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Objectionable content
17 September 2009
Having waded through her complete works, Gerald L. Houseman concludes that there should never, ever be an Ayn Rand revival
The sales of Ayn Rand's books achieved biblical proportions quite a long time ago. Perhaps the Bible outsells individual works - Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead or We the Living - but her total sales volume seriously rivals that of the Good Book. This does not appear to have alarmed those on the religious Right, despite their tendency towards over-excitement. One might expect a title such as The Virtue of Selfishness to set off some of their bells, but it doesn't.
Any attempt to review her work can be misleading if we treat Rand purely as an author. She created the Objectivist movement, asserting that there are objective truths and rules of human conduct derived from reason and the terms of self-interest. When Objectivist precepts are discovered and developed, they supposedly can be built into a set of logically connected constructs.
Rationality and self-interest are synonymous entities in Rand's scheme, and they stand in stark contrast to altruism and charity - impulses considered to be violations of good manners and common sense that, left unchecked, could lead to the downfall of Western civilisation.
Seven decades of Randian influence and activity have shown us that Objectivism should be considered a war on altruism, a behaviour her acolytes consider antithetical to everyone's best interests because it can be used as an effective prop by statists and socialists. These kinds of "tyrants" and their supporters can be expected to seek power at our expense, for they cause gullible people and opportunistic free-riders to support basic changes in making political choices for us. They will invariably ignore or debase selfishness, Rand states over and over again (her books are some of the most repetitive ever published), even though she believes that it can be defended as an obvious and personally self-evident need of most, if not all, individuals. And selfishness, she strongly believed, is a virtue that should not only be acknowledged but encouraged. Yes, encouraged! Property rights and an economy of free trade along the lines set up by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations - a laissez-faire world, in other words - are central to the core of Objectivism and the individualism Rand believes it sires and promotes.
This individualism, in turn, finds expression and indeed identity through creativity. But when Rand writes of creativity, it appears to take on special meaning, for her world is one in which heroes are concentrated in only a few select endeavours - architecture, art, writing and, above all, entrepreneurship.
The "captains of industry", as she calls them, are the most creative of all; but whatever their field of work, competence and marvellous leadership talents are the key. One of the great minds we meet in Atlas Shrugged is a CEO type who builds a coast-to-coast railroad across America without any government help, even though no such person has ever existed. John Galt, the leading hero of this excessively long lecture - which is what the book really is - leads a "mind strike" that puts all of the rest of us dummies in our place. And Howard Roark, the architect-hero of The Fountainhead, who builds the tallest building in the world, is loved by his employees even though he is unapproachable, almost inhuman and never engages in small talk.
Whatever their quirks, these creative and superior people are able to maximise their individualism, as well as the creativity with which it goes hand in hand, only through a largely unregulated arena of the type Rand's detractors would call dog eat dog.
Capitalism is, according to one of her titles, "the unknown ideal". And the foremost task of Objectivists is to provide capitalism with a strong intellectual defence. It is a big responsibility, no doubt, but there are only a few tenets to understand: there can be no real disputes between rational thinkers, the rules of self-interest and rationality are discoverable and discernible, and all individuals are blessed with rights while societies, which are a mere abstraction, have no rights. No collective, no group has any rights because any notion of collective rights would ultimately mean that some have rights but others do not. A rude and cynical class consciousness intrudes on all these thoughts, of course, and Rand demonstrates this by soaking any working-class people in her novels with a generalised blame rooted variously in inattentiveness, laziness, doltish attitudes and, above all, envy.
It is obvious that some characteristics of her novels, such as the last mentioned, detract from her message. She had a strong tendency, for example, to be overtly anti-feminist; for while her industrial heroes could be assertive and thoughtful, their women could not. In Atlas Shrugged, for example, Dagny Taggart, the epic's female lead, is described in a scene as having "the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm (that) gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained". And while she titles various parts of The Fountainhead with names of various males, both good and bad, poor Dominique Francon, Howard Roark's beloved, never gets such a part named for her. You may think she would deserve better treatment than this.
A characteristic peculiar to Rand that detracts mightily from her works in a spectacular way is her enthusiasm for such inanimate objects as machines, trains, high-tension wires, factories and industrial areas of cities. Her unstinting praise of the so-called geniuses of entrepreneurial bent is difficult enough to swallow; but her paroxysms of delight as she ponders smoke-belching steel mills or grease-covered railroad bridges, page after page, will cause thoughtful readers to experience feelings of profound and abject embarrassment.
So why, we should ask, had ideas and approaches similar to Objectivism not been thought out, or carried out, before Rand came along? Because the people like her heroes have been too busy making money and building a great industrial society, she has explained; don't we all realise that? Such people rarely have the time to pause and pontificate on any subject, especially when they more or less instinctively know these basic Randian axioms of society, culture, economics and politics. And of course the question arises: what about the rest of us? Those who are not so fortunate or benighted with overwhelming virtues? Wasting my time by reading every one of her novels and essays, I have concluded that there are few, if any, steps we inferiors can take; certainly there is no collective action that would win Rand's approval. We are assigned simply to put our faith in the creative rich.
