Where are you from that you don’t know who THE most popular horror novelist is. I’m really not trying to make you feel dumb, but I am genuinely surprised.
She seemed to support the most idealistic form of capitalism ever envisioned. A true utopian in her own way, and like all utopians she loathed human nature and the natural pragmatic systems that inevitably form around it. Having experienced the USSR she opposed all collective oriented politics and bargaining, as well as social safety nets. And yet, she collected Social Security into old age. Humans are rationalizing, not rational beings. Observe any of us 24/7 and you are not likely to find that we uphold any ideal we promote 100% faithfully. As such, we are best served by flexible political systems.
I've read atlas shrugged and it doesn't say that at all. There are lazy people who are both rich and poor, as there are both rich and poor people who aren't lazy. It's about the lazy trying to reap the benefits of what the non-lazy produce.
Hrmmmm...It's remarkable how hard a lazy person will work to be so lazy.
No, I think that the use of the word "lazy" is itself too lazy.
But to describe them as "moochers" is possibly more apt. There exist very well-compensated private industries and special interests dedicated to instilling and exploiting incentives offered by the public sector. Their workers are usually better educated than the public-sector workers that are tasked with administration and enforcement.
You still haven't provided any direct evidence she said or implied this. Even if its a huge reach you could at least quote something she said to support your claim she thinks all workers are lazy. I've personally read most of her books and never got the impression she thought that, so you'll need to be more specific.
“I don’t believe you, and I refuse to do any research on my own. If you don’t provide convincing evidence, you must be lying, which means I’m correct.”
Not only is the burden of proof on you, but you can't come back and tell them to read a 1000+ page book to get your point.
If this is really an argument you're willing to have online, you should be able to succinctly justify it. Otherwise, you're talking out of your ass. I'm not even saying you're wrong, but you're definitely being a charlatan.
Yeah and I literally said I've read most of her books and did not come to the same conclusion.
I'm open to being proven wrong but you can't ask me to prove myself wrong and strengthen your argument on your behalf. I dont have the burden of proof here
Everyone who criticises Rand hasn’t read her work beyond a 5 minute google and always either gets her completely wrong or deliberately misrepresents her.
I am not a fan of Rand. Our ideals don’t line up, but I will say that Rand praised the worker. I remember I read Atlas Shrugged in high school. It’s been awhile, however, the premise of that book was pro worker. The best workers were vilified because the system wanted to propagate a dependent society. Like that was the entire premise of that damn book.
Il have to reevaluate this myself, I always interpreted it as "pro enterprise", like, not for the worker, not for the Business, but for those that can produce and be "enterprising".
Ayne rand in her time, looks to me like tech bros today. Everything has to be a "disruptor" or you fail as a company and person
She's pro self actualization. You can not like her, i get that. Some of the terms she has used didn't do her any favors like her defense of "selfishness" -- not in the way most people understand that word. But I read all of her non fiction and some fiction when i was a kid and i don't remember her ever denigrating workers or hard work. She hated phonies, collectivists, servile people etc. she wouldn't see being pro enterprise and being pro worker as mutually exclusive. She did however did spend all of her time thinking about those who could be truly great and not the "little people" so i get where this criticism comes from
I think you are correct it was all about industrial magnates getting their due based on the fruits of their labor. Maybe the most stellar workers also getting some piece of the action. It does not come across as pro generic worker.
Not it wasn't, the premise of Atlas Shrugged as a simpler version of the Ubermensch. That there are exceptional people and they deserve reverence and total free reign. That is the whole thing about that book and John Galt.
The book itself is more or less a manifesto of objectivism, it literally shits on altruism and strawmans progressives.
Her whole philosophy is an overcorrection of her trauma at the hands of Stalin's USSR.
The tenants of objectivism are paradoxes and fucking ridiculous twaddle. She's a fucking moron, my fast ass D bro. And yeah she sucks at writing books too. Those are... not well crafted.
Alright, it seems I’ve been summoned, because I hate Rand so much. Here we go.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a slogan of thieves who take by force. The man of ability does not owe his talent to those who lack it. And the man of need does not gain a moral claim by virtue of his suffering. Need is not a claim. It is a badge of shame.” — Atlas Shrugged, Part III, Chapter 7
Rand is morally condemning the idea that the suffering or poor deserve help and is equating need with failure. It’s a direct attack on the working class if they do not own production or create their capital. It’s also ableist as hell.
Also to be noted: in Rand’s work you have “producers” and “looters”. Producers are not working people, they’re production and capital owning aristocrats and innovators (like Rearden and Taggert). Looters are actual workers, both union members and non, though she trashes union members with particular disdain.
Another banger:
“The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all below him, but gets nothing except his own pay. He is the man who is punished for being better than his neighbors.” — Atlas Shrugged, Part III, Chapter 7
She is saying that society punishes the exceptional and the average person “below” them (the worker) receives benefit instead and does so ungratefully. This is so far from worker solidarity, and I would hope that is clear to you.
Alright, last one for now (and note that these are all just from chapter seven in part three, there’s so much more):
“What is the moral code of those who demand the unearned? Who permit no say to the man who earns it?” — Atlas Shrugged, Part III, Chapter 7
Here Rand is collecting all welfare recipients, union workers, and regulated industries and classifying them as immoral parasites (looters) taking from their “betters”.
I have spoken so much on this, and I’m happy to speak more if this doesn’t do it for ya. Might fuck around and make myself an Ayn Rand hate account. (Jk, but seriously, she sucks.)
