Meeting Ayn Rand on the Las Vegas Strip
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
It is so telling that this guy thinks moral certainty and "fervor" are a good thing. A person who is 100% certain and unquestioning in his beliefs is a person who cannot be reasoned with. This avowed rationalist speaks with the language of religious fundamentalistism.
If X (which is assumed to be true) and Y then Z. It might be logically valid, but it’s still meaningless.
On the contrary, as logical reasoning in any particular system of logic depends on the set of axioms defining that system of logic, any philosophy which does not admit any axioms likewise does not admit logical reasoning, and any philosophy which only includes those axioms necessary to support a system of logic can't lead to any conclusions other than those that constitute the description of the system of logic. In order for a philosophy to have interesting consequences, it must have substantive axioms.
Side stepping that, from a pure logic standpoint you can reason about philosophies independent from reality. But, with nothing actually connecting them to physical reality the value of such effort is basically just aesthetic in nature. "TRUTH is ..."
Never fight against-- you inevitably become that which you fight. (to paraphrase Nietzsche)
Like Marx, Rand was far better at criticizing than she was at proposing a solution. Both proposed scenarios with a big hand-wavey "magic happens here" step in the middle followed by a utopia.
I also have to say this: Rand's admiration for big business and for "captains of industry" was obviously coming from someone who'd never actually worked in the high corporate world. Your average executive is almost indistinguishable from a Soviet apparatchik, and corporations are internally not terribly unlike Soviet bureaucracies (especially big ones). The number of real executives who at all resemble Rand heroes is something you can count on one hand -- and interestingly most of them don't espouse Randian-type ideology. Most seem to be either apolitical or slightly to the left.
Some of Rand's ideas are interesting and well stated. I think she's worth reading. But a lot of her politics sounds really archaic now that we're almost 25 years past the cold war. Today's totalitarians are mostly ultra-right-wing theocrats, strong men like Putin, and neoliberal state-capitalists who are attempting to create a kind of high-tech feudalism.
The fanatical totalistic version of socialist ideology is dead (that's a good thing-- one down, three or four to go). I'd personally take European or Canadian style "light socialism" over Iran or Singapore, thank you very much.
Rand apparently put out several subtle books on the subject previously but no one seemed to get the point. It was then she finally resorted to knocking you over the head with an over-the-top version.
I found the movie simplistic, but hearing that afterwards gave some perspective.
Also, if you're going to override people's flags, you should also override all the upvotes, because there is no way to just downvote irrelevant crap like this, so political diatribes, Buzzfeed links and everything else that has a solid core of upvoters will dominate if we can't filter for relevance.
I'm afraid you have a misconception, and it's a crucial one. There is no "topic of this site". The axiom of Hacker News is intellectual curiosity, and intellectual curiosity does not limit itself to one set of things.
Of course we're not all curious about the same stuff. That's why we have voting—to express personal interest. But to flag an article like this one is to say it has no (or nearly no) potential for intellectual curiosity at all, and that seems clearly to be a bad call.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
Let me elaborate: Should I start spamming links to long-winded vegan propaganda? I would find it interesting, because it appeals to a viewpoint I happen to agree with. I also find Sailor Moon to be interesting. Should I start linking Sailor Moon content? Exactly how ridiculous and fluffy do my interests have to be before we can agree that there would be a better forum for the content?
Although they might be interesting to some particular hackers, vegan evangelism, libertarian politics and Sailor Moon are pretty far from the obvious intent of "things that good hackers would find interesting."
More than that, political content is poisonous to good discussion. The more you allow politics in, the more politics will consume everything, and the more comment threads you'll have that only gratify people's need to be outraged. I can understand that some political stories legitimately reflect a new trend that affects hackers and entrepreneurs, but allowing anything that interests anyone just allows far too much junk and hastens the site's decline.
The guidelines do say that most political stories are probably off-topic. But "note those words most and probably" [1]. They're not there by accident.
