---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Atlas Shrugged Date: Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Subject: New comment on "The Ridiculous Rise of Ayn Rand"
To: Bruce Majors <
majors.bruce@gmail.com>
LinkedIn Groups |
| I just posted two comments there:
1)
"Rand's "thought," such as it is, boils down to two propositions. One is
that selfishness is the highest of moral virtues. The other is that the
masses, above all resentful of success, are parasites living off the
hard work of capitalists far superior to them in every way."
Ayn Rand used "selfishness" as a synonym for rational self-interest in her works. This is unusual in its use, but taking her use of the word out-of-context is not a substantial argument.
Rand did not think that most people were parasites. She actually thought that most people in a substantially free society were producers as they must be. She did think that there were a substantial minority of people who used the force of government to grant their special interests favors at the cost of most Americans. These people she regarded as parasites. When most of the people are not producers any more, society quickly begins to collapse, as depicted in Atlas Shrugged. Unfortunately, when government becomes too big to be protective of individual rights, it will necessarily become the captive tool of parasitical special interests. Government shenanigans become too complex for most of the people to follow and understand, so the special interests take over, as they largely have now.
2)
"Selfishness, by contrast, is not psychologically interesting; Rand's
understanding of human behavior has no room for the complex, the
unexpected, or the paradoxical."
Rand was a very strong proponent of individuality. Individuals are complex and highly differentiated. As such the needs of individuals must forever confound the ability of central planners to even know what individuals need and when they need it. Our individual values are unknown to them and even if they knew them, there would be no way rule of law could deliver our values to us. It is in the robust and rich private sector that each of us can pursue our self-chosen values in voluntary cooperation with others and hope to achieve our personal happiness. It is only in the private sector that the values of each of us do not have to come into conflict. In the private sector, live and let live is the rule. In the government sector, the rule is the use of force to get what some special interest wants from others, at least once the limited functions of government to protect individual rights are satisfied. Constitution mandated such an individual rights protecting limited government, prior to more than a 100 years of unbelievably expansive and convoluted re-interpretations by government to expand its powers virtually without limit.
Posted by Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. |
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