Ayn Rand reviews children’s movies (2014)
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Atlas Shrugged popped up in a trend, reminding me of the remarkable level of vitriol against it. It is obviously grinding an anti-collectivist axe, and it can fairly be called cartoonish, but if you can't see its archetypes in the world around you, you aren't paying attention.
I can easily understand people not liking the book, but the level of loathing that some show for it is odd, as if someone could go off on a rant and redline judge everyone who enjoyed the movie Wall Street as obviously terrible people.
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1478389565094256642
Sure, you may not like grammar or the wordiness or the characters but the ideas - those are what you’re reacting to.
Atlas is a punchline for a reason.
My favorite short book (non-fiction) covering from the last days the Tsars through the remainder of the Soviet period (the period that shaped Ayn) is A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, by Peter Kenez.
The archetype of a glorious manager who goes on strike which makes everybody very very sorry they ever doubted them isn't one that I'm super familiar with.
I wonder if Carmack has ever looked at a graph of US wealth inequality.
Or played Bioshock.
But that's a nice hypothetical you've got there.
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-poor-get-poorer-w...
Median wealth was the same in 1995 as it was in 2016 [0].
Median inflation adjusted household income was the same in 1974 as in 2016 [1]. If you go the full range it's gone from $54k to $67k between 1968 to 2021.
That is technically higher, but it's not CPI adjusted.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
Learn these things before you try to engage in conversations about this topic:
The difference between income and total compensation.
The difference between income and wealth.
The dynamic nature of economic mobility over the course of someone's life. (Older people have more human capital and therefore more wealth).
Fun fact Denmark is one of the most wealth unequal countries.
I clicked 10 or so citations that all went to the same guys blog where he at best had skewered pew research I sourced directly instead.
> Learn these things before you try to engage in conversations about this topic:
> The difference between income and total compensation.
If you have data on median compensation (outside of regular income) we can discuss it. It would however already be represented in wealth data, so it seems negligible.
> The difference between income and wealth.
Which is why I provided both.
> The dynamic nature of economic mobility over the course of someone's life. (Older people have more human capital and therefore more wealth).
How is this relevant to median income/wealth measured over time? It's not measuring one person's wealth growth, but a time series of snapshots of everyone's (meaning all ages).
>How is this relevant to median income/wealth measured over time?
Because the age and dominant generation of the population massively affects the median household wealth. It's why the median wealth of Japanese Americans is significantly higher than Hispanic Americans. The median age of the Japanese American population is almost double that of Hispanic Americans.
He's a global warming denialist often citing Daily Mail as a source. I know who he is. "just a guy" would've honestly been a better resume. What he is not is a primary source or a good source of unbiased anything.
> Because the age and dominant generation of the population massively affects the median household wealth. It's why the median wealth of Japanese Americans is significantly higher than Hispanic Americans. The median age of the Japanese American population is almost double that of Hispanic Americans.
Ok, median age in the 1990s was 32.9, and 37.9 in 2016 [0], so the wealth being the same means it actually shrunk even more since older people should have more. Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the...
Oops I guess the Senate finance committee fucked up then
https://medium.com/beyond-pen-and-paper/the-poor-arent-getti...
So we have this scenario where either
1) you can't explain how my points are wrong, and direct me to read some blogs you like.
2) you don't want to
In either case, why are you even responding? If everything on the internet is self-explanatory, everyone should agree. So why aren't we? This is why we explain how something is wrong, and support it using data from mutually reliable sources. You repeatedly sidestep this, for whatever reason I don't know.
It's a myth that the poor get poorer. Market economies are not zero sum. Whether or not you want to explore that seriously or just participate in an exercise of confirmation bias is, again, not my problem.
All you've provided are ad hominems against sources that directly counter your initial contentions without sincerely examining the information or data contained within. I'm not interested in hearing your regurgitated, scripted nonsense on this topic that every ignorant believer in this myth spews out. I've participated in this conversation too many times to be surprised by how it goes or the points made. Nothing you've stated is new, unaccounted for, or unexplainable if you'd spend 5 minutes challenging your world view. It's not my job to provide sources only you approve of.
