Tell me why Atlas Shrugged is stupid so I don't have to read it.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me why Atlas Shrugged is stupid so I don't have to read it.

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VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Or Eddie Willers. Sure he is my loyal friend since childhood who stood by me when no one else would and held my company together when no one else could, but gently caress him he was just the son of my dad's servants so I'll send his commoner rear end out on a doomed mission to the wilderness on behalf of the company I've already decided to abandon to go live in the woods with all our friends.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 15:37

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 16:30

Murgos: Oct 21, 2010

Gum posted:

Are you honestly saying that you can't think of a single example of how someone elses education has benefited you?

I don't think that's what I said.

I know people who have educations, as in they have a college degree, and don't do anything with it. Indeed, in their case they would have been better off without the expense of the education, except that it got their foot in the door because their employer decided they would only interview people with diplomas. I think this makes sense for the employer in weeding out a lot of potential unwanteds but the job itself doesn't need a specific skill set taught in college.

I know other people who use the specific knowledge gained by their education and leverage that in their lives to great effect. MD PhD's for an obvious example. But the effort required to get an MD and a PhD is so great that people who get them have already self-identified as people looking to leverage an education.

I don't think that the education itself is what holds the value, I think it's what the person who is educated does with that knowledge.

This is all besides the point though, there is lots of evidence that educating the workforce increases GDP growth and tax revenues so Ayn Rands objection to government scholarships because they are a an unwarranted claim on public resources is objectively false.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 16:39

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

VitalSigns posted:

Or Eddie Willers. Sure he is my loyal friend since childhood who stood by me when no one else would and held my company together when no one else could, but gently caress him he was just the son of my dad's servants so I'll send his commoner rear end out on a doomed mission to the wilderness on behalf of the company I've already decided to abandon to go live in the woods with all our friends.

Yeah I think there were actually a few problems with the secondary disposable characters being more human and more sympathetic than the ones we're supposed to be invested in.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 16:43

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

waitwhatno posted:

A university educated physician earns around $100k more a year than someone without a degree. After you graduate, about half of that money goes to the state forever.

Over a lifetime, that's millions of dollars and a 1000+% return on the initial tuition fee investment. Probably a >5% annual return rate over 40-50 years, something a stock investor would cream his pants about.

And even the combined average return rate for all degrees types is pretty good, beaten only by very high performing capital investments. Seriously, compulsatory public education is like one of the best things Marxists managed to push trough. It's a gold mine, lol at the Randites who want to shut it down.

Cool, our education system does work for higher math and science degrees. That is obvious. Almost all other people waste an extra 2 years in college learning bullshit that has nothing to do with their career and will not help them.

Also I did not say education is bad. Just that our current system blows and does not work efficiently for a large % that go through it.

# ? Sep 2, 2015 16:45

Sizone: Sep 13, 2007; by LadyAmbien

goodness posted:

Cool, our education system does work for higher math and science degrees. That is obvious. Almost all other people waste an extra 2 years in college learning bullshit that has nothing to do with their career and will not help them.

You realize that a large part of the emphasis of humanities courses is to prevent people from becoming randians, right?

e: also, you're trying to put a dollar value on education, which has a value incommensurate with, and arguably greater than, money.

Sizone fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Sep 2, 2015

# ? Sep 2, 2015 23:31

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

Sizone posted:

You realize that a large part of the emphasis of humanities courses is to prevent people from becoming randians, right?

e: also, you're trying to put a dollar value on education, which has a value incommensurate with, and arguably greater than, money.

I am not putting a dollar value on education at all. The comment about going to school longer for higher math and science degrees is about level of difficulty not potential salary. Our system does not actually teach people how to be competent, independent thinkers. It teaches rote memorization will get you a Bachelor's, and a Bachelor's will get you a job. The fact is the jobs that the majority end up with are things that could be learned in 2 years. Most do not need to go to school for 4 years but that is just part of the system where you need a degree to get a job.

