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The Rand-ian Writing On The Wall
Submitted by Jeff Thomas via International Man,
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed. – Ayn Rand; Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Pretty strong words… the last four, in particular.
Ayn Rand knew whereof she spoke. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1905, she became politically conscious while still a child and did not favour the existing concept of constitutional monarchy. So, it would not have been surprising if, when the Russian revolution broke out when she was twelve, she bought into the proselytising of Vladimir Lenin, as so many did at that time.
Instead, she quickly surmised that the Bolsheviks’ claim to improve life for the average man was, in reality, a plan to diminish the quality of life for all of the people. In doing so, the Bolsheviks confiscated her father’s business and displaced her family. At one point they were nearly starving, but in 1925, she received permission to emigrate to the US. (She later attempted to get her parents and sisters out, but it proved to be too late.)
A Lesson Hard-Learned
In establishing her now well-known beliefs in governmental systems, Ayn Rand had the benefit of having observed the entire progression from a relatively benign monarchical system to totalitarianism. As a result, she not only learned that political leaders can be deceitful in their claims for social improvement, she also learned, first hand, that those leaders (and/or hopeful leaders) who promise that they are going to change the system in such a way that everyone will “have all they need,” are the most deceitful of all.
In my opinion, the greatest possible threat from the fanciful claims by politicians lies in the willingness of the populace to actually believe such claims. Sadly, it does seem as though the majority of people in any country tend to be extraordinarily gullible in this regard.
The very idea that some method can be found that would make it possible to equalise all people is patently ludicrous. There will always be differences in intellect, talent, and ambition from one individual to the next. The idea that any government should somehow enforce the more gifted or more motivated to continually give up the fruits of their efforts, whilst giving those fruits to others who are less gifted and less motivated is, by definition, unworkable.
The Obvious Choice
Such an idea, whether we consider it laudable or not, cannot ultimately succeed. The most that can be expected is that the idea could successfully be enforced, which would result, eventually, in the gifted and motivated ceasing to make the necessary effort to excel. And, of course, in socialist countries, this is what, over time, we see take place.
There is a direct relationship between the degree of “redistribution” by the government and the decline in effort by the gifted or motivated.
Still, there will always exist those who are less gifted or less motivated who will want to believe that political leaders can somehow make this impossible concept a reality. And of course, these people can fully be expected to vote for, or otherwise support, those who make such empty promises.
Therefore, the realisation that should be taken away from this discussion is that, over time, it is perfectly predictable that a given government might ultimately go in a direction of self-destruction, as it will be likely to pander to the majority, who seek such largesse at the expense of others.
What then, of the minority? What of those who are in that group of more gifted or more motivated people—the ones that do, historically, tend to push a society forward with their abilities and efforts?
They have a choice. They can “go with the flow,” should the country in question go into social and political decline; they can accept it and try to muddle through, as did Ayn Rand’s parents after the revolution. Or they can vote with their feet, as did Rand herself.
The results of these choices are plain: Zinovy and Anna Rosenbaum disappeared into Soviet obscurity, whilst daughter Ayn escaped to become a novelist in a freer and more inspiring country: the US.
This scenario repeated itself in Germany and Austria in the 1930s, when such notables as Albert Einstein, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig Von Mises made their exits to the US, England, and Switzerland, respectively.
The Writing Is on the Wall
And so it has gone, throughout history. When the writing is on the wall that “the society is doomed,” most people invariably stick it out where they are, hoping either that “things will get better,” or at least, that “it won’t get too much worse.”
In George Orwell’s 1945 book, “Animal Farm,” the pigs convinced the other animals to revolt against the farmer, whom the pigs claimed was oppressing them. When the revolution succeeded, the animals proudly painted the words, “All animals are equal” on the barn. Later, under cover of darkness, the pigs changed the wording to, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
This was literally the writing on the wall—the signal that the moment had arrived when the animals should have either overthrown the pigs or, if that was not possible, hopped the fence and skedaddled.
