I haven't... I was going to check it out of the library until I realized I could hunt small animals with it.

But I did just see part 1/3 on Netflix, and it was a little different than I had always been lead to believe. What I want to know is how true to the book are some aspects of the movie.

I understood the premise of at least a lot of Ayn rand's philosophy and presumably this book itself was that working toward one's own self interests would ultimately be better for the general population than directly promoting the public interest. The way the movie went, however, did NOT put these two approaches into a dichotomy. What I saw instead was advancements toward communism far ahead of a modern American liberal's hottest wet dream that were being put in place NOT in the "public interest" but merely by people promoting their own self-interests but using the government as a tool to do so, with the thin disguise of being in the public interest.

That unfortunately boils down to a slippery-slope or strawman fallacy at best, that these people were evil because they were at an extreme edge of collectivism and nowhere near the margins that existed when this book was written, and certainly not a case of altruism failing, but instead crony capitalism failing miserably. If the movie is indeed true to her, then any liberal could use this as a shining example of what happens when capitalists try to manipulate the government to their own selfish ends, and altruism still rings as the best course of action.

I don't want to debate her work with the wrong viewpoint of it. I fear I might have to dedicate a huge chunk of my life to actually reading the book, which isn't going to get me hot and bothered like it would a libertarian so it's definitely likely a huge waste of my time.

Can anybody help me out here?

 

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tldr

Why didn't you just PM BT? He probably has a 'Bible Study Group'

 

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Because while I'm sure BT masturbates to it, I can't trust his explanations for anything.

 

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Just read the book and figure it out for yourself.

Rho

 

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I did actually read the book, but I think Ayn Rand took her point and clobbered me over the head with it enough that I ended up being brain-damaged.

Sorry.

 

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There wasn't anything Ayn needed more in this world than a good editor.

Rho

 

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Exactly

200 page idea - 1200 pages of text. Good idea poor execution.

One movie should have been enough. I only hope they improve upon Ayn's ridiculous ending.

 

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Her whole premise was that pure capitalism is good. People should be able to profit. The villains all wanted to bring down the capitalists, the "people who could", because they didn't think it was "fair" that some people and companies did better because the people running them were best at what they did. So the whole idea of the villains was two-fold. First, hamstring the "better" and "more talented" to bring them down to everyone else's level, and if that doesn't fail, essentially force them to volunteer all their efforts and talents because if you're better than everyone else at something, it's "your duty" to benefit society. Not yourself though, that would be evil.

Where her story totally, completely, and utterly fails is treating all of the protagonists (capitalists) as though they're all good people. Not a single one was dishonest. They all paid their employees fair wages (based on what the employee was worth). Slavery would have been appalling. They all wanted to turn a profit and compete, but they were all moral and ethical and upright about it. They all "played fair". Yeahhhhhh dreaming much? Doesn't work that way in the real world. In the real world you get some of those people, but more who are motivated by pure greed and will gladly stomp all over everyone else in order to get what they want.

That was what I took from it, anyway.

 

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You can think of it as an ideological counterpoint to socialism basically. No good reason to read the whole thing.

It makes the case by neglecting gray area entirely so it isn't much realistic use, but the point is pretty straight-forward.

Capitalism > Socialism because socialism sucks for talented/highly capable people.

 

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