Menter: Will Aspens reopening shrug off the virus? – Aspen Daily News

This week I am reprising a slightly modified version of a column I wrote in this paper almost eight years ago titled Aspen shrugged (Aspen Daily News, July 19, 2012). Its substance seems more appropriate now than ever. Socialism and free market economics intersect more acutely in Aspen than perhaps any other place on earth. Without adaptation, Aspens fragile balance of unparalleled governmental subsidies for locals, and an international tourism economy playing to the jet-setting, uber-wealthy capitalist class, may be in jeopardy. Can such a system, dependent on safe and efficient air travel, and relying almost entirely on the intangibles of experiential value, survive the emerging coronavirus-triggered economic disruption?

Ayn Rands self-proclaimed magnum opus Atlas Shrugged uses as background for her philosophy of objectivism a fictional world where capitalists are denigrated by ministers of a centrally controlled economy. In this dystopian domain individuals work for the benefit of the collective. As the capitalists disappear into hiding, the worlds economy collapses.

Atlas imperfectly references the titan from Greek mythology, who in modern interpretations is forced by Zeus to hold the world on his shoulders. Rands symbolism of a shrugging Atlas represents the worlds productive capitalists shrugging off responsibility for anyone but themselves by retreating to a mountain hideaway and refusing to help rebuild an economy they did not destroy.

Theorizing an opposing world view to Karl Marxs workers paradise, Rand envisioned a world where people act out of selfish rationality to achieve their individual interests, in contrast to Marx and Friedrich Engels, who openly promoted the Communist Manifesto to portend a stateless and classless worldwide communist society where the individual was subordinate to the collective. Rands world view was seared into her consciousness through personal experience with the failed Soviet interpretation of Marxs communism. Not unlike Marx, Rands belief in the superiority of her economic and political philosophy was the definitive sign of her narcissistic intellectualism.

If Marx and Rand are foundational polar extremes of modern political and economic thought, then Aspen is the modern petri dish for the interplay of their philosophies. While few Aspenites would identify as communists or objectivists, mostly placing themselves somewhere in between, it remains true that few communities are so geographically separate and also so economically and societally segmented as Aspen.

On the valley floor reside mostly workers. The workers mostly, but not exclusively, inhabit tidy government-subsidized, garage-less homes. On the elevated surroundings reside mostly the capitalists as Rand might refer to them. The capitalists mostly reside in exquisite privately owned homes, some with garages so big, theyre larger than an average workers entire home.

The workers of Aspen are united in the sense that their livelihood relies upon consumption, which like gravity, flows from the higher elevations to the valley floor. This activity generates the taxes needed to provide the subsidized housing, transportation, child care, and recreation that make Aspens idyllic working-class life possible in one of the nations most expensive zip codes (although according to Business Insider, as of 2019 Aspen no longer even cracks the nations top 25).

Conversely, as if defying gravity, political power rises from the workers on the valley floor who exact the taxes needed to support their idyllic (it isnt really, hence the quotation marks) working-class lifestyle from the capitalist class, so long as they continue enjoying the view. Rand might not consider these as examples of objectively selfish behavior, but given the system in place, thats what it looks like to me. More importantly, there is exactly nothing requiring this systems perpetuation.

Reflecting neither Marxs utopia, nor Rands dystopia, Aspens delicately balanced, capitalistically funded socialism relies on one commonly shared notion. While the people here are real, the place defies reality. In traditional economic terms, Aspen produces almost nothing of value yet retains some of the highest property values on the planet. This understanding of value is both notional and contrived.

Aspens notional economic value lies exclusively in its ability to deliver one product, the Aspen experience. Its contrived economic value flows from the government subsidies generated by the demand for that experience, which over the past many decades has far exceeded available supply. But will future demand remain so high? All economic systems have a half-life, and Aspens monied visitors and government-subsidized, private-sector workers cannot exist without each other. It is Aspens intertwined economic values, notional and contrived, capitalist and socialist, that make Aspens economy work, and the kicker is, its a system that produces nothing that any consumer cannot live without or get at a lower cost someplace else.

In a coronavirus world, will Rands capitalists continue to willingly pay any price to parachute into Aspen to ski, listen to beautiful music and annually conjure a festival of ideas, financing the resort communitys government-subsidized locals' lifestyle? The notion seems less objectively rational than ever.

Would Marx recoil at the sight of Aspens sell-out socialism, where service to and control over capitalism have heretofore simultaneously made possible his otherwise futilely pursued workers paradise? Or would he decide its demise was a painful but necessary step for the purity of the collectives cause? My guess is the latter.

Most importantly, will Aspens delicately balanced, capitalist-funded socialist paradise (by now you know the reason for the quotations) and tourism-based economy shrug off the coronavirus pandemic and return to some adaptation of normality? Or, like after the silver boom ended a century ago, will Aspen begin a return to quieter years? I hope its the former, but only time will tell.

pmenter98388@gmail.com

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Menter: Will Aspens reopening shrug off the virus? - Aspen Daily News