Capitalist Heroes (Ayn Rand Remembered)

Wall Street Journal ^ | 10 October 2007 | DAVID KELLEY

[shrinkermd]

Businessmen are favorite villains in popular media, routinely featured as polluters, crooks and murderers in network TV dramas and first-run movies, not to mention novels. Oil company CEOs are hauled before congressional committees whenever fuel prices rise, to be harangued and publicly shamed for the sin of high profits. Genuine cases of wrongdoing like Enron set off witch hunts that drag in prominent achievers like Frank Quattrone and Martha Stewart.

By contrast, the heroes in "Atlas Shrugged" are businessmen -- and women. Rand imbues them with heroic, larger-than-life stature in the Romantic mold, for their courage, integrity and ability to create wealth. They are not the exploiters but the exploited: victims of parasites and predators who want to wrap the producers in regulatory chains and expropriate their wealth.

Rand's perspective is a welcome relief to people who more often see themselves portrayed as the bad guys, and so it is no wonder it has such enthusiastic fans in the upper echelons of business as Ed Snider (Comcast Spectacor, Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers), Fred Smith (Federal Express), John Mackey (Whole Foods), John A. Allison (BB&T), and Kevin O'Connor (DoubleClick) -- not to mention thousands of others who pursue careers at every level in the private sector.

Yet the deeper reasons why the novel has proved so enduringly popular have to do with Rand's moral defense of business and capitalism. Rejecting the centuries-old, and still conventional, piety that production and trade are just "materialistic," she eloquently portrayed the spiritual heart of wealth creation through the lives of the characters now well known to many millions of readers.

[traviskicks]

Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.

[mnehring]

bump

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

“Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world.
All the other social groups- workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers- exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction.
But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship.
Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars.
Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.”

Source: Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal Chapter 3
AYN RAND

[Clemenza]

Innovators, risk takers, and entrepreneurs are the great civillian heroes of American society, not "the working class."

Wal Mart has done more for poor people than the federal government ever has.

[cyborg]

Why did the government work to get rid of the mafia? Because they don’t like competition.

[steve8714]

Where do we put the managerial elite? Not those who build with their sweat and blood, but advance through connivance into the higher echelons of corporate life? The Chuck Knights, the William Stiritz’: the short-term visionaries in green eyeshades of modern American life, or the hedge fund speculators, cunning manipulators of free markets such as Soros? They would be so at home under Fascist systems I cannot even tell you.

[Clemenza]

LOL. Very true.

[Iwo Jima]

I no longer refer to myself as a "capitalist." My defining characteristic -- my "top value" as Ayn Rand would say -- is not money but freedom. Therefore, I am a libertarian.

While I totally agree that capitalism is the only economic system compatible with freedom, I wish to differentiate myself from those people whom you described whose only value seems to be accumulating money. More and more and more money. And they are not too particular about how they go about doing it.

[Rudder]

Ayn was born in February. What’s today’s occasion?

[Dave911]

I have the privilege of working with and for a gentleman truly in the mold of Ayn Rand’s heroes. I can’t tell you how time consuming and utterly maddening it is to constantly have to fight the idiotic bureaucracy we face at every level day in and day out. When I think of the time, effort and dollars we spend dealing with government it just makes me sick. That effort and those dollars could be put to the use of expanding our business and the creation of more private sector jobs.

Atlas Shrugged is a book that will truly change your life and it should be required reading at every public school in America.

[upcountryhorseman]

Do you also believe in open borders and making all drugs
legal for all?

[Earthdweller]

Big O’ Bump!

[teeman8r]

you misinterpret the libertarian ideals of legal immigration with illegal immigration, and making all drugs legal for all is a strawman argument. making possession not a crime and the freedom to ruin ones own life through drugs is an individual choice.

taking the money out of illegal drugs, will end the war on our freedoms.

teeman

[SkiKnee]

Well said!!!

I’ve been telling people for years that there is a difference between legalization and decriminalization. Sometimes they get it, most don’t.

Criminalization of a substance creates criminals where criminals do not exist.

[Iwo Jima]

See my tagline. I do not believe in open borders. Many libertarians think as I do. Open borders is not necessarily derived from the core libertarian principle of non-agression, though many libertarians think that it is.

As to drugs, nobody believes that "all drugs should be legal for all." Minors have no capacity to make such decisions, and selling or giving drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc., to a minor is and should be illegal.

As to consenting adults, I believe in making marijuana legal subject to the same rules as alcohol and cigarettes. I would see how that goes before making other currently illegal drugs legal. I doubt that I would ever want to make meth legal.

I hope that you see the connection between the two subjects that you raised: drugs and borders. If marijuana were legal, that could very well destroy the Mexican drug lords who are sending tons of drugs and dangerous people into this country.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Atlas Shrugged was published 50 years ago today.

I was homeschooled and it was assigned reading for me. Kid sister, also homeschooled, is currently reading it for the first time.

[beavus]

Sort of...

Let’s not forget the businessmen who advocate government takeover of healthcare, supported the National Socialists, recruit the Justice Department against their competitors, lobby for federal subsidies, etc.

It’s not so much one’s occupation as one’s philosophy that is defining.

[monday]

“Where do we put the managerial elite? Not those who build with their sweat and blood, but advance through connivance into the higher echelons of corporate life?”

So you think only manual labor has any value. You think that business leaders got their positions by luck?

The ONLY resource of value in the universe is the human mind. Without it all other resources are worthless. Without knowledge and strategic thinking, all other resources, both labor and material, as well as capital, are wasted, squandered on products no one wants, unsuccessful ventures, and failed enterprises.

Business leaders become wealthy because they are more successful than ordinary people at combining capital, labor, and material to produce wealth. It takes intelligence and skill. Without them we would all still be hunters and gatherers.

[Lurker]

Criminalization of a substance creates criminals where criminals do not exist.

It sure does.

"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

Recognize anything? You should.

L