Atlas Shrugged

[moda0306]

stone,

So for every unit of opportunity to shed light on information the internet gives us, it gives the bamboozlers two units of opportunity to play tricks in front of us??... I can definitely see that being the case.  Like I said I don't think we're in a better position to read a health insurance contract and improve our position today than in 1955.

Look at all these investment broker commercials showing guys like you and me with 15 graphs up on his computer screen(s) like Gordon Gekko showing us that we can beat the market... the internet FEEDS on that bamboozlement, it doesn't reduce it.


TennPaGa,

Yes... most people, many of whom end are little old ladies, are just in absolutely no position to know anything about some of the most important aspects of their life (insurance, finance, health).. yeah it's convenient to use Grandma but I think it's a legitimate point to make and we'd be dumb to ignore the exposure our elderly would have.  Most of us had that super-sweet Grandma (or knew of one) that would do anything for her family and lived her entire life by the rules, but in "Randville" would succumb to the bamboozlers even before most irresponsible consumers, since an old lady with a few hundred grand in the bank gets a lot of attention from Bamboozler Insurance Co. and Tomfoolery Investment Group.

You can't eliminate that behavior or have the government consume every area of life, but maybe it makes that first $10k she gets in SS income every year not the worst thing a society could organize.

[MediumTex]

Regarding your comment that ignorance will become a choice... I ascribe to what MediumTex has written in many places here: that people, in general, aren't necessarily looking for truth, but for a story that makes sense to them.

I don't think it would be overstating the matter to say that meeting the demand created by this collective vein of irrationality that runs through much of human thought is one of the largest industries in the world.

Any commercial enterprise that relies on the ability to tell stories effectively and get its customers/clients/followers to believe the stories in the face of the three basic riddles of life--i.e., how to prevent death, how to know the future and how to avoid work--would be included in the industry I am describing.

Intuitively, I think that some members of this "storytelling" industry (which of course includes most of Wall Street) are annoyed by the PP because they sense that the PP is premised upon the storytellers being more entertainers than truth-tellers.  I think it's hard for the storytellers to articulate it in quite this way (which is weird, since they are so good at creating narratives), but I'll bet they would agree with this view of things if you asked them after they had had a few beers.

Of course, the concept of "truth" itself is a slippery term, but I like the way Harry Browne defined "reality" when discussing these matters of objectively verifiable phenomena outside of ourselves.  He said that "reality" is what you bump into when you aren't looking where you are going.  I would say that there is probably an analogous definition of "truth" that is probably close enough for purposes of this discussion.

There is certainly nothing wrong with adopting a set of beliefs that provides one with a smoother ride though life, but the key I think is to make sure that the beliefs really are easing one's journey through life, and not just making one a stream of income to a skilled set of storytellers (which is what history suggests is more often the case).

[moda0306]

Jesus, MT, do you write these things over a day-long period and then wait for the proper time to post, appearing like it just comes right off the top of your head?

That post was some heavy sh!t.  Your observations in that post are basically the backbone of almost every conversation on this board, in one way or another.

Put a pin in this one for your book.

[MediumTex]

Jesus, MT, do you write these things over a day-long period and then wait for the proper time to post, appearing like it just comes right off the top of your head?

That post was some heavy sh!t.  Your observations in that post are basically the backbone of almost every conversation on this board, in one way or another.

Put a pin in this one for your book.

Sometimes I rhyme slow, sometimes I rhyme quick.

[moda0306]

Age: Shown

I kid... I'm 27 and listen to Boston like they came out yesterday.

[Jan Van]

I'm just waiting for "Atlas Shrugged" to become available for free in the Public Domain...

[Jan Van]

jmoocher..   http://lmgtfy.com/?q=atlas+shrugged+pdf+free+download   ;D

oooohhhh....

That is a cool site! I only checked Amazon.com and they have Anthem for free...

[moda0306]

Can we get it in audio where we hear Ayn Rand deliver it in her Russian growl?

(headache)

Kidding.

[Reido]

I kind of see evolution of capitalism as being towards ever greater resources going towards tricksters.

