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Tonight’s Word: Rand Illusion. The Colbert Report features objectivism. We offer a defense.
Stephen Colbert took a shot at Any Rand last night. Evidently, sales of her magnus opus Atlas Shrugged are up quite a bit due to the recession and government involvement in the markets i.e. nationalizing Wall Street and bailing out irresponsible mortgage owners. As you may know, Max Gladwell is inspired by John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged, and we subscribe to Rand’s objectivist philosophy. However, we do approach Rand from a unique perspective.
Rand advocates for self interest. It’s a key principle in the objectivist philosphy. Another way to put this is that we ought to behave selfishly. It’s the belief that we’re all better off if everyone acts purely in their own self interest, and we believe this to be the case. However, many Rand supporters take this as a license to act immorally i.e. like an asshole. It’s one thing to be selfish, quite another to be a selfish prick. There is a huge difference. What these people fail to appreciate about the heroes of Atlas Shrugged is that they had incredible integrity, a quality that is sorely lacking among today’s corporate and political elite.
Rand’s heroic ideal was defined by a strict value system. Galt, Reardon, Taggart, and their peers had respect for one another, for their competitors, and for those who worked for them. And this wasn’t from a place of altruism; it was because respecting others and being a moral human being was absolutely in their self interest. They took responsibility for their actions and accepted the consequences because that’s how a reputation is built and because having a solid reputation is also in their self interest. Above all, though, they valued the qualities of innovation, intelligence, self-reliance, and one’s ability to produce i.e. to create value.
To compare those responsible for this financial crisis (Wall Street bankers) to the heroes of Atlas Shrugged is to do Rand a great disservice. It’s not an accurate comparison. Is it a coincidence that there were no bankers among the titans of Atlas Shrugged? No, because bankers don’t produce anything. A big part of our trouble is that we let our financial services industry grow to about five times the size that it should be, all because there was easy money to be made in what amounted to a massive, international Ponzi scheme that was the global financial markets. Make no mistake. Madoff and Stanford were the tip of the iceberg. All of Wall Street and it various affiliates were in on it. They’re all culpable. And in Rand’s world, they’d be allowed to fail so that more responsible and innovative entrepreneurs could take their place.
If we’re to make comparisons, let’s not think about all of the companies and CEOs getting government bailouts. Instead, we should be measuring the heroes of Atlas Shrugged against those who don’t need bailouts, because none of Rand’s characters would have found themselves in a position to ever need one. Does Steve Jobs need a bailout? Does Sergy Brin need a bailout? Does Peter Chernin need a bailout? No. Today’s smart leaders whose companies actually innovate and produce value are doing OK.
So the suggestion that we should “Go John Galt” is just absurd. This blog suggests that all the smart folk should go on strike, as they did in Atlas Shrugged. It’s pure politics and has nothing to do with actual business realities or the principles for which Rand stood. In Atlas Shrugged, the government seized control of functioning, profitable businesses like Reardon Steele. It would be like Obama nationalizing Google or Exxon.
Granted, John Galt would not approve of bailing out destined-to-fail businesses like GM and AIG with taxpayer dollars or any dollars for the matter. These companies have earned the right to go bankrupt, and we should let them. But he would not be going on strike. On the contrary, Galt and his ilk would view this recession as a tremendous opportunity. He would work on innovations that would capitalize on these new economic realities. He would create efficiencies that saved time, energy, and money, because that’s what the market demands. In short, he would produce.
That’s the only thing that’s going to get us out of this mess. We need to produce. And we need to create value. That’s what Galt would do.
14 responses so far ↓
1 Mario Vellandi // Mar 12, 2009 at 1:15 am
Well said bud.
When I saw the clip earlier, it made me think how dumb those fools were for claiming their silly interpretation of Randian philosophy as the right one.
In essence, it is party neutral. The only thing that matters is the pursuit of one’s self interest. While I could continue on…we both know the path.
