Atlas Wanked: From Fiction to Fraud in 52 Years
By David Neiwert Saturday Jan 10, 2009 4:30pm
Sometimes right-wingers' astonishing dearth of self-awareness is a real source of amusement. Take Stephen Moore's encomium to Ayn Rand in the Wall Street Journal:
Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.
At first I had to check to make sure this wasn't a lame attempt at satire or parody. But no. He really is serious about this.
Moore's solution? Eliminate the income tax.
Seriously, that's what a typical Randian thinks would work.
But what's especially amusing is that the economic wreckage we see before us today is in fact the handiwork of the Randian dimwits who've become endemic to conservative economics.
Exhibit A: Longtime Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was a Big Randian from back in the day.
Of course, Greenspan now admits this approach may not have worked out so well. Especially the bit about letting the true economic geniuses/captains of industry have their unfettered way. In fact, it all turned out to be a big fat fraud, didn't it?
Greenspan wasn't alone, of course. George W. Bush's entire approach to governance, especially in the economic sector, was fundamentally Randian: Bush never met a tax cut for the wealthy or deregulation scheme he didn't chase like a fox after a chicken. Even the Democrats who succumbed to the "era of profound irresponsibility" did so because they were harkening to the siren song of the right-wing Randians.
Watching Randians at work trying to convince themselves of their essential rightness in the face of the global wreckage pile of evidence to the contrary would be funny were the consequences of their historical muckup not so devastating and so far-reaching for so many of the ordinary schlubs for whom the Randians have at best a guarded contempt. It all reminds me of a bit of wisdom my granddaddy passed along to me: "Watch out for ideologues. Ideas are more important to them than people."
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He'll have a tremendous fahnschtucker!
He'll be very popular at parties.
you haven't touched your dinner!
If the Cato Groups is Libertarian
What does that make the Green Hornet?
build a civilization, a nation-state, a tribe, a community or a family on self-interest. Rand's narrow, selfish, adolescent view of strength, fortitude and "manliness" is a no-go and always will be.
Unfortunately as more and more people become atheist, Libertarianism will be one of the two ways in which they become politically. This is because once people stop striving to impress some invisible sky genie, then all they will have left to care about is either themselves or the whole of society.
Stupidity doesn't die off just because one brand of it has been taken off the shelves.
A Libertarian is a whiny little 4-yr old that kicks and screams because its sibling is getting medical treatment while its not getting the shiny new toy it wants for itself.
That's a standard critique of people defending religion. That once people aren't worried about having big daddy in the sky watching they will just become selfish jerks. Of course even if it were true it doesn't mean that atheism is wrong. A lot of truths have unpleasant implications. However, I've seen no evidence that it is true and plenty that it isn't. Most people don't even take religion seriously. They can easily profess belief in God, even pray to him when appropriate, and turn around and screw anyone that gets in their way. If anything people who are atheists also tend to be more serious and thoughtful and realize that there is more to quality of life than just collecting as much stuff as you can.
IMHO, that man of strength, fortitude and manliness was the kind of man she wanted to ravish her - the Gary Cooper type (he WAS exactly the right actor to play the part of Howard Roarke...), strong, silent and nothing in his veins but cold ice. Anything to wake up some kind of human feelings in her. It is doubtful she ever really found one.
It does make one wonder if she had a thing for Josef Stalin, to be honest with you. I do not say that in jest.
It has been a LONG time since I read her bio. But WOW was she screwed up. I do remember seeing a photo in it of her sitting on a comfy chair, with a young Alan Greenspan literally kneeling at her feet. I can't even think of the man since then without recalling that image.
I am living proof that just reading her works does not make you a free-marketeer or a rugged individualist (puh-leeze!). I went through some of the stages of, "Yeah! that sounds like a good and healthy system. Some day, the world should try that!" - that was, until I ran across The Virtue of Selfishness.
NOTHING healthy could come from a person as f&$#*@ed up as Ayn Rand. It was only seized upon by power grabbers and money grabbers.
Amateur psyche eval here: All she wanted was a good lay, really, and wrote about the man she wanted to do it to her. The irony is that "real" men she wanted - the Marlboro man types - didn't get it at all. It was the accountant, behind-the-scenes types - the Karl Rove, Repug types, the hangers-on at the periphery - that got it into their heads that they were somehow Howard Roarke or John Alt, and were the studs to give it to her.
What freaking irony it is, too. Her followers all being not industrialists - which to her meant, of course, manufacturers - but bookish wannabes who thought manipulating money was the same thing as being one of her wealth creators.
Evidently they still do, want to give it to her, to read Stephen Moore. Have at her corpse, boys! You've all screwed the American economy unto death, so you might as well do her cold, dead body, too.
It was all a sick and distorted philosophy that only sick and distorted males could get off on.
And now we have a sickened and distorted world to show for them idolizing her sick distorted mind.
And now it is time for the healthy segment for the world to shuck off Rand and her sickos and take back the world - and re-create the world Ayn Rand has destroyed.
The totalitarians of the Eastern Bloc from which she came couldn't have destroyed the West any better. Her Ragnar Danneskjold was the Götterdämmerung in Atlas Shrugged; SHE was the destroyer terrorist for the real world.
. . . . TD
I thought _Atlas Shrugged_ was just for college sophomores ... before they go on to learn some real philosophy.