> Mate there's CBO, BLS, Journal of Economic Research, IMF, and several academic study citations in the video, post, blog, and all over the internet.
Yet the only thing you've linked is a blog and a medium post, not IMF, or BLS or the sources you seem to agree are reputable. Why is that? Is it because they don't say the things your blogs claim they do?
The author cites his own blog, which also cites his own blog. Almost all the citations in his blog are to his own blog. One single link in the article did not go to his own blog but instead went to a video at reason.com. This is not a pattern which gives confidence in the material.
Conversely, my favorite people have called her "one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history", and the like.
And she was clearly a massive, massive hypocrite.
[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
Now, a question to HN: who here actually read Lenin, and works of his original party mates?
A picture far from a hippie paradise they draw. The Strong subjugate the Weak through natural right, and those weak are not your poor workers, but your idle intellectuals, nobility, aristocrats, social democrats, and much of white collar workforce, which would've included you.
Muscular proletarians band together to build a dictatorial regime, and go crushing "weakling classes" just because they can.
I agree her abhorrent message was "the strong subjugate the weak through natural right", but Ayn Rand very clearly believed that poor workers were the weak and rich white-collar businessmen were the strong that deserved to subjugate them. That's completely different than Lenin's view. There are many flavors of asshole and just because both Rand and Lenin were assholes does not mean they saw eye to eye at all.
The ideas espoused by Ayn Rand are absolutely unconscionable and I'd argue anyone who doesn't see the "Atlas Shrugged" effect, where impressionable readers tend to become hyper-assholes for months (or the rest of their lives) after reading it, they are paying less attention than those who don't notice all the John Galts around them. Of course that upper-middle-class white male whose parents are paying for his college tuition is a John Galt, and of course all those Hispanic sons of migrant workers are stupid dirty lazy nobodies who should worship him. Aren't you paying attention!?
This is yet another case of yet another rich person saying we should all be deeply grateful they're bestowing their diving Jobs upon us and we should all worship them and not get angry when they don't pay taxes.
I had a similar reaction when I read Battlefield Earth a few years ago. It struck me as an overly-long, painfully generic scifi novel. It wasn't unique enough on any level to justify either love or hate.
If you see those archetypes around you then you seriously need to learn some empathy which Rand clearly lacked. Let me sum up the book: "There are people who are so smart, if they left the world would collapse and everyone will die. Let's do that."
The ego of thinking that the whole world depends on you and your big brain is something a lot of people in tech need to grow out of. It's toxic and so is Rand.
[Babe / Charlotte’s Web]
Ingenious farmers find new ways to market their farms and products with innovative marketing.
[Snow White]
Seven dwarves give room and board in exchange for house keeping. They save her from a dangerous, overreaching government. It later translates into future potential political favors.
[Beauty and the Beast]
A woman rightfully chooses a man with more resources.
[Up]
Politically persecuted man overcomes adversity and claims a flying fortress of intelligent dogs.
[The Muppets Take Manhattan]
A capitalist Cinderella story with puppets minus the fairy tale magic.
Although, in general Im puzzled by the cliche portrayal of A.R.'s views as somewhat cold or inhumane. Though I did not read all her essays and works, Im familiar with the several ones which warrant no such trivialized characterization. On the contrary, she explicitly and implicitly said that "...reason and emotions are not contradictory or in opposition. It is only when we do not understand our emotions that such dichotomy appears". Any thinking individual can sign his name under this. And, that is why we have psychiatry industry, billion dollar self-help book industry, etc. On the other hand we have also recreational drugs and alcohol abuse, etc -- which is the point in case, when emotions take over faculty of reason to govern our decisions/life that ... destruction, destruction, destruction...
If you walk down a street and see a musician play with donation box, if you were using only emotions without reason you'd give away your wallet and all rings and keys to the car.
