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Comment by arkis22 | Hacker News Reader

I would like to recommend Atlas Shrugged to anyone who has not read it.

It is long, and it is indeed preachy, but she nails so much about the human condition.

I do think that most people that complain about her don't really understand her work. In her eyes capitalism is an intrinsically _personal_ system, individuals helping each other.

The heroes of the story all have their companies named after themselves, while the "bad companies" are bland things like associated steel. Her point is that as soon as you divorce the individuality from capitalism, you get these bad outcomes. At the end of the day companies aren't companies, they're people.

To drive this home, the USSR treated people as interchangable inputs. If that's your policy you are completely ignoring people's individuality. Are they lazy? smart? work hard? People are not interchangable, and by respecting that the US outspent the USSR.

This "personal" capitalism is far different from the way our multinationals, governments, or even people, act today.

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I like to compare Rand's work with Marx's.

When I read the "Communist Manifesto" and - part of - "The Capital", I was impressed by Marx's critique of capitalism. Most of his hypotheses (back from the 19th century) were eventually proved true, while seeming absolutely unthinkable at the time (e.g. the issue of over-production). However, his proposed solution - Communism - seemed naive and overly-optimistic, probably due to the outcomes we already are already aware of from such social experiment today. His critique was excellent, but his proposed solution weak, and dare I say almost a fairy-tale.

When reading Rand, her solution - Objectivism - seems also impracticable and overly-optimistic. I personally believe that he who disassociates his well being from the well being of his neighbor, has little understanding of how society behaves in the long term. However, her critique of Socialist policies is spot on, and almost eerie. I live in Brazil, and there are many moments of our current political catastrophe that seem to have come out of Atlas Shrugged, and therefore I cannot through away the authors entire work because of a broken solution, which is only part of both novels. The anticipation of such self-destructing forms of government with more than half a century in advance is a merit of Rand's.

Needless to say, it is always easier to criticize then to come up with a solution. In Ayn Rand's case, her critique is pertinent and time has in fact proved it to be well founded. Just please ignore her solution.

So TL;DR : "Marx correctly diagnosed the problem with Capitalism, but his prescription was wrong; Rand correctly diagnosed the problem with Socialism but her prescription was wrong"?

I say its much easier to find faults in a system than coming up with a well-designed system.

I think it's a misnomer to think of capitalism and socialism, or objectivism, as solutions.

They are structures or perhaps models. They all fail because of people not doing what they're supposed to be doing. The only true solution would be a process that forces people to do what they're supposed to do.

And I don't see that happening... ever? Until the AI rules us at least.

I agree.

However, not everyone is convinced of such faults. There is still a considerable part of the current political movements that still believe that: a) neoliberal democracy is perfect, and any failure is only the fault of who has failed; or b) communism is the perfect solution, and the failures of USSR, Cuba, N. Korea, etc were only caused due to capitalist interference.

For these convictions, a well developed critique has its merit, for it at least can question such certainties and unblock the way towards thinking of a better solution.

This is a satirical analysis of Atlas Shrugged, right?

When I read it, my impression was that the message is 'all acts are moral if they are in your own self-interest.'

The 'heroes' as you call them abandoned civilization to create a utopia where the free-market is the only law. Check out Bioshock to see what might happen.

'all acts are moral if they are in your own self-interest.'

I believe it's more, "All acts are moral when transactions are conducted fairly and consensually between the involved parties."

Which works fine as long as there's an ultimate authority to enforce fairness (defined how...?) and consent.

'all acts are moral if they are in your own self-interest.' Is obviously wrong.

The villains of the book think that charity takes precedence over everything, or that they are intrinsically entitled to something just because they exist. In other words, if we're both starving, it's my moral obligation to feed you first.

Abandoned civilization? By the end of the book the main characters had their wealth confiscated and civilization had fallen apart. And it's not just the heroes. There's countless references to regular workers "abandoning civiliation," giving up work and roaming the countryside stealing food.

I would love for you to point out a passage where Rand says that the only law should be the free market.

She had PTSD or something similar. Her "literature" was therapy.

