Atlas Shrugged – by Ayn Rand

[Anonymous]

I posted an analogy from my own expirment with altruistic capitalism and a more self-serving form of capitalism here:

http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=818&p=78207#p78180

I repeat the question at the end of it below:

SilentDawning wrote:

To those of you have read the book or seen the movie series– am I correct in my band management analogy? Does it reflect the dangers of alturism and the advantages of the capitalistic model Ayn Rand writes about in Atlas Shrugged? Or does it need refinement?

[Anonymous]

From what I remember – Atlas Shrugged was about the innovators/ captains of industry vs. stifling government regulation and those that parasitically live off the government system.

SD, from your example it sounds like the musicians you worked with were glad to let you do all the work and reap the benefits, but that is not quite the same thing as the government forcing you to share the fruits of your labor with others. As you have shown, you have worked out a very satisfactory arrangement recently that works for you. The government does not restrict your ability to do this and the musicians with whom you work are fairly interchangeable.

Now imagine that you grew into a sort of music kingpin and forced your musicians to work long hours in sweatshop conditions and required that they kickback a portion of their salary in order to stay employed. I believe that these things are examples of the evil extremes to which industry could go (and has gone) if left unchecked. There must be a balance between regulation and the ability to compete. Many good people can have honest disagreements about the ideal mixture of regulation vs. free market/laze fare (hands off).

[Anonymous]

Thanks Roy — the point i see you making is that the “feeding at the trough” mentality in my case was voluntary and changeable. With Atlas Shrugged, its a matter of government and law.

I ordered the book Atlas Shrugged (the 100 page synopsis version since I have no patience for long books any longer, or the time for them) so I could understand it. I also payed the $4 to view the movie, Part 1 on Amazon Prime, although I found it a bit slow and fell asleep before it completed. I realized the book is about government policy and philosophy of economic systems. However, so far, I see the analogy in my little music production company as part of Atlas Shrugged — how governments, and sometimes, individuals take advantage of the motivation and hard work of a few people, and then call it their right, thus crushing motivation to achieve. I need to be steeped in the book to , though to make intelligent commentary You’ve convinced me of that.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Ayn Rand relies on the myth that hard work makes you richer. Capitalism was never so. Pay is unrelated to how hard work is.

[Anonymous]

Sam bee commented that there isn’t a direct relationship between hard work and wealth.

I think that is true in a certain number of contexts; I’m sure you could ad more. It is true when:

a) the work you are doing is actually FUN to you.

b) you invest in passive investments like real estate or stocks that actually generate a return while you do nothing after the initial research and purchase.

c) you end up at a poorly managed company that pays you for hardly doing anything at all

d) you are born into a wealthy family with parents who don’t instill a work ethic,and just give you money

e) dumb luck hits you. Like in Forrest Gump, or the time an insurance policy my Dad bought me as a kid turned into a small gain because the insurance company demutualized, and was bought out by a large insurance company. My shares went through the roof. And it was totally an accident.

Otherwise, I see a direct correlation between how hard I work, and the money I earn. As Stephen Leacock said (he’s a Canadian humorist) “the harder I work, the luckier I get”.

[Anonymous]

What money my dad made in his work was exceeded by clever investment and antique/property resale.

My experience is the same. I had a job which I worked at ten hours a day for a month last summer. Never got paid a cent for it.

My grandmother said you need money to make money, which is perhaps where what you say comes in.

In a lot of the the poorer countries, there are people who work their backsides off, in Bolivian silver mines, Bangladeshi clothes sweat shops etc.

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

What money my dad made in his work was exceeded by clever investment and antique/property resale.

My experience is the same. I had a job which I worked at ten hours a day for a month last summer. Never got paid a cent for it.

My grandmother said you need money to make money, which is perhaps where what you say comes in.

In a lot of the the poorer countries, there are people who work their backsides off, in Bolivian silver mines, Bangladeshi clothes sweat shops etc.

Ya there are many 10s of millions of Americans who work 50-50 hours a week, hard exhausting jobs and barker make enough to pay rent at shabby apartments and food and utility bills, to say nothing of health insurance, cars and insurance, tithing and it their student loan, despite working their backs off in the richest country in the world for 50-60 hours a week.