What is your point about humanities courses preventing Randians? You realize that a large number of people don't have to take classes to not be a Randian.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 04:46

Sizone: Sep 13, 2007; by LadyAmbien

goodness posted:

I am not putting a dollar value on education at all.

a Bachelor's will get you a job. The fact is the jobs that the majority end up with are things that could be learned in 2 years. Most do not need to go to school for 4 years but that is just part of the system where you need a degree to get a job.

Dang dude. you're contradicting yourself without even realizing that you are doing it.

If you are not learning how to think and engage, then you are going to a lovely school or you are in a lovely program. That's true of primary education too.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 10:20

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

I guess you have some kind of proof that you're about to post to show education is worthless, since you're such a critical thinker and all

VVVVVV
Not to you, to the guy above you

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Sep 3, 2015

# ? Sep 3, 2015 10:20

Sizone: Sep 13, 2007; by LadyAmbien

VitalSigns posted:

I guess you have some kind of proof that you're about to post to show education is worthless, since you're such a critical thinker and all

The gently caress are you directing that at?

# ? Sep 3, 2015 10:28

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

Sizone posted:

Dang dude. you're contradicting yourself without even realizing that you are doing it.

If you are not learning how to think and engage, then you are going to a lovely school or you are in a lovely program. That's true of primary education too.

Thank you for supporting what I am saying. If you are not learning how to think then you are in a lovely school or program, and that happens to be many of the schools and programs in our country. I didn't say that having people go to school from an early age is bad. Just the way the curriculum is taught at Primary and Secondary levels.

If you could explain how taking 4 years to teach information that only takes 2, especially when training for straight of out college jobs typically happen on the job, is wrong I am listening. I actually would like to know because from what I see the US education system is terrible compared to many European countries.

Stinky_Pete posted:

Even for a job with no higher-ed-specific skill set, a BA tells a hiring manager "okay, this person had to at least practice their writing and communication skills, and has some perspective," which, as far as I'm aware, is the primary skill for most office jobs that don't require a certain certification.

This is a highlight of the problem I am talking about. You do not need a 4 years of education (BA/BS for most people) to go work in an office and it is a flaw of our system that having a degree "proves" to the hiring agent that you are competent.

goodness fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Sep 3, 2015

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:14

Stinky_Pete: Aug 16, 2015; Stinkier than your average bear; Lipstick Apathy

Murgos posted:

I don't think that's what I said.

I know people who have educations, as in they have a college degree, and don't do anything with it. Indeed, in their case they would have been better off without the expense of the education, except that it got their foot in the door because their employer decided they would only interview people with diplomas. I think this makes sense for the employer in weeding out a lot of potential unwanteds but the job itself doesn't need a specific skill set taught in college.
...
This is all besides the point though, there is lots of evidence that educating the workforce increases GDP growth and tax revenues so Ayn Rands objection to government scholarships because they are a an unwarranted claim on public resources is objectively false.

Even for a job with no higher-ed-specific skill set, a BA tells a hiring manager "okay, this person had to at least practice their writing and communication skills, and has some perspective," which, as far as I'm aware, is the primary skill for most office jobs that don't require a certain certification.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 18:38

mysterious frankie: Jan 11, 2009; This displeases Dev- ..van. Shut up.

Stinky_Pete posted:

Even for a job with no higher-ed-specific skill set, a BA tells a hiring manager "okay, this person had to at least practice their writing and communication skills, and has some perspective," which, as far as I'm aware, is the primary skill for most office jobs that don't require a certain certification.

It also tells them that you know how to plan and execute a complex four year project (if you went to a university with high admission standards it tells them you've got it together enough to have even started doing heavy duty preliminary work to achieve your goal while still in K-12). It's super valuable for applicants who have nothing too impressive on their cvs yet. Maybe it's not fair like some have said, but it's not an illogical hurdle put in place by the dumb ol' Man.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 19:34

A Wizard of Goatse: Dec 14, 2014

Murgos posted:

I don't think that's what I said.