Born in the upper-middle class in tsarist Russia, her dad a business owner. Got thrown out in the street by the muzhiks, along with the whole family. Had to wander through the country, nearly starving on occasion. Fled the place at the first opportunity.

It's all in the books. The glorious, near superhuman entrepreneurs are echoes of Daddy. The welfare state is the masses who robbed her family of their wealth. She has a visceral hate of them because, well, they were the cause of her family's destitution in real life.

And she is actively trying to construct an ideology which is in every way, every single detail, opposite to the ideology of the revolution that sent her life on a different course - opposite even when it makes no sense. Like someone who got raped and then is preaching how sex is bad for you.

It's quite transparent.

You could belittle any author as "merely" the result of their upbringing and psychology to invalidate them. That's not productive or fair.

The story that you gave and your reaction to it shows a distinct lack of empathy. If it happened to you I'd bet you'd bitch too.

The point is - is this true or not? I strongly believe my assessment is correct.

As for the "lack of empathy" - I actually intended to add a coda, as to how the life of young Alyssa Rosenbaum was pretty miserable, and how I, as someone who grew up behind the Iron Curtain and actually lived and suffered for two decades under a stalinist-like dictatorship (unlike armchair libertarians who read Atlas Shrugged at Starbucks in a comfy western city, all decked up in turtlenecks and designer jeans), I sort of understand her visceral reaction to the horrors of that kind of regime. No, not "sort of"; I truly understand - again unlike western readers.

But then I said to myself - this is the accidental "thought leader" of a movement, the rise of selfishness and base instincts, that - if left unchecked - would burn down the world and put a stop to the project that has started 6000 years ago in Sumer, and still going strong, that we call civilization.

So pardon me if there's another side of me that says "screw Ayn Rand and her insane mumblings".

I strongly believe you are incorrect.

And your insistence at labeling the values she espouses as being simply selfishness is a shallow understanding of her ideas.

If you'd like to expand your history I'm sure I could give an example of your animosity being the result of you overcompensating for something. Does that make it true?

...aaand we've finally arrived at the core boilerplate "argument" with any Ayn Rand supporter. I've seen this more times than I can count. It's as inevitable as the eye of the maelstrom.

If you disagree, your understanding is "shallow". Or perhaps there's something wrong with you, psychologically. In other words, you're dumb or crazy. She would approve so much of this tactic, because she's used it a lot herself.

And it's ironic because Ayn Rand herself was shallow as an intellectual, and her writings really were the attempts to overcompensate of someone whose mental equilibrium was in bad shape after living through horrors.

It's called projection. And the answer is no. Have a nice day.

Annnnd we've finally arrived at the classic liberal. I'm dumb, crazy, and there's something wrong with me. Why should your argument only apply to her and not you? You've listed no counter examples. Thank you, you too.

A few clicks into Google and I found many scholarly critiques on her work as well objectivism in general. There seems to be consensus on rejecting this philosophy. Basically, it has no supporters in the academic community.

There are scholarly critiques on everything. No philisophy is perfect. Capitalism and Socialism obviously have their scholarly critiques.

Atlas Shrugged is a novel which happens to contain Ayn Rand's philosophy. You can learn from it or not. I think there's some truth to all kinds philosophy, you just need to be discerning.

An analogy to this would be: "you can't seriously be a Christian. No academic thinks the Bible really happened."

I can still learn from the Bible, or the Church, even if it's all a lie.

If you're looking for a scholarly consensus on the "one true universal philosphy" you're going to be waiting awhile.

Objectivism, as a philosophy, was never really offered up to the academic community; when studied, it has been largely been found to be inconsistent and incoherent, as a work of philosophy, by the community. Googling "objectivism critique" makes for good reading.

That's not to say that there's nothing useful in objectivism, but as a work of philosophy it's weak in some ways that could be shored up, and weak in other ways that could not. Of course, Ayn Rand went the pop philosophy route, publishing novels and leading a weird tiny cult more than trying to address critiques of her work.

I have read critique's and found their logic and understanding lacking. The same way they find my logic and understanding lacking.