The year 2009, however, has shown us that this is hardly the time for such faith. The privatising and non-regulatory urges pervading the US Government since the beginning of the century (and particularly since the 1980s) have brought many of us to the very end of our patience and to a finale for our faith in the capitalist system, or in the wealthy, or in those captains of industry - and especially of finance - in whose hands we are supposed to place our lives and hopes. A quick example: one of Rand's most ardent students, Alan Greenspan, who headed the Federal Reserve for years and said that all his economic knowledge - all of it - came from Rand, is now regarded as one of the major miscreants of the current worldwide economic malaise. (He now admits that he expected more self-regulation from the bankers and Wall Street types. Thanks for nothing, Alan!) If ever there was to be a time or date for Rand or Objectivism, it surely seems not to be the present.
Twenty-seven years after her death, there are still some prominent people who bow to Rand. There are the usual suspects, of course, such as the "thinkers" attached to various right-wing foundations, or the occasional conservative politician or political staffer. Some of the more prominent of the impressed, according to recent press reports, are entertainers such as Angelina Jolie. And, odd as it may seem, some of these people are new or recent converts. Perhaps they just have a poor sense of timing in addition to their inexplicable sense of judgment. There are also persistent rumours that a film company is looking into a big production of Atlas Shrugged for a television series, and this could bring in new Objectivist converts, such as those who do not read. Bringing such a film into existence at a time of stressful capitalism certainly raises any number of questions.
This is more than a question of timing or bad luck, however; for there is an even bigger snag, a bigger poison in the pudding, which destroys any so-called philosophy invented by Rand. An article in a 1986 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, although it remains too often ignored, leaves no hope whatever for the many defenders and apologists for the allegedly "free" market. The co-authors of this contribution assert and prove that there is no such thing as a "free-enterprise system", simply because all the bargains taking place in a market system are characterised by an information deficit on one side or the other. This gap reflects an information advantage that one side invariably holds over the other in any deal so that there are, in fact, no truly equitable financial agreements to be had. And it is because of this absence of equity that free enterprise can achieve only what can be regarded as a mythic status. This not only applies to the free-enterprise myth itself, however; it applies to all its constituent elements, such as Adam Smith's "invisible hand", which was perennially held to be a kind of guarantor of self-interest that allegedly made the whole system work. But there is no invisible hand, just as there is no free enterprise.
The economics profession belatedly recognised these findings and their effect on their discipline when its Nobel prize was awarded in 2001 to Joseph E. Stiglitz, one of the authors of the 1986 Quarterly Journal of Economics article. And the mortal blow wrought by the new "information economics" is quite complete: the free-enterprise system and the invisible hand have not only died, but also the many works based on them, such as the long-lasting contribution of Adam Smith or, for those who take them seriously, the bestselling works of Ayn Rand. There are many other casualties, of course: the works of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, the books and articles of thousands of others, and far from least, the work of the many free-enterprise foundations such as the Heritage Institute, the Cato Institute, the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution and Britain's Adam Smith Institute. The "studies" emanating from these sources for the past six or seven decades have all undergone the shredding they deserve, intellectually at least, although the foundations themselves - despite having nothing to say or do now - pour out a continuous load of propaganda based on assumptions that have been totally disproved.
For the Randy people, Objectivism remains the basis of discussions in their local societies, one can be sure, while the Ayn Rand Institute and Reason magazine (an odd name indeed when one considers the cause to which it is devoted) continues its task of publishing, worshipping and misleading.
Sadly, the economics profession itself has not sufficiently caught up with the findings and trends that have undone much or most of its work, although time tends to work well, at least in the long run, for science and truth.
Gerald L. Houseman is professor emeritus of political science, Indiana University. His most recent book is Economics in a Changed Universe: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization, and the Death of Free Enterprise (2008) and he is working on a novel, Holland's War.
Readers' comments
Well written, but even if one can't be like Roark or Galt I find it easier to aspire to be like them than be like Jesus or Mohammed.
Interesting article - but it detracts from the fact that for some, exstance requires alternative thought and action to that of the common man. One does not have to agree to a train of thought to see the beauty or logic of it - the very fact that it transgresses most rational belief is in itself not the issue - did it make you think is the prefered response. Charity of thought, poverty, religion or mediocrity is always championed by a few learned individuals who think they are protecting the great morass of humanity from a few freaks of nature but the Universe is indifferent at best and we are just another species that must evolve ... and that sometimes requires ruthlessness - in thinking or action ...
Michael, The problem with using evolution as a defense of the Randian philosophy is that it totally ignores the evolution of society until the creation of wealth became possible through the discovery of agriculture. In a hunter gatherer society altruism was the norm, there was no way for a single individual to survive apart from the group because there was no way to hoard the necessities of survival. There is joy in altruism because it is an evolutionary necessity. Hoarding is, and should be regarded as evil because that is our original evolutionary imperative.