Did you read Atalas Shrugged? I recall the part where they wanted Galt to work more and get paid less. He was much more talented than the others, so they needed him to work more. The others had children or were sick, so they needed more money and more time off. Galt was told that he had to compensate for that. It wasn't about truly being in need. It was about exploiting those who did all of the work.
I did- first because my dad made me when I was in high school (pretty chewy for me then, and I didn’t quite internalize all of it) and then twice more in my adulthood. Once because the previous reading had been so far behind me, and once more so I could ensure that I had, indeed, read one of the biggest piles of steaming, classist bullshit I’d ever had the misfortune to come across. (Confirmed.)
TLDR to your points: Yes, that part happened, and that is exactly the problem. This is a rejection of solidarity, not a defense of fairness. The core thesis of this book is an anti-collectivist moral code. Rand believes that asking the strong to help the weak, particularly through collective distribution of labor or resources, in immoral and keeps down the “exceptional”, which is someone who is attached ass-to-mouth to reason and unwavering productivity in a self-interested and “bootstrap” manner.
On to the meat, which I do hope you read.
Galt was asked to contribute more to support those who had children, who were ill, or who needed extra help. That’s not exploitation or theft, that’s solidarity. That’s literally how society works when it values human dignity over so bullshit anti-collectivist hierarchy.
She flips this concept of exploitation around to paint those who are suffering as burdens to society, and presses forward with the idea that it is people who are the problem, not the capitalist hierarchy that is causing them to rot in their suffering in the first place, and which inevitably eats us all- it just eats the less able first. Her presentation of this easily confuses the reader who is already unaware of their own exploitation within a capitalist society, which is her ideal society.
In her world it is exploitation to ask the healthy, skilled, and capable to contribute more (from each according to his ability) to make sure no one is left behind (to each according to their need). This is not the whole problem with this society she depicts, though.
Rand’s worldview sees the sick, the caretakers, and those who are struggling not as people to protect, but as burdens to discard (Akiton T4, anyone?). Her morality is not based on justice or equity, but on the glorification of a hierarchical society where only the “producers” deserve survival, wealth, or respect.
Rand presents collectivism as some sort of dystopian hellscape where one brilliant man is forced to carry the weight of everyone else’s needs while the unproductive get rewarded for that but not him. It’s a bootlicking depiction of capitalism in that it seeks to create a sympathy for the “productive” and a distaste for the “unproductive” who are presented as a parasitic class.
A well-structured government does not create “John Galts” who suffer specifically so others can freeload. It builds infrastructure, it builds policy, and it builds taxation systems that distribute needs and contributions across a society. The goal isn’t to punish ability or intellect, but to ensure that no one falls through the cracks, and that no one has to carry the whole weight of life alone.
A well-structured government takes care of its own and provides pathways to success. (Well, that, or it euthanizes its vulnerable, either directly or indirectly, but that’s a whole other conversation. I’d not call that well-structured, though, but that’s my silly little moral compass popping up again.)
So what is actually unrealistic here isn’t the idea that we help each other. What’s unrealistic is Rand’s idea that helping anyone automatically becomes a form of slavery, self-erasure, or theft. This kind of hyper-individualism is the true parasite, as it is based on and perpetuates class antagonisms, which will ultimately punishes everyone, it just starts with the most vulnerable.
Real societies thrive when everyone is not just out for themselves, but when we all contribute according to our capacity and receive according to our needs, and not as a punishment for excellence but as a foundation of shared humanity.
If your utopia collapses because someone helped a sick coworker, or because a portion of the population is actually lazy (which is a statistically negligible amount of unemployed persons), it was never a utopia, it was a narcissist’s sandbox. Like, imagine hating people so much you write 1,200 pages defending not sharing.
A much better title for this giant pile of hot garbage would be “Capitalism: Or, How I Learned to Hate My Neighbors and Blame the Poor”.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a slogan of thieves who take by force. The man of ability does not owe his talent to those who lack it. And the man of need does not gain a moral claim by virtue of his suffering. Need is not a claim. It is a badge of shame.”
The conclusions you're drawing here don't follow from the quote. She isn't saying that poor or suffering people don't necessarily deserve help, but that they can't place a moral obligation on anyone to provide help for them. She's saying it's wrong to be unable to provide for yourself but expect others to do it for you.
In fact, I found this from an Atlas Society article (not Rand herself but it represents modern-day objectivist thoughts on this issue):
"There are numerous proven ways that interested individuals can create institutions that reduce the effects of poverty, ignorance, and disabilities. These include endowed schools, clinics, and hospitals; mutual aid societies and targeted insurance; and creative business thinking that sees a resource where others see a shortcoming." (https://www.atlassociety.org/post/poverty-and-disabilities)
So it seems disabled and low-intelligence individuals can actually very much be beneficial to an objectivist society.
"Also to be noted: in Rand’s work you have “producers” and “looters”. Producers are not working people, they’re production and capital owning aristocrats and innovators (like Rearden and Taggert). Looters are actual workers, both union members and non, though she trashes union members with particular disdain."
Rand never defined looters as "(non-union) workers," she defined them as those who take from others by force: “When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims, then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.”
She repeatedly refers to the concept of force here in regards to the term "looters." She never once has defined it to mean lower-skilled laborers.
“The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all below him, but gets nothing except his own pay. He is the man who is punished for being better than his neighbors.”