Its a nonsensical statement, nobody is driven only via emotions. But some are driven completely without emotions.
The Ayn Rand school for tots joke from the Simpsons is a million times funnier and incisive imo as it targets this weakness of her philosophy and it's just a throwaway joke.
That sentence misses the very definition of philosophy and its purpose. It is true that Ayn Rand never had children and didn't talk much about parenting (although she did in various Q&A and also spoke about education - was very fond of Montessori for example), but that doesn't mean that Objectivism, which is Ayn Rand's philosophy, has no value to a parent or child.
Ayn Rand offered Objectivism as a philosophy for an individual human being, to aid in living in the natural world as a human. It is a comprehensive world view that speaks to the nature of reality, the nature of human beings, our relationship to reality as well as ethics, politics and aesthetics.
An individual's choice to raise children is personal and individual and Objectivism would argue that it is a moral choice to become a parent if you value raising children of your own, can afford to do so and are willing to accept the enormous life-long commitment and responsibility that doing so entails. A child's relationship to their parents, what rights children have and what a parent's responsibility is to their children are all things that Ayn Rand actually did speak about during her life, but the one thing I will grant you is that the fictional characters in her books were mostly childless and that probably had a lot to do with the fact that she herself was childless and so it wasn't something she felt moved to really talk about through her writings.
As for "need to raise them if you want a society to continue,"...
Objectivism certainly has a lot to say about an individual's relationship to "society", the very definition of "society" (an abstract concept referring broadly to a group of individuals) and it rejected the philosophical notion of "duty", not to be confused with "responsibility." Individuals have responsibilities, which they accept willingly. A parent, for example, has a responsibility to their children. Pet owners have responsibilities to their pets. People enter into contracts and relationships, make promises to one another and agree to work together collaboratively. All speaking to responsibilities. A duty, on the other hand, refers to an obligation imposed at birth to which someone has no ability to opt out. The duty to have children, for example. "If you want society a continue..." Objectivists would say "If you want children and a family and are prepared to accept the responsibility then do it for yourself. But don't take such a major life decision lightly, and you don't have a 'duty' to do so."
You are talking about the former, and I think you can make the case that raising a child can be substituted in for "designing a building" like in the Fountainhead as a responsibility someone chooses, but I don't think it's so clean as usually raising a child involves a second person (and therefore compromise), as well as the child themselves who has to have some autonomy over their lives. This dynamic is pretty hard to navigate with purely objectivist principles imo as there's three individuals involved including the child who needs to be turned from a ball of emotions into a full fledged adult, and this is ripe for comedy. The OP failed to do so (look at that Muppets Take Manhattan joke, who the hell is laughing at that other someone enjoying a political enemy being mocked?). I think the Simpsons did a pretty good job with their joke.
"and I think you can make the case that raising a child can be substituted in for "designing a building" like in the Fountainhead as a responsibility someone chooses,"
No, I don't think you can make that case at all. Unfortunately you proceeded to refute that case and, in doing so, were refuting a straw-man of your own construction. There's nothing really to comment on because all of your conclusions were drawn from a false premise that you established yourself.
Raising a child is nothing like designing a building. They are completely distinct endeavours with their own requirements, challenges, rewards, levels of commitment and so forth. An architect, such as Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, may metaphorically equate one of his creations as being "like my child" but it would only be a loose comparison made to illustrate the level of attachment and care that he directs to the pursuit of that value.
"This dynamic is pretty hard to navigate with purely objectivist principles imo"
What, in your opinion, are "the objectivist principles?"
You're starting with a lot of false premises so if you'd like to give me your nutshell overview of what you think objectivism is then maybe I can understand why you think Objectvsm is ill-suited to parents. Objectvism positions itself as a philosophy for human beings living on this earth. It exists to provide you with a world view and a framework for living and getting the most out of life. Having and raising children is definitely an important part of being a human being. Many, perhaps most, humans value family and having a family and so if Objectivism can not guide parents then it would be unfit for its own stated purpose. I happen to think otherwise, having raised two children through to adult-hood as an Objectivist, following my understanding of "objectivist principles" and teaching them objectivist values.
