From Fiction To Reality

Steve Moore says that we are fulfilling Ayn Rand’s dystopian prediction:

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn’t Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and the “Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act.” Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion — in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of “Atlas Shrugged”: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That’s the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies — while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to “calm the markets,” another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”

She was far ahead of her time.

10 thoughts on “From Fiction To Reality”

  1. Even more on-target, and generally overlooked today, is her earlier dystopian novel Anthem, when she predicted that the left would ultimately turn anti-technology. Made in the Thirties when the left was wallowing in Stalinist smokestack porn, this prediction seemed wildly off-base. But Rand had been paying attention to the underlying arguments of people like Lewis Mumford. There are handful of techno-liberals still around, most of whom are placing a pathetically overoptimistic confidence in the Obama Administration. But the left generally seems to be in the process of becoming the political arm of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement. The new Science Adviser seems to be of that wing, for example.

  2. Part of it seems to be some sort of wish-fulfillment. There’s a deep need for the engineers, the entrepreneurs, and the scientists (the ones who actually participate in technology development) to be wrong. Maybe it’s some sort of Luddite concern? If I stop technological progress then I can’t be replaced. Definitely there is something very religious and dogmatic about environmentalism. Why is it so important to recycle or buy “green” products?

  3. Eh, Karl, for most of humanity relative power and wealth is much more important than absolute power and wealth. That is, for most people, being richer and more powerful than you is more important than us both being richer and more powerful.

    If the New Left (or even the old Left) had its way, we’d all be poorer and more constrained, but they would have more power over us. From their point of view, that’s a win. This is why the new Democratic leadership are utterly unconcerned about whether their schemes will impoverish the nation. Frankly, they would welcome a new Great Depression, because it would enormously enhance their power and prestige.

    Folks who would willingly choose a world in which (for example) they could be richer and live an easier life, even at the “expense” of the CEO of IBM or Amazon being even richer and living an even easier life, are in the minority, at least in nontechnical fields.

  4. Carl, you wrote:

    If the New Left (or even the old Left) had its way, we’d all be poorer and more constrained, but they would have more power over us. From their point of view, that’s a win.

    I see why the “New Left” elite is for this. They make out like bandits. The question though is why do so many of the public buy into it?

    Eh, Karl, for most of humanity relative power and wealth is much more important than absolute power and wealth. That is, for most people, being richer and more powerful than you is more important than us both being richer and more powerful.

    That does seem to be the right angle for a lot of stuff. My impression though is that there’s also an implicit assumption that we’re in a zero-sum game. If, for example, Bill Gates is getting richer, it has to be at the expense of everyone who isn’t rich.

    Technological development is a bit different. I don’t see an obvious relative power matter. Maybe the people who can figure out the tech have the advantage? But from a zero-sum game point of view technology is threatening. If someone comes up with technology that makes our lives easier, there has to be some tradeoff somewhere that cancels that benefit. Since from many peoples’ points of view, new technology just “happens”, then the drawbacks are equally unpredictable.

    The example that has long been done to cliche is immortality. In art, immortality is always portrayed with serious side effects, often bad enough that the subject (victim?) longs for death or causes great harm to others in their obscene quest for eternal life. Even in situations where immortality is offered to the entire human race (for example, curing all forms of cancer in the recent movie version of “I am Legion”) there’s some terrible drawback whose cost is far worse than curing all forms of cancer. It doen’t appear to me to have anything to do with relative power.

  5. >> the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance).

    Such a law would adversely impact my current employer, and myself. I work for his second small business, which his first provided the financial means for.