I know people who have educations, as in they have a college degree, and don't do anything with it. Indeed, in their case they would have been better off without the expense of the education, except that it got their foot in the door because their employer decided they would only interview people with diplomas. I think this makes sense for the employer in weeding out a lot of potential unwanteds but the job itself doesn't need a specific skill set taught in college.

I know other people who use the specific knowledge gained by their education and leverage that in their lives to great effect. MD PhD's for an obvious example. But the effort required to get an MD and a PhD is so great that people who get them have already self-identified as people looking to leverage an education.

I don't think that the education itself is what holds the value, I think it's what the person who is educated does with that knowledge.

This is all besides the point though, there is lots of evidence that educating the workforce increases GDP growth and tax revenues so Ayn Rands objection to government scholarships because they are a an unwarranted claim on public resources is objectively false.

a pile of gold bars is pretty worthless if you just bury em in the dirt and forget about em, too. The dichotomy you're setting up proposes some kind of innate, objectively measurable Value Atom that some things contain and some do not independent of human involvement. It's not, value is a rough measure of percieved potential utility plus difficulty of acquiring a thing, for everything, whether it be an object or a service or an insubstantial concept.

This kind of misunderstanding of why things are valued is also a big driver behind, say, why libertarians are so loving nuts about the gold standard, incidentally

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 3, 2015

# ? Sep 3, 2015 19:58

Orange Sunshine: May 10, 2011; by FactsAreUseless

mysterious frankie posted:

It also tells them that you know how to plan and execute a complex four year project (if you went to a university with high admission standards it tells them you've got it together enough to have even started doing heavy duty preliminary work to achieve your goal while still in K-12). It's super valuable for applicants who have nothing too impressive on their cvs yet. Maybe it's not fair like some have said, but it's not an illogical hurdle put in place by the dumb ol' Man.

Yes. The primary purpose of an MBA is that it shows you had what it takes to get an MBA. It weeds out those too stupid or lazy or disorganized to get one. Also, you might possibly learn something that might be of some use in business, but that doesn't really matter.

And the people who are spending their time getting MBAs are mostly 20 year olds who are the most useless people on the planet, other than everyone younger than them, so no great loss in wasting their time.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 08:46

Sizone: Sep 13, 2007; by LadyAmbien

goodness posted:

Thank you for supporting what I am saying. If you are not learning how to think then you are in a lovely school or program, and that happens to be many of the schools and programs in our country. I didn't say that having people go to school from an early age is bad. Just the way the curriculum is taught at Primary and Secondary levels.

If you could explain how taking 4 years to teach information that only takes 2, especially when training for straight of out college jobs typically happen on the job, is wrong I am listening. I actually would like to know because from what I see the US education system is terrible compared to many European countries.

This is a highlight of the problem I am talking about. You do not need a 4 years of education (BA/BS for most people) to go work in an office and it is a flaw of our system that having a degree "proves" to the hiring agent that you are competent.

You are still equating degree with job, you're thinking of college as a trade school, you are still missing the point. Only assholes who get business degrees do that, you pursue higher education because you love the subject matter that you're studying or because it makes you a better, more interesting person.

Trash on primary education all you like, American public schools are basically garbage, but disparaging higher education is dumb. Between being a student and teaching I've had first hand experience with 2 community colleges, one for profit "university" and two CSUs. Only the for profit place was garbage (fortunately, I was freelance instructing there and not dependent on it for any of my learnin'). In fact, out of the uncountable units I've completed in my life, I can think of fewer than half-a-dozen courses which were a waste of time.

Honestly, it sounds like you've got a case of sour grapes because you took a calculus course and, like, a 100 level pearl scripting class and no one wants to hire you based on that.