Both sides are echo chambers because neither side can prove anything. Philosophy is wild like that. The only thing you can do is think for yourself.

You're free to dismiss the philosophical critiques of objectivism as "they're an echo chamber"-- it's a free country, for now, at least.

I do think it's interesting that the defenders of objectivism here are so confident, where mainstream philosophers really tend to be pretty humble. The way I read it, mainstream philosophers know their ideas will either stand on their own, or get built on by the next generation for something bigger and better. Kinda like, most scientists I've ever known were pretty humble.

Rare is it to meet a philosopher who's as confident in their stuff as the objectivist defenders here, and never ever have I met a philosopher or scientist who's dismissed critiques as "they're an echo chamber".

I dunno. I'd like to see an objectivist embrace that kind of humility and see where it takes them. (My guess is, it takes them straight out of objectivism entirely, which is why you don't see anyone like that.)

Except I didn't dismiss the philosophical critiques of objectivism as an echo chamber. I critiqued them as lacking logic and understanding.

I said both sides are an echo chamber. I can sit here and give you my reasons, and then you can give me your reasons, and then I can say what problems I have with yours, and you can say your problem with mine. At the end of the day if we disagree then we're both just repeating our reasons and not convincing each other. An inconclusive echo chamber. Philosophy.

If you look up the word humble, it means having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's own importance. I'm not arguing about my importance though am I? I'm arguing about an opinion on an independent issue I feel correct in, just like you. Only I'm using reason instead of insulting your character.

That's reeeeally not how critical discussions work, and I think I'm seeing the problem here.

You can find lots of critiques of objectivism based on some inconsistency in its flaws or premises; what you can't find much of is objectivists addressing or resolving those critiques. You can only find them dismissing them ("lacking logic and understanding"), as you've done.

Where adherents of some mainstream philosophy are faced with critiques, they usually try to resolve them to strengthen the philosophy or, if it can't be resolved, discard the philosophy. You just don't really see that happening with objectivism. There's no "echo chamber" here, mainstream philosophy evaluated your stuff long ago and moved on.

As for taking a lack of humility as an insult, why on earth would that be an insult or bother you? You're right, aren't you? Objectivism is the best philosophy, isn't it? Why would you need to be humble?

You have a strange definition of critical discussions if you don't think people bring up their points and criticize other's viewpoints.

I'm sorry, but I can't include complete philosophical essays about Objectivism, its criticism, and my rebuttal in these comments to justify my logic for you. I'm sure if you really wanted to you could find people that could address these critiques. I don't think you want to.

If I disprove assumptions (the flaws or premises in objectivism), I have already disproved the conclusion. I have not proven myself correct, but I have shown the conclusion to be incorrect. That's just logic.

You're saying objectivism excludes humility? Silly, Objectivism doesn't mean you should be a tool. Ironically, that suggests a lack of understanding in your critique.

Indeed, and elsewhere in the thread I recommend We the Living if you really want to understand Rand in her own words. It's the least philosophically ambitious of her novels, and as a direct result it's the best read.

> capitalism is an intrinsically _personal_ system, individuals helping each other.

Rand was so averse to the idea of "individuals helping each other" that she includes a scene where a zillionaire capitalist charges for giving one of the other heroes a short ride in his car[1]. It's the villains who show their villainy by talking about doing each other favours and the heroes who talk about driving a hard bargain even when they're about to consummate the business relationship by having an affair.

[1]which is absurd both for the assumption that it's better that way and for the assumption that a zillionaire capitalist accepting a token amount of gold for performing unskilled labour represents a functioning market.

She also includes scenes where the heroes help one another, or even help strangers. (Example: Dagny inviting the tramp to join her for dinner).

The scene where "a zillionaire capitalist charges for giving one of the other heroes a short ride in his car" is symbolic. The characters in the valley wanted to uphold the ethos that everyone there lived by the product of his or her own effort.

Ayn Rand didn't include that scene for people like you who want to nitpick everything. She is writing for the kind of readers who think "hmm, having to pay for everything sounds annoying -- but on the other hand, it means you're not constantly dealing with requests for free favours. What kind of people would live in a place where everything had to be paid for? Would I want to live with those people?"

