She bought into the fantasy that the rich get rich because they’re smarter and harder working than everyone else, when really they’re all a lot more Trumpy than she would have thought.
But that’s really specifically the opposite of what happens in the book.
The richest people in the book are referred to as “The Aristocracy of Pull”: people who make their wealth by influencing governments to unevenly enforce economic restrictions. Oligarchs, basically.
The entire point of the book is that these people are parasites who obtain wealth without producing anything of value. The heroes in the story stop them by withholding their labor until the system collapses.
The president in the story is a useful idiot installed by these oligarchs.
That’s literally the whole book. You can argue about her version of utopia: people thriving by exchanging the fruits of their labor under a free market system. But her version of dystopia is pretty much what we’re going through: incompetent sycophants being installed into positions of power by anti-intellectuals who can’t tell the difference between wealth and talent.
No, the problem is that she props up this idea of the Ubermensch as an answer to the problem of oligarchy, but there’s no such thing as these super men. Most of human achievement is incrementalism with labor providing the engine of progress. Her philosophy is a retort to Marxism, because she was a victim of the Bolshevik Revolution, but her solution solves literally nothing. An oligarchy of capital owners instead of politicians with no system of controls to stop them. Which would make everything so much worse. Sure, no one would have a monopoly of violence, but that would only make violence far more prevalent rather than less.
Edit: it’s why she’s so popular with fascists. She created this myth of the Ubermensch they can envision themselves as and sell to others, while throwing away the pesky “anti-religion” and “anti-oligarch” part of the philosophy.
I’m just saying, her heroes may be unrealistic, but her villains are a prescient depiction of MAGA. So it’s strange to me when people try to equate Rand with MAGA.
Rand’s fans are MAGAs, that’s why. Argue that they don’t understand the material, and I’ll agree with you, but that doesn’t change that the philosophy does make you think that money is equivalent to value. And robs you of the tools to identify the “leeches” as Rand called them. “Since they argue for smaller government, they must be the good guys”
I was formerly an objectivist (I got better) and that was the same fucking thing I fell for.
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But that’s really specifically the opposite of what happens in the book.
The richest people in the book are referred to as “The Aristocracy of Pull”: people who make their wealth by influencing governments to unevenly enforce economic restrictions. Oligarchs, basically.
The entire point of the book is that these people are parasites who obtain wealth without producing anything of value. The heroes in the story stop them by withholding their labor until the system collapses.
The president in the story is a useful idiot installed by these oligarchs.
That’s literally the whole book. You can argue about her version of utopia: people thriving by exchanging the fruits of their labor under a free market system. But her version of dystopia is pretty much what we’re going through: incompetent sycophants being installed into positions of power by anti-intellectuals who can’t tell the difference between wealth and talent.
No, the problem is that she props up this idea of the Ubermensch as an answer to the problem of oligarchy, but there’s no such thing as these super men. Most of human achievement is incrementalism with labor providing the engine of progress. Her philosophy is a retort to Marxism, because she was a victim of the Bolshevik Revolution, but her solution solves literally nothing. An oligarchy of capital owners instead of politicians with no system of controls to stop them. Which would make everything so much worse. Sure, no one would have a monopoly of violence, but that would only make violence far more prevalent rather than less.
Edit: it’s why she’s so popular with fascists. She created this myth of the Ubermensch they can envision themselves as and sell to others, while throwing away the pesky “anti-religion” and “anti-oligarch” part of the philosophy.
Well, nobody’s perfect.
I’m just saying, her heroes may be unrealistic, but her villains are a prescient depiction of MAGA. So it’s strange to me when people try to equate Rand with MAGA.
Rand’s fans are MAGAs, that’s why. Argue that they don’t understand the material, and I’ll agree with you, but that doesn’t change that the philosophy does make you think that money is equivalent to value. And robs you of the tools to identify the “leeches” as Rand called them. “Since they argue for smaller government, they must be the good guys”
I was formerly an objectivist (I got better) and that was the same fucking thing I fell for.