In the second part of our slog through Atlas Shrugged, we show a few signs of wear and tear. Still, we power through:
- Compliment Sandwich
- Hate Bingo
- Writers Workshop (we probably should have warned Forrest beforehand that he had to play Ayn Rand)
- And screwing like a business man!
Today’s guest Forrest has a blog where he takes pictures of himself while he watches Portland Trailblazers games.
I’ve only listened to part 1 so far, but I hope you cover some of the most annoying parts of Atlas Strugged. In Randian Style, this post will be way too long:-In a book about capitalism and pulling yourself by your bootstraps, Dagney Taggert is awfully smug about becoming the head of the company her father started.-Railroads aren’t just a hilarious future mode of transportation. They are also historically one of the most subsidized industries in American history.
It’s extremely expensive to build a railroad, and the return on investment occurs over too long a time period (if at all) to interest private companies.-The government subsidizes RR companies in various ways, as well as using Eminent Domain in order to buy the land needed to build railroads (since you can’t just buy a 10 foot wide strip of land that stretches over 1000 miles, you have to buy all the land surrounding it, and only the government can do that using it’s constitutional powers).-Rand knows nothing about Capitalism. While entrepreneurs are a necessary part of a business, they are not the only part. Capitalism requires the government to enforce laws, build roads, etc., a labor force, and finally a demand for goods… also known as customers.Rand not only disparages the labor class as “moochers and looters,” she literally posits that a capitalist utopia will spring up sans labor force and customers to buy the goods and services that the Entrepreneurs want to sell.-She is a sociopath who corresponded over a long period of time with a man who killed and mutilated a 12-year-old girl. From Slate: “Thenewspapers were filled for months with stories about serial killer called William Hickman, who kidnapped a 12-year-old girl called Marion Parker from her junior high school, raped her, and dismembered her body, which he sent mockingly to the police in pieces. Rand wrote great stretches of praise for him, saying he represented “the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. … Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should.” She called him “a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy,” shimmering with “immense, explicit egotism.” Rand had only one regret: “A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy [Hickman] was not strong enough.”http://www.slate.com/articl…