Our Daughter Isn't a Selfish Brat, Your Son Just Hasn't Read Atlas Shrugged (2010)

I've never understood why Atlas Shrugged gets so much more hate than any other book that ever gets mentioned. Its like a rule of the internet that anytime it is mentioned, people must show up and dunk on it.

There's a good reason Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy holding "History of the National Security State".

If we don't live for others, he who dies with most toys still wins a lonely, meaningless death. I believe Ayn had a chip on her shoulder from growing up in the Soviet Union and took an extremist contrarian view rather than a moderate one. Extremism is often what catapults people into fame.

"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt - until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties." -G.V.

I remember the early days of Hacker News (different account) where Ayn Rand was praised to high heavens. Libertarianism ad nauseum.

Meh, I don't believe this is good criticism, actually the author would find himself in the middle of the people who he derides so colorfully. He just doesn't understand their perspective.

And not that of Ayn Rand either, who grew up in Russia. She certainly has an extreme position. This is very relevant context. We currently live in such a system. Nobody is only egoistic or altruistic.

> To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy

Not really and this is not how the world works and the author criticizes her in the background of a different definition of altruism.

She is no prophet or anything, but I believe it is worth reading about her perspective.

I disagree that altruism needs to be self-sacrifice, it most often is not, but this is how Rand defines it. There are cultures that practice quite direct self-sacrifice if they failed others. Can such a person be kind to others if they fail to be kind to themselves? Why do you need to love yourself so you can love others?

> Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong.

It is probably always wrong for everyone, including Rand. Not a Rand fan at all for that matter, she wasn't a too popular author in my country, I think this is mainly a US phenomenon. I think this is relevant too.

Now THAT'S funny, I don't care who you are. (Although it will certainly gag pretty much any content filter that can't buffer more than a few dozen F-bombs...)

Possibly the reader-hero/-author mirror effect. I wouldn't ascribe too much to gender equating to philosophical tendencies.

I'm often disappointed by the lack of philosophical depth and nuance objectivist adherents display. Plus, the arrogance of assuming one's perception is exactly the way reality is when there are as many viewpoints as there are individuals. Beyond math and gravity, subjectivity and ambiguity are the norm. Furthermore, no one is an island and cannot scale their efforts beyond themselves without cooperation and friendships that require solidarity.

Modern libertarianism, the political extension of hyper-individualist objectivism, is largely an ideology sold and popularized by billionaire climate deniers to cynically benefit themselves.

I’m guessing that’s just a reflection of who you know. In my experience no one likes Fountainhead and most of the people who like Atlas Shrugged are men.

This is satire. McSweeney's is a humor literary journal.

It would probably be helpful had you previously read Atlas Shrugged. I am by no means recommending the book (in fact, I'd advise avoiding such poor writing and childish naivety), but having been one of the unfortunate folks who wasted hours on that book, I knew what the author was going for from the first paragraph. And I found it quite humorous.

Spoiler alert: it's a humor piece. There's sex in Atlas Shrugged, maybe it just doesn't fall into your category of "hard core", but again I will point out that it could have been described as such for humorous effect.

It also works for people who have enough weight to throw around so that they don't have to care about the consequences of their actions. You would think that the social repercussions of doing such would be enough to alert someone that they were self-sabotaging, but the mindset has a built in mechanism that prevents this insight from occurring, namely that it allows the user to reframe such feedback as other's attempts at looting them from their rewards. It's a bit of a strange mental attractor in that respect, once a stable orbit of the assemblage of ideas takes place, it is very difficult to perturb one out of it.

Came here to say the same thing, gave up reading article after half way through when it became apparent it was a straw man.

This isn't an argument it's a comical story, but no one has ever mistaken an objectivist for having a sense of humor, so I don't know why I'm surprised by this response.

The tag line is "daily humour every day since 1998"

It is, as you point out, satire.

It is a quite common device in satire to set up a less than accurate scenario, in order to highlight a single failing. It isn't aiming to be a well balanced essay on the pros and cons of anything.

Nah, the author is just really sad that poor Johanna will never have any real friends...

You're getting heavily dunked on here, but personally I think your parody of an Ayn Rand fan is even more on point than the author's.

I’ve read about 2/3rds of it. It’s a terribly written book - too drawn out and on the nose and the “message” is obvious since chapter two or so. It’s like one of those idiotic self help books where if you read first couple chapters you’ve read the whole thing

Same thing with Fountainhead which i read whole

My experience is that 99% of the people who hate Atlas Shrugged never read the book, they just heard that the people they hate like it, so they hate it.

I don't even really understand why people map it onto politics in the way they do. It seems to me fundamentally a story about people trying to accomplish something big, innovative and disruptive but being stymied by the various forces who resist or fear change, whether because they're profiting from the status quo or they're lazy or ignorant or entitled or whatever.

Like one of the central set of "bad guys" are the rival owners of other railroad companies, who are trying to maintain their monopoly/cartel. Another set of "bad guys" are the privileged family members who expect to have wealth and power by birthright. I don't see why a person who had left or far left political views wouldn't resonate with the protagonists struggles against these various entrenched, privileged rent seekers.

I read the book when I was still a right-libertarian, and I credit it with playing a significant part in pushing me left into Anarchism. Thus, I'd say I fall pretty firmly in the camp of "I have read the entirety of Atlas Shrugged and severely disagree with it".

And I have to disagree with the "not an academic treatise" take: the book is a statement of philosophy first, and a story in a distant second. Most character's actions serve to either portray the "right" behavior of the Objectivist Ubermenche, or act a strawman foil to the heroes of the story. Frankly, the most surprising thing is that Rand doesn't stick to easy slam-dunk wins against her strawman "collectivists": she portrays the kinds of monstrous actions that her philosophy encourages, and then celebrates them. Franscisco D'Antonia's bombing of his own mine when he inevitably lost the fight against labor, the reverse-Robin Hood character's outright theft for the benefit of those who really don't need it, heck, the bizarrely rapey sexual encounters between Dagny and Rearden are all portrayed in a unquestionably positive light, and that's probably why so few people who don't already agree with the underlying philosophy finish the book: it's seriously alienating to see evil unambiguously praised.

Atlas Shrugged does not simply "inspire" individualism: It demonizes anything less than overtly selfish behavior, to the point of praising characters for acting against their own interests simply out of spite towards those who fail to live up to the Ubermenche ideal. Contrast that with individualist anarchist writers like Max Stirner, who's philosophy follows something like "Liberation begins with the self, but we can work better together": The former is destructive, where even self-interest takes a back seat to the rejection of cooperation, whereas the latter truely puts self-interest first, acknowledging that cooperation often grants greater benefit to ourselves as well.

As a novel, it's low-effort, monotonous wish fulfillment accented by the occasional romance or absurd moment. As a philosophical statement, it's a lackluster re-framing of the least favorable parts of Nietzche with the overt "Woman only get into academia if they're sterile" sexism being replaced with a more subtle "Women should be more like men" form. The book has few redeeming qualities, and can only really be enjoyed by a reader who already agrees with the premise.