I think we need to define what "tricksters" are.  I think that if you're referring to corporations, then I generally disagree - it seems to have been well established that in most free markets, excess profits do get competed away, and generally profits revert back to a mean.  Besides which, anyone can take "advantage" of profits by simply investing in any company that they think is ripping them off.

If you're talking about bankers and those responsible for the 2008 crash, then I think that is a mix of criminals who are responsible (and failure to arrest them is a failure of the government) and bankers who never should have received a bail-out.  The politicians who bailed them out should have been removed from office, and failing to do this would have been a failure of democracy.  Personally, I think the banks should have been bankrupted and their assets sold off by the fed who could have enforced the promises made by the FDIC.  Charges should have been brought against anyone who knowingly made sub-par loans and sold them to investors - but then again, investors are responsible for knowing the risks of what they're buying!  Homeowners shouldn't be purchasing housing they can't afford!  Oh, and Nancy Pelosi should be in jail for buying puts with insider information.

In the end, many people were responsible.  I don't think that government regulation is the answer.  I'm not opposed to some regulation, but overregulation tends to add costs and make markets inefficient.

[6 Iron]

Personally, I think the banks should have been bankrupted and their assets sold off by the fed who could have enforced the promises made by the FDIC.  Charges should have been brought against anyone who knowingly made sub-par loans and sold them to investors - but then again, investors are responsible for knowing the risks of what they're buying!  Homeowners shouldn't be purchasing housing they can't afford!  Oh, and Nancy Pelosi should be in jail for buying puts with insider information.

You are going to need a big jail, because you will need to include the bureaucrats responsible for forcing the "fairness in lending" regulations on banks that made these subprime loans, Fanny and Freddy for massively distorting the market for these loans, and I have no problem with nailing the Ivy League quants that then tethered our financial system to this charade with insanely leveraged collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.

[MediumTex]

I have no problem with nailing the Ivy League quants that then tethered our financial system to this charade with insanely leveraged collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.

If Allen Ginsberg wrote a piece about these quants it might start something like this:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by speculative fever, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the Wall Street thicket of greed at dawn looking for an edge, any edge,

angelheaded talent burning for the ancient wordly connection to the masters of the universe and their dark machinery of night,

who tasted easy wealth and drank deeply, hollowing out their souls without a care in the supernatural darkness of cold-water luxury apartments floating across the tops of cities contemplating a meaningless world,

who bared their brains to Goldman Sachs under the El and saw angels bearing great fortunes staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

calling to them to spill their mental talent generously, to turn themselves into an abstraction, an idea, a nightmare, to be absorbed into something ever-more meaningless, to sell their souls every day a little more cheaply, watching their value spiral infinitely toward nothingness as they watched their fortunes take the place of what had once made them human,

as the nature of their fate became clear in tiny increments the angels bearing fortunes transformed into decrepit humans lumbering under the weight of their own wasted existence, not devils but simply life on the edge of expiration, something on the edge of nothing, and it was then that the quants wailed, realizing the nature of the bargain they had made.

[Benko]

1.  Thread started out " what do we think of Atlas Shrugged" and "Can you provide a general overview of her correct predictions?"

2. It is an important book in that it serves as a warning of the dangers of excesses in one direction. 
          We have ignored the warning and are and will to continue to pay the price, but that is another story.

3. Medium Tex: "Rand seems to be saying that if the government just let capitalists be capitalists, a utopian form of capitalism would naturally emerge".

I disagree.  The story illustrates vividly what happens what capitalism is not in control i.e. society falls apart for very familiar reasons in very familiar ways.  In the story they go to "galts gulch" in what is presumably a very small society run by a very small group of hard working idealists.  Such a small society might work for a short time.  It certainly would not work here.

Capitalism (as opposed to what is going on now) would solve some of the current problems but given human nature there needs to be some ways put in place (I think) to prevent some of the worst excesses.

4. Clearly capitalsim is not perfect, but don't blame capitalism for things that are the result of statism/gov't regulations, Chicago politician's being elected to national office, etc.

