# Most people get Ayn Rand's philosophy wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 1, 2025, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474 "2025-11-01T11:57:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 21
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/401 "2025-12-21T05:19:13Z")
So what? According to Ayn Rand (and how we actually do it) is you pay someone who is willing to go work in a coal mine. Really it’s a question how any society gets all the dirty and dangerous but actually necessary jobs done. Usually the answer is “you pay them”. The real question is how do you prevent a society from becoming stratified by classes where people are limited to certain jobs or careers by virtue of their birth. I’ve toured turn of the century coal mines with my kids. That job probably would literally kill me. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/402 "2025-12-21T09:23:15Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Usually the answer is “you pay them”. And you pay them as little as you can. After all, there are plenty of poor people looking for work, and none of the other owners are offering any more. You’ve made sure of that. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/403 "2025-12-21T11:15:52Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > A committed socialist, Orwell wrote that it disturbed him that even in a socialist workers’ utopia, somebody would still have to mine coal– a job that Orwell admitted would flat-out kill him if he had to do it. Orwell didn’t foresee that coal mining would disappear as an industry. If there are a hundred miners left in the UK I’d be surprised. If (for some bizarre reason) they were to open a new mine today it would use technology that Orwell wouldn’t recogise. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/404 "2025-12-21T11:18:42Z")
Quite right. As far as it goes. But as the TV show _Dirty Jobs_ so eloquently showed, there are still plenty of unpleasant tasks to be done keeping a civilization running. And our system most definitely does _not_ pay people in proportion to the unpleasantness of their work. Coal mining is (was?) simply an accessible example of a dirty job. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/405 "2025-12-21T11:27:42Z")
That’s right; my dad was a coalman (and a communist); he came home bright black every day and worked ceaselessly to improve the lot of people in dirty jobs. Rand and Marx both valued hard work above all else; they just disagreed on the relative value of the work done by ‘entrepreneurs’ and by ‘the proletariat’. Another fifty years and most dirty jobs will be taken up by robots. The captains of industry won’t need workers then, except to serve them drinks; this doesn’t seem to be a viable economic model for the vast majority of the population. We’ll have to think again. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/406 "2025-12-21T12:28:35Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > And you pay them as little as you can. After all, there are plenty of poor people looking for work, and none of the other owners are offering any more. You’ve made sure of that. Historically IRL, you also force them to live in company housing, buy all their equipment from the company store. and evict their families if all the able-bodied family members (including children) die in the mine. I don’t Rands goes into a lot of detail about working conditions in the D’Anconia Copper Mine. I presume she thinks the free market would reward mining businesses that treat their workers well and provide high safety standards. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/407 "2025-12-21T12:55:42Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I don’t Rands goes into a lot of detail about working conditions in the D’Anconia Copper Mine. I presume she thinks the free market would reward mining businesses that treat their workers well and provide high safety standards. Which is a fantasy that is completely disconnected from how the world works. Randian philosophy is at odds with human nature and economics. It’s a fantasy that falls apart with just a little critical thinking. Remember that the sex in Fountainhead starts as rape, but the victim ends up liking it, pure fantasy for selfish monsters. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/408 "2025-12-21T14:00:51Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > more about maximizing freedom and personal choice rather than maximizing wealth. Again this is one of the fundamental arguments against randianism, rehashed over and over back in the days before all Randians decided they were fascists. It’s not a misunderstanding. The fundamental problem with the Randian world view is it equates _economic_ freedom with actual freedom. It’s one thing to say that a society should have low taxes, that’s a perfectly reasonable position, but it’s another to say a society having high taxes makes it less free, just as much as not having freedom of speech, or habeas corpus, or other fundamental rights. That’s clearly untrue, a democratic country that respects fundamental rights, but has ridiculously high tax rates, is a freer country than a brutal dictatorship, where you can be executed for criticizing the government, but has incredibly low taxes. Again there was constant argument with Randians over this argument before they all decided they never really cared about freedom of any kind, and proved that by getting Trump elected. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/409 "2025-12-21T14:13:54Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > No one said everyone will get rich in a Randian society This is a misunderstanding but it’s a misunderstanding among the followers of Rand not the critics. Of course Rand didn’t promise everyone would get rich that’s like the whole point. Its the Randians who all think _they_ are the elite geniuses who will be up as rich magnates, not slaving away in the Copper mines without all that pesky government OSHA interference with all the other schmucks. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/410 "2025-12-21T14:26:55Z")
In a world that’s all about the economy, a person has exactly as much economic freedom as they can afford. Which of course means that anyone who wants freedom must first accrue money. By any means fair or foul. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/411 "2025-12-21T15:29:30Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > > [@msmith537](#): > > > > Usually the answer is “you pay them”. > > And you pay them as little as you can. After all, there are plenty of poor people looking for work, and none of the other owners are offering any more. You’ve made sure of that. And when they die (because inevitably, most of them will die of the labor) you find new poor desperate people. That’s why a just society institutes OSHA to force the owner of the mine to maintain some minimum safety standards. I used to be an asbestos actuary. You can look at the the number of mesothelioma cases in the US and make a pretty good guess as to when OSHA was implemented, even though there’s typically a 30 year gap between exposure to asbestos and development of mesothelioma. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/412 "2025-12-21T15:37:57Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > > [@msmith537](#): > > > > Usually the answer is “you pay them”. > > And you pay them as little as you can. After all, there are plenty of poor people looking for work, and none of the other owners are offering any more. You’ve made sure of that. The dilemma of coal, wheat farming, and other fundamental production industries is that they are _commodities_: there’s virtually no value-added component to them, and beyond bulk grades there’s no such thing as brand loyalty. This guarantees that those buying them are interested in one thing only: the absolute minimum price. This in turn guarantees that the producers will cut production costs to the absolute bare bone, which of course includes laborer wages. Coal mines are arguably a case where government labor and safety laws are appropriate: by mandating a floor beneath which no producer is allowed to sink, it somewhat removes the impetus for a race to the bottom. As long as all producers are under an equal burden with such mandates, they become acceptable– something a Wild West free market couldn’t produce on its own. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/413 "2025-12-21T15:41:40Z")
And of course federal minimum wage laws were introduced for essentially the same reason across all low-skill labor activities, dangerous or not. To prevent states competing in a race to the bottom of worker wages as the Depression got underway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474.md?page=20)