Rep. John Campbell Literally Taking His Policy Cues From Ayn Rand Novels
Dave Weigel finds one member of congress who’s happy to admit that he gets his policy ideas from a crackpot:
Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), who gives his departing interns copies of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” told me today that the response to President Obama’s economic policies reminded him of what happened in the 51-year-old novel.
“People are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’” said Campbell. “The achievers, the people who create all the things that benefit rest of us, are going on strike. I’m seeing, at a small level, a kind of protest from the people who create jobs, the people who create wealth, who are pulling back from their ambitions because they see how they’ll be punished for them.”
Just think what kind of nightmare scenario we might be inflicted with if the titans of finance who’ve made up such a large proportion of high earners in recent years were to pull back on their efforts! I shudder. Meanwhile, I haven’t actually read the book but my understanding is that in Atlas Shrugged they’re actually building a high-speed rail link from Las Vegas to Disneyland.
86 Responses to “Rep. John Campbell Literally Taking His Policy Cues From Ayn Rand Novels”
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March 4th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Right, little people don’t create wealth.
All of those people who unload the trucks, mop the floors, cook the burgers, work the fry-o-laters, take the orders, fill the sacks, work the registers – they don’t generate any value for McDonald’s. Neither do the people who laid the pavement, poured the concrete, laid the tile, banged the studs, and installed the equipment.
Nope, the only people who have a claim on creating any wealth from the operations of the McDonald’s are the owners.
What a creep.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
John Campbell has the sort of hands that would drop things all over the kitchen
…at McDonald’s.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
He was probably worried that someone might soon be asking if Republicans could get any more ridiculous, so he made sure everyone knew they could.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
For two decades Republican and Democratic presidents entrusted the Federal Reserve to a long-time member of Ayn Rand’s inner circle, somebody so dedicated to Rand that he participated in the Stalin-lite purge of Nathaniel Branden when he stopped having his affair with Ayn.
What could possibly go wrong?
March 4th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
It didn’t happen. That was fiction.
Dumbass.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Singapore is certainly enjoying the money flowing into their country from American venture capital firms.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I hate it when Sailer makes sense.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Actually, Atlas Shrugged is about a heroic architect who struggles, in the face of fierce opposition, to protect the California marsh mouse.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), who gives his departing interns copies of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,”
Because if he gave copies to the incoming interns, they might decide not to work for him for free.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
JM, don’t be surprised that the GOP is basing economic theory on the payoff of a novel. They based their entire torture policy on the premise that torture helped Jack Bauer catch the bad guys with the nuke.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
“I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden metal at the point of a gun,” she said. “Don’t let them, Hank. With your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we’ll revitalize our country’s failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits.”
“Oh, no, I got out of that suckers’ game. I now run my own hedge-fund firm, Rearden Capital Management.”
http://mcsweeneys.net/2008/11/20tucker.html
March 4th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Campbell used to my Congressman. Now it’s Dana Rohrabacher. I can’t win for losing.
The best Atlas Shrugged parody, of course, is Aslan Shrugged.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I am not sure what is more troubling the congressmen’s comment or Matt’s facetiousness towards finance. I have never had much faith in the intellect of most elected officials (especially capitalists) but Matt persistent ignorance on the importance of our finance industry is probably worse. And progressives wonder why people fear nationalization.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Meanwhile, I haven’t actually read the book but my understanding is that in Atlas Shrugged they’re actually building a high-speed rail link from Las Vegas to Disneyland.
Well played, sir, well played.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Silly Matt, have you tried to read a modern article about Economics? It’s tough, and way above Rep. John Campbell’s pay grade. A novel, on the other hand…
March 4th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
When one of those fuckers invents a perpetual motion machine (like Rand’s ubermensch, John Galt did in the book) then we can talk. Trading derivatives doesn’t count for shit.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Ah, Atlas Shrugged, where the barons of business are also engineering geniuses who care about rail and alternative energy. Also, as a native Coloradan, I’m sure that, if there’s any place wild enough to hide a Galt’s Gulch in the state, it’s only due to federal protection.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Re “my understanding is that in Atlas Shrugged they’re actually building a high-speed rail link from Las Vegas to Disneyland.”
