5 Things the Right Doesn't Understand About Atlas Shrugged

Actually you are looter yourself.  In order to escape the taint of looterism you'd have to save and pay for the car up front.  What you're saying here is that you wanted to use the financing company's $10,000 without paying for it.  Maybe it's true that the company shouldn't make such a scum-sucking profit, however you wanted the car, and you wanted it now, and you can't afford it.  Don't blame someone else for your inability to control your own desires.  That's what you actually paid for by the way: Desire-management. 

For the same reason why liberals bitch about Fox News. The media should not be partisan.

Why do you think that?

Your paper really should stay out of politics.

I think the Hank Reardon character's take on unions shows a flow in trying to place her ideas in the modern world.  His factory was non-union and he said he didn't need a union because he paid higher wages than any other manufacturer and he did so because he wanted the best employees.  That sounds great, but that's not how modern capitalism works.  In the real world, no matter how good the employees are, a businesses maximize profits by closing the factory and moving it to Vietnam, Myanmar, China or South Africa or wherever else they can pay the lowest wage and have the fewest regulations. If Hank Reardon were running a company today the board would vote him out and make him VP of research and development, then they'd outsource all production overseas, declare profits through a Caribbean based subsidiary to avoid taxes, and reap profits in the billions. 

Money is NOT the root of all evil, "the love of money...." IS. When progressives got involved in trying to manage businesses dealings with each other we incurred the wrath of segregation and tyranny. Wilson RE segregated the military and his cohorts began the covert dealings with the soviet and facsists in Europe and Asia. Government contracts and promises provided the beginnings of what we have today, entitlements and grants programs that enslave the recipient workers of the companies benefitted by such entitlements. The book proves out the purest of the free market strengths, that small businesses are the inovators and the ownership of ingenuity should stay with the inventor, so they can work out the bugs (see- APPLE, IBM, FAB, NIKE, INTEL, McDONALD'S). Once the bugs are worked out then the ownership can be expanded and markets grown to benefit more and more people. More workers have jobs, from 1st job opportunities to expanded team leadership roles with large salaries commensurate with experience. Liberals should like the book, it displays the opportunities they can prosper and benefit by and the ways in which they can restrict ingenuity and desires that don't match their own abilities and directives.

From a right-winger (me): Excellent article and right on the money. It is greed --the desire for unearned profit -- that is the true destroyer, whether that be from a high-profile businessman or a lay-about drawing welfare checks. Any dollar, any cent! taken from me that has not been taken in exchange for goods or services represents greed.

We should be proud of production, but our ideas are not ours! Many people can have the same idea, which clearly shows our ideas are not exclusive to us as individuals. So why do we feel we need to profit from them? The profit is ensuring that all people have the basics provided, when all the basic needs are provided for, mankind tends to chill out. Money is merely a symbol for the exchange of energy. Oddly people opposed to Socialism participate in Socialism everyday, our current system is a Social system based on the premise of individuality. People opposed to it complain that they shouldnt have to pay for someone else, yet they do, in the form of taxes, profits, fees, etc etc. Everytime we buy a product from the store are we not "paying" for someone?

Great article. I too have read "Atlas Shrugged" at least ten times. The Right just does not get it. You left out one of the best scenes when the slimy Floyd Ferris comes to Reardon to blackmail  him into signing over his new metal. He says to Reardon what good is a nation of law abiding citizens? I don't have access to my copy but the point is government wants to have something on everyone. Everyone is guilty of something. Reardon gives up his metal for the woman he loves. The world got "miracle metal" to make small items not rails or building materials or anything productive. I was glad to see someone on the left write something good about the book. Rand believed strongly in self determination, Never taking anything that was not earned or deserved and that is the moral lesson one should take from the book. It is basically a utopian novel. She is right though about a lot of things. Her heroes are true heroes and her villains are true villains, I was glad you mentioned poor Eddie Willers his end broke my heart.

That's rather twisted. It may well be the Orren Boyles of the world that are sleazebag capitalists, but ultimately it was the corrupt government that passed laws to cripple Hank Rearden. It's called crony capitalism, kind of like the current administration: crippling the coal industry while squandering our money on bogus "Green energy" companies run by donor buddies.

So many comments about cost efficiency here, so I thought I might share this little tidbit for the sharks.