2 Colin // Mar 12, 2009 at 3:58 am
On the money. I would just defend bankers, as they are themselves producers, just of a less tangible product than a Galt, Reardon, or Jobs. You should remember one of the first strikers in Atlas Shrugged was the legendary banker Midas Mulligan. Though he may not have been a producer, he consistently lent money to producers, thereby allowing them to do what they did.
3 Michael // Mar 12, 2009 at 5:24 am
The contrast between the heroes of Rand’s novels and today’s captains of industry could not be greater.
Letting self interest guide the market only works when the major players act rationally with a view that looks further than next quarter’s profits. The big problem is that our whole culture of immediate gratification is opposed to the notion of the responsible long term benefit, instead going for the smash and grab business model.
Power corrupts and lots of power corrupts a lot.
When corporations grow to a size where they are not the extension of a single person’s will, but a faceless mob with no morals or values other than profit at any cost, corruption is inevitable. Sadly this is the norm rather than Rand’s noble captains of industry at the helm.
4 De Rien // Mar 12, 2009 at 6:11 am
There’s a fundamental problem with acting selfishly. The “integrity” that you claim is the basis for Rand’s heroism will not emerge in the behavior of selfish individuals. Any evolving system needs a overarching governor which directs the trajectory of the system. Today, anything goes, so people will do anything possible to amass more money.
My simple solution: a salary cap. The top tax rate is 100%. That’s right. 100%. Anything a person makes over, say, $100 million is taxed at 100%. No one can make more than $100 Million. People will no longer have the obsession of making more and more money. Other behavior will emerge. Perhaps that “integrity” you were talking about.
5 Max Gladwell // Mar 12, 2009 at 8:00 am
Colin: You are right. The narrow role of the banker as a financier is essential. We’ve let that get out of control with a thousand other types of financial services, which is what ultimately brought our economy down. Good ol’ Midas. I knew there was one. He just didn’t play a central role.
De Rein: Your point is a good one, but capping income is not the answer. We simply need a set of laws to govern and insure integrity. People generally won’t act morally without a sufficient carrot-and-stick system of rewards and punishments. It’s not so much regulations as basic laws.
What we’ve had over the past decade is not a free market. Anything but. The destruction of our economy is not the result of the free market run wild. The market was manipulated by big business, lobbyists, and big government in favor of big business. That’s not free. Huge government subsidies and tax breaks for select industries (energy, agriculture, etc.) is not free. We need to return to a free market, which is something we’ve never really had.
6 Max Gladwell // Mar 12, 2009 at 10:38 am
This comment from the HuffPo article says it best:
My paraphrase of Mark Twain’s definition of the term: “A book everyone talks about, but nobody actually reads”. In the case of compulsive capitalists: “But they still let what they think it says rule their thinking and behavior”.
Those who would hijack Rand to justify their immoral behavior and political agenda talk about Atlas Shrugged, but they haven’t actually read it. They don’t know what it means to be self-reliant and to value productivity and creativity.
These people are all too eager to gain from corporate welfare and for the advantages afforded by lobbyists like Abramoff and the corrupt politicians who they buy. Rand despised corrupt politicians and made no distinction about which way that corruption leaned, whether to the left or right.
7 Richard // Mar 12, 2009 at 11:02 am
I read everywhere how Galt was “One of the richest men in the country” in the novel. Did we read a different book? Galt was the son of a gas station attendant who invented a motor that could have made him rich, but he never takes it to market. Galt is never the richest man in the novel- he’s relatively poor- but he is the SMARTEST man in the novel, and would be richer than the rest in a free market that respected the mind. Too many commentators talk as if Atlas is about a strike of the RICH. It’s not. It’s not even a strike of the PRODUCTIVE. It’s a strike of the MIND. It’s about the mind on strike- the thinkers, the doers, the creators- whether they are rich (like the banker Midas Mulligan) or poor (like the young brakeman and others). Many of the villains in the story are richer than all the heroes put together (James Taggart tosses $100 bills to bums) but they’re rich through government pull.
