3 Crucial lessons Ayn Rand can teach us today

LiptonCambell: Today is the birthday of Ayn Rand, author of the 1957 classic "Atlas Shrugged," and one of history’s most celebrated champions of capitalism. Here are three of the crucial lessons Rand offers those of us who want to fight for a freer, more prosperous America.

1. Celebrate Business

Today business is the scapegoat for virtually every evil. Whatever the problem or crisis, “greedy” businessmen take the blame, and the solution is always held to be more controls, more regulations, more taxes. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, for instance, Republican leaders raced to blame “greedy” bankers, not government policy. President Obama has intensified this outlook.

According to Rand, this is one of history’s worst injustices. Businessmen are the ones who create the medicines, food preservatives, sanitation systems, irrigation systems, and millions of other innovations and labor-saving devices that have nearly tripled our lifespans and provided us with a standard of living unimaginable by our forefathers. As she explained in 1961, the businessman is the great liberator who, in the short span of a century and a half, has released men from bondage to their physical needs, has released them from the terrible drudgery of an eighteen-hour workday of manual labor for their barest subsistence, has released them from famines, from pestilences, from the stagnant hopelessness and terror in which most of mankind had lived in all the pre-capitalist centuries.

If we want to limit government, Rand warned, this is something we need to celebrate. To slam business is to attack a core part of what makes America great.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/02/3-crucial-lessons-ayn-rand-can-teach-us-today/#ixzz2JnS2E5tL

LiptonCambell: 2. Don’t Apologize for the Profit Motive

Underneath the attack on business is an attack on the motive that drives businessmen: the desire for profits. The profit motive, we’re constantly told, leads businessmen to lie, cheat, and steal their way to a buck—or at minimum taints them morally.

Just recall the criticisms of Mitt Romney. Even his Republican challengers criticized him, not for passing RomneyCare, but for having been a profit-seeking businessman. But if the profit motive is dangerous and immoral, how can we tolerate the profit system?

Rand sets the record straight. A profit, she notes, is the insignia of production: you make a profit when you produce something of value, something that others want to buy because it makes human life better, longer, easier, more enjoyable.

Capitalism is fueled, not by the Al Capones or the Bernie Madoffs of this world who seek to get money by hook or by crook. It is fueled by individuals who make money by creating wealth. This is the actual nature of the profit motive: it is the desire to earn rewards through productive achievement.

That, says Rand, is the kind of attitude toward one’s work, toward one’s wealth, and toward other people that pervades a free market. Free markets drive out of business the short-sighted, unproductive moochers who don’t create value—and a capitalist government locks up predators such as Madoff when they try to defraud others.

Capitalism is good, said Rand, because it protects each man’s ability to make the most of his own life—and government intervention, which strips such men of their wealth and their freedom, is morally wrong.

3. Run from Anyone Trumpeting “The Public Good”

Today government grows at the expense of individuals: at the expense of their rights, their freedom, their wealth. The supporters of Big Government have always justified this by appealing to “the public good.” How have defenders of capitalism responded? Not by challenging the notion of “the public good.” Instead, we have accepted that notion and tried to persuade people that only capitalism can achieve it.

But the justification for capitalism, Rand stresses, is not that it serves “the public good” or “the public interest” or “the common welfare.” All of those slogans are dangerously vague: they can mean anything, and so they can be used to “justify” everything. The justification for capitalism is that it is the only system based on the individual’s inalienable right to pursue his own life, liberty, and happiness.

Society, Rand observes, is not an entity but a collection of sovereign individuals, and the essential political value they have in common is freedom.

Freedom, Rand stresses, means that individuals can exercise their rights free from coercion and compulsion. They can work to make a successful life for themselves, acting on their own independent judgment, keeping the fruits of their labor, and dealing with others through voluntary exchange to mutual advantage. The government’s role is to protect their freedom by barring the initiation of physical force. The economic system that emerges when government is limited and individual rights are secured is capitalism.

If you want to stop the growth of the state, you have to get rid of any ounce of the idea that individuals exist to serve some social purpose or goal. Capitalism is the system rooted in the conviction that each individual is an end in himself and has a right to exist for his own sake.

Ayn Rand’s Winning Formula: Capture the Moral High Ground

If you wanted to boil down what makes Rand so successful and what she can teach us today, it would be that she teaches the free market side to take the moral high ground.

We “must fight for capitalism,” Rand says, “not as a ‘practical’ issue, not as an economic issue, but, with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue. That is what capitalism deserves, and nothing less will save it.”

But how can a system driven by self-interest and the pursuit of personal profit be moral? That is the question Rand answers in her works, and it is the question we address in our book, the national bestseller "Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government."

We can limit today’s unlimited government. But to do so we will need to mount an unapologetic moral defense of freedom. The first step is to arm ourselves with Ayn Rand’s unsurpassed stockpile of intellectual ammunition, and then to speak out for freedom.

Don Watkins and Yaron Brook are the authors of the national bestseller Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, and a fellow and executive director, respectively, of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/02/3-crucial-lessons-ayn-rand-can-teach-us-today/#ixzz2JnSPhkAF

CoIin: Have you read much of her stuff, Two Soups?

CoIin: She was very intelligent. Wouldn't like to meet her in a dark alley

LiptonCambell: Ive read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead

CoIin: ok then

CoIin: any good?

