between cause and effect may be different, but the effect is the same on the common man. If something happens to an economy, then those in power (either through election or free interaction of individuals) will climb over everyone else to ensure their lifestyles. Thats because people, all people, are irrational and stupid and threatened. We need to combat this, and a start would be getting rid of schools with vested interests beyond making students as productive as possible in whatever they do.

Mark Hamill

Permabear wrote: »

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The answer is to close the loopholes, not abandon the whole net that the loophole exists in. Loopholes are bad because of what they let in, so to speak. Removing the net lets everything in. Big businesses spend billions on lobbying so they can get away with doing the things they would do if no net existed in the firstplace.

Permabear wrote: »

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Good for her, reality disagrees (what with the existence of billion dollar lobby groups and all).

The Mad Hatter

Permabear wrote: »

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You'll notice that I said Rand's ideas are extreme, not that she was an extremist.

When we create an enormous, multilayered government to operate an unfathomably labyrinthine regulatory environment, does it come as any surprise when legislators create loopholes and benefits for corporations that bend their ears? Lobbying has become a multibillion-dollar international industry precisely because of the growth of large government.

Again, this is disingenuous. The problem is not with the existence of lobbies and PR companies, but with what they campaign for. You're quite right that companies wouldn't need to campaign for lighter regulation, or to suppress scientific research, if those regulations didn't exist in the first place. My question was and remains: If this is how they behave under relatively restrictive regulation, how are we to believe that under less or no regulation we would benefit?

Bannasidhe

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

You'll notice that I said Rand's ideas are extreme, not that she was an extremist.



Again, this is disingenuous. The problem is not with the existence of lobbies and PR companies, but with what they campaign for. You're quite right that companies wouldn't need to campaign for lighter regulation, or to suppress scientific research, if those regulations didn't exist in the first place. My question was and remains: If this is how they behave under relatively restrictive regulation, how are we to believe that under less or no regulation we would benefit?

History shows us that light touch regulation doesn't work and lassiez faire policies are a recipe for exploitation.

There is a reason government were forced to act and put a break on the so-called free market and that was because the vast majority of the population did not benefit - they became commodities to be exploited.

Personally I have no doubt that were we to return to a lassiez faire system we would also return to the working/living conditions in which the majority existed the last time such a political philosophy held sway.

Gbear

It's always a pleasure to see O'n'W swoop in like an avenging angel, blasting fallacies left and right.:p

Mark Hamill wrote: »

We wouldn't be in a recession in the first place if it wasn't for unregulated banking. People in power will always try to protect that power, be they high paid civil servants deflecting the effects of recession onto everyone else or high paid CEOs deflecting the effects of a company liquidation onto its lower paid staff. Lots of till workers lost their jobs in Irish banks, not so many CEOs.

I disagree with this assessment.
If everyone in the country decided to bet all their money on a horse in the morning and lost, it would certainly be bad for the country but that doesn't mean that the government should step in.
What's bankrupting the state is the bizarre wedding of socialism to capitalism - a failure in regulation at first and then deciding to bail out the banks that should've been allowed to fail like any ****ty company.

We probably would've been better off if we either had stuck with a lack of regulation and simply let the banks go to the wall or if we had come from the other exterme and had an iron fist squeezing any risk out of the banking sector.
We've ended up with none of the control of socialism and all of the aftermath of a failed gamble from capitalism.

Either way, Ireland is not an example of laissez faire capitalism.

robindch

Permabear wrote: »

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That's the opposite of oldrnwisr's Poisoning the well that he mentioned above. What would it be? Sweetening the well? I don't know.

Anyhow, Rand did rail against religion and supernaturalism, but that doesn't mean that anything else she said was right, or that she would receive any degree of automatic support here in A+A. And while she appears to have held rational thought in high regard, I've never once got the impression that she was actually very good at doing it. Rather the opposite really and perhaps that's why supporters here are thin on the ground.

Mark Hamill

Gbear wrote: »

If everyone in the country decided to bet all their money on a horse in the morning and lost, it would certainly be bad for the country but that doesn't mean that the government should step in.

Why not?

Gbear wrote: »

We probably would've been better off if we either had stuck with a lack of regulation and simply let the banks go to the wall

And what would have happened to peoples money in said banks?

jank

Mark Hamill wrote: »

We wouldn't be in a recession in the first place if it wasn't for unregulated banking. .