All of that said, I'm just happy it isn't the flat out hatchet job I expected. When the mainstream press mentions Rand, it's almost always to portray her as some "Wicked Witch of the West" caricature, and to misrepresent her philosophy so as to marginalize it.
Perhaps it meets the minimum bar for substance (but if so, that bar is so low that almost nothing could squeeze under it), but if so only in a general interest sort of way, exactly the kind of way referred to in the guidelines (emphasis added):
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
A review of the rather old phenomenon of the political philosophy of Objectivism that is prompted by a reasonably recent convention but doesn't really address anything new about it doesn't seem to fit into the topicality guidelines even if grants that it is substantive (which, in this case, seems excessively generous.)
All: Please only make comments which improve the signal/noise ratio of a thread.
edit: fixed name of the show
Also, the absurdity of expecting facts from a comedy show has been brought to my attention just recently. All in all, what a great first comment on this site ; )
Anyway, I'd argue there is an obvious atmosphere of disgust. The voice-over before the first interview segment states her philosophy amounts to being a selfish asshole. See the relevant part of the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFy9A7WEzPA#t=104 from 1:45 to around 3:40.
The net result is the impression that everything she's saying is basically bullshit. It seems to me that it's considered unacceptable to refer to her ideas.
I sometimes toy with the thought of writing a second ending to be Atlas Shrugged where old Dagny looks at our world and can't grasp what is wrong with it.
Those political priorities still come from "Washington" and rule over NY (or Silicon Valley). Both cities are meant within context of the book.
Source: Atlas Shrugged, Francisco's "Money Speech"
Anyone living and producing goods or services in a corrupt country will understand this. You need to experience several years in the society described in the quote to fully understand the implications.
Understanding a philosophy doesn't mean accepting it.
This part alone shows how much superficial BS this is.
You cannot produce anything without using the earth's resources. They do not naturally belong to any man.
So it's either "take what you want, by force, and fuck everyone else", or we find some peaceful way to share those resources amongst each other. Preferably without terminally destroying them for future generations.
Yes, the latter is done through a huge variety of intricate social constructs, and all of them are corrupt to some degree, because such is mankind.
But the only society in which you do not need permission from your fellow men is one in which the majority of the population has the status of serfs.
Atlas Shrugged is basically the reductio ad absurdum version of saner arguments for capitalism.
Ayn Rand's Objectivism aligns well with fiscal conservatives and capitalists in a way that is hard to find elsewhere. I have met a lot of people who are pro-capitalism fiscal conservatives and they seem to have fallen through the political cracks. I see very few politicians or public-figure role models who appeal to Capitalists.
The second reason: Keynesian economics works, at least in the short to medium term. When a recession hits, real fiscal conservatives lose big. Democrats know this and play to it explicitly. Republicans also know it, and are masters at politically weaponized Keynesianism. They espouse fiscally conservative rhetoric while being ardent Keynesians in practice, usually through military spending and financial bubble-blowing.
I disagree. Fiscal conservatism means that I get to keep more of my money, instead of having the government take it. That's certainly an advantage to me.
But I think you meant "it's not an advantage of one person over another", which is true. And by extension, I think you meant "therefore it doesn't help one candidate get elected over another", which I think is false. Telling people that you're going to let them keep more of their money shouldn't be a very hard sell. (Now, true, most conservative candidates don't seem to be able to articulate such a message, but I think that's because most "conservative" candidates aren't fiscal conservatives at all.)
Krugman has managed to make the Keynesian premise completely unfalsifiable using a tall podium and a variety of rhetorical techniques. Krugman believes his own press, rarely reads opposing views and mischaracterizes opponents such that to read his column, you'd think everyone who disagrees with him must be a moron.
According to Krugman:
If the economy isn't doing well, it's because we need to pass a stimulus package.
