Category Archives: Atlas Shrugged

Several years ago, Miss Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead. Despite a generally poor press, it is said to have sold some four hundred thousand copies. Thus, it became a wonder of the book trade of a kind that publishers dream about after taxes. So Atlas Shrugged had a first printing of one hundred thousand copies. It appears to be slowly climbing the best-seller lists.

The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could not possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do. Somebody has called it: Excruciatingly awful. I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the looters. These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, labor, etc., etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. This, she is saying in effect, is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.

Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive storyknown as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures.

The Children of Light are largely operatic caricatures. Insofar as any of them suggests anything known to the business community, they resemble the occasional curmudgeon millionaire, tales about whose outrageously crude and shrewd eccentricities sometimes provide the lighter moments in boardrooms. Otherwise, the Children of Light are geniuses. One of them is named (the only smile you see will be your own): Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian dAntonio. This electrifying youth is the worlds biggest copper tycoon. Another, no less electrifying, is named: Ragnar Danesjold. He becomes a twentieth-century pirate. All Miss Rands chief heroes are also breathtakingly beautiful. So is her heroine (she is rather fetchingly vice president in charge of management of a transcontinental railroad).

So much radiant energy might seem to serve a eugenic purpose. For, in this story as in Mark Twains, all the knights marry the princessthough without benefit of clergy. Yet from the impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of the heroine and three of the heroes, no childrenit suddenly strikes youever result. The possibility is never entertained. And, indeed, the strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged is scarcely a place for children. You speculate that, in life, children probably irk the author and may make her uneasy. How could it be otherwise when she admiringly names a banker character (by what seems to me a humorless master-stroke): Midas Mulligan? You may fool some adults; you cant fool little boys and girls with such stuffnot for long. They may not know just what is out of line, but they stir uneasily. The Children of Darkness are caricatures, too; and they are really oozy. But at least they are caricatures of something identifiable. Their archetypes are Left-Liberals, New Dealers, Welfare Statists, One Worlders, or, at any rate, such ogreish semblances of these as may stalk the nightmares of those who think little about people as people, but tend to think a great deal in labels and effigies. (And neither Right nor Left, be it noted in passing, has a monopoly of such dreamers, though the horrors in their nightmares wear radically different masks and labels.)

In Atlas Shrugged, all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as looters. This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears and hates. This spares her the playguy business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.

Looters loot because they believe in Robin Hood, and have got a lot of other people believing in him, too. Robin Hood is the authors image of absolute evilrobbing the strong (and hence good) to give to the weak (and hence no good). All looters are base, envious, twisted, malignant minds, motivated wholly by greed for power, combined with the lust of the weak to tear down the strong, out of a deepseated hatred of life and secret longing for destruction and death. There happens to be a tiny (repeat: tiny) seed of truth in this. The full clinical diagnosis can be read in the pages of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Here I must break in with an aside. Miss Rand acknowledges a grudging debt to one, and only one, earlier philosopher: Aristotle. I submit that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzsche. Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so her ulcerous leftists are Nietzsches last men, both deformed in a way to sicken the fastidious recluse of Sils Maria. And much else comes, consciously or not, from the same source.) Happily, in Atlas Shrugged (though not in life), all the Children of Darkness are utterly incompetent.

So the Children of Light win handily by declaring a general strike of brains, of which they have a monopoly, letting the world go, literally, to smash. In the end, they troop out of their Rocky Mountain hideaway to repossess the ruins. It is then, in the books last line, that a character traces in the dir, over the desolate earth, the Sign of the Dollar, in lieu of the Sign of the Cross, and in token that a suitably prostrate mankind is at last ready, for its sins, to be redeemed from the related evils of religion and social reform (the mysticism of mind and the mysticism of muscle).

That Dollar Sign is not merely provocative, though we sense a sophomoric intent to raise the pious hair on susceptible heads. More importantly, it is meant to seal the fact that mankind is ready to submit abjectly to an elite of technocrats, and their accessories, in a New Order, enlightened and instructed by Miss Rands ideas that the good life is one which has resolved personal worth into exchange value, has left no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous cash-payment. The author is explicit, in fact deafening, about these prerequisites. Lest you should be in any doubt after 1,168 pages, she assures you with a final stamp of the foot in a postscript:

And I mean it. But the words quoted above are those of Karl Marx. He, too, admired naked self-interest (in its time and place), and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleared away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishment. The overlap is not as incongruous as it looks. Atlas Shrugged can be called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers inside the tent, and as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The Message is the thing. It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism. Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system, one, intellectually, at about the stage of the oxcart, though without mastering the principle of the wheel. Like any consistent materialism, this one begins by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc., etc. (This books aggressive atheism and rather unbuttoned higher morality, which chiefly outrage some readers, are, in fact, secondary ripples, and result inevitably from its underpinning premises.) Thus, Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world.

At that point, in any materialism, the main possibilities open up to Man. 1) His tragic fate becomes, without God, more tragic and much lonelier. In general, the tragedy deepens according to the degree of pessimism or stoicism with which he conducts his hopeless encounter between human questioning and the silent universe. Or, 2) Mans fate ceases to be tragic at all. Tragedy is bypassed by the pursuit of happiness. Tragedy is henceforth pointless. Henceforth mans fate, without God, is up to him, and to him alone. His happiness, in strict materialist terms, lies with his own workaday hands and ingenious brain. His happiness becomes, in Miss Rands words, the moral purpose of his fife.

Here occurs a little rub whose effects are just as observable in a free-enterprise system, which is in practice materialist (whatever else it claims or supposes itself to be), as they would be under an atheist socialism, if one were ever to deliver that material abundance that all promise. The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure, with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit. No doubt, Miss Rand has brooded upon that little rub. Hence in part, I presume, her insistence on man as a heroic being With productive achievement as his noblest activity. For, if Mans heroism (some will prefer to say: human dignity) no longer derives from God, or is not a function of that godless integrity which was a root of Nietzsches anguish, then Man becomes merely the most consuming of animals, with glut as the condition of his happiness and its replenishment his foremost activity. So Randian Man, at least in his ruling caste, has to be held heroic in order not to be beastly. And this, of course, suits the authors economics and the politics that must arise from them. For politics, of course, arise, though the author of Atlas Shrugged stares stonily past them, as if this book were not what, in fact, it is, essentiallya political book. And here begins mischief. Systems of philosophic materialism, so long as they merely circle outside this worlds atmosphere, matter little to most of us. The trouble is that they keep coming down to earth. It is when a system of materialist ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real life that mischief starts. In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them.

One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she seems to have in mind). When she calls productive achievement mans noblest activity, she means, almost exclusively, technological achievement, supervised by such a managerial political bureau. She might object that she means much, much more; and we can freely entertain her objections. But, in sum, that is just what she means. For that is what, in reality, it works out to. And in reality, too, by contrast with fiction, this can only head into a dictatorship, however benign, living and acting beyond good and evil, a law unto itself (as Miss Rand believes it should be), and feeling any restraint on itself as, in practice, criminal, and, in morals, vicious (as Miss Rand clearly feels it to be). Of course, Miss Rand nowhere calls for a dictatorship. I take her to be calling for an aristocracy of talents. We cannot labor here why, in the modern world, the pre-conditions for aristocracy, an organic growth, no longer exist, so that the impulse toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship.

Nor has the author, apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the Left first surprisingly resemble, then, in action, tend to blend each with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing. The embarrassing similarities between Hitlers National Socialism and Stalins brand of Communism are familiar. For the world, as seen in materialist view from the Right, scarcely differs from the same world seen in materialist view from the Left. The question becomes chiefly: who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently?

Something of this implication is fixed in the books dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To a gas chambergo! The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture-that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

We struggle to be just. For we cannot help feeling at least a sympathetic pain before the sheer labor, discipline, and patient craftsmanship that went to making this mountain of words. But the words keep shouting us down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own antidote, warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything. Nor would we, ordinarily, place much confidence in the diagnosis of a doctor who supposes that the Hippocratic Oath is a kind of curse.