It's hardly a "nitpick" to point out that throughout the book the heroes make a point of congratulating themselves and each other on only acting in their self-interest every time they conclude an agreement, whilst every time they dare to practice the Randian vice of altruism either the ungrateful recipients or the book's narrative throws it back in their face.

The real purpose for Dagny's dinner with the tramp after all isn't for Rand to illustrate the virtues of helping tramps, but for the tramp to lecture on how the Twentieth Century Motor Company failed because the company based its ethos around helping those claiming to be in need, and explain that the book's hero has resolved to "stop the motor of the world* rather than continue to work for others.

And yeah, the symbolic nature of having to pay for everything rather than do favours is the heroes believe [in maintaining the illusion that] those deserving of their support are evaluated not as individuals but based on their ability to produce interchangeable tokens of past effort....

I used the word "nitpick" intentionally. I was referring to your point questioning whether "a zillionaire capitalist accepting a token amount of gold for performing unskilled labour represents a functioning market". This is the kind of arbitrary criticism someone comes up with when they're not interested in honestly understanding the author's message.

"The real purpose for Dagny's dinner with the tramp after all ... [is] for the tramp to lecture"

This is another example of your nitpicking. You know that I was not talking about that one particular scene, but illustrating that Rand has nothing against charity and she has many scenes in her novels where characters help people in need. That is, Rand does not teach "never help others", as you imply.

"And yeah, the symbolic nature of having to pay for everything rather than do favours is the heroes believe [in maintaining the illusion that] those deserving of their support are evaluated not as individuals but based on their ability to produce interchangeable tokens of past effort...."

And nope, you're still misunderstanding the message. The heroes are not asking who is "deserving of their support" then evaluating them "on their ability to produce interchangeable tokens". The heroes want to live by their own effort. Living with others who also want to live by their own effort makes life easier, because you can specialise and trade the products of your labour for the products of their labour. Production and trade are essentials of any human community, charity isn't, which is why there is no charity in the valley.

Pointing out that Ayn Rand didn't really understand the capitalist system she eulogised is far from a mere "nitpick". You seem to have missed the entire point of the criticism: zillionaires devoting time that could have been spent more productively to giving people lifts is exactly the kind of "charity" Rand is trying to pretend it isn't.

And when the heroes do help each other, just in case you think they might be supposed to be doing it out of a sense of kinship, Rand tends to have them say things like this:

"I hope you know it's not for your sake that I wanted to help you fight."

He smiled; it was a faint, friendly smile. "I know," he said.

"It's not out of pity or charity or any ugly reason like that. Look, I intended to give you the battle of your life, down there in Colorado. I intended to cut into your business and squeeze you to the wall and drive you out, if necessary"

He chuckled faintly; it was appreciation. "You would have made a pretty good try at it, too," he said.

"Only I didn't think it would be necessary. I thought there was enough room there for both of us."

"Yes," he said. "There was."

"Still, if I found that there wasn't, I would have fought you, and if I could make my road better than yours, I'd have broken you and not given a damn about what happened to you"

As with all religious texts, Atlas Shrugged produces its blind devotees who will assert literally anything to avoid confrontation with any other aspects that might conflict with their worldview. But it's a curiously selective reading of the text that argues a book whose key moral messages include the slogan "I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine" is about a personal system of individuals helping each other, and not the negation of said system in favour of the logic of self-interest and cold hard cost-benefit analysis.

I am struggling to understand your point - your last sentence is a masterpiece of unclear grammar - yet as you're now referring to "religious texts" and "blind devotees" I don't think you have any interest in rational debate. Curious minds can google "The Ethics of Emergencies" for AR's views on charity.

You've managed three posts of ad hominem attacks on me for dissing your sacred text, completely failed to negate my original point that Rand obviously doesn't capitalism as "an intrinsically personal system of individuals helping each other" (as opposed to a means to ensure the productive get rewarded) and you're accusing me of being uninterested in rational debate? Seriously?

