Does Ayn Rand's Philosophy Make Sense In Our World Today?
I urge readers to join in the discussion in response to my piece on Sylvia Earle: “Humankind’s Plight at a Macro Level.” In particular, frequent commenter Cameron Atwood discusses the role that the ultra-libertarian philosophy of Ayn Rand has in our current government here in the US.
It’s funny you bring up Ronald Reagan’s mention of Ayn Rand in 1966, Cameron. It was only a few years after that (the early 1970s) that I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (the former is the better of the two, IMO). The whole libertarian thing made a great deal of sense to me for a couple of decades — until I realized the truth of essentially what you’ve written in your comment, i.e., that private interests in a deregulated environment, generally, will exploit the resources around it to an unacceptable level. Any doubt Americans had about this should have vanished in 2008 with the collapse of our financial system, not to mention our society’s coming face to face with the ruination of the fragile ecosystem on which it and all other life forms depend.
The fact that many of us simply refuse to see this doesn’t speak too highly of us.
While I am not a libertarian, I see a lot of merit in their arguements up to the point where they back away from almost all regulation. The problem of the so-called unregulated financial meltdown in 2008 was IMO not so much the lack of regulation but the picking of winners and losers by the government. When funds from Freddie and Fannie were turned loose in the marketplace with little or no control over how they were placed, the greed inherent in human nature took over. Huge profits were generated in the financial community by taking a cut out of the federal largess distribution.
The first mistake was interferring in the marketplace and the second mistake was not adequately regulating the process.
A libertarian government would not have made the first mistake, leaving the regulation unnecessary.
Personally I appreciate regulation when it is necessary. I like it that all the stop signs are the same size, shape and color. But, regulation become obnoxious when it dictates the size, shape and color of my home in a historic district. Or, whether solar panels are an acceptable covering for a roof. How about regulations that prevent the siting of a wind turbine that might obstruct the view of a sunset?
It is not that regulation is bad per se but bad when it is over reaching. Regulation that tickles the fancy of a special interest group at the expense of others should not be acceptable in a free country where we stive to protect life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. L
Larry, you are right-on in your observations! Up in Cincinnati, there’s a relatively new federally-subsidized energy audit and retrofit program which is exactly what you describe in terms of pandering to special interests. First, the program defines the only-1 “brand” of auditor certification, when there are at least 3 or 4 professional groups which certify energy auditors. Second, each auditor’s report includes only 1 contractor referral for each recommended retrofit measure, despite there being many local qualified contractors. Third, all the recommendations except lighting are for 1 specific brand-name of product, when there are several equivalent products available in the market. Fourth, anybody who has an audit from a non-inside auditor like me (albeit certified since 1990 by another well-respected professional association) does not qualify from any of the federal subsidies. Like most energy consultants, I actually encourage my customers to get competing bids for more than one contractor or product. But the federally subsidized program ignores this historical practice. Which is disgusting, the kind of corruption which can only come from lobbying and back-room deals, not from interest in best customer service or energy outcomes.
Similarly, when the first solar NABCEPs appeared in Ohio, they lobbied for a statewide rule that only NABCEPs could install grid-tied PVs. But there were only a handful of NABCEPs in Ohio at that time. Now there are far more. But the 1st change in that corrupt self-serving law was to allow licensed electricians to do installations in addition to NABCEPs.
This is my 29th year in energy biz. The current situations I’ve seen in the 12 states where I’ve worked so far have severely devolved into far too much catering to special-interests, far too many special deals for this or that player or product. From my point of view, all energy use and load reductions as well as all new non-conventional energy supplies ought to be treated equally, based on their respective abilities to lessen or eliminate conventional energy.
Yet in most eastern states, electric utilities still practice “regressive” or “declining block” pricing, where electric prices goes down the more you buy. In Columbus OH, a homeowner can buy his last kWh abt 45% cheaper than his first. In Cincinnati, the last residential kWh is 1/3 cheaper than the first. In Cincinnati, small business electric rate reduces the price by abt 6 cents from 2800 kWh to 9000 kWh per month. In other words, all these are examples of lobbied-for special interest benefits for higher users.
