Atlas: Shrug This!
CNBC financial reporter Rick Santelli famously yells out among the stock traders, "How many of you want to pay your neighbor's mortgage?" This because instead of giving all the money in the federal budget to the people who sold un-payable mortgages or insured them, Obama wants a portion of the budget to go to subsidize the people who paid for the mortgages, paid what they could, anyway. These are mortgages on which Wall Street got rich for the last few years. Well, Mr. Santelli, I have a question for the public: "How many of you want to pay for your neighbor's private jet? How many of you want to pay for your neighbor's Picasso? How many of you want to pay for your neighbor's trip to Dubai? How many of you want to pay for your neighbor to get his son acquitted for a hit-and-run perpetrated while driving your neighbor's Lamborghini on cocaine and Veuve Clicquot? How many of you want to pay your neighbor a half-million-dollar bonus for losing all his bank's assets in the riskiest of investment strategies?"
Sales of copies of Ayn Rand's pile of extra cushion-y bathroom tissue, Atlas Shrugged, are going through the roof? Seriously? It's the roof of a garden shed, but still a roof. Who are the pathetic suckers who are buying this book up? Or is this one of those spikes in sales contrived via bulk purchases negotiated between a think tank and a few organizations sympathetic with the message of that tank. There's an Ayn Rand Institute? How do they spend their work days, sitting in solid gold bath tubs full of chinchilla milk thinking about how worthless poor people are?
Know what Atlas Shrugged is about? It's about the wealthiest people in the USA getting so fed up with paying taxes that they go on strike, refusing to produce the wealth that keeps the ungrateful masses from starving.
Let me just say this, first, on a practical level: I have friends who have started their own farms, their own bars, their own import businesses, their own investment brokerages, friends who can build cars, friends who can fabricate steel, friends who can weld, friends who can live in the wilderness, climb mountains -- friends who've found themselves in the Andes with nothing more than half a sandwich in their pockets and were not worried in the least -- friends who are experts on alternative energy, friends who can build atomic clocks, practice medicine, write contracts, balance books, who have mastered any number of languages, friends who can make an astrolabe out of a coffee can lid a coat hanger and some cabinet hinges -- I'm one hundred percent confident that we can continue civilization without the wealthiest financial wheeler-dealers "creating" wealth. I'm probably the only person I know who would feel helpless for a while. Everyone else I know is tough, adventurous, generous, brilliant, motivated - full of joie- de-vivre and ambition. Leave the Prudential building empty and we'll put it to good use. Stop paying farmers to grow wheat for General Foods and we'll help get that earth growing food. You don't think we can figure out how to keep the electricity grid running? You're actually standing in our way of doing that far more cheaply. Exactly what favors do you think you're doing us? If you stop making Barbie dolls, it would free up a lot of resources for making condoms and fishing lures. Defense? You think we won't be able to defend ourselves? You forget the Revolutionary War my friends. And the Vietnam War, come to think of it. You think suddenly all practical skills and ingenuity will vanish along with your glorious presence? You think no one else is waiting in the wings to get a mining company together? To ship goods? Mathematicians will forget how to do math? Engineers will lose the ability to engineer? No one in your absence can figure out how to capitalize an international corporation?
Please, go right ahead, underestimate the power of human beings to live without you golden gods who inhabit the penthouses of the world. Look, you're not airline pilots. Entrepreneurship is an attitude that motivates a person to acquire skills and knowledge, it isn't a skill in itself. Just about everyone I know is a possible entrepreneur if that's what they turn out to be interested in or see a social need for.
And the premise that these lords of the universe work harder than anyone else is backed by what? I know people who've worked three jobs and are in the can, never made more than thirty thousand a year, and they've been paying for the wealthy to run the economy into the ground.
