Ayn Rand/Objectivism/Atlas Shrugged
Ok - I bookmooched 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand about a year ago (note - before it suddenly became trendy to read it due to the collapsing economy) and have recently started reading it. Amusing parallels with regards to socio/politico/economic collapse aside I have noticed an interesting side effect when I mention my reading choice to people
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The free market economy uses the wrong metrics to measure and reward success; in a world with finite resources, continual growth is going to lose out to reality. I'm on the side of reality. Secondly, Ayn Rand's characters are flaccid and unbelievable. The moral positioning of the individual uppermost is as blinkered as her characterisation of altruistic socialism: neither position reflects the complex relationship between the individual and society. Also, what Bob the Angry Flower has to say is true too: you don't have much time to be a philospher if you're spending all day trying to feed yourself. Not to mention that such a "strike" wouldn't have the effect posited; firstly, there is strong economic pressure on greedy individuals (greed being good) to deviate from Galt's line. Anyway, the people involved aren't that many standard deviations away from the norm and it's certainly the case that with six billion people on the planet, nobody is irreplaceable. So the Galt plan is a big pile o'shite anyway. And who says that every smart person buys into the scrabble for riches, rewards, recognition? Well, Rand does; but there are lots of happy smart utilitarians out there constituting a counterexample.
To be slightly more emotive: she's an evil bitch whose one merit is being dead.
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I'm only about a third of the way through the book and so have not formed any real opinion either way but assuming that her theory is as flawed as you describe, and that the book is an overlong rant espousing this, why do you have *quite* so much vitriol reserved for her?
I could understand a disinterested shrug, or a 'meh, it's poorly written and badly thought out tripe' but I can't (yet) understand what it is about her and her theories that make you loathe her so much.
Is it because many (capitalist) people seem to have bought into her ideas over the past 50 years and as a result she may be, to a lesser or greater extent, responsible for the general rape of the planet? Or is it something else?
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I don't mind the author producing overlong diatripe enshrining their pet philosophies; usually I just avoid it, although I'm similarly glib about Heinlein. I do think it's a crying shame that idiots have kind of adopted Objectivism as (a distorted version of) the American Dream; it's a playground philosophy and people should know better.
That being said, I _am_ a long-haired hippy who thinks that "enough is plenty" and my moral stance on taking a free energy machine and holing up in a kibbutz for the elite with it is easy to guess :-)
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