As the character Francisco D’Anconia says at the end of his famous Money Speech:
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing -
When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -
When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you -
When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice -
You may know that your society is doomed”
Look around us. We are.
8 Max Gladwell // Mar 12, 2009 at 11:13 am
Richard: Thank you. Thank you for making Francisco’s quote a permanent part of Max Gladwell. It was long overdue.
We’re optimists, though. We have faith in the Constitution and American Democracy. We believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s no coincidence that our forefathers added the elusive concept of “happiness” to the Declaration of Independence and that happiness is a key theme for Rand.
Our favorite quote from Atlas Shrugged is in Galt’s speech. “Life is the reward of virtue, and happiness is the goal and reward of life.”
The vision set forth by our founding fathers has surely been corrupted. The Left and Right have an equal share in this. But it’s not beyond repair. We now have the tools to take back our government. It won’t be easy and the path may not be direct. But we’re confident that we’ll get there.
9 Marc Hummel // Mar 13, 2009 at 10:57 am
Great post.
Any idea if the graph he showed correlating Obama’s economic announcements to sales of “Shrugged” is real? I’d be surprised if someone a) had access to that data and b) took the time to put it together, but maybe that’s what Colbert interns are for.
10 Max Gladwell // Mar 13, 2009 at 11:00 am
Marc: That chart is from an Economist article: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13185404. It coincides with the news certainly pre-dates the Obama admin.
11 Josh Bee // Mar 29, 2009 at 2:43 pm
In Atlas Shrugged, we see that Midas Mulligan is a banker. He leaves American culture because society pressures him to lend money to those too poor to pay it back, and he considers this unproductive and amoral.
In reality, amoral bankers (unlike Mulligan) are the ones who loaned money based on either altruism or immoral greed… in either case, it has deep-seated philosophical and practical consequences.
To the author: Perhaps reading the book would save you the embarrassment of posing such a sarcastic rhetorical question about Bankers in Rand’s novel.
In this free-market of thought, you’ll have paid for your mistake by suffering this rebuke, and by having lost some of my credulity- an equitable end.
12 Max Gladwell // Mar 29, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Josh: You’ll notice that we chose our words carefully. We say “there were no bankers among the titans of Atlas Shrugged,” and that is both true and accurate. Mulligan played a bit part. The titans were Galt, Dagny Taggart, Reardon, and d’Anconia. There were second-tier heroes as well, but none of them were bankers.
Rand would never have cast a banker as a titan, nor could they have played a central role, because while certain types of bankers provide value, they are not producers. They produce nothing. They don’t innovate. They simply play a role in helping the producers.
In the real world, bankers thought they could innovate. And they innovated our way into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Thanks for your comment.
13 Patrick Dominguez // Apr 6, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I would disagree that “self interest” is the key to success of “titans of industry” and other business people who have successful careers.
I would make the case that those who are successful in business are consistently focused on creating value for *others*. And of course benefit for oneself can accrue as one who provides value.
On the many occasions I’ve heard CEOs and business leaders talk (both in public and internally to staff), their talks are not about self-interest, it’s about how their vision for creating more value and what their plans are for doing that.
It’s when at the individual level, one becomes more concerned about self-interest, esp. short-term gain, that’s when the trouble happens.
Your post suggests that morality arises from a place of self-interest. I think that’s a particularly limiting point of view. There’s an increasing consciousness (which I believe transcends mere enlightened self-interest and motivates millions of people on this planet) that our fates are interconnected and that our talents and gifts are best utilized for the good of many, not just oneself, and that this is a truer path to fulfillment in life.
If you look at the phenomenon of “affluenza” in the US, that’s a sure indicator that a life dedicated to economic self-interest is not ultimately not what it’s cracked up to be.
14 John G. // Apr 14, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Three comments
1) Nice catch with Midas Mulligna Colin
2) Isn’t Hank’s last name Rearden? Did I read a different version or something?
3) Nice article
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