If the economy STILL isn't doing well, it's because we need a BIGGER stimulus package or ANOTHER stimulus package. (repeat this assertion until things get better, which they are likely to eventually even if it's despite rather than due to all this stimulus.)
If the recovery is surprisingly slow, it's because we didn't listen to him when he said we need a bigger stimulus package.
If the recovery is surprisingly fast, it's because we DID listen to him about the need for the ORIGINAL stimulus package.
Thus there is no real-world outcome which he can't explain in terms of the need for government to spend more.
(Constructing a similar argument for the need to spend less in all these circumstances is left as an exercise for the reader)
If you agree with the principles of Objectivism you can more or less follow it as a way of life, without doing anything drastic like abandoning all your worldly possessions, or feeling like a hypocrite.
Indoctrinatied? What a way to start but he sure makes his stance clear with that sentence.
As someone who really values Ayn Rands work (I am one of those who was influence by Atlas Shrugged), I find it difficult to get through this piece (as it is with things you disagree with). I find it very biased yet it never really gives any good arguments against objectivism.
Of course one should not treat Ayn Rand as a god and be dogmatic about her ideas, and certainly don't judge her by the people that do.
Considering how big the book is, I'd like to know before I try to read it.
I think the entire history of engineering is a testament that we can make observations on a consistent enough basis to be practical.
For comparison, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World present cautionary examples in a fictional context, but can still be seen as political works in their own right.
This is not to say that you'll enjoy the book (it is a long book, and anybody who has read it will remember the 70-page speech by Mr. Galt, even if they ended up skimming much of it) or even agree with the philosophy; often it seems that well-intentioned approaches that result in disaster by the "bad guys" (e.g. job security measures -- nobody can be fired) are disastrous only because they are taken to an extreme (e.g. everybody gets paid the same).
As for why I would recommend reading it, I grew up in the 80s, and I feel like the view I got from reading most casual fiction of the time and even from my early education was that communism (especially Soviet-style communism) was as valid an economic system as capitalism, and in the future imagined by scifi authors, the USA and the USSR were side-by-side in the conquest of space; and that much of the anti-communist sentiment, and the Cold War itself, was more of the Dr. Seuss "Butter Battle Book" argument over which side of the toast should be buttered, or pointing out specific leaders of the USSR (like Stalin) as being aberrations, rather than an indication of problems with the system of governance. Reading Ayn Rand (and later, Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative, and various works by von Mises and Hayek) gave me a more complete view in a lot of ways as to why the Cold War happened (even though most of those books postdated the start of the Cold War significantly), and how McCarthyism could have existed in a country that to my young eyes seemed extremely tolerant to controversial ideas.
The book creates exaggerated scenarios in order to illustrate certain principles and beliefs.
Some of those beliefs are:
1) If you created value as a producer then you deserve to keep and use that wealth you created. Others don't have a right to it and must trade with you through voluntary win/win means.
2) There are devious individuals who will use their influence to make government force others to provide them with benefits and harm their competition.
3) Being competent and producing value is one of the highest moral virtues. It is what advances society forward and promotes the "common welfare".
4) Objective thought should be relied upon rather than the opinion of others. You don't need to have a title in order to have an opinion. You just need to be competent on the subject matter.
5) Society will try to make you feel guilt for your success. As long as you created wealth through moral means then you should be proud, not full of guilt.
If nothing else, Objectivism is a pretty convincing argument that the left/right political binary is bullshit.
The greater reason not to post such comments, of course, is that they're inevitably off-topic and tedious.
I think the quote that demonstrates the author's slant is the following one about the Venetian hotel, and how "[o]nce inside, you have to follow the arcade of shops along a faux canal". This canal seems to conform to the dictionary definition of 'canal', and the author seems to be trying to exaggerate what he deems to be the flaws of Las Vegas.[1] There are numerous other instances in the article where similar hyperbole is used, and I will not bore you with a list, but they show that the writing is more sensationalist than journalistic or academic.