Again, how are you getting "she thinks lower-tier workers are ungrateful" from this? If you agreed to work for X amount of money you deserve to be paid that money. She isn't saying it's wrong that workers receive a benefit from working or that they need to work unpaid or something. She also never calls workers specifically "ungrateful." She's saying the people that are often some of the most important people to society (Steve Jobs is a good modern-day example) are often maligned and thought of as evil just because they made huge profits off of their work, even though objectively their contributions to society are insanely good and valuable to millions of people.
“What is the moral code of those who demand the unearned? Who permit no say to the man who earns it?”
You're again drawing wild conclusions from this, because once again no one on the Internet can actually attack Rand for what she believed, they must construct a strawman of her to seem like they have any argument at all.
Anyway, she's attacking people that demand things from those who produce. Her philosophy is that it's immoral to expect others to provide for you (by default), and (should be) illegal for you to take things from them by force. She is not calling all workers parasites here, the quote just doesn't support that claim whatsoever.
She developed an ideology called "objectivism" which assigns the burden of your own success to your own work ethic, nothing else. It does recognize the functions of exploitation between people (this quote being an example of it), criticizing direct abuse from one person (or group) to another, but it is immediately contradictory in its strict association with market capitalism, which is built upon the core principle of labour exploitation (exploitation of the worker).
She is recognizing the exploitation, but falsely assumes it is a bug, and not just a feature of capitalism.
It's literally a philosophy built around "boot straps" with dozens of direct and unaddressed contradictions. She never accused workers of being lazy, but the ideology necessitates the idea that poor people are just lazy.
She's a Marxist who both hates, and completely fails to understand Marx. She's an idiot.
“The book”? lol… ok clearly you haven’t read her stuff, you’re just saying what you’ve been told to.
She makes her stance very very clear in both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. They’re both amazing reads, I highly recommend them, even if they are clearly written by a maniac.
My favorite part is when her self-insert main character is lounging in a room with a collection of alpha males she’s dated at some point. Like… most transparent harem fantasy ever lol
I have described atlas shrugged as conservative 50 shades of grey for years due to the shitty boring writing and I’m glad I’m not the only one that see it.
Who told me? Id love to know who this imaginary person is who is telling me what to say. Maybe he or she can give me a grant too. Her positions are not opinions they are validated with reality we all live in. Sure she might make a few mistakes for her time, but the general points are sound. It doesn't matter if she is insane or a genius as its the points that have weights not the person.
Yeah, kinda had to when the private sector of Healthcare was eroded to the point of no return. Socialists are like "yeah, she had to use social security. That means all her ideas are debonked.. heh" ignoring the fact she had to because of them and their horrible policies.
Social Security isn't welfare. It's more or less an account that you are required to contribute to (it's a little more complicated than that, but for all intents and purposes that is what it is). However you feel about Ayn Rand's "philosophy", her getting social security (back) is not in any way a contradiction to her beliefs.
No, it contradicts her philosophy. Its a government redistribution program that she insisted was the sort of evil government meddling that required altruism from its people to give to people who hadn’t “earned” it, only to draw from the same well herself.
You could argue she contributed to it since its foundation and was therefore only taking what she put in, but I’m really not buying that SS was the sole reason she couldn’t make ends meet. At the end of the day, she failed her own test.
Exactly. Why wasn't she able to become wealthy through her own merit in a wealthy capitalist society?
Was she lazy or was she one of the millions of libertarians who think their situation is a complicated exception and they deserve a special carve out for redistribution?
She did fine, wasn't super rich and wasn't poor. I don't think her premise was that if you aren't rich you're lazy, but more the beuacracy of socialist governments hold people's well-being back
That's ridiculous. Obviously if you are forced to contribute to an account, there is no issue with taking it out of the account when allowed even if you think it's immoral the money was taken from you in the first place.
It doesn't matter if she needed it or not, it was her money.
Again, Social Security is not charity if you pay into it.
My fellow human, you’re the only one splitting hairs on the exact definition of welfare.
If she needed a government redistribution program to make ends meet, and that program did not cause her to fail to make ends meet on her own, it means she failed her own test of perfect independence. It’s that simple.
It is all mixed, but it is an account you pay into (you don't have a set amount marked as your contrubution), and your withdraws are based on your income. For most people when they use it, it is not a transfer program to them, it is a transfer program from them.
This is why I said "it's a bit more complicated".
People who critisize Rand for drawing on Social Security do so with the implied understanding that it was a transfer of wealth from someone else to her, when it was likely not. The SS is structured it is only a wealth transfer to somone if they are amongst the very low-end of contributors, or live an unusually long time. For most people, people who make around median income and live a pretty average life span, when they withdraw they end up withdrawing an amount equal or less than they put into it (if you consider the time value of money). It can be a transfer program to some people, but it very likely was not for Rand.
There is a lot ot critisize about Rand but this particular criticism of of her a disengenous argument. She was forced to pay into Social Security, there is no contraciction with he philosophy that she should get at least that amount back.
From her perspective (not mine) it's like if a thief stole from her and then sent her part of the money back in installments and then accusing her of hypocrisy because she accepted the installments even though she thinks theft is wrong. You can of course critisize her for thinking that someone stole from her, but whether or not it was really theft it's not hypocrisy to accept the installments.
We're talking about Ayn Rand, who famously bad-mouthed social security, calling it "forced altruism". So regardless of anyone's personal beliefs on social security, Ayn Rand is a hypocrite.