And BTW ... I prefer the term RANDROIDS to describe her rabid rabble of followers. Randians seems a bit too merry to be descriptive.
Randians sounds like they've gone a-wenching
Or at least a panty raid.
Great post, Colonel. You're a true wag.
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To think that conservatives have for decades followed the economic philosophy of a FICTION writer, instead of that of a real economist, and have led us to this economic precipice is retch-inducing. I agree with OMG, except that in my experience, Atlas Shrugged seemed to be popular among right-wing high school pseudo-intellectuals.
I prefer to think of Randians as those of us who follow the teachings of James Randi.
tend not to work with these folks, they rather quickly tend to resort to Argumentum Ad Hominem.
Let us see how the crew does here.
Well they also tend to resort to Argumentum Ad Reductio, tautology and false dilemma.
of L.A. Confidential?
He (I presume) said he was going to be wiped out with the financial meltdown (those damn Randbots).
I hope he has eluded the worst.
Although, Dennis was the prototype randtroll in this forum.
Was LA Confidential the guy who was also shilling for Pelosi, I swear at some point there was some sort of magnificent trolling activity with a LA-something handle, that almost looked as if it was a bunch of interns @ Pelosi's office using the same handle.
for Hillary and I don't know who else but he knew some practical things about economics and I was willing to listen.
then the guy just went off the reservation. It was all a very odd episode...
Paul in LA (?).
dennis was tuber's role model. Wonder how he'd have landed on the Israeli/Gaza fiasco?
Oh well, 'nuff reminiscing, back to football.
fiasco here!!!
It's the wrong freakin' thread!
We're not supposed to be thinking about U.S./ Israeli war crimes that are happening as we all merrily type away!
Especially on a thread that is about Ayn Rand!
Snap out of your freakin' obsession with Israel/Gaza already, fastfeat!!!
Jesus H. Christ!
and we were closer in thought than both of us realized.
I wish he wouldn't have gotten petty and rediculous one time suggesting that I should get a real job. I won't say what I do but rest assured, as the misery index goes up, my job security goes up!
the ad hominem might be a hint that the perpetrator doesn't have a CLUE about it! (and don't take that as a moment of self-reflection!¡!¡
Sorry but you article is misleading.
They want the income tax replaced with a consumption tax, much simpler (tons less overhead expenses). Makes a ton of sense because those that produce get taxed less and those that spend get taxed more.
(i.e. merely a sales tax) because it's about the same for everyone -- it's a reducio ad absurdum. A progressive income tax, on the other hand, is fair because those who earn a high income also tend to put a high burden on the infrastructure and "public goods" in general.
Right-wingers seem never to have heard of public goods, probably because such goods are not in the Ayn Rand lexicon. Go figure.
They'll constantly harp about actual dollar amounts in taxes the wealthy spend, and never address the smaller percentage overall as compared to the working classes.
It doesn't seem fair to pick on people with TB.
Anyway, if we just brought back slavery and allowed the poor to sell their organs, the economy would quickly recover. The main thing is never consider reducing the military budget, especially after commissioning yet another aircraft carrier, and keep the off-shore tax havens. All the wealth just couldn't be kept by the 3% and some of it would eventually fall out of their pockets.
we are in for an interesting future, the Chinese just revealed their new multi-role supersonic stealth bomber, pretty wicked, ditto the Russians and their F22/35 beating new strike stealth aircraft.
The Chinese bought all the ex Soviet aircraft carriers, and are modernizing them and maybe building their own too.
They also have a full sized mock training carrier in a lake...
The Republicans and Wall Street took the American economy and gutted it for short term profit, our war machine will not run on wishes and dreams of empire, it needs cold hard cash and trade.
The American Empire and star is waning, it will be traveling east soon.
You can not ignore the basic premise that wealthy individuals have to spend a smaller percentage of their wealth/income in consumption. Whereas middle class and lower classes have to spend more of their income most likely on basic necessities like housing, food, etc.
Ergo taxing based on consumption alone will mean that the middle and lower classes are taxed disproportionally more off their income that the upper classes.
Consumption taxes are an even more extreme version of the trickle down bullshit. It may be a libertarian wet dream, but like all their crackpot ideas, it just plain does not f*cking work. It is interesting that they have to resort to the most amazing exercises in marketing and intellectual dishonesty to sell their bullshit ideas though.
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tax instead of ab income tax they would think it unfair. If they were going to build a mansion, they would norder materials from somewhere that had no taxes.
The odd thing about consumption taxes is they often are POS (Point of Sale), which republicans tend to favor. Yet when Bubba raised taxes a few cents at gas pumps republicans were going around screaming he was going to collapse the economy.
But the real gadfly in POS is the VAT (Value Added Taxes) that pappa boosh favored. There an item is getting additional taxes at each step of it's manufacturing. The wheat farmer is charged a little more tax, then the miller, then the baker and then the trucker, but it all adds into the final cost to the consumer for the loaf of bread at their local Piggly Wiggly.
that popped up in California back in the 80's I believe.
We had a really cool guy running for Insurance Commissioner at the time. California had (and still has) a problem with uninsured drivers.
His idea was to "Pay at the Pump" for automobile insurance. The more you drove the more you paid for insurance through the gas tax!
No more premiums, no more "for-profit" insurance companies gouging the ever-loving crap out of everyone! Every person who entered the state of California would be automatically covered and the coverage was pretty good as I recall!
I thought it was a great idea!