Review from The National Review, by Whittaker Chambers

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Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | Conservative Book Club

In electing Trump, the Republican base rejected laissez-faire economics in favor of economic nationalism. Full-fledged objectivism, the philosophy Rand invented, is an atheistic creed that calls for pure capitalism and a bare-bones government with no social spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare. It's never appeared on the national political scene without significant dilution. But there was plenty of diluted Rand on offer throughout the primary season: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz all espoused traditional Republican nostrums about reducing the role of government to unleash American prosperity.

Yet none of this could match Trump's full-throated roar to build a wall or his protectionist plans for American trade. In the general election, Trump sought out new voters and independents using arguments traditionally associated with Democrats: deploying the power of the state to protect workers and guarantee their livelihoods, even at the cost of trade agreements and long-standing international alliances. Trump's economic promises electrified rural working-class voters the same way Bernie Sanders excited urban socialists. Where Rand's influence has stood for years on the right for a hands-off approach to the economy, Trump's "America first" platform contradicts this premise by assuming that government policies can and should deliberately shape economic growth, up to and including punishing specific corporations. Likewise, his promise to craft trade policy in support of the American worker is the exact opposite of Rand's proclamation that "the essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade."

And there's little hope that Trump's closest confidants will reverse his decidedly anti-Randian course. The conservative Republicans who came to power with Trump in an almost accidental process may find they have to exchange certain ideals to stay close to him. True, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence have been able to breathe new life into Republican economic and social orthodoxies. For instance, in a nod to Pence's religious conservatism, Trump shows signs of reversing his earlier friendliness to gay rights. And his opposition to Obamacare dovetails with Ryan's long-held ambitions to shrink federal spending. Even so, there is little evidence that either Pence or Ryan would have survived a Republican primary battle against Trump or fared well in a national election; their fortunes are dependent on Trump's. And the president won by showing that the Republican base and swing voters have moved on from the traditional conservatism of Reagan and Rand.

What is rising on the right is not Randian fear of government but something far darker. It used to be that bright young things like Stephen Miller, the controversial White House aide, came up on Rand. In the 1960s, she inspired a rump movement of young conservatives determined to subvert the GOP establishment, drawing in future bigwigs such as Alan Greenspan. Her admirers were powerfully attracted to the insurgent presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, whom Rand publicly supported. They swooned when she talked about the ethics of capitalism, delegitimizing programs like Medicare and Medicaid as immoral. They thrilled to her attack on the draft and other conservative pieties. At national conferences, they asked each other, "Who is John Galt?" (a reference to her novel "Atlas Shrugged") and waved the black flag of anarchism, modified with a gold dollar sign.

Over time, most conservatives who stayed in politics outgrew these juvenile provocations or disavowed them. For example, Ryan moved swiftly to replace Rand with Thomas Aquinas when he was nominated in 2012 for vice president, claiming that the Catholic thinker was his primary inspiration (although it was copies of "Atlas Shrugged," not "Summa Theologiae," that he handed out to staffers). But former Randites retained her fiery hatred of government and planted it within the mainstream GOP. And it was Rand who had kindled their passions in the first place, making her the starting point for a generation of conservatives.

Now Rand is on the shelf, gathering dust with F.A. Hayek, Edmund Burke and other once-prominent conservative luminaries. It's no longer possible to provoke the elders by going on about John Galt. Indeed, many of the elders have by now used Randian references to name their yachts, investment companies and foundations.

Instead, young insurgent conservatives talk about "race realism ," argue that manipulated crime statistics mask growing social disorder and cast feminism as a plot against men. Instead of reading Rand, they take the "red pill", indulging in an emergent internet counter-culture that reveals the principles of liberalism rights, equality, tolerance to be dangerous myths. Beyond Breitbart.com, ideological energy on the right now courses through tiny blogs and websites of the Dark Enlightenment, the latter-day equivalent of Rand's Objectivist Newsletter and the many libertarian 'zines she inspired.

Once upon a time, professors tut-tutted when Rand spoke to overflow crowds on college campuses, where she lambasted left and right alike and claimed, improbably, that big business was America's persecuted minority. She delighted in skewering liberal audience members and occasionally turned her scorn on questioners. But this was soft stuff compared with the insults handed out by Milo Yiannopoulos and the uproar that has greeted his appearances. Rand may have accused liberals of having a "lust for power," but she never would have called Holocaust humor a harmless search for "lulz," as Yiannopoulos gleefully does.

Indeed, the new ideas on the right have moved away from classical liberalism altogether. American conservatives have always had a mixed reaction to the Western philosophical tradition that emphasizes the sanctity of the individual. Religious conservatives, in particular, often struggle with Rand because her extreme embrace of individualism leaves little room for God, country, duty or faith. But Trump represents a victory for a form of conservatism that is openly illiberal and willing to junk entirely the traditional rhetoric of individualism and free markets for nationalism inflected with racism, misogyny and xenophobia.

Mixed in with Rand's vituperative attacks on government was a defense of the individual's rights in the face of a powerful state. This single-minded focus could yield surprising alignments, such as Rand's opposition to drug laws and her support of legal abortion. And although liberals have always loved to hate her, over the next four years, they may come to miss her defense of individual autonomy and liberty. Ayn Rand is dead. Long live Ayn Rand!

- - -

Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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Washington Post Op-ed: Ayn Rand is dead. Liberals are going to miss her. - Salt Lake Tribune

By Jennifer Burns By Jennifer Burns March 3 at 8:28 AM

Jennifer Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Ayn Rand is dead. Its been 35 years since hundreds of mourners filed by her coffin (fittingly accompanied by a dollar-sign-shaped flower arrangement), but it has been only four months since she truly died as a force in American politics. Yes, there was aflurryofarticles identifyingRand lovers in the Trump administration, including Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo; yes, Ivanka Trumptweetedaninaccurate Rand quotein mid-February. But the effort to fix a recognizable right-wing ideology on President Trump only obscures the more significant long-term trends that the election of 2016 laid bare.However much Trump seems like the Rand hero par excellence a wealthy man with a fiery belief in, well, himself his victory signals the exhaustion of the Republican Partys romance with Rand.

In electing Trump, the Republican base rejected laissez-faire economics in favor of economic nationalism. Full-fledged objectivism, the philosophy Rand invented, is an atheistic creed that calls for pure capitalism and a bare-bones government with no social spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare. Itsnever appeared on the national political scene without significant dilution. But there was plenty of diluted Rand on offer throughout the primary season: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz all espoused traditional Republican nostrums about reducing the role of government to unleash American prosperity.

Yetnone of this could match Trumps full-throated roar to build a wallor his protectionist plans for American trade. In the general election,Trumpsought outnew voters and independents using arguments traditionally associated with Democrats: deploying the power of the state to protect workers and guarantee their livelihoods, even at the cost of trade agreements and long-standing international alliances. Trumps economic promises electrifiedruralworking-class voters the same way Bernie Sanders excited urban socialists.Where Rands influence has stood for years on the right for a hands-off approach to the economy,Trumps America first platformcontradicts this premise by assuming that government policies can and should deliberately shape economic growth, up to and includingpunishing specific corporations. Likewise, his promise to craft trade policy in support of the American worker is the exact opposite of Rands proclamation that the essence of capitalisms foreign policy is free trade.

And theres little hope that Trumps closest confidants will reverse his decidedly anti-Randian course. Theconservative Republicanswhocame to powerwith Trumpin an almost accidental processmay findthey have to exchange certain ideals to stay close to him. True, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence have been able to breathe new life into Republican economic and social orthodoxies. For instance, in a nod to Pences religious conservatism, Trump shows signs ofreversing his earlier friendlinessto gay rights. And his opposition to Obamacare dovetails with Ryans long-held ambitions to shrink federal spending. Even so, there is little evidence that either Pence or Ryan would have survived a Republican primary battle against Trump or fared well in a national election; their fortunes are dependent on Trumps. And the president won by showing that the Republican base and swing voters have moved on from the traditional conservatism of Reagan and Rand.

