Does anyone else think it would have been better served at about 200 pages total. I just finished forcing myself through it. I kept finding myself begging her to shut up and get to a “good part”. What am I missing??
Subjective values.
For someone who’s already into it then Atlas shrugged isn’t that great, but Atlas Shrugged is probably the greatest introduction to libertarianism ever written.
I loved Atlas Shrugged but it is quite long. Especially Galt’s speech at the end.
“I loved Atlas Shrugged but it is quite long. Especially Galt’s speech at the end.”
As I recall I worked it out once and if you randomly select 12 pages out of Atlas Shrugged 1 of them will be the John Galt speech… My father listened to Atlas Shrugged on CD and he was just telling me "Yeah after the first CD of him talking I skipped the next to and went to the middle of the third where he finally stopped talking
Looking back, it really was quite a long book, but I think the content justifies the length. After all, Atlas Shrugged tries to vividly describe a world in man-made turmoil while explaining where said turmoil came from and instilling a love for the achievements of great individuals in its readers.
In my opinion, it could’ve been a lot longer without getting boring.
Ayn Rand wrote the book “For the New Intellectual” that is a synopsis of Objectivism and has exerpts from “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” that you might find as a better reference than the other magnum opuses.
I kept finding myself begging her to shut up and get to a “good part”.
There is no way you’re going to make it through the Galt speech if you think its preachy/wordy/boring now.
“Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.”
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
One of the most notable economists and social philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig von Mises, in the course of a long and highly productive life, developed an integrated, deductive science of economics based on the fundamental axiom that individual human beings act purposively to achieve desired goals. Even though his economic analysis itself was “value-free” — in the sense of being irrelevant to values held by economists — Mises concluded that the only viable economic policy for the human race was a policy of unrestricted laissez-faire, of free markets and the unhampered exercise of the right of private property, with government strictly limited to the defense of person and property within its territorial area.
For Mises was able to demonstrate (a) that the expansion of free markets, the division of labor, and private capital investment is the only possible path to the prosperity and flourishing of the human race; (b) that socialism would be disastrous for a modern economy because the absence of private ownership of land and capital goods prevents any sort of rational pricing, or estimate of costs, and (c) that government intervention, in addition to hampering and crippling the market, would prove counter-productive and cumulative, leading inevitably to socialism unless the entire tissue of interventions was repealed.
I really didn’t enjoy it very much. I like the Fountainhead much more. Maybe because I was already a libertarian when I read it, but the long rants by the various characters just bored me, and the way it ended seemed really rushed. Like she had to do a sci-fi ending in order to tie up what was such an outrageous situation in the world.
I understand people who are unfamiliar with libertarianism or quality capitalist fiction like Garet Garrett might find it special and more power to them.
If you want to read great capitalist literature, I know Jeffrey Tucker really likes Garrett’s “The Cinder Buggy”. I am quite partial to “The Driver” about the real Galt, Henry Galt (Who is Henry Galt?) and his adventures with American railroads. Yes, you cannot make this stuff up. Before “Who is John Galt?” there was “Who is Henry Galt?”.
I liked the fountainhead more, as well.
I think Atlas Shrugged is overrated because Ayn Rand is overrated. She’s a popularizer of libertarianism, and that’s always good, but almost everything about her philosophy is just terrible. Objectivism is a joke.
I want to read it one day, but I don’t have that much time for such a long book.
Has anyone on here read Infinite Jest? Is that a good book too?
“I kept finding myself begging her to shut up and get to a “good part”. What am I missing??”
Mozart was a Red - One act play
Mozart was a Red - Introduction.
I never read Atlas Shrugged but I can say what I think about Ayn Rand. I think she sucks. Absolutely sucks. I dislike her for many reasons. First of all she is no economist, I think one had to be rather knowledgable at economics to convince the masses for liberty. Second of all she has objective morality, I am strongly against objective morality. I am a nihilist and do not believe in any morals. She argues for libertarianism not from a point of view that advances liberty or from an economic point of view but from an ethical point of view. This was also Murray Rothbard’s dislike of Ayn Rand. He said that she is not so much of a libertarian as she is an objectivist. Rothbard also made a good point. He said that she constantly praises businessmen, even though it were the businessmen (through government regulations) that repulsed the rest of society and made them distrust the free market. Besides capitalism should not be a statement of morals. Sometimes capitalism sucks. If you are a poor person and have nothing, it sucks. I agree that in the end capitalism is the best method and the only one consistent with liberty, but what exactly is moral about being poor and having to struggle, nothing. That is my problem with thinking of capitalism as moral. Capitalism should be an economic concept not some ethical system. Third of all, and this is more of an ad hominem attack, Ayn Rand was a quite terrible person in real life. There are lots of libertarians, just take Ron Paul for instance, who are very nice people and spread a good message. Ayn Rand has a rotten personality. I know that bad personality does not imply bad philosophy, but I am after all writing about why Ayn Rand sucks. So that is why I think she sucks.
I also heard that Rand copied a lot of her work from Nietzsche, so it was not so original even.
Mises and Rothbard say it best.
Rothbard was impressed with Atlas Shrugged and the Randians at first, but he quickly grew disillusioned with them when he started to interact with them. In Radicals For Capitalism, Brian Doherty quotes Rothbard:
Eventually Rothbard and the “circle bastiat” members were purged from the Objectivist groups.
On a half related note, I am finding The Road to Serfdom to be overrated. As someone pointed out earlier in relation to Atlas Shrugged, if you already ‘get it’ then its not giving you anything new. But, I am not letting that ruin my Mises Academy class on the subject, because I get to listen to DiLorenzo lecture for 5 weeks
Really, really interesting article about Ayn Rand:
Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman
by
Michael Prescott
This essay is adapted from two posts I first published on my blog (www.michaelprescott.typepad.com). After writing this essay, I wrote a series of further posts on this topic, which can be read here, here, here, and here- or just go to the June page of my blog, where you can find all of these additional posts in one place. Some Ayn Rand fans discussed my thoughts regarding the Rand-Hickman matter on their message board; this discussion may be read here.
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Part One: Ayn Rand’s “real man” Recently I was rereading Scott Ryan’s fascinating, albeit highly technical, critique of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality, and getting a lot more out of it the second time, when I came across a fact culled from a posthumous collection of Rand’s journal entries. In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, “What is good for me is right,” a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. “The best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I have heard,” she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.) At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan. According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, “is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness – [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people … Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.” (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.) “A wonderful, free, light consciousness” born of the utter absence of any understanding of “the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people.” Obviously, Ayn Rand was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage of Rand’s life, her kind of man. So the question is, who exactly was he? William Edward Hickman was one of the most famous men in America in 1928. But he came by his fame in a way that perhaps should have given pause to Ayn Rand before she decided that he was a “real man” worthy of enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional heroes. You see, Hickman was a forger, an armed robber, a child kidnapper, and a multiple murderer. Other than that, he was probably a swell guy. … |
I think it’s overrated.
it has a few great gems in it (Rearden’s Trial and D’Anconia’s Root of Money speech and a few other, smaller parts), but for the most part it’s tiresome and a bit disappointing.
it needs to be rewritten as the narrative has merit…it just needs to be cleansed of the objectivist hogwash and injected with a more sound understanding of human action and economic behavior.
“For someone who’s already into it then Atlas shrugged isn’t that great, but Atlas Shrugged is probably the greatest introduction to libertarianism ever written.”
word. if you read AS after The Driver and after you are familiar with Rothbard it’s a huge letdown.