————
Yeah –but then the dynamo which powers the world stopped and the train slide to a halt around Long Pine.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Doesn’t anyone on the Right realize that “Atlas Shrugged” (along with the rest of the Rand catalog) is a terrible book?
March 4th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
The perfect response to that stupid book is Bob the Angry Flower’s “Classic Literature sequels: Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later”.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Ayn Rand novels have always seemed to me to be Pink Floyd in text, something you should get over in tenth grade and feel mildly embarrassed about ever taking it seriously by the middle of your freshman year in college.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Hmm – link was missing:
http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
March 4th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I read a post somewhere a few days ago which suggested that if we had paid the genius financiers that created all these wonderful risk allocation devices their same seven and eight figure salaries to do something else and go nowhere near our financial system we would have been much better off. I can only hope such titans retire to an island somewhere never to be heard from again.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Oh come on now, don’t be closed minded. All sorts of great policy ideas can be inspired by fiction.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/2139573/Barack-Obama-aide-Why-Winnie-the-Pooh-should-shape-US-foreign-policy.html
Barack Obama aide: Why Winnie the Pooh should shape US foreign policy
Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.
Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”
March 4th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Dave Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Doesn’t anyone on the Right realize that “Atlas Shrugged” (along with the rest of the Rand catalog) is a terrible book?
===========================================================
I defy anyone to say “Winnie-the-Pooh” or “The House at Pooh Corner” are terrible books!
March 4th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I always wondered who was buying all of this steel and the like that Rearden Steel produced. More to the point, if you read Atlas Shrugged, it’s almost as if the “demand” side of the market isn’t really present; Rearden makes his metal Just Because He Can (sure, he likes money, but he already has quite a bit of it).
March 4th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I’m not a big fan of Rand. But I love the facist artwork she has on her books.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
When you entire philosophy can be refuted by a 10 hour video game, it may be time to move on
March 4th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
What I think is funny here is that the Dems have pretty much become the party of urban knowledge-workers, from teachers to software engineers to architects to investment bankers. As David Brooks wrote shortly before the election, it takes talent for Republicans to lose investment bankers. And, of course, most of the wealth in this country is generated in those educated, urbanized blue states that people like Campbell so despise.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
“More to the point, if you read Atlas Shrugged, it’s almost as if the “demand” side of the market isn’t really present”
That’s actually very consistent with conservative philosophy. Look at the discussion we had about oil when prices were high. Conservatives insisted that no amount of demand reduction could possibly bring down prices. But meaningless supply increases ten years in the future would immediately bring down prices. Interestingly, oil supply is down from then, and oil prices have somehow fallen. You think demand might have had an effect? Conservatives don’t, they still think that Bush’s call to meaninglessly increase supply in ten years caused the price fall despite that fact that supply has dropped.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Re: “And, of course, most of the wealth in this country is generated in those educated, urbanized blue states that people like Campbell so despise.” True. And the REALLY odd thing is that Campbell represents one of those blue states, albeit a rather red section of it.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Not likely. I mean, you know, there’s that thing called ‘context’ that they fail at miserably… wherein you need to read more than one novel in your lifetime in order to judge what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Meanwhile, I haven’t actually read the book…
Consider yourself lucky. I rather enjoyed The Fountainhead, mind you, (no snickers, please, I was in 8th grade) but Atlas is one heaping portion of turgid whoop-ass.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I’ll defend Rand as a writer.
I appreciate her writing the same way I can appreciate Soviet propaganda posters. Just accept them for what they are.
