Would someone please condense Ayn Rand for me.

I always viewed her as advocating selfishness.

However a boot strap zillionaire I know who was influenced by her,

is super good to his employees. That seemed discordant to Ayn Rand.

Is he a discordant practitioner or am I missing something.

Is Ayn Rand as big a mystery as cats?

What is it about Ayn Rand?



Moi

I was going to write a lengthy response but then it occurred to me, moi621 just google her and read Wikipedia. One interesting fact is while she advocated limited government and an every man for himself economy, she was a heavy smoker and when she got lung cancer she applied for and received medicare and medicaid. I guess government wasn't so evil when she needed medical care.

In the Ayn Rand novel, her heroic creative class are actually very good to their employees. They want to lure the best and the brightest away from their competition by giving them something more. Better wages, more flex time, better health insurance, and the like. It is in the employer's rational self interest to have a happy working base of employees. But ONLY for their employees. Everyone else is on their own.

What the moochers and takers want, is for everyone to have the same pay regardless of their work ethic. Even if they slack off, they still get paid the same as the ones doing the best work of all.

I do not see the democrats as being that small minded. They have never (to my knowledge) said that the person pushing a broom should get the same pay as the person designing an airplane. What the democrats have instead said, is that everyone needs the same access to education, and health care, so that they can both have the tools to become a valuable worker, (not just push a broom their whole life.) and to be healthy enough to do the work without going bankrupt.

Ayn Rand's fantasy never delves into the opportunities of the working class. All of her heroes start off rich and well educated already. She does not have any character starting off poor, and making himself rich with the sweat of his own labor. She sort of skips that side of things. She makes the assumption that everyone already has a totally equal footing in life, and if they simply work hard, they will be rich, and drive the economy.

Real life doesn't work the way it does in Ayn Rand's fantasy world. I've known a lot of people with good ideas and strong work ethics that can never get ahead. They don't have access to the education they need to better themselves, and so are stuck where they are. One illness, and they would be destitute. Ayn Rand doesn't even know those people exist.

In Ayn Rand's perfect world, everyone would start out rich and well educated. From that point on, their hard work and creativity would help them ascend to power and control.

Her writing fails simply because not everyone starts out with the same tools. Some people are born too poor to afford health care, or education. Some people are born to circumstances that prevent them from using their hard work ethic and natural creativity to prosper. Her argument is, essentially, if you want to use your hard work to get ahead, you need only have a good idea, and innovate, and the rewards will simply come to you. Employers will fight to lure you to them. You will become rich, because you are a valuable worker, and a part of the creative class.

Here is my question to Ayn Rand followers. How can someone design a new technology like an engine or a train system, if they don't have the education? How can they afford that education if they had the bad luck to be born poor?

Ayn Rand never answers that question. Because she never addresses that, her followers assume it doesn't matter. They see giving anything to someone who hasn't yet earned it, as playing to the moochers and the takers. They have to earn it, before you give it to them.

Ask yourself this. Has a child ever done anything to "deserve" an education? In Ayn Rand's world, he would have to. If he had the audacity to be born into a place where education was lacking, that is just his bad luck. Sorry kiddo, you are on your own. Better luck next lifetime. Next time try being born to rich parents.

In Ayn Rand's world, there is no social contract to help the people that follow you to do any better than what they can do on their own. If they are uneducated, then it is up to them to educate themselves. She doesn't address where that education money is going to come from. If you were born in a place with no infrastructure for industry or business to grow, once again, better luck next time. Build it yourself with no education, and no resources. She doesn't stop to think just how impossible that really is.

Yes. Someone who follows Ayn Rand can be good to their employees. They get value from those workers. What they won't stand for, is their hard earned money going to people who are NOT their workers. They don't want their tax dollars spent on education the lower classes. They don't want their tax dollars spent on any infrastructure that doesn't benefit them directly. They do not want their tax dollars to be spent on keeping the workforce healthy if it isn't THEIR workforce.

Ayn Rand's idea is that you only give to people that help you directly. That is her "Rational Self Interest". If there is a group that does not benefit you directly, then that group is entirely on its own. They get nothing, until they earn it for themselves. No education. No infrastructure. No health care. No social safety net. No government retirement plan. You get nothing if you didn't earn it from a corporation.

Does that explain anything?

Let's stop and think about this, however:

What would the world be like without someone to push a broom, pick up the garbage, or run the sewage treatment plant?

Just saying...it's a dirty job, but one we rely on and someone has to do it.

Paolo wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2012 4:38 pm Let's stop and think about this, however:

What would the world be like without someone to push a broom, pick up the garbage, or run the sewage treatment plant?

Just saying...it's a dirty job, but one we rely on and someone has to do it.

Or hands on caregiving to the elderly.

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy or one of the follow on books the hitchhiker got a ride on a space ship with the telephone wipers and trash collectors, etc. they had built three space ship and it was the first to take off, the captain kept looking back for the other two, but they never had any intention of leaving they were just getting rid of the telephone wipers and trash collectors etc, later it was found that those that stayed the engineers, and doctors, and business owners, and corporate presidents had all died, died from a bug because nobody was left to wipe the phones and collect the trash.

River

One thing I find funny is that while her biggest supporters like to tout that 'absolutely anyone can make it', they conveniently ignore the fact that the entire system is set up to require that most people don't.

Now, I don't remember where I got the quote from, but the best way of describing Ayn Rand's writings has to be:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

excellent description , Cainanite

all contributors.

You basically support my understanding that she advocates Pigism,

That is plus ism

The antithesis to Progressive or Jewish politics. A "let them die" attitude.

I sure would like to see her genome at 23andme just to be certain she ain't of my tribe.

Looking forward to more discussion and am so impressed no one Obama-ed or ( )0( ) Bush - ied

yet.

Thanks again.

I read Ayn Rand's Anthem in College and thought "gee how great to be that much for the "I"...

Then I thought about it for a week or so and realized just how cold and uncaring her philosophy was.

I'm not good at explaining or condensing certain philosophies and her "Rational Self Interest" is one of those that I can't easily explain.

I mean Camus' version of Existentialism is pretty ugly in justifying murder but "Rational Self Interest" lacks compassion in all things.