"How to commit to the bit" by Ayn Rand.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Galt's Gulch was much more Socialist Commune than libertarian.
Money had no use as Ragnar was running around distributing gold to everyone on a regular basis, John Galt had built a literal free energy machine and was giving the power away AND giving vanishingly cheap lectures on how to build one. Even the scarce resources (like the only car in the entire society) were being rented out for 50 cents a day.
Plus all these fiercely competitive supercapitalists would just step aside and just allow competitors to operate with no challenge. The iron mine, and coal mine were all running at industrial scales to serve a town of a few hundred (they had robot labour and free energy) and when the copper miner just showed up they just let him stake a an exclusive claim and start digging with no issue.
I highly recommend Adam Lee's critical readthrough on patheos.com https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/
I just like that step one of Rand's utopia is violating the laws of physics. It can't work if energy is scarce, so her solution is magic.
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I feel dumb because I read this book only because of BioShock, and a and was like, "pretty neat." I didn't really think too much about it after that. So I love when I read about people's critiques of it!
I've read several books in the Objectivists library, including Atlas shrugged, the fountainhead, and the virtue of selfishness.
For a certain kind of person, I do think they have value in showing a different ethical/moral framework. To wit, if you have been raised on the principal that you must always sacrifice your own happiness for others, then Onjectivist philosophy is quite novel and can actually be helpful in moving towards a more self-actualized thought mode.
For most others, however, it can turn you into a raging a-hole.
In terms of how tenable the overall principles are in practice, just remember that Rand herself went on social security.
I really like this take.
I think about those who like American Psycho or Breaking Bad, and even see themselves as those characters, unaware that those characters were assholes and emulating them makes you a bad person.
Where others see how f'd up the system is and these two are pushing the limits of what's acceptable.
I mean, are there people who see themselves as Patrick Bateman? Walter white is a bit of a stretch too, but Bateman.
Welcome to the fabulous world of the edgelords!
Yyyyyup. He's kind of got it all. The outsized toxic masculinity, the focus on self improvement, a self centric sense of superiority, money and the power to commit cathartic violence. There are people who look at that toonish parody of a miserable violent financial bro and instead of seeing horror they see a life goal.
Some people are held at bay from becoming a Bateman not by empathy but by potential curtailment of freedoms if they get caught.
Not really people who see themselves as those characters (except the terminally delusional) but people who just idolize those characters because they appear cool or witty or have agency, despite being terrible humans.
I wouldn’t say I respected Walter as a protagonist…he’s quite clearly an anti-hero.
But I will say that I hated Skyler the first time around. Second time, though, it was like she’s the only rational person in the whole show. Especially towards the end.
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I'm neurodivergent and fell for this shit hard. It's actually pretty embarrassing to look back on. Luckily, I got better
This is good. Many people fall into this trap and never realize they’re trapped; they’re convinced it’s everyone else that’s trapped
There's only one thing American libertarians hate more than poor people. And it's actual libertarians.
My favorite part was Ayn Rand's last years of her life was getting government handouts.
"No true Scotsman, REEEE!" motherfuckers when I deny the legitimacy of Scotland itself 😎
There's a tech recruiting company called "John Galt Staffing." I don't know if they're run by Libertarians or it's just an unfortunate name conflict, but whenever they contact me, I respond with an email saying that I won't do business with them.
If I had that name, I'd change it. "I just don't know why little Adolf is having trouble with his classmates."
Edit Fixed the spelling of the company name.
I have a relative who was named Adolph (with that spelling) immediately before the rise of Hitler. I think he kept it on the, "Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks," logic, but I'm not sure.
It's like the companies calling themselves Skynet.
If it's 'Gault,' it's probably coincidental. If it's Galt, almost certainly Randroids.
so basically you're asking "Who is John Gault?"
I read The Fountainhead instead, and it was interesting enough to keep me reading. "Okay, there's a lot of setup of characters and circumstances going on, I am curious to know how this plays out," and then it just ... doesn't. It was all a lead-up to a long, weakly written, and plainly stupid monologue about how completely ruthless all people should be at all times, only ever thinking in the shortest term about themselves.
I closed that book wondering why Ayn Rand was famous for anything beyond being a shitbag, when I was young enough to be kind of a shitbag myself.
But there is the rape scene which Rand thought to paint in a positive light to read about.