The only thing us lesser people lack is the sociopathic narcissism to think our presence is what holds society together. The grotesque narcissism that would enable someone to write a book about the wealthiest people in the world, a novel asserting that their wealth is commensurate with their importance to society, a novel asserting they are so necessary that if they ceased their activities the civilized world would grind to a halt - and, most incredible of all, the megalomaniacal narcissism to call that novel Atlas Shrugged. Oh, the weary weary uber-wealthy, the world weighs so heavily on their shoulders. Grotesque, sociopathic, megalomaniacal narcissism, that's the one irreplaceable quality these self-appointed gods of civilization possess.
Atlas Shrugged? Are you for real? Atlas dropped the ball years ago, Atlas never had the ball, Atlas has been sitting on the ball and in fact just took a huge dump on it. Atlas farted. For such an infantile gesture of self-seriousness as that title Ayn Rand should be considered a fool the way Einstein is considered a scientist. Ridicule should be inseparable from her name just as heat is from fire.
What psychologically intact human being can be but outraged and disgusted by the idea that a class of people who squandered a trillion dollar tax cut at the beginning of the Bush administration, to whom we, the US public, surrendered so much of the public weal, who were given trillions of dollars of wealth created by all of us, wealth that could have gone to schools, health care, roads, bridges, capitalization of a new energy infrastructure, trillions we the public sacrificed on the theory that making the rich richer would somehow take care of everything -- this class which brought the nation's economy to its knees, now begrudges helping fund our nation's basic needs. This class is so in love with itself that shame and introspection are simply not in their mental skill sets.
Have you heard of the documentary, "A Day Without A Mexican?" You know why it's not called Atlas Shrugged? Because the people who made it aren't utterly detached from reality. Because doing actual work gives one perspective. Because spending the day going from rooftop to rooftop in a helicopter to chew the fat with other geniuses could lead you to believe you're the glue that holds the entire planet together. People who don't have private islands have a more realistic idea of what they do to contribute to society.
You know why the uber-wealthy don't go on strike? Because they know there are millions of smart, hardworking people ready to take their places. Some, like Warren Buffet, know it and appreciate it. Others, like the Koch family who fund the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, know full well that the public would be entirely justified adopting the stance that they're being ripped off by the US dharma of wealth worship. The Kochs are consciously aware that the public is always this [-] close to discovering they don't need these extra layers of ownership, they don't need the stock market, they don't need to surrender their social concerns to have a healthy economy. That's why the Kochs and Scaifes fund these think tanks that pump out nothing but pro-profit, anti-taxation propaganda.
Unfortunately for those Kochs, we now see that even if we do give up our social concerns we don't get a healthy economy. When there is no incentive for the rich to curb their greed, they'll devour the whole planet. Has there ever been an administration that has given the capitalists and financiers more freedom that the Bush administration? Has there ever been an administration that's given more public resources away to the private sector, and more money to the financial sector? And what's the result? There may in fact be a direct correlation between how much we spoil our capitalists and how much harder the rest of us have to work to keep our heads above water.
Yes, Atlas is spoiled. Atlas is a spoiled brat. There have been many peasant rebellions, there have been plenty of labor strikes, and they often work because labor is necessary to the process of making and moving and trading physical wealth. The wealthy don't go on strike, they screw the rest of us over, that's how they punish us and express their disgust with us. But that's just business as usual for most of them. Spare the guillotine, spoil the Atlas.
There was a joke when I was a kid. A kid would ask, "How come there's Mother's Day and Father's Day but no Children's Day?" And the adults would say in unison, "Every day is Children's Day!"
Atlas whines and cries and poops his pants every day. Atlas is an overpaid whining bitch.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Atlas Shrugged is beside the point. The gall of the idea of any of our self-appointed supermen "going Galt" is the point. They drank the Kool Aid, now they want us to drink their vomit. Ayn Rand was a terrible writer. Those who sing her praises are some of the most compulsive liars, self-aggrandizers and anti-democratic activists in our nation. And I think it's pretty clear where she would come down on the current crisis - very much on the side of greed. She may have understood the difference between greed and merit intellectually, but her ability to discern right from wrong in actual external reality was severely impeded.
A more informed criticism of the recent "Going Galt" trend: http://www
Quite good it is.