In real life, making this decision is quite a bit more difficult. However, it can be said that Ayn Rand made the task simpler for us. In the quote above, she offers the “writing on the wall.” It only remains to us to decide whether the point she describes has been reached. We can assume that, if we are presently living in a country that matches her description, and it remains possible at present to make an exit, as she did in 1926, we would be well advised to do so.
Certainly, her parents mistakenly waited longer, and young Ayn was the only one who escaped the Soviet Union.
We cannot control the obsessive behaviour of tyrants. They will forever be amongst us, and the majority of people do tend to “go along” in the end, either through ignorance or in the false belief that they will somehow benefit from such tyranny.
Our one choice, therefore, is the one that was faced by Ayn Rand and her parents. They chose differently and their fates could not have diverged more as a result.
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There is a direct relationship between the degree of “redistribution” by the government and the decline in effort by the gifted or motivated.
Hmmmm. Let's see I haven't worked in 20 years. I'm in college at UCLA and have lots of ideas about whether or not meaning has any relationship to existence and further if consciousness of that meaning is an intentional outcomel of matter over time.
Ok I'll buy it.
First off I would like to apologize to a poster several weeks ago who I threw several curse words at because he talked about leaving the country before tshtf. We can vote with our feet can't we. People have been doing it for centuries. But where do you go today with MAD. It matters not to me what you say about AR (whether it be LTER or a "believer"; I stumbled upon Atlas Shrugged when I was about 19 and it was a paradigm shift for me. No matter what she believed personally the book itself was very prescient of our present situation. It also allowed me to see the lie in the media by about 1996(that and 1984).
I guess my point would be that you don't have to like the author or everything on the book but you can still learn a lot from thinking about what they say. It can help make you argument and belief stronger. I have learned a lot by reading things by people who I thought were full of bullshit.
Keep the sarcasm but lose the long diatribes of hate.
I love Zerohedge! Where else would I get to talk to guys like you - except in Broadmoor.
LOL! Love it.
She's not wrong to describe the endemic corruption in government and its consequences, but like all of her kind she corrupts the reader with beguiling truths while conveniently overlooking the fact that it is corporate cronyism, the finance entitlement brigade from her ilk stealing the wealth from the nation that is the most dangerous, doing the most pernicious harm. The true welfare queens are the zionist banking cartels, not the trailer dwelling sheep picking out the microscopic scraps from the floor in return for votes and docility.
To me, she is another disgusting zionist, the poorest excuse for a human being turning the real issues on its head and making the sheep fight among themselves with the false popular political paradigms of the day (socialism-v-capitalism) while pumping up the egos of the productive and intelligent so her kind can continue to spread hate and confusion while robbing everyone blind. How would you describe yourself? A gifted minority or a moronic sheep at the teat of government? Why the first of course! Except they are both sheep beguiled by lies, debt, and delusions while the private central banks, the corporatists, the political whores and the MIC all bow to a bunch of zionazis nobody dares to criticize because they hide behind the irreproachable quasi-religious and fictional race called the Semitics now linked to the Jewish people who are as helpless against the Zionists as the rest of us.
I can find much worse excuses for a human being. She profited to a much lesser scale than many other, much more destructive liars. Find me anyone who will willing deny their own self interest for another, especially complete strangers and I will show you someone nailed to a cross. Virtually everyone talks their book, even if they are dead wrong and stupid. Rand was not stupid and while she may have given a pass to the evils her perspective enables, those evils were mild compared to what we are watching currently. We are facing a world destruction, a collapse of civilization if this continues. If everyone and I mean everyone was pursuing their true self interest, there would be far fewer people in the fragile position they find themselves now. Self interest reinforced by self sufficiency removes a huge amount of leverage and power of corrupt central governments. It is dependency that these "failed" policies have created that are the real threat, something that Rand resisted completely. There is nothing more dangerous than a safety net held by people who do not know you or care about you and have no vested interest in you.
"Self interest"
And don't forget that when Rand talks about self interest she's not only talking about the practicality of economic self interest she is also talking about holding true to your own values rather than to allow yourself to be conned into accepting the values of others.
