Ayn Rand's Originality

One of the things I find most interesting in Professor Kobylka's Cycles of American Political Thought is his discussion of Social Darwinism in the late 19th century. Much of Ayn Rand's philosophy seems to come right out of William Graham Sumner's writings.

Ayn Rand's Imagination

I am currently reading Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns. In an interesting juxtaposition, I am also currently listening to Cycles of American Political Thought from the GREAT COURSES series taught by Professor Joseph F. Kobylka of Southern Methodist University. It is my opinion that the misanthropic Rand was clueless about American history.

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"This book (Atlas Shrugged) is like the conservative Bible" . . . "Preachy and can be used to justify anything."

More Ayn Randian Douchebaggery From the Wall Street Journal

Yaron Brock, the president of the Ayn Rand Institute, weighs in on the relevance of Atlas Shrugged in today's The Wall Street Journal in a piece titled "Is Rand Relevant?"

The novel's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. "If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society," Rand wrote elsewhere in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," "you can predict its course." Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of
the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society -- particularly its dominant moral ideas.

F**k you! The dominant economic philosophy of absolute laissez-faire capitalism is what got us here. The financial system imploded because too many people believed the Ayn Randian bullshit espoused by Alan Greenspan that said that the best people to police the financial markets are the players in the financial markets.

Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism -- and that so long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention -- and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest.

F**k you! How the hell did AIG and Lehman Brothers get away with writing hundreds of billions of dollars in unregulated credit default swaps that they couldn't make good on? It was because free market Randophiles like Greenspan believed that the "rational self-interest" of the counter-parties was a better check on inappropriate extensions of credit than government regulation. The economic meltdown was generated in the areas of the market where the government refused to intervene.

Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote "affordable housing," which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.

F**k you! The loans were made by mortgage brokers pursuing their rational self-interest of generating fees and commissions for themselves while ignoring little things that weren't in their self-interest like the ability of the borrower to repay. Those loans were repackaged into collateralized debt obligations by executives at investment banks who were pursuing their rational self-interest of huge bonuses while ignoring little things that weren't in their self-interest like the long-term viability of their companies.

Yes Rand is relevant. Everyone needs to understand her glorification of unregulated capitalism and everyone needs to understand that the financial system collapsed as the result of people putting her ideas into practice.

Cognitive Dissonance

It seems that I have worn out my welcome on another Bible-believing Christian's blog. While there is nothing particularly remarkable about this, I did find interesting that the straw that broke the camel's back was a critical comment about an atheist. I ran across PheistyBlog shortly before the election. Its proprietress is pretty far out on the right fringe to my way of thinking, but my comments were always met with reasonable civility. Last week, however, I responded to a post that invoked Atlas Shrugged as an analogy for the state of America today by pointing out that we are in this mess because our financial system has been operated on Ayn Rand's free-market principles for the last three decades.

That comment inspired the following tirade (as well as the deletion of my follow-up comment):

And Vinny, if you’re going to comment here, please at least attempt to disprove any of the points I make. So far, all you’ve done is make some half-baked comment about Ayn Rand. Don’t you have anything to say about anything else I’ve pointed out?

Of course you don’t, because you have no valid argument. Get lost, Vinny. I’m past the point of being pissed off at you socialists and am nearly to the point of rage. I’m not going to waste my time trying to be nice and decent to you because you’re a tyrant and you support measures that seek to steal my freedom (and my children’s) and the fruits of my labor. I’ve raised myself up from being a poor single mother by working very hard and making good choices, and I don’t have the time nor the patience to read your logic-lacking posts because this has gone beyond politics and has become VERY PERSONAL for me. YOU SEEK TO PUNISH ME for making good choices, paying my debts, and for working hard…and what gives you that right?? Are you that arrogant that you believe that your views are so correct that stealing from others is somehow justified? Do you think it’s fair that I should work harder and make more responsible decisions, only to have Obama and his minions force me into slave labor, so that I may provide for others who make poor decisions and are irresponsible?

I WILL NEVER labor for the sake of another human being other than myself and my own family, and will NEVER expect any human to labor for mine. The alternative is REPUGNANT and IMMORAL.

PheistyBlog is paraphrasing the oath required of entrants into the capitalist utopia of Galt's Gulch in Atlas Shrugged in that last part: “I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live my life for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” Nor is she the first evangelical Christian I have run across who is a fan of Rand's opus. This raises several questions for me:

• Isn’t there something strange about a Bible-believing Christian embracing the creed of a militant atheist like Ayn Rand?


• When the Apostle Paul instructs: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ” in Ephesians 6:5, doesn't it at least refute the notion that there is anything immoral or repugnant about a about a Christian submitting to slavery (even if you don’t take the passage as an explicit endorsement of slavery)?


• When Jesus says “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” in response to a question about paying taxes in Luke 20:22-25, doesn’t that suggest that the Bible-believing Christian would be wrong to equate taxation with stealing?

Oh My Gosh! "Atlas Shrugged" is Coming True!

The staff fully recognized the power of counterparty surveillance as the first line of protection against overextended or inappropriate credit. Alan Greenspan The Age of Turbulence p. 373.

There you have it. For eighteen years, the chief overseer of the financial system was a student of Ayn Rand who trusted the market to allocate credit risk.

How did that work out? This week, the government announced that it's pouring another $30 billion into the black hole that is AIG because the counterparties to AIG's credit default swaps had NO FUCKING IDEA what AIG was up to. Counterparties were powerless to keep AIG in line just as they were powerless to keep Lehman Brothers in line.

Why do we continue to bail out AIG? One reason may be because AIG is the biggest insurance company in the world and letting it fail might cause people to start cashing in their life insurance policies. This could lead to a run on the life insurance industry that would rival the run on money market industry that followed Lehman's bankruptcy last September. This would force the government to guarantee life insurance policies like it guaranteed money funds.