She’s also a bit like so-called “outsider art.” You read those books, and there are a lot of amateurish mistakes, and you are constantly reminded of just how batshit insane she is…but that’s part of the aesthetic. It gives the work character. She’s sort of like the Misfits. Every single song is about murder and mayhem, and that’s sort of creepy, but it makes it clear that a real, genuinely nuts person is absolutely pouring out his soul into these lyrics.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Wow.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Henry Farrell has an appropriate response, complete with Facebook group.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
“Just think what kind of nightmare scenario we might be inflicted with if the titans of finance who’ve made up such a large proportion of high earners in recent years were to pull back on their efforts!”
Yeah, good thing none of those titans of finance are influential in the highest reaches of the Democratic Party. Then they might lend their shit fingers to public policy. Oh, wait…
March 4th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
The Fountainhead
a/k/a How To Be An Egomaniacal Asshole in Twelve Easy Lessons
March 4th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Reading Rand is like reading the diary of a sycophant stalking a jerk.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
‘Anthem’ was ok. And it was short.
I started ‘we the living’ because I like historical fiction, but then I realized I wasn’t a teenage girl with daddy issues, so I stopped after a few dozen pages.
atlas is decent pulp fiction and a quick read esp if you skip the (100 page?) monologue. It’s like reading those star trek books that used to be put out by the gross (I think they still are and have added star wars and every other sci-fi tv show to the mix).
March 4th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
i feel like i should defend one of my favorite books. sure the philosophy as lived by her characters is unworkable in reality. and yes reading the monologue in atlas shrugged is like slamming your head against a wall for three hours. but to dismiss some of the ideas put forth in her books because she was crazy as hell isn’t intellectually honest. for me the great takeaway from these books is that self-reliance is a good thing. that you should take pride in your work, and fight for something you believe in. integrity, honesty. and to expect more of your fellow man is to respect him. there are values to be taught in those books.
i’m sure i’m going to get harrassed for sticking up for the books but i have to. the fountainhead was and is one of my favorite books.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I haven’t actually read this post, but my understanding is that it will create a utopian society whereby everyone lives off the entitlements that the top 2% afford us c/o the government
March 4th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Meanwhile, I haven’t actually read the book
And you call yourself a blogger?????
March 4th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
A couple of observations.
First, the Nazi’s took a leaf from Atlas Shrugged in Poland. They essentially attempted to behead the society, relentlessly killing anyone who was educated, anyone who showed leadership or leadership potential, anyone who was a politician, statesman, teacher, engineer, etc.
They killed 25% of the population.
And it didn’t work. After the war, the Poles rebuilt their state to the maximum extent allowed. The attempt to reenact Atlas Shrugged was a grotesque and bloody failure.
The other thing is that if we look at the actual performance of the grand ‘Captains of Industry’ the record of great wealth concentrated in individuals does not result in Randian grandeur.
Paris Hilton? Flake. The Olins? Inherited money put to the service of gutter ideology. The Hunt Brothers, lucky idiots who blew their fortune on a quixotic quest to corner the silver market… yeah, that was a productive use of societies wealth. John Rockefeller, an outright criminal scumbag.
March 4th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
First, the Nazi’s took a leaf from Atlas Shrugged in Poland.
The attempt to reenact Atlas Shrugged was a grotesque and bloody failure.
I don’t understand what you are implying or trying to imply here, Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Only infants believe in supermen.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
…further the references to Hilton, Olin and the Hunt brothers are all over the historical spectrum and not surprisingly only negative, what about Gates and Carnegie. There is certainly no argument that there are good people and bad right?
March 4th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
duBois Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Only infants believe in supermen.
=========================================================
True – what does that say about the Cult of Obama?
March 4th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
spago Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I haven’t actually read this post, but my understanding is that it will create a utopian society whereby everyone lives off the entitlements that the top 2% afford us c/o the government
================================================
Well played!!!