A popular fallacy it seems. If banking in Ireland is unregulated, why was there a state appointed banking regulator in the name of Patrick Neary from 2003 until 2010?

jank

Bannasidhe wrote: »

History shows us that light touch regulation doesn't work and lassiez faire policies are a recipe for exploitation.

Can you care to actually show us any proof of this? History is showing us right now how civilisations end up destroying themselves through debt, grand spending and taxes, see Rome for example.

The Western world for its most part is totally indebted because of perks like government pensions, increments, welfare and so on. Even well managed countries like Germany will have to severly cut back on its spending on these items if its to remain solvent, nevermind places like France or Italy (gulp!)

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-18/europe-s-39-trillion-pension-risk-grows-as-economy-falters.html

http://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/raising-germany-s-retirement-age-still-won-t-avert-pension-time-bomb-/c3s5971/

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Personally I have no doubt that were we to return to a lassiez faire system we would also return to the working/living conditions in which the majority existed the last time such a political philosophy held sway.

Ah, the classic Dickinson rebuttal. Didn't take long.

joseph brand

Permabear wrote: »

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Why am I finding it hard to empathise with the Billionaire 'Sir' Paul McCartney?

Exceptional individual talent. Since we're mentioning pop stars, I could produce a huge list of wealthy pop stars, and even some wealthy hip hop stars who deserve to pay high taxes, mostly due to how irritating their music is, but I'm probably wrong, since they have "exceptional individual talent".

There's plenty of billionaires and millionaires with zero talent, who simply inherited their massive wealth. Sitting on fortunes which are matched only by their selfishness. The Koch brothers and that piggish mining woman in Austalia spring to mind.


It's funny that you thought that Rand would be respected in the AnA forum. I was reminded of how Paul Ryan had to quickly backpedal, after promoting Rand, the atheist.
He gave copies of Atlas Shrugged to his Capitol Hill staff as Christmas presents, (this act is not without a certain irony) and he often spoke of how much his life was influenced by her books:
“[T]he reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand" Paul Ryan.

Decent, ignorant, god-fearing, scared christians were aghast at the thought of their beloved, poster-boy, professing his fanatical love of a devil worshipping atheist. Shock. Horror. How could he?

Anyway, she's not really liked in here, and she's certainly not liked over there.

bnt

joseph brand wrote: »

Why am I finding it hard to empathise with the Billionaire 'Sir' Paul McCartney?

He wasn't a billionaire back in 1966 - far from it.

I "like" the term that was used by some commentators during the recent US Elections: "Social Darwinism" - but not for the reasons you might think. It's an example of how labelling an idea can obscure its real meaning.

For starters "Darwinism" is a misnomer, since Darwin was merely describing what was happening, not advocating it. He goes out of his way to say "we people are better than that". In Nature, when species are subjected to evolutionary pressures, what happens to the losers in the race? They die, and stop using resources, leaving more for the winners.

However, if "Social Darwinism" was the rule, what would happen to the losers in that race? They wouldn't just go away, by laying down and dying. People en masse simply don't do that. Instead, people cling on and try to make the best of a bad situation. You can see this in some of the most deprived areas in the world, such as the slums of Mumbai or Sao Paolo. Advocates of "Social Darwinism" don't seem to factor in the resilience of the human spirit, though Darwin did.

Can you imagine a world in which "losers" just "went away"? There would be no homeless people on the street, for starters. But what does it mean to "lose", in our complex social and economic world? Are you a "loser" if you lose your job? Should you then walk in to one of those Futurama "Suicide Booths" and end it all? That would leave employers struggling to find more people next time they need to expand their business. Just as the "capitalists" rely on roads and infrastructure, they also rely on a source of people who are both educated and available, and they can't provide that by themselves. Businesses focus on short-term profits, but people develop over a much longer time scale. :cool:

Where some people get Atlas Shrugged wrong is that Rand was not advocating "Social Darwinism", as some of her recent Republican followers seemed to do e.g. Paul Ryan. There's an explicit theme running through the book, that the success of the "winners" does not come at the expense of the "losers" - that success is to the benefit of everyone in society. (Which is not to be confused with "trickle-down economics"!) Here's an extract from the (long) speech John Galt gives in Part III that goes in to this idea:

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.

Such was the service we had given you and were glad and willing to give. What did we ask in return?

Nothing but freedom. We required that you leave us free to function—free to think and to work as we choose—free to take our own risks and to bear our own losses—free to earn our own profits and to make our own fortunes—free to gamble on your rationality, to submit our products to your judgment for the purpose of a voluntary trade, to rely on the objective value of our work and on your mind's ability to see it—free to count on your intelligence and honesty, and to deal with nothing but your mind. Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.