Michael, there even is a theory in biology called bounded ratioalism which tries to explain altruism in biology. It makes the same argument as the 1986 Quarterly Journal of Economics article someone always have an information edge. An example is a man raising the child of his wife. Except the wife knows she was unfaithful that time... Anyway, in biology, there are lots of behaviour which counter your appeal to evolution (as you understand it).
Breathtaking ignorance and deception is displayed prominently in this article: "A quick example: one of Rand's most ardent students, Alan Greenspan, who headed the Federal Reserve for years and said that all his economic knowledge - all of it - came from Rand, is now regarded as one of the major miscreants of the current worldwide economic malaise." Simply not true. Greenspan was repudiated by the Objectivist community when he abandoned the principles of individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism. How can a man who takes a position as the head of the Federal Reserve, an institution whose stated goal is to dictate the parameters of the US money supply- be said to advocate laissez-faire capitalism? Or simply google Greenspan and Objectivism and try to find some evidence that Greenspan followed *any* of Rand's principles when he presided over this government-induced meltdown. Exhibit B: "'A rude and cynical class consciousness intrudes on all these thoughts, of course, and Rand demonstrates this by soaking any working-class people in her novels with a generalised blame rooted variously in inattentiveness, laziness, doltish attitudes and, above all, envy." How dumb exactly to you take your readers to be? Pick up any Rand novel and you will find moral and immoral characters of all classes. Many of the characters she portrays as pinnacle of evil are upper-class wastrels, while many of her most honest and moral characters are working-class. Just another example of an intellect that cannot come close to matching the likes of Ayn Rand, and thus finds it necessary to desperately smear her with populist rhetoric and blatant lies.
Objectivist community? Isn't that an oxymoron, like enlightened self-interest?
I think Whittaker Chambers said it best in his 1957 review: From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"
If the supreme moral value of objectivism is selfishness, then maybe Alan Greenspan was merely being selfish, acting in his own best interests, when he took up the position of head of the Federal Reserve? Why should he care then what the Federal Reserve is or does, so long as it pays well?
If the free market and free enterprise are dead then does this also mean the end of individual freedom? And can we now look forward to the birth of enlightened politicians and the all powerful state to guide us towards the promised land? I'm sure this ideology was popular back in the 1930s? However it appears to have died and then been resurrected! I hope this second coming is at least slightly more convincing than the first!
Dagny Taggart couldn't be "assertive and thoughtful"? Yeah, just like Romeo couldn't be romantic and Faust couldn't make a bad deal. And this isn't where the absurdity ends. Where does professor Housman get off painting Rand as some sort of elitist and himself as a friend of the common man, while saying that "thoughtful readers" would feel "profound abject embarrassment" at something that, in fact, millions of people find inspiring (whether, in the end, they agree with Rand or not). Is there any way to take this other than as an assertion that Housman himself and the cloistered intellectuals who read the THE and snicker at Rand are thoughtful, whereas her large popular readership is comprised of fools. That's "rude class consciousness" if I ever saw it. If the THE wants a critical article on Rand, surely they can do better than this collection of arguments from intimidation and gross misrepresentations. Professor Houseman may have "waded through" all Rand's works, but he evidently did stop to read them, and certainly not to think about them. How exactly In addition to such patently false claims, this article contains nothing but arguments from intimidation (such as assertions about what "any thoughtful person" would find embarassing)
Is the speed of light an impractical fantasy or failed objective because we cannot attain its velocity with our current vehicles? So it must similarly seem to some that the objective world is asymptotically elusive to humans fraught with the realities of emotions, distractions, and other callow behavioral shortcomings. For our frailties the reality of objectivity is a fantasy? For our frailties we should not endeavor to set our philosophical compasses upon objectivity, but in resignation distance ourselves from it and speciously fulfill our prophecy of its illusiveness? Giving up is easier than effort, and certainly puts one amongst in the far more populated, familiar, commiserative camp of misery shared. The difficulty of the journey is more self imposed than most are willing to or have the character to admit, and such difficulty ensures that only the few will traverse the uncharted terrain and attain what reward awaits. "information deficit"? The more directly vested of an undertaking without a financial safety net (government intervention/intrusion with funds confiscated from citizens, or euphemistically, collected through taxation) the less likely a transaction will transpire haphazardly or unaccountably without sufficient information. Toyota would not continue to source parts from a supplier if the supplier changed the terms of a contract that materially altered the specifications of the delivered parts in such a way that compromised the intended and expected functionality agreed upon. This example, and millions of contracts like it, is the fabric of all transactions between participating parties whereby providing such disclosure as necessary benefits the establishment of their mutual agreements. In this example both each Toyota and the supplier win if the parts expected are exchanged for the monies agreed upon. Consider if “information deficit” had occurred in the establishment of the contract whereby Toyota overpaid for the parts. Perhaps multiple competitors bids were not considered and consequently Toyota finds itself to be less profitable than a competing auto manufacturer. Toyota could seek to renegotiate the terms with its supplier in order to regain its competitive edge. Perhaps the negotiator for Toyota will be demoted, or perhaps a renewed contract would include compensation for the earlier agreement. Toyota could abandon the contract altogether if it could not survive financially, which in turn would adversely affect the supplier - so the supplier would probably exercise discretion at the outset as well. A successful Toyota would otherwise provide a testimonial for the parts supplier’s portfolio of credibility by which it could attract other auto manufacturers. The success or failure of such transactions and indeed whole market processes is rooted in the degrees of participants’ development, rationality, fluidity, ability, effort, and voluntary associations and adequate information disclosure. The merits of a free market do not require technically complex philosophical constructs to grasp, and are easily corroborated empirically by familiar examples, such as the correlation between market freedom and market achievement when comparing America to the Soviet union in the 20th century.