Look, here's a sample G.E. course requirement list, that's two years worth of schooling. I wouldn't consider any of it to be frivolous except maybe the fine art requirement and the idiotic area e

http://www.santarosa.edu/for_students/student-services/articulation/csu.pdf

Now add to that 2 years worth of requirements for your major. That's 4 years of "information", not two years padded out to four.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 11:20

Stinky_Pete: Aug 16, 2015; Stinkier than your average bear; Lipstick Apathy

Sizone posted:

Trash on primary education all you like, American public schools are basically garbage, but disparaging higher education is dumb. Between being a student and teaching I've had first hand experience with 2 community colleges, one for profit "university" and two CSUs. Only the for profit place was garbage (fortunately, I was freelance instructing there and not dependent on it for any of my learnin'). In fact, out of the uncountable units I've completed in my life, I can think of fewer than half-a-dozen courses which were a waste of time.

Honestly, it sounds like you've got a case of sour grapes because you took a calculus course and, like, a 100 level pearl scripting class and no one wants to hire you based on that.

Look, here's a sample G.E. course requirement list, that's two years worth of schooling. I wouldn't consider any of it to be frivolous except maybe the fine art requirement and the idiotic area e

http://www.santarosa.edu/for_students/student-services/articulation/csu.pdf

Now add to that 2 years worth of requirements for your major. That's 4 years of "information", not two years padded out to four.

Yup. It turns out that learning to be a well-rounded person helps you become more than just a cog. It gives your work more context and helps you carry it across domains. And hell, even something as simple as my intro to film class gave me categories and concepts that helped me enjoy Breaking Bad and Community more.

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

a pile of gold bars is pretty worthless if you just bury em in the dirt and forget about em, too. The dichotomy you're setting up proposes some kind of innate, objectively measurable Value Atom that some things contain and some do not independent of human involvement. It's not, value is a rough measure of percieved potential utility plus difficulty of acquiring a thing, for everything, whether it be an object or a service or an insubstantial concept.

This kind of misunderstanding of why things are valued is also a big driver behind, say, why libertarians are so loving nuts about the gold standard, incidentally

This reminds me, a libertarian I keep on Facebook once posted a Keynes quote about how you could bury little bottles with U.S. bonds in them, and someone would hire workers and purchase machines to retrieve them, and it would technically help the economy, but there are better forms of economic activity. He had no clue that it was a jab about gold.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 14:57

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

Sizone posted:

You are still equating degree with job, you're thinking of college as a trade school, you are still missing the point. Only assholes who get business degrees do that, you pursue higher education because you love the subject matter that you're studying or because it makes you a better, more interesting person.

Trash on primary education all you like, American public schools are basically garbage, but disparaging higher education is dumb. Between being a student and teaching I've had first hand experience with 2 community colleges, one for profit "university" and two CSUs. Only the for profit place was garbage (fortunately, I was freelance instructing there and not dependent on it for any of my learnin'). In fact, out of the uncountable units I've completed in my life, I can think of fewer than half-a-dozen courses which were a waste of time.

Honestly, it sounds like you've got a case of sour grapes because you took a calculus course and, like, a 100 level pearl scripting class and no one wants to hire you based on that.

Look, here's a sample G.E. course requirement list, that's two years worth of schooling. I wouldn't consider any of it to be frivolous except maybe the fine art requirement and the idiotic area e

http://www.santarosa.edu/for_students/student-services/articulation/csu.pdf

Now add to that 2 years worth of requirements for your major. That's 4 years of "information", not two years padded out to four.

I am not trashing higher education, just stop. I am talking about education specifically in America. Higher education is a great thing itself and I am totally in support of it. The American system is just bad, especially in comparison to leading countries in education around the world. We have the power and money to make it one of the best but it is not important here to create individual thinkers.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 16:14

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

American schools consistently top the worldwide lists of best universities so I don't know what you're on about, although even if they didn't that would be an argument for more investment in education, not less.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 16:46

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

VitalSigns posted:

American schools consistently top the worldwide lists of best universities so I don't know what you're on about, although even if they didn't that would be an argument for more investment in education, not less.

