Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism
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It works intellectually, but it is best used for inspiration. How often do you find a piece of literature for $12 that MAY change your life.
I'm a long-time fan, after finding one of her books at a flea market when I was a kid (bought it coincidentally at the same time as Walden Two, a socialist manifesto by B.F. Skinner...one was delightfully rational and rang true while the other's greatest feat of intellectual brilliance was the use of glass dinner plates so you don't have to flip them when washing them to know that both sides are clean), but I'll never re-read the John Galt speech. Atlas was just too long. Ayn clearly never heard of DRY (or assumed her readers were too stupid to understand it the first several times she said it).
Her books make the case that individuals working in their own self interest are the best thing for "human civilization." Disagree if you will, but you'll have a tough time coming up with a definition of "advancement of human civilization" that everyone can agree on. In the end you fight for your own vision of what the world should be and ignore the rest.
Might is right. Ignore that at your own peril. Especially if you're in a startup.
No, I think it's easy, we've got a great way to measure progress. We call it "power." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
Even if we let them live, Kardashev, brilliant though he may be, has hardly come up w/ a universal set of values that everyone is, should, or will eventually strive for.
The best you can do is to absorb his ideals, spread his word and create technology that furthers his goals. And in doing that you become an Ayn Rand follower.
Only if we can use them as fuel.
:P
Political disagreements stem from philosophical disagreements. If two mathematicians were arguing about geometry and one assumed that parallel lines never met and the other assumed they did they would not have a meaningful conversation. The problem with most conversations is they mostly deal with surface issues. Clinton or Obama. Bush or Kerry. Blah or Bleh.
Amen to Hacker news for getting to the heart of the matter. And to the the non-Rand-ers, apologies for our intensity and contrarian views. But this conversation will be good for everyone...
And of course, her primary error is that humans are rational beings. We're not. We're evolved animals, and one of the things we've evolved is the ability to rationalise behaviours that stem from thoroughly irrational sources. That a whole bunch of bright self-made and aspiring individualists who prefer doing to theorising have a lot of time for someone who essentially gave them a way to feel just great about both means and ends which have caused pain to other people+ is hardly surprising; but it's correlation, not cause. Indeed, I suspect that the people who readily accept Rand would basically have thought and acted that way anyway, but would have found an alternative, less satisfying, justification for doing so (for example, the economical justification of the Austrians). The importance of Rand to such people is the moral justification she crafted for them.
+ Note, I'm not passing moral judgement here; what makes us feel guilty about our actions is the combination of empathy with knowledge of the pain we have caused someone else - but we can alleviate that guilt if we can convince ourselves it's for a greater good; and there is no greater good than to have done what is morally right.
I made it about 1/3 of the way into The Fountainhead but got bored and lost interest. Self-interest is ok, but I'm not going to make it my religion.
The architect who wouldn't design what people like (because it wasn't rational, as I recall) seemed like a really annoying person to deal with. And I certainly wouldn't want to invest in his startup :)
For investment, it definitely depends on when you invested: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&s=MSFT&l=on&z... http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=my&s=MSFT&l=on&z...
The same goes for the early years btw -- apple had it's IPO much sooner than ms.
As for which product or company is better, that depends on what you're looking for. I don't believe that there is a single best solution. It's obvious that they both make products that meet a lot of people's needs.
No it isn't. Both Frank Lloyd Wright and Ayn Rand explicitly refuted such a claim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright#Cultural_Ref...
In any case, Lloyd Wright's buildings might well have pushed the envelope on art, but they've been criticised on technical grounds.
And the idea that "if you don't do anything you're told not to you'll never do anything new" really doesn't need an 800-page exposition by someone who demonstrates a complete lack of empathy for humans, a penchant for rape, and no particular talent as a writer.
The relationships between her characters are usually sadomasochistic, not sexual abuse. But even when it does appear it takes up barely ten pages in her novels.
> ... and no particular talent as a writer.
Ironically contrary to her message, the popularity of her books suggests otherwise.