What is rising on the right is not Randian fear of government but something far darker. It used to be that bright young things likeStephen Miller, Trumps controversial White House aide, came up on Rand. In the 1960s, she inspired a rump movement of young conservatives determined to subvert the GOP establishment, drawing in future bigwigs such as Alan Greenspan. Her admirers were powerfully attracted to the insurgent presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, whom Rand publicly supported. They swooned when she talked about the ethics of capitalism, delegitimizing programs like Medicare and Medicaid as immoral. They thrilled to her attack on the draft and other conservative pieties. At national conferences, they asked each other, Who is John Galt? (a reference to her novel Atlas Shrugged) and waved the black flag of anarchism, modified with a gold dollar sign.

Over time, most conservatives who stayed in politics outgrew these juvenile provocations or disavowed them. For example, Ryan moved swiftly toreplace Rand with Thomas Aquinaswhen he was nominated in 2012 for vice president, claiming that the Catholic thinker was his primary inspiration (although it was copies of Atlas Shrugged, not Summa Theologiae, that he handed out to staffers). But former Randites retained her fiery hatred of government and planted it within the mainstream GOP. And it was Rand who had kindled their passions in the first place, making her the starting point for a generation of conservatives.

Now Rand is on the shelf, gathering dust with F.A. Hayek, Edmund Burke and otheronce-prominentconservative luminaries. Its no longer possible to provoke the elders by going on about John Galt. Indeed, many of the elders have by now used Randian references to name theiryachts,investment companiesandfoundations.

Instead, young insurgent conservatives talk about race realism,argue that manipulated crime statisticsmask growing social disorderand cast feminism as aplot against men. Instead of reading Rand, they take the red pill, indulging in an emergent internet counter-culture that reveals the principles of liberalism rights, equality, tolerance to be dangerous myths. BeyondBreitbart.com, ideological energy on the right now courses through tiny blogs and websites of the Dark Enlightenment, the latter-day equivalent of RandsObjectivist Newsletterand the many libertarian zines she inspired.

Once upon a time, professors tut-tutted when Rand spoke to overflow crowds on college campuses, where she lambasted left and right alike and claimed, improbably, that big business wasAmericas persecuted minority. She delighted in skewering liberal audience members and occasionally turned her scorn on questioners. But this was soft stuff compared with the insults handed out by Milo Yiannopoulosand the uproar that has greeted his appearances.Rand may have accused liberals of having a lust for power, but she never would have called Holocaust humor a harmless search for lulz, as Yiannopoulos gleefully does.

Indeed, the new ideas on the right have moved away from classical liberalism altogether. American conservatives have always had a mixed reaction to the Western philosophical tradition that emphasizes the sanctity of the individual. Religious conservatives, in particular, often struggle with Rand because her extreme embrace of individualism leaves little room for God, country, duty or faith. But Trump represents a victory for a form of conservatism that is openly illiberal and willing to junk entirely the traditional rhetoric of individualism and free markets for nationalism inflected with racism, misogyny and xenophobia.

Mixed in with Rands vituperative attacks on government was a defense of the individuals rights in the face of a powerful state. This single-minded focus could yield surprising alignments, such as Rands opposition to drug laws and her support of legal abortion. And although liberals have always loved to hate her, over the next four years, they may come to miss herdefense of individual autonomy and liberty. Ayn Rand is dead.Long live Ayn Rand!

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Ayn Rand is dead. Liberals are going to miss her. - Washington Post

WASHINGTON Although Americas political system seems unable to stimulate robust, sustained economic growth, it at least is stimulating consumption of a small but important segment of literature. Dystopian novels are selling briskly Aldous Huxleys Brave New World (1932), Sinclair Lewis It Cant Happen Here (1935), George Orwells Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale (1985), all warning about nasty regimes displacing democracy.

There is, however, a more recent and pertinent presentation of a grim future. Last year, in her 13th novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver imagined America slouching into dystopia merely by continuing current practices.

Shriver, who is fascinated by the susceptibility of complex systems to catastrophic collapses, begins her story after the 2029 economic crash and the Great Renunciation, whereby the nation, like a dissolute Atlas, shrugged off its national debt, saying to creditors: Its nothing personal. The world is not amused, and Americans subsequent downward social mobility is not pretty.

Florence Darkly, a millennial, is a single mother but such mothers now outnumber married ones. Newspapers have almost disappeared, so print journalism had given way to a rabble of amateurs hawking unverified stories and always to an ideological purpose. Her Americans are living, on average, to 92, the economy is powered by the whims of the retired, and, desperate to qualify for entitlements, these days everyone couldnt wait to be old. People who have never been told no are apoplectic if they cant retire at 52.

The government monitors every movement and the IRS, renamed the Bureau for Social Contribution Assistance, siphons up everything, on the you-didnt-build-that principle: Morally, your money does belong to everybody.

Social order collapses when hyperinflation follows the promiscuous printing of money after the Renunciation. This punishes those who had a conscientious, caretaking relationship to the future.

In her novel, she writes:

The state starts moving money around. A little fairness here, little more fairness there. Government becomes a pricey, clumsy, inefficient mechanism for transferring wealth from people who do something to people who dont, and from the young to the old which is the wrong direction. All that effort, and youve only managed a new unfairness.

Laughing mordantly as the apocalypse approaches, Shriver has a gimlet eye for the foibles of todays secure (or so it thinks) upper middle class, from Washingtons Cleveland Park to Brooklyn. About the gentrification of the latter, she observes:

Oh, you could get a facelift nearby, put your dog in therapy, or spend $500 at Ottawa on a bafflingly trendy dinner of Canadian cuisine (the citys elite was running out of new ethnicities whose food could become fashionable). But you couldnt buy a screwdriver, pick up a gallon of paint, take in your dry cleaning, get new tips on your high heels, copy a key, or buy a slice of pizza. Wealthy residents might own bicycles worth $5K, but no shop within miles would repair the brakes. High rents had priced out the very service sector whose presence at ready hand once helped to justify urban living.

The (only) good news from Shrivers squint into the future is that when Americans are put through a wringer, they emerge tougher.

Speaking to Reason, Shriver said: I think that the bullet we dodged in 2008 is still whizzing around the planet and is going to hit us in the head. If so, this story has already been written.

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A wry squint into our grim future - MyDaytonDailyNews

Event Date:

Tuesday, March 7, 2017 (All day) - Saturday, March 11, 2017 (All day)

ALFA BOOK STORE NEWS FOR THE WEEK OF MARCH 7 THRU MARCH 11 Coming Events: The Members Only Half Price Sale will be held Friday, March 10 and Saturday, March 11. Paperback books will be 50cents and hardback books will be $1. New books: James Patterson now offers a series of books you can devour in a few hours called the Book Shots Series. One of those is currently on the new book shelf. Kill or Be Killed includes four thrillers: The Trial, Heist, The Womans War and Little Black Dress. The shelves with military books has recently had an infusion of new books including U.S. Army, A Complete History, Conduct Unbecoming, American Guerrilla, Seal Target Geronimo, and Seal Team Six to name a few. On the young readers shelves the series of P.C. Casts books Marked, Betrayed, Chosen and Hunted can be found. The classic shelves house The Odyssey, Uncle Toms Cabin, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, Atlas Shrugged and many more well know classics. Visit the Book Store located in the library. You will find a wide variety of books and you could also find some of our in-store specials some as low as 20cents. The store is open Tuesday from 10:30am to 7:30 pm and Wednesday thru Saturday from 10:30 to 4:30. All profits go to help the new library buy books and provide programs for the community.

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ALFA BOOK STORE NEWS FOR THE WEEK OF MARCH 7 THRU MARCH 11 - Alpine Sun

Henry Cavill in Batman v Superman

Much of the reason for the continued popularity of Christopher Reeves portrayal was the commitment he gave to the character irrespective of whether he was saving Lois from falling to her death or rescuing a kitten for a little girl. For Rand the little girl is a moocher, Lane only worth rescuing if Superman sees in her his self-interest (as in, if he wont get laid, she can hit the pavement). Applying an Objectivist view point to Superman results in the muddled character Batman v Superman presents.