I believe Mr. Dorchen has missed the point of Atlas Shrugged, and I think it offers valuable principles to live by in these times. To refute that the book is "about the wealthiest people in the USA getting so fed up with paying taxes that they go on strike, refusing to produce the wealth that keeps the ungrateful masses from starving," I offer the following quote (emphasis mine):
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. *Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.* Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--*made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability*. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced."
I encourage anyone to read this book themselves and form their own opinions.
Wealth is sometimes generated by honest work, Sometimes stolen, sometimes inherited, sometimes leveraged by generational advantage ( rich families getting richer). It is NEVER obtained without the work or support of other people. Try being an architect without customers Mr Roark. Try building your creations without contractors. Try getting paid if contract law wasn't supported by a society paid for by the work of millions of others.
Money is not necessarily made by the efforts of every honest man - ya ever hear about slaves, serfs, sharecroppers - them who owed their soul to the company store. Ever hear about exploitation. There are plenty of people putting in long days with little to show for it while others have bought politicians to change the rules to make it harder for the non elites to survive. I used to teach junior high kids - most of them eventually realized human interdependancy. Too bad Ms Rand and her selfish fans never learned the concept.
Of course you have to cooperate with other people in order to create wealth. Ayn Rand never says that you don't. She's pointing out that no individual has a claim to what another individual produces. When you cooperate with other people properly, you offer them what you think their work is worth, and they accept if they agree with what you've offered. In such a relationship, an individuals' only proper claim is to be paid for this work. Certainly there are dishonest people who enslave and coerce. Ms. Rand has always said that force or coercion of any kind is morally wrong. If you'd like to read the context for the quote about money, you can read it here: http://www
There's also an important difference between wealth and money here. Wealth is ultimately the product of the mind. This could be a chair, a motor, a design for plane, etc. Money is merely an object to facilitate trade.
Who cares about Atlas Shrugged? That's not what the essay's about. It's about the arrogance of the "supermen.
The paragraph you quote is a great example of Rand's lack of understanding of how people get rich. The inventor doesn't get rich. The person who secures the legal right to profit from the invention gets rich. That could be the inventor, or someone getting wealthy AT THE EXPENSE of the inventor.
No one says money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak. Money is made by the greedy at the expense of those with less avaricious values. And the proof is on the front page,
The post is not about Atlas shrugged primarily, but Mr. Dorchen spent a good bit of time smearing the book and also incorrectly associating immoral ideas with it. He associates what you call "supermen" to the Atlases of her novel, which I would disagree with. I posted this to attempt to set some of that right. And in regards to your comment about Ms. Rand not understanding how people get rich, that's not what this quote is about. She's talking about how money (a facilitator of trade) and wealth (the products of man's mind) work. If you care to better understand the quote, the context is here: http://www
The good news is the rich ARE running themselves off the rails and we who know how to live off the land will be doing just that. Soon we will all be learning to live without the rich.
Perhaps, as a disciple of Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, decided to be like Howard Roark - and blow up "his" economy rather than let it be ruined by "liberals.
The plot hole with "going Galt": there's this time-honored practice in the workplace called "hiring scabs." The vacuum created by the big one falling allows four little ones to ascend, as those little ones concluded that half a paycheck is better than no paycheck.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs.
LOL, MajorKong!
Nice!
As usual - an astute observation Major Kong.
Good article. Ayn Rand sounds like a bitter victim of Bolshevics and her novel is just an extension of her sick revenge fantasies against every poor person in the world who had nothing to do with her family's fall from grace. Her anger is seriously misplaced. She should have had a psych eval and counseling if she had been born 50 years later.
If a disgruntled black American had written an epic revenge fantasy novel against every white person in America, we'd never hear the end of it. Or perhaps we'd never hear of it at all because no one would publish that and ironically, they would have probably been labeled a com mie and black listed.
The weak person, in my mind, is he who believes compassion is a joke, or immature, or foolish. Not because Jesus or Gandhi or King proved otherwise, but because in order to believe as the Randian narcissist does he must either be willfully or accidentally ignorant of a great deal of wonderful human activity going on around him, or simply psychologically damaged. Or, perhaps, sheltered from examples of compassion. I can't think of a weaker person.
