# Opinions on Ayn Rand **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 2, 2017, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588 "2017-04-02T15:14:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/201 "2017-04-18T00:45:51Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Why does the man who pushes the broom on Rearden’s mill floor deserve an equal share to Rearden, who invented a revolutionary new kind of steel? . . . Who has said that? No one here has proposed such an absurdity. Why does the guy who pushes the broom deserve only one one-hundred-thousandth of the income Rearden gets? Why does he deserve to be absolutely powerless in salary negotiations? (“I’d like a raise.” “You’re fired.”) Why does he deserve to be so dependent on that rotten job that he can be abused in the workplace, and have to take it, because without the income, his kids starve? The U.S. workplace is softened by regulations on business. This is a good thing, something we learned from the Robber Baron era, when abuses were extreme. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/202 "2017-04-18T18:45:23Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Who has said that? No one here has proposed such an absurdity. Beren Erchamion did. I quoted him asking it. > [@Trinopus](#): > > Why does the guy who pushes the broom deserve only one one-hundred-thousandth of the income Rearden gets? Why does he deserve to be absolutely powerless in salary negotiations? (“I’d like a raise.” “You’re fired.”) Why does he deserve to be so dependent on that rotten job that he can be abused in the workplace, and have to take it, because without the income, his kids starve? > > The U.S. workplace is softened by regulations on business. This is a good thing, something we learned from the Robber Baron era, when abuses were extreme. Well that’s a bit extreme. The “reason” is that his contribution is far less than Rearden’s. He’s only responsible for keeping the floor clean. It’s a job anyone can do (and one he can do pretty much anywhere). Rearden has responsibility for keeping thousands of people employed. ---
**Author:** ![Beren\_Erchamion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/90ced4/32.png) [@Beren\_Erchamion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beren_Erchamion)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/203 "2017-04-18T18:52:04Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Rearden has responsibility for keeping thousands of people employed. Utter nonsense. It’s society, through its aggregate demand for the product, that keeps people employed. All Rearden does is skim off the top. He’s a parasite. ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/204 "2017-04-18T20:24:10Z")
> [@Beren\_Erchamion](#): > > Utter nonsense. > > It’s society, through its aggregate demand for the product, that keeps people employed. > > All Rearden does is skim off the top. He’s a parasite. You are funny. I doubt you mean to be, but you really are. Slee ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/205 "2017-04-18T20:24:58Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > It was an act of immorality, from people who were supposed to be paragons of moral perfection. > > If it was an “act of war,” it targeted people who had nothing to do with the oppression of individual liberty. John Galt just walked away, but this boob set fire to property that was not his own. What property are you referring to that “not his own”? It’s been a long time since I read the book, but it was my impression that Wyatt Oil was not a public company. That it was privately owned. But I could be wrong. Am I? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/206 "2017-04-18T20:27:24Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Except it’s not 100% “their” fortune anymore is it? Do they not have shareholders and investors? Do their corporations owe any debt? Do they have any obligations to customers? Employees? > > IIRC Ffrancisco D’Anconia committed what we would consider outright fraud and embezzlement in destroying his fortune. And what “extraordinary” thing did he do anyway, other than inherit a copper mining business? I’m not going to go back and read the book, but if you want to do so and substantiate the claims you are making, that would be great. Otherwise, you’re just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. I think you’d have a better case against Roark, but then he turned himself in to the authorities, so there’s that. ---
**Author:** ![Beren\_Erchamion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/90ced4/32.png) [@Beren\_Erchamion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beren_Erchamion)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/207 "2017-04-18T22:31:25Z")
> [@sleestak](#): > > You are funny. I doubt you mean to be, but you really are. > > Slee ? Business success is just luck. It really doesn’t matter who’s in charge–anyone could do it. I get that the beneficiaries of capitalist wage slavery like to pretend otherwise, but reality exists independent of the artificial self-serving narratives they create. That’s the problem with Ayn Rand. She insisted that reality did not exist, and that instead things worked based on the shit she just made up. Which is, incidentally, also the flaw of Austrian pseudo-“economics”: “praxeology” is just a fancy way of saying “reality doesn’t matter so we’ll just make shit up.” ---
**Author:** ![Fredescu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/73ab20/32.png) [@Fredescu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fredescu)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/208 "2017-04-18T22:51:53Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I’m not going to go back and read the book, but if you want to do so and substantiate the claims you are making, that would be great. Otherwise, you’re just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. Relevant quote: > [@Atlas Shrugged](#): > > Francisco laughed suddenly. “…But accidents do happen in the world – you know what they say, man is only a helpless plaything at the mercy of nature’s disasters. For instance, there was a fire at the d’Anconia ore docks in Valparaiso tomorrow morning, a fire that razed them to the ground along with half of the port structures. What time is it, Mr. Rearden? Oh, did I mix my tenses?” D’Anconia’s whole deal was defrauding shareholders. The notion is that the shareholders aren’t thinking for themselves, they are relying on D’Anconia’s mind, so it is only just that he remove his mind from society. The shareholders should have thought for themselves and realised that the business owner would burn it down. The only way for anyone to support laissez faire capitalism is to ignore or deny the existence of information asymmetry, and this character is a good illustration of Rand’s attempt at that. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/209 "2017-04-18T23:45:55Z")
> [@Fredescu](#): > > Relevant quote: > > D’Anconia’s whole deal was defrauding shareholders. The notion is that the shareholders aren’t thinking for themselves, they are relying on D’Anconia’s mind, so it is only just that he remove his mind from society. The shareholders should have thought for themselves and realised that the business owner would burn it down. The only way for anyone to support laissez faire capitalism is to ignore or deny the existence of information asymmetry, and this character is a good illustration of Rand’s attempt at that. That’s fine. But again, this whole bit about these guys destroying their companies is a red herring. The claim that was made, and that I asked for examples of, was: " This gives righteous justification to Randians to be cold heartless jerks who build themselves up at the expense of others." ( See post #179, emphasis added.) Somehow “build themselves up” morphed into “cut themselves down”. Can we concentrate on examples where one of the heroes in her books “builds himself up at the expense of others”? ---
**Author:** ![Fredescu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/73ab20/32.png) [@Fredescu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fredescu)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/210 "2017-04-19T00:08:19Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Can we concentrate on examples where one of the heroes in her books “builds himself up at the expense of others”? I don’t think there are any obvious examples of that. Like I said earlier, Rand presented laissez faire capitalism as a chivalrous battle of ideas where the smartest guy wins because he’s smart. Her books were intended to illustrate that. They were fiction though. The person you were responding to was talking about people following her ideas in the real world, where everything is not so black and white. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/211 "2017-04-19T00:09:47Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > What property are you referring to that “not his own”? It’s been a long time since I read the book, but it was my impression that Wyatt Oil was not a public company. That it was privately owned. But I could be wrong. Am I? A privately owed oil company? No investors? No bank debt? The entire shebang operated as a mom-and-pop? I gonna use a somewhat infamous word, but today, I’m using it properly. Inconceivable. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/212 "2017-04-19T00:34:40Z")
> [@sleestak](#): > > You are funny. I doubt you mean to be, but you really are. > > Slee You should probably not respond to him. He is not really interested in discussion, he just wants to spout his extreme views. Views which are not entirely off-base, but are not framed in a way that would foster discourse. ---
**Author:** ![Fredescu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/73ab20/32.png) [@Fredescu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fredescu)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/213 "2017-04-19T00:44:18Z")
Fostering discourse is just luck, anyone could do it. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/214 "2017-04-19T02:19:39Z")
> [@Fredescu](#): > > I don’t think there are any obvious examples of that. Like I said earlier, Rand presented laissez faire capitalism as a chivalrous battle of ideas where the smartest guy wins because he’s smart. Her books were intended to illustrate that. They were fiction though. The person you were responding to was talking about people following her ideas in the real world, where everything is not so black and white. The other thing to keep in mind is that the morality of the actions taken by the “strikers” in _Atlas Shrugged_ is not necessarily transferable to everyday situations we might find in the US. I’m not going to defend Rand’s morality, but the actions taken by people like D’Anconia in the novel need to be understood in the context of the world as it existed in that novel. Countries were routinely nationalizing private companies, and passing laws contrary to what she would consider legitimate actions by the state. I said earlier that the strikers were essentially at war, and they were. It even came to actual shooting at the end of the book. Instead of asking: Would it be OK for Bill Gates to act like Francisco D’Anconia tomorrow, one should ask: Would the US have been justified in taking similar actions against German and Japanese companies in WWII? Or, would it have been OK for industrialists to have taken similar actions against the USSR in the 1920s or The Peoples’ Republic of China in the 1960s. Anyway, I think it’s fair to say that Rand would not have endorsed “getting ahead at the expense of another person”, even if lots of her readers (and even more non-readers) come away thinking that. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588/215 "2017-04-26T15:33:18Z")
> [@Fredescu](#): > > Fostering discourse is just luck, anyone could do it. You owe me a new keyboard. I, as a libertarian, am evidence that Rand is neither necessary nor (to my mind) sufficient to develop a philosophy around. I’ve read only [_Night of January 16th_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_January_16th), her shortest and most approachable work. _Atlas Shrugged_ and _The Fountainhead_ are in my to-be-read pile (they may reach the top some day) but then so are the _Communist Manifesto_ and _Mein Kampf_. I’ve not seen the move of _The Fountainhead_ but I did struggle through the recent trilogy of _Atlas Shrugged_. Thirty years ago my wife and I attended a showing of [_We the Living_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_Living_(film)) when it was showing in San Francisco. When the lights went up we discovered Milton Friedman had been sitting three rows in front of us. Along with [Isak Dineson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Blixen), [Virginia Woolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf), and [Pearl S. Buck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck), I consider Ayn Rand a strong woman writer of a certain era who kind of went off the rails towards the end. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/opinions-on-ayn-rand/783588.md?page=10)