Suppose you own a bike.  Presumably, you ride that bike to places other than your home.  So you buy a lock for that bike to prevent people from stealing it.  The cheapest piece of shit bike chain at Wal-Mart costs 5 dollars.  Estimated rate of bicycle theft in the Houston area is about 0.05%.  Unless you spent more than 10,000 dollars on your bike, you have spent an amount to protect your bike that exceeds the actual risk.  So my question to those here who seem to worship efficiency:  Do you own a bike, and have you bought a lock for that bike?  If so, you really have no concept of efficiency.  If you don't own the lock, where do you park your bike?  I could use a new bike, the chain keeps coming off of mine.

Eddie Willers was a good character, reminds me of Dyson in T2.  He was a victim of circumstance and didn't have the farsightedness to get the HELL OUT OF THERE.

The right and especially the Libertarians get this. these days the left are in favor of an ever expanding government. The large and more powerful the government the more corrupt businessmen. This is abundantly clear from Atlas

Not a bad article, but it's kind of creepy how you keep saying "We".

5 things this article didn't understand:

1. Objectivism2. The characters of Atlas Shrugged3. The Plot of Atlas Shrugged4. The point of Atlas Shrugged5. The corresponding lessons for our world

Wow so a regulator would have saved the train. That's what you take from it? The problem is that the people who own the train know best. But the government coerced owners. A regulator to regulate the government or just the owner. Which would have been more efficient? You have got to be kidding or never had worked in the real world.

I see someone failed their reading comprehension classes.

Madmac...nobody held a gun to their head to make them work there....they choose to stay.   So why do we need government to make those rules...the labor market would demand it.

Jef...and you base this belief in a strong central government on what?...How many extraordinary things can you say a strong central government has accomplished at the best price and most efficient manner?

She could have really used an editor.

But this still doesn't explain what Jimmy Barrett is doing in this film?!?!?!

That's great Jef! Keep re-reading it because there are obviously still "new and brilliant things" that you've missed so far.

As a novel, AS, creates a controlled environment to extract an argument the right has cooped into a thesis. Amazing and, absolutely no wonder these geniuses totally reject scientific findings. Unless those findings support their economic agenda.

Oh, Baubin, the reason the labor laws were drafted WAS  to "protect rights of workers..." that goes back to the early assembly lines where workers were worked for six or eight or more hours without so much as a restroom break. As for your full quote--  "It would be a government that did not choose sides in economics, and only regulated economics in order to protect rights of workers and businessmen." --I don't believe a government can serve both without regulating both, equally. As long as business can buy access but not face corporate sanction, labor will always be at a disadvantage.   

Rand did have one practical idea: Society's most productive people don't have to put up with progressive-abusive governments. She didn't phrase it this way, but she showed that society's alpha producers can "fire" governments which treat them badly and shop around to "hire" governments which offer to treat them better. 

For example, Tiger Woods fired California's state government, with its unreasonable tax demands, and hired Florida's state government, which doesn't demand a state income tax, simply by moving there. And nobody in California's government could stop him. 

Similarly, many of China's new millionaires reportedly want to fire China's government and hire governments in other countries which offer them better deals, by seeking citizenship in those countries and moving their fortunes beyond the reach of China's progressives.

I doubt that Tiger and China's millionaires got the idea from reading Atlas Shrugged, but rather figured this out on their own.

Rightwingers who love Rand fail to grasp the paradoxical absurdity of people who wish to lead government while simultaneously despising it; they think government can't do anything right, and if you put them in office, they'd be happy to prove it. Some say Rand's point is that government should simply get out of the way, but the government can't do that, and it won't do it without an iron-willed dictatorship at its helm. As long as we have a democratic republic, our government will always be an expression of our citizens' will. It is now, of course, though the Tea Party screamers can't conceive of that fact.

An unregulated free market is not a formula for exorcising corruption from society. Before the New Deal, we had what was as close to an unregulated market as you can imagine, and our economy was a ceaseless boom-and-bust cycle, with at least as many years of recession or depression as prosperity. When your country is mostly rural, as ours was then, it's not as big a deal; people who make everything they use and wear and grow everything they eat aren't going to feel the pinch of a tanking market. As my grandmother used to say, the Depression didn't mean anything to her because they were farmers and were poor already. But we don't live that way anymore, and market bubbles and speculation wreak havoc on lives in ways that they didn't in our agrarian past.

Which is why, politically-speaking, we will never find the Randian/libertarian dream as tolerable as we like to believe. The government plays a vital role in the economy, starting with the fundamental necessity of rule of law. Only government can provide that.