March 4th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Don’t bother; just play Bioshock. Bonus: you get to beat up underwater Objectivists with a pipe wrench.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
“All of those people who unload the trucks, mop the floors, cook the burgers, work the fry-o-laters, take the orders, fill the sacks, work the registers – they don’t generate any value for McDonald’s. Neither do the people who laid the pavement, poured the concrete, laid the tile, banged the studs, and installed the equipment.
Nope, the only people who have a claim on creating any wealth from the operations of the McDonald’s are the owners.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few small franchise owners are not “being punished for their ambition” by Obama’s budget.
I believe the Republican cut-off is the salary of a member of the House. Below that, you’re a parasitic drain who should be grateful you’re not deported for earning unAmericanly low amounts of money.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
True – what does that say about the Cult of Obama?
This from a slavish devotee of the Bush cult. Too late for the projection now. You spent 8 years freaking out when anyone said the odd bad word about dear leader. Spare us the sanctimony now, loser.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
True – what does that say about the Cult of Obama?
That your talking points are two months out of date?
March 5th, 2009 at 12:16 am
Rand is perfect as a way to coordinate disparate inputs for the ghost dance right. The changes have been sudden and drastic for these people, everything from their comic racist beliefs to the defense of a capitalist system thay do not understand – which is why I find it so wonderful that they are trying to destroy the operating system of Reagenoid capitalism, Wall Street, while at the same time protesting against their own tax cuts because the rich will get tax raises. This altruism in favor of greed has always struck me as funny, pathetic and sick. Now the Endtime is here, but the rapture is taking the wrong stuff: there goes the daytrader’s sstash, there goes the 401(k), there goes the value of the house – it must be the fault of the Negroes!
So cozying up with a dominatrix or two seems to be a way out.
What does puzzle me is that, throughout the last 30 years, surveys have consistently shown that conservatives say they are happy to a greater extent than any other group. And yet, their public face is so unhappy. It is redfaced anger 24/7. I’ve long suspected the happiness result is about a different norm in the Right community, that discourages saying that one is unhappy. The result is roadrage politics.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:24 am
Re: All of those people who unload the trucks, mop the floors, cook the burgers, work the fry-o-laters, take the orders, fill the sacks, work the registers – they don’t generate any value for McDonald’s. Neither do the people who laid the pavement, poured the concrete, laid the tile, banged the studs, and installed the equipment…..Nope, the only people who have a claim on creating any wealth from the operations of the McDonald’s are the owners.
Joe in Lowell,
If all the construction workers and masons in America were to disappear, no more buildings would get built, and our cities would fall apart. If the owners of McDonalds were to disappear, the burger shops would still be run- perhaps by the government or by the employees, and perhaps not as efficiently or in as great a number (not that it would be a big loss) but burgers would continue to be flipped and potatoes fried.
Something to think about.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:59 am
If you’d like to get the taste of Ayn Rand and her preening sycophants out of your mouth, and have any interest in gaming, I’d suggest getting hold of the 2007 PC shooter/RPG Bioshock (also on XBox and PS3, if you must). In the backstory to the game, just after WWII, super-rich industrialist Andrew Ryan (AR, get it; an admitted standin for Ayn Rand) financed the construction of a secret underwater city in which the elites of business, the arts, and science would have their creativity set free from the constraints of Western beaurocracy, Soviet Communism, and religious morality. In little more than a decade (the game is set in 1960), the city is largely in ruins and the majority of the survivors insane due to an overdose of biological enhancements created by unchecked science and capitalism. Oh, and Andrew Ryan is revealed to be a liar, a hypocrite, a mass murderer, and worse. Ryan’s death at the hands of the protagonist (unfotunately in a non-interactive cutscene) is a highlight.
BTW, politics and philosophy aside, Bioshock is a great game, even for gamers (like me) who do not love shooters (it has a large RPG element to it). It is the spiritual sequel to the great ’90s PC classics System Shock I and II. The gameplay and story are first rate, and the art design is a particular standout–the city’s style is sort of retro ’50s futurism meets ’20s and ’30s Art Deco.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:35 am
I think it was actually J-Pod at NRO who said: “it’s ok to think Ayn Rand is the coolest thing ever…until you turn 18. Then you should stop.”