My apologies: I didn't intend to post the last few lines of my comment above, which mostly repeat what I said earlier. I meant the comment to end on the word "misrepresentations."
Like commentator Scott Hampton, I find this article to be useless because the author exhibits neither an understanding of Rand's philosophy nor her literary methods. There is no point in attempting to refute what is written. Those that wish to dismiss Rand without the need to first comprehend he message will find solace in these words. Others with active minds, who do not settle for being told what or how to think, should turn to he fiction and non-fiction works and judge for yourself whether Mr. Houseman is attacking an accurate or an inaccurate picture of Rand's ideas and observations. Regards, -- C. Jeffery Small go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/
I am another like Mr. Hampton and Mr. Small. There is no need to refute this pile of bluster and squeak. To the author...If Rand's thought and her books were even 20% as horrible as you've mistakenly asserted, how do you explain not just the vibrant sales but also the fact that millions of people derive lifelong inspiration and love of life from her books?
First, for whatever it is worth, I am not a defender of Rand or her philosophy. However, this article does more harm than good for those of us interested in resisting a laissez-faire social structure. Why does the above piece do more harm then good? First, a comment on tone. Snickering, while surely providing emotional release for the moment, has no place in reasoned discourse. So, comments like: "...despite their tendency towards over-excitement", "Yes, encouraged!", "...will cause thoughtful readers to experience feelings of profound and abject embarrassment", "don't we all realise that?" " "thinkers" " etc., can be, thankfully, omitted. Second, this piece does not address, at all, Rand's philosophy. The author is content to dip his toe into the lake and then exclaim that it isn't deep. For example, he is happy writing the convenient but blatantly false statement "...And the foremost task of Objectivists is to provide capitalism with a strong intellectual defense." This is wrong. Rand, whether or not she was right or wrong about reason (I think she was wrong), stated clearly that her primary concern was with the efficacy of reason and that her moral and political views followed from that (supposed) efficacy. This author let's Rand's attacks on Plato and Kant stand uncontested. Not once does he challenge Rand's ethical system or the (supposed) connection to her political stance. Arguments are not won this way and while the present majority of intellectuals will (probably) be content to rest on the thumb nosing Dr. Houseman participates in, in the long run this form of engagement hands the "Objectivists" the future on a silver platter. Third, the, what I think was meant to be devestating, economic argument is, simply, horrible. Stiglitz, the author of the 1986 article mentioned above, like practically all economists, relies on a definition of "efficient" markets that has nothing to do with the way markets work. The entire notion of "perfect competition" has nothing to do with real markets. "Perfect competition" assumes a market where each actor possesses perfect information. I hope that the reason this model makes no sense is self-explanatory. I am flabbergasted at the extent to which the academic economists have developed their theories on a host of rotten assumptions. But I digress. If Houseman is genuinely interested in keeping back the forces of capitalism (which I adamantly am), then perhaps he should spend time offering substantive criticism of Rand's work -- not slogans he takes to be her work -- and the Objectivist literature that is now emerging in academic journals. I'd suggest Dr. Tara Smith's (University of Texas) work as a first target.
@John Donohue: I think that the article's implicit answer to your question is this: the stupidity of reading (or quasi-reading) public.
I suppose we can also infer from the exorbitant sales and consumer satisfaction of the Twinkie that Twinkies are good things to eat.