There are some amazing schools here and I appreciate going to one, but again that is not the issue. The issue is that our primary/secondary education system is designed to get kids to pass standardized tests. I am also not arguing against investment in education. That is the most important issue in the world and deserves so much more than we give it here. It seems some states are slowly coming around to positive change at least.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 17:08

A Wizard of Goatse: Dec 14, 2014

goodness posted:

There are some amazing schools here and I appreciate going to one, but again that is not the issue. The issue is that our primary/secondary education system is designed to get kids to pass standardized tests. I am also not arguing against investment in education. That is the most important issue in the world and deserves so much more than we give it here. It seems some states are slowly coming around to positive change at least.

Could you move that goalpost just a little more

Stinky_Pete posted:

This reminds me, a libertarian I keep on Facebook once posted a Keynes quote about how you could bury little bottles with U.S. bonds in them, and someone would hire workers and purchase machines to retrieve them, and it would technically help the economy, but there are better forms of economic activity. He had no clue that it was a jab about gold.

bahaha

# ? Sep 4, 2015 19:36

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

Could you move that goalpost just a little more

bahaha

I could but it would not be where my point is. You are right originally I commented on the status of higher education, not that is was bad though just that our system was faulty. But that is due more to our primary/secondary education system than the actual colleges and universities. And the point is that P/S do not teach children to be independent, logical thinkers. They teach them to pass standardized tests. Higher education might give them enough to be successful in their job but take them out of that and they are just one of the millions posting the latest headline on Facebook without even bothering to read the article.

goodness fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Sep 4, 2015

# ? Sep 4, 2015 19:47

A Wizard of Goatse: Dec 14, 2014

lord knows none of those fancy non-American intellectuals repost poo poo on Facebook!

# ? Sep 4, 2015 20:11

fspades: Jun 3, 2013; by R. Guyovich

goodness posted:

I could but it would not be where my point is. You are right originally I commented on the status of higher education, not that is was bad though just that our system was faulty. But that is due more to our primary/secondary education system than the actual colleges and universities.

But what is even your point? The post you've objected to was about the societal value of public primary education, aka that institution literally everyone on Earth wanted to hop on since it became a thing during the 19th century. You have to bring a pretty drat strong argument to convince people it was all a huge failure. Bonus points if you can compare it with countries with completely privatized education systems. (there isn't any :ssh:

)

# ? Sep 4, 2015 20:19

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

fspades posted:

But what is even your point? The post you've objected to was about the societal value of public primary education, aka that institution literally everyone on Earth wanted to hop on since it became a thing during the 19th century. You have to bring a pretty drat strong argument to convince people it was all a huge failure. Bonus points if you can compare it with countries with completely privatized education systems. (there isn't any )

"And the point is that P/S do not teach children to be independent, logical thinkers. They teach them to pass standardized tests"

That we need to revitalize that area of education is the point. Not the fact that people should go to school, education can heal and unite the world's cultures and I am all for it.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 20:22

A Wizard of Goatse: Dec 14, 2014

lmao so we've gone from

goodness posted:

The western Education system is a huge failure fwiw.

to 'sixth graders in public schools could get a little more emphasis on critical thinking skills', this was definitely worth multiple posts to argue

# ? Sep 4, 2015 20:36

A Wizard of Goatse: Dec 14, 2014

The principle of Western education is history's greatest failure, by which I obviously mean that it is great, and succeeded at everything it set out to do.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 20:46

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

lmao so we've gone from

to 'sixth graders in public schools could get a little more emphasis on critical thinking skills', this was definitely worth multiple posts to argue

It is a huge failure at teaching children to be independent thinkers. Maybe this is just a recent turn of events and before now the American education system was amazing at this. It isn't just wah I wish kids had a little more critical thinking but I see you would like to argue ignorantly and call out my mistaken exaggeration rather than actually talk about it. It is all just opinions.

goodness fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Sep 4, 2015

# ? Sep 4, 2015 21:09

Hello Sailor: May 3, 2006; we're all mad here

goodness posted:

It is all just opinions.

I don't recall you posting any facts to get the ball rolling. When did you establish that some level of the US education system places less focus on critical thinking than the average focus on such by first-world nations?