* * *

In 2016, Zack Snyders Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice staggered its way to over $800 million at the global box office. For many films this would have been a considerable success, but for one with such high expectations that cost in excess of $250 million to produce and market, and was supposed to be the tent pole off which Warner Bros would hang its DC extended universe it was a disappointment (especially when rival superhero bout Captain America: Civil War powered past the billion mark). Alongside the perceived failings of Suicide Squad, changes occurred at the top of Warners, with Geoff Johns becoming the new creative lead tasked with adding more levity to the DC universe. But I would argue that Batman v Supermans shortcomings, and those of its 2013 prequel Man of Steel, have more to do with the philosophical beliefs of their director, Zack Snyder, than simply with tone.

Among the many negative reviews (the film currently has a score of 27% on Rotten Tomatoes) and fan reactions, a noted theme developed: that the film, and the filmmakers, were clearly more interested in Batman than Superman (hence his first billing) and that Batman v Superman failed to capture the essence of the Superman character and mythology built up since his debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938. Much of the negative reaction focused on the generally glum tone taken with a character who had previously been seen (particularly in the Christopher Reeve incarnation) as the embodiment of light and hope. Similar issues had been taken with Man of Steel, especially in the sequence where Superman, as Clark Kent, allowed his adopted father to die in a tornado. How could the filmmakers so misunderstand such an American icon?

In March 2016, while finishing work on Batman v Superman, Snyder stated in a profile in The Hollywood Reporter that:

I have been working on The Fountainhead. Ive always felt like The Fountainhead was such a thesis on the creative process and what it is to create something. Warner Bros. owns [Ayn Rands] script and Ive just been working on that a little bit.

Zack Snyder, 2013. Photo by Eva Rinaldi, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This quote reveals Snyders interest in Rand and Objectivism and points to a key reason why his version of Superman fails to live up to the characters nearly 80 years of history. Indeed, Rands ideas have become increasingly popular since the 1980s and, if the Atlas Society is to be believed, well liked in Hollywood. And this makes sense, as on the surface Rand advocates a self-made hero, one who uses his talents for his own gain. For Rand, this rational selfishness is the key to improving society, and on the surface Superman might appear to be a reasonable simulacrum of the Randian Hero; strong muscular types, who are handsome, well-built, and possess an iron will. But if we delve into Supermans conception, we can see that he really stands as Objectivisms antithesis.

Supermans Left-Wing Origins

Created in the 1930s by two young Jewish high school students, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman went through several iterations before they settled on the version that would catch fire with the public and start a superhero boom. These early stories may come as a surprise for those with only a casual knowledge of the Man of Steels history: he tackled gangsters, slum landlords, and profiteers rather than mad scientists or alien threats (as detailed by Les Daniels, 1998). Siegel and Shuster had taken their Superman ideal and put him to work as an often violent hero, not averse to killing the odd wife beater. As sales grew, the publisher asked Siegel to cut out the guns and knives and cut back on social crusading (Larry Tye, 2012), but the essence of Superman was set. Drawing inspiration from film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (in his portrayals of Robin Hood and Zorro), Siegel and Shuster deigned that Superman would use his powers for the good of all, while his alter ego, journalist Clark Kent (an embodiment of the reality of the creators lives), struggled to get the story or the girl. As wish fulfilment Superman is revealing rather than using his unlimited powers for self-gain, Siegel and Schuster wrote Superman as selfless, one who instinctively uses his powers for others. Its something that 1978s Superman (Richard Donner) was imbued with, developed in the characters Kansas upbringing (a sort of gee whiz nostalgia for 1950s morals) and the screenplays treatment of the character as a Christ figure.

In a message left for him to discover, Supermans Kryptonian father Kal-El (Marlon Brando) intones,

They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you my only son.

Biblical allusions aside (and there are many more in the film), the essence of Superman was captured; someone who does good, because it is good to do so. Rands conception of a hero, and indeed of good, is rather different.

Rands Hero

Ayn Rands passport photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In Atlas Shrugged, the philosopher character Ragnar Danneskjld pronounces: Robin Hood He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, Im the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.

Rands philosophy is based on the conception that being selfish is a moral good, and that the sole aim of life is to pursue happiness through productive achievement (quoted by Joseph Breslin). In this conception, a folk hero like Robin Hood is punishing those who produce, to feed moochers and looters. The looters are the government types who take from the productive to give to the unproductive moochers, and all are keeping great men back.

Paperback cover

So what of societys poor and disadvantaged? Well, its their fault, and you owe them nothing, according to Rand. In Atlas Shrugged, the hero John Galt outlines this clearly, Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. In Rands conception the poor and the needy are parasites, living off the talent and industry of others. As she explained: The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone (www.aynrand.org). No wonder Superman looks so glum rescuing flood victims in Batman v Superman theyre just moochers who should have worked harder to provide a better shelter for themselves.

The Randian hero is one who concentrates on himself, pursues his goals for their own worth without thought or sense of society. In Rands view, happiness is achieved through selfishness, through taking care of the individuals needs and not caving in to moralities that suggest that self-sacrifice and sharing can lead to happiness. In this conception of the universe Superman cannot be happy in his rescuing of the innocent, only in his time with Lois in which he displays and pursues his own desires. Happiness comes partly by treating others as individuals, trading value for value (www.aynrand.org) thus relations with others are predicated on trade, on exchange. What have the helpless and needy got to give Superman? If Clark Kent had been adopted by Rand instead of Ma and Pa Kent, what would have stopped him from becoming a tyrannical overlord?

Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve in Superman 1978

Much of the reason for the continued popularity of Christopher Reeves portrayal was the commitment he gave to the character irrespective of whether he was saving Lois from falling to her death or rescuing a kitten for a little girl. For Rand the little girl is a moocher, Lane only worth rescuing if Superman sees in her his self-interest (as in, if he wont get laid, she can hit the pavement). Applying an Objectivist view point to Superman results in the muddled character Batman v Superman presents.

Superman in Batman v Superman

The failings of Snyders Superman can be summed up in a conversation the character has with his Earth mother Martha Kent during Batman v Superman. In the exchange, Martha explains to Superman, You dont owe this world a thing. You never did. This is the world that nourishes him (literally, as the yellow sun generates his power) and provided loving parents, but this sequence suggests he doesnt have to pay heed to that. In Man of Steel, the death of Jonathan Kent, during a tornado, illustrates this viewpoint. Rather than reveal his powers to the world, Clark lets him die, and the film suggests Jonathan is all right with that. Personal priorities triumph over anothers need.

A key element of Batman v Superman is the re-creation of the popular Death of Superman storyline from the 1990s comics, but the differences between the film and the original are instructive. By removing the battle with Doomsday to outside Metropolis and making Doomsday a creation of Kryptonian DNA and technology, Snyder removes the social good of Supermans sacrifice in the fight, but also the connection to the extended family generated over decades in the comic book. Rather than a sacrifice for the lives of others, his death becomes a moment of sacrifice for himself, a personal atonement rather than an act of social good. In the comic, his death is viewed by close friends, other heroes, and strangers. In the film, there is Lois Lane (his lover), Batman (who 10 minutes earlier was trying to kill him), and Wonder Woman (a stranger). The contrived pieta illustrates just how far Snyder misunderstands Superman by redrawing him along Rands selfish lines. This selfish self-sacrifice misses the essence of drama that exists in a character who can do almost everything. It is in the choice (of how, when, and who) to help that Supermans character fascinates. This dramatic axis is underpinned by the character of Clark Kent, his humanity motivating Supermans choices. There is no self-interested reason for Superman to retain the Clark Kent persona after he is revealed to the world (is it any wonder, then, that Clark Kent is such a small part of Batman v Superman and is killed off)? Superman is tethered to the world by his/Clarks extended family, something Snyder was happy to partially dispense with in the killing of Supermans Pal Jimmy Olsen, something the director described as fun (www.independent.co.uk).