He lost.
is a nearsighted Alfred E. Neuman with a dermatologist.
The problem here is the government has at best the economy of scale and at worst the Bugs Bunny With Snow Ball Effect.
Now y'all see why I never entered politics.
Is the smell thats the worse, cant be removed from clothes
That's my flatulence.
"Watch out for ideologues. Ideas are more important to them than people." That's not quite right. Ideologies by definition provide certainty and inevitability to the adherent/believer and thus do away with critical analysis, uncertainty and caution. They demand passivity. Marxism, Freudianism, monotheism and all but one of the other "isms" are intellectual straightjackets. And they are all founded on ideas of some description. Humanism, the well-spring for the Enlightenment, pragmatism, the scientific method and the ensuing technologies, representative government and what Declaration of Rights you want to name is based on a balance among the human qualities of reason, ethics, imagination, intuition, common sense and memory that collectively result in active, disinterested participation. Democracy is the political face of humanism. So, don't fear ideas but, rather, dismiss ideas that call for genuflection./p>
like legalism.
If you didnt cut and paste that comment you are wasting your time here.
I enjoyed reading it and the concepts in it.
And agreed.
Abbybwood
exposing the ridiculousness of this religion is key to showing that the right wing is totally bankrupt. oh, wait. we're bankrupt. stupid americans, electing right wingers after they've already told everyone that they think they're better than us and so are entitled to a bigger share than everyone else!
I would argue that the Rand philosophy, if it may be so dignified, was a late outgrowth--and therefore derivative--of Social Darwinism, an intellectual aberration and abnomally if there ever was one.
They are risky fincial intruments.
And if Ayn Rand is the one that came up with them, I don't agree with her either.
What are derivatives?
In calculus is what I know.
(I was slow on your pun, but I'm drinking.)
I'm smoking and I'm slow on everything.
happy Saturday Night!
How I envy you.
(As long as you're smoking what I think you're smoking.)
Its like playing the over and under in football but with others monies
betting.
My kids do it all the time on Sportsbook.
One son just cashed out $2500 of his winnings to pay a bankruptcy lawyer for getting over his head with credit card debt betting on Sportsbook!
Ha!!!
Idiot!!
I wish I knew twenty years ago what I know now about the stock market/ financial world and its crookedness and what a crock it is.
Wasted a quarter century in manufacturing designing and building products that are useful to companies and people, when I could just have played stockbroker and made millions being an arse with other peoples money.
That's why they want to remove all regulations, (Free market mentality.) There has never been a regulation put in place unless someone was taking advantage of no regulations.
when someone would benefit because a regulation would hold a competitor back.
Be careful with absolutes.
That would be on the entry of new competitors.
Conservatives have been behind as many, if not more regulations, as liberals.
regulating other people. But when the regulations apply to themselves, then regulations are an abomination unto the Lord.
Consequently, when conservatives are in power, there is a tsunami of new regulation overall (while a few very selective regulations are winnowed out). Guess which regulations are winnowed out? Heh. Altogether now ... can we spell b-a-n-k-i-n-g regulations?
they will regulate 'themselves' when regulations protect their investments... ie, thru patents, intellectual property rights, copyrights, etc.
no doubt they have
both conservatives and liberals are all for regulations, they just differ on how they want to skew the economy.
(never has been a "free" market, never will be a "free" market)
is the part of Sharia law that forbids one from charging interest over time when loaning money. I'm not sure how they profit from the loan. But we do not seem to be too far from it since the Feds lowered the rates to zero. Its just that you have to be a bank to participate in this trial version of Sharia Law. Wonder if it clarifies that in the Koran.
There's something similar in ancient Jewish law. After a debt goes for seven yours they waive it.
Like the Geneva convention?
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that were still their law....
but I think that the Roman Catholic Church was against any form of interest during the Middle Ages. But they then shot themselves in the spiritual foot by selling indulgences. It's tough being the one, true religion. All those messy rules.
That is so, it is called usury.
But then they made lending one of the few businesses open to the Jews.
Even nobles got indebted to the Jews, and this may've caused some of the violent pogroms.
That's why indulgences became one of the issues of the Protestant Reformation. It seemed to allow sin if you were willing to pay for it. But it also caused controversy between the interpretations of the Magisterium and the Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura.
S-U-C-K-E-R-S?
they are not a modern invention.
there can be many causes for one, but the end result is a money/credit crunch.
First of all, Greenspan may have been a Randian back in the 60's, but as Fed chairman he was anything but a libertarian. Many libertarians and Austrian economists such as Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and Robert Higgs have blamed Greenspan's easy credit and expansion of the monetary supply for the housing bubble and its inevitable bursting. Greenspan's mea culpa is an attempt to cover his ass and salvage what is left of his reputation.
Second, Bush actually increased regulation more than any President since Nixon. The Federal Register added almost 14,000 pages of new regulations since 2001, while govt. spending on regulation increased by $16 billion since 2001, a 62% increase. Bush also added 90,000 new federal regulators during his term, while Clinton cut almost 1,000 during his term.
Trying to equate Republicans with Libertarianism makes for a convenient and simplistic story, however if you look at the facts I don't see how you can pin the blame for the crash on Libertarianism when there is exactly one libertarian in Congress(Ron Paul), and he has been warning about the crash for years, to no avail. Also he is not exactly beloved by his party (see the Republican Presidential Debates).