5.  If you are concerned about being "tricked" by capitalism than either:
    A. educate yourself before making such a decision or.
    B. find/hire someone more educated than you to make those decisions or
    C. Let the gov't do it for you.  See Solyandra.  See "the bureaucrats responsible for forcing the "fairness in 
            lending" regulations on banks that made these subprime loans"

[MediumTex]

1.  Thread started out " what do we think of Atlas Shrugged" and "Can you provide a general overview of her correct predictions?"

2. It is an important book in that it serves as a warning of the dangers of excesses in one direction.  
          We have ignored the warning and are and will to continue to pay the price, but that is another story.

3. Medium Tex: "Rand seems to be saying that if the government just let capitalists be capitalists, a utopian form of capitalism would naturally emerge".

I disagree.  The story illustrates vividly what happens what capitalism is not in control i.e. society falls apart for very familiar reasons in very familiar ways.  In the story they go to "galts gulch" in what is presumably a very small society run by a very small group of hard working idealists.  Such a small society might work for a short time.  It certainly would not work here.

Capitalism (as opposed to what is going on now) would solve some of the current problems but given human nature there needs to be some ways put in place (I think) to prevent some of the worst excesses.

Do you read "Atlas Shrugged" as a type of fairy tale with government bureaucrats in the role of the Big Bad Wolf, or do you read it as a description of an idealized economic system that could ever actually exist in the real world?

To me, Rand has a tendency to take the purity of motive and vision of a great artist and combine it with the greed and drive of a capitalist.  I don't know, however, whether such characteristics can actually coexist within the same person.  It seems like the artist or the capitalist would win out, but the two tendencies could not be maintained with some perfect level of inner tension.

To me, there is no such thing as a starving artist who will not bow to commercialization who is also a skilled deployer of capital (which requires one to embrace commercialization) .  The two states seem to be mutually exclusive.

Rand's heroes are appealing, but they strike me as more like aspirational caricatures, sort of like what you would expect to see in a capitalist propaganda poster.

Maybe Howard Roark from "The Fountainhead" is a better example of what I am talking about.  To me, Roark was ultimately just a stubborn artist who had a passion for seeing his visions turned into reality.  As a capitalist he was mostly a failure, but as an artist he was an appealing figure.

If Rand's message was really not about capitalism at all, but rather about maintaining focus and commitmenet to the purity of one's productive expression, then I think that is an easier message to agree with.  Of course, that raises the issue of what to do with the bureaucrat's purity of expression when it comes to his bureaucratic ideals that he would also like to see fully realized.

Rand would say "Well, one is right and one is wrong", to which I would reply, "Sure, but who gets to decide these things?  I understand you want to be in charge right now, but what do we do when you are gone?"

[Reido]

You are going to need a big jail, because you will need to include the bureaucrats responsible for forcing the "fairness in lending" regulations on banks that made these subprime loans

Yup!  Some pretty hefty penalties should be handed out.  I haven't really been following too closely, but BoA is getting sued now for like $40B because of those issues, correct?  At least that's a start!

[MediumTex]

i think one of the places where she is overly optimistic is with the assumptions she makes about the spontaneous emergence of a galts gulch type of capitalism and its ability to survive and thrive...

real world capitalism has a type of herpes (called crony capitalism) and no mater how much you wish it wasn't there it always will be, forever ready and waiting to have another outbreak and spread its virus.. the problem is the supposed cure (government and regulation) is often a part of the disease, and even when it is not a part of the disease to much cure is often just as harmful..

to find a balance between free market capitalism and honest government regulation you need two things, a well educated public capable of independent thought, (we no longer have this... regardless of ideology most students receive something far closer to an indoctrination than a "classical education" in how to think) and a public that cares enough to keep politicians honest (we have people that care but they seem to be vastly outnumbered by people conned into voting in Wesley Mouch type politicians and policys)

having a thinking population is also necessary on the "capitalist" side of the equation, part of being able to think involves learning to recognize fallacy's and much of being conned into bad capitalist choices involves (in addition to outright bad information) falling for fallacious ideas... IE "in investing" appeals to emotion, appeals to greed, bad statistics (past performance is no guaranty of future performance is written plainly, yet people still buy based on the big print about past performance in the funds description) these and others are all used to convince investors/consumers to make poor choices with there capital... and the same things are used to convince people to make poor choices with their votes and the government programs they support..