Batman v Superman

Ben Affleck in Batman v Superman

Despite the overall negative tone of the critical reaction to Batman v Superman, some praise was given for Ben Afflecks Batman. How can a film that misunderstands one hero get the other right? The secret may be in comic author Frank Millers liking for Rand (Miller authored The Dark Knight Returns on which Batman v Superman is partially based). The Atlas Societys website quotes Miller,

I was drawn again and again to the ideas presented by Ayn Rand in her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. Eschewing the easy and much-used totalitarian menace made popular by George Orwell, Rand focused instead on issues of competence and incompetence, courage and cowardice, and took the fate of humanity out of the hands of a convenient Big Brother and placed it in the hands of individuals with individual strengths and individual choices made for good or evil. I gratefully and humbly acknowledge the creative debt.

Batman works well as a Randian hero the rich individual, working out his personal neuroses by beating up the moochers and looters (interestingly he has no moochers in his own house dependents Alfred, Robin, et al. have to work for their keep). In Millers The Dark Knight Returns, a retired, older Bruce Wayne returns to being Batman not because he wants to help the city, rather because his personal obsession is inescapable. For Miller, Superman becomes a government stooge, his patriotism and commitment to good tethering him to the looting politicians.

Superman shrugged: Batman v Superman

By basing much of Batman v Superman on Millers work, and with a fan of Rand at the helm, Superman gets a raw deal. Gone is the nobility of helping those who cant help themselves. What is left is an image of Superman, but one that is hollow and missing its essence. This year a Justice League movie is being released (also directed by Snyder), with a Man of Steel sequel planned. Only ditching Rands quasi-philosophy can get Superman back on track and revive the character.

Works Cited

Bidinotto, Robert James. Celebrity Rand Fans. The Atlas Society. https://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/4598-celebrity-rand-fans

Breslin, Joseph. Ayn Rand: The Good, Bad & Obscene or Why Objectivism Is Flawed. The Washington Times. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/31/ayn-rand-good-bad-obscene-or-why-objectivism-flawe/

Daniels, Les. Superman: The Complete History The Life and Times of the Man of Steel. Chronicle Books, 1998.

Miller, Frank. The Dark Knight Returns. DC Comics, 2006.

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. Penguin Classics, 2007.

Shepherd, Jack. Batman v Superman Director Zack Snyder Explains Why He Killed Off Jimmy Olsen. The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/batman-v-superman-zack-snyder-explains-why-he-killed-off-jimmy-olsen-a6954956.html

Siegel, Tatiana. Batman v. Superman: Married Creative Duo on That R-Rated DVD, Plans for DC Superhero Universe. The Hollywood Reporter. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/batman-v-superman-married-creative-874799

Tye, Larry. Superman: The High-Flying History of Americas Most Enduring Hero. Random House New York, 2012.

Introduction to Objectivism. https://www.aynrand.org/ideas/overview

Selfishness. https://campus.aynrand.org/lexicon/selfishness

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Superman v Objectivism: Forget Lex Luthor and Brainiac; Could Ayn ... - Bright Lights Film Journal (blog)

Ayn Rands divisive novel Atlas Shrugged offers both a frightening dystopia, where government regulation and totalitarianism force the gifted artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs to go on strike, and a hopeful utopia, where these gifted individuals are eventually free to produce great things. Rand warned in the 1960s that the US was a mixed economy heading towards dictatorship. With Donald Trump in The White House, it appears we are close to reaching that dictatorship stage, having perhaps reached it already.

There have been many protests against Trump, but strike action has also been taken. For instance, feminist groups have protested misogyny in the workplace and set up protests to close down streets, owing to Trumps appalling treatment of women. Though unlike in Atlas Shrugged, these strikes are also targeting neoliberal policies that have eroded social provision and labour rights.

Rand warned in the 1960s that the US was a mixed economy heading towards dictatorship

In addition, 127 top companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Netflix, and Twitter have all filed court papers against Trumps executive order on immigration, stating it violates immigration laws and the Constitution. Most of this action prevents the freedom of movement of workers, simultaneously suppressing the progress and innovations these companies can make; Trump is blind-sighted to the fact that a large portion of the money America makes from companies comes from foreign workers. Hence, we would also be seeing how a society that uses force to over-regulate the private sector could stagnate and come close to collapsing, which is a major event that takes place in Atlas Shrugged.

What the book also shows, however, is that great thinkers with tenacious wills can overcome such forces of tyranny. In the future, more and more companies will likely strike out against Trump, and though theyd be unlikely to cease production, they might move production outside of the US, and stagnate the American economy. Once even the most ardent Trump supporters see that they have become worse off than before, they will defect against him, and America will come full circle.

Once even the most ardent Trump supporters see that they have become worse off than before, they will defect against him

The US probably wont however, embrace laissez-faire capitalism with total free markets and minimal government regulation, given that this was the underlying cause of the financial crisis. Big banks abused minimal regulation, fuelled a prejudice against immigrants and poor people, that then helped lead to Trumps rise to power. Nevertheless, the theme of individuals against the collective, that was paramount in Atlas Shrugged, is likely to resonate with many Americans today. Given that many people are furious at Trumps love of mob-mentality, stupidity, and suppression of anything that disagrees with him, it is likely that his presidency is a ticking Atlas-Shrugged time-bomb.

See more here:

Strikes, Capitalism and Trump: A Review of Atlas Shrugged - The Boar

Because of his role in outing Soviet spy Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers other career, not that of paid witness he would become, has been overshadowed. For Chambers was a journalist par excellence. He had the distinction of having written for the New Masses, Time, and National Review.

At the time of his testimony, he was a highly-paid writer at Time. The pro-Hiss left no doubt wishes hed stayed at the typewriter rather than appearing behind a congressional microphone. Without Chambers, the Hiss case would never have gotten off the ground and Chambers would have toiled away his remaining days writing for Time, and Hiss leaking from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to Moscow.

To examine Chambers career without the Hiss case is, of course, impossible, but to examine his career solely on journalistic grounds reveals links between the different ideological magazines he wrote for. At first glance, a writer first for New Masses, then Time, then National Review shows chartable growth from communism to the mainstream then overshooting it into another political sect, the Buckley conservatives of the 1950s. But whatever party label he sported, his basic journalistic mission never changed, nor did his view of collectivist action.

While on the New Masses, Chambers differentiated himself from others by showing Marxists acting rather than preaching:

It occurred to me thatI might by writing, not political polemics which few people ever wanted to read, but stories that anybody might want to readstories in which the correct conduct of the Communist would be shown and without political comment.

The most praised of this formula, Can You Hear Their Voices? appeared in the January 1931 issue of the Masses, dealt with activist farmers who raid a food store during the worst of the Depression. Awakened to their collective power, they take food and arms into the mountains, like one of those resistance groups in a World War II film.

By the time his byline appeared in Time Magazine, Chambers had gone through six years of espionage work for the NKVD. NO longer pushing the history train toward the Revolution, Chambers was now trying to derail it. But the populist sense of reaching the masses via journalism remained.

Surveying the aftereffects on Western fellow travelers of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Chambers saw his armed band of farmers circa 1931 now betrayed by this nave cadre who themselves thought they had enlisted in the cause of antifascism but were merely serving another variant of it:

How could they know that Lenin was the first fascist and that they were cooperating with the Party from which the Nazis borrowed all their important methods and ideas? By last week even the dullest fellow traveler found outAfter Stalins purge, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Russian grab of half of Poland, 1940 betrayed the full sense of Stalin with his attacks on Finland, the seizure of part of Rumania and all of the Baltic States.

But Chambers hope for collective action remained, now centered on those who had fallen off the history train:

The Party had trained a group of men who would one day help destroy it. The literary intellectuals might be slow, lazy, self-important, impracticalbut they had reached their convictions not without years in the wilderness and days of blindness.

Chambers saw hope for a counterrevolution in Waldo Franks outline for action in Chart for Rough Weather and the writers observation that the struggle is for the human soul.