I disagree. See my last paragraph to two posts ago.

> In her eyes capitalism is an intrinsically _personal_ system, individuals helping each other.

I don't think 'helping' is the best word choice here

Nice one.

For those who haven't read Atlas Shrugged: amongst the group of protagonists in the book, the granting of favours or donations is clearly outlined as immoral, as per Rand's philosophy. All goods and services are to be traded for fair value.

I meant helping in the sense that when the two parties engage in a transaction, it's mutually beneficial. So the two parties obviously aren't harming each other (they're helping).

If as you say "Her point is that as soon as you divorce the individuality from capitalism, you get these bad outcomes." Then she totally misses that humans are inherently social and will trade for social capital whenever possible, and form cartels naturally. She seems to have had a poor understanding of actors who engage in realpolitik.

> To drive this home, the USSR treated people as interchangable inputs.

Capitalism does that, too (it's a central element of the Marxist critique); that's actually a big part of why many non-Communist socialists and even non-Leninist Marxists, from very early on, described the system in the USSR as State capitalism (where the State was a vehicle for the Leninist vanguard, rather than the population/proletariat, to control capital and oppress the proletariat in much the same manner as a traditional capitalist elite.)

>This "personal" capitalism is far different from the way our multinationals, governments, or even people, act today.

As a Socialist myself, I have wondered: how does capitalism become personal? Is it possible to achieve this? Let's assume for a moment that Marx was wrong about exploitation; how does wage labour, unexploitative, take the form of personal relation?

From my point of view, I was thinking that the division of labour will create an impersonal relationship, so much so that the worker will not see his own labour in the final product. How does personal capitalism fare with division of labour and automation?

I want to keep an open mind rather than to steer this ideologically, so I hope you are not put off by my differing viewpoint.

How is capitalism, or any financial system, ever not personal?

At its core, capitalism is simply the codification of a win-win transaction between two or more parties. I work for your company, you pay me X salary.

Whereas socialism is the codification of a win-lose, non-consensual transaction. You're doing well, give me your money so I can give it to a third party, or else.

Of course there are negative externalities to worry about, contractual enforcement, etc. But those don't change the core philosophies.

> How is capitalism ever not personal?

A review of the works criticizing the dominant system of the mid-19th Century industrialized West by cobtemporaries who coined the name "capitalism" to describe that system would answer that question.

> At it's core, capitalism is simply the codification of a win-win transaction between two or more parties.

No, at its core capitalism is the arrangement of government, property rights, and legal system to preferentially serve the interests of the holders of capital over others. Hence the name.

Are you saying capitalism cannot exist without government?

"Government" is simply whatever actor or set of actors possesses, between them, a monopoly on the legitimate use of force; you can't have human society without government and you can't have capitalism without society, so, sure, you trivially can't have capitalism without government.

More deeply, capitalism is not only incidentally tied to government through the necessity for society, but more deeply through the dependency on a specific model of property rights being enforced by government.

That's redistributive taxation, not socialism. Socialism is ownership of all property and business by the government. Per Marx/Engels:

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State," "Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. "

> Socialism is ownership of all property and business by the government.

Socialism is the control of the means of production (not necessarily all property) by the public at large (Marx/Engels view of the State as the agency by which this control is exercised is not the only Socialist view, Socialism is broader than just Marxism.)

> I work for your company, you pay me X salary.

And if I don't work for your company, and I can't find other work, I starve. It's hardly win-win if one side of the transaction faces much more dire consequences if the negotiations fail.

If that's happening to you, presumably it's your fault for not winning harder?

"Objectivism" is just another name for narcissism. If you're not a winner, the narcissist's view is that you deserve whatever bad things happen to you.

Narcissism is wonderful for short-term gains, but an absolute disaster for long-term stability and growth.

Which is not a surprise because empathy is an established reality, not just in human behaviour but in animal behaviour, with straightforward evolutionary benefits.

You have to go quite a long way back down the evolutionary tree to lose empathy. If Rand and her acolytes want to live down there I suppose we can respect their choice.