Very poorly done, Gerald. Have you really come to this, a poor propagandist for statism? Gerald wrote: > One of the great minds we meet in Atlas Shrugged is a CEO type who builds a coast-to-coast railroad across America without any government help, even though no such person has ever existed. Ever heard of James Hill? He was her explicit model for Nat Taggart, and her explicit inspiration for Dagny Taggart -- as, to a lesser extent, was Cornelius Vanderbilt. Gerald wrote: > The privatising and non-regulatory <em>[sic]</em> urges pervading the US Government since the beginning of the century (and particularly since the 1980s) Please. Statistically speaking, the size of bureaucracy, in terms of sheer civilian manpower, increased dramatically under Ronald Reagan, so that by the time he was finished, there were well over 200,000 <em>more</em> government workers than in 1980, when he took office. In fact, the size of government under Ronald Reagan grew astronomically in virtually every way. To wit (continued in the next comment):
(continued from previous comment) At the end of the first quarter of 1988, government spending had increased to 28.7 percent of the national income (“national income” refers to the private money generated by the hard-working citizens of this country). To put that into better perspective, this figure is even higher than Jimmy Carter’s outrageous numbers: in his final year as president, Carter maxed out at staggering 27.9 percent. Indeed, both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter cut government spending far more efficiently than Ronald Reagan. Here are some of those numbers, which don’t lie: Under Reagan, Social Security spending went from 179 billion in 1981 to 269 billion. Farm programs skyrocketed: 21 billion to 51 billion. Medicare jumped from 43 billion in 1981 to 80 billion in 1987. During the Reagan era, federal entitlements alone rose from 197 billion to 477 billion. Reagan promised the people that he would “abolish” the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He did no such thing. On the contrary, these budgets more than doubled under Reagan. In his own words: “We’re not attempting to cut either spending or taxing levels below that which we presently have.” In addition to not cutting, however, Reagan also upped the spending a few notches, thus: the Gross Federal Debt went from 900 billion to 2.7 trillion. Ford and Carter simply doubled it; Reagan tripled it. Spending habits (which are a better gauge of government size than are taxes) increased under Reagan’s leadership in almost every way. But in any case, Reagan hardly cut taxes: by the end of 1987, government revenues, a good indicator of taxes and tax cuts, were nearly identical to those of Carter. Reagan’s Economic Recovery Act, so-called, was negated a year or two later by his Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA). He furthermore placed a five-cent-per-gallon tax on gas. He hiked up taxes on the trucking industry. He succeeded in increasing the Social Security tax – to the tune of 165 billion. In terms of foreign trade, Reagan was the most mercantilistic since Herbert Hoover: import restriction doubled under Reagan, and quotas were placed on countless products. Foreign aid went from 10 billion to 22 billion. Reagan also supported seatbelt laws and federal airbag laws. Reagan increased regulation of the auto industry by not opposing that monstrous thing known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ). (continued)
(continued from the previous comment) In the final analysis, Reagan, like all the other bureaucrats, was just another interventionist. Obviously, it's too late for Gerald, but I say this to all thinking readers out there: don’t be fooled. In the last 12 years alone, 51,000 NEW regulations have been added to American law. And yet, according to Gerald (and Alan Greenspan), it is "free markets" that have failed. What free market? Woodrow Wilson was a free marketer? Obviously not. Herbert Hoover? Right. FDR? Don't make me laugh. "Banking, housing, and insurance are the most regulated areas of the economy. They are strangled by regulations." (Journal of American Law, January 2009). To say that neither the state-protected Federal Reserve, nor the artificial adjustment of interest rates, nor corporate welfare, nor the bankrupt social security system, nor income tax, nor rule by lobby groups, nor the carte-blanche printing of fiat money are responsible for our current economic crises but the free market is is worse than wrongheaded: it's a kind of lunacy. Gerald wrote: > [The 80's] brought many of us to the very end of our patience and to a finale for our faith in the capitalist system, or in the wealthy, or in those captains of industry - and especially of finance - in whose hands we are supposed to place our lives and hopes. A quick example: one of Rand's most ardent students, Alan Greenspan, who headed the Federal Reserve for years and said that all his economic knowledge - all of it - came from Rand, is now regarded as one of the major miscreants of the current worldwide economic malaise. It is a matter of historical fact that Alan Greenspand repudiated Ayn Rand, both formally and in deed, beginning in about 1970. Quoting from Greenspan's autobiography: "As contradictions inherent in my new notions began to emerge, the fervor [for Objectivism] receded." In 1995 Greenspan wrote that "[centralized banking is a necessity because] only a central bank, with unlimited power to create money can guarantee that such a process ['a cascading sequence of defaults'] will be thwarted before it becomes destructive." Ayn Rand, of course, anathematized any and all forms of centralized banking, including the inflation-generating Federal Reserve. It's worth noting also that "a cascading sequence of defaults" is precisely what we've just seen happen, any yet as we now know, it was <em>caused</em> by centralized banking. Fact: Alan Greenspan dramatically extended the confiscatory power of social security, whereas Ayn Rand vehemently opposed social security -- on principle -- in any form, and she repeatedly called for its abolition. Fact: Alan Greenspan gave Hillary Clinton a standing ovation when she called for socialized medicine. And yet Alan Greenspan is now blaming his own failures as head of the Federal Reserve for "inherent problems with free markets," which free markets, however, as I've touched upon above, we've not seen in this country for well over 100 years. Gerald is swallowing it all hook, line, and sinker. The truth is that Greenspan ("the maestro") and his dream-team staff, couldn't figure out how to run the economy, and it was the Fed's expansion of the money supply (1% interest rates!) that created the bubbles. So interventionism has failed, as it always does. Can anyone seriously say, 'an even smarter version of Greenspan will get it right this time'? (continued)