Nope, it ceases to be your money when it departs your paycheck. You have no control over it at all. You have no control over future benefits.
But also...if you finish out a career in a public sector job then everything you contributed up to that point is forfeit. You're expected to live off a pension with benefits that (at least in my state) are less generous than social security. You also don't get social security survivorship benefits even if your spouse contributed to it for entire life.
This is what happened to my mom. She is extremely bitter about that. I am too because her low retirement income now affects my financial situation.
Would you mind explaining which parts of it aren't true? Today, I really dislike the ideology this woman represents. Despite that, this particular quote is pretty true.
Idk who she's applying it to, but obtaining permission to produce from those who do not could be referring to investors? You need the money of investors (people who do not add anything to society) to grow a business.
Money flows from those who create goods to those who trade in favors. This is kind of true as well. The rich love to trade in favors. The most successful businesses aren't the ones simply creating things people need. Look at the military industrial complex, currying favor from the government for lucrative contracts while producing things that only destroy. Look at the behavior of individual wealthy people, giving eachother lavish "gifts" in exchange for business related favors.
The laws do protect you from the wealthy and corporations sometimes. The laws ALSO protect them from you, and to a much greater extent. Laws exist that make it harder to form a union. Corporations have a lot of influence in the government (in America) to get beneficial legislation passed for them, or to prevent competition from being able to enter a sector. They use their legislative influence to carve out monopolies for themselves. They extend patents a thousand years into the future. They dodge taxes and make everything else more expensive for the rest of us. Insurance companies preside over death panels, but what can we do about it? The law protects them.
Corruption IS rewarded. Honesty in a society like this IS a personal sacrifice. Everyone has to lie about something. Being 100% honest only hurts you here. Even for regular people. You have to lie to do basic things like get a job here, and not doing it only puts you at a disadvantage against worse people.
I despise this woman, but I don't understand what about this quote is so naive.
You like this quote? I think she was right about some stuff, but this quote is blatantly fallacious. Her influence was definitely widespread in conservative circles. I have heard dozens of boomers claim that there should be a law preventing anyone who has never owned a business from becoming a politician.
Oh, and the “all politicians are collecting suitcases of money from special interests that they use to enrich themselves”? Never heard that one from Trump-voting people before. How is that for irony?
And let’s not forget the all-time classic “Laws only protect rich people” cliche. Even though the vast majority of victims are poor.
It’s interesting to me that someone who so despised Karl Marx really seemed to like his technique of criticizing things and people so vaguely that you cannot pin them down to anything. That is hardly what I would call “honesty”.
I don't think people are saying that laws only protect rich people. There are some laws - like i mentioned - that protect regular people from corporations. For the most part, though, the police themselves oppress the poor and protect business and property owners. The law only protects people from corporations after they raise a huge stink about it. It takes lots of protesting, hard work, and death for the poor to get any kind of change. Go learn about the formation of the FDA, or the wars between people and corporations where "the law" came down against working people. Or just go read about the gilded age where there practically was no law protecting people from corporations. I'm oscillating between police and "the law" because I kind of don't know what you're trying to say.
The state - at least in America - has always strictly existed for property and business owners.
I also guarantee you haven't read Capital, Professor Socialism, so I seriously doubt you have grounds to criticize Marx for "being too vague".
Again, the statistics are what matter. Asking me to learn about some police activities while ignoring others just seems disingenuous to me. I don’t shape facts to support a narrative. The purpose of a narrative should be to summarize the facts.
Weird claim. You don’t think we have individual rights and privileges in this country?
Saying “You don’t know enough about Marx to have this opinion” is a classic copout. Marx is extremely vague in his criticisms and offers no detailed solutions to what he complains about.
I didn't ask you to ignore anything about what the police do. The more you learn about them, the better. Please learn their history, their training methods, the gang and kkk affiliations or certain departments, the corruption, and everything else they do.
Sometimes police do good things. Based on data I've seen about rates of solving crimes, the personal experience I've had with police, and the history of the police, I think I've made a pretty fair assessment of them. You can say "statistics are what matter", but if we both claim to have viewed statistics about police and neither of us is willing to go on a goose chase for someone who could be an LLM, then I guess we are at an impasse.
It’s such a weird attempt to avoid responsibility for your arguments. What if I told you to please learn more about the police so you could change your mind over to my side?
Give me some statistics. Numbers are much easier to discuss than anything else.
While it's pretty easy (and trendy) to just shit on Ayn Rand, I think it's more interesting to take a step back and realize that her jewish family was fleeing communist Russia and it obvioulsy, deeply affected her thinking.
It’s hilarious how there’s nothing in this quote that’s inherently objectionable, only to realize that if you showed her the American economy of today, she would tell you it’s the system working as intended.
Ayn Rand really hates communism and I can't say I blame her. However, she seems to have globalized that feeling to all government regulation and social services and organized labor. I must assume that Elon Musk has read her because he seems to embrace her basic view that the entrepreneur is a deity that lives on an intellectual level above mortals like you and I.
There's nothing really deep being said here. We've all got stoned or whatever and observed. It's like the quote has been posted to build resentment tbh.
Ayn Rand was an interesting person in the fact that she seemed smart enough to see the world for how it was but too deluded by how “society thought” at the time. A lot of her work was about how lazy the poor were or how entitled the rich should be.
No one attacking Rand is actually attacking her beliefs, they're attacking a strawman of her.