But it doesn't mean it's a good choice, an intelligent decision, or one that's going to lead to better outcomes in the future.

Empathy is a trade-off, like most things:

- If you hold too much empathy for those who would destroy society, society will weaken.

- If you hold too little empathy for those who would support society, society will weaken.

Farmers don't tend to have much empathy for invasive weeds or pests growing in their crops. I believe Ayn Rand saw communists in a similar light.

Of course, that is all based on the presumption that society should continue in the first place. Feel free to replace "society" with "your family," or "your company."

The idea that market transactions are inherently impersonal was nicely outlined in David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5000 Years".

In summary, market transactions are final, in that you once a the goods exchange is complete you will have no further obligations to the other party. This property is very useful, and makes our goods exchanges very easy, but they are still inherently impersonal. There are other forms of goods exchange that do not have this property, which he discusses in the book.

Of course, market transactions being final doesn't mean that no further relationship is _possible_, but that relationship forms outside of the market system.

> At its core, capitalism is

That kind of transaction dates back to bartering, and is neither unique to capitalism nor excluded from socialism.

The way you put it also assumes that both parties are capable of negotiating the work/money trade to be advantageous to both; it seems pretty clear that Walmart and their floor workers are not in such a win-win.

> Whereas socialism is the codification of a win-lose

This is roughly equivalent to saying capitalism is the codification of exploitation, in that neither are true of their respective, functioning systems, and both are failure modes of their respective systems.

Socialism is the venture capitalism of people, at scale. Society invests in you and your situation; if you pan out, it needs a return on that investment so that it can reinvest.

Of course these are all drastic simplifications of complex systems that cannot be boiled down to soundbytes, but eh.

>At its core, capitalism is simply the codification of a win-win transaction between two or more parties. I work for your company, you pay me X salary.

I don't think that's true; I view capitalism as a mode of production, subsisting on private ownership of the social means of production, the primacy of wage labour (this is the aspect you mentioned) but also the production of commodities (i.e exchange is to be maximised rather than the use of products) and lastly that production is for profit and accumulation of capital rather than satisfying social wants.

>Whereas socialism is the codification of a win-lose, non-consensual transaction. You're doing well, give me your money so I can give it to a third party, or else.

This is not what Socialism is about. Socialism is contrasted with capitalism not by money redistribution (in fact, no redistribution of non-social MoP produce or money occurs) but by the fact that means of production would be owned collectively by workers, and used for their benefit. The workers are also the consumers. This two-faceted benefit would seem to be a win-win in my opinion.

>non-consensual transaction.

The non-consensual part of Socialism is seizing the means of production from capitalists (either via revolution or otherwise). The non-consensual part of capitalism is the fact that people must sell their labour-power as a commodity on a market to private property owners in order to survive. Although all parties appear at face value to be participating in a system of equal and fair uncoerced exchanges, a look at the more extreme examples in our world of sweatshop labour or prostitution by necessity gives an opposite picture. These people are free to quit at any time, but have little option otherwise. They certainly can't accumulate sufficient capital to start a self-employment model of business.

Have you ever worked for someone you liked? Or have you ever been offered a job or promotion because of a good personal relationship?

Most things sold in the business world are sold by personal relationships and conversation or personality.

I think the issue Marx points out isn't an "original" quality of capitalism, but rather an "eventual" (steady-state) quality of it.

AFAIK, capitalism is the idea of investment of capital. Marx's issue is that the capital pools in such a way that most people don't have it, or don't get to spend what they do have in a way that gets returns.

In an ideal situation, I am able to "spend" my "excess capital" - my excess time, skills, drives, etc - to improve my own situation. This is personal.

However, in practice, many people can't or don't do this. Maybe they're missing that drive towards self-investment. Maybe they're minimum wage and literally don't have any excess.

Marx's issue of "praxis" - that you do not own (literally or emotionally) the product of your work is an emergent, rather than inherent, quality of capitalism. So it seems reasonable that a society could exist with other factors the confound that emergent quality, so that you can have you cake (the core bits of capitalism) and everyone gets to eat it (everyone can actually take advantage of those core bits)

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