(continued from the previous comment) At the end of 2007, the last full year for which data are available, the Federal Register contained fully seventy-three thousand pages of detailed government regulations. This is an increase of more than ten thousand pages since 1978. There are also fifteen federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, commerce, and so on. Government spending in the United States currently equals more than forty percent of national income, i.e., the sum of all wages and salaries and profits and interest earned in the country. This is without counting any of the massive off-budget spending such as that on account of the government enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nor does it count any of the recent spending on assorted "bailouts." What this means is that substantially more than forty dollars of every one hundred dollars of output are appropriated by the government against the will of the individual citizens who produce that output. Anyone who can call that kind of government a "non-regulated" government, as Gerald would phrase it, is out of his mind. Gerald wrote: > So why, we should ask, had ideas and approaches similar to Objectivism not been thought out, or carried out, before Rand came along? They have. Ever heard of Thomas Aquinas, whose metaphysics and epistemology Ayn Rand was an explicit admirer of, who first offered the "three reasons private property is necessary to human life" (first, "because every man is more careful to procure what is for himself alone than that which is common to all" <em>Summa Theologica,</em> IIa, IIae, 66), and who in this regard represents a great advance over his (and Ayn Rand's) teacher Aristotle? Ever heard of Thomas Aquinas who because his, as you say, "approach was carried out" singlehandedly brought the world out of the dark ages? Ever heard of Bartolome de Las Casas and the other Spanish Scholastics, who were the first people to give a systematized formulation of individual rights? How about Baruch Spinoza, whose metaphysics and ethics Ayn Rand explicitly admired? How about the French Physiocrats? John Locke? Herbert Spencer? Nietszche? Frederich Bastiat? The framers of the United States Constitution? Carl Menger? J Aflred Nock? Ludwig von Mises? Ernest Bramah? Garet Garet? Yes? You've heard of them? No? Gerald wrote: > This is more than a question of timing or bad luck, however; for there is an even bigger snag, a bigger poison in the pudding, which destroys any so-called philosophy invented by Rand. Ayn Rand did not invent capitalism. The word was coined by Karl Marx, but he didn't invent it either. In fact, the free markets have existed since the dawn of humankind -- wherever (and whenever) humans were and are left free. Gerald wrote: > An article in a 1986 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, although it remains too often ignored Ignored! Don't be absurd. You people are constantly trotting that dinosaur of an article out, despite the fact that it's been bunked a billion times. Gerald wrote: > [That dated article] leaves no hope whatever for the many defenders and apologists for the allegedly "free" market. You're incorrect. In any case, though, if you really believe that, why would you complain about that "non-regulation" and the free market destroyed your faith in capitalism, since your Stiglitz article "proves" that free markets cannot exist? Which is it, Gerald? You can't have it both ways. The truth is, there never was an invisible hand, as Ayn Rand said many times, as did everyone else, from Menger to von Mises. Ayn Rand was no fan of Adam Smith, and you beclown yourself still more in suggesting that she was. There's no invisible hand; there's only supply and demand, and the awesome logic of Say's law. Gerald wrote: > all the bargains taking place in a market system are characterised by an information deficit on one side or the other. This gap reflects an information advantage that one side invariably holds over the other in any deal so that there are, in fact, no truly equitable financial agreements to be had. And it is because of this absence of equity that free enterprise can achieve only what can be regarded as a mythic status. You are in error: capitalism[dot]net[forward slash]excerpts [forward slash]1[dash] 931089[dash]06[dash]X[dot]pdf It's called the flaw of pure knowledge and perfect competition -- also known as Platonic competition. You see, Gerald, the free market it is what happens naturally among humans when humans are left free. If, for example, you want tobacco that I'm willing to sell you, and if you're (therefore) willing to pay the price that I'm asking for it -- regardless of how much information you possess which I don't, and vice-versa -- and we then engage in a free-market exchange, we have just upheld the free-market system. It's that simple. In fact, it's not nearly as complicated as you and Stiglitz make it out to be, and that is your basic error.
Ray Harver: "the free market it is what happens naturally among humans when humans are left free." Dead wrong! Most humans, psychopaths not counted, have a sense of justice that can be cultivated. You see, where Randians might see a drowning child as a great business opportunity ("you want help? Then pay up!") regular folks see a human in need and act to help.
Joan, neither rand nor anyone else I know of suggested asking drowning children for money before saving them. She wrote on the issue of help to strangers in such situations, in her article 'The Ethics of Emergencies" (in the Virtue of Selfishness). That piece discusses, among other things, the value to one of other people, including strangers, and the differences between cases like that of a drowning child and other sorts of cases (like that of people starving in the third world) that are often likened to it.
