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Comment by _lc1i | Hacker News Reader

Despite Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead being amongst my favorite books, Ayn Rand always has me so polarized. Her moral philosophies and ability to write characters earns my unmatched admiration. But her blinding hatred for socialism (as conveyed from her very first book) keep her economic views from ever being realistic or even interesting. For the same reason communism fails, her free market would fail, because it only takes one (inevitable) company to ruin the party for everybody. Man is too easily corrupted to live at the economic extremes of communism or completely free markets.

I always like to think Ayn Rand's selfish desires and socialism could work together. Just think of taxes going to reasonable causes (such as infrastructure or health care) as forced self-interest :)

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"Her moral philosophies and ability to write characters earns my unmatched admiration."

Rand's characters are cartoon heroes and villains whose distinguishing characteristic is a leaden humorlessness.

Her moral philosophy is as cartoon-like as that of the communists she hated so much. The world consists of a few beleaguered (and attractive!) supermen, and the great mass of sponging inferiors who bleed them dry.

This is heady stuff when you're fourteen, but it bears about as much relationship to reality as the Left Behind novels, which offer the same kind of subtle characterization and philosophical depth.

I have been following Diana Hsieh's exploration of Atlas Shrugged (http://www.exploreaynrand.com/1957/), and I very much disagree with your characterizations of her moral philosophy and her characters.

Here are two questions that serve to show the level of depth that you're not seeing in the book (but very much exists):

"What is Lillian's view of sex? Why does it torture Hank? Is he right or wrong to accept that torture?"

"How has Hank Rearden's attitude toward and treatment of his family changed? How -- and why -- has it remained the same?"

If you can't see it in a fiction book, perhaps Tara Smith's "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics" might help you to understand the nuance of Rand's moral philosophy. (Tara Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.)

Her characters are certainly often exaggerated and unrealistic, but they are so in her crafted fictional world setup to convey her philosophy while a telling a good story. However, the dialogue and surrounding thoughts of her characters still provide incredible insight (at least to me). Maybe I am an ignorant jerk needing to read more sophisticated philosophy (likely on both accounts), but she introduced to me, through her characters, a compelling way to think and live

And even if you hate her characters and her philosophies, with exchanges like the below, she is a least interesting to dissect and deserves more than dismissing her writings to fourteen year olds.

"Do you believe in God, Andrei?"

"No."

"Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they'd never understand what I meant. It's a bad question. It means nothing. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do--then, I know they don't believe in life."

"Why?"

"Because, you see, God--whatever anyone chooses to call God--is his highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception over his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your life and to want the best, the very greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it."

If you like this sort of thing, you should read Nietzsche (which is where Rand appropriated this sort of thing from).

Nietzsche is not only a much more eloquent writer, but his ideas are far more profound.

"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."

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html

Those kinds of condescending and trite dismissals are just not interesting. Rand draws more than her fair share of them and I don't think an honest debate can be held over her (good) philosophies because of their prevalence.

Ayn Rand (and in my experience, most Objectivists) didn't want an honest debate "I am not looking for intelligent disagreement any longer.... What I am looking for is intelligent agreement."[1] (I recommend the whole essay.)

[1] http://www.mclemee.com/id39.html

Thanks for the essay. It's unfortunate Rand and Objectivism are so uncompromising. I guess that leaves the debating and exploration of ideas to us laymen, and we all know that won't go anywhere productive or intelligent :)

Actually, her points are so black-and-white, oversimplified, childish, naive, take your pick.. that, yeah.

What do you think America was built by? A bunch of man-babies who took their toys and went home when someone else wanted help?

I can understand her dislike for Soviet-style socialism, but this would only lead me to have more contempt for 21st-century corporations, which combine the worst of both worlds between socialism and capitalism.

I don't know if you've read atlas shrugged or not, but a large part of it is about collusion between government and private corporations.

That's corporatism, which Mussolini named as a synonym for fascism (and is largely held to be a precursor to totalitarian rule).

It's also what we see today in the healthcare mess: private insurers buying off politicians and blocking any real progress.

I'm going to have to disagree with your second part. Yes the reason that healthcare is a mess is because the government is involved, but not because they need to be more involved.

1. Tax structure that makes a market place for insurance impossible. 2. Medicare reimbursement system, it's method of calculating costs is seriously flawed. 3. The inability to buy insurance across state lines. 4. The inability to sign a contract with your doctor, i.e. waive/limit liability. 5. Massive amounts of regulation and red tape that must be complied with. 6. The strangle hold the AMA has on the production of doctors, granted by the government.

and those are just a few of the major problems.

What we have today and these future proposals are all forms of regulatory capture -- i.e. influencing and controlling those who make the rules. Every time you see a new standard or regulation it can probably be assumed that it's being proposed to cement the position of vested interests.

She really really did. I have read up to that last long (very long) speach by Atlas, which is plenty to note: most of the worst characters are business men. One of the most disfavorable characters in the entire book is Dagny's brother James, who unlike her grasps at the government for support.

Also, she anchors her book in America. Imagining how America could go wrong, but uses the socialism in Argentina and Mexico as a backdrop. She spends quite a lot of time giving examples of good selfish capitalism and bad selfish "capitalism"

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