So no, I don’t see a correlation, especially after spending much time with a few friends who are CEO of a millionaires club. They work far less harder on average, and are less generous on average with charity donations and fair pay. Basically the unanimously told me that few of them got rich through hard work. Mostly if they didn’t get luckily with stocks etc. they got rich by penny pinching for years, payed people as little as possible, bought quality stuff but wore their shoes into the ground past their soles, but most importantly, they got people like me to do them their jobs for less then 400% less then you could find someone in the white pages to do their work. Many openly admit to regularly using their social position and manipulation to get much work done for free or find ways out of paying the promises price.

That on a stage they did these things for 15-20 years to become millionaire. And that was the expressed talks within the millionaires club out of 100s agreed was the average and most reliable way to get rich.

So no, I understand the thinking now, and while many are my friends still I despise this thinking which for them is viewed as their right and the right if their social position to do.

For a better book and movie them atlas shrugged about how the system works check out Robert Bernard Reich books. Or watch inequality for all, much much better.

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

…So, based on the synposis here, I believe I have lived both sides of the economic models in Atlas Shrugged. I believe voluntary altruism isn’t sustainable over the long-run when it creates economic inequities for the entrepreneur doing all the work. Even the altruistic entrepreneur can’t survive on the scraps society leaves behind after they consume the fruits of the entrepreneur’s labor…What about the sick and the afflicted? I believe the answer is for society to cultivate a voluntary, charitable culture in their society. I would love to see Ayn Rand propose a solution which involves guilt-free education, training, and role modeling from opinion leaders which encourages altruistic giving — on Atlas’ own terms. THAT is sustainable. Not forced service or forced giving. And that’s partly why I don’t agree with the tithing question in TR’s — or what I feel can be a bottomless pit of unrequited service at church…To those of you have read the book — am I correct in my band management analogy? Does it reflect the dangers of alturism and the advantages of the capitalistic model Ayn Rand writes about in Atlas Shrugged? Or does it need refinement?

That was part of what the book is about; one of the ideas that actually made some sense to me was what she called, “the sanction of the victim.” Basically the general idea was that in many cases people are taken advantage of primarily because they allow others to take advantage of them and they believe they should accept what they don’t really need to put up with. However, Rand doesn’t just argue that selfishness will produce better results for the individual and society as a whole than altruism, she goes way beyond that and acts like altruism is some kind of sinister evil in itself that has corrupted the world. As far as I can tell she saw things in a very black-and-white, either-or, and frankly cynical way. That’s one point where she went wrong in my opinion, I think that in reality altruism has actually helped people achieve much of the progress and success we have so far and more importantly it will never be eliminated completely because it is basically a natural instinct many people have.

[Anonymous]

dash1730 wrote:

I read Atlas Shrugged in my youth, but it’s influence on my thinking ebbed as I aged…A major failing, IMO, of the current political right, is that they equate capitalism with corporatism, the first being relatively small businesses in competition with, and supporting one another for the mutual good of everyone such as was common in this country 75-100 years ago. The second is mega corporations, who’s only objective is maximizing value for the exec’s and their investors. They discover it’s easier to buy out the competition, thus eliminating the competition, while increasing their dominance in the market place…But as our corporations get ever bigger and gain an increasing part of the newly unregulated pie, they often become now to big to fail. I just don’t see the difference between the evils of huge corporations and huge government. Moreover, the huge corporations now have so much money they can buy influence over the government, at the expense of the individual citizens.

SamBee wrote:

Ayn Rand relies on the myth that hard work makes you richer. Capitalism was never so. Pay is unrelated to how hard work is.

That’s another problem I saw with this book, even the freest of markets we can imagine would not prevent some of the nepotism, cronyism, and inefficient bureaucracies the book’s villains display. To me the arch-villain Jim Taggart was the most believable and realistic character in the book basically rising to the top not based on hard work or any exceptional ability but simply by being born into a wealthy family and knowing other influential people. However in real life rather than being miserable I think someone like that would generally do just fine without needing someone like Dagny to compensate for him because he could easily find many people to pay to do whatever he couldn’t or didn’t want to. Really the only way to accomplish Rand’s vision of the way the world should be would be for only people that think the way she did to be in power across the board which even if that was possible to achieve in the first place I don’t see how it could ever be maintained from one generation to the next. Basically it is pure fantasy to even talk about and we might as well get used to the fact that people are going to think differently about the same things sometimes no matter what they are taught is supposedly correct.

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