If you want to argue that Keynesian government investment will help the economy, then make the argument yourself. Don't set up this straw man of massive deregulation when the facts prove that it doesn't exist. I am not defending Moore, or even Rand, but I think eliminating the income tax would help the economy a lot more than the Federal Reserve printing money to be dished out to corrupt state and local governments for "infrastructure projects". Read about the Big Dig in Boston if you want to see what happens when vast sums of Federal money are given out for this purpose.
Your rebuttal of the notion that Greenspan was a champion of deregulation makes a quick change to citing how Bush increased regulations?
And look who's talking about straw men. If you want to claim that Greenspan wasn't a Rand-influenced deregulation champion, then cite Greenspan.
Never mind, I'll do it for you. Here's Alan recently:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/ec...
“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Mr. Greenspan had argued that government regulators were no better than markets at imposing discipline.
“Were you wrong?” Mr. Waxman asked.
“Partially,” the former Fed chairman reluctantly answered, before trying to parse his concession as thinly as possible.
As is well known-now, Greenspan admitted in clear terms that his trust in markets to reasonably regulate themselves was "a mistake".
Trusting free markets to require no regulation but instead be motivated to look after their own self-interest to the point that this would create self-regulation that is best for everyone..
This isn't Rand's thinking, you're claiming? It wasn't Greenspan's also, despite the fact that he says it was, in no uncertain terms?
It's also just been proven a dismal, utter failure.
I love this argument of yours, the one that claims that Libertarianism or "real" Conservatism has never been tried, but if it were, oh boy, look out. It's exactly the same as those who claimed that Communism was never tried.
The whole idea of a politics of pure theory that ignores how people actually act is foolish, and it ignores the whole meaning of the word "politic".
no doubt helped his friends and hindered their competitors.
Likewise, with Clinton, who as you say, undid regulations.
Our government is for sale to the highest bidder.
It matters less who the front man is and more who is winning the bid, they help those that put them in power.
Peter Schiff has been astute and correct to point, but he sings only one song over and over.
He leaves a whole lot out. The explosion of derivatives market which Greenspan did not want to regulate, the Republicrats followed suit.
Peter Schiff wants everyone to bail on the dollar and to buy gold, cui bono?
Schiff holds gold.
I saw an episode of Southpark (can't find the link) that just ripped the hell out of Ayn's books as being total and complete crap, from at least a literary standpoint.
Fortunately, even as an English major and Business minor in college, I never came near the book.
could equally well be applied to Ayn Rand's fiction.
'Chloroform in print.'
"Randian" implies an influence from Rand.
"Randroid" implies robot-like devotion to Rand.
At any rate, Randroids are second only to Scientologists when it comes to retribution flamewars, so watch out.
see above.
The creative forces of Randroid Mythology supposedly make the world work. Everyone else is subject to man maede rules while these geniuses make their own.
No wonder the Repugnant Ones like her.
These cyphers see themselves as the evolutionary rulers of the world, rather than the pathetic criminals that they really are.
See my references to Social Darwinism above.
Just read your posts.
You arer very acute!
Thanks
But not acute enough to get laid.
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Money is Honey
Nat King Cole does it to a T but I couldn't find it.
;~}
Some people just don't want acuity...
Probably not to keen on it.
Get laid.
Bush/Nixon/Bush/Bush
Character from that adult social/political/spy cartoon series, they explore the various aspects of Randism I gather.
The Dr. who is a famous son of a more famous dead adventurer scientist father lives on the memory of his coat tails.
Venture Bros is a very clever series, well worth renting from your local video library. Rips apart a lot of conceptions and psychoanalyzes the various sides to heroes, super villains and govs, plus spoofs a lot of the popular action movies from recent times
And its very funny.
and some other book by Rand in the 60's, when I was in college. I really didn't like either of them then, and I have no plans to slog my way through them again.
I am pretty certain that G W Bush never turned a page in either of those tomes, so I doubt he based "his approach to governance in the economic sector" on anything other than what someone else put in front of him to sign. After he signed in the right place and read the few lines on cue cards (as best he could) they gave him a little shot of Jack in the back room.
Eliminating taxes, especially on the wealthy "sector" is just second nature for the rest of the Repugs and crooks.
was the book and movie The Fountainhead. I read it in high school. As a person who loves Wright style houses and breaking away from the boring boxes we call home, I liked the idea of originality used in building. The movie stunk, but the book inspired me to be original in many ways. Guess I didn't get the Randbot "bug" 'cause I never read any other book of hers.
I've read Stranger In A Strange Land more times than I'll ever admit. But I don't start a religion based on grokking. Nor a political philosophy based on Heinlein's writings.
Only the truly pathetic find their life's road in the writings Rand. Or Heinlein.
I tend to feel my flesh crawl at the word grokking. In the Witch Magazine The Green Egg (now defunct), they often referred to Grokking, and other such Heinleinian terms, that only gradually did they drop them when other readers were complaining they had no idea what they were talking about.
There are certainly several layers of irony in that...
I only read Jane Austen books lately and watch Jane Austen movies.
I've seen the BBC's "Pride and Prejudice" so many times in the past few months that I think I know every line.
I guess it's an inner need I have to put my mind into times when there were no nuclear weapons, when all the waters were crystal clear. When all the thousands of different song birds were still singing and not extinct.
