The Present AJE
Little accounting pun for you in the title, you nerds. IOZ offers a version of that lost economic history of the United States I’ve been asking for. Warning: Contains swears. Because, how could it not?
Also, in another post, the funny:
Trying to construct a coherent personal economic ideology out of a Rand novel is as realistic, likely, and sane as trying to set up a street gang using The Outsiders as your manual.
and re “Going Galtâ€:
In general I think it safe to say that people who display no outward indications of appreciating the distinction between business income, profit, salary, and taxable income are not, whatever their claims to the contrary, occupying the lofty brackets that Obama proposes we liquidate or nationalize or blast into space or whatever as we make the final transformation into the People's Republic.
But he should have said “distinctions among,†so, WOLVERINES!
Comment by Thoreau —
March 8, 2009 @ 1:41 am
That IOZ post is getting a lot of attention on blogs.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 8, 2009 @ 1:46 am
And IOZ also has an excellent point about the relationship between corporation and state when he notes that:
Yep.
Comment by kid bitzer —
March 8, 2009 @ 7:21 am
i’m okay with “between” in these contexts, because the intention is to point to a bunch of pair-wise distinctions. i.e., “these schmucks couldn’t tell the difference between a,b,c & d” means:
they couldn’t tell the difference between
{a&b}
{a&c}
{a&d}
{b&c}
{b&d}
{c&d}
but maybe i’m just too permissive. my students are always telling me that. “you’re too permissive in your usage, professor,” they say to me, “we expect you to maintain higher standards of linguistic purity!”
i try to tell them that english is not a latinate language, that the augustan prose of johnson and addison is not the only model they should follow, but they persist in their punctilious orotundity.
kids these days–what are you going to do with them?
Comment by Rev. Run —
March 8, 2009 @ 9:05 am
Henley, quoting IOZ:
But there is dissent. John Allison is the Chairman of the Board and former CEO of BB&T. BB&T has $152 billion in assets.
Wouldn’t you know it, John Allison is a Randian.
It turns out that there is a whole slew of successful businessmen who idolize Ayn Rand.
Look, you can say that Ayn Rand is a terrible novelist–and I would agree. You can say that she is a shoddy philosopher–and I would agree. You can say that the depictions of business in her books are laughably unrealistic–and I would agree.
The one thing you can’t say is that her ideology, as a personal ethic, doesn’t work for some people. Many successful people are adherents. Perhaps it’s self-serving but at least it’s not self-defeating.
Comment by Hesiod —
March 8, 2009 @ 10:14 am
Did Galt’s utopia have roads, farms, houses, plumbing and electricity?if so where did that stuff come from?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 8, 2009 @ 10:46 am
What a magnificent metaphor for the American economy.
Whatever shall we do if Jim Cramer stops telling us which Wall Street investment houses we should invest our money with?
Comment by BruceR —
March 8, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
Don’t you have a Watchmen review to write?
Seriously, your fans have been looking forward to reading your take more than seeing the movie. Which I can’t do anyway right now due to locational challenges, so come on, throw us a frikkin bone here…
Comment by Kolohe —
March 8, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
sane as trying to set up a street gang using The Outsiders as your manual.
I would have used ‘The Warriors’ as the punch line, but that’s just personal taste, I suppose.
Comment by Kolohe —
March 8, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
sane as trying to set up a street gang using The Outsiders as your manual.
I would have used ‘The Warriors’ as the punch line, but that’s just personal taste, I suppose.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
March 8, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
How and why is that an “excellent point”? State clearly what the point is.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 8, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
I don’t want to put words in either my coblogger’s mouth or IOZ’s. MY point is that it’s one more area where Rand was spectacularly ignorant of history, with serious consequences for her thinking.