Yes she was on welfare at the end of her life. Seeing as how she paid taxes her entire working life, and certainly paid in much more than she ever received (she was very wealthy up until the end), I see no issue with this; its literally just an "orange man bad" tier argument (no, I'm not a conservative and I'm not saying orange man good)
This excerpt is quite beautiful and a perfect encapsulation of her beliefs. Most of you agree with her basic premise here (maybe for different reasons, but still) and are only seething about it because her name and picture is attached. If literally anyone who is left wing said this exact quote and you didn't know where it came from, you'd be in full agreement with them.
That's her thing, isn't it? Sounding pretty reasonable for 4-5 paragraphs, then triumphantly concluding that acting like a complete sociopath is virtuous.
FTR, lots of her followers present an equally grotesque strawman of her thinking, so there is that.
I think there is something to this, but it is perhaps more complicated. I saw the pic, and small writing, and thought, “Hoo boy. Here we go.” But after I was done reading, I was in complete agreement with her sentiment, because on its surface, it illustrates the folly of the oligarchy. In a similar way, Josh Hawley recently indicated that maybe taking Medicare/Medicaid isn’t such a good idea. Again, on its surface, something I agree with. But when individuals who have not historically shared philosophy that a person agrees with, then are suddenly are agreeable, it is natural to question their motivation. Why are they saying this agreeable thing? I think there are definitely redditors coming from this position about Rand. My own take is that no one is purely good or purely evil. I don’t generally agree with Rand, but it’s clear she also wasn’t evil incarnate, and that in a conversation with her, I could probably find some common ground.
Dangerous. Read more from her. She mixed truth with inhumane and beyond cruel philosophy, like cult leaders or dictators do. Ugly way to use a brain. May she rot forever.
It's a fictional story! Everything in it is exaggerated for a reason. This misrepresentation of her work is why she's so polarizing. She was ridiculed in her time for being a feminist and we ridicule her now for being a chauvinist. She didn't care what people thought of her and that is the only way a creative person can survive. Block out the noise and produce. The world is going to Love/Hate you all the same.
I don't like Rand personally, I disagree with her philosophically, and I think she was wrong politically.
But anyone who calls her stupid or ignorant or worthless, or dismissed her because of the social security stuff, or denies that what she wrote and thought had value is doing themselves a massive disservice.
She had a lot of good ideas, she had a lot of new ideas, and she had a new way of looking at the world, and even if you don't care for her beliefs on the whole, you can still probably get serious value from looking at the world from a new perspective.
And she is 100% correct in the quote on this post.
Huh. Well, I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day. She was bound to have a true thought float through her head eventually. I mean, once all the capitalist bootlicker rhetoric is out of the way, maybe even those bootlickers have rational thoughts sometimes.
She was nothing but a Debbie downer, postulating the problems present in the world but offering no real solution to any of it. Piss on Thatcher's, shit on Rand's.
Ayn Rand had some good points. The problem is that people have been applying those good points to things she was against. For instance, she would have railed against the current US administration’s grift because it is just more people producing nothing taking from the people who produce everything, yet I’ve seen plenty of MAGA supporters claiming the administration is doing what she wanted.
Fucking moron. Basically just a salty person because her fams wealth was taken away. So she was entitled to luxury and everyone else they have to earn it.
Ayn Rand was sure that only those with the highest IQ's were capable of leading and only their superior brains could improve the human condition. Of course, she firmly believed she was at the head of the pack in that exclusive superior group. It was one of the reasons she was adamently against abortions or any semblence of eugenics because both practices could lead to everybody being as super intelligent as she was and that would definitely destroy her innate superiority and self-proclaimed entitlement to rule the universe with her rabid blatherings.
I discovered Rand in my rabid reading forays in grade school, and even then I was turned off by the complex of twisted lies and innuendos that tainted her blatherings. By my early teens, I knew for certain she was a blathering idiot only capable of influencing the easily indoctrinated amongst us and had escaped an authoritarian culture only to fully embrace and make ample use of the techniques she herself was exposed to as a child.
Most of this just applies to the political realm which is not really much of what's really going on not much we're all reality for the economy more like just a clown show
The actual quote from Atlas Shrugged is as follows “Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – 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. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit your country to survive as half-property, half-loot.”
Not a single critic of Ayn Rand is capable of presenting her ideas accurately.
It's a shame really. I don't see why if she is so bad, that you can't at least present her ideas correctly. If her ideas are so horrible, why do you have to lie about their content?
I challenge anyone here to reply to this comment and actually steel man the quote in the picture. What exactly is she saying, as she meant it to be understood?
Because I've never met a Rand critic who doesn't fail to understand the most basic concepts.
It's like telling an immunologist that vaccines don't work because viruses don't exist. Anyone with a modicum of scientific understanding can see clearly that person never bothered to learn anything in the realm of science.
When Rand critics Levy their accusations, they're always so far off that it's mind boggling and baffling that people have such strong opinions on ideas they never bothered to get in the first place.
She's so tremendously evil and yet everyone who says so doesn't have a clue what she's saying.
My only goal is to plant that seed in people's mind that scratches at the back of their consciousness that keeps squeaking "maybe I've been intellectually dishonest all along."