So to all those Randophiles who see her prophecies coming true, please remember that they are coming true because the government allowed the financial system to operate on her principles.

Finishing Ayn

I have more or less finished Atlas Shrugged although I stopped reading much of Rand’s philosophy about half way through. My basic rule was that anytime one of Rand’s prime movers talked for more than a couple of paragraphs, I skipped ahead to look for plot. That saved me fifty pages on John Galt’s big radio speech.

One of the things I can’t help but wonder was whether Rand actually knew anything about American history. At one point, Francisco d’Anconia spouts the following nonsense:

To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a
country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America,
for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement.
For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no
fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and
slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the
highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.

I can’t help but think think Blacks and Native Americans might have a little bit different take on the slavery and conquest questions.

Isn't It Ironic?

The more I read, the more I am struck by the irony of the title of the Stephen Moore article in the Wall Street Journal that inspired my reading in the first place: Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years.

When Rand wrote the book, it was complete fiction. America was enjoying a time of unprecedented prosperity in the 1950's despite the ascendancy of the "looters" and "moochers" that Rand so despised. Strong unions and a 90% top marginal tax rate did not destroy the economy or cause industrialists to close their factories and disappear.

In the last thirty years, however, American manufacturing has declined precipitously and the United States has gone from the biggest creditor in the world to its biggest debtor. All this happened as American economic policy turned in favor of Rand's "prime movers" with tax cuts for the wealthy and union bashing.

Randian Turgidity

"Hank, this is great."

"Yes."

He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his
voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the
rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to
acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood.

Atlas Shrugged, p. 86. Any parent who catches their high school aged son reading this stuff should seriously consider disabling the internet porn filters.

Santelli's Rant on CNBC

CNBC's Rick Santelli is getting a lot of press for his rant about bailing out people with bad mortgages.

Rick Santelli says he is an “Ayn Rander.” He also touts the efficiency and fairness of the trading pits in Chicago as opposed to the unregulated markets that produced the financial meltdown.

What Santelli does not mention is that it was the unregulated markets that were supported and defended by Alan Greenspan who was suckled on objectivism at Ayn’s very own tits. When Congress asked Greenspan about credit default swaps and mortgage securitization, he testified that the markets should be allowed to allocate risks as it saw fit.

The trading pits that Santelli loves function as well as they do because they are heavily regulated. There is a centralized clearing corporation that monitors the positions and transactions of all market participants to make sure that they have sufficient capital to cover risks. All market participants can see what is trading and what the open interest is in all contract classes.

Economist Steve Liesman was correct to point out that the market got us into this problem but that it cannot get us out. Left unsupervised, the players went nuts in the markets for mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps. I don’t know whether Liesman is correct about the government being able to get us out. I hope it can.

Atlas Slugged

I am trying to read Ayn Rand's Altas Shrugged. Since I made fun of the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore's last month when he recommended it to every member of Congress, I have noticed a number of allusions to Atlas Shrugged from the market pundits on CNBC. This morning, Rick Santelli openly proclaimed himself a Randian true believer.

While there is nothing surprising in finding Rand fans among CNBC pundits who regularly tout the wonders of free markets and the evils of government, I am curious about the frequency with which I have been hearing her referenced recently. It is possible that they have been making such allusions for years and I just never noticed, but I suspect that there is more to it than that. For one thing, the market failures of the last year have discredited many conservative economists forcing ideologues like Santelli and Moore to cite works of fiction as authority for their views.

I also wonder whether the more frequent references to Rand aren't in part a reflection of the breakdown in the coalition between uber-libertarians and conservative Christians that has powered the Republican party since 1980. I have always thought that it must have been rather painful for fans of Rand's militant atheism and her celebration of "prime movers" to suck up to the anti-intellectualism of the Religious Right. I wonder whether the more open embrace of Rand reflects a loss of patience with the bumpkinism of the Palin wing of the party.

I first tried reading Rand when I was in high school because a couple of guys in the chess club assured me that she was the ultimate font of all wisdom. However, rather than starting with one of her novels, I picked up The Virtue of Selfishness and I got bored with it pretty quickly. A couple years ago though, I caught The Fountainhead on cable and I enjoyed it pretty well. When I ran across a copy that my wife had read for some class in college, I decided to give it a try. I found Rand's prose pretty wooden, but imagining Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey delivering the dialogure helped a lot. Unfortunately, Atlas Shrugged is 400 pages longer and I don't have any positive associations to help bring this to life.

I am only about seventy pages in so far and I can't count the number of times that I have cringed in pain at the sledgehammer subtlety with which Rand drives home her themes. I had figured out pretty early that the character of the composer Richard Halley would be a paragon of misunderstood creative individualism like the architect Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. However, Rand takes no chances:

"The music of Richard Halley has a quality of the heroic. Our age has outgrown
that stuff," said one critic. "The music of Richard Halle is out of key with our
times. It has a tone of ecstasy. Who cares of ecstasy nowadays?" said another.

Ouch! Ouch! Alright! I get it, Ayn. I get it! Genius is unappreciated and resented by the masses. It is the one great truth that all high school chess club members understand.

Ayn Randian Douchebaggery from the WSJ's Moore

Saturday's Wall Street Journal carried a column by senior economics writer Stephen Moore titled 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years. Despite the column's title, I am not at all sure that Moore ever thought of Rand's novel as fiction:

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

You know what else would have been great Steve? In 1964, it would have been great if every member of Congress had read Gone With The Wind before they voted on the Civil Rights Act. Then they might have realized how much happier Blacks were when their masters took care of them in the good old days before Northern carpetbaggers filled their heads with crazy notions about voting and going to decent schools.