A real life example I've seen repeated is that when war talk starts most people don't like the sound of it it but when a war is assured most people get in line behind it. This is a case of individuals foolishly giving up their own values because they've been conned into adopting the values of the warmongers usually with the sop, "support the troops!"
If you scare them enough to believe they are threatened they will support it. Better the warzone happen somewhere else than their own backyards. They gotta be able to watch their TV shows without a bomb interruption.
It's a good argument, but seriously I cannot see how anyone can say that selfishness is a virtue without giving their conscience a twinge. I certainly can't.
I might counter your argument by saying that we are facing a world destruction precisely because these people are persuing their true self interests. That it is precisely because these vermin in government are persuing their own self interests instead of the interests of the people they swore to represent we are in such dire straits.
Now I do understand your point that being individually self sufficient negates the need for a central government in the first place, for which you will get no arguments from me. But realistically, it is not an option for everyone living in major cities to become self sufficient and agrarian. It is just not logistically possible, no matter how attractive it is to me personally.
I can understand and applaud enlightened self interest. I can understand and applaud self sufficient living. I can understand and applaud minimal government interference. I cannot understand nor abide, this dark and ultimately stupid worship of selfishness as a virtue. I reject it completely because I feel it is deeply wrong.
I cannot see how anyone can say that selfishness is a virtue without giving their conscience a twinge
If your conscience insists that you allow others such as politicians, theocrats, celebrities, bankers and arms merchants to subvert your own will and system of values in deference to their own then your conscience is a pretty poor thing.
Be selfish enough to be true to your own beliefs and not those who claim that war and theft are agents of "the public good."
That's what she was talking about.
We're well inside the realms of fiction when we envisage a world without governments at all. I like it, but it is not terribly realistic.
One thing that was certain about "Rand", she was a zionist and the zionists are the biggest control freaks on the planet who like to dictate what everyone can do with their lives. I've seen her old interviews and they are not pretty. That level of control she harps on about always needs a government - her beloved Knesset. So with respect, I doubt that she was talking about the irony of the "public good" serving the interests of war and needing smaller governments.
We're well inside the realms of fiction when we envisage a world without governments at all. I like it, but it is not terribly realistic.
It's not necessarily realistic to believe that no one will ever be robbed or raped or murdered or that you or I will ever live as free men. Yet that does not make those things undesirable. Quite the opposite.
zionist
Yes, she could be terribly wrong at times. But then again, aren't we all.
I doubt that she was talking about the irony of the "public good" serving the interests of war and needing smaller governments.
Look again:
Men who are free to produce, have no incentive to loot; they have nothing to gain from war and a great deal to lose. Ideologically, the principle of individual rights does not permit a man to seek his own livelihood at the point of a gun, inside or outside his country. Economically, wars cost money; in a free economy, where wealth is privately owned, the costs of war come out of the income of private citizens — there is no overblown public treasury to hide that fact — and a citizen cannot hope to recoup his own financial losses (such as taxes or business dislocations or property destruction) by winning the war. Thus his own economic interests are on the side of peace." -- Ayn Rand's The Roots of War
http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-roots-of-war
Billy, could you please explain to me the specific mechanism whereby a free man "produces" wealth?
Iron ore in the ground is pretty much useless. Iron ore dug out of the ground, smelted, refined, and worked into steel can do many things. That is not a natural process; it takes a man to do it.
If you gave me two tons of iron ore and told me "There's a saw in there", it wouldn't help me clear the forest. The actual saw is considerably more valuable than the raw material, and the work done to produce it is what creates 'wealth'.
This is pretty f'ing simple. The fact that you seem incapable of grasping it leads me to believe the last two letters in your screenname are indicative of the time at which your level of knowledge topped out.
Thanks Frank for the kind words. Actually I am a mechanical engineer designing mines and factories among other things. The crucial point you miss is that "you" do not actually turn the iron ore into a saw at all. Can you tell me how ore is turned into a saw? Well, I'll give you the short story. You need energy and other resources to make this transformation. Your hands do virtually none of the actual work except push a few buttons and pull levers. Virtually all of the energy comes form burning plant material. So plants produced that saw; you didn't.