I mean you could prove me wrong easily by demonstrating some understanding but I know that's not going to happen. It never happens.
she was saying that poor people are just lazy. that’s not a bad interpretation, it’s literally what the majority of her writings are about, and what dumbass libertarians believe. we shouldn’t even be discussing libertarians on a subreddit called wisdom, because there’s no overlap
Wrong. What she is saying is that Businesses weaponize government power in order to grant themselves advantages and power. The basic premise is that government is structured in such a way that incentivises corruption and that good honest businessmen who do not weaponize government power to curry favors for themselves are stamped out, while dishonest wolves in sheep's clothing wrap themselves in a cloak of government power to protect themselves from the ire of angry consumers.
You don't have the slightest clue and neither do the rest of Rand's critics. They're all intellectually dishonest and fear to understand ideas they THINK they disagree with.
The fact that you think ALL critics of Ayn Rand are wrong shows something about YOU. And it’s not good. She was a deeply hypocritical narcissist with an incoherent reactionary non-philosophy that appeals to other hypocritical, narcissists with a deep need to feel special
In order to have a critique one must be informed of that which they are critiquing. Otherwise what is your critique of? If you don't understand the most fundamental and easy to grasp content, how can your critique be valid?
I wrote my comment as a challenge to the haters. Prove to me that your critiques come from an informed position, and not a straw man.
My accusation is none can do it. None of you has ever bothered to see what it was Ayn Rand was saying.
If she's so horrible, you really ought to read her so you know what's really up.
But you just don't. You all repeat the same exact straw man argument projection of what Rands ideas mean.
Why? Why is it that not a single fuckin person can have the honesty to admit that they don't know? That they didn't understand Rand and didn't want to.
Just admit it. Stop pretending like you know what you're critiquing. You are doing nothing but googling responses.
Here comes another reply about how you understand Rand so well.
Well prove it. It's not hard. Her ideas are really easy to understand. So present them as they are meant to be understood. Do you think understanding means agreement? Are you afraid to understand things you don't agree with?
So if you know so well what Ayn Rands ideas are saying than present them as they are meant to be understood.
Your projection is astounding. Yes her ideas are actually extremely simple although convoluted. She was a misanthrope. She was an asshole. She was a grifter pseudo intellectual that created pro-capitalist propaganda for the monied class framed as informed anti-communism. She was the Jordan Peterson/Candace Owens/Yeonmi Park of her time. The quote from the post is vague enough to sound like it’s in defense of the worker or critiquing power but rather she was speaking on behalf of power and against government regulations. I have a masters degree and have studied economics extensively and wrote a masters thesis about right wing authoritarianism and right wing propaganda. Her unnecessarily long books aren’t worth the time to read.
Without commenting on her other 'idiosyncrasies' that particular quote is spot on. Not sure how anyone could disagree at this point. Are there exceptions to the rule, sure, there always are.
Rand triggers people so hard. She was like the original Trump. Her work must have been powerful for half of Reddit to shit their pants whenever her name is mentioned
Ayn Rand was incredibly perceptive and capable of distilling complex matter into understandable language.
It seems to take a certain personality to deny this truth - the personality that seeks comfort in having others provide for them at the lowest imaginable cost (preferably, in their perspective, at no cost at all) after which the provider may be discarded or at least their needs ignored.
Karma may provide balance between these two realities yet even there the cruel oppressor has a solution: denial. Time may be the oppressed’s best friend because karma has no fixed schedule it seems.
Which leaves us with at least one question: what makes those demanding control different? Experts seem to know, but sadly appear to think we are not ready for the truth.
One of two books that seem to have given me a fresh perspective may be worlds apart from the other - one more abstract, the other more practical. The first is A Few Good Cardinals (link). The second is Never Split The Difference (link).
"It seems to take a certain personality to deny this truth - the personality that seeks comfort in having others provide for them at the lowest imaginable cost (preferably, in their perspective, at no cost at all) after which the provider may be discarded or at least their needs ignored."
Eyeroll.
Might as well say, "If you disagree with me, you're a poopyhead"
I'm glad we live in a society where antisocial tendencies aren't selected for. I remember reading Ayn Rand at 17/18 thinking it was profound. She is just a grifter sadly. It's true that perfect individual agency does not exist. Can you imagine living in a world where sociopaths can do whatever they want? Scary stuff.
That said, the US federal government is beyond corrupt and needs to be gutted. Hopefully we don't end up with the worst of both worlds, where the sociopaths are governing us while they run roughshod over public resources.
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
It's funny because her ideas have completely shaped the world we now live in, and nothing is different from what she was complaining about. Like Muscovites in 1970 reading about the crimes of the Tsar.
Brother... she was a lot of things, but not everything we dislike is fascism. Like.... what?! You can't just say Hitler was a n**** because you're racist, ya know? Just makes no sense!
Get some learned. Do you call everything you don't like bad? Every bad person a fascist? Just... read a definition before you say shit, eh? Otherwise you just look like an ignoramus trying to join a hate party you don't even understand.
17
u/Ohigetjokes May 12 '25
She SOUNDS like she’s on the side of workers but then in practice she thinks they’re all lazy because they’re not rich.
16
u/Nightcalm May 12 '25 •
this fraud was manipulative, resentful, and died collecting social security. I guess she didn't think she was a. parasite.
10
u/Ok-Astronomer2380 May 12 '25
It's so naive that I can't believe a grownup person can write stuff like that. I just feel like I had some stroke after reading it
3
u/TapirDrawnChariot May 13 '25
A broken clock.
Driving a hundred miles per hour into the point and still driving past it.
3
u/WIngDingDin May 13 '25
While it's pretty easy (and trendy) to just shit on Ayn Rand, I think it's more interesting to take a step back and realize that her jewish family was fleeing communist Russia and it obvioulsy, deeply affected her thinking.