March 5th, 2009 at 1:43 am
ha, that’s funny
March 5th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Consider the real life example of the Karmet Steel Works in Kazakhstan. It had workers and equipment but without a competent owner the workers weren’t getting paid and the town was in desperate straits. And then a new capitalist owner, Lakshmi Mittal, turned it into a successful business. Mittal similarly turned around steel mills in Romania and Mexico. In each of those cases there were workers and factories but without a competent owner running things there were fiascoes.
Rand may have been over-the-top and even ridiculous at times, but there are some Atlantes in real life, and the rest of us would be a lot worse off without them. It wasn’t the guys mopping the floors at Genentech who developed Avastin, after all; it was men of the mind.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:08 am
“Who is Dr. Helen?”
No seriously, who the hell is she? – I asked myself only this morning. I really hadn’t the faintest idea. Which, even now, makes me even more terrified of her plot. The relative obscurity of this she-Galt is yet another chilling parallel to the hero of the prophetic 1300 pages masterpiece.
My feeble moocher mind recoils at the ominous sight of the now certain downfall of Socialist America, and manages to find fleeting comfort by revisiting a cliché of another atheistic tale: “The most merciful thing in the world… is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents” – an equally visionary, albeit far less talented writer than Ms. Rand, once proclaimed.
And merciful it is indeed, for it is this same inability that prevented me from discerning, since the 4th of November until this very day, the circuitous chain of events that inexorably links the election of Chairman Obama, the self-imposed income reduction of Dr. Helen, Michelle Malkin, and Glenn Reynolds, and the final collapse of our world.
Fellow parasites of the overmen, the origin of our ills is well known. As a dog often perishes from disease after affectionately licking the corpse of a recently dead relative, so too our twin species, Homo moochicus and Homo looticus, contracted a fatal illness because we couldn’t control our base inclination towards vain, misplaced, immoral concern for the destitute. These people were, we recognized too late, naught but walking cadavers, hopelessly beyond our help, whose sole purpose was to test the fiber of our noble selfishness. We failed.
Now that the the end is near, we must at least make a closing effort to understand the error of our ways. Let us draw upon the weak power of our uncreative minds to answer this question: which disturbance was the tipping point that has waken the Great Laissez-Faire Gods from their slumber? Was it the insolent 3.6% raise in the income tax? Is hubris to be found in the impious practice of economic necromancy, through which we raised the New Deal abomination? Assist me, brothers!
Wait! What was that?
It… it’s them! For the love of Kucinitch! I can’t bear it! They… are…shrugging…
March 5th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Hector,
Invest in a good sarcasm detector.
March 5th, 2009 at 9:58 am
It wasn’t the guys mopping the floors at Genentech who developed Avastin, after all; it was men of the mind.
Who, I might add, were employees at Genentech, just as the janitors were. If you followed your thoughts through to your natural conclusion, you would have said that the janitors didn’t develop Avastin, and neither did the scientists, because it was all do to the capital markets that made it possible. But no one really believes that.
I might add, as an aside, that if there’s one thing I’ve learned growing up in the US, it’s that no one is indispensible because there is a huge pool of smart, talented people here. Yes, a bunch of libertarians could “go John Galt,” but enough liberals and those without political cares except pure greed would rush in to replace them. And in fact if some captains of industry like George W. Bush or Neil Bush “went John Galt,” the country would end up better off.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Just think what kind of nightmare scenario we might be inflicted with if the titans of finance who’ve made up such a large proportion of high earners in recent years were to pull back on their efforts! I shudder
If only we could have paid them to do nothing at all! Hundreds of millions in bonuses for doing nothing would be better than those same bonuses for requiring a multi-trillion dollar cash infusion.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:19 am
The shrugging that these new John Galts are doing is actually just their recognition that they don’t have enough customers and they will have to contract or close.