I presented two cases where I assert popularity /\ !talent = T, ie. !popularity \/ talent = F, to show that !(popularity => talent).
Your response: "so you claim that Rand does not have popularity".
Er, wtf?
Can we just end this thread here before we get to the inevitable anticlimactic conclusion that people differ in opinion?
Only a small percentage of people buy books regularly. So to make a big bestseller you have to write a book that gets bought by that huge majority of people who don't read much. And usually their decisions are dominated by random extraneous factors: i.e. it's a biography of someone they admire, or is related to some doctrine they subscribe to, or contains facts they need or gossip they want to know about.
Think of the books you find in the houses of people who have hardly any books: the Bible, the Guinness Book of World Records, a Chilton car repair manual, a racy biography of Princess Di, a book of popular mysticism, a book about how to make money or lose weight. Those are the really big sellers.
(This question sounds smarmy, but I ask it earnestly.)
Good judges can tell who the good writers are, but there's no currently no independent way of telling who the good judges are.
Empirically the oscillations of opinion seem to settle down after a few hundred years. Even then there are probably errors. E.g. tragedies will tend to be more highly regarded than comedies, because they seem more serious.
I meant to write: "OK. And because of this Rand isn't a good writer?".
It's not a non sequitur, just a typo.
To save myself from repeating the same argument as the few threads above this, I'll just link to it:
> the popularity of her books suggests otherwise [my emphasis]
In other words, you weren't actually making the claim I thought you were - that popularity implies quality. So I'm sorry for missing your point originally.
I do disagree that popularity is evidence of quality; popularity is only evidence of broad appeal, and you'd still need to demonstrate a correlation between broad appeal and quality - I contend that no correlation exists. But that's a reasonable debate, not a logical fallacy.
But I have to ask - why didn't you tell me that I was refuting an argument you hadn't made...?
You sound like a BOFH - what is your basis for making such superficial, critical statements about highly creative people?
As to Lloyd Wright's skills as an architect (if that's what "superficial, critical statements about highly creative people" was referring to) - I do not dispute that he was highly creative, nor that he was the first great American architect. But his roofs habitually leaked, and there were other technical problems with his creations. Since buildings, whilst unquestionably being creative endeavours, are not purely expressive in purpose, technical failings are not trivialities; they'd have curtailed the career of a lesser architect.
Oddly enough, the same is true in software; there's lots of uninspired but technically competent software, there's rather less beautiful but technically unsound software; and very little code which is both beautiful and sound - but competence can keep a coder in the game even if they have no artistic flair.
The philosophy works well with architecture because of "classical" limitations and the power of the individual to evoke change in the modern world. That's a message that any startupper needs even as you're certainly right - we need to iterate with customers in mind. But then, that's our sector. Imagine those crazy businesses where the innovator knew that, if he asked, people wanted faster horses.
The notion that "I know exactly what people need and my ideas are all rational and brilliant while other's are stupid and irrational" is just so arrogant and wrong, but it seemed to be the main point of the Fountainhead (based on the 1/3 of the book that I read 10 years ago...)
Two interesting ideas come to me about this.
From what I've read, Henry Ford studied assembly lines at the Springfield Armory (which was first to create machines to make individual parts for guns, as well as first to allow non-skilled labor to assemble pieces together without involving a craftsman at all.) What's ironic is that two brothers who created and sold the first gasoline car (motorized carriage) were also in Springfield.
Henry Ford made many innovations to the product and the pipeline. New competitors innovated on the design front to get more customers, while Henry didn't. Since Henry did not change his automobile, and people wanted to buy cars in the 1920's with a more modern look (as defined by not looking like the same car Ford had put out since 1908), other designs took hold.
Successive design changes are made to stand out from the current crowd, that's all.
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blDuryea.htm
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:yqqlYiJW0w4J:www.engr.s...
The point here is that for an artist to make authentic art, the work has to be a reflection of that artist's core values regardless of what they are. It is that core that gives consistency to an artists work, and it is being true to that core that is necessary (but not sufficient) to make meaningful art.