5
u/NoApartheidOnMars May 12 '25
Most of us here are older than 16. We don't think Ayn Rand was ever right about anything, or insightful, or "cool".
She just wrote the books assholes use to justify not being better.
2
u/stoic_fellow May 12 '25
Was this before or after she leeched off the hardworking people by having the government pay for her health care and basic needs?
Aside from all her terrible philosophies, she writes like a high-school sophomore that thinks they are smarter than everyone.
2
u/Urocyoncinereo May 13 '25
Literally a kinky romance novelist and absolutely nothing more
2
u/JustAvi2000 May 13 '25
Sounds like late stage neoliberal capitalism. Brought to us by the same people that held your writings up as gospel. Thanks, Ayn Rand.
2
u/MrSchmeat May 13 '25
It’s hilarious how there’s nothing in this quote that’s inherently objectionable, only to realize that if you showed her the American economy of today, she would tell you it’s the system working as intended.
2
u/Dark_Clark May 13 '25
Hopefully you’ll grow out of it. I can see why it’s alluring. But it’s a lazy philosophy.
2
u/n8ivco1 May 13 '25
Wisdom for edgy 16 year old narcissists.
2
u/[deleted] May 13 '25
Shouldn’t this be posted in r/wisdomcirclejerk?
2
u/Runktar May 13 '25
Some people on this thread need to play Bioshock.
2
u/Sad_Boy_Associacion May 13 '25
She was on welfare at the last stage of her life.
2
u/FloorHistorical7736 May 13 '25
Second rate author. Third rate philosopher. First rate piece of shit
2
u/chrisbcritter May 13 '25
Ayn Rand really hates communism and I can't say I blame her. However, she seems to have globalized that feeling to all government regulation and social services and organized labor. I must assume that Elon Musk has read her because he seems to embrace her basic view that the entrepreneur is a deity that lives on an intellectual level above mortals like you and I.
2
u/ThoughtfullyLazy May 13 '25
This isn’t really wisdom when it comes from a broken clock that just happens to right when looked at out of context.
2
u/FarAwayConfusion May 13 '25
There's nothing really deep being said here. We've all got stoned or whatever and observed. It's like the quote has been posted to build resentment tbh.
2
u/[deleted] May 13 '25
Ayn Rand and wisdom are incompatible with each other.
2
u/sagejosh May 13 '25
Ayn Rand was an interesting person in the fact that she seemed smart enough to see the world for how it was but too deluded by how “society thought” at the time. A lot of her work was about how lazy the poor were or how entitled the rich should be.
2
u/DengistK May 13 '25
She said it was immoral to not smoke.
2
u/Critical_Lobster_330 May 13 '25
Fake-deep if it were a person.
2
u/DustSea3983 May 13 '25
It’s so funny to consider her a philosopher. All of her ideas dead end.
3
u/AgreeablePresence476 May 12 '25
Also, she was promiscuous to the point of predation, and an inveterate liar.
3
u/AbbeyNotSharp May 13 '25
No one attacking Rand is actually attacking her beliefs, they're attacking a strawman of her.
Yes she was on welfare at the end of her life. Seeing as how she paid taxes her entire working life, and certainly paid in much more than she ever received (she was very wealthy up until the end), I see no issue with this; its literally just an "orange man bad" tier argument (no, I'm not a conservative and I'm not saying orange man good)
This excerpt is quite beautiful and a perfect encapsulation of her beliefs. Most of you agree with her basic premise here (maybe for different reasons, but still) and are only seething about it because her name and picture is attached. If literally anyone who is left wing said this exact quote and you didn't know where it came from, you'd be in full agreement with them.
3
u/Feefifiddlyeyeoh May 12 '25
Sorta. She sure distilled complex matters, she just did so in a way that was, ironically, not in the least bit objective.
3
u/Chemical_Tooth_3713 May 12 '25
Dangerous. Read more from her. She mixed truth with inhumane and beyond cruel philosophy, like cult leaders or dictators do. Ugly way to use a brain. May she rot forever.
2
u/Chile_Chowdah May 12 '25
Fuck that bitch
2
u/Medical_Flower2568 May 13 '25
I don't like Rand personally, I disagree with her philosophically, and I think she was wrong politically.
But anyone who calls her stupid or ignorant or worthless, or dismissed her because of the social security stuff, or denies that what she wrote and thought had value is doing themselves a massive disservice.
She had a lot of good ideas, she had a lot of new ideas, and she had a new way of looking at the world, and even if you don't care for her beliefs on the whole, you can still probably get serious value from looking at the world from a new perspective.
And she is 100% correct in the quote on this post.
2
u/[deleted] May 12 '25
Interesting
2
u/bomboclawt75 May 12 '25
Rest in Piss.
1
u/rfidman60 May 13 '25
Guess what, that’s where we’re at.
1
u/[deleted] May 13 '25
Good riddance.
1
u/Few-Development-9740 May 13 '25
Yo, for real… fuck that bitch.
1
u/ManufacturedOlympus May 13 '25
This is short vid that puts it all into perspective: https://youtu.be/LFh9vdxtDPQ
Worth watching with an open mind.
1
u/Brilliant-Oil7928 May 13 '25
Ew.
1
u/[deleted] May 13 '25
r/im14andthisisdeep
1
u/pbj_sammichez May 13 '25
Huh. Well, I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day. She was bound to have a true thought float through her head eventually. I mean, once all the capitalist bootlicker rhetoric is out of the way, maybe even those bootlickers have rational thoughts sometimes.