Comment by kid bitzer —
March 8, 2009 @ 8:19 pm
that was my first reaction to the ioz quote–that rand really did not have a very deep understanding of the way the world works–certainly not of how people work, and not even economies. a blind guide.
but that reading would not explain thoreau’s reference to “the relationship between corporation and state”.
so my guess is that thoreau had a slightly different “excellent point” in mind:
rand is constantly exalting the wonders of unfettered free-market capitalism, private agents who are so much better than weasely government stooges.
but in fact, there have been very very few successful corporations that have not had help, at every step of the way, from massive government institutions, be they monetary, regulatory, property-protecting, what have you.
certainly the railroads were not such a private enterprise–spectacularly not.
but i shouldn’t be taken to be an authoritative thoreau-interpreter either. just taking a stab at it.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 8, 2009 @ 8:24 pm
You’re just saying what I said more specifically, I think. Which is not a bad thing, mind you.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 8, 2009 @ 8:29 pm
Basically, yeah, I was saying that the activities of big corporations are not easily disentangled from the state, and it takes a certain amount of blindness to persuade one’s self that to sing the praises of big business is to sing the praises of the free market.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
March 8, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
Atlas Shrugged isn’t an historical novel, so I’m not catching your point. As a matter of fact, IOZ’s quote says something about how government “gave” railroads massive land grants, which is historically ignorant in and of itself.
Regardless, I do not see A) why it is that Rand should be castigated for historical inaccuracy in a work of fiction and B) how it is the IOZ managed not to mention James J. Hill, after whom Rand modeled Nathaniel Taggart and who, in real life, built the Great Northern RailRoad without the kind of cushy loans given to the Central-Pacific and Union-Pacific in the Pacific Rail Acts.
If this is what all three of you are endorsing as either a thesis, theory or demonstrable “fact”, it’s a load of crap.
Comment by abb1 —
March 9, 2009 @ 4:14 am
To paraphrase an old Soviet joke: yes, the victory of Randism is possible in one separate country, but it’s better to live in a different one.
Comment by matthew hogan —
March 9, 2009 @ 10:19 am
“where Rand was spectacularly ignorant of history, with serious consequences for her thinking. ”
Her thinking? That itself is quite generous.
Comment by dhex —
March 9, 2009 @ 10:19 am
early christmas wish: maybe malkin will “go galt” by not writing anymore?
i figure that temporary political alliances are some kind of great dance, meant to show us the universal forms behind power. thus in the 90s we could fear the spectre of white armed christianist males who would militia-ize us all into going to church; in the early 2000s it was swarthy allah-heads and their explody ways; and now it’s the economic aids that is melting our t-cells of prosperity.
this too shall pass, as will the consternation that the answer to every single one of these disconnected metanarratives is more government, greater government, faster goverment, and more powerful government.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 9, 2009 @ 10:45 am
Hey, whoa, easy, folks. It’s just a work of fiction; it’s not meant to be a commentary on history and human affairs or anything.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 9, 2009 @ 11:14 am
My favorite Ayn Rand historical blunder is her example in The Fountainhead of “the man who one day invented the wheel.”
Jumping chocolate Jesus on a pogo stick, that’s stupid!
Comment by IOZ —
March 9, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
Hey, whoa, easy, folks. It’s just a work of fiction; it’s not meant to be a commentary on history and human affairs or anything.
Brother, if you’re not being sarcastic, you may wish to acquaint yourself with The Romantic Manifesto, along with the voluminous record of notes, journals public statements, essays, interviews, etc. in which Rand says that that’s precisely what it’s meant to be.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 9, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
Leave Ayn Rand ALOOOOOOOOOOOOONNE!!!!!!
Comment by dhex —
March 9, 2009 @ 1:07 pm
wait she wrote a book about art?
on purpose?
how bad is it?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 9, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
IOZ,
Sarcastic. Mocking the comment a few before mine, which made that point sincerely.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
March 9, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
So, if you write about an honest railroad, historical commentary dictates that you mention the other railroads that received government benefits.
Still doesn’t make any sense, especially since, historically speaking, the character who founded Taggart Transcontinental is modeled after a railroad magnate who didn’t, in fact, receive government benefits.
This must be the comeback when you realize you nor IOZ don’t know what you’re talking about.
Comment by IOZ —
March 9, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
In that case, joe, I transfer my disdainful comments!
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
March 9, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
So, just out of curiosity, since this quote is being venerated on these pages, what is incoherent about Ayn Rand’s so-called “economic ideology”? She has copious writing about minarchism/an-capism (depending on your interpretation)…I don’t see those as incoherent – you may have plenty to disagree with in those two ideologies, but that does not make them incoherent.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
March 9, 2009 @ 4:59 pm
So, if you write about an honest railroad, historical commentary dictates that you mention the other railroads that received government benefits.