We don’t have a problem with insufficient supply, we have insufficient demand, and all the tax cuts in the world aren’t going to make businessmen risk more.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Hang on, a devotee of Atlas Shrugged is a member of Congress? Why doesn’t he get a real job?
March 5th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Dave in Hackensack,
As Tyro points out, it wasn’t the shareholders who invented the drug, it was salaried scientists. But don’t let that interrupt your musings about the capitalist supermen.
Joe in Lowell,
I know that you were being sacrastic, my post was intended as an explication and defence of your point, not a rebuttal. Sorry if it was unclear.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Tyro,
“Who, I might add, were employees at Genentech, just as the janitors were.”
More likely, they were outside contractors.
“If you followed your thoughts through to your natural conclusion, you would have said that the janitors didn’t develop Avastin, and neither did the scientists, because it was all do to the capital markets that made it possible.”
Instead of putting words in my mouth and arguing with a straw man, why not argue with what I wrote? Of course the scientists deserve credit for developing the drug. They are “men of the mind”, are they not? And incidentally, the CEO of Genentech, Arthur Levinson, is a scientist with a Ph.D. in biochemistry. The capital markets may have provided the funds that kept the lights on and paid the salaries of the scientists at Genentech early on (an important contribution, no?), but the scientists developed the drug.
Hector,
“As Tyro points out, it wasn’t the shareholders who invented the drug, it was salaried scientists. But don’t let that interrupt your musings about the capitalist supermen.”
Who said it was shareholders who invented the drug? I thought you were smarter and a more honest debater to jump on that straw man.
Interesting that you have nothing to say about Lakshmi Mittal turning around those steel mills.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Of course the scientists deserve credit for developing the drug.
A Randian philosophy would disagree. The scientists are mere employees who work in the service and at the whims of the captains of industry and the capital markets who deign to pay them for their services. Just as a construction company has bricklayers and a restaurant has cooks: the Randroids are dismissing the value of the people who do the actual work. The scientists aren’t the “capitains of industry” in the Ayn Rand mind. The scientists are the peons. And that’s why their mindset makes no sense at all.
And here’s the difference: as I scientist, myself, I realize that my interests are more in line with those of the construction workers and the restaurant cooks than with the investment bankers and the CEOs.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
It wasn’t the guys mopping the floors at Genentech who developed Avastin, after all; it was men of the mind.
You’re not following through here. What good does *developing* Avastin do? Someone still has to run a production line that makes lots of pills and puts them into bottles. (Not just design the production line, but build and operate it. And it has to be built out of something, too – probably materials and parts that someone else has to make.) Then someone else needs to distribute those bottles to pharmacies across the country (which, in turn, requires someone to build transportation devices and someone else to build transportation infrastructure for them to run on), and someone else needs to hand those bottles to patients. None of those functions are done by “men of the mind” (well, they could be, but there would be little point). Deciding which patients need Avastin and which don’t is another kind of mind function (which also relies on swarms of other jobs), but that doesn’t change the overall point that the guy who built the road between your pharmacy and the Avastin factory is just as necessary to your supply of Avastin as the inventor of Avastin is.
Complex and interdependent economies are complex and interdependent. If there’s one part that *isn’t* needed in the short to medium term it’s invention – people can keep doing things the way they were done before, albeit at the price of stagnation. But invention without implementation is useless in any timeframe, and inventors (like everyone else) couldn’t even live from day to day without someone, usually not themselves, implementing well-understood solutions to the problems of feeding, clothing and housing them.
