[DArcMattr]

If only this were true.

I worked at the Ayn Rand Institute, and still keep tabs with their activities and their progress.

If Ayn Rand's ideas were as widespreadly acknowledged and held, then we'd see a distortion free economy, not a series of spin jobs all geared towards acquiring political power.

[ska]

   then we'd see a distortion free economy

That is either incredibly optimistic, or incredibly naive. Perhaps both. To the degree that Rand's thoughts can be made consistent in this area, they touch on many areas of economic complexity that nobody has a very good idea how to understand & model, let alone control.

[theseatoms]

Right. No one man (or small group of men) can understand, model, or control many areas of society. (Depends specifically what you have in mind here.)

But it's not incumbent on Rand to plan these areas. (Not sure if you're implying that it is.) Free market price signals do the majority of the heavy lifting, in resource allocation, broadly speaking.

To the GP, I would stipulate "state distortion free". ("State", as in "by force".)

[ska]

That's ideology, not science. So still being optimistic.

[res0nat0r]

It seems her philosophy these days has been converted to: screw everyone else and how can I get as rich as possible? Which is no wonder why most of the CEOs and politicians in the article adore her so.

[gozur88]

Except that they don't adore her. CEOs like big government, because they can use it to raise barriers to competition.

[ue_]

Would other barriers to competition not take root, along with the corresponding inhumanity that is only held off by barriers at the moment? For example, the use of private police forces to defend private property (as far as I'm aware, whether IP is property or not for example is subject to disagreement within the libertarian sphere) and prevalence of sweatshop labour.

[clarkmoody]

> inhumanity that is only held off by barriers at the moment

You mean the way that a voting majority can use the power of the state to punish others they disagree with?

> prevalence of sweatshop labour

The only reason we don't have sweatshops is because of our level of prosperity, not because of government action. If you outlawed sweatshops in developing countries, for instance, many children would starve or be forced into much worse lines of work.

[vkou]

Why do they have to starve? Do sweatshops grow food? There's certainly no shortage of it.

What portion of the value of their labour is captured by them, and what portion of it is captured by the sweatshop owner?

How many of these starving children had families that were removed from their land by various forms of rent-seekers (Or were used as generations of sharecroppers by said rent-seekers)?

[gozur88]

It's not really necessary to debate the merits of Objectivism to make the observation CEOs of the largest American corporations aren't, as a group, big fans of Rand.

[monocasa]

I would argue that they're simply not internally consistent.

[gozur88]

Among CEOs of the largest corporations I see pretty wide support for the welfare state. Do Jack Welsh, or Tim Cook, or Jeff Bezos, or Warren Buffett strike you as being anything like Ayn Rand in outlook? The Washington Post took a pretty hard turn to the left after Bezos bought it.

[ffk]

Can you describe what her philosophy was originally?

[cknight]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)

Objectivism touches on a few things, some pretty mundane. But the most controversial aspect of it would be this part:

"that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism".

It's been a while since I read Atlas Shrugged now, but as I recall, she essentially sees the role of government as being limited to the defense of both the society and the individual from external threats (so, military and justice systems, respectively). Everything else has its place in the market.

[IsaacL]

The Ayn Rand lexicon is a good jumping off point. http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html

Ayn Rand's philosophy goes far beyond the stereotype of capitalism and selfishness. She wrote a ton on consciousness, concept-formation, the psychological function of art, and so on. Click around that link above and you'll see what I mean.

If you want to dive in at the deep end, this is her most technical work, and is the book that convinced me (and many others) that she's on to something big. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology...

[jamst174]

I was a huge Ayn Rand devotee until I realized it tried to see the world in black and white...and we don't live in a black and white world. This is my view of her philosophy after reading Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead multiple times as well as all her other essays and smaller fiction books. Like most other philosophies such as communism, it can sound good in theory and works on a small scale if everyone agrees to play by the rules. It would never work in a country of 330 million people.

The idea is that the free market is able to solve every problem. Businessmen will serve their own self interests but that is OK because in the process - others will benefit via the goods they produce and the jobs they provide. So businessmen will always offer fair wages and benefits to their employees because if they don't, those employees will go work for another business owner that does offer them and will get the benefit of more motivated workers. The best workers will always be offered the best wages, again because this benefits the owners bottom line to have the best employees. (collusion between businesses to depress wages, people stuck in locations with few employers and no competition for wages, the reality of businesses paying off politicians - are just a few real world flaws here IMO)

As far as regulation goes - the government does not need to be involved there. The free market will sort it out! Businesses that offer dangerous products will not get any customers so the incentive is there to only provide safe products (of course, what happens to the people that initially buy those products before people find out how dangerous they are or never find out about the dangers at all until it is too late? How do you fight a polluter that ruins the water source in your town, especially if they are also the main employer?).