Rand's point was not at all that Roark would "force" his work on his clients for whom Roark could care less, but rather that the client had to choose Roark because Roark's work resonated with the values of the client in the same way that someone who buys art is hopefully doing so because that art resonates with their values.
The point Rand was making was that culturally the kind of art Roark was producing, in the beginning of the book, is not popular and that only a few desired it. By the end of the book, Roark had found success in finding a growing body of clients who wanted his style of design. He had found his niche and had remained true to his core values as an artist - integrity being the primary one.
For pure art it may not matter (though I suspect that wealthy artists have adapted to market demands, but won't admit it), but for functional products it matters a lot.
This is sort of an amusing debate, because usually I'm the one pushing to make things more different and unconventional. However, to make changes really take root, you often have to "boil the frog".
I think for art you can look at a work in 2 ways: the subject and the style. The subject can and usually is highly influenced by the buyer, but the style of the artist, which I argue should be a manifestation of the artist's core values, should not be influenced. If it were, the artist would lack core values and consistency - which is never the case (that I know of) for meaningful artists. So again, the buyer chooses the artist for their style, and then goes from there on possibly suggesting a subject (such as a portrait), not the other way around.
You can easily argue that Apple is taking this same approach to technology. They present a distinct style of products - usually highly designed/integrated and simple to use (some would argue almost inspiring to use) in their many different products, but the type of product they make is highly influenced by what people want. For many, Apple products might be too simple or too expensive, but there is a growing group of people willing to pay extra for Apple's style of technology.
Now, if Apple were to change their style based on market research for every product, that would be the death of the apple brand as we know it, and they would morph into yet another cloning company. The familiarity idea you were talking about also breaks down with the Apple example, as who knew they wanted a Mac before it existed? It certainly wasn't familiar, nor was the Iphone, etc. But that issue is another topic. My point was that to be a successful artist adherence to a core set of values is key (in the case of business you could call it branding). This issue shows up alot in music, where people will find that a band has "sold out" by changing their unique sound to appeal more to a mass audience thus losing those original fans.
The funny thing is that in the Fountainhead, Howard Roark really sacrificed A LOT for his singular focus on the types of projects he wanted to work on. His measure of value in his life was not having steady jobs, but achieving his vision. If someone wants to focus on something that doesn't match the conventional goals, I don't see that as being a problem as long as it doesn't inhibit other's freedoms.
Rand again takes this to the extreme, but it helps her to make a point (and makes for a more interesting story).
This one made me laugh a little. What did people want from gmail, Paul? Folders, right? Lots of good folder-related features. Did you give it to them? Nope. You made search work right, threaded the conversations, and to hell with what people wanted. You gave'em what they didn't know they wanted (but what was right). And you were right to do so.
Sure, now you have labels, which are just like folders only not called folders, but I'm pretty sure you weren't around for that (or at least you didn't push for labels if you were around for it).
Gmail definitely contains some compromises, and I'm ok with that. I'd rather have a good product with millions of users than a "perfect" product with zero users (not that perfection is possible anyway).
I agree, and I know you're not as arrogant as a Rand hero. Your post just made me laugh. ;-)
But I'm glad you clarified, because the "I know what's best" sentence could very well be the best thing ever said on News.YC.
Not sure where you got that. All of my posts on this topic should make clear that I'm a very big Rand fan, and have read all of her books (really, all of them). I would never call myself a SOME-PERSONS-NAMEian of any sort, so perhaps that's the difference. I do sometimes refer to myself as an anarcho-capitalist, so, philosophically, your Rothbardian views and mine probably coincide more than they differ. ;-)
I actually did enjoy Atlas Shrugged. But the speech is too much, the book too long (by about half), and the characters are weak (for such a long book). When I first started reading Rand, I wanted to share her books with everybody. So I recommended Atlas, her opus, to everybody I knew. None of them made it through the book. All got bogged down in the speech, and either gave up, or skimmed the rest of it. Even people who were reasonably heavy readers (though mostly pulp) still couldn't stomach the whole thing. I started recommending Anthem after that, and everybody made it through...everybody enjoyed it...and some went on to read other Rand books (I recommend The Fountainhead next).
