Frank Li — What If Ayn Rand Was Wrong, Mostly?

Frank LI takes on Ayn Rand.

To understand Libertarianism and American Conservatism, one needs to study Ayn Rand, which is what this post is about.…

Ayn Rand was a successful novelist. But her works on philosophy should be irrelevant, because they are too extreme, thus more wrong than correct.

Rand constructed a fantasy world in her novelist's mind, which is what novelist's do, but then she believed in it, confusing it with the real world. So do a lot of other people that can't distinguish fantasy from reality and are prone to magical thinking.

econintersect.com
What If Ayn Rand Was Wrong, Mostly?

Frank Li | Chinese ex-pat, Founder and President of W.E.I. (West-East International), a Chicago-based import & export company, B.E. from Zhejiang University (China) in 1982, M.E. from the University of Tokyo in 1985, and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1988, all in Electrical Engineering

See also

As a professional philosopher myself, I can report that Ayn Rand is ignored by the profession, much of which is embarrassed by her identification as a philosopher rather than a popular novelist. She was not even a good writer and is not studied in literature classes either.

The following post is long and technical — a difficult read, I would suspect, for those not familiar with the history of philosophy to the present. The interesting thing about it though is it is summarizes Robert Nozick arguments eviscerating Rand's "philosophy." Robert Nozick is the actual philosopher closest to Rand's position and sometime incorrectly associated with her, so he can hardly be accused of academic prejudice.

This near-unanimous rejection has led to some remarkably uncharitable, and bizarre, attempts to explain away the lack of academic interest: in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Rand, its authors write that “her advocacy of a minimal state with the sole function of protecting negative individual rights is contrary to the welfare statism of most academics,” claiming outright that the overwhelming majority of professional philosophers and political theorists have been simply unable to fairly evaluate her work because of the biasing factor of their prior political commitments.

Somehow the same ‘welfare statism’ of academics has not prevented the close study of Robert Nozick’s landmark Anarchy, State and Utopia, a sophisticated libertarian text that mounts an original, and far more effective, argument against redistributive policies. Apart from John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, there is perhaps no more commonly-assigned book in undergraduate political philosophy classes.

The problem with Rand from the standpoint of professional philosophers is that she was either not acquainted with the field or incapable of understanding the argumentation that characterizes the history of Western intellectual tradition. In any case, she simply was not qualified for the task she undertook. I'll leave it to the literateurs to evaluate her work as literature.

Rotman Institute of Philosophy
The System that Wasn’t There: Ayn Rand’s Failed Philosophy (and why it matters) -Nicholas McGinnis

Pam and Russ Martens — Trump & Company Channel Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand made her mark by writing and lecturing on a philosophy called Objectivism. It’s a philosophy that flips upside down everything that most Americans hold dear. Under Objectivism, greed is good, selfishness is noble, helping one’s fellow human beings is for suckers and an outright evil. The philosophy also holds that big government is bad and obscenely rich corporate titans are the real heroes of society. (See related articles below.) The Koch brothers’ network of billionaires has been financing the proliferation of Rand’s books into high schools and colleges for decades.

Trump is the personification of the Ayn Rand creed and his elevation from reality TV host to the Oval Office is valid proof that the Kochs and their ilk have spent their money wisely....

Wall Street On Parade
Trump & Company Channel Ayn Rand
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Zero Hedge — Ray Dalio Praises Trump: Predicts "Huge" Changes; It Will Be "Glorious To Be Rich"

In one of the most euphoric praises for Donald Trump and the president-elect's fledgling administration to date, overnight Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio said economic changes under the Trump administration may be more dramatic than shifts from “the socialists to the capitalists” in the U.K., U.S. and Germany from 1979 to 1982, and predicted that "we are about to experience a profound, president-led ideological shift that will have a big impact on both the US and the world."

Comparing Trump to Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl, Dalio said the incoming administration may have a much bigger impact on the U.S. economy than can be measured by tax changes and fiscal spending. The Trump era could “ignite animal spirits” and attract productive capital.

In his summary of Trump's economic policies, Dalio urges readers to read Ayn Rand "as her books pretty well capture the mindset. This new administration hates weak, unproductive, socialist people and policies, and it admires strong, can-do, profit makers. It wants to, and probably will, shift the environment from one that makes profit makers villains with limited power to one that makes them heroes with significant power."…

By and large, deal-maker businessmen will be running the government. Their boldness will almost certainly make the next four years incredibly interesting and will keep us all on our toes.

