I thought it would be an interesting contrast. Office Space was another side to the dot-com story of the Bill Gates and Michael Dells and Jeff Amazons (okay, Bezzos) making fortunes out of building tech companies with their own two hands. I think most tech workers at the time related more to working long hours, living in cheap Ikea furnished appartments with old servers and C++ books scattered around than they realted to becoming millionares.
It’s kind of like, if you worked at a consulting firm, there might be a partner who is a rainmaker and brings in a ton of business. All the consultants and managers work hard, but if that rainmaker leaves, a lot of the business leaves with him. The more junior staff probably aren’t in a position where they could generate that business. They don’t have the contacts or the knowledge.
Rand’s world makes me think of a couple of corporate comparisons. In the consulting firm where I used to work, everything you do is based on billable hours or generated revenue (selling projects). Similar to a law firm. If you don’t keep your hours or your sales up, you are at risk to be let go. If you come up with some idea that benefits the company, you are rewarded. The upside is that there is a definite career track to Partner and big money. The downside is that it is highly competetive and requires extensive hours and travel.
Now most people don’t want to work like that so they take comparatively corporate jobs like my current job in MegaConglomocorp Insurance. Everything is a lot more structured but it is also more beurocratic. Timelines are measured in quaters and years, not hours and days. Initiative outside of your defined tasks are discouraged. As long as I show up and make some effort, I probably won’t ever get fired, however, I could get caught up in an arbitrary layoff as some VP three levels above me consolidates my department based on last years budget report. And it will take me years, if ever, to advance. If I were to describe my coworkers in one word, it would be “complacent”. They are just cogs in a big machine, with little to no ability to demonstrate excellence or achievement. They focus on their little jobs for decades praying they don’t get laid off, numbed from constant messages about “realignment” or “performance improvement” initatives that never seem to make things work any better.
I imagine that in Rands world, industrius companies (those names after their owners) are probably run more like my first example. A steelworker who shows particular leadership or a supervisor who comes up with a labor saving idea is quickly promoted. Looter companies (those with names like Amalgamated Inc) are more like the second example. Entitled people sitting around on their ass surfing the SDMB demanding protectionist legislation so they don’t have to compete.
shrug There is reading, and there is comprehending. Either that or we read different books.
And had you ACTUALLY read the book (and comprehended it), you would have seen myriad examples of bad businessmen running their companies into the ground. Does the name James Taggart ring any bells, as an example?
ETA: Oh, and Galt didn’t run a company at all.
And I weep for the electrons and all that wasted effort for the hamsters.
Aristocracy of excellence. I like that description. But the Illuminatus! Trilogy has a much better version of the main characters of Atlas Shrugged in Hagbard Celine and Mavis/Miss Mao/Stella. But that just brings me back to libertarians/objectivists being anarchists that lack the courage of their convictions. Apparently a normal guy can teach himself engineering, design a massively superior engine, vanish leaving only tantilizing clues, surreptitiously organize a social rebellion, and make profound speeches, but can’t defend his personal property and so suddenly needs a “minimal” government. Ooooo kay.
But Rand wouldn’t have thought anything low of even below average people if they were striving for excellence. I mean, she wouldn’t cheat on her husband with them, or anything, you’d have to be a self-help guru psychologist for that, but she’d not throw you out.
Not agreeing with an author and feeling that she did not successfully make her point != failing to comprehend, any more than agreeing with her would necessarily mean a lemming-like lack of critical thinking and a desire to buy the premise regardless of the actual contents.
Not understanding key parts of the story = failing to comprehend the story. Asserting things that aren’t part of the story and miss the point of the story also = failing to comprehend the story.
Have you read the new Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers? Gates is used a primary example, the gist of the argument being that Gates (along with other, similarly notable figures) is so successful and influential not because he is a singularly talented person who took advantage of opportunities, but because he is a talented person who took advantage of singular opportunities. That is, Gates is undeniably brilliant and driven, but not uniquely so. What was unique was his context, opportunities, and (in a sense) his luck.
I don’t expect that you’d completely agree with Gladwell’s argument, but it’s well written, and lays out a convincing argument for why we should generally pay relatively more attention to context and relatively less attention to individual excellence when explaining extreme success. Worth picking up at the library.
I’ll take a look, but I will probably agree. I think that luck and opportunity does play a large role…along with drive, ambition and talent. It’s the combination of all o those that create companies like Microsoft.
Not realistically, no. The argument is basically the same that Matt Damon gives in Good Will Hunting. There’s pride in being a laborer if you try your best at it. Look at lots of the people on Dirty Jobs.
I don’t think Rand was trying to be realistic. It’s certainly easier to espouse your ideology that way, but it sure weakens the argument.
Heh, the anarcho-capitalists would love you forever for that quote.
Anyway, though what you say is likely true of many libertarians, I don’t think you can generalize like that, since often the convictions that lead one to libertarianism are different from the convictions that lead one to anarchism. If you’re a libertarian primarily because you think coercion is a moral wrong, then, yes, you ought probably to be an anarchist. On the other hand, if you’re a libertarian because you think coercion is generally inefficient and harmful, that still leaves plenty of room to believe (consistently) that anarchy is a stupid idea.
