atlas shrugged, are we living through it ?

not quite, good sir wrote:

both atlas shrugged and the fountainhead are about art in a society of commodification.

You need to go back and re-read, I think. Atlas Shrugged is not at all about "art in a society of commodification". In fact it is not about art at all.

People like to claim that Rand is the banner bearer for the conservatives, but she is much more in line with the ideal of classic libertarianism. Conservatives are seen as hypocritical because they want government out of the workplace but in the home. Liberals are seen as hypocritical because they want government out of the home, but omnipresent in the workplace. Libertarians and fascists are the least hypocritical of the political groups.

Rand was neither conservative nor libertarian and she was rabidly opposed to being associated with either group.

Conservatism = traditionalism, which is an arbitrary preference for the old way of doing things rather than an objective preference for the correct way of doing things. It also capitulates to religion, which Rand opposed even more than she opposed socialism.

Rand also hated libertarianism because it lacks the necessary philosophical foundations for liberty and individualism and is therefore vulnerable to corruption. It is also a broad banner that can mean almost anything; for example, Mike Gravel is a raging socialist libtard and he just converted to the Libertarian party. If Gravel is a libertarian, then I sure as hell am not one.

By the way, I'm an Objectivist, although I have been unable to finish Atlas Shrugged thus far.

First, the idea that Bill Gates and other execs get paid what the market will bear is foolish. Executives get paid by compensation comittees that are in-bread kiss asses that just want to cover their butts by being able to point out that they hired the most expensive guy they could find and, thus, can't be blamed when that guy drove the corporation into the ground. And Bill Gates has probably done more to destroy jobs than create them by destroying competition and leaving the world stuck with a monopoly on crappy computer operating systems.

Second, it is not a question of redistributing wealth. It is a question of whether the system to distribute wealth is fair and in the best interest of society as a whole. If it is not, than people have every right to petition their government to make the system fair. And people have a right to demand that profits be made without spoiling the environment, injuring workers, harming people's health, forcing people to work for wages that cannot even buy them food, shelter, transportation and health care (not to mention education for their children) and without requiring the invasion of far off nations to secure the preferred energy source.

Third, cut the revisionist history. Deregulation has been taking place at a staggering rate for the past 20 years. The result has been a massive shift in wealth to a very small percentage of the population, while the rest of the population has seen stagnation, at best, in their share of the "pie". The federal reserve's intervention into markets has been an effort to prop up the majority of the population that increasingly cannot keep up financially as tremendous amounts of wealth are shifted to speculators and traders.

Fourth, and finally, Ayn Rand's "individualism" is as much a utopian dream as is communism or socialism. Government is a reflection of our civility and humanity. We have social security because of the collective shame this country felt over the tremendous number of elderly people who were simply starving to death or dying in the heat or cold instead of living their golden years in peace. Ayn Rand would instruct us to turn a blind eye because it is not our fault that someone did not save enough money for their retirement. But we are human and civil and will not let markets decide who lives and who dies.

Did you even read the blog, both parts? Government, more than any other entity, created the mess we are in via the Federal Reserve, via social engineering consuits, via the creation of a ratings agency monopoly. Government cultivated our dependency on securing offshore resources in unfriendly locales. Government is currently in the process of ensuring chronic malaise for years to come.

The only problem with what you advocate is that it won't work. It will punish those who you seek to help the most. Otherwise, I, myself, might be persuaded. It amuses me the extent to which you pretend to be an economist. I do realize, of course, that your very livelihood depends on you putting forth this argument, but all you will accomplish is a wider, shorter pyramid, a smaller pie. California, the harbinger of all national trends is in one hell of a predicament BECAUSE of the VERY FISCAL and labor-friendly policies you advocate. My condolences to all who suffer the consequences of your ignorance.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/12/california-implodes-in-multiple-ways.html

John Smallberries wrote:

Third, cut the revisionist history. Deregulation has been taking place at a staggering rate for the past 20 years. The result has been a massive shift in wealth to a very small percentage of the population, while the rest of the population has seen stagnation, at best, in their share of the "pie". The federal reserve's intervention into markets has been an effort to prop up the majority of the population that increasingly cannot keep up financially as tremendous amounts of wealth are shifted to speculators and traders.