# ? Sep 4, 2015 23:01

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

"The western education system is a huge failure, whoa why are you telling me I'm wrong it's just an opinion man, opinions can't be wrong."

You are making a very effective case that wherever you were educated, their system needs some serious reform.

# ? Sep 5, 2015 01:06

Stinky_Pete: Aug 16, 2015; Stinkier than your average bear; Lipstick Apathy

goodness posted:

It is a huge failure at teaching children to be independent thinkers. Maybe this is just a recent turn of events and before now the American education system was amazing at this. It isn't just wah I wish kids had a little more critical thinking

This is news to me. Maybe you don't see schools as teaching children critical thinking because it is hard to teach explicitly, and hard to measure. Can you even describe what's missing from the curricula that would help children become more independent thinkers?

# ? Sep 5, 2015 02:31

A Wizard of Goatse: Dec 14, 2014

Stinky_Pete posted:

This is news to me. Maybe you don't see schools as teaching children critical thinking because it is hard to teach explicitly, and hard to measure. Can you even describe what's missing from the curricula that would help children become more independent thinkers?

More open-ended assignments where kids are given a general end goal but relative freedom to figure out their own ways of accomplishing it, for one example. This is traditionally the wheelhouse of the humanities (write an essay about something interesting you did on summer vacation, put together an art show), while primary-level STEM stuff tends to be much more rote, although that doesn't have to be the case. It's not a completely unhinged statement anymore, he's just made the sulkiest retreat in human history to a bland generality that has nothing to do with what he originally said, or any topic anybody was discussing. And hosed it up when he tried to puff his sentences up to make it sound like he knows anything because lmaoooooo if you think independent, critical thinking is a thing prized by 'non-Western' educational systems.

The economic function of broadly accessible public education for all classes is not, and was never, about creating 'independent thinkers'. Nobody wants or needs a bunch of independent-thinking factory workers and farmers. Public schools are there to provide standardization, socialization, and basic skills training, which massively improve the productivity of the people coming out the other end. Before public schools started taking over even, say, literacy was a pretty exclusive, elite thing, not something just automatically expected of every person who can dress themselves. Like, just picture what it was like trying to get anything done in a world where you can't assume half the people you're working with can loving read, and then picture the kind of guy who dismisses the thing that made an industrial society possible as 'a failure' cause uuuuuh muuuuuuh NCLB is bad

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Sep 5, 2015

# ? Sep 5, 2015 03:57

Furia: Jul 26, 2015; Grimey Drawer

goodness posted:

It is a huge failure at teaching children to be independent thinkers. Maybe this is just a recent turn of events and before now the American education system was amazing at this. It isn't just wah I wish kids had a little more critical thinking but I see you would like to argue ignorantly and call out my mistaken exaggeration rather than actually talk about it. It is all just opinions.

How is it that you are complaining about a lack of critical independent thinking and you made a thread asking people to tell you what to think about a book you never read because you couldn't be bothered? Are you gonna blame this on the educational system too?

# ? Sep 18, 2015 10:47

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 16:30

Huttan: May 15, 2013

LloydDobler posted:

Don't forget there are three movies that earnestly summarize the book while wasting significantly less of your free time. I watched the first two on streaming in a drunken haze but they're only on dvd now so I'm much less inclined to finish. Plus they sucked hard.

They used different actors for all the characters in each movie. So if you watch them in sequence, it is hard to figure out who, for example, is playing Dagny this time. About the only advantage of watching the film is to hear Teller speak.

One of my complaints about the book is the cartoonish image of companies being unable to function when the CEO leaves. Anyone who has worked for a large corporation knows the ridiculousness of that idea. And for many modern corporations, they do better when the CEO gets sacked. Would Shell go belly up if the CEO decides to quit and set his oil rigs on fire? Did that work for Saddam Hussein? But we're supposed to believe that when Wyatt goes on strike, his company vanishes. All the employees suddenly become brainless morons when the CEO departs. And of course there are no shareholders who are now hunting down the next Bernie Maddoff (and any surviving relatives) because their stock is now worthless.

