Posted on 03/16/2009 6:21:45 AM PDT by shove_it
Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.
There's a reason. In "Atlas," Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?
The novel's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. "If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society," Rand wrote elsewhere in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," "you can predict its course." Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society -- particularly its dominant moral ideas.
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I’m sorry for not being too specific, Rand used men like sex toys and was an atheist.
Just bought it for the wife last week.
“ass clown?”
You choose to be a slave. So be it! I forgive and pray for you.
Rand was right but she was sick. A disease is never your friend!
Everyone, occasionally makes a stupid remark born of ignorance. I hope my fellow freepers will forgive you as I am trying to.
She's topical right now, and the book contains some good ideas and arguments against totalitarianism and collectivism.
But a writer she is not! She reminds me in a vague way of Marion Zimmer Bradley, a dreadful sci-fi/fantasy writer who insisted on stopping the action for 10-15 pages in every chapter while she used her cardboard cutout characters as a soapbox. Same as with Rand, I read Bradley on a friend's recommendation. Friend is an electrical engineer/IT person which is probably why she didn't notice the awful style.
I happen to disagree with Bradley's ideas (she was a radical and probably lesbian feminist) and agree with (most of) Rand's, but that makes absolutely no difference on the separate fact that neither of them could write their way out of a paper bag.
She portrays business leaders as heros, creative doers. But that's not always the case. That's the problem. In fact, my impression of the culture of most large corporations, based on first hand experience, is that they are no better than gubmint.
The C-level executives are just overpaid bureaucrats. Unless they are the founder of the company, they didn't create anything. Just like with gubmint, they are playing with someone else's money. And just like with gubmint, they lie and steal.
You're average C level exec comes in, rewrites the mission statement, the vision statement, etc. Stays holed up in his office with the lawyers and the accountants, and leaves after a few years, well paid, and someone else gets to deal with whatever mess he left behind.
And down the ranks, it's also quite like gubmint. VP level execs, and directors, are all motivated to expand their budget. Just like in gubmint, they have to make sure they spend every dime of last year's budget, often times just blowing it at the end of the fiscal year, so they make sure they get the same budget, or bigger, next year. They build little fiefdoms, try to take on new employees, not because they need them, not because it helps the company, but because it helps them accrue power and get to sit on on all the big meetings and feel special.
In short, the problem is a human problem, and business is far from immune. In my view, the only businesses that you can really hope to trust at all are the small businesses, where there isn't so much political BS. Where they are spending their own money, not shareholder money, and where the leaders of the company actually care about their core business, and aren't merely raping a company for a few years and then moving on.
Corporate culture, in the main, is sick. The only reason they are competitive at all is because all the other corporations suffer from the same disease. I saw it myself in many places, in various industries. And that's why Rand's idealistic notion of The Businessman is fatally flawed.
A morally dead fiction writer, the new “leader”.
So you knew her personally? And her husband? And of course, you've read the book?
I have read Rand. “Atlas” is a horrible book with an important message.
She wasn’t a conservative. She was a nut with a conservative message.
In the 1950s, Ayn Rand began to codify and publish her philosophy. She began a long affair when she was 50 with a 25-year-old student of her ideas, Nathaniel Branden. Until he left her in 1968 for another woman, and she threw him out, Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden carried out their affair with the knowledge of both their spouses.
Off the subject and pointless.
“Off the subject and pointless.”
I’m sorry
I don’t know if you’ve read any of her work; and while I too don’t sign on to her atheism, her political and economic philosophies (still) show a great deal of prescience.
Truth is truth - no matter the source - or how flawed that individual might otherwise be.
I’ve read AS 4-5 times (most recently in January in anticipation of the new regime), and find it gets better with age.
I gave everyone I know a copy of it for Christmas. IMHO it’s required reading for the entire populace. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in it (there is a place for *voluntary* altruism, IMHO, for instance) but it made me think harder than any book I’d ever read and drastically altered my view of the world.
LQ
I’d be interested to hear your rationale for the statement that her “Objectivism” goes to far. I don’t see how this is possible since it’s based on reason and logic.
I'm going to put you down as a Rand Detractor.
ML/NJ
I read “Atlas Shrugged”. It is a poorly written book. It is three times as long as necessary. The message is important, but Hemingway would have done a better job. I love Ernie,
I’ve been looking for that same story for some time. If you find it, ping me please.
I had it in my head that it was a Kurt Vonnegut short story.
Why do you say it was hard to read? I thought that it was brilliant, and the current weekly thread on the FR.com book club provides evidence of that.
Where does the man hater charge come from? She was married and there was a movie about her affair with one of her most ardent supporters.
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