The difference between Trump and Thatcher/Reagan seems to be populism. The US and UK are not emerging from a previous period of social democracy (New Deal) or democratic socialism (Old Labour). The US and UK are reacting politically to the inequality resulting from Reagan and Thatcher that goes under the rubric of neoliberalism. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were more like Ronald Reagan than FDR, or even Nixon. Tony Blair was much more in the mold of Margaret Thatcher than Harold Wilson. Trump realizes that he has two years to do something significant for the middle class workers that voted him in, or his power base will crumble. If there is not significant economic improvement for workers in the 2020 campaign, he will lose his bid for reelection. Moreover, he will face a vicious opposition that will try to stymie his every move. Theresa May is in a similar position in the UK.

Zero Hedge
Ray Dalio Praises Trump: Predicts "Huge" Changes; It Will Be "Glorious To Be Rich"

Tyler Durden

Peter Turchin — Another Victim of Ayn Rand’s Corrosive Objectivism: Sears

The story of the rise and fall of Eddie Lampert.

Cliodynamica — A Blog about the Evolution of Civilizations
Another Victim of Ayn Rand’s Corrosive Objectivism: Sears
Peter Turchin | Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, Research Associate in the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, and Vice-President of the Evolution Institute

Atlas Mugged...Paul Ryan set to become Speaker of the House. Galt Gulch here we come.

Looks like Ayn Rand/Austerity boy, Paul Ryan, is about to become Speaker of the House. He has forced Republicans to submit to total compliance to his rule.

Here comes Galt Gulch. End of Medicare as we know it. Vouchers. Privatizations. Social Security "reform" a.k.a. benefit cuts, etc, etc.

Paul Krugman — Money Makes Crazy

You see, in the conservative worldview, markets aren’t just a useful way to organize the economy; they’re a moral structure: People get paid what they deserve, and what goods cost is what they are truly worth to society.… 

Modern money — consisting of pieces of paper or their digital equivalent that are issued by the Fed, not created by the heroic efforts of entrepreneurs — is an affront to that worldview. Mr. Ryan is on record declaring that his views on monetary policy come from a speech given by one of Ayn Rand’s fictional characters. And what the speaker declares is that money is “the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. ... Paper is a check drawn by legal looters.” 

Once you understand that this is how many conservatives really think, it all falls into place. Of course they predict disaster from monetary expansion, no matter the circumstances. Of course they are undaunted in their views no matter how wrong their predictions have been in the past. Of course they are quick to accuse the Fed of vile motives. From their point of view, monetary policy isn’t really a technical issue, a question of what works; it’s a matter of theology: Printing money is evil.

And the corollary is the gold and silver are virtue.

Paul Krugman gets this very right. It's a moral issue with some people since money and morality are joined at the hip if not synonymous. Which the basis for the double standard that allows those with wealth to follow different rules than those that don't have wealth, moral worth being equated with financial worth.

BTW, notice that Krugman uses the term "modern money."

Economist’s View
Paul Krugman: Money Makes Crazy
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

Sara Robinson — Ayn Rand Worshippers Must Face Facts: Blue States Are Providers, Red States Are Parasites

Funny and makes a point. Must-read. Trust me, you'll enjoy it.

The time has come for blue America to go Galt.… 

The New York Times published a widely discussed article updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.… 

Progressives believe in the redistribution of wealth, so we're not usually too upset by this state of affairs. That’s what it means to be one country. E pluribus unum, and all that. We’re happy to help, because we think we’ve got a stake in making sure kids in rural Alabama get educations and seniors in Arizona get healthcare. What’s good for them is good for all of us. We also like to think they’d help us out if our positions were reversed. It’s an investment in making America stronger, and we feel fine about that. 

But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages together, tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good. 

So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that, by and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies, and so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked insanity about how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-soaked, sex-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.…

By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare the birth of a new Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist personal-responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red leeches off our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by without us, let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from us, at minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up verbal whoop-ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to unload on us if the roles were reversed.

The time has come for blue America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — long and epic, as Rand's turgid writing style would have required — might sound a bit like this:….