The election of 1944 saw the Partys most open and fervent support for FDR and the growing alarm of conservatives, and some liberals, about cultural dominance by Stalinists at home and their suspicious liberations of Nazi satellites abroad. It was also the year Chambers Ghosts on the Roof appeared in Time magazine. In it, Chambers was again trying to activate readers, this time through the approving ghosts of the murdered Nicholas and Alexandria toward the Party that murdered them. For the Czar, Stalin accomplished only what he had dreamed about:

What vision! What power! We have known nothing like it since my ancestor, Peter the Great, broke a window into Europe by overrunning the Baltic States in the 18th century. Stalin has made us great again!

Examining the Pact, the Czar noted rather enviously, I always wanted to take down those Poles a peg, but something was always tying my hands.

A decade later, Chambers again took up the familiar profession of journalism, this time on the staff of National Review. By now, he had gone through the emotionally brutalizing participation in the Hiss case, which provoked one suicide attempt. But his vision of journalism remained although this time focused on a very specific group: conservative Republicans. As opposed to 1941, he counseled his new comrades to cease their attempts at rolling back the New Deal (their stated editorial mission was for the magazine to stand athwart history, yelling Stop) and instead reap the benefits of accepting the drift of History:

Those who remain in the world, if they will not surrender to its terms, must maneuver within its terms. That is what conservatives must decide: how much to give in order to survive at all: how much to give up basic principles.

This sense of mission entailed cleansing conservatism of its more soulless elements such as Ayn Rand. Chambers review of Atlas Shrugged compared her atheistic capitalism to Karl Marx: He too admired naked self-interest and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleansed away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishments.

Thus, had there been no Hiss case, Chambers would have remained much of what he was: a crusading journalist. The familiar trajectory of the communist moving rightward fits him on the surface, but also doesnt. Along the way, he brought baggage with himnamely the Marxist baggage of journalism as a mass activator.

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Whittaker Chambers: Crusading Journalist | The Liberty Conservative - The Liberty Conservative

Illustration credit: Jim Cooke/Jalopnik

If there is one quote that sums up the ethos of Uber, it might be this cut from the companys firebrand CEO Travis Kalanick: Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation. But after a month marked by one disaster after another, its hard to see how Ubers defiant, confrontational attitude hasnt blown up in its face. And those disasters mask one key, critical issue: Uber is doomed because it cant actually make money.

After a discombobulated 2016, in which Uber burned through more than $2 billion, amid findings that rider fares only cover roughly 40 percent of a ride, with the remainder subsidized by venture capitalists, its hard to imagine Kalanick could take the company public at its stunning current valuation of nearly $70 billion.

And now, in the past few weeks alone, Uber has been accused of having a workplace that fosters a culture of misogyny, accused of stealing from Google the blueprint of a successful self-driving system, and has lost 200,000 customers over ties to President Donald Trump and how it responded to a taxi driver boycott.

Yet even when those factors are removed, its becoming more evident that Uber will collapse on its own. Barring a drastic shift in the companys businessan implausible rollout of self-driving car fleets across the U.S., an increase of fares by three-fold, or a complete monopolization of the taxi and ride-hailing marketsUbers lifeline is shrinking. Its business model could collapse if one court case, and there are many, goes against it. Or perhaps more pressing, if it simply runs out of cash.

That Kalanick quote about confrontation may be as innocuous as a random sound bite, but its representative of the ride-hailing giants methodology since its founding in 2009: a perpetual resistance to regulatory oversight; a belief that, ultimately, an unfettered market is the key to prosperity.

At first glance it seems like Kalanicks libertarian ideals have paid off. Most recently valued at a reported $69 billion, Uber has captured a majority of the ground transportation market and flipped the taxi industrya sector Kalanick once famously and snidely referred to as the Big Taxi Cartelon its head. His philosophy mirrors the mindset of one of his favorite authors, the laissez-faire Ayn Rand. In 2012, Kalanick proffered that Ubers battle against government regulations has an uncanny resemblance to the Randian philosophy. A billionaire fighting The Systemand prevailing. Its a good story for those who find truth in Atlas Shrugged.

Ubers long had skeptics, and its not innovative to paint Kalanick, 40, as the boogeyman of Silicon Valley, where unseemly savants exist in vast supply.

The precarious moment in the companys eight-year history falls on Kalanicks lap. Its his baby after alla startup founded on seemingly nothing more than a vague idea, without much regard for the workforce to make it possible, or even a clear idea of what business model it actually wants to pursue. Uber has jumped from one idea to the next: UberX, UberEats, autonomous cars, and now flying cars, of all things.

The impact of Ubers death would probably be as much of a rebuke of Kalanicks vision of running on a scatterbrained dream, not so much a solid business model and philosophy, that you could muster.

It would also be devastating for some. The livelihood of 11,000 employees across the world rests on Kalanicks decision to submit to that philosophywhich, at its core, is a ruthless way of doing business. At the very least, drivers in the pre-Uber market could earn a decent living. Conversely, for example, Uber drivers taking advantage of new vehicle solution pilot program in Boston renting cars by the hour through Zipcar will earn less than Massachusetts minimum wage. How innovative.

One of the biggest issues that has left Ubers business model hanging in the balance is its resistance to classifying its driversthere are reportedly600,000 in the U.S.as employees, not contractors. If Uber is a house of cards, this is a key part of the foundation that, once removed, would demolish the structure.

Indeed, the company has said reclassifying drivers could force Uber to restructure its entire business model. The result of its opposition to readjust has been entirely expected. Without the perks and protectionsthat an employee may enjoyhealth care, benefits, gasoline and work reimbursements, vehicle maintenance, all of which could reportedly total as much as $730 millioncomplaints from drivers have piled up, ranging from low pay to new services like UberEats (a loathed food delivery service thats reportedly set to lose over $100 million annually) and UberPOOL, its carpool option which increases the companys take per-ride, lowers the take-home pay for drives, and is understood to be quite a drag for drivers and passengers alike. Drivers themselves said as much in a recent, disastrous question-and-answer session with Ubers president.

The counter-argumentperhaps one that would come from Kalanick himselfis that Uber drivers have the freedom to work whenever and wherever they want, or for the company at all. But the reality is that perception is built on a lie.

Uber, which didnt respond to questions from Jalopnik about its viability, recently paid $20 million to settle claims that it grossly misled how much drivers could earn on Craigslist ads. The companys explosive growth also fundamentally required it to begin offering subprime auto loans to prospective drivers without a vehicle.

Drivers with loans need to work to pay their monthly tab, thereby necessitating they work more for less, and so on. (Figures released in 2015 indicated that nearly 40 percent of Ubers driver force has no other source of income, while 30 percent work for Uber while holding down a second part-time job.)

To maximize their income, some have taken to sleeping in their car to be close to busier work areas. And beyond drivers, the company has also been accused of lying to prospective engineers about promises of lucrative stock options, in a move that could allegedly save it millions of dollars of tax deductions.

The Craigslist ads, for one thing, succeeded in reeling in drivers.

I thought I would try it out because I was desperate, said one driver who learned about the company after reading an online ad and declined to be named for fear of retribution in an interview with Jalopnik. Back then, the pay was quite a bit more than it is now. There have been a number of fare cuts since then. So, at the beginning, it was kind of different because not only was the pay higher, [but] because the pay was higher, there was a different type of customer that was using the service.

He added, And then contrast that with now with uberPOOL, a driver can be getting paid just 80 cents for a ride, and all the sudden you have these people who mightve been taking the bus, and now all the sudden theyre your boss for 80 cents and you better hop to and do what they say with a smile, or youre going to get a 1 star rating, if not [physically] assaulted in some cases.

That strikes at a core tenet of Ubers case that it provides a far-superior taxi service. Violent incidents, for example, involving drivers and passengers have popped up timeandagain against a backdrop of the companys campaign to prevent it from having to subject prospective drivers to extensive fingerprint background checks. Really, what is an Uber but a taxi with a smartphone app? Even then, taxi services have launched apps of their own.

Customers want to get from A to B quickly, pleasantly, and at a reasonable price, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigans Ross School of Business. The Uber thing worked because it was cheaper and, initially, it was more pleasant than the typical taxi. So thats why it worked. But people dont have loyalty to Uber, not even the drivers. The drivers tend to drive for both Uber and Lyft, its chief competitor and a company with a remarkably more cuddly public image, albeit one that is probably not deserved.