I am inspired watching people sit around the parlor in the evening playing music and reading books and playing cards and dancing and falling in love. Respect and all that crap.
we all need to find shelter in turbulent times. Believe it or not, I find shelter in Lord Peter Wimsey. I love the times when there was romance left in the world, and charm, and manners.
I was out with some friends in a bar in upstate New York a few years ago, and a Billy Joel song came on the jukebox. I, as a good music snob, immediately proceeded to suffer dismay and disgust. But a friend pointed something out - Billy Joel's music is not nearly so annoying as the people who will play the same damn 4 Billy Joel songs in heavy rotation on a jukebox. And you can't really fault Billy Joel for that. In fact, he is a wonderful piano player with a highly developed sense of harmony, who has created some of the more sophisticated song structures heard on the radio for the past 30 years. But we associate his songs with drunken craven slobs in upstate New York taverns.
This is, for the most part, how I think about Ayn Rand. I don't find her nearly so annoying as the idiots who drool over her every utterance and scribble. In fact, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead were entertaining and intellectually stimulating novels. If I had escaped as a child from Leninism and Stalinism, I would like to think I would find an artistic way to express disgust for the evils of collectivism as well.
Does this mean that I want Government to be reduced to a police force and a shell structure for a profit driven fire department? Of course not. And I think a lot of people feel the same way. But there are a lot of idiots out there who have found the ability, within her writings, to justify a lot of heinous stupidity, and I am not sure that she should be blamed for all that - although I am not sure she should be completely forgiven for it, either.
Anyway, my two cents.
Both Rand and Strauss had similar upbringings... they both came from wealthy families who benefited greatly from eons of oppression on those less fortunate. When the less fortunate had enough, their families did what they do best, ran away, and set forth to leach off another hosts. In this case, both Rand and Strauss benefited from a stable and prosper society that was so because of ideas opposite to theirs.
I honestly can't find anything remotely intellectually exciting, about the ramblings of a brat who was pissed off because the peasants had had enough of being shitted upon and took her families toys away. Her writing style (and I had to suffer through Atlas and The Fountain Head) is awful. And her philosophy is borderline that of a spoiled 5th grader... I couldn't understand why she needed hundreds of pages to make her damned point.
Sat, 01/10/2009 - 17:41 — schnick
"...the idiots who drool over her every utterance and scribble..."
I do that with The Simpsons.
Married for 50 years or whatever, but probably frustrated.
Bronte sisters comes to mind.
Rand's family was not from the aristocracy. Her father was a successful merchant, yes, but this is hardly the same thing as being part of the tsarist system or the aristocracy which "benefited greatly from eons of oppression."
Rand's father was given a special dispensation to live "beyond the Pale" (the original Jewish Ghetto, a large area in what is now Western Russia, where jews were forced to move after a series of pogroms in the late 19th century).
I don't know anything about Strauss, and so won't engage there.
I am sorry to disagree with you about her writing style - which I do not find to be "awful." And I wish that people who disagreed with her philosophy would stop trying to insult it instead of, well, disagreeing with it.
I am not someone who blindly follows her creed, but I thought she was passionate about it and expressed it pretty clearly. As I said above, I do not think this makes her responsible for the idiots who followed her, but it doesn't completely absolve her of responsibility for that, either.
Basically, my overall point is that Rand is not the problem - if she had never existed, these assholes who use her works and thoughts to further their own immoral, short-sighted, craven goals would have used Nietzsche directly, or found some way to twist Horatio Alger, or made a philosopher out of Andrew Carnegie.
and it was not divided in terms of aristocracy and plebe. There were people with money, and people without money. Rand belonged to the class with money, the people without money had enough. Rand's family ran away. And Rand never stopped bitching about it.
Because let's face it, she was writing about the same damn thing over and over and over and over and over again in her books. It was probably the world's longest temper tantrum...
BTW, many of the socialist/communist ideologues were Jewish, so what Rand experienced in Russia was mostly an economic class struggle.
Rand's writing style is impressive if you have little literary expossure. That is why she is so popular with the high school crowd. However, her stories are way too predictable and she had to resort to a fairly pedantic writing style. In what I assume it was an effort to give some gravitas to her pseudo-philosophical points. She could have cut all her books to less than 1/10th the page count, and still be able to make her points amply. I really found her stories to be *that* boring.
a simpler way to put it using the music analogy would be: "It's not the band, it's their fans I hate".
I need to get that bumpersticker that says, "Oh God, please protect me from your followers."
"Who's going to protect me! Those people are insane!"
if she existed.
STOP COMPLAINING AND START THE REVOLUTION!
I was right with you on being a musical snob (I consider it having good taste but will also accept "musical elitist") and showing disgust as Mr. Joel's whiny voice comes from the juke box. But then you lost me. First of all I'm not familiar with anything from Joel that could be called sophisticated song structure. Zappa, yes, Joel no. In fact (curse you) I have Uptown Girl running through my head right now! Aghhh!!! Joel should be consigned to musical hell for that song alone. And while Rand's followers are definitely idiots she was a piece of work as well. I tried reading her books in college and couldn't finish them. From what I remember the prose was awful and the characters two dimensional. On a personal level she was also a witch. She required all kinds of insane commitments from her followers which she herself never lived up to. She manipulated some of them terribly, betraying them in all kinds of ways.
"No Free Lunch Distributors"? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTDaVpBPR0&fe...
Would Rayndians consider the 750 billion dollar tax payer bailout of Wall Street a "free lunch".