Selfishness is too narrow a term. "Self" versus "others" suggests there never exists a situation of voluntary generosity. I can say from personal experience that for the people in my network, acting in their benefit does not cost me. I voluntarily give to them and it does not feel like I am losing anything. In fact, I gain meaning in my life. The trouble is when people let others choose the form of their "giving". If you give because you "should" give rather than because it is driven from your own internal values and is entirely a part of who you are, then you are a tool of someone else. And it appears to me that the majority of giving is this external driven kind. That is the problem. People have lost touch with their own innate generosity because they have been so overloaded with externally pressured or even mandated "giving".
I will make it simple for you YHC.
Do you work by incentives, or idealism?
E.g. when your boss wants you do work double time....do you say "great, I will help out humanity by producing extra goods today" or do you say "great, I will make double time and have more cash"?
Liberals cannot seem to grasp this undeniable, eternal, and universal fact of motherfucking life.
It's like the priests and sex: deny it to yourself...but reality won't go away. Natural urges remain....
And you become a pedo.
"Selfishness" can be used to describe many things. A person that has 5 kids by 5 baby daddies and expects society to pay, and the mother will have no regard as to how this child will be raised in poverty....is that "selfish" to you?
It is to me.
You liberals and your "compassion" have done horrendous damage by INCENTIVIZING maladaptive behavior.
When idealism meets reality.....reality usually wins.
I'll take selfishness along with voluntary charity anytime over enforced "selflessness".
"If everyone and I mean everyone was pursuing their true self interest, there would be far fewer people in the fragile position they find themselves now."
This is just so wrong. It all stems from the preimise of Rand and other right wing idealogues that private individuals, through their own selfish interests, "produce" wealth which should be then offered into exchange in a free market for other things of value that other people have "produced". This supposedly maximizes overall wealth creation. However, not Rand nor any other libertarian will ever give you a remote hint of how this "production' actually works, becuase they don't undestand it. The fact that it ALL comes form the natural world, and specifically mostly from plant material, and the fact that anytime anyone "produces" anything what they are really doing is consuming plant material, well they'll never tell you that. Ultimately, the reason the economy is failing now is because of Peak Oil which is limiting how much stuff can be "produced", yet the monetary system requires exponential growth to function. The two (the reality of limits to real world stuff versus the fantasy of exponential growth money) are becoming decoupled now.
which begs the question: Did Rand ever produce anything to aid in actual living? No. Just more paper and wated trees-a beaurocrats dream
but like all of her kind she corrupts the reader with beguiling truths while conveniently overlooking the fact that it is corporate cronyism, the finance entitlement brigade from her ilk stealing the wealth from the nation that is the most dangerous, doing the most pernicious harm.
Perhaps you missed the part in Atlas Shrugged where the crony capitalists in league with corrupt politicians drain the society and economy of all life and meaning. I can understand how you missed it, it was only the premise of the entire book. But no worry, you're still a winner!
And I always thought it was all about the industry leaders and intelligentia leaving to create a new society because they had enough of collectivism and statism. As they disappear, the people ask, "Who is John Galt?" in response to questions they cannot answer, which broadly means, "Why bother?" - As in Atlas Shrugged.
It is an entertaining piece of science fiction. As a philosophical treatise, not very well thought out nor a rational guide. It is often a celebration of fiat money (See Francisco d'Anconia), a perversion of the virtue of charity (Because in her warped world, charity is only done at the point of a gun), and an insult to those less fortunate (Because they are all moochers). While NOTHING at all is written about the biggest looters and moochers of all - the private banks that suck the nation dry, create wars, and print money out of nothing.
It is often a celebration of fiat money (See Francisco d'Anconia),
Read it again. His speech denouces fiat currency.
“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, ‘Account overdrawn.’ --Francisco’s Money Speech
As a neo-objectivist, anyone who hates on or disagrees with Ayn Rand is a fucking idiot!!
Go back to your union goverment jobs you idiot fucks!
Don't be silly.
