Few authors have ever achieved the popularity that the novelist and essayist Ayn Rand (1905-1982) did. With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943 and Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Rand became a full-blown cultural phenomenon, selling millions of books and inspiring countless readers—ranging from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to actress Angelina Jolie—with her moral defense of capitalism. A refugee from Soviet Russia, Rand argued that capitalism was the best way of organizing society not simply because it was more efficient than communism but because it allowed the individual to fill his or her potential. A self-declared “radical for capitalism,” Rand emphatically rejected collectivism of all stripes and embraced “man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” Decades after her death, Rand’s work is hotter than ever. In an age of massive government intervention into every aspect of the economy and personal lives, sales of her books are way up and a movie version of Atlas Shrugged is in the works. References to Rand are everywhere from Mad Men to The Colbert Report to The Simpsons and there’s even a new critical appreciation, as evidenced by two new biographies, Ayn Rand And The World She Made and Goddess of The Market: Ayn Rand And The American Right. Approximately four minutes long and produced by Meredith …
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What the movie in the intro?
What legacy? She got famous due to dogmatists and insecure people eating her toddler texts up, that’s a legacy?
Rand’s ideas (on the supremacy of reason, epistemology, and laissez-fare capitalism) are clearly presented in her nonfiction writings, and dramatized eloqently and completely in “Atlas Shrugged.”
Irrefutably so.
The human faculty of reason is exercised by choice. Those who choose not to exercise reason cannot be “reasoned with”; it won’t convince them. Such a person has literally made up their mind to blank out reality. So, it’s best to not expect them to “get it.” Just leave them alone.
@shakyra1 Define self giving. Anyone who is a millionaire living a lavish that does philanthropy work sounds like a Capitalist to me. If they gave out their entire wealth out to the poor and kept nothing for themselves, that would be Altruistic which Rand was against.
I agree with u but ayn rand wouldnt. her whole view was that any form of altruism was a terrible thing. trust me on that one
@shakyra1
There is nothing irrationable about using ones wealth or influence voluntarily to help a person or a group of people you see striving for the same values you hold yourself. There is a difference between that, and forced socialist altruism for anyone asking for a handout.
I would assume the same thing, Angelina and Brad, they are probably silly socialists, with no care in the world!
I find it strange that people as self giving as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt would be Rand fans. I assume they have not yet read her books…
@libertits, rand expicitly denied that competition is a goal in and of itself. the end she had in mind was individual liberty and personal flourishing. competition to her was a practical consequence of this in certain social aplications.
If I accepted competition as the ultimate goal of life, then I would have to accept Hitler’s notion of the world of two soldiers fighting like beasts with each other to get the highest post, accept a world without solidarity where people let go and stand by the weaker getting swallowed, like germans did during the nazi rule. If you think this is extreme comparison, i really think that Rand’s philosophy, which is not just economic, could lead to such consequences.
If we developed a society where competition is the purpose of existence and who gets to the top is the ultimate value, then I’d have to agree with Hitler’s idea of making two soldiers fight themselves like beasts to who gets the higher post, with not doing anything if there is genocide, like Germans did during the nazi rule. I don’t want to live in a world, where solidarity is seen as a weakness, then it will lead us to self destruction and stop reproducing- Nietzsche’s last man
If we developed a society where competition is the purpose of existence and who gets to the top is the ultimate value, then I’d have to agree with Hitler’s idea of making two soldiers fight themselves like beasts to who gets the higher post, with not doing anything if there is genocide, like Germans did during the nazi rule. I don’t want to live in a world, where solidarity is seen as a weakness, then it will lead us to self destruction and stop reproducing- Nietzsche’s last man
We already have the development,that students engineer their career to provide themselves as what the market is looking for,to market themselves as if they were goods.I find this development problematic & see generation by generation getting more numb in their development in a humanist way as a complete critical and creative being. I think this will ultimatively lead to stagnation and exactly the people who were different and not going with the flow were always the ones bringing humanity further
Education and social justice, benefits should not be in private hands. There are ideals that should be true independent of us and they should be preserved independent of the needs of the market. I want my kids to be educated in things that have no value for the market but for their development as human beings.
Thomas Jefferson was a racist man, with racist views of the world. No wonder your country cannot snap out of racism if you keep listening to people whose thoughts are already outdated.
I have a Marxist view of the world, because in your dualist, good and bad, black and white view of the world, who doesn’t agree with your view of the world, agrees with the opposite: a marxist. evil, the cause of too much government.
I think you are an adept, fundamentalist and that is a big problem. An open society accepts many ideas, cooperation for the solution of problems, not absolute ideas and notions of the world.
I don’t know if I have a Marxist view of the world, but I certainly don’t have a nazi view of the world, a social darwinist one, where the biggest predator gets to eat all and I don’t do it because of anything else than self-interest.
I agree that competition is important and it does ent
I was the one wasting my time. i have told you the abuses of multinational corporations in the third world and you have refused to listen to them. It just depends on what you mean with “too much government”.
I know I am wasting my time here but you have an absolutely Marxist view of the world.
There is nothing wrong with economies of scale.
You don’t understand that competition provides a hedge against anyone becoming too big and the free market is voluntary.
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
—Thomas Jefferson
I don’t eat at McDonald’s. I understand that economic growth of a company is important, but I don’t agree that just any means for it to get bigger should be allowed.
No, the problem is that you say that 2+2=5 and I am supposed to think it is like that.
You see, I agree that big government enables more corruption, I just don’t agree that instead of enabling a government to get bigger, private interests get bigger, because then they specialize in getting bigger and bigger stepping on people’s interests.
It is better to read many random things, than to just read one and believe that you have absolute knowledge of the world. It is better to read many things instead of just one book from one or two authors and believe you know it all.
Of course my country is not filled with people who understand free market, it is composed by “apes”, whose inhabitants don’t get a chance to develop, because big companies are first than people!
That question is completely out of topic. We are talking about free market and what effects it has if there is no regulation, so chiquita is an example of that: of how companies can exploit situations, weaknesses anywhere to serve their self interests. It can be in USA, in a third world country, or wherever they see a possibility of gain more money. So if companies have no government regulation they could never get so big to make such evil? this is like a religious belief in the market.
I have no idea hwo the country was before Chiquita arrived, but I assure you they came only to steal or get by corrupted governments what they have. Do you mean to ask if Chiquita never having arrived would have made those lands be lost because they can make better use of them, since the third world apes cannot?
Well, the USA supports dinasties of dictators in third world countries. They support coups that ouster any form of president who works in interests of majorities and not for the interest of US industrials. They do not only say who, they establish who stays or who must go. The US government is directly responsible for great amount of despots and ruling dinasties in the third world, this is documented.
To say that it is possible to completely describe reality by reason, would mean we have absolute answers to all problems, like religion does. In the middle ages, people thought the earth was flat and that was their reality. Seeing reality is limited by our knowledge, and we have absolutely no idea of the things we don’t know, it is completely insane to think we do. Cover the sun with a finger, you don’t see the sun, and it means it doesn’t shine.