[KirinDave]

I wouldn't say that was the main thrust of the article, by any means. You take one sub-point amongst a set of much larger and more important points and mine it out and claim that yet again, government intervention has proven useless.

Her main points, for those who will tl;dr the article and take your post for granted:

1. People do not always act in ways that are inherently good, either in an ethical sense or in a sense of what is "financially good." Rand does seem to suggest that this will be an inherent property of people who are capable of rising to positions of power.

2. The current system rewards people who can amass capital and take risks with it more than people who actually create that capital in the first place. She points out scientists and engineers who make the world a better place and invent new technology that can revolutionize markets are not proportionally rewarded for this change, while speculators who can take big chances with money are rewarded disproportionately. This creates a strong draw away from the allure math, science, and medicine towards the better paying jobs in the world of finance, thus weakening our ability to innovate and generate new capital for capitalism to draw upon.

Your complaint addresses neither of these, and I can't help but feel like you were being a bit disingenuous and dodging the actual issues she raised by hiding behind a straw man outside the crux of the article. Please address her substantive complaints if you're going to argue with the article.

[yummyfajitas]

Regarding 1, that's nonsense. There are many unethical people in positions of power in both Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead.

Near as I can tell, the most she ever suggests is that people who compete within the market (e.g., by inventing a better metal or making better loans) are more ethical than those who use the government to gain an advantage.

[steveplace]

The current system rewards people who can amass capital and take risks with it more than people who actually create that capital in the first place.

The origin of this system was not created through free-market-capitalist methods.

scientists and engineers who make the world a better place and invent new technology that can revolutionize markets are not proportionally rewarded for this change,

But the men and women who take on risk to pay them are rewarded.

[KirinDave]

> The origin of this system was not created through free-market-capitalist methods.

Is that relevant?

> But the men and women who take on risk to pay them are rewarded.

Yes, but that's the interesting part. The actual exceptional people are, almost invariably, the scientists and doctors, and engineers who possess unique backgrounds, education, and frequently unique cognitive abilities. Many people have invested large sums of money to gain the unique education that allows them to purse. And then suddenly any speculator is considered to have "taken risk" by funding these people? And they get the lion's share of the reward, while it may take years just for the actual inventor to pay back the loans. Meanwhile the funder could be "anyone with money" and now they simply have more money.

Sometimes people who like capitalism talk about a Meritocracy, but that word is deceptive in this case because it's a meritocracy of products, not a meritocracy of people.

[dantheman]

Inventing something by itself does not create value, to create value it must solve a problem. If you invent something,self funded it, and then take it to market you will be incredibly rich.

[KirinDave]

Such as the Theory of Relativity, or inventing the Internet, right?

Too bad reality doesn't reflect your sentiment. Even solving a massive problem may not result in becoming rich. Especially with the way network economics has turned the whole scarcity model upside-down for modern internet-based startups.

[gaius]

What you consider "profit" depends on what you are trying to achieve. There are plenty of billionaires who'll be forgotten but in 500 years people will talk about Einstein like we talk about Newton, and about Tim Berner-Lee like we talk about Da Vinci.

[whopa]

But one of the points of the article was that people who have the potential to be the next Einstein or Berners-Lee are disincentivized to pursue that potential, and instead follow a path that makes more money, but doesn't add value to society.