Never read it....now I will.....sounds like she was ahead of her time
Never mind. fat finger double post
I remember, in 70's, bunch of "Sidhartas" floating around. Well, now it's "John Galts".
Just by reading a book!
So if the writing is truly on the wall and our society is doomed, where is today's "America"? I'd like to pull a Simon Black if there was somewhere to go.
Let's see......my choices are stay and hope things get better or leave and go someplace else. Must have been nice that Rand had the old USA to run to. Where do we run to today? Russians, Germans, Italians, etc. may run but Americans are not supposed to. Everyone left their country and came here. Here we told our king "no" and stood our ground. What happened to that country? It is even legal now to tell our gov no because we r the government. If that is not the case anymore, then shut up and do what u r told slave. Time to quit running, hiding, and living in fear. Time to be American again and tell the bastards no. You can't live forever and u can't take it with you. Leave your children a real inheritance like the one that was left by the original Americans. I stand ready if we ever get some leadership. As long as u live defeated, you already are.
Ayn Rand knew that the only way to prosperity is through freedom.
Humans do not have the right to rule other humans - end the rule of man, create a totally free society, and watch the "more gifted and motivated" ones, as this article put it, lift society to a never-before-seen explosion of wealth, leading to universal health and peace.
Oh the things that could be. If we only had a good leash. Compare our government to dogs. A good dog can be a great help. Sheep dogs,watch dogs, dogs for the blind, hunting dogs. These dogs are an asset. A pack of wolves or feral dogs are not. I hate to say it but them dogs went feral. Done got off the leash.
What we need is a good leash.
Oh please, you think that's going to get us never before seen wealth? Rand was an idealist. Yes, some of the freedom and anti-oppresssion things she preached are geberally good for a society to uphold, but there is way more to it than that. How about natural resources upon whcih we are all completely dependent for every single thing we consume or interact with economically? The problem with this free market and free society ideology is that it's a bit like a one handed clap or a dry waterfall -- they exist in our minds but in reality they don't really work. The things that make societies and markets "free" are also the things that provide opportunities for entities to take them over so they aren't free anymore.
Yep things could be very different. Huge monopolies control everything. Food,shelter,energies,media even the money in your pocket, every thing. We did not get here by accident. Getting back on track wont be an accident either.
Accountability changes everything. We have zero now. Your not suggesting accountability would make things worse are you?
Correct, we have little accountability now, and the average citizen is last on the list of entities actually recieving any accountability. Not sure what you mean by asking if I think accountability would make things worse. The problem is we have as you say monopolies in everything. Private and public sectors have merged into an oppressive, corrupt, unaccountable mega-structure designed to steal wealth from the masses. It's pointless debating whether it's the government's or private sector's fault. In reality, the entire structure of society of the last thousand years has been predicated on perpetual growth. whether it's government or business, when the eoncomy can no longer grow then the whole thing collapses because it wasn't designed for that and no one in charge has any idea how to change it to suit a zero-growth future.
Break any of those monopolies and you will find there is a lot more to go around. Break all of them? Hard to say but I know my life would be better. If the government did its job right these monopolies would not last long. There is only one reason to have a government. True Justice. Thats it.
We don't need a government to break monopolies. We need an educated populace and honest money. Then it's the people who decide from whom they are going to trade that honest money with for goods and services. With the internet, and proper education (not public education controlled from DC), communications travel at the speed of light. Woe be to those monopolies.
Its the government that is proping up these monopolies. Fiat the worst of them is what is keeping these monopolies running. Take away the fiat and poof most of them would go bye bye fast. Government guns are the only thing that permit fiat at all. The size and scope of government we have now cannot exist without fiat. Together they make for a psychotic critical mass. Its no wonder they went feral.
You are hopelessly naive. There has always been government. There will always be government. It is human nature. You cannot escape it. Your only hope is to have some choice in what government you have.
Okay, then my choice is the City-State. If I don't like what my politician does, I can walk over to his house and punch him in the nose (not drive 800 miles and make an appointment).
Amen.
Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum was a trained seal that the White House used to propagandize cold war rhetoric about the Communist system in
the USSR. Her writing was substandard and her books were half assed and half baked notions of how she thought the Capitalist system worked in comparison with the Russian Revolution that she lived through. Greenspan and the Republican Party supported any writer that supported their interests in stealing money from hard working American families through the concepts of central planning. Greenspan found his talking stage puppet in terms of Rosenbaum's 'Ayn Rand' stage persona and character. The object of Greenspan's attention was 'wealth transfer' and the too silly notions of 'Ayn Rand' and her 'Atlas Shrugged' fit Greenspan's ideal for a working model ruse he could entertain the 'folks' with in order to deflect their attention away from what his real priorities and intentions were. Around the same time Greenspan removed his doctoral thesis from public domain so that journalists and writers would be unable to determine what theoretical academic work allowed Greenspan to take the reigns of power in the USA Government financial sector as FED Chairman. Rand was just a fucking prop for Greenspan and his ilk. Greenspan's ideology was by no means 'Objectivist' when he introduced the Greenspan put. Greed and hubris was covered up with 'Objectivism' and the limited scope that offers any sort of real thinker or philosopher. Rand was neither a thinker or a good writer
as much as she was just a prop in Western politics and ideology.
Greenspan actually thought that the system would self-correct fraud. What a naive ass hole.
So she's sort of like John McCain then? Trauma heavily influancing ideology. Huh, interesting...
Explains a lot of the self interest and empathy denial that's in the novels.
One of the big problems with Rand is that she throws around the word "produce" quite a lot, but she doesn't seem to have the foggiest idea of what it means. Not really her fault though, she was an actress.
Well great, thanks for that insight into why communism doesn't work. Hopefully that will keep any communists on ZH quiet. Oh wait, is there a single communist on ZH? I have never actually met a communist, do they even still exist?
I guess the guy who invented Facebook is several billion times more gifted and motivated, and deserving of material wealth that the computer programmer actually writing his code, so he deserves to be a billion times richer. Only seems fair.
Yes, but the programer got an "attaboy". So, see you forgot, it is fair.
well her laughable 'free of government restraints, Big Business has, in its own interest, the desire to do good for all...' IMAGINE THAT!
Parts of Ayn Rands work concerning individualism, liberty and capitalism (among mises, friedman, bastiat etc) is some of the most insightful that i have come across and has greatly influenced my thinking. Fransiscos money speech refuting that money is the root of all evil is simply impeccable.
"People like the economists F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, novelist Ayn Rand, mathematician John Forbes Nash and psychiatrist Ronald David Laing, will promote the idea that man is an egoistic being which works only for its own personal interest. Extreme individualism becomes increasingly one of the basic characteristics of the Western man and concepts such as altruism, collectivity and solidarity are dismissed from the central core of his thought. The Western man accepts rationally that these concepts are clearly utopian and that they will never be applied massively in societies."
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2014/01/how-western-societies-lost-th...
Except maybe Norway??
NMB, i dont think that this concept is utopian, i think its wrong. As humans we must be concerned for our personal interest (in all shapes and forms). However this does not in any way stand in the way of wanting to help and assist other people.
I agree. As a human, I want to help others. What I object to is being forced to help with a gun to my head and a politicians hand in my pocket.
PARASITES AND POLITICIANS vs THOSE PULLING THE WAGON
why do you think they want to disarm amerikan sheeple
why the pravda main stream media
why the desire to control the internet
why all the spying on the amerikan sheeple
why the tyranical use of the IRS and DOJ and EPA to circumvent the LAW
why will it cost amerikan sheeple $20,000/year per illegal imported libtard democrat vote amounting to $1 trillion over the lifetime of 4 million illegals accessing medicaid and social security benefits.... sukka
si senor i pay in $10,000 in "taxes" and si senor i take out $30,000 in benefits.... gracias sukka, amerika is muy bueno...
Yeah, but people are not naturally honest. You cannot just trust people to be honest and forthright. You need recourse to some authority to make people forego dishonesty. This is the core failure of Ayn Rand's utopian "just leave me alone" philosophy. There has never been a society or civilization that was founded and sustained upon honesty. It has always been a self-sacrifice to be honest because most people are dishonest, unless compelled otherwise.