AlterNet

Ayn Rand Worshippers Must Face Facts: Blue States Are Providers, Red States Are Parasites
Sara Robinson | AlterNet

Janet Allon — Paul Krugman: Deluded New Majority in Congress Insists We're Living in an Ayn Rand Novel

The new meme is the same as the old meme — reduce dependence on government by eliminating the nanny state and instituting a night watchman state that is solely focused on security and property.

AlterNet
Paul Krugman: Deluded New Majority in Congress Insists We're Living in an Ayn Rand Novel
Janet Allon

Branco Milanovic — Why individualism does not necessarily imply preference for a minimalist state?

Rand, Mises, Hayek, and left libertarianism briefly compared and contrasted.

Global Inequality
Why individualism does not necessarily imply preference for a minimalist state?

Branco Milanovic

Alan Greenspan — Gold & Economic Freedom

Published in Ayn Rand’s “Objectivist” newsletter in 1966, and reprinted in her book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, in 1967.

Zero Hedge
Gold & Economic Freedom

Alan Greenspan

How on earth did this man become the chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and serve five terms, appointed successively by Presidents Reagan, GWH Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush?

Of course, Greenspan was not the only central banker who was a gold fetishist.

It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. By and large, if the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with ‘free banking.’ The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy. — Paul Volcker, Foreword to Marjorie Deane and Robert Pringle’s The Central Banks (Hamish Hamilton, 1994)

Central bankers hate inflation and love gold as a price anchor. As economists, they possess little creative imagination, lack systemic awareness, and have one track minds.

Lars P. Syll’s — Foot-in-mouth disease — Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan

The ironic thing is that Sitting Bull is an icon of the freedom that Ayn Rand and  her fanboy Alan Greenspan only fantasized about and the people that they believed to be capable of assuming that mantle could not when entrusted with the global economy. As Greenspan later admitted, they didn't have the right stuff. And he didn't either as chief regulator responsible for preserving and ensuring the stability of the financial order and banking system. Ayn Rand calling real men like Sitting Bull "savages" is way beyond moronic. And they were also much better philosophers than she aspired to be but never made the grade.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Foot-in-mouth disease — Ayn Rand and Alan GreenspanLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Tim Murphy — Eric Cantor Loses GOP Primary. Wait, What!?

[Eric] Cantor became the first majority leader to lose a primary in 115 years.

So who is [David] Brat?

Mother Jones 
Eric Cantor Loses GOP Primary. Wait, What!?
Tim Murphy

Adam Lee — 10 Things I Learned About the World from Ayn Rand's Insane "Atlas Shrugged'

Review of Atlas Shrugged with a summary and main points, if you haven't read it.

AlterNet
10 Things I Learned About the World from Ayn Rand's Insane "Atlas Shrugged' 
Adam Lee

Mark Ames — Found: Libertarians' "Lying To Liberals" Guide Book

This Saturday’s "StopWatching.Us" protest in Washington DC promises to be the Mother Of All StrangeBedfellowsPaloozas, the apotheosis of sentimental Boomer politics in which right-wingers hold hands with left-wingers in a righteous People’s Crusade against the government Death Star.

I wouldn't be the first to point out how embarrassingly easy it has been for rancid Koch libertarian front groups to convince those on the Left that they are all on the same team. As Salon writer Tom Watson wrote, the event is "fatally compromised by the prominent leadership and participation of the Libertarian Party and other libertarian student groups [who stand] in direct opposition to almost everything I believe in as a social democrat."

What hasn't been revealed until now, however, is how the libertarians got so good at fooling their lefty marks. For that you have to look back 35 years, to an amazing series of articles in the Koch brothers' REASON magazine in which prominent libertarians lay out to a new generation of followers a playbook of "tricks" to fool earnest leftists, liberals and hippies into supporting their cause....

More dupe the rubes bankrolled by billionaires promoting laissez-faire. Again, follow the money.

NSFW Corp

Found: Libertarians' "Lying To Liberals" Guide Book
Mark Ames
(h/t Gary Goodman)

David Ferguson — Michele Bachmann: Tea Party is an ‘intellectual movement’ at its core (via Raw Story )

Michele Bachmann: Tea Party is an ‘intellectual movement’ at its core (via Raw Story )

In her remarks to the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told the assembled crowd that the Tea Party and conservative movements will triumph over progressivism because of the right’s unstoppable intellectual…

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Henry Blodget — This Selfish Ayn Rand Business Philosophy Is Ruining The US Economy

Mr. Binswanger was kind enough to join me and Aaron Task on Yahoo's Daily Ticker today to talk about his philosophy (video here). He argued that CEOs and entrepreneurs should pay employees as little as possible. After all, Mr. Binswanger argues, the employees are just "trading" their labor for the entrepreneur's money. That's the employees' decision, and they don't deserve a penny more than they get.