What honest railroad? It’s a work of fiction! She didn’t “write about an honest railroad,” she invented out of her own mind a railroad, without any apparent knowledge of what a completely inappropriate example railroads are for illustrating the concept of a business built without government aid.
I know, I’ll write a novel about a mythical German leader who displays the profound virtue of tolerance for the developmentally challenged by building camps in which the they can lean to concentrate. Why are you all looking at me like that?
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
March 9, 2009 @ 7:26 pm
oh ooops, joe. swing and miss.
My point is that A) it was a fictional novel and B)even if you want to say that it must have some historical accuracy to it, then it already does.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
March 9, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
“it must have some historical accuracy to it”
As does LOTR. People used to try and kill each other with swords, for instance.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 10, 2009 @ 1:53 pm
The problem is not that she portrayed honest, self-made businessmen. Such people do exist, and some are even quite successful. (We’ll leave for another time a debate over just how common they are, but stipulate that the number is greater than zero, and that such people are probably more common in small enterprises than large ones.)
Rather, the problem is that she portrayed a society that breaks down when they leave. There’s no reason to believe that the perfectly upright, self-made leaders of LARGE enterprises are so numerous that all the rest of the economy is utterly dependent on them. If the most virtuous businessmen left, my guess is that most large enterprises would hum along as before, and perhaps even record an uptick in the quarterly earnings statement, due to a combination of less competition and fewer annoying guys who insist on some semblance of good conduct.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 10, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
BTW, the reason I’m a libertarian is not that I worship a mythic few great businessmen. Rather, I’m a libertarian because I see that the bad guys are abundant and in cohoots with the state. I have no illusion that they can be stamped out, but their power can at least wane a bit.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
March 10, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
100% correct – and whether this is ex post interpretation on my part or Rand’s intent, I find the most coherent way to read AS is that the attractive, superbusinessmen are icons for the entire productive (middle) class. That falls in line with this quote:
Comment by abb1 —
March 10, 2009 @ 6:06 pm
The problem is not that she portrayed honest, self-made businessmen. Such people do exist, and some are even quite successful.
I don’t think so; it defies common sense. All other things equal, a dishonest (and/or dynastic) businessman has a huge advantage over the “honest, self-made” businessman, and he will prevail.
If the nice-guy businessman does manage to succeed, it’s just a fluke; one of those exceptions that confirm the rule.
Comment by abb1 —
March 10, 2009 @ 6:17 pm
I find the most coherent way to read AS is that the attractive, superbusinessmen are icons for the entire productive (middle) class.
Yes, and that’s the American tragedy in a nutshell. Idolizing sleazeballs who despise them.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
March 10, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
“I find the most coherent way to read AS is that the attractive, superbusinessmen are icons for the entire productive (middle) class.”
The book doesn’t deserve a coherent reading. I read it a long time ago and also some of her essays on literary criticism. Too bad she didn’t practice as a novelist what she claimed to admire. She idolized Victor Hugo, and iirc, singled out “93″ as a great book. She loved the way his characters were superhuman (she would say living up to humanity’s real potential or something like that) and she loved the philosophical debates. So far that sounds like Atlas Shrugged.
What she didn’t seem to notice, though, was that Hugo was fair to both sides. He’s clearly on the side of the revolutionaries in “93″, but their chief antagonist in that book is every bit as heroic and superhuman and sincerely devoted to his own ideals as any of the characters on the revolutionary side. That generosity of spirit is totally alien to Rand, and it’s what makes “Atlas Shrugged” such a shrill, antihuman piece of propagandistic garbage. Victor Hugo in a libertarian mood would have disdained to create a character like Wesley Mouch. Rand couldn’t see her political opponents as human beings.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 10, 2009 @ 11:31 pm
Or Arabs. Or American tribal peoples. No doubt there are others. She was also misunderstood animals.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
March 11, 2009 @ 2:57 pm
De gustibus on whether it’s good literature, but it is coherent, so your criticisms from a literary POV have nothing to do with the coherency of the text.
D’oh! Fail. Did you read what I wrote about the characters being icons, or were you too amped on Rand-hate to pay attention?
Comment by abb1 —
March 11, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
There is no Rand-hate in me. Why would anyone hate her?
No, I haven’t read what you wrote about the characters being icons. Post a link.