For folks who have never read the book and don't intend to, I always recommend a post by Brad Hicks. He suggests that Atlas Shrugged is book 1 of a trilogy with Anthem as the 3rd book.

Brad Hicks posted:

Atlas Shrugged, for those of you who never read it, can be summarized entirely fairly as follows. Unknown to our viewpoint characters at first, an inventor named John Galt has invented a "free energy" machine, a motor that runs on ambient static electricity and the Earth's own inertia and puts out enough electricity in a fairly small unit to power almost anything, including vehicles, force field generators, energy weapons, even an invisibility cloak if you use a big enough unit. He invented this while working at a company where his contract gave them rights to stuff he invented on the clock, like most professional engineers and inventors, but he assumed that as the inventor, he was entitled to all of the profits from this fabulous new invention. The company's management and other employees, though, saw just how much resentment would happen if one company owned the monopoly on an invention this valuable, and started making plans for how to invest some of the profits into charitable ventures, so they wouldn't get the whole thing taken away from them via eminent domain. John Galt, outraged that anybody would even suggest that he or the company he worked for owed anything to the nation that provided his education, protected him from infectious disease outbreaks, protected him from Communist invasion, built the roads that got him to work each day, provided the police that kept him safe, and provided the court system that protected his property rights at all, sabotaged the Galt Engine, so nobody could have it.

Then he went further and, in a fit of offended pique, promised to "stop the motor of the world," to kill 90% or so of Earth's population by intentionally wrecking the economy. Which he then did. How? By finding every other competent engineer or manager in the US and persuading them to be just as selfish as him, just as unwilling to pay back or protect their country; he declared a covert "strike of the mind," as he called it. He hid them all in a secretive compound in the Rocky Mountains, protected by force field and invisibility cloak, and waited for the US economy to collapse, which, obligingly, it did -- because John Galt had carefully sabotaged the bridges and railroads that made it possible for fuel and seeds to make it from the coastal cities to inland farms, and make it possible for food grown on inland farms to make it to the coastal cities. And as chaos was breaking out, he and his fellow inventors hijacked every radio transmitter in the US to broadcast his manifesto: You all deserve to die, for asking us to pay you back even one nickel, because we are all so selfish we don't consider any of the things you all paid for out of your taxes and that you did with your labor to have been at all helpful to us as entirely self-sufficient brilliant inventors and managers. So die.

He suggests that the middle of the trilogy should be called Shrug Harder.

quote:

And that's where the series is interrupted. But from where the third book picks up, and by applying a little common sense, we can outline the main plot points, if not the characterizations, from the untitled middle volume, the one I'm whimsically calling Atlas Shrugged 2: Shrug Harder. When the previous book ran out, America was winding down to what was clearly going to be the last harvest, ever, and the Strikers were planning for the day that they, as the only people possessing any high tech or any capability of mass production of food or anything else, would ride out of their hidden Colorado fortress as humanity's saviors. They were pledging to themselves to build a new world based, as John Galt's manifesto had promised all Americans, on the virtue of selfishness. They assumed that a grateful (or at least desperately needy) and vastly reduced in number population would welcome them as liberators, chastened and having learned their lesson. Except that we know from the third book that that's not what happened, and anybody who knows human nature should have been able to predict that.

Outside the valley, the conversion to local subsistence farming and the work of scavenging the dead cities for any usable metal would have been rough. No time or energy would have been available to save even minimal technology. We're looking at a collapse all the way back to (at best) early iron age levels, maybe even all the way back to the bronze age, and nobody will even have time to teach the next generation to read and write. But one thing very clearly did happen, in every survivor's village, and became world-wide policy as soon as even minimal travel and communication made it possible for the chiefs of the scattered villages of survivors began to reunite society into any kind of a civilization, and that is a fierce determination to make sure that the next generation remembered who had done this to them, and why they had done it. They would have educated their children to remember the names and descriptions of every one of the hated Strikers who had personally murdered four and a half billion people for a political point. And they would have educated their children that one idea, one idea in the Strikers' twisted minds, had lead to those four and a half billion deaths, the greatest act of genocide in human history: selfishness. How far did they go to eradicate selfishness? They went so far as to eradicate the first person pronoun from the language.