That's one way of looking at it.

The other way of looking at it is that employees are members of a team. And that, as members of the team, employees should not be paid as little as possible but, instead, share in the value they help create.

That, for what it's worth, is the way I look at it.

And my view of this isn't the product of an armchair philosophy.
It's the product of living and working in the once-vibrant U.S. economy and of running a successful company with ~130 employees.

Most of the full-time employees at our company, Business Insider, have stock options. These allow everyone to share in the success of the company. We don't pay our employees "as little as possible." We pay our employees as much as possible while still achieving our financial goals. As the CEO of the company — and as the entrepreneur who co-founded it and an investor who funded it — I don't hallucinate that all of the company's success is due to me. It is a privilege to lead our team, but it is the hard work of the ~130 talented people on the team that make us successful. And it is the revenue we receive from our readers and clients that sustains the 130 jobs at Business Insider — not me. The overall mission of Business Insider, meanwhile, is not to "make as much money as possible." It is to produce a great product for our readers and clients, produce a compelling return for our investors, and provide excellent jobs for our team.

In short, the goal of our company is to create value for all three of our important constituencies: customers, shareholders, and employees.

Business Insider
This Selfish Ayn Rand Business Philosophy Is Ruining The US Economy
Henry Blodget

(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)

Harry Binswanger — Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%

Never say we don't present both sides. And no, this is not the Onion. It's Forbes.

It is “the community” that should give back to the wealth-creators. It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit from the 1% than vice-versa.

Then he quotes from John Galt in Any Rand's Atlas Shrugged to prove it.

Forbes
Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%

Harry Binswanger, Contributor

"I defend laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand's Objectivism"

(h/t dan Lynch)

Another narcissist that never grew up.

Conservatives Used to Mock Ayn Rand -- How Did She Become a Hero to Right-Wing Nerds Everywhere?

Today's doltish conservatives, like Paul Ryan, worship her. But their forebears called Rand's work "preposterous"

AlterNet
Conservatives Used to Mock Ayn Rand -- How Did She Become a Hero to Right-Wing Nerds Everywhere?
Michael Lind | Salon

How an Ayn Rand following hedge fund moron killed an American retail icon

Eddie Lampert is yet another hedge fund moron with an Ayn Rand fetish who's doing a great job in killing Sears, an American retailing icon.

Lampert is running Sears the "objectivist" way, perhaps as Ayn Rand herself would have loved, where his approach is to destroy cooperation and pit managers against managers and pit whole divisions against whole divisions creating a vicious, survive-at-the-expense-of-everyone-else mentality.

Maybe this will be a lesson to all the deluded Ayn Rand devotees who blindly and ignorantly worship her sociopathic rantings.

The fact is, there can be no progress, no advancement, no peace, no harmony, no broad prosperity, without cooperation and without human behavior that is in DIRECT OPPOSITION TO THAT WHICH IS ESPOUSED BY THE SOCIOPATH, RAND.

That is why there is not a single prosperous, free, democratic country on the face of the earth that sports Rand's objectivism as its model. And, furthermore, the most civilized, democratic and prosperous countries ALL have high levels of Socialism, Scandinavia being a good example.

Anyway, read the story of Lampert's destruction, it's over at Alternet.

By the way...you'll really get a kick out of this: where did Lampert pick up all his masterful "high finance" experience? Well, over at Goldman Sachs, of course, where he worked directly with none other than Robert Rubin, who built a mighty career for himself by destroying everything he touched, except his own personal fortunes.

Our entire economy--no, our entire nation, is infested with these cockroaches.

Makes me want to vomit. Seriously.

David Atkins — How an Ayn Rand-Loving Libertarian Destroyed The Company He Runs With His Cultish Objectivist Theories

How Eddie Lampert blew up Sears by introducing internal competition instead of cooperation.

AlterNet
How an Ayn Rand-Loving Libertarian Destroyed The Company He Runs With His Cultish Objectivist Theories
David Atkins | Hullaballoo