Fit in with Ayn's philosophy?
One time I had the option of reading Ayn Rand or the US Naval Manual on distillation systems on board 1955 era diesel submarines. It was fascinating to learn that the average submarine needed over 5,000 gallons of fresh water per week and the distillation units stayed relatively the same for several decades. The two in use for most of the time were the Model S and the Model X-1, which as everyone knows can be used for descriptions of the Model AAA-1 as well.
Never went to that dentist office again too.
.
Oh well it's past time for my weekly soak in a bath of Pre de Provence Vervain Scented Bath beads, a large cake of Marius Fabre soap, and Pinaud scented shampoo.
Serious?
BTW. Not to show my total intellectual moronishness, but WTF does ")O(" mean???
(Not to interrupt your baaatth....).
that the )O( was symbolic of Goatse. Don't image google that unless you have a strong stomach.
It's the symbol of the Moon Goddess, waxing, full, and waning.
Come to think of it it sounds like binging and purging.
The important detail that Ayn Rand left out of her books was the fact that POWER CORRUPTS. Even large corporations can become corrupt, as we have just witnessed. One giant fail for capitalism.
Sorry had to kind of laugh at that one.
In a way, what businesses were back in her day, with the history of violent strike breaking, horrible treatment of workers, and so on, couldn't even be called corrupt, it was just business as usual for many companies. Now, however, the Enrons of the world have of course taken things to another level of corruption, by any definition of that word.
The rules in the US have been set up largely to be favorable to corporations, since that's the altar that we pray at more than any other. As people have seen going back to the Ancient Greeks and beyond, your gods become more corrupt than you yourself ever would dare.
everyday consider the cost/benefit ratio of complying with our laws.
If it costs them more to comply than were they to evade, they evade.
It is nothing personal, it is only business.
If the government applies no penalties as has been the case for the most part with the Bush Crime Syndicate, they never comply.
say what you want about Rand but she was dead on on religion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTmac2fs5HQ&NR=1
Rand was dead on on a lot of things. Most just don't want to deal with it.
what else was Rand "dead on"?
had to be crap. I read it years ago and decided that if the world were really as portrayed in the book, if people were that self absorbed, then life was sort of pointless. Of course, my Libertarian son-in-law thought it a masterpiece.
Me thinks somebody's not quite happy with their little girl's choice in a hubby.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page is chocked full writers for whom humanity is optional.
"Oh, so you went to Yale?
That's great. So long as whatever you do the rest of your life has nothing to do with people."
through his character Eccles in one of the Goon Show episodes,
"yes I went to Oxford, I bought this tie there..."
All branches of conservatism are sophomoric attempts to represent pathological disorders as virtues.
If you want to see an example of unfettered Libertarianism, look at the Iraqi reconstruction.
And then say with a straight face that the unchecked private sector is a good thing.
...but I have to disagree with 90% of the people in this thread. I'm sorry, but I read Atlas Shrugged, and found it to be a great book.
Frankly, I think Ayn Rand would HATE modern republicans for many, many reasons, the least of which being stupid enough to think that following her philosophies when the system which her philosophies were meant for didn't exist anymore.
She would HATE their idealistic, religion based values. (She doesn't like religion in general, but she'd be more pissed at those who wield it as a tool in power, as the Republicans have done. Re: Government Stem Cell Research ban by Bush, and the Terry Schiavo fiasco.)
She would HATE the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because she saw that it was a combination of the aforementioned idealistic values, and a deceptive lure to make profit on the suffering of others, (something she did NOT advocate).
She would HATE that the Wall St. firms who had caused the recession had done so because they were trying to profit on essentially doing nothing.
And most of all, she would HATE these firms (and the auto dealers) for then asking for a bailout. (She would then hate the government for giving it to them, but she'd be pretty pissed they asked for it in the beforehand.) They're essentially trying to profit off the work of others, without earning it themselves. (The work being the taxpayers, who have paid the government the money which would go towards their bailout.)
That last was what Ayn Rand hated above all, and preached against in Atlas Shrugged.
Just to clarify, let me tell you exactly what the government in Atlas Shrugged was. It was filled with people from the business world who were still interested in profiting for themselves and their friends, and were influencing the government machine to do so. It's based on an OLD BOY NETWORK, which is claiming to do certain things IN THE NAME OF THAT WHICH IS GOOD AND JUST, (And in the text citing the bible and god-given duty and all that crap), while still WORKING FOR SELF PROFIT.
If that doesn't sound like the last 8 years to you of Bushco and the Republicans than I don't know what does.
P.S I would like to clarify that I still entirely supported Obama during the election, even going out and canvassing for the campaign, am encouraged by his plans for the country so far, (not so much in regards to some aspects of foreign policy, but that's after listening to Jeremy Scahill, not Ayn Rand), and would not for a second think of voting for any current members of the Republican party, given the events as far back as Nixon. I'm also grumbling about the Democrats, given their history of bowing TO the republicans, but I'll take the lesser of two evils in this case.)
P.S.S For the religious out there, please understand I'm not against religion, just the abuse of it, which the Republicans, and the fictional government of Ayn Rand's work, have done.