So please, tell me what you consider to be "objectivist principles" so I can help clarify because in my opinion you don't seem to understand what Objectivism is all that well. But you do seem want to have an honest discussion and so I'm happy to provide clarification if you seek it.
* You should choose to live based on your individual desire / choices
* You should adhere to your own standards given these choices
* You owe other people nothing, and you are free to enter and leave relationships with other individuals freely
now internet searching:
https://theobjectivestandard.com/what-is-objectivism/
> In sum, the key principles of Objectivism are: Reality is an absolute, reason is man’s only means of knowledge, man has free will (the choice to think or not), self-interest is moral, individual rights are absolute, capitalism is moral, and good art is crucial to good living.
Hard to argue with any of that except self-interest is moral / capitalism is moral. The 2nd is the "political philosphy" I mention which you don't care about really, and the first is well I guess where you can get into a discussion vis a vis children and development, and if my paraphrasing was fair / a straw man.
I'm pretty tired of this conversation, and I think we both agree the OP was lame. I'll give you the last word and leave this conversation.
Metaphysics: the nature of reality and our relationship to it. Epistemology: how we acquire knowledge. Ethics: how we should behave / act in a given situation. Politics: how we relate to and interact with one another. Aesthetics: art.
The reason for the political view that capitalism is moral rests on the premises established below. Like I said, the branches are hierarchical. You can't form an ethical system, for example, without having an understanding of epistemology (otherwise how would you know what is ethical or not?) and you can't form a basis for epistemology without knowing what it is reality.
So objectivist politics comes from the fact that reason is our means of knowledge and that we have free will. This means that in order to survive as a human being, we need to think and to act. Thought and action are fundamentally independent processes. That doesn't mean we can't collaborate, it just means that a group acting in unison requires the individuals within that group to engage in action and it means that there's no such thing as a "collective brain". People "putting their heads together" are people thinking independently, communicating and using that process to further individual thought and communication and collaboration.
That leads to the question "what is the 'correct' system of politics?" The answer is a system that protects the individual's right to think and act freely. Free of what? Free of force and coercion. Force is the opposite of reason. If you have a system that protects your individual rights to think (freedom of expression and conscience) and act (freedom to acquire and own property, freedom to assemble, freedom of association etc.) then what you end up with is capitalism. Free markets are the consequence of a system that protects those rights.
And yes, objectvism rejects altruism as a moral system. It is important to understand the terms, though. Colloquially, people tend to think of altruism as benevolence and kindness. Philosophically what it means is that a moral decision is always to place the interests of others before your own. Following that to its logical conclusion, if given the choice to feed your kids or someone else's, it would be selfish to feed your own. To paraphrase something Ayn Rand said: "It is not an altruistic sacrifice to spend your life savings on a medical operation to save your wife's life. It is altruistic to give your life savings to a complete stranger and to let your wife die." Objectivism views altruism, as a moral framework, as unfit for human survival because it is a system that ultimately demands suicide. It is never right to do something for yourself when you could kill yourself for the sake of another. Give your food, your clothes, your savings, your life to complete stranger at your own expense. This is where objectivism tends to get controversial because the most common ethical systems are altruism-based, which teaches us that there is no such thing as "rational self interest", that doing anything for ourselves is immoral, that we should be using our lives to serve others instead. Objectivism views life as an end in itself, not a means to someone else's ends. In other words, you're not a tool. Your life has as much value as anyone else's, and it should have the most value to you since it's your life.
As a leftist, it is quite easy to critique her ideas in good faith: she disdains anyone who doesn't confirm to her idea of "productive", abhors the poor, and deifies the upper class as being the ultimate model of humanity. And that's not even being reductive.
It would have to be somewhere near the dartboard to be reductive, this is just a weak projection. You mentioned the ease of criticizing her ideas and in the same breath, completely ignore them. The irony is lost on you.