One thing is sure is that Randies are verbose.
One thing is sure is that Randies are verbose.
Fun story: Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, gave an insufferable lecture sponsored by the Objectivist society at the University of Chicago in 2008. Aside from all the usual Randian rot, he made this insane argument that *too much* federal regulation had caused the financial crisis. He had three non-causally associated graphs to prove it (they all went up!). I, a lowly undergraduate, pointed out that unless he had eliminated a sufficient number of other possible explanations for the correlation, his causal claim had no force. Brook retorted by insisting that a logical connection must be made in support of a causal claim. I agreed, and pointed again that while the logical quality of his claim meant that his explanation might be true in some possible world, his inability to exclude other explanations meant there was no reason to think it true in this world. Anyways, this story is meant to show that even the best and brightest of the Objectivists simply can't think straight.
I can't claim to have read all her work - The Fountainhead was more than enough to convince me that there was no need to go further. The abuse and accusations of ignorance her acolytes always seem ready to dish out to anyone offering the slightest suggestion that St Ayn may actually have been mistaken, always reinforces my feeling I was right.
Ayn Rand - NO ONE CARES. Most acolytes get hooked as teenagers and can't shake the idiocy. Most readers figure out that her work is tripe and move on. This is a waste of ether.
Objectivism is a religion. All religions aspire to a utopian world of some kind, and to a particular code of behavior deem acceptable. To the objectivist a utopian world is not a happy one, where humans live in peace and harmony. No, that is not what they would call utopian. Randroids fantasize about a cruel world of extreme Social Darwinism. They do not believe that the free market will benefit all, as Adam Smith believed. They do understand perfectly well that free market policies will benefit only the rich. The rich, they believe, are morally superior. The moral worth of a person is determined by wealth. Moral superiority gives an individual the right to lie, steal, cheat, even kill. Killing in the name of objectivist ideology is not murder, but a duty. This is evident in Rand’s view of the Native Americans. She explicitly stated that the extermination of the native peoples was the duty of European men, since the natives had no concept of private property, unless of course the natives were converted to capitalism. So Randroids understand that their ideology does not lead to a happy world, but a happy world is not what they want. They seek to exterminate those not fit to live in extreme capitalist world. It is free market jihadism. It has a natural appeal to narcissists. Usually Randroids are devoid of any talent, yet their inflated sense of self worth leads them to seek mythologies suited to their delusions. I think they just recent and hate the world for their obvious lack of talent.
It more and more happens now that people talk in general terms about a subject that actually lacks the properties that these general terms are supposed to describe. Capitalism, private enterprise, profit are things of the past. The "captains of industry" are not private owners, they are appointed bureaucrats. It's completely ridiculous to blame the current failure of the "economy" on "extreme capitalism". Only unthinking, brainwashed "activists" can propagate the myth of greedy capitalist corporations making huge profits. They don't make any profits, for a couple of decades now. In this period, they survived on fraud: 1) Dividends (i.e. yearly profit per investment) dropped to less than 1%. 2) Instead of giving shareholders their yearly profit, corporations spread the myth of the growing value of shares. This was a deceit that forced people to keep money in banks. 3) Practically all huge pension and insurance funds were invested in shares. People had no idea where their money were. 3) About a year ago, most of the money belonging to the public (not just to those who willingly bought shares) were spent or stolen. 4) At this point, it became no longer possible to maintain the myth of the growing value of shares. The "capitalists" began frantically sell any shares they owned and divide the remaining funds among the small number of insiders in the form of "bonuses". This last act of the "captains of industry" should have shown the public that "economy" has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism: capitalists would not steal their own money, would they? But, the population cannot wake up and drop that saga of the greedy capitalist.
In response to Pyshnov, our current system is as much capitalistic as Stalinist Russia was communist. Our system might not be the original ideal of capitalism, like Stalin was not what Karl Marx had in mind. But both are the inevitable end result of a faulty ideology. Capitalism leads inevitably to corruption, even if you had good intentions to begin with. It is human nature, and that nature was beyond the understanding of Ayn Rand, supporters of capitalism, and communism. So yes, I do believe we can blame capitalist ideology for our current mess. It is what happens when people in a system are driven by the profit motive.