BTW, Harry Browne was a huge Ayn Rand fan.

In his 1967 audio series, he spoke at length about "The Fountainhead" and the ways in which it had influenced his thinking.

I think that some of the weaknesses in Rand's thinking (assuming you agree that there are weaknesses) became much easier to see with the passage of time and the experimentation with free market capitalism in various places around the world.  I don't think some of Rand's early adherents would have predicted that crony capitalism would be as big a problem as it has been in many places (even though Eisenhower tried to point this out in his farewell address to anyone who was listening).  To cite one example today, I'll bet the Russian people wonder what is supposed to be so great about capitalism when it seems only to have taken the former communist elite and converted them into the new capitalist elite with very little "trickle down" for the average Russian.

In her time, though, I think that Rand was a VERY big deal and did influence many in her generation.  What is sort of bizarre is that Alan Greenspan was very much an Ayn Rand disciple (though I don't think he quite made the elite inner circle of male Rand devotees who made up her man harem), but for reasons known only to him his tenure as Fed chairman didn't resemble anything Rand would have likely endorsed. 

[AdamA]

BTW, Harry Browne was a huge Ayn Rand fan.

In his 1967 audio series, he spoke at length about "The Fountainhead" and the ways in which it had influenced his thinking.

As much as I love to listen to Harry Browne, I think there are limits to the Libertarian world view.

The advice he gives is great on a personal level, especially in books like "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World." 

I just have a feeling that there is a dark side to all of this stuff when it's applied to governments on a larger scale.
It's hard to articulate...

[Benko]

How is crony capitalism any different from other forms of influence?

If you live in dictatorship you use whatever means you have e.g. goods, friendship, money,  sex, etc. to influence officials of the dictatorship.  If you live in communist or socialist society, the same.

Crony capitalism just seems like more of the same and from reading Wikipedia:

"Crony capitalism is generally associated with more virulent government intervention"

i.e. looks like that one of the reasons it can happen is because gov't regulates business so much i.e. the more nanny state you have, the more nannies there are to be bought off.  Not that it is possible to get rid of gov't regulation totally unfortunately.

Strict term limits seems like one step in the right direction, in any case why is "crony capitalism" an issue when the same thing happens under any form of gov't?

[MediumTex]

BTW, Harry Browne was a huge Ayn Rand fan.

In his 1967 audio series, he spoke at length about "The Fountainhead" and the ways in which it had influenced his thinking.

As much as I love to listen to Harry Browne, I think there are limits to the Libertarian world view.

The advice he gives is great on a personal level, especially in books like "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World." 

I just have a feeling that there is a dark side to all of this stuff when it's applied to governments on a larger scale.
It's hard to articulate...

I sensed the same thing my first time through all of this stuff, but when I realized that a tiny portion of the population will ever do any of the stuff HB recommended I realized any concern is mostly theoretical.

In a lot of ways, Harry Browne was providing a guidebook for making one's way through a world that someone else already screwed up and you are just trying to make space for yourself and your loved ones without feeling the obligation to re-make the whole world in the way you would have made it if you were in charge. 

For example, I love the way Browne talks about why one might want to attend a protest or a march.  He says you shouldn't attend such an event because you really think you are going to change the world through such activities (although you might, he just suggests it is unlikely).  What he says attending such events really is good for, however, is meeting like-mined people that might be the kind of people you want to associate with.  I think about that when looking at video of the OWS protests.  I don't know if they are changing the world or not, but I'm sure they are having a great time and forging some relationships that will be lasting and meaningful.

***

"Yeah, I met my wife back in '11 at the New York OWS camp.  I had just been gassed and a police horse had bitten me on the arm and this little ray of sunshine just wandered up and started applying direct pressure to my wound and helping me flush out my eyes.  It was love at first sight."

[stone]

Reido, "I think we need to define what "tricksters" are".

What I was trying to say is that in free market capitalism just as in any system there are two ways to do well. You can either provide something of use and exchange it with other people or you can play the system and live off the gullability of others. From what I can make out a large and increasing chunk of the global economy could be described as living off the gullability of others. You don't neccessarily need to rope in the government to play the system you can simply identify other people's frailties and exploit those rather than trying to identify genuinely useful work that needs doing. Some would say that it is condencending not to milk such frailties for all you can. Warren Buffet basically said that about the Abacus mortgage-backed CDOs didn't he?