Furthermore, there’s actually lots of inventors – and even more potential inventors, kept out of the current inventing positions primarily because the current inventors are in them. Galt’s plan would never actually produce even technological stagnation (even spotting him the Jedi mind control powers necessary to convince millions of people to abandon and sabotage their own careers) – those people would be replaced just as surely as if they had died.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
They actually call themselves ‘randians’
check out the loons at dailypundit.com
March 5th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
One thing about Atlas Shrugged: I don’t remember any shades of gray. Seems like everyone in that novel was either 100%, or 100% evil. I occassionally notice that people who are opposed to Obama mention Atlas Shrugged. It’s pretty clear that Obama and the Democrats are in the “100% evil” category. Also, Atlas Shrugs ends with the destruction of the United States. Not exactly the best choice of book for Republicans who (one hopes) should be looking for ways to cooperate with the Democrats.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Gotcha, Hector. Plain text is a tough medium; it’s easy to misconstrue.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Also, Atlas Shrugs ends with the destruction of the United States. Not exactly the best choice of book for Republicans who (one hopes) should be looking for ways to cooperate with the Democrats.
What do you think “I hope he fails” means, when “fails” refers to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act not staving off a depression?
March 5th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Chris:
“Furthermore, there’s actually lots of inventors – and even more potential inventors, kept out of the current inventing positions primarily because the current inventors are in them. Galt’s plan would never actually produce even technological stagnation (even spotting him the Jedi mind control powers necessary to convince millions of people to abandon and sabotage their own careers) – those people would be replaced just as surely as if they had died.”
That’s a very good point. You touched one of the fundamental errors of Ayn Rand’s conception of the world: that there are a small number of extremely talented people who are completely irreplaceable.
There is another very basic error: Rand sees free markets as rewarding some indefinite quality like “absolute creativity” or “absolute value of the mind”. This is very off the mark. People have been talking a lot about captains of the industry and entrepreneurs. But, if you think about many of the examples of people who earn a lot of money, and therefore would be more interested in escaping (because, after all, they are the ones who have the greatest “income tax burden”), the more you realize that they don’t “make it their own” at all, their value is hopelessly relative to the specific society they came from. Their value is much more dependent on the “moochers” and “looters” than the other way around. Moochers and looters would actually do quite well without them.
Think of some people who make a lot of money right now. Would they be rewarded in Galt’s Gulch (or Rapture)? Think Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, Kobe Bryant or Seinfeld. Think top writers, sport figures, movie stars. How fucked would these people be out of their country? And how irreplaceable at something essential are they?
So, by all means Galters, feel free to keep the fruits of your new work mopping the floor in Galt’s Gulch, because nobody will value the old “fruits of your labor and creativity”. New York will not burn to the ground. We’ll miss Seinfeld, but come on, Seinfeld can’t really compete with the guy who fixed a broken pipe in my bath room and restored the possibility to take hot water showers. How much is that guy payed?
March 5th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Interesting that you have nothing to say about Lakshmi Mittal turning around those steel mills.
He probably bought the factories from the government for a lot less than they were actually worth, got them in working order, and then raked in the profits.
Which part is supposed to impress us?
March 5th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Which part is supposed to impress us?
All three. It’s called business acumen.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Re: All three. It’s called business acumen.
It’s called economic immorality, actually, at least by the Scholastics, but let that pass.
“But, apart from fraud, we may speak of buying and selling in two ways. First, as considered in themselves, and from this point of view, buying and selling seem to be established for the common advantage of both parties, one of whom requires that which belongs to the other, and vice versa, as the Philosopher states. Now whatever is established for the common advantage, should not be more of a burden to one party than to another, and consequently all contracts between them should observe equality of thing and thing. Again, the quality of a thing that comes into human use is measured by the price given for it, for which purpose money was invented, as stated in Ethic. v, 5. Therefore if either the price exceed the quantity of the thing’s worth, or, conversely, the thing exceed the price, there is no longer the equality of justice: and consequently, to sell a thing for more than its worth, or to buy it for less than its worth, is in itself unjust and unlawful.”
March 6th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Both emotions are natural to humans, except for the stone-faced, Objectivist, achieving-more-than-thou “wealth creators” among us.