P.S.S.S To the guy said "power corrupts," I would like to ask you to tell me one story that emphasizes that theme where the corrupted villain is not toppled, or replaced by some good-guy character who is also wielding some kind of great power. I don't care if it's superheroes, a united front of good-guy people who are united by a brave and charismatic leader, or a ultimate weapon of ultimate destiny for some young farm lad who finds it in an ancient tomb, fulfilling an ancient prophecy--you'll find in some way, someone is wielding power for good. Yes, power can corrupt, but part of what Ayn Rand was going for is that it doesn't corrupt everybody, and some people can wield it correctly..
Power itself is not evil but having unlimited power DOES corrupt a person after a few years. That's why Presidents and Prime Ministers are voted in for limited terms. And who hasn't had a school principal who acted like a mini-Hitler? Having government oversight over corporations again is the first step towards correcting this Randian mess.
Truth in that statement, and certainly I'll believe that not many in history have demonstrated themselves wielding that power, (I'd say Bush ranks as a prime example--I don't think he's a complete idiot, just in WAY over his head.) But be clear when you say that--the phrase is "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." I've heard people just tossing the phrase "power corrupts" around when they forget that their enjoyed way of life is the result of someone at some point holding some kind of significant power.
And oversight is fine, that's really not what Rand was going against. You have to remember that she was of Russian heritage, and didn't like communist Russia,(Forget the details, think her family fled communist Russia or something...or she did at a young age, I'd have to back and look it up.) which was the absolute example of government in control, which explains why the government becomes the home of the boogeymen in her stories--but the government itself isn't the boogeymen, it's the "parasites" she describes, who prey on others, make them think that they are responsible for the suffering inflicted on themselves, and seek personal gain at the expense of others.
I'm really surprised with all this Ayn Rand bashing...I'm not libertarian, but I really think she was on to something with all of this. It's a philosophy that still fits the answers to our current economic needs, it just was demonstrated in laissez-faire capitalist form. (Which, in order to work properly, demands NO interference from the government, and that includes laws which benefit businesses. That second bit is what most laissez-faire capitalists I've met forget.)
There is also the fact that in Ayn Rand's world, the heroes are assumed to be above reproach. They accept some basic moral tenets, then follow them logically to their conclusion in action. In her world, it was those enjoying the production of labor that were exploiting, and deemed that exploitation the only worthy goal of society. Society today cannot be compared, because only wealth is deemed worthy of approval, not how it is gained. In her world, a productive society is the ultimate; in ours, wealth is the ultimate.
It is good to see that in this tiny thread there is still some critical thinking being practiced.
according to Ms. Rand, George Bush ought to be dangling from the end of a rope by now. Initiation of force for false purposes, lying us into war, torture: Capital crimes, according to Ayn Rand.
Whoa ... that would put the Randroids in an impossible Catch-22 (but reason/logic, laughably, does not deter them).
Atlas Shrugged: The Turner Diaries of economic thought.
Last March he penned a WSJ piece about how he visited a college campus where the undergraduates were scared shitless about the economy, and he reassured them that because cellphones and iPods were so plentiful, everything was hunky-dory.
About six months later the banks collapsed...
I encountered Randites in college and figured that it was little more than a computer nerd's angle at getting laid.
Radford to offer BB&T-funded business course
Wikipedia: BB&T
Anyone who reads Atlas Shrugs or maintains that libertarianism is a serious philosophy past the age of 20 (which is being generous) forfeits all right to ever be taken seriously for the rest of their life. It is the most intellectually bankrupt puerile nonsense on the planet, totally unsupported by any actual data. FWIW I am a cultural anthropologist who has been teaching for 20 years.
My view has always been that every smart person should see the obvious logic of libertarianism... and then sophomore year of high school comes to an end. Next fall you'll be a Marxist for a few months but eventually one ends up realizing that utopian philosophies are guaranteed to fail: expecting the market to solve all of our problems is equally as stupid as expecting government to solve all our problems.
And I agree with him...
As is well known-now, Greenspan admitted in clear terms that his trust in markets to reasonably regulate themselves was "a mistake".
Trusting free markets to require no regulation but instead be motivated to look after their own self-interest to the point that this would create self-regulation that is best for everyone..
This isn't Rand's thinking, you're claiming? It wasn't Greenspan's also, despite the fact that he says it was, in no uncertain terms?
It's also just been proven a dismal, utter failure.
----------------
Greenspan was lying. Greenspan was manipulating the market with his FED policy. A manipulated market was incapable of regulating itself, because the manipulator- Greenspan, would not allow it to regulate itself. The Greenspan Put. Greenspan put a floor under the market. An artificially supported market is not a self regulating market. Greenspan mispriced risk by artificially supporting the market. A self regulating market prices risk. Greenspan is the culprit, not the market.
Every boom goes bust. Greenspan created an artificial boom based on a credit bubble and would not allow the bust. He created a housing bubble to keep the credit bubble alive after the stock bubble burst.
In doing so, he dug a deeper hole. The needed correction is larger.
What was the risk from being irresponsible? Greenspan would always bail out the market. Thus excessive risk taking was condoned, not by the market, but by the market manipulator, Greenspan.
Greenspan wrote in 1966, that the 1920's FED policy lead into the Great Depression. He repeated that policy in spades.
When the housing bust came, he blamed the fall of the Berlin Wall for the housing bubble.
Greenspan lied when he said he trusted markets to self regulate. If he trusted markets to self regulate he never would have manipulated interest rates in order to manipulate the markets. He would have let the market decide where the rate should be and let the market price risk accordingly.