LiptonCambell: I like her writing style, and I like her philosophy. Fountainhead was weird, though....the good guy raped the girl, and that just happened to be the raped girls kink.

If nothing else, it's an odd stance to take for a woman writer...

CoIin: Well, I'm sure she had a point.

CoIin: I've been watching a few old clips of her on YouTube. Like her or not, she can sure get the better of these talk show hosts, eh?

Have you seen them, Lipton?

LiptonCambell: Some. As a philosophy, I find her works excellent. As a person, Ive heard she could be rather difficult

About a year ago i posted a topic on John Stossel talking, among other things, about rands work...lemme see....yea, heres the vid.....really entertaining



EDIT: DOH! While I do think the above video is worth watching, it isn't the one I thought it was....the below is the first of the video I thought it was. I'm not going to be like Lori or Duncan- I'm sure you can find videos 2-6 on your own...

the real slim DEEPy: ayn rand has some good defenses of capitalism, but i deny her stance on social safety nets. rand supported the blanket eradication of safety nets, as they separate personal reward from personal responsibility, and there is validity to that;.however, what of those who have no control over their plight- the disabled and elderly?

surely, a limited safety net would be more beneficial than harmful for those who have not the alternative of self-sufficiency.

LiptonCambell: >>>.however, what of those who have no control over their plight- the disabled and elderly?

Disabled could use insurance. For the most part, that's how it's done now- we have the cost of insurance deducted from our pay, as well your employers pay into an insurance. The combined effort is used for disablity pay.

As for the elderly, lets be honest- we don't NEED the government to organize everyons savings account. And frankly, the government runs the retirement program HORRIBLY. Do you honestly think the government isn't spending the money that was intended for retirement? In the next couple decades, more people will go into retirement than be actually employed. I honestly believe that, in less than 25 years, the government will abandon the retirement program- and screw over the millions who invested in it.

CoIin: Hey Two Soups

I've been reading a collection of her essays called "Philosophy: Who Needs it? " recently. Have you read that? Boy oh boy, she's quite a gal, eh?

I was amazed and amused to discover that one of the essays is an assault on one of my fave dudes, Paul Feyerabend . I wonder if he responded?

You know, she reminds me of someone else - John Searle (know him? ) - for the following reasons:-

1. Whether you agree or disagree with what's being said, it becomes apparent the instant they start speaking that you're in the presence of a truly prodigious intellect.

2. They both seem to be mavericks of sorts. As you noted about Ayn above, she could be quite abrasive at times. Searle is the same. They can both be blithely dismissive of their peers when they see fit (and this is no doubt construed as arrogance).

3. Even though they must be among the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, I almost never hear their names mentioned by other philosophers. Perhaps for the reason above .

Was Ayn Rand an academic herself or was she operating outside the system? Is she well known over there? She doesn't seem so well known among we Limeys as far as I can tell.

LiptonCambell: She's fairly well known....she was a soviet who came to America for university, or college, or whatever, and fell in love with the American system. Career wise, she was a screenwriter- pretty impressive for a woman in the 1930's and 40's....

Honestly, some shows I watched referenced her and I never noticed- like the early Simpsons episode where Marge joins a play(Maggie is left at the Ayn Rand Daycare Center), or in the episode of South Park, where the Police officer cannot read- and when he finally learns how to read and is excited to try the new experience, he reads Atlas Shrugged- and refuses to ever read again, since it is such garbage lol....Also, the recent game Bioshock takes several nods from her works, going as far as to name the man protagonist after her....sort of(Ayn Rand- Andrew Ryan)

"According to a 1991 survey done for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Atlas Shrugged was situated between the Bible and M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled as the book that made the most difference in the lives of 5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members surveyed Modern Library's 1998 nonscientific online poll of the 100 best novels of the 20th century[53][54] found Atlas rated #1 although it was not included on the list chosen by the Modern Library board of authors and scholars."


Atlas Shrugged being Rands most popular writings, a complex story about a nation falling into a deep depression....needless to say, the last couple of years it's gotten more popular, but I would always love to see it get more interest...

"

Sales of Atlas Shrugged have increased since the 2007 financial crisis, according to The Economist magazine and The New York Times. The Economist reported that the fifty-two-year-old novel ranked #33 among Amazon.com's top-selling books on January 13, 2009...With an attached sales chart, The Economist reported that sales "spikes" of the book seemed to coincide with the release of economic data. Subsequently, on April 2, 2009, Atlas Shrugged ranked #1 in the "Fiction and Literature" category at Amazon and #15 in overall sales."

They came out with a movie based on the books. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it...from what I've seen, it's dry and dull, and comes off as a made-for-tv movie or television mini-series....also, they haven't finished it yet, so you wouldn't be able to see the ending for another couple of years...

Ms_Mafdet_The Great: I just wish to say: I Ayn Rand !!

DEEP_acheleg: i agree that the government runs social security in a horrible manner, and i would not be opposed to its privatization. americans have some of the highest wages in the world, and some of the lowest savings rates. i am generally against government mandates; however, savings is rarely ever harmful- and lord maynard can suck it.

LiptonCambell: Oh, I noticed another show reference Ayn Rand- an early episode of Futurama, where they visit the sewer people for the first time- they show the crew the sewer's library, being comprised of books that got flushed- and one of the crew noticed it was entirely crumpled up porno and Ayn Rand lol