I still believe that intelligent people can get everything they really need to know about Rand's philosophy from Anthem. And, of course, dumb folks can actually read Anthem, understand it, and enjoy it.
But, you're definitely weird to think "Catcher in the Rye" is shallow. Perhaps you like a lot of words in your stories. I don't. Word of advice: Stay away from Hemingway, you won't like it.
Yes, I have read both Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in the last couple of years, and they were viewpoint-changing events for me. They are lengthy, but it was worth the read for me. My key takeaway is that personal freedom and the ability for individuals to focus on their goals with as little artificial interference as possible leads to the greatest societal gain.
My point was poorly made. Stated more clearly, in my view, this essay is a work that shares the spirit of a lot of the same lines of thought as AS (though wholly unique in its focus). In addition to this essay being great on its own merits, I recommend this essay to anyone who is interested in getting a flavor of some of the big picture questions AS discusses.
However, I actually enjoyed the book and the story. Before I read the book, I had a lot of random and poorly formed ideas about what was economically moral, and this really helped me to crystallize my viewpoints.
Brevity is one of the virtues of great literature. You'll probably learn that as you grow older and time becomes more valuable to you. Certainly, great literature can be long (Middlesex is perhaps the best novel of the past 20 years, and it weighs in at a pretty hefty 556 pages...this is still significantly shorter than Atlas), but Atlas Shrugged, as art, suffers under the weight of the philosophical treatise that it's carrying around on its back (much like the mythic Atlas, and yes, I believe he should shrug off all that extra weight).
The Fountainhead is somewhat less marred by needless words, but only Anthem is actually free of cruft, in my opinion.
"Her objectivist philosophy may be a bit overt in the latter, but never for a second could I sleep well knowing I'd proposed that others -skip- these books."
People who like what they find in the shorter Rand books will go on to read the others. People who get stuck in the mud of Galt's speech will never pickup another Rand book. That speech is simply terrible literature. It might be good philosophy, but it's not good art.
"We, the Living", I didn't care for. The language is stilted (even more than Atlas and Fountainhead). It was her first real writing in English, and it shows. I never recommend WTL to folks who don't already like Ayn Rand, and most of the folks I know who've started it never finished it. I did, but I would never re-read it. (I've re-read Fountainhead and Atlas, minus the Galt speech, a couple of times, and Anthem at least four or five times.)
The way this relates to Ayn Rand is that in all her stories the captains of industry are pervceived as evil profit mongers by the masses. The masses evantually rise up and take back what's "theirs" and the entire economy grinds to a halt. This is what Rand witnessed in the Russian Revolution and this is exactly what is happening in Zimbabwe today.
(I read the first 100 pages of Atlas Shrugged, and got sick of it. I thought it was uninteresting as a novel and inefficient and not rigorous as a treatise. This part of the novel seemed to intentionally perpetuate my confusion: the conflict, as I recall, was between truly selfish people and collectivists that were too incompetent to see when the selfish people were doing collective good. Why conflate incompetence and collectivism?)
2007 - 1943 = 64
1981 + 64 = 2045
But if we're gonna go there (and this is all in jest), I see it like this: in 1981 Depeche Mode were a bunch of drama-whoring junkies with Casio keyboards, yet they managed to express the same basic ideas in far fewer words, plus a catchy euro-pop beat.
I appreciate some aspects of Ayn Rand's thought, but find her books a chore to read.
Alan Greenspan considers Ayn Rand a major influence? It's an interesting factoid, but falls far short of implying causality. I could make another Depeche Mode reference here, but it would be extremely tasteless.
When Greenspan and his ilk characterize people as 'parasites', I parse that as 'anyone who gets between me and the forests of money to which I am entitled'. I might see where he's coming from, but his rhetoric is needlessly violent.