Freddie and Fannie got into trouble because they were protected from risk. A self regulating market would never have allowed Freddie and Fannie to leverage up to the degree they did.
Monetary policy was the only allowed way to influence policy and Greenspan and everyone else implemented it as a result of the Great Depression, blaming the Depression on the lack of it back then. So you've got that part backwards for one thing.
Greenspan wrote in 1966, that the 1920's FED policy lead into the Great Depression. He repeated that policy in spades.
Utterly wrong. Greenspan did write that, but he didn't repeat those policies, he did precisely what he thought should have been done in the 1920s, which is to use monetary policy.
This is not, contrary to what you seem to think, regulation. Regulation is a matter of not allowing financial institutions to do what they just did for the last number of years, leading to what just happened.
The funny part about those like you still claiming that deregulation is the magic road to success is that we now see the results of it, and it's catastrophic. No one but extreme libertarians are claiming that deregulation never happened, and it's quite a trick to try and justify that claim.
I always feel like suggesting a place that has the least regulation imaginable for all the libertarians who dream of such a thing. It exists! There's hardly any regulation at all, the market is utterly free to rise and fall according to raw human nature.
It's called Somalia. You'll love it there.
...two books by Rand:
1. Philosophy: Who Needs It;
2. Atlas Shrugged.
Besides being a shitty writer, it became obvious to me that Rand's "philosophy" is simply Nietzsche's "will to power" cosmology vulgarized for American audiences.
Nietzsche held philosophers and artists to be the greatest exemplars of humanity. Rand basically took this view and turned the money grubbing capitalist into her vision of the "Overman."
This woman is a philosophical joke.
I have had similar arguments, only to get a blank stare in return and been asked "nietz"who?
Rand was so successful in this country because Americans are seldom exposed to real philosophical currents.
That is why she needed to resort to works of fiction, where she could control all the action (her characters are always the victims of the things Rand does not like, who convenient and who predictable).
I have no problem with philosophers writing works of fiction. I have a problem with people writing works of fiction trying to be philosophers... If a person has to create their own reality, maybe they are not the most qualified to write and ponder about it?
I have problems with Nietzsche, but he was actually a very good writer and did make some interesting points, especially compared to Rand's stale prose. Rand, as you said, is a really shitty writer. It's dumbed down, pseudo-intellectual philosophy.
Nietzsche Nazis is what I call them As for W. he didn't have to read the books he got it straight from his granddaddy Prescott, America's foremost nazi sympathizer along with Ford and Lindberg
The income tax is relevant to this discussion because it is a scam set up by the elite to enslave the working class to a life of debt and toil. Eventually the working class wakes up when they are desperate and brings the whole thing down. The elite are few and we are many so they employ propaganda to ensure we don't catch on to their scam.
In case you do not already know the Federal Reserve Bank is not a government agency. It is privately owned and is subject to zero oversight. It's never been audited ... why ... because the system is set up to constantly funnel money into these banking parasites through taxation and debt.
The income tax system is illegal because the constitution does not allow for wage income to be directly taxed. Period. It's against the law. And there is no law on the books giving them the power to do so.
The Federal Reserve and the income tax system are all a huge set up which not only bleeds the working class dry but feed the war machinery which in turn makes even more money for these vultures in the banking elite and war profiteers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r6-o1lpJHU&feature=channel_page
Who is John Galt?
Modern version:
"What would Jesus do?"
Both are rhetorical questions because HUMAN BEINGS ARE FLAWED.
Our "only hope" is to continue to TWEEK this sloppy imperfect representative democracy, and get as far down the road as possible before the old ticker gives out.
and... Oh Yeah... DEATH TO THE NEOCONS.
Rand attempted to found a social philosophy on the primacy of the individual who was supposed to act upon what she called 'desert island ethics', that is, people were supposed to act as if they were alone in the world. No social philosophy can be consistent that is not founded on the smallest social unit, the couple. Rand was a seething, a-social curmudgeon who, spurned by the younger Nathaniel Branden (a convert to her ridiculous philosophy, Objectivism), flew in the face of all the lessons of modern science, social and otherwise, while insisting her contorted social philosophy was harmonious with human nature.
Her twisted teachings are bruited about by all those who insist they have a right to do whatever they want with their property, no matter who is downstream or what the zoning regulations are. I've come across people like this who name themselves after the characters in her books, and disparage those who try to bring sense to the discussion by calling them by names of characters she parodied in her pathetic writings.
Actually he is the dude who details my car. He's not so brilliant but he does a reasonable job.
Rand is a looney. This novel appeals to the naiveity of youth, but when you grow up, you realise it's garbage, and bloody impossible to implement.
Remember, at the end of the novel, Congress amends the Constitution saying "Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of trade". Oh, yeah, that would fly.
The characters don't speak like real people. They pontificate at the drop of a hat, and almost every minor character is a wimply, p***y "socialist". Despite its mammoth length, it's a simplistic novel at heart, filled with predictable, boring dogma.
The ending of The Fountainhead is hilarious. Essentially, Howard Roark burns down the buildings he designed because they weren't to his exact standards (I suppose the wallpaper was an off white instead of white). They weren't pure enough. He argues that he has the right to do this, that the laws of ordinary men do not apply to him, and the jury acquits him.
Plus of course that true love can most certainly come about as a result of rape. Because a truly worthy man doesn't have to abide by those silly laws and stuff.
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