Atlas Shrugged and the need for greed

By Contributor Archive

Filed Under General, Outside the Track on Jun 2 

Stephen Moore writes today in the Wall Street Journal comparing life in the US today, to the fictional world of Atlas Shrugged:

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

Currently we have:
Housing crisis
Credit Crisis
Banking Crisis
Failure of Auto Industry Crisis
Environmental Crisis
States Budget Crisis
Healthcare Crisis
And so on…


The Obama administration and the Bush administration before it, in their benevolence are trying to save us from ourselves with more laws, programs, borrowing money we don’t have to pay for things we don’t want or need. I’m sure Mr Obama thinks he will bring people up from their present state by mandating that the government intervene in our lives. I don’t think he realizes that in the process of bringing people up, he is really tearing them down. Eventually the people who produce things in the economy will stop because the incentive to produce is gone. Some might call this disappearance of greed a good thing

Many have said greed is the problem and needs to be stopped. Who better to stop the greed than the government? They’re not greedy at all! Who better to make choices for you than some bureaucrat in a cubicle somewhere in the 202 area code? Never mind that the laws of economics tell us that you will always make the best choices for yourself when left to your own devices — and this is why the US has prospered.

I do think greed has brought us to the point of these crisises. However, the government is not the solution to the greed and the current crises we now face.

Milton Friedman, the grandfather of the free market, explains it perfectly to Phil Donahue in this clip

Friedman teaches us these things:
1—Great ideas don’t come from the government
2—There has never been a society that has not run and/or been motivated by greed. And I will add here that this is not a bad thing.
3—The only time society has escaped from poverty and oppression is when there has been capitalism and free trade.

I will close by saying this, with great freedom. Comes great responsibility, we clearly have not understood that. Sadly the government has picked up on that and has convinced itself and many that they must be the responsible party in all of this. Sadly by doing this we learn nothing and Atlas Shrugged becomes a reality, not just big book on the library shelf.

Comments

  • ABNormal

    Her fiction works are good reads, but her endings are often laughable. Mostly, her fiction is great for thorough explanations and lifelike examples of her philosophy. In Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, Rand often stops the story to describe certain philosophical concepts. These concepts are awesom to know, but if you are reading just for the story (and not an indoctrination), this can be frustrating. For example, in AS, she describes about the nature of money for 40 pages!

    I prefer to read her non-fiction where she gets right to the point.

    You absolutely must read The Virtue of Selfishness, For the New Intellectual, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and Philosophy: Who Needs It.

    For you creative people, you must read: The Romantic Manifesto.

    Writers should read: The Art of Fiction and The Art of Non-Fiction.

  • Brian H

    Good point, Eden

    I just watched a documentary on North Korea and the same thing happens there. People barter in markets for their necessities.

    Like the scene in Jurassic Park when Goldblum’s character says “that life, uh… finds a way”, so too can be said about the free markets, regardless of how much governments try to do to halt its ability to flourish.

    • East of Eden

      i always think of that Jeff Goldblum quote from Jurassic Park when I think about the Bulgarians! Life does find a way…it always does.

  • Gary Russell

    What we truly have is a LEADERSHIP crisis.

  • Brian H

    Look at what is happening in California and New York where the wealthy producers are leaving due to the heavy tax burdens and you can see that Atlas is beginning to shrug.

    Look at the corporate leaders that are being replaced by unexperienced bureaucrats and you can see that Atlas is beginning to shrug.

    Look at the people taking to the streets in Tea Parties to protect the product of their efforts and you will see that Atlas is beginning to shrug.

    Unfortunately, before the situation improves it will only get worse.

    I have my “Who is John Galt?” bumper stickers proudly displayed on my cars.

    • East of Eden

      I always wondered what the John Galt bumper stickers ment, until recently.

      The thing with the government taking over and trying to level the playing field or whatever you want to call it, is that the free market will always find a way to creep in and subvert around the governemt. I learned this when I lived in Bulgaria in the early 90s just after communisim fell. The people there would tell me about how they would barter and trade with each other to get the things they needed that the government didn’t or wouldn’t supply. They were and are very resourseful people, who I would not mind being stranded with when things get really bad.

  • Sartho

    I took a class in college called the History of Economic Docterine. In that class they explained that one of the basic premises of capitalism is that there has to be a poverty class – a group of people willing to work the jobs that nobody else wants because either the pay is terrible or the job itself is terrible.

    This seemed so odd to me because you always hear about how great capitalism is but it requires people to be poor and to suffer. But then I realized that it doesn’t “require” a specific set of individuals to be poor. It provides people opportunities to either be poor or not to be poor, however those opportunities may not be equal. But the essence is that people choose to be poor. I grew up well below the poverty line and it was because I had a disabled mother who couldn’t work and a father who relied on get-rich-quick programs that took more money than he ever made off of them because he didn’t want to work for a living.

    By trying to eliminate poverty we tend to spur it on by teaching people to become dependent rather than to be self sufficient. And the larger the dependent group becomes, the greater financial burden on the entire nation because there’s less tax revenue coming in and more payments going out. Not a good combination.

    I’m not a believer in forced charity. If people don’t want to work, let them pay the consequences. If people want to give, then let them, don’t force them. The only circumstances where I would reconsider is when people really don’t have that choice or opportunity – physical or mental limitations, etc.

    • Kristen Berry

      Sartho,
      I’m with you on the concept of forced charity.

      Give a man a fish and you have fed him for the day.
      Teach him how to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime
      - Chinese proverb

      I do believe poverty is a learned choice.

    • East of Eden

      Sartho…thanks for sharing about your life growing up, I’m sure it wasn’t easy.

      Personally, the times when I had less motivated me to improve my life, and I knew then that I was the only one that could make my situation better.

  • Joe Citizen

    ‘We the Living,’ her first book, is also a must read.