Ayn Rand

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Is anyone here familiar with the late philosopher and writer Ayn Rand? Since I have strong Libertarian views I agree with her views of free will capitalism and such. Strangely, I have a hunch I may be related to her as "Rand" was my maternal grandmother's maiden name and Ayn Rand is of the same cultural background my ancestors were. Also, in pictures of her she certainly does resemble my mom's side of the family. If she is of relation to me that would explain my philosophical and anti-religious views. Anyway though, any fans of her theories and works?

*sigh* Yes. She also believed businesses should have the right to descriminate against people for things people have no control over. Essentially, in her view people should be free to hate.

All I'm familiar with is her ethical philosophy as outlined in my ethics class, where her reasoning was demonstrated to be fallacious. Common wisdom in philosophical circles seems to suggest that she was a crank, but if someone can give an outline of a sensible yet original stance of hers and a book that elaborates on it I may consider reading that book. The metaphysical society library in my college has lots of books on Rand's because they were given to them for free.

Conservatives tend to love her since most of her ideas lean towards setting humanity back a few centuries to the days of rampant monopolies, discrimination, wage slavery, and disposable employees who are fired for getting injured, having a child or wanting a raise.

I've heard of her, and read some of her non-fiction. Yeah, I would have to say that I tend to think that she is a crank. This isn't to say that studying her is completely without merit, but her reasoning is generally accepted to be fallacious.

Conservatives tend to like her ideas because they lean towards the type of rugged individualism that conservatives tend to like, however, very few conservatives are actually objectivists, so I wouldn't say "love". As for her ideas, well... to be honest, few of the things you actually state really seem like they would become dominatingly powerful, I mean, even if I accept that these situations will get worse, I don't think most honest researchers on the matter would accept your notion with at least the same connotation. Getting monopoly power is relatively difficult, and a number of the people who have gotten close have also tended to be effective at what they did, or perhaps had government subsidies, for example, with Rockefeller's standard oil, during the period of time it could be labeled a monopoly, it still could be cited as driving down the prices of oil. As for discrimination, there is research by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker that suggests that market competition tends to undermine discrimination. Wage slavery is harder to quantify, however, it seems difficult to suggest that our entire salary system is kept from collapse by claiming that employers cannot pay certain workers less than 7 dollars an hour. As for disposability, well, few jobs are *that* disposable, I mean, the major group that is disposable would be the burger flippers, but if you can get some form of premium above that then you aren't perfectly replaceable like a barely trained factory worker. Heck, given that the Industrial Revolution is hated for unemployment AND low wages, it seems hard to say that it was a situation easy to improve upon faster, and the most blame I can see would likely be that there were no efforts to ameliorate the pain. In any case though, I wouldn't completely trash the economic ideas Ayn Rand's principles lead to, as even if one disagrees, there are a number of very smart economists who would lean her direction, or even agree.

She has an amazing writing style, and is an author I can't put down. Atlas Shrugged is in my top 5 books.

But I have to scrub with lye afterward to stop feeling dirty.

She has absolutely zero empathy, almost no compassion - and that misplaced for the poor downtrodden industrialist robber barons.

She had a severe misconception of the tenets of socialism, and an odd belief that trickle down is good for those on the bottom rung.

Her depiction of a communist factory in Atlas Shrugged, while fascinating to read.... I'm not sure if it was because her writing was that compelling, or because I was trying to figure out what damaged a human being that much that she hated humanity so much.

I find her morally bankrupt. It's kind of like watching anything from the Hannibal Lechter series, or American Psycho.

She's cold, calculating and cruel, but I can't turn away from the car wreck.

Yeah it's true that even if they are flawed the ideas have merit.. but considering smarter people have put forth better developed versions of the same ideas before in a more eloquent fashion I don't see her as being relevant and can't fathom the pop star status she seems to have among neocons.

As for a number of economists agreeing with her... well economics is one of those fields where beliefs can range wildly even far into fantasy land (trickle down economics? Yeah I want some of what those guys were smoking).

Her ideas have merit strictly from a business profit perspective.

Libertarian ideas are great for business, and horrible for the working man who lives in a country with a decent standard of living.