  6. The question though is why do so many of the public buy into it?

    You mean people who are merely soldiers in the movement, not the leaders? Well, in part they do expect to benefit, if only a little bit. The Gender Studies student expects to get a grant from the government so he won’t feel inferior to the part-timer who works his way through school getting an engineering degree. The union teacher expects to see legislation come down that will protect her wages (at, perhaps, the expense of new teachers, or the books the students get). If nothing else, they expect to feel smugly superior to the other side, and see a few of the leaders of the other side publically horsewhipped. Never underestimate the taste of the average man for seeing those of whom he is jealous slaughtered in the arena for his amusement. There are also certainly quite a lot of useful idiots, folks who believe the nonsense through honest mistake, poor rearing or education, et cetera.

    there’s also an implicit assumption that we’re in a zero-sum game. If, for example, Bill Gates is getting richer, it has to be at the expense of everyone who isn’t rich.

    That’s because over the shortest term it is a zero-sum game. Bill Gates can only get $10 per copy of Vista if everyone of us — well, you — who buy a copy give up that $10. Now, of course, we later reap many benefits from Vista (or so the ads say), so that it’s worth that $10 and more. But that’s longer term, and requires longer term thinking. If people were good at that, there’d be no such thing as obesity and out of control credit card debt.

    But from a zero-sum game point of view technology is threatening.

    I wouldn’t say people look for hidden evil in the new tech. Rather, they know technology is both powerful and tricky to use. Hence, they suspect that it will become mostly a tool for the more capable among us to extract more value from the masses. That is, it will let Bill Gates cleverly charge more for Vista.

    They also probably fear the challenge of mastering it, and that if they don’t, they’ll fall behind everyone else and get poorer. It’s like Microsoft (to pick on Bill more) coming out with yet another new operating system, with all kinds of settings and cleverness you have to figure out. You worry that if you don’t do it right, you’ll get inundated with viruses and miss out on all the cool new YouTube videos your co-workers are talking about, and feel like a doofus.

  7. “we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, ”

    Why are you surprised? Didn’t Bush promise in 2000
    to run a CEO Presidency?

  8. That is, for most people, being richer and more powerful than you is more important than us both being richer and more powerful.

    I find this to be both discouraging and true. How do you remain such an optimist?

  9. I find this to be both discouraging and true. How do you remain such an optimist?

    Goodness, ken, the finiteness of life and the increasing aches and pains of middle age, not to mention the annoyance of presbyopia, bother me far more than the fact that humanity does not live up to its stated ideals.

    Because, first of all, I regard the rest of humanity, including its silly social systems, as just a choppy sea through which I must swim to reach my personal objectives. I don’t much care if the rest of you make sense or are driving yourselves to general ruin, so long as I can ensure the security and prosperity of myself and my family and friends. And that I can do.

    Indeed, most intellitent and capable people can do just fine whatever the social madness around us. When the Mongols invade, we just become factors for the warlords, becoming so helpful to them in lending efficiency to their efforts to exterminate the prior ruling class and exploit the masses, that we rise to high levels of reward and power in the new heirarchy.

    This is why I have to laugh at the Obama minions who think The Revolution is going to free them of the claws of their oppressors in the overclass (e.g. their overdue Visa and cable bill, the expense of their cell phone and recent ER visit for an upset stomach, the fact that they only got a C in algebra and got summarily fired by Barnes and Noble for turning up late the 18th time in a row). In truth, the overclass — those who are intelligent and capable — remains always the same people. They just change their titles, is all, from CEO and CFO to People’s Comissar or whatever. Believing in revolution is a fool’s paradise as old as mankind.

    Secondly, I believe in biology. Humanity has not really changed its nature in 40,000 years, and I don’t think it will in the next 40,000 years. We have wired-in instincts that ultimately rule us far more than our intellectual fads or verbal theorizing, and these instincts generally take care of us. That doesn’t mean people with messed-up ideas survive — it’s always possible they won’t, and new people with better ideas will replace them. But generally the species is robust and will survive any temporary silliness, even if large swathes of individuals will not. I just make sure I’m always surfing on the unstoppable swell of the basic instincts, not trying to fight them. That way likes as much success as it is given to mortal man to achieve in this life.

    Take heart. Read some history. Humanity has indulged in these follies for millenia, and, for the most parth, they’re just froth and noise. Where they’re actually dangerous, some cautious getting out of the way will preserve you and yours.

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