[ScottHanson]

It's only a garbage article if you're a fanatical Rand groupie.

The post contributes to an important societal debate over whether or not the successful owe anything back to society, such as taxes.

Obviously it's stimulated a lot of heat.

[unalone]

No, it's garbage because it makes a claim, then fails to back it up well.

I read the NYmag article. Gladwell in that article does appear to be Rand's favorite villain. However, the blog post doesn't use those points. It doesn't contrast Gladwell's "cutting down the great man" to Rand's points. It brings up Rand, attacks her, brings up Gladwell, draws no conclusions whatsoever, and then says that the author can see a connection. The fact that a good argument as come up is because of the various Hacker News factions, not because of any merit that article had whatsoever.

[RobertHenderson]

No, it's garbage because it makes a claim, then fails to back it up well. --

The guy simply asked a question. A question which then led to this long tirade by Rand groupies.

[unalone]

FTA:

Well, according to Ayn Rand everything in the world grinds to a halt. In her bizarre world view, no replacements are available amongst the rest of humanity to rise up to the occasion and take over from the cry-babies who have gone home in a snit.

Then, citing Gladwell out of context:

Then there's the question of why so many Asian students excel at mathematics:

And then there are the math geniuses who, as anyone can’t help noticing, are disproportionately Asian. Citing the work of an educational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Gladwell attributes this phenomenon not to some innate mathematical ability that Asians possess but to the fact that children in Asian countries are willing to work longer and harder than their Western counterparts. That willingness, Gladwell continues, is due to a cultural legacy of hard work that stems from the cultivation of rice. Turning to a historian who studies ancient Chinese peasant proverbs, Gladwell marvels at what Chinese rice farmers used to tell one another: “No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.”

Elsewhere in this thread was an argument from somebody who saw this and assumed that Gladwell was being racist and saying that working in rice paddies make Chinese people hard-working.

Then it sums up:

So the question is then: Are the successful truly independent of the society within which they grew up or do they owe their success, at least in part, to the benefits, attitudes, and advantages it bestowed upon them?

Read the entire article, Why Success Is More Circumstantial Than Personal.

Who is right? Malcolm Gladwell or Ayn Rand?

It doesn't add anything of interest. It doesn't make an initial comparison. It doesn't argue about how they're opposed in any way. We the commenters did that.