It appears to me that during the latter half of the 19th century, when everyone was wearing a gun, society was much more civilized with each other. Was there dishonesty? Absolutely, but it had a shorter lifespan.
Given the challenge of getting 2014 Americans to read an actual book, I'd like to point out the Declaration of Independence is a condensed Atlas Shrugged.
Wealth/asset taxes are just around the corner.... FATCA set the stage.
$3,500 to renounce citizenship now. $5k, $10k, $20k in the future..??
Never underestimate the evil and tyranny of a bankrupt government....
I think that was a mis-print; Ayn Rand meant : your society is "groomed".
We have been RE-groomed since then, those now halcyon days of 1950s, by Ayn Randian mantra becoming operational since Ronnie Reagan took over the West.
Now its payback.
Having been truly re-groomed, hook line and sinker, we are now truly doomed.
But not for the reasons that Ayn ranted about.
For the reason that her spiritual son Greenspan acted ON, at the behest of his front man for the Oligarchs : RR !
When one delusional "supply side-no government is good government" dogmatist replaces another "our money your problem" dogmatist, selling Dear Henry's US petrodollar hegemony carrot to balance "Cold war is good" big stick shenanigans; we have lost the Enlightenment at Dealey Plaza Dallas day.
Ayn Rand was a phony.
She was an articulate incompetent and an intellectually dishonest person of little character. She was a character in composition which was her ticket to ride. Ride “free” I might add. She was a control freak.
She was a great supporter of Israel. Israel was a communist country when founded. The Soviet Union was actually the first nation to befriend Israel. She took health benefits from the government and collected Social Security. She lived in Hollywood, which lives off tax subsidies and special tax arrangements and special financial arrangements unavailable to any other industry. Like football, and baseball, and any other monopoly you can think of. Her entire circle of friends were all Bolsheviks. Or at least highly evolved socialists.
The Marina Del Ray “Objectivists” meetings were cancelled on Jewish Holidays only. Her entire collection of advocates was and is a tightly controlled group. They are constantly under the watch of the Randian Thought Police. She excommunicated people who didn’t do exactly as she dictated. She was a tyrant. Rand’s philosophy is a straw man for Israeli aggression. John Galt is the equivalent of the moral case for supporting Israel. The Ayn Rand Institute seeks to influence public opinion, and particularly American policy, toward unequivocally siding with Israel. That’s it!
What we all live off is time, air, water, food. None of which can be produced. Food is either food in its own right or food to feed other food to produce more food. Money was an invention of man to allow man to trade across great distances. Thus it became a simple matter to consume natural resources, not produced by man, merely collected in order to collect money.
Soon money collection became easier than manual labor. One does not produce money. One collects money. In this sense it makes no difference what “money” is. It is only useful for collecting things from afar; if you will allow a simple example. Ebay. If money is gold, you don’t have to keep collecting, but you have to keep your collection, if you stop collecting.
The African Jungle is a free market. Just ask the beasts of pray and their pray. No government except, time, air, water, food.
A free market is a market with a top predator.
Well, you can always give your shit to your benevolent rulers...who can then dole out the goodies as needed to the unwashed.....of course after taking their cut.
Rand was not perfect, and I don't recall reading anywhere that she thought herself some kind of perfect human being. She definitely had personality issues.
However, your 'critique' - and I use the term loosely - is virtually all ad hominem.
If you don't think food can be produced, I suggest you get off your pimply and pock-marked ass and go work on a farm for a while. Everyone here who has a garden knows what an idiot you are.
Finally, we have scientists and politicians all over the world pleading that we buy into the Global Warming/Climate Change scam, when they have no reputable evidence to support.
60 years ago, Rand described our current society to almost a "T" (she didn't foresee cheap air travel and computers - go shoot her). I pick her track record over Krugman's any day.
My critique is not a critique. It is a condemnation.
Farming (I grew up on a farm) is CULTIVATNG. Hence it is called AGRICULTURE.