Walter, I completely disagree. There exists one criterion by which we can judge the systems: whether the owners are running, managing the business or the managers are not the owners. This criterion stems from the core difference between capitalism and socialism (communism never existed, thanks God). This difference was the only proposition that was spelled out in Communist Manifesto, the proposition of how a capitalist system can become a socialist system: private citizens should not be allowed to own means of production. If this is fulfilled, understandably, someone else, not the owner, has to run business. And we see that in both cases, in Soviet Russia and, today in the West, the business was/is run by SALARIED EMPLOYEES, NOT BY THE OWNERS. In Russia, business (i.e. means of production) belonged to "all people"; in the West today, and actually starting from the moment a company stock becomes publicly traded, the business belongs to "all the people" likewise. There were concrete steps to be studied by which the West became a socialist system. This process began early in the 20-th century, however, the turning point was adoption by the US of the state laws (mainly related to taxation) proposed by K. Galbraith in his "The Affluent Society". Since then, people who run big business, are people who have no interest in its profitability, but only in its growth and, therefore, in the growth in their salaries (bonuses, etc.) and their personal status. These people, as a rule, would not be able to make this kind of money if the business were strictly their own - they are parasites who thrive on public money. The big business itself, thrives on that same source - public purse that was made available to it by the crooked taxation laws. Note here, please, that what it means is this: unelected scum has the right to REDISTRIBUTE public money and national wealth (since they use taxes). From this point you can yourself draw all the ramifications: to the current economic collapse, globalisation, new world order and to the thousands of small things in life, all of which you probably hate, but wrongly attribute to "capitalism". This system, by the way is promoted by commies, for several decades now working hand in hand with the corporations (developing that gentler and kindlier corporate citizen and chanting the Global Village song). Please, see reference to the work that described the earlier stage of this system: Adolf A. Berle, Power Without Property, 1959. Moreover, Berle, an economist, started wondering about the socialism replacing capitalism in the '20s. The new "change" happened around 1990, when Russia became a free country but the West decided to openly impose communist way of life; the poles shifted. But this is another story.
Before you say that I am exaggerating with "..the West decided to openly impose communist way of life..", see this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/oct/28/parents-playground-children
I think our disagreement is more on semantics than substance. I could not agree more. Our modern captains of industry really don’t produce anything. Our best and brightest spend their lives chanting arcane economic jargon in order to create complex financial instruments, rather than new technologies, science, or even the arts. They are useless parasites, as you called them, constantly finding ways to justify their existence and enlarge their pockets. However, I believe this to be the inevitable outcome of capitalism. Capitalism teaches to value personal profit above all else. Capitalism is not a validation of greed or self interest, which I agree with, we can all act selfish. Capitalism is the WORSHIP of greed and self interest ABOVE all else, and often at the expense of everything else. Is this psychological mindset that drives capitalism. It is not about efficiency, or even practicality. It is about out running your opposition, to maximize your profit as the main priority for existence. A form of natural selection Vis-à-vis the invisible hand. It is the rules of the game that encourages the misbehavior found in our system. Think about it this way; it is not the purpose of evolution to create winged creatures; its purpose is to survive by all possible means (this is a gross oversimplification). Survival means the selection of those better adapted, and this process of selection produces winged creatures, even though they were not directly intended. Capitalism does the same thing, it selects in favor of those who increase their profit, it selects against everybody else. Making profit is the point, even if that means cheating, lying, or changing the rules of the game to suit you situation. Therefore what we have today is the logical conclusion of the capitalist game. Systems are never static, they change, and this is what capitalism changes into given enough time. Anyway, this enough for this civil discussion, it was a pleasure.
in the words of 'Stump' 'Big Bottoms. Swing, big bottoms. Boppa lu la
The link leads to an article regarding child supervision in a playground. I am not a communist, but blaming communism for the current collapse makes as much sense as blaming environmentalist for climate change. It is hard to have a serious discussion, such a statement is not even wrong.
Unfortunately the title 'Triumph of the Will' was already taken by a more creative woman. Rand will always appeal to a certain mentality - usually male students disdainful of 'feminine emotionalism' - because the appeal to utter selfishness always appeals. The whole of human and prehuman history leads in the opposite direction. Amoeba-eat-amoeba is as old as it gets but those amoebae that joined up to work together for mutual benefit are the ones that got somewhere. Hers is a circular world where obviously the Superior People are held back by their inferiors whose evil parasitic designs reject the only values that matter to Superior People in order to exploit them. Her sex has certainly made a difference by playing on feministic claims that women are not supposed to be so hard-headed - see, she can out-macho the men. Had a man written her witless parables fuller of straw men than "Pilgrim's Progress", he would have been open to far more charge of promoting one single 'macho' view to the exclusion of all other human (or even animal) values represented more by women. Because she was female, women are reluctant to challenge her primitive view of society for fear of being seen to break the ranks and men for fear of hearing they disagree only because she was female and would accept a man saying the same. In the end, she gives a message a lot of people want to hear: you are a superior being, nobody else matters, if you have problems they are all somebody else's fault. 'Mein Kampf' said much the same.
Apparently, a political scientist is here to tell us that Joe Stiglitz killed Adam Smith, Hayek, Mises, Rand, and basically the entire theoretical basis of capitalism with an article in a professional journal in the mid-1980's. And who says the economics profession is increasingly esoteric?! Houseman, there's no shortage of hacks on the internet--stay in the academy, where this kind of thing is at least frowned upon on purely interdisciplinary grounds. **Also, thanks for digging up the bit about Greenspan--had literally NEVER HEARD THAT BEFORE.**