Yes, they are few and far between, so we should bow down and let them tyrannize the rest of society. Call it “trickle-down achievement.” Everything they do–from mass producing and selling cluster bombs to starting a war so we can use (consume) them–benefits the roach nest of regular humanity, anyway.
Let them dig up all the oil they can so they can get rich MAKING petroleum products like acid rain and byproducts like beach balls.
Of course, these Isaac Newtons are all self-taught, self-reared and raised, self-clothed, self-fed, self-washed and self-delivered into this world by a do-nothing, lay-on-her-back-all-day because she’s so lazy mother, who lived a life brought forth by the accidents of the human race cooperating enough to yield some measure of a society.
Debt to society?
Shared responsibilities?
Joint planning and cooperation?
HOW DARE YOU!! YOU SOCIALIST COMMUNIST SCUM!!!
Get out of the way of THE ACHIEVERS!!!!!!!!! It’s a crime to stop them from running you over.
Yeah, if they have to obey the law, live together with the human race, and acknowledge the basic humanity and rights of everyone else, then these supermen should just GO ON STRIKE. Who would want to join the human race, after all, if they couldn’t do whatever they wanted with anybody or to anybody anytime they felt like with no repurcussions?
March 7th, 2009 at 1:46 am
Atlas is Shrugging. We’re farther along in the storyline than most people think.
Professor Michael T. Klare of Hampshire College and Human Rights has already received these references, thanked me, and stated: “I will examine them closely.” (”A Planet at the Brink. Will Economic Brushfires Prove Too Virulent to Contain?”)
David S. Mason, Professor of Political Science at Butler University in Indianapolis, has posted them on his personal blog. (”The End of the American Century”)
link to supporting documentation located here:
http://tinyurl.com/cmzt92
The ‘bibliography’ is ten pages long…and growing.
Oh…and read the book before ya diss. It isn’t as cut and dried an issue as either the conservatives or the liberals seem to think.
Nuance…
(The Zombie Argument and the Other Minds Problem…I’m beginning to think of them as working theories… Does anyone actually think anymore, or is it all kneejerk neoteny?)
March 8th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Don’t know if anyone beat me to it, but there’s a name for these people:
RandJobs
March 9th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Funny…I thought Atlas was a poorly written bodice ripper novel. Might explain the right wing fascination better, given that report about porn…
March 16th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Have never seen such an outpouring of ignorance all in one place. Very obvious that over 90% of those posting have never even read Atlas Shrugged. If anyone cares to look at the root causes of the current economic crisis, they will find a very inept, sweaty, and incoherent congress, which instead of calling for restraint in the mortgage market (where this all began), instead were enthusiastically screaming “take it off” (lowering interest rates, and disregarding prudent mortgage qualifying measures) to Fannie & Freddie executives in order to enfranchise unqualified home buyers. Don’t close down Guantanamo. Ship Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest on the congressional ‘economic’ terrorists there. Lock them up, and throw away the key.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Jay almost took the words out of my text box.
I would say, though, that I haven’t seen such an outpouring of hate-filled ignorance.
Well, outside the studios of MSNBC.
Folks, it’s all right to disagree, but, you really ought to read Rand’s words and works, you really ought to learn what she herself said, not accept some other ignoramus’s knee-jerk interpretation.
I guess, considering the tone, you would disagree with her ideas and would continue to oppose free minds and free markets.
But I really, really have to wonder: Just why do all you “progressives” fear and hate freedom?
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 am
“Meanwhile, I haven’t actually read the book…”
How in the hell can you intelligently critique something YOU ADMIT YOU HAVEN’T EVEN READ?
Good God. You ought to be ashamed to put that in print.
“I haven’t actually read any of Yglesias’s stuff, but as I understand it he’s a putz who couldn’t write 6 coherent sentences if his life depended on it and doesn’t even read the source material before posting on it. What’s more, he seems to be paid by someone to do it.”