You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments, with radios, movies and cars, should own our palaces and yachts—you decided that you had a right to your wages, but we had no right to our profits, that you did not want us to deal with your mind, but to deal, instead, with your gun. Our answer to that, was: 'May you be damned!' Our answer came true. You are.

Rand uses one of the main characters in the book, Eddie Willers, to illustrate how someone who is not one of the "best and brightest" is still of crucial importance in making things happen. While his boss (Dagny) is running around the country, he's the guy back in the head office who keeps things running. What happens to him at the end is left deliberately ambiguous - I won't spoil it except to say that the reader ends up rooting for him and hoping for the best.

joseph brand wrote: »

Anyway, she's not really liked in here, and she's certainly not liked over there.

I don't know if I "like" Ayn Rand, or Atlas Shrugged, but that's not the point ..! Even if I don't agree with all her ideas, I'm still glad that someone put them down in writing for us to examine.

Bannasidhe

jank wrote: »

Can you care to actually show us any proof of this? History is showing us right now how civilisations end up destroying themselves through debt, grand spending and taxes, see Rome for example.

The Western world for its most part is totally indebted because of perks like government pensions, increments, welfare and so on. Even well managed countries like Germany will have to severly cut back on its spending on these items if its to remain solvent, nevermind places like France or Italy (gulp!)

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-18/europe-s-39-trillion-pension-risk-grows-as-economy-falters.html

http://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/raising-germany-s-retirement-age-still-won-t-avert-pension-time-bomb-/c3s5971/




Ah, the classic Dickinson rebuttal. Didn't take long.

Yeah- Dickens was making it all up and it wasn't based in reality at all but he was so persuasive that child labour laws were brought in out of needless sentimentality.




That's why Rome fell was it? Really? Over extension played no part eh?

Seriously Jank - read a decent history book.

The Mad Hatter

Did jank just confuse Charles Dickens and Emily Dickinson?

Bannasidhe

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Did jank just confuse Charles Dickens and Emily Dickinson?

I think he meant that famous Victorian sentimentalist Roger Dickensian.

Bannasidhe

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Yeah- Dickens was making it all up and it wasn't based in reality at all but he was so persuasive that child labour laws were brought in out of needless sentimentality.

I don't think "go read a history book" is a good backing for any claim, but in any case, this article might be of interest:

http://mises.org/daily/2858

jank

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Yeah- Dickens was making it all up and it wasn't based in reality at all but he was so persuasive that child labour laws were brought in out of needless sentimentality.




That's why Rome fell was it? Really? Over extension played no part eh?

Seriously Jank - read a decent history book.

Clearly you didn't read post 25 of this thread.

Bannasidhe

bluewolf wrote: »

I don't think "go read a history book" is a good backing for any claim, but in any case, this article might be of interest:

http://mises.org/daily/2858

Yes - it is when someone is disputing something occurred.

There is ample evidence of the exploitation that was enabled by lack of governmental regulation of industry where profit and profit alone was the be all and end all.

As I said - there was a reason governments eventually acted and a read of a history book is a good place to learn what those reasons were.

Read the article - It deals with the US which is politically very different from the European models also the author is not exactly what one would describe as objective.

Valmont

magicbastarder wrote: »

a friend's comment on facebook recently:
friend's comment on facebook recently:

Dear right-wing America. Ayn Rand died on welfare, of obsessive smoking caused, in part, by her inability to loved or be loved by another human being. Ayn Rand had no friends. Ayn Rand is what humanity looks like when it tries to live in the airless vacuum of selfishness. A cancer-riddled, friendless, childless woman, dying alone on the charity that she spent her life decrying for others. And if that isn't an absolute picture of the word failure, then I don't know what is.

I think your friend has received some inaccurate information.

Rand had many friends (Isabel Paterson for example) and was loved dearly by her husband Frank O'Connor. If you doubt this then I suggest reading Ayn Rand and The World She Made by Anne Heller which chronicles many of Rand's relationships from early life until her death.

I don't understand the criticism of Rand for claiming back a small pittance through welfare payments of the large amount of tax she paid during her lifetime as a successful novelist. If someone steals a tenner from me but offers one pound back I'm going to take it; but that doesn't necessarily imply that I support theft. Were she receiving welfare in excess of what was taken from her then yes, this would be a valid criticism. But she didn't, so it isn't.

It would be nice if we could have a debate based in reality for once; based on Rand as she was and by what she actually said.