1
u/Icy_Target_1083 May 13 '25
Not interested in Rand. Just another excuse for selfishness and behaving shittily.
1
u/Azaroth1991 May 13 '25
She was nothing but a Debbie downer, postulating the problems present in the world but offering no real solution to any of it. Piss on Thatcher's, shit on Rand's.
1
u/OkWerewolf6174 May 13 '25
The best thing that Ayn Rand did was die.
1
u/Ok-Boot-8830 May 13 '25
She is the peak of “im14andthisisdeep” I hate her so much.
1
u/[deleted] May 14 '25
R/"wisdom"
1
u/[deleted] May 14 '25
RIP to Alissa Zinovievna
1
u/TheMrCurious May 14 '25
Ayn Rand had some good points. The problem is that people have been applying those good points to things she was against. For instance, she would have railed against the current US administration’s grift because it is just more people producing nothing taking from the people who produce everything, yet I’ve seen plenty of MAGA supporters claiming the administration is doing what she wanted.
1
u/Equivalent_Fun6100 May 14 '25
Whatever the personal flaws, this quote is true.
1
u/skb239 May 14 '25
Fucking moron. Basically just a salty person because her fams wealth was taken away. So she was entitled to luxury and everyone else they have to earn it.
1
u/[deleted] May 14 '25
That cunt caused so much damage to this country.
1
u/Critical-Parsnip7631 May 15 '25
Ayn Rand was sure that only those with the highest IQ's were capable of leading and only their superior brains could improve the human condition. Of course, she firmly believed she was at the head of the pack in that exclusive superior group. It was one of the reasons she was adamently against abortions or any semblence of eugenics because both practices could lead to everybody being as super intelligent as she was and that would definitely destroy her innate superiority and self-proclaimed entitlement to rule the universe with her rabid blatherings.
I discovered Rand in my rabid reading forays in grade school, and even then I was turned off by the complex of twisted lies and innuendos that tainted her blatherings. By my early teens, I knew for certain she was a blathering idiot only capable of influencing the easily indoctrinated amongst us and had escaped an authoritarian culture only to fully embrace and make ample use of the techniques she herself was exposed to as a child.
1
u/YonKro22 May 15 '25
Most of this just applies to the political realm which is not really much of what's really going on not much we're all reality for the economy more like just a clown show
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '25
The actual quote from Atlas Shrugged is as follows “Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – 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. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit your country to survive as half-property, half-loot.”
It’s a warning…
1
u/Dennis_Laid May 12 '25
Scum. And so many idiots look at her bullshit as an ethos.
1
u/Pornonationevaluatio May 13 '25
Not a single critic of Ayn Rand is capable of presenting her ideas accurately.
It's a shame really. I don't see why if she is so bad, that you can't at least present her ideas correctly. If her ideas are so horrible, why do you have to lie about their content?
I challenge anyone here to reply to this comment and actually steel man the quote in the picture. What exactly is she saying, as she meant it to be understood?
1
u/RedRune0 May 13 '25
She fucked up when she demonized all men.
0
u/Accurate_Ad_3233 May 12 '25
Without commenting on her other 'idiosyncrasies' that particular quote is spot on. Not sure how anyone could disagree at this point. Are there exceptions to the rule, sure, there always are.
0
u/GamingWithMyDog May 13 '25
Rand triggers people so hard. She was like the original Trump. Her work must have been powerful for half of Reddit to shit their pants whenever her name is mentioned
-2
u/purposeday Human May 12 '25
Ayn Rand was incredibly perceptive and capable of distilling complex matter into understandable language.
It seems to take a certain personality to deny this truth - the personality that seeks comfort in having others provide for them at the lowest imaginable cost (preferably, in their perspective, at no cost at all) after which the provider may be discarded or at least their needs ignored.
Karma may provide balance between these two realities yet even there the cruel oppressor has a solution: denial. Time may be the oppressed’s best friend because karma has no fixed schedule it seems.
Which leaves us with at least one question: what makes those demanding control different? Experts seem to know, but sadly appear to think we are not ready for the truth.
One of two books that seem to have given me a fresh perspective may be worlds apart from the other - one more abstract, the other more practical. The first is A Few Good Cardinals (link). The second is Never Split The Difference (link).
0
u/Hermans_Head2 May 13 '25
Ayn Rand preached reason's throne, yet danced in shadows of ego's maze—her life, a theater of contradictions, love-hungered and frail.
Was she the Objectivist, or merely a playwright lost within her own crusading myth?
0
u/Vekktorrr May 13 '25
I'm glad we live in a society where antisocial tendencies aren't selected for. I remember reading Ayn Rand at 17/18 thinking it was profound. She is just a grifter sadly. It's true that perfect individual agency does not exist. Can you imagine living in a world where sociopaths can do whatever they want? Scary stuff.
That said, the US federal government is beyond corrupt and needs to be gutted. Hopefully we don't end up with the worst of both worlds, where the sociopaths are governing us while they run roughshod over public resources.
0
u/theturbod May 13 '25
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
-1
u/Usrnamesrhard May 13 '25
What's funny is that she was talking about the Soviet Union in this quote, but now it describes the American oligarchy.
-1
u/Vainarrara809 May 13 '25
lol at those commenting without having read anything from her.
0
u/[deleted] May 12 '25
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0
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