The idea that whatever you can secure the right to profit from is somehow yours is intellectually and morally pathetic. Laws are often unjust and always have been. Laws are bad approximations of the way people need to behave in order for civil society to operate. It's up to each person to make up for the failures of the law. Instead today's Randian narcissist buys the law to make it say what he wants it to say and pretends that's justice because it's law.
What is weakness and what is strength? Those deficient in the mammalian trait of sympathy are they who arrogate to decide the question of strength and weakness in their favor and impose their answer on everyone. That's always been true.
And that is why I am a genius.
You seem to have entirely missed the point of Atlas Shrugged. It's not about the wealthiest people getting fed up with taxes - it is about the people of superior thinking, superior creative ability and superior productivity rebelling against those who wish to leech off of their abilities. As I've seen and as Ayn Rand recognized, superior wealth does not always equate to superior ability. It would if we had a truly laissez-faire capitalist market. Instead we have mixed economy infested with leeches and continual government interference. This is exactly why many of inferior ability can become wealthy despite their incompetence.
I suggest you read the book again. If you can create a better product for less money and in less time, good for you, enjoy your profits. You deserve them. If you expect to create an inferior product for too much money taking too much time to produce it and yet be unfairly gifted equal ability to profit as those superior to you, you are a leech. If you expect something for nothing, you are a leech. If you expect to survive off the backs of others, you are a leech. If you wish to acquire wealth through force and fraud - you are a leech and a brute unworthy of the label "civilized". "Atlas Shrugged" isn't about the leeches and brutes, it's about human beings of superior and civilized ability struggling to survive in a culture that celebrates the leeches and brutes.
Ok, I'm going to have to invoke Poe's Law on that.
Objectivism is what happened when they thought "Gee, Libertarianism isn't quite crazy enough. What if we threw a personality cult into the mix?"
The Randian world view does not acknowlege the interconnectedness of people who work within a wealth-creating enterprise. Most Randians would consider me to have superior abilities to those of my secretary. They would consider the abilities of my boss to be superior to mine. But I need a secretary to maximize my productivity. My boss needs my abilities to run the corporation.
I understand the notion that if my boss, my secretary, and I work hard to support non-workers, we will at some point become the victims of an injustice but Rand proponents go much further than that. They would have people believe that my secretary is the leech if her wages and benefits cut into the bonuses that my boss may wish to award himself or if she were to become unemployed.
Dividing the world so neatly into the "superior" and the "inferior" and condemning a culture because it celebrates the "inferior" seems like a morally perilous enterprise. My salvation has come from giving more regard, not less regard to other people. I find my moral and spiritual bearings in the examples of people like MLK whose efforts to uplift the downtrodden I believe elevated the society as a whole. I acknowledge the moral peril of a society that rewards leeching but I am more concerned about the moral peril of a society in which the privileged are taught to regard the poor as "inferior" and as "leeches."
Yes and of course determining who the leeches are is a subjective judgment to be made by the objectivists.
LMAO
Did you read the book?
Where does it say that workers on the lower rungs of an organization are leeches? Where does it say that about the poor? Where does it say that they are inferior?
Ayn Rand did not believe that any human being was inferior in regard to rights. She believed that every man and woman born has the same exact rights as any other individual. Nor did she judge people as a group, so she would never have accused an entire class of people of being leeches, whether rich or poor.
Yet Rand was the daughter of merchants, people who do not create but rather act as middlemen between producer and consumer in exchange for wetting their beaks in the nectar the producer eventually receives from the consumer..
Muhammad also reportedly came from a family of merchants. Something about the misfit kids of Semitic merchants must turn them into prophets.
Alas, when it comes to reality, Objectivism is about as objective as Scientology is scientific. That "culture" doesn't exist. In Rand's world, a deregulated financial market would lead to lots of wealth generated for everyone by far-thinking ubermenschen who would be rewarded commensurate with their ability. In the real world, as we now see, it leads to turmoil. Or perhaps you believe our current troubles are simply due to too much financial regulation.