By the way, I'd like to see you prove the corollary here. Please unequivocably demonstrate cause and effect, rather than stating spurious correlation that you consider to be obvious on its merits. By the way, my brother is a truck driver who has seen his wages stagnate, largely because of an influx of supply into his field and largely as a result of more onerous DOT regulation heaped upon already ridiculous regulation. But my brother, like many of his peers, has done nothing to improve his skillset, and, thus his expectation. And while he has a smaller share of the total pie, his absolute share has actually grown. We, as a society, are doing nothing to improve our skillsets because our fundamental public education is failing, and not for want of money. Private schools outcompete their public peers while paying teachers less. Charter schools have cropped up largely to answer the cry of no competition, with great success.

Sagarin is making great points. A big barrier of contradiction for me is Alan Greenspan. Per his book, he was part of Rand\'s weekly(monthly) group that discussed ideas, freedom, individualism. He was a great student/peer of Rand and was a self labeled libertarian-republican. yet, he was the leader of the biggest governmental, market-manipulator, price setting institution of them all, the fed.

how does he justify that?!?!?

Alan Greenspan fully understands what he did as Fed chairman and is simply lying his ass off about it now. He is evil, not stupid.

While Greenspan was complicit in the Fed's entire experiment with not targeting the money supply, I believe his larger culpability lies with putting too much trust in government. He had too much faith in government "data," thereby not acting in concert with his notion of irrational exuberance uttered back circa 1995. He could not pull monetary levers in a vacuum, and, despite his redundant protestations about the government's need to rein in entitlement spending, shift more toward pay-go, and his incessant warnings about the dangers presented by Fannie and Freddie (go read any old semi-annual FOMC testimony - the former Humphrey-Hawkins testimony), the market was never "free." The most hideous blight on the government was actually the monopoly they created amongst the ratings agencies. That was the root of the entire problem.

But, the short answer is, Greenspan's entire doctrine of not being able to recognize an asset bubble, only having the capability of mitigating the deflation of one was utterly incorrect. That combined with the entitlement attitude championed in government that nobody should ever have to feel any pain whatsoever, an attitude that didn't and doesn't allow markets to adjust and "clear." And we are doing it all over again in an even more grotesque fashion. Just wait. The fireworks haven't even begun.

By the way, has it occurred to no one that maybe, just maybe, the government through its sovereign entities (subsidiaries) shouldn't be in the business of determining the price of money and credit? How can anything but price distortion and improper transmission of credit be the outcome?

QFT mofos. nobody serious should take her seriously. she's an academic joke for high schoolers with pretensions of sophistication and political liberatrianism. go read some foucault or schopenhauer.

Government created this mess by letting traditional banks and investment banks merge. The investment banks infected the traditional banks with their high risk mentality and drove them into the ground. The government also created this mess by raising the amount of leveraging allowed. The fed tried to prop up the economy with interest rate cuts to create the appearance that Ws tax cuts had a positive effect on the economy. This was no experiment in social engineering. It was political cover for failed tax policy. California is the same. They cut taxes like crazy and now wonder why there is an enormous debt. California could raise sufficient revenue to fund its government. They don't do that because it is politically taboo.

But the bottom line is that many people claiming to be financial professionals, or worse, economists, stood by and poured gasoline on the fire for years. This is because the risk to the system as a whole is not reflected in the individual "bet the company" transactions that are now taking down the economy.

I am looking forward to a flatter pyramid that will be stable and socially responsible. If that means that we all live with less in order to have a healthy environment, a healthy population and a safe workplace, then that is fine with me. The current system requires exploitation of workers, the environment, our health and even militarism to keep feeding the capitalist monster.

i think it's interesting how this thread started on the topic of Rand, with most posts of a literary or ideological nature, and has evolved into a a more technical discussion of economics.

and that's how it goes... the world is too freaking complicated for an ideology to not be horribly inadequate on at least a few counts. Set it down in a forum like this, and the discussion naturally osmoses to something more technical. Of course, people like general ideas better than complicated facts, so I expect this thread to peter out really soon.

criticisms of what i just said (a la Nietzsche)

- simplification and synthesis do clarify our understanding of systems

- in all fairness Rand's ideas have resisted easy summary and consensus in this forum, so they are by no means overly-simple or a waste of time.