But its the driver classification as contractors thats routinely staked out as potentially devastating for Uber. A $100 million settlement for a high-profile federal class-action suit over driver classification was denied last year, but the judge in the case believes Uber has enough wiggle room to readjust and still survive, despite the companys insistence that it would have to wholly restructure its operations. While that case remains pending, more suits over the driver classification have continued to emerge.

If you lose a case in a statethe state asserts theyre employees for state lawit would encourage other states to file lawsuits, but you only lose state by state, Gordon said. If you lose it at the federal level theyre in huge trouble.

The part-time model can last forever, he continued. But with drivers doing this more or less full time, he said, Something has to change; the price of the rides has to change... And if what changes is these people end up being employees, then I think the whole house falls down.

Its not just Uber drivers who feel downtrodden. A widely-circulated essay published last week by a former engineer described a series of incidents that painted the companys headquarters as a space that fostered repeated, systemic sexual harassment.

The essay by Susan Fowler Rigetti alleged that her former boss, for instance, solicited her for sex.

On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasnt. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldnt help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.

When Fowler Rigetti engaged with HR, she said, they responded that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this mans first offense ... he was a high performer. Translation: Nothing would happen to him.

Kalanick immediately issued a statement that what Fowler Rigetti described is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. He added that it was the first time hed learned of the allegations. An investigation was ordered, and Uber hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct the internal probe.

But Silicon Valley is a small place, where high-profile talent bounce around companies on a regular basis. People talk. For Uber, the damage may have already been done.

I think this could definitely take a toll, said one former Uber exec who requested anonymity, adding: Its going to be difficult to continue to recruit the best and brightest talent.

Fowler Rigetti claims Uber had a game-of-thrones political war ranging within the ranks of upper management in the infrastructure engineering organization. Managers and peers duked it out, she said, while some attempted to undermine their direct supervisors with the intention of taking their job.

The ramifications of these political games were significant: projects were abandoned left and right, she said. The discontent and disorder at Uber HQ that she describes doesnt lend credence to the idea that its facilitating a decent work environment to succeed going forward.

In late November, the financial blog Naked Capitalism published the first of a series of pieces by transportation industry analyst Hubert Horan on the financial viability of Uber. The posts asked a simple question: Can Uber Ever Deliver? According to Horan, based on a significant amount of data on the companys finances that has been released, the answer is no.

Horan argues that, in order for Uber to prove that its domination of the taxi industry will improve overall economic welfare, it would have to earn sustainable profits; provide service at a significantly lower cost; create new competitive advantages through major product redesigns and technology/process innovations; and, eventually, be incentivized to pass on its efficiency gains to consumers.

This hinges on an autonomous driving fleet. Despite optimistic overtures from automakers and self-driving car start-ups, the likelihood of that coming to fruition, if ever, is decades away. Ford has an optimistic plan to roll out fully-autonomous cars by 2021, for example, but they would be limited to use in a geo-fenced area.

Kalanick himself has said the development of self-driving cars is existential to Uber. Labor drives up operating costs; removing 160,000 drivers from the equation makes it a lot easier to balance the books. Though Uber has a reported $11 billion war chest stowed away, by burning through billions at a rapid clip, the path and timeline to becoming a driverless car company however that would materialize is muddled.

Even then, Ubers likelihood of success appears slim.

If you put driverless cars totally aside, the near-term future of Uber is the question of whether they could succeed in establishing a reasonably secure quasi-monopoly position in the United States and other large developed country markets before the cash runs out, Horan said in an email to Jalopnik. This is certainly possible but by no means certain. If yes, cash flow would improve considerably. If no, cash flow problems could get worse as the world becomes increasingly aware that it will never generate sustainable profits in its core business. Kalanick said that Uber had an existential need to succeed in driverless cars. This suggests his optimism about taxi profitability is not what it used to be. And at the rate its going, Uber could crash and burn through its stockpile of cash by the end of the decade.

Like a lot of Silicon Valley companies, Uber has survived on the backs of wealthy investors that have propped it up, despite eye-popping losses for several years. Horans analysis found that Uber has maintained operating losses of $2 billion a year, surpassing any start-up in history, with a negative 143 percent profit margin. Thus Ubers current operations depend on $2 billion in subsidies, funded out of the $13 billion in cash its investors have provided, he wrote.

Further, Horan found that Uber passengers fares only covered 41 percent of the actual trip cost, suggesting it charges far-too little for fares. Even public transit systems, long lambasted for being money-losing ventures, perform better: for instance, fare revenue for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which serves the nations capital, accounts for 47 percent of its operating costs.

Uber ... was using these massive [investor] subsidies to undercut the fares and provide more capacity than the competitors who had to cover 100 percent of their costs out of passenger fares, Horan wrote.

If a monopoly is the key to success, its hard to figure how Uber can achieve total dominance. In the third quarter of 2016, for instance, Uber lost $800 million, according to The Information, a tech news site. Its chief rival, Lyft, is backed by General Motors and recently secured market share gains against Uber in significant U.S. markets, the site said, adding that Lyfts continued relevance in the U.S. has changed the math for Uber in terms how much it projected it could profit from developed markets in the next few years.

Steven Hill, a former fellow at the New America Foundation think tank, who has regularly criticized Uber, said the company has been successful only because taxi service has kind of sucked.

I think ride-sharing may survive, but Uber may not, said Hill, who published a book on the so-called gig economy called Raw Deal: How The Uber Economy Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers.

Because the other thing thats really bedeviling Uber: instead of just focusing on being a good taxi company for the digital age finding the way, a sweet spot, to make that work, its blowing all sots of money [on] self driving-cars and China and now India. The company just so much reflects the megalomania of Travis Kalanick and whatever he thinks hes doing.

I mean, seven out of 10 silicon valley startups fail, Hill went on. Theyre producing a product or service that no one necessarily wants to buy at the cost you can produce it for. Capitalism 101, right? So thats what were seeing with Uber. At this moment, it does not appear that Uber is able to produce a service that customers will pay enough more to make it sustainable.

Its unclear in what markets Uber may be turning a profit, if any at all. The company reportedly said it wanted to achieve profitability in the second quarter of 2016, and it claimed at the time it had reached that goal in the U.S. and Canada. But by December, according to Bloomberg, Uber was losing money again in the U.S., to the tune of $100 million per year.

Its also striking that Uber tapped Wall Street banks for a billion dollar loan by convincing several financial institutions to focus only on its nearly $70 billion valuation, and not operating losses in certain markets. According to Reuters, regulators at the Financial Reserve were bothered by the loan because the banks carved out Ubers more mature operations from the rest of the business.

Thats a vague statement, but Reuters said the regulators scrutiny was not a surprise because it is rare for young, unprofitable technology firms to tap the leveraged loan market which is traditionally restricted to companies with long histories of generating cash. (The reserve declined to release any documents related to the loan in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, saying: Such information, including any statement confirming or denying that any such information exists, would constitute a disclosure of confidential supervisory information and thereby was exempt from public release.)

Again, its commonplace for venture capitalists and early stage investors to fund operating deficits. The belief is that the company is going to grow fast enough and that, with enough growth, its going to turn profitable, and its going to turn highly profitable, said Gordon, the University of Michigan business professor.

A common comparison to describe Ubers approach is Amazon, which lost money consistently over the first several years of its existence. As Horan notes, however, Amazons worst losses were $1.4 billion in its fifth year of operations, but shrank rapidly thereafter, while Ubers losses have been steadily growing and will be over $3 billion in its seventh year.

The problem with Uber, Horan argued, is that it doesnt have a powerful economy of scale that is, the savings in cost that are produced when production increases, particularly through fixed costs being spread out. Unlike Amazon, which had significant fixed costs, Horan said that 85 percent of Ubers costs are variable.

Uber cannot expand into new markets at very low cost since it faces unique driver recruitment, political lobbying and competitive marketing challenges in each city, Horan said.

Gordon said thats why the typical approach by venture capitalists with Uber probably wont work.

