Ask HN: Is the world today like 'Atlas Shrugged' to you? Why or why not? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is the world today like 'Atlas Shrugged' to you? Why or why not?

16 pointsrblion9 comments

I've seen this book come up a lot over the years in tech circles and finance circles, even more so now with tech and finance seeming to merge together with cryptocurrency. I don't agree with every idea of Rand's but there are some very interesting parallels for sure.

I'm thinking about things like the world being angry at Facebook but when there is an outage, millions of people seem to be freaking out. Also the world having mixed feelings about Amazon and consumerism but when the world's shipping infrastructure is having issues, people realize how much they rely on e-commerce these days. Imagine if Big Tech just stopped working for a day, imagine the world's computing grid just going offline completely for even an hour.

I live in Maui and notice that a lot of tech billionaires and millionaires buy land or estates here. This is kind of a 'utopian paradise' in their eyes. The irony is that there is a lot of issues in Hawai'i that most tourists just aren't aware of.

I could write a lot more but I think you get the idea. I'm curious to hear what you think and feel. I know this is a loaded question but it's Saturday and this is the only place I know that would take a question like this seriously.

Thank you for reading and contributing

Tech and finance types tend to ascribe genius to themselves where luck would be more appropriate. It’s pretty typical of the nouveau riche.

We live in a replay of 1880-1914. Wealth is consolidating towards tech and a large interests now vs railroads and trusts then. Same story otherwise… tech is the great disruptor. Hopefully it won’t end the same way.

The objectivist thought process is useful as it simultaneously justifies a boogeyman to explain the failures of the powerful and those aspirants to power. It’s a sort of fuzzy blanket to incubate conservative and reactionary ideas.

In the words of Officer Barbrady, at first I was happy to learn to read and then I read Atlas Shrugged, and I vowed never to read again.

Private enterprise meets our needs and desires by design, but there's nothing noble nor particularly interesting about that. Certainly nothing that needed 1,200 turgid pages to explain.

Atlas Shrugged is a reaction to the failures of central planning in the USSR. In doing so, it repeats many of the mistakes, with a different cast and crew.

The first to get rich then pull up the ladder behind them to move into a ruling class. The tech revolution managed to let some new players into that class, otherwise nothing has changed.

If every Billionaire left the country to go live in Maui, a new bunch would fill their positions at the top of the food chain almost instantly.

Atlas Shrugged is a fairy tale the rich use to maintain the illusion that the outcome of their luck is actually a result of their special value in the world.

The objectivist philosophy is born out of one of the oddest worldviews I've ever encountered. At once compelling; those who work hard and make things work are right to wield the fruits of it, yet also seems to be foolishly naive; power is not conferred legitimacy by it's own existence, but rather in how much it lubricates the efficient functioning of the other edifi around one. The powerful are as much accidental fortune aggregators as they are victims of the situations of the microcosms of the world around them.

Rand rejects the obligation of the Atlas to the World. Despite the fact that without the world, there is naught to recommend or even honor the Atlas for. Rand also, and justifiably, I think, highlights the alieness of an Atlas's thinking to those that do not naturally aspire to it.

The great paradox of Atlas Shrugged is this:

If you can do, do so and reap the fruits. Do as thou wilt, but complain not when the world's turning goes not in your favor. Eventually it won't, and it will destroy you.

> The great paradox of Atlas Shrugged is this:

Really? As much as I dislike Rand's sententiouness, I don't go around palming off my own vapid taglines as the author's.

I always thought Rand's greatest paradox is the world she describes is not our world, not our reality, and readers think she is writing about our reality. The problem with Rand is her characters are not real humans: her heroes are born with innate, unlearnable talents they simple have at birth. She states ths over and over again in her literature: these innately superior humans are born that way, and it cannot be learned - they just are, and that "are" is god-like in purity of thought and a perfection of action. POPPYCOCK, complete bullshit and only suitable for immature intellectualism, of the type the GOP and most religions seem to rely.

Trash. Quite unfortunately some of the most shallow thinking I've seen.

The modern world isn't that bad, is it?

Maui is not Galt’s Gulch by any stretch of the imagination.

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