As far as social programs - again, the government need not be involved there. All the rich (as well as the other people just trying to get by) will help their neighbors out of the kindness of their own hearts. Or not! Being forced to be altruistic ruins the whole point and regardless of the benefit to society, is one of the worst sins to a Randian. There are many references to money being taken from the wealthy via force - at the end of a gun. How a society handles the disabled, the poor, the elderly - if everyone doesn't out of the kindness of their own hearts - was never really addressed and was the final flaw for me. Just let them die I guess?

I'm sure I'll get some flack for this from the true believers and many will say I have it wrong. I guess I'd say that it is a great personal philosophy if you want to use it that way, but to try to apply it to governing or to any large scale modern society is impractical and, in the end, just downright cruel. Just one man's thoughts.

[cknight]

What struck me most in Atlas Shrugged was Rand's focus on rail. By giving the Taggart family a self-built, privately-run transcontinental rail network, very little of the story mentioned roads at all (there was one road trip, as I recall). It seems quite possibly intentional, as the use of a road system implies that taxation and collective action are actually needed, undermining one of her main points.

I can't help but feel that environmental issues also put a nail in the coffin of her philosophy, but to be fair, it wasn't a big deal back in her time. Atlas Shrugged made no mention of the negative externalities of any of the businesses being run, from steel mills to mining and oil. As soon as a business's externalities impact others, moral issues are raised.

[IsaacL]

I don't think you had a deep understanding of her philosophy.

"The idea is that the free market is able to solve every problem."

Ayn Rand doesn't say this. It sounds more like a stereotypical Republican talking point.

Rand would say that the only thing that can solve problems -- can, not will -- is an active individual mind. (This doesn't rule out people working together in groups, provided the group is made up of active individual minds). Laissez-faire capitalism would not solve all problems, but it would leave individuals free to work on solutions to whatever problems they saw fit.

[xiphias]

Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally.

(From Wikipedia)

[TheOtherHobbes]

Which is obviously wrong, because it presupposes - against all the evidence of history - that humans are rational enough to understand the consequences of their own actions well enough to maximise their own contentment.

In reality "the pursuit of happiness" could mean working in a soup kitchen, meditating full-time, moving into the rain forest and living with a primitive tribe, or buying a farm and working towards becoming self-sufficient.

(Does this sound hypothetical? I know people who did some of these things, and some of them reported their happiness increased significantly.)

In reality it always seems to mean the narrow and small-mindedly unimaginative pursuit of money, power, and social status for the purposes of physical comfort, childish short-term ego gratification, self-importance, and conspicuous wealth/status display.

Sometimes a rare individual will produce something worthwhile as a side-effect. But don't confuse cause and effect - plenty of individuals chase these goals and produce absolutely nothing of value at all.

So there is no deep insight there. It's just a transparent exhortation to work, spend, manipulate, and consume in a very public way, instead of doing something more challenging with your life.

[vkou]

> If Ayn Rand's ideas were as widespreadly acknowledged and held, then we'd see a distortion free economy, not a series of spin jobs all geared towards acquiring political power.

Sounds exactly like what my neighbourhood Marxist-Leninist tells me. (He also avises me to not listen to the drivel spewed by the New-Trotskyists.)

[nyolfen]

> If Ayn Rand's ideas were as widespreadly acknowledged and held, then we'd see a distortion free economy, not a series of spin jobs all geared towards acquiring political power.

this is such a bizarre idea to me. i've only read the fountainhead some years ago and watched a documentary or two about rand herself, but it seems to me that the general thrust of her ideas is that acting in one's self interest is the most morally correct mode of activity in the economic sphere (and to some degree, the interpersonal).

establishing and maintaining a leveled, open and fair market seems to essentially be altruisitic, a term i know she was not fond of. it's working to further a level playing field that conforms to ideal principles at direct cost to one's self, if one is dominant in any particular part of that market.

monopolistic and semi-monopolistic behavior is pursued because it works. the essentially charitable act of aiding your competition by shunning those practices seems to contradict the lessons of her philosophy, as far as i can tell. it's subalterning the individual to the collective. feel free to correct if i've read her incorrectly, though.