From Bob the Angry Flower In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
LOL Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
I am less inclined to blame Ayn Rand than her audience. Her work dropped like a seed into fertile soil. Why that is the case is a profoundly interesting question in social psychology--one which I, unfortunately, am not well equipped to answer. We need a successor to Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, (Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, respectively.) As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
...there are uncanny similarities between the plot-line of the book and the events of our day" said Yaron Brook, Executive Director at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
I daresay.
Except that the source of our problem is that the real looters have convinced themselves, and the entire financial press, that they are all Hank Reardens . Whereas, in fact, they are much more like Cuffy Meigs.
It's difficult to find a really a good example, because Ms. Rand's villains are badly drawn, unconvincing, childish cartoons, even more so than are her heroes, if that were possible.
From the Economist:
Whenever governments intervene in the market, in short, readers rush to buy Rand's book. Why? The reason is explained by the name of a recently formed group on Facebook, the world's biggest social-networking site: "Read the news today? It's like `Atlas Shrugged' is happening in real life". The group, and an expanding chorus of fretful bloggers, reckon that life is imitating art. Some were reminded of Rand's gifted physicist, Robert Stadler, cravenly disavowing his faith in reason for political favour, when Alan Greenspan, an acolyte of Rand's, testified before a congressional committee last October that he had found a "flaw in the model" of securitisation. And with pirates hijacking cargo ships, politicians castigating corporate chieftains, riots in Europe and slowing international trade--all of which are depicted in the book--this melancholy meme has plenty of fodder.
Some were reminded of Rand's gifted physicist, Robert Stadler, cravenly disavowing his faith in reason for political favour, when Alan Greenspan, an acolyte of Rand's, testified before a congressional committee last October that he had found a "flaw in the model" of securitisation. And with pirates hijacking cargo ships, politicians castigating corporate chieftains, riots in Europe and slowing international trade--all of which are depicted in the book--this melancholy meme has plenty of fodder.
melancholy meme... barf. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
His thesis is that no one who reads them with a mature mind can find them aught but drivel. The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