This is all idiotic from a progressive or professional energy or environmental perspective. But it all demonstrates your point about special interests. Ayn Rand did not promote or advocate for this kind of corruption. Her brand of economics may appear raw or mean, but not nearly as bad or dishonest as a lot of what we have today in our nation.
“Ayn Rand” – real name Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum – advocated for the supremacy of selfishness as the most noble of human attitudes.
We rose from the status of nomadic hunter gatherers through cooperation and sharing. Selfishness stands ready to return us to the law of the jungle. We have lost control of our government through the selfishness of everyone on both sides of the bribery that warps and poisons our democracy.
People who consider her ideas laudable, or mostly harmless, have often forgotten that “Private” entities cannot survive without “public” entities, and it will always be a balance of both that leads to the greatest widely shared prosperity. Widely shared prosperity is, after all, a chief stated goal of the founding of our nation:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
To the extent that government fails to perform its functions, the failure is nearly always traceable to bribery or it’s sibling, conflict of interest. To the extent that corporations need regulation, it is nearly always traceable to greed and the resulting disregard of human and/or environmental health (which in the end are the same).
An examination of the way BP and Massey Energy were handled before and after the disasters they caused reveals excellent examples of the very worst sort of corruption of government.
Greed, one of the purest forms of selfishness, was and remains at the core on both sides of the corruption equation.
Personally, I think that Ayn Rand’s ideas in their purity have run their course, and that only the fringe of the fringe thinks that way today. My wife and I watched (1950??) version of “The Fountainhead” with Gary Cooper a few weeks ago, and we had to laugh at how forced the dialog was.
Another highly relevant matter is allowing debts to amass simply because we don’t want to automatically enforce paying for stuff we want, or to fairly and conservatively assess what we are investing in or hoping to gain in exchange for the debts, or to expect or require that existing debts be repaid in a timely manner. Maybe our current various-level debt problems have become so intense as to be unrepayable and to render us now insolvent, fiscally irresponsible? But we cannot afford to bailout every person and company which takes on too much debt. We’ve already done a lot of bailouts, yet we’re still piling up debts with no overall culture-wide philosophy or inclination to repay, not even to begin installments on the pay-downs.
I’m in year 29 in private sector business, an energy consulting and design professional, having done almost all my energy and building projects without public subsidies, never having received any bailouts, owning paid-off house, office, office equipment and vehicles, having paid off my college loans. Those all involved diligent paydowns, including avoiding splurges or other distractions until paydowns were complete. Yet my customers today almost always expect me to help them find as many subsidies and special benefits as possible. What the heck happened!
Money is supposed to have meaning, whether in Ayn Rands writings or in our modern era. Limits on the money we have forces us to make choices, to form our priorities, to restrain us from doing what we cannot afford. Yet many of our leaders and too many people (including business owners) disrespect the value, responsibility and self-limiting aspects of money. Recall in Atlas Shrugged that “$” was actually a superposed “U” over “S”, meaning the bonified currency of the US. Great! But now we’re more than likely to substantially reduce the value of our money by monetizing our debts, aka “printing money” instead of selling bonds.
In my sector, whether utilities or solar companies or energy performance contractors or home and business owners, all seem to lobby strenously for subsidies and handouts to benefit themselves. I have never lobbied for subsidies. And I paid fully for all the energy efficiency and solar features on my home and business. Same as most of my customers 1983 thru early 2000s. We did not ask neighbors for handouts or assistance. We valued AND abided by the limits of what money we have. We paid full initial costs and saved on our utility bills honestly.
But our current system and politics has much distorted this kind of practice and philosophy. We citizens and our nation can be both progressive in our politics and better with our energy use and less polluting while at the same time not resorting to fiscal irresponsibility and disrespect for the values of money. But as a whole, we are not. This fact alone is a major reason why I do not think our current economic model or situation is much similar to or caused by Ayn Rand-type economics.