Because she died without telling anyone, it's not entirely clear how Shrug Harder would have ended. We know that at some point, at least one of the Strikers does leave Galt Valley. He built a high-tech home, stuffed it with a library and all the wonders of the Strikers' science, and then (apparently) set out to make contact with the nearest survivors' village, assuming that they'd worship him as a god for his technological superiority, assuming they'd cheerfully feed him and provide him with anything he wanted for the products of his labor. And, rather obviously, they did what anybody would do: they executed him for crimes against humanity. His technological redoubt was never found. Did other Strikers meet the same fate, or are they all holed up in Galt Valley still? We'll never know. But that brings us to the book that would clearly have been relabeled once the trilogy was complete ... Atlas Shrugged 3: Anthem.

As an aside, I've got all of Rand's published works, plus the stuff that Peikoff wrote when he "took over" after Rand died. Her fiction is basically her political/philosophical lectures wrapped up in a fig leaf. Which is why John Galt's speech covers some 20 pages. And why the characters never talk to each other, just past each other. Rand's understanding of how humans behave is as wooden and broken as the junk in the Left Behind series. I remember going to some objectivist conferences back in the 80s and they sold cassettes of her lectures, which reminded me of Amway (and other MLM) presentations, where the "leaders" would sell bootleg cassettes to their "downstream". Sometimes I think that the only profit in multi-level marketing pyramids (outside of the parent corp) was this selling of bootleg "motivational" speeches/lectures.

quote:

Anthem is actually the best book of the three. And it's a credit to Rand that she realized just how monstrous the real results of the Strike would be. Many, many so-called Objectivists and Libertarians, who only read the first book, thought they were supposed to cheer for the Strikers, believed the Strikers' personal delusion that the Strike, and the resulting mass genocide, would usher in a techno-libertarian paradise on earth. No, in Anthem we get a view of John Galt's Earth from the viewpoint of someone who grew up in the next generation, never having known a technological world, knowing only a world in which selfishness is labeled the ultimate sin. The massive die-off from John Galt's strike has resulted in the rise of the most vicious and backwards and cruelly unfair totalitarian regime in human history. And our nameless hero slowly has it dawn on him that the ruling council is so afraid of selfishness that they're retarding any attempt to restore human technological civilization, no matter how miserable and stunted low-tech life is, until they figure out some way to integrate technological progress into their civilization without anybody being able to claim credit for it. Which cannot possibly work.

Our nameless hero, having found working light bulbs and a working electrical system in the ruins of the city his farming town is built over, even offers to forgo personal credit for the discovery, offers to accept no credit for it at all. But their paranoia and terror that he's a prospective future Striker pushes them to hound him to the point where in desperation he and his girlfriend flee the city into the uninhabited wasteland ... where they find the technological trove, and the library, left behind by the unnamed Striker at the end of Shrug Harder. He and his now wife settle down to raise children, to use the subsistence farming skills they learned from their own civilization to sustain them, to gather any other stragglers who escape the cities, and to stay out of sight until they find a way to overthrow the horribly dictatorial Councils that rule the world and lead it to a saner middle ground, one that (presumably) knows to watch out for civilization-wreckers like John Galt but that also knows that giving personal credit is a prerequisite for technological advance. It is, if not an entirely happy ending, a hopeful one.

Oh, except for one thing. I made up the whole bit about the second book. I don't think Ayn Rand was aware enough of the limitations of her philosophy for her to realize that the communo-primitivist dictatorship of Anthem, not a techno-libertarian utopia, would be the inevitable outcome of a genocide of almost the entire human race by techno-libertarians. Oops. Never mind, then. Sorry!

She never gets the concept of revenge and retaliation.

# ? Sep 19, 2015 19:12

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me why Atlas Shrugged is stupid so I don't have to read it.

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