What's real? Leeches and brutes? Few and far between; most people want to work and earn a decent living. Superior creative humans forced to bear the weight of the world on their shoulders? Rare. And when a real innovator does come along -- think Bill Gates, if you like -- there's no cry to collectivize his products or his wealth.
It's fine to be a fiction writer and posit societies, or human motivations, that don't exist. But the real world is more complex than that. One notion she got right, though: I shouldn't base my view of reality on an untested belief system that exists only in someone else's head. But as much as she might say that of Kant, or the Church, I would say it of Rand herself. Why should I take her notions on faith, when I can use my own reason and see the world as it is? It's not the world of Atlas Shrugged, and those rules won't work.
Several million points out of ten!
I read 'Atlas Shrugged 'back in the 80's at age 17 ot 18 and rejected it and Rand's Philosophy completely. I have to agree with Mr. Dorchen's analysis of the those who purportedly stand for free-markets and believe in the superiority of the wealthy. They see themselves as the center of the universe and the only ones capable of holding society together. In reality they are represented in the novel - they just have their characters wrong.
While many of think they are represented by the Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon characters. That they are superior beings who are fighting a never ending battle against small minded bureaucrats and petty business men. The see themselves as the Protaganists in this never ending, preachy novel.
But, most of these same people are actually better reflected in the Looter and Moocher characters of James Taggart or Orrin Boyle. James was oblivious to the problems facing the world and only concerned with short term profit. Orrin ran a steel company that couldn't function without help from others - when his company failed to deliver goods and services, he has helpless and could only whine and blame others.
Their basic assumption about their place in the story is flawed. They are not the hero trying to hold things together which will in turn save all the undeserving others. They are instead the antagonists in the story causing the business world to fall apart an sacrificing the future for everyone for a quick buck today.
This article adds nothing to an understanding of what Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand or Objectivism is all about. It never rises to anything approaching an intellectual level.
While it might dissuade a few second-handers from reading the book such readers were not Ayn Rand's target audience.
Those who read for enjoyment and enlightenment are invited to read the book and form their own opinions.
Which were totally represented!
A bunch of self aggrandizing narcissist choking on their hubris with the idea that if they stop, the world collapses.
It is the Reagan Rovian Bible, that should tell you all you need to know!
Atlas Shrugged Part 2
http://www
I showed this to my Dad--a West Virginia boy who worked his way out of grinding poverty (and who thinks Ayn Rand is clueless). He burst out laughing on the last frame.
MajorKong - The cartoon above fails to address the fact that all the people who got things done in Rand's world actually became farmers, shoemakers and mechanics in their utopia. Know what you're talking about before you comment on it. Have a nice day.
I thought the uber-wealthy were supposed to have better educations than us plebs, so why did they not study the events that led to the French Revolution?
I agree that the people you write about are not essential. Unfortunately, you seem to be as misinformed about Atlas Shrugged as Alan Greenspan and the rest of the people who think they're like Rand's heroes.
Actually Rand's heroes are more like the friends you describe. They are people who can do real things. Atlas Shrugged was not about the richest people leaving so that they wouldn't be taxed.
Ironically, most of the biggest screaming so-called supporters of Ayn Rand at the moment are exactly the kind of parasites Rand railed against.
Again, you're right. Only, please don't be like your opposition. Read the book, if you want to talk about it. Thanks.
Well said!!
I'm not a big fan of Ayn Rand & her political/life views - but I did throughly enjoy Atlas Shrugged. When I first heard all the conservatives cheering the novel, I thought to myself "did any of them read it?"
Unfortunately, that is the same question I first had after reading this article.
It's a terrific read - like a sci-fi soap opera with trains. As fiction, it's fun. As a way of making a really obtuse point about how communism sucks, it suffices. But as a blueprint for a new society, it fails to identify who cleans the toilets in their mountain hideout.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