The reason of your spoiler is so that society could collapse faster because they would be hosed without the elite. They wanted to world to go to shit so that everybody would realize how much the creators are needed and would be welcomed back without restrictions.
I don’t think that’s right. It was so the world could see that it should conduct itself in a way that encouraged creators. Whether the creators were those who individuals who left or not is immaterial. It was to slap society upside the head and have it refocus on encouraging that which is most beneficial to society.
If that were the case, why would _________ go to see her at the cabin when she… well, I guess this isn’t cafe society, do we need spoilers?
…I disagree with your explanation.
I think there is more to Dagny’s frustrations than simply the overarching theme of destroying society by removing the prime movers. (Of course, Dagny is not middle or working class.)
My point was that the book isn’t about the idea that without the elite the world would collapse and that we should acknowledge those who discovered fire and created tools and made miraculous discoveries as our saviors.
It’s been a while, but I thought the idea was that society would rot away and then the “creators” would return and start over.
Despite the tone of the novel and the way it is generally taken, I do not think the main idea is that “society” should needs to encourage the creators.
It may not be a great line, but I believe it is meant to be when ______________ says, “Get out of my way!”
No, not really. At the very end of the book society had seen the raw truth (according to Rand) and the Men of the Mind were already moving back into the world to start things up again. The idea wasn’t to destroy society…but to destroy the concepts of collectivism and the enslavement of the individual to the needs of The People. Once that was accomplished and the IDEA of socialism/communism was finally killed for good in the minds of the people then the main characters in the book would lead all of those on strike back into the world.
No…it was that society needs to appreciate the people who make all this stuff possible…not just the folks like Galt, but those like the kid on the train or the composer, etc. That society needs to not treat people like slaves, to be used up for the greater good.
One thing that it seems there is come confusion on here seems to be this idea of elite in the book. Recall that there were several examples of just regular guys who had also joined Galt’s movement. The kid on the train, or the engineer that Dagny was trying to promote to run the operations at the rail road…these and others were not anyone really special, except in the fact that they agreed with Galt’s philosophy and were hard workers. This hints at the fact that this movement wasn’t supposed to just be Galt and a few rich fat cats, but a huge movement that drained the best engineers, scientists, workers, etc, from society.
Forgive me for not comprehending your brilliance, then.
On review, I see that my post was poorly worded. PLease ignore first “who”. And I was just trying to clarify that there motivation was no that they come back and save society. Rather, that society operate in a way that savior-types would be home grown.
OR we read the same book…and simply disagree. It IS possible to understand something…but come away with different opinions. I will confess that it’s been awhile since I read the book, however, so maybe I’m wrong on certain points.
I simply found her philosophy unrealistic. (And the book was incredibly tedious, long-winded, and annoying.)
Well, Objectivism is supposed to be all about the Virtue of Selfishness and the self-actualization of the free individual, who owes society nothing. Isn’t it? Objectivists (and, to a lesser extent, Libertarians) tend to bristle and growl if you even talk about this or that being for the “common good,” as if just thinking that way is the first step down the slippery slope to Stalinism. And yet now and then, as in what you were describing, we encounter an argument from them that maximum personal liberty is good for society, with the implicit assumption that that really is relevant after all. It’s only to be expected from political Libertarians, who need to pitch their message to an unconverted audience if they ever hope to get any traction, but it sounds kind of jarring coming from a pure intellectual like Rand. (Who did try to start a movement, come to think of it, though it never grew beyond a cult.)
I do not remember the end of the book exactly, but I cannot imagine that Rand published it without considering every comma and every colon. She used an obvious metaphor when she had the train – a Taggart Transcontinental train if I recall – break down and had the passengers, including Eddie Willers, go into the wilderness with a band of nomads living in horse drawn wagons.
I do not remember the men of the mind returning to the world and Dagny and the rest have definitely gone back to Galt’s Gulch.
I do not see how the idea of the ‘Sanction of the Victim’, as an example, is meant to speak to society as a whole and if it did, the message would not be that we need to respect the prime movers.
The message is, “You do not have to acquiesce and be absorbed into the collective,” the message is, “Get out of my way!” not, worship me.
Considering Rand’s overall approach, I have a hard time believing that the core message of the book is not something the author comes right out and says in the book itself, especially considering the three hour speech that she herself was extraordinarily proud of!
It is in that speech that she refers to the philosophy that states that morality (a focal point of the novel) would not be necessary on a desert island. The main character then says that it is on a desert island where one would most desperately morality!
The individual has access to a rational mind and needs to use that mind to apprehend the world in a morally consistent way. He (she) rejects those formations of morality that do not stem from a rational accounting of the world and damns those who would claim to be able to demand fish from the sea because of its capacity and because of their need.
None of that is in keeping with the idea that society needs to appreciate anyone except the individual; not as a provider (that is antithetical to the main idea), but as an ideal.