They dont have an economy of scale, he said. So, every day, venture capitalists fund loss-making companies, but not one [with] a model you cant see how its going to flip twice as many rides that you keep losing money on. Youre not going to start making twice as much money because youre doing twice as much rides. Its not like a factory [with fixed costs].

Maybe Kalanick knows something we all dont. Maybe Uber has a secret team of genius scientists wholl surpass all expectations of driverless cars and, somehow, have a fully-automated fleet of vehicles for the company to use everywhere within a few years. Maybe billionaire investors are actually fine with propping up a money-losing venture into perpetuity.

But until Uber can prove it has found a sustainable modelor, perhaps, stop the investor leaks of its financialstheres little to suggest it has the bandwidth to survive. Whether its sold, drastically shrinks its market footprint, or just outright shutters, its untenable for Uber to exist long term as the tech juggernaut it is today.

Kalanick has pushed an enterprise on little more than a grandiose bet: that Uber could exist on a playing field of its own with few regulations, carving a path to financial salvation by dominating the taxi market simply through the sheer force of investors with bottomless pockets. It isnt working.

Excerpt from:

Uber Is Doomed - Jalopnik

The Orange County-based Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), founded in Los Angeles in 1985 to advance the writer's philosophy of objectivism, recently announced that Jim Brown has taken over as the new chief executive officer.

The nonprofit organization, which moved to Irvine in June 2002, distributes free books to teachers, sponsors cash-prize essay contests for high school and college students and offers free online courses for adults. It was founded by longtime Orange County resident Leonard Peikoff, the author and philosophy professor whom Rand, who died in 1982, chose as her heir.

The Russian-born writer escaped Soviet Russia, came to America and lived in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, writing screenplays, a Broadway play and nonfiction works on epistemology which to Rand was the study of how humans acquire knowledge art and ethics. Her best-known novels include "Anthem," "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" which depicts a dystopian U.S. where thinkers and creators go on strike when confronted with aggressive new regulations.

"Atlas Shrugged" was not critically well received when it was published in 1957, but it became a best-seller and later a rallying cry for the tea party movement.

In 1962, Rand was asked to write a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times. Her first was a brief introduction to objectivism. She described it as objective reality in metaphysics, reason in epistemology, self-interest in ethics and capitalism in politics.

In a 1959 TV interview, according to BBC News, Rand had offered this explanation: Man's "highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness and that he must not force other people, nor accept their right to force him, that each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest."

In 1985, Michael S. Berliner, then the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, attempted to clarify what he considered a misconception that Rand's philosophy gave rise to or was somehow associated with libertarianism. He explained that she "thoroughly repudiated libertarianism and the anarchism that dominates that movement."

"Objectivism stands for reason, rational self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism, including absolute individual rights," he wrote in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. "It is a systematic, integrated view of existence, in direct contrast to the anti-philosophic, subjectivist approach of the libertarians. Having no interest in fundamental principles, libertarians make common cause with anyone, including terrorists, opposed to government, especially the United States government," he wrote.

With the naming of Brown, the institute has deviated from its two previous leaders, who were academics. In a statement, ARI referred to his 30-year finance career and military service in the U.S. Air Force.

Brown earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the United States Air Force Academy and an MBA from Harvard Business School, it said.

The husband, father and retired chartered financial analyst was interviewed at his new office in Irvine.

Below are excerpts from the conversation.

Weekend: Do you have a favorite lecture by Ayn Rand?

Brown: I do because it's the only one I ever saw in person. In 1977, I saw [Ayn Rand deliver her talk] "Global Balkanization" at the Ford Hall Forum [a lecture series at Northeastern University from 1961 to 1998] in Boston. I walked in and [former Federal Reserve Board Chairman] Alan Greenspan was sitting on the floor playing chess with someone in the foyer. By then, he'd been on President Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, so even then he was famous. Of course, when Ayn Rand came up this little, tiny woman with this heavy Russian accent it was amazing. I've reread that talk a few times. This is the essay in which she talked about classifying people according to ethnicity or arbitrary racial classifications, and she systematically demolishes it as any type of rational thinking at all. The Q and A was interesting too. She was so clear on what she wanted to say in answer to every question.

Weekend: How can the Ayn Rand Institute improve?

Brown: We have to get the ideas out and we have challenges in that area including resistance in the culture. I don't have to remind anyone reading this that the culture and society out there can look pretty irrational. Just look at the last election. But that's not the biggest obstacle to our success. I think the biggest obstacle to our success is right here in the objectivist movement. Sometimes, we can't get out of our own way.

So the room for improvement is what we can change about our movement. How can we make the movement more effective? I really believe strongly and we are starting to develop this idea here at the Institute that we need to develop a sense of community among objectivists. And that can only begin here at the Ayn Rand Institute. If we are going to try to help foster and develop this, it has to start here. We want to increase awareness, understanding and acceptance of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, objectivism. That is what we are about. So we have to give people something of value, probably over a period of years, before we can expect to have earned their support. Just like Say's Law in economics, you have to produce before you can profit. That is what I think we're doing: We're investing in people's minds, persuasion and in the influence of a philosophy that's a gift to the world in my view. When we have done that, we can hope and expect that they will support us because we will have earned it.

Weekend: What's your favorite work by Ayn Rand Institute founder Leonard Peikoff?

Brown: For comprehensive understanding, "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand." For sheer pleasure, [the audio lecture course] "Eight Great Plays." I love it. For immediate impact on my life, his objective communication course is excellent. I still use "motivation, structure, concretize, delimit" everywhere I go.

Weekend: Which Ayn Rand book is the most effective in reaching the reader?

Brown: "Atlas Shrugged." There are a lot of ways you could measure what's most effective, but the way I interpret your question is which Ayn Rand book has the biggest impact on the maximum number of people, and it has to be "Atlas Shrugged." Everyone's talking about "Atlas Shrugged."

Weekend: Businessmen are depicted as villains not just as heroes in "Atlas Shrugged." Can you name three businessmen who are like villains in today's mixed economy?

Brown: If you look at [Ayn Rand's] "The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy," she talks about the money-making mentality and the moneymaker versus the money appropriator. [ Rand] also states in there, pretty explicitly, that there's often a combination and a mix. That's the way I think of most of today's businessmen. It's difficult to evaluate in today's mixed economy who's the moneymaker and who's the money appropriator. For example, I'd put [GE Chairman and CEO] Jeffrey Immelt as more of an appropriator, though he's undoubtedly a talented businessman. I'd put [Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO] Rex Tillerson along the lines of the moneymaker, besides obvious ones such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and probably Jeff Bezos.

Weekend: Is there a single quality that you acquired during your military aviation career that uniquely applies to your new role as CEO?

Brown: The first thing that comes to mind is an appreciation for working cooperatively and collaborating with people. If you have a big air crew, you can't just be the boss and make commands. You're in charge and you can't just tell people what to do if you want to get some new programs done or you're trying to move classes through administration to train 500 pilots a year. You have to give people responsibilities, have them commit to their responsibilities and own it. If you can get people to own their responsibilities, then reporting to you is a cooperative venture, not a command-and-control venture. I really learned that in spades as a flight commander and as a squadron commander when I was training pilots.

Weekend: What is the Ayn Rand Institute's greatest success in its 32-year mission to advance objectivism?

Brown: Getting Ayn Rand's books specifically her fiction into people's hands.

Weekend: How do you guard your leadership against sycophants in favor of people who might be more willing to tell you and ARI what they think you might not want to hear?

Brown: That's a very good question. It's a reason for collaboration. You only get sycophants if you're an authoritarian, because you can't spot them if you're an authoritarian.

Weekend: What is the most misunderstood part of objectivism?

Brown: I think it's this notion of objectivists as righteously selfish people who are mean-spirited, unconcerned and unloving. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Weekend: How will you know you've succeeded at ARI?

Brown: The first successful milestone that I would really take pride in is when people say that the Ayn Rand Institute is a wonderful place to work.

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Jim Brown, new Ayn Rand Institute CEO: 'Culture and society out there can look pretty irrational. Just look at the ... - Los Angeles Times