- economics is hopelessly complicated

Blowing Rock Master wrote:

I think you're interpretation of the book has gotten screwed up because your only exposure to it is second hand. Most of the criticisms I've seen in this thread (at least the ones that are comprehensible) are based on the premise that Atlas Shrugged glorifies unbridled corporate greed. That's not what the book is about. The main message is that the world is divided between those who produce wealth (goods and services) and those who attempt to claim that wealth as an entitlement for themselves. It then proceeds to show what would happen if the producers said "screw you" to the leeches and stop producing. The book doesn't say that you shouldn't take care of your fellow man, it says you shouldn't be forced to do it.

Thank you for actually getting it right. You just missed that the producers also produce intellect and ideas. The looters do not. They just criticize them.

Ayn R is about the human individual, not corporations. Other posters just got it wrong.

Also, I am stupified by the poster who keeps opining on AR and other posters thoughts having never read her books. Truly a living example of her ignorant characters becoming policymakers. Try just shutting up for a change.

Listen to her yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTf6NK0wsiA

"The new laws and regulations have neither prevented frauds nor instituted fairness. But they have managed to kill the creation of new public companies in the U.S., cripple the venture capital business, and damage entrepreneurship. According to the National Venture Capital Association, in all of 2008 there have been just six companies that have gone public. Compare that with 269 IPOs in 1999, 272 in 1996, and 365 in 1986." WSJ

Getting back on point, yes, as evidenced above, Atlas has indeed shrugged. Although in Rand's novel it was a conscious decision by the men of ability to strike in hopes of bringing about a new beginning, today's strike is simply the result of the government's perverse disincentives to take risks and create.

The awful inescapable consequence of this is quite simply the end of prosperity. For generations each family has not only expected, but actually achieved a far greater standard of living for their children. But, historically, this has only been the case since Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was embraced by America. Before this, the best one could wish for is a lot in life as good as one's parents.

Should the principles of individual rights, and its economic corrollary of capitalism, be completely abandoned, and consequently the men of ability retreat from the economy, then the only way our children will understand the meaning of progress will be from bedtime stories told to them by their despairing grandparents.

Honestly, people, the idea that Ayn Rand espouses a complete, free-market, no government intervention ideal in her books is completely bogus. When you stop and read her books for their MEANING, looking beyond the words on the page, then you see the true meaning of her works. She fights against those who, in her words, are "destroyers." They are the people who CAN support themselves, but would rather gain power over others through the use of social pressure, for my lack of ability to think of a better term for it.

At the core of her arguments, she attacks people who seek fame, fortune, and power over others when they themselves are quite incapable of acheiving it. The perfect example is Peter Keating, a man who is completely incapable of performing himself, so he seeks to gain power over others by exploiting social pressure. The same can be said for Orren Boyle and James Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. They try to gain power over others by exploiting the social and political system of the time. This is very similar to those incompetents at the "Big Three" who expect to be saved because of their "power" and status, working to exploit the current political, economic, and social situation, instead of letting those most capable do so.

My point in the end, though, is that Ayn Rand does not attack government intervention or social projects directly. She may attack the way the contracts are awarded, favors courted, and the exploitation of the system, but the actual projects she does not attack.

Take, all of you neo-conservative economists out their who wail about the fall of capitalism to socialist policies in this election, what about the roads? Our national system of roads are one of the largest socialized services in the world. Or how about all of that free trade occuring in our globalized world? All of our nation's ports are publicly-owned entitities. Port Authorities do NOT make money, or enough money, to have ever been profitable to private investors. In the end, I'm saying that the Government has to step in, and provide the basic infrastructure and investment and intervention in the economy to even all private companies to function. So, increased government spending, especially on infrastructure (and I'm talking Green Energy, electricity, water, and National Healthcare) are some of the most important functions of our government.

My point, Ayn Rand did not attack the basic functions that the government must serve in the national economy, only those PEOPLE who exploit the system for personal gain and to bring others under their power. Eat my environmentalist, socialists, bum y'all.

To address the original question, no, but we are living through the Creature from Jekyll Island.

That aside, this is the time to start a company - VC, though down, is still available - just not the time to take it public.

"So, increased government spending, especially on infrastructure (and I'm talking Green Energy, electricity, water, and National Healthcare) are some of the most important functions of our government."

Are you crazy? Rand would never accept any of this as proper functions of government. The proper functions of government are strictly to provide for police to protect us from domestic threats, for a military to protect us from international threats, and a court system to settle disputes.