[stone]

RE - crony capitalism

i just stumbled on an article that seemed relevant to the topic... http://rightwingnews.com/column-2/blocking-the-paths-out-of-poverty/

Simon, is that article you posted supporting street vendors really "right wing"? In the UK we have a real struggle to come to terms with Gypsies. No one here describes going easy on them as "right wing". Such labels often seem to just get in the way of sensible policy.
Fairly typical UK Gypsy stress:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-11430524

[Storm]

I have no problem with nailing the Ivy League quants that then tethered our financial system to this charade with insanely leveraged collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.

If Allen Ginsberg wrote a piece about these quants it might start something like this:

Beautiful poetry, MT.  If you ever lose your day job, you should definitely become a writer.

[Storm]

Capitalism isn't a perfect system, but it is somewhat more perfect than most systems that have come before it.  Here are some problems with two forms of capitalism that I've noticed:

Anarcho-capitalism:  This is the Ayn Rand utopia of capitalism.  There is not much government, and not many laws.  Anyone can buy and sell any product.  The problem with anarcho capitalism is that there are no protections for consumers and evil people end up selling poison as baby formula and a bunch of people get killed.  Anarcho-capitalists will tell you that "oh, the market will regulate itself because consumers will magically become super educated (after several thousand die from poisonous food and water) and choose to not do business with those bad companies."  Well, I'm sorry, in the real world "caveat emptor" doesn't always protect consumers.  When you're the one feeding your baby formula, do you want to rely on the hope that the factory didn't decide to suddenly start dumping melamine in it, or do you want the full force of law behind your consumer protections?

Highly regulated capitalism:  This is the European model.  Personally, I think it's the best one yet, because businesses are allowed to compete on a mostly level playing field.  They aren't allowed to participate in anti-competitive collusion, price fixing, or using a monopoly in one market to obtain a monopoly in another.  They aren't allowed to sell products with false advertising, or sell medical products that kill people.  The cost of regulation is high and is reflected in corporate and income taxes, but citizens know that they can go buy baby formula off the shelf of a local market and not poison their baby.  The disadvantage to this form of capitalism is that it is more subject to crony capitalism, where corporations influence government to corrupt the system by passing laws creating barriers of entry.

There is no perfect system, but regulated capitalism, so long as the corruption is cleaned out every few decades by social upheaval and revolution, is probably the best system we have yet.

If you were to combine regulated capitalism with a representative democracy with publicly funded elections (no campaign contributions, whatsoever), I think you might come close to the perfect system.  Does anyone know of a country that has this in place right now?  I'm thinking there must be some Scandinavian country like this, but my mind is drawing a blank.

[MediumTex]

If you were to combine regulated capitalism with a representative democracy with publicly funded elections (no campaign contributions, whatsoever), I think you might come close to the perfect system.  Does anyone know of a country that has this in place right now?  I'm thinking there must be some Scandinavian country like this, but my mind is drawing a blank.

I think that the U.S. had a system much like this in the 1948-1960 period.  There wasn't public funding of campaigns, but campaigns cost vastly less back then and television hadn't turned the process into a visual spectacle.

During that period the economy had many regulations and relatively high tax rates but things seemed to work pretty well in terms of improving standards of living, rising incomes, equitable wealth distribution across society, etc.

[stone]

Would simply having a limit of $500 per person for campaign contributions work? In the UK we have BBC funded slots on TV for "party political broadcasts" and no other TV adverts. That seems better than having Goldman Sachs or whoever paying for TV adverts. We still have a mess from dodgy campaign funding though. Politics does not need to be expensive. Ghandi didn't have a lot of money behind him as far as I know. I do agree that if you allow paid for TV etc political campaigns and million $ donations then things go to the dogs.

[moda0306]

I think where the gray area comes up with elections is not with the funding of campaigns, which can more easily be controlled, but by independent sponsorship.

It seems to some to be a violation of the first amendment to say that people can't come together and form an organization and petition on the radio for a given candidate.