You need to maintain a mixture of socialism and capitalism together. You can't tax the corporations out of their profits, or they'll close their doors and stop operating, but you also can't forget the human equation.

It comes down to a question of where you draw the line as an acceptable standard of living for the common man.

I've read Anthem, Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, her pseudoautobiography and a handful of her essays.

She's crazy. Her ideas have some level of appeal to them, but that doesn't mean they are good. Basically they are the negation of extreme communism... the inverse of an extreme is an extreme in the other direction, and extremism is dangerous to a healthy society.

A lot of people don't "get it" when they read her books, especially gifted teenagers who are hideously under-appreciated in the modern American public school system. They often go along with what is really quite a bad idea, simply because it is against the same things they hate. I am now unsurprised that Atlas Shrugged was pulled from my Senior literature's required summer reading list.

It is humorous to note that Objectivism, her philosophy, has shown great promise in the treatment of psychopaths and sociopaths. Getting them to agree on the simple, self-serving premise of Objectivism and then deriving the usefulness of obeying the most basic rules of society has been successful in partially rehabilitating people with such anti-social personality disorders. The whole premise relies on them realizing that they WILL be caught if they commit crimes, which is a bit of a difficult to get across...

Bioshock is a videogame that is entirely based around examining the effects of Objectivism in a city called Rapure (analogous to Galt's Gulch). Rapture experiences a huge technological breakthrough, and the way that the Ayn Rand-based character Andrew Ryan deals with it causes society to collapse. The game is a first person shooter for a reason, but it is a definite recommendation to anyone who likes games and is interested in Objectivism.

The book Faith of the Fallen in the Terry Goodkind series The Sword of Truth is book number 6, and addresses the evils of a society based on collectivism, and state-reinforced individual helplessness. If you like fantasy books I recommend this series to you (the first book has sub-par writing compared to the rest of the series), and about 5,000 pages in you'll get to see what I mean...

I'd agree somewhat, few people really put together the same ideas(egoism, capitalism, objectivity, a rights-ish framework), but part of the issue is probably that these ideas don't all agree. However, she is not a pop star to the neocons, she is a pop star amongst certain libertarian groups though(such as the Objectivists, and just about any libertarian group with "Reason" anywhere in the title. Neocon is a term that has lost a lot of it's meaning, but really it refers more to a group that has a strong view on the goodness of American culture, a desire to transform the world for the better through military action, and a willingness to side with a lot of other groups to get those 2 desired things. In fact, neocons are usually *less* focused on a minimal Ayn Randian state than other conservative groups, they might just try to advocate Ayn Rand though because they see her as expressing "American" values, not because they follow her.


Umm.... well... you see ranging into fantasy land in all fields. In any case, it must be stated, that the economic ideas that politicians bring up often have very little relationship to the field of economics, thus "trickle-down" economics is not something an economist came up with. In fact, a lot of the stuff that falls under "supply side economics" is bad according to most economists.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 04 Dec 2008, 4:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am not surprised, do you have a source though? I'd be curious to read about this, as I like psychology stuff.

I would have once upon a time, but I have since switched systems. Hopefully some searching can find it but I have no special recognition of where I found it.

Ayn Rand = Ebenezer Scrooge, except female.

I realized this when we were doing the run-through through our Christmas play at school (which is A Christmas Carol). Neither one cared for anything except $$$ and both had a "screw the poor" attitude.

There is little chance you are related to her unless you have a Rosenbaum in your family. "Ayn Rand" was her pen name. Her real name was Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, and she was born in Russia.

I have two copies of her book Fountainhead. I did have three, but I think I threw it at a car. Oh, I have never read that book, I have tried but couldn't get past the first few pages.

^I think I might be related to Edgar Allan Poe because me and him are the sad type. Wishful thinking....

YES, I luv Ayn Rand but I will not debate about why since her work is an art. Sometimes when I agree with the author's views that doesn't necessarily mean that it is fact. There is a difference between an art being expressed and fact that is only described by facts and figures. This is why I admire artists and critics. One who uses their right side of the brain vs one who uses that left side of the brain. That is Creative vs Intellect.