You need seeds and animals and such to PRODUCE milk, meat, corn, wheat et al.
We never figured out how to produce a cow or an ear of corn from nothing.
If one cow becomes ten cows, it is not a product, it is procreation.
If a seed becomes a plant, it is cultivated.
The “product” is a collection of things which man cannot produce. Nature does!
A farmer makes money selling things cultivated or through husbandry with nature.
"The idea that any government should somehow enforce the more gifted or more motivated to continually give up the fruits of their efforts, whilst giving those fruits to others who are less gifted and less motivated is, by definition, unworkable."
You have perfectly described the bail out of the .001%. However, it seems to be working for them. So, what do you mean by "unworkable"?
Just wait. None of this is in any way sustainable.
The equation is simple. Governments are manned by wolves and sheep dogs. Unless there are sufficient sheep dogs in government the wolves devour the innocent sheep. If the wolves run wild in government the country dies. In this age the wolves are winning and in the eyes of many sheep dogs the wolves appear to be running wild…
One of My Favorites:
"You can Avoid Reality, but you Cannot Avoid the Consequences of Avoiding Reality....."
and all variations thereof........
I'm an old philosophy-addict, here's my assessment of Rand.
Ayn Rand sidestepped the entire 18th-19th century philosophical blossoming of European thought that flowered into vast paradoxes in Nietzsche, esoteric explorations in Heidegger, moral introspection in Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, strange logico-linguistic conundrums in Wittgenstein and Russell, existentialist malaise in Sartre and Camus, and the reactions against state power of the continental Anarchist, Dadaist and Situationist movements.
She basically ignores the history of European thought and starts fresh with her own simplistic historical narrative. The external conclusion (her political philosophy) can best be summed up as: "Don't let the government give bottom-feeders the upper-hand". The internal conclusion (her attempt to grasp higher meaning) can best be summed up as: "Selfishness is the most enlightened of drivers; it is categorically imperative; its aggregate results have produced Civilization itself."
It is a one-dimensional narrative, at whose core exists an irreduceable seed of elitism: the notion that there is a small, special class of 'producers' who keep everyone else alive by virtue of their hard work, and that the rest of the world consists of 'spongers' or free-loaders, whose only purpose is to take. It follows from this that selfishness is the highest impulse which can drive a man, and the spontaneously selfish actions of vast numbers of 'producers', we are led to believe, aggregated to create the modern world. Typically, no great attempt is made to produce evidence for any of these assertions.
When she wasn't arguing these premises in essays or on Donahue, she was crafting a paper-thin literary universe with characters whose only noticeable features were that they perfectly exemplified one or more of her pet ideas. Within the test-case of her own literary universe, her ideas were demonstrated to be quite correct. Most readers encounter her ideas through fiction, interestingly, rather than reading the essays on Objectivism. Half a century after Europe had explored the concept of the 'anti-hero' almost to exhaustion, she was bold enough to create a literary Hero of the most solemnly straightforward sort, and to present it, totally without irony, as the apogee of human development, with marquee lighting and a 10-foot banner which read: "This is who we all should strive to be." The lack of subtlety and understanding in this beggars all expression and still makes me feel mildly embarrassed just talking about it.
This was a philosophy and worldview for American teenagers and early twenty-somethings, if ever there was one. And its precisely here where it has most thrived: within this demographic.
I believe now that there is a core of American grass-roots political ideology which revolves around nothing more sophisticated than the notion: "Government is evil." Many of its proponents would balk at the nakedness of that sentiment, and want to qualify the statement, but I believe I have grasped the core idea. "We hate the government", basically dressed up with some sound money theory and so forth.
Its hard to imagine a worse political configuration than we presently have. Its also hard to envision a network of roads, a hospital system, and the internet, without some kind of government. In many ways I think we already live within Randian paradise, and our Goldman Sachs CEOs no doubt see themselves as the John Galt's whose labours make all our lives possible. God bless their selfishness.
You're too intelligent to be here!
It's ironic that he attempts to make Ms Rand out to be some prophetic hero when she fully embraced the bankster driven productive engine of our economic enslavement, Capitalism.