Ayn Rand's Gospel of Selfishness and Billionaire Empowerment is Plaguing America

[Makalakumu]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/ayn-rands-gospel-selfishness-and-billionaire-empowerment-plaguing-america?page=0%2C0

The United States and other independent governments around the world are crumbling while Ayn Rand’s billionaires are taking over.

February 7, 2013  |  

 

 

Thirty years after her death, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness and billionaire empowerment rules the world. It’s a remarkable achievement for an ideology that was pushed to the fringes for most of her life, and ridiculed on national television in a notorious interview with Mike Wallace.

But, it’s happened. And today, the United States and other independent governments around the world are crumbling while Ayn Rand’s billionaires are taking over.

It's very obvious to me that the authors haven't read the book.

She divided the world into makers and takers (or what she called “looters”).

On one side are the billionaires and the industrialists. People like Dagny Taggert, a railroad tycoon, and Hank Rearden, a steel magnate. Both were fictional characters in her book Atlas Shrugged, but both have real-world counterparts in the form of the Koch Brothers, the Waltons, and Sheldon Adelson. According to Rand, they are the “Atlases” holding up the world.

So, in Atlas Shrugged, when the billionaires, tired of paying taxes and complying with government regulation, go on strike, Ayn Rand writes that the American economy promptly collapsed.

On the other side are the “looters,” or everyone else who isn’t as rich or privileged, or who believed in a democratic government to provide basic services, empower labor unions, and regulate the economy. They are the leeches on society according to Rand (and according to Mitt Romney with his 47% comments). And, as she told Mike Wallace in in 1959, they do not even “deserve love.”

If the authors had read the book, they would have discovered that Ayn Rand spits most of her criticism at a class of billionaires that use the power of government to crush their competition and line their pockets.  I've never understood why Liberals constantly ignore this...

Or maybe they do understand it...

Or she may have come to understand that corporations and billionaires owe their wealth to the state and not the other way around. Without favorable patent and copyright laws, a court system, an educated workforce, and an infrastructure to move goods about the country, then no one would be able to get rich in America.

So, Mr. Thom Hartmann, are you saying that without super rich patent trolling lawyers that squash innovations that would create competition and new wealth, without a court system that is regulated and tilted toward the rich where justice is determined by how much money you have to spend, without a dumbed down and indoctrinated populace that is cowed to lick the boots of their masters, without infrastructure projects that create a monopoly for auto and oil companies, no one would get rich in America?

Mr. Hartmann, read the damn book next time.

[Arius]

So, Mr. Thom Hartmann, are you saying that without super rich patent trolling lawyers that squash innovations that would create competition and new wealth, without a court system that is regulated and tilted toward the rich where justice is determined by how much money you have to spend, without a dumbed down and indoctrinated populace that is cowed to lick the boots of their masters, without infrastructure projects that create a monopoly for auto and oil companies, no one would get rich in America?

In all fairness, before there was an aggressive intellectual property lobby, public eduction, and a plutocratic justice system, there were no billionaires.  Though that could just be a coincidence.

Of course, as the legal infrastructure which maintains social inequality has grown, more and more billionaires have emerged.  Realistically, most modern wealthy people lean on the state for support.

There are far too few Howard Roarks in society.

[tasmlab]

Alternet in particular just loves to have Ayn Rand as their boogieman, constantly ignoring (as you identified) that all of the villians were rich people abusing the state.  There was no bad guys who were poor in the book except for the town/group of factory workers who scared off all of their higher performing colleagues.

This group has made up their own version of Ayn Rand's story.

I'm not sure why they pick her in particular for their boogieman.  They could twist Rothbard or Mises or Hayek or Milton Friedman, or even Ronald Reagan.  Or beat up on Ron Paul since he is still alive.

It's probably because of the romanticism she brought and that she claimed the free markets and mighty capitalist virtuous instead of political rich people who sort of excuse their riches as a shame.

As an aside, Alternet is one of the nastiest places on the Internet.  The commentors there all try to shut down any curious conversation, are often rude, their smug, and have terrible ideas.  

Oddly, most of the commentors at Reason.com are just the same.

[nathanm]

I'm not sure why they pick her in particular for their boogieman.  They
could twist Rothbard or Mises or Hayek or Milton Friedman, or even
Ronald Reagan.  Or beat up on Ron Paul since he is still alive.

I
think because Rand wrote a fictional story set in a realistic world
with very heavy ideas. She gave it enough fiction to get people to read
it, and enough philosophy to make people grumpy about it.  Those other
guys wrote academic books with only ideas (I know, not Reagan), so they aren't going to catch the popular imagination nearly as much.  What? No super slow-mo ninja with superpowers?  Take your kooky anarchy ideas elsewhere, buddy!

[LFReasons]

 I blame bad epistemology. It's hard to blame those that knowingly use fallacies to garner support for what they want when it's so ridiculously easy to do so. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people don't know how to think. They think they do, but all they're really doing is snatching at whatever random associations arise from words that they have been programmed into reacting to without thought. I got taken in by it too, and I'd guess it was the same for many of you, but once I gained a basic competence in logic, most of the illusions that had been pounded into me sloughed away quite painlessly and rapidly.