Who is John Galt?
Who is John Galt?
Who is John Galt?
Over, and over, and over again, we hear this question asked, to the many characters in the book, but of us. You feel like you have a sense of what it means by the time you finish the book, but then you sit with it for a bit and you're left with more questions than ever. What does this question even mean? Who is the destroyer? Who is the liberator? Who is the man that stopped the motor of the world? Is it even possible to stop the motor of the world? Does society really rely on the self-sacrifice of a few great men to move forward? Do "great men" even exist, or is everything a collective effort? Are all great men self-sacrificial animals like Rearden or do some of them have other motivations? Is a normative urge to not care about anything except one's own life, reason and one's creative capacities as Man a coherent worldview? Is it even possible for John Galt to exist in our world?
Okay, I'm jumping the gun. All of these and more are questions that I wish to ask of both myself and the book, but a quick summary is in order. The overarching plot of Atlas Shrugged follows our two protagonists as they rebuild a critical railway track, moves onto the mysterious disappearances of most of the great men of industry in the wake of increasing centralisation by the government, illustrates the plight of the country in the wake of this flight and the consequent conversion of the state to what is essentially a centralised communist command economy which only serves to make things worse, reveals that the great men did not just disappear but are in fact on strike and are living in a small slice of utopia concealed in a mountain range, and ends with these great men returning to society to rebuild it, free from the shackles of the collapsed political machine and society's creed of their self-sacrifice.
At its core, in Rand's own words, Atlas Shrugged is an exploration of the relationship between these great men, these creators, these prime movers and the rest of the world. As a consequence, the plot plays a minimal role in exploring this relationship due to its inherently low resolution - at the end of the day, the plot resides in the broad strokes of the story's progression while the bulk of the exploration of relationships and the nature of man comes from the way each scene unfolds in exquisite detail. An upshot of this is that any half-decent analysis of the work has to irrevocably begin with an introduction of the people themselves. And thus, it is time to meet the cast of characters with which Ayn Rand populates her masterpiece.
The two "protagonists" of Atlas Shrugged, if we define protagonists as the people the story follows for the longest relative periods of time, are Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden. Dagny is the Operating Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental, a railroad founded by her grandfather Nat Taggart and currently in decline because of its management by her brother, James Taggart. Rearden is the founder of a number of metallurgical ventures, the most important of them being Rearden Steel, where he devises a new compound called Rearden Metal that is orders of magnitude lighter and stronger than any steel in production at the time. And by "he devises", I do mean it - from what we learn of it, it took 10 years of chemical and metallurgical research, a lot of which Rearden spearheaded firsthand, in order to bring the compound to fruition. It is not simply his capital being brought to the fore through the human excellence of others, which is a common criticism levied against Rand's consideration of industrialists and capitalists as "great men".
Anyways, there's a host of side characters who all have their own quirks, some of whom are just as instrumental to the story as our dear protagonists. But for the most part, most of these side characters can be cleanly divided into two categories - those that are Good and able, men and women who exercise their productive capacities and reason to the utmost extent, the people who keep the world running in Rand's view, and the Bad, the people who not only fail to contribute anything positive to the world, but whose entire worldview is based on a hatred of those with productive ability, a constant demand for need to be what determines the distribution of wealth over ability, and an incessant clamor for the consideration of the public good as a front for their own drives towards the destruction of the prime movers. The most relevant of these characters is James Taggart, the president of Taggart Transcontinental, who starts off simply as a man incapable of making any decisions, hiding behind pleas of "what would the Board think?", and providing justifications of his own incapacity by appealing towards his apparent moral superiority for caring about the "public good" above base materialistic needs, but ends as a descriptive caricature of the worst of Man, the drive to destroy all that is Good and an endless desire for the unearned, propelled forward by jealousy and the entitlement of a victim - in his own words, a man who believes himself to have the "right of weakness".
James Taggart's female counterpart is Lillian Rearden, Hank Rearden's wife. The only difference between the two is that while Rand deigned to give James at least the veneer of ability and independence through his figurehead position as president of Taggart Transcontinental, Lillian exists solely as the destroyer of Hank Rearden. The entirety of her existence and identity rests upon her position as Rearden's wife. Apart from these two, a few of the other figureheads of the Bad include Wesley Mouch, originally Rearden's man in Washington who double-crosses him to end up as the Top Co-ordinator at the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, Orren Boyle, the head of Associated Steel and a foil character to Hank Rearden, whose ability to woo the press and Washington far exceeds his ability to actually run a steel mill, as demonstrated through his endless self-serving corruption, Mr. Thompson, the head of the state who has no remarkable qualities whatsoever and exists solely to illustrate the government's dependence on the prime movers, and Dr. Floyd Ferris, the public-facing half of the State Science Institute and a man who claims that reason does not exist and the public would do better not to think for themselves at all.
But the true protagonist of Atlas Shrugged, a man beyond either Good or Bad, is John Galt. John Galt is the Ideal Man, at least in Rand's view: a prime mover of the highest order, a man of incredible intellectual and productive capacity who exercises both solely for the realization of his creative capacities, and a man who recognizes society's creed of self-sacrifice for the prime movers and refuses to comply. John Galt is the first domino to fall in the question at the heart of Atlas Shrugged - what if all the prime movers went on strike?
It is with this question that we can finally start poking and prodding at the core ideological and philosophical premises of Atlas Shrugged. The very first premise we must validate to answer the question of what would happen if the prime movers went on strike is whether the prime movers exist at all. The reason the question is one of existence and not one of definition is because given existence, the definition follows trivially - if we determine that a supermajority of world progress rests on the shoulders of a minority of the world population, then this minority consists of the prime movers. Note the focus on world progress - a prime mover not only has widespread effects on the world, but specifically widespread positive effects. Also note that a positive answer to this question does not immediately validate all aspects of Rand’s worldview - even if prime movers do exist, it does not necessarily follow that their identities, behavior and relation with society at large proceed exactly as Atlas Shrugged depicts.
It is, to the author, evidently obvious that certain individuals have outsized effects on global progress relative to the median. Who these individuals are can be debated, but it cannot be contested that they exist. However, the necessary prerequisite for considering these individuals "prime movers" is that a majority of world progress can be attributed to them. In other words, if contribution to world progress follows a Pareto-like distribution with an extremely fat upper tail, then those at the upper-tail end are the prime movers. Outcome distributions in fields like science, healthcare, industry, literature and more can serve as a reasonable proxy for contribution to global progress, and luckily for us, there is plenty of literature studying outcome distributions in these fields, with studies showing that most of them are pretty close to being Pareto distributions. Science has Lotka's Law, economic firms have Zipf's Law, patents follow a power law distribution, as do book sales, and you can find instances of this phenomenon in just about every field in which you care to look.
But we need a bit more than that for the theory of prime movers as posited by Rand to hold true. The Pareto distribution needs either to be extremely fat-tailed or to have few enough people, to the point where an extremely small fraction of the population going on strike results in widespread dysfunction and societal collapse. This is a bit easier to model in a field like science, for example, where contributions and breakthroughs tend to be considerably more individualistic than the output of an economic firm. Using Lotka's Law, a more extreme version of the Pareto distribution which says that the number of authors with n publications is proportional to 1/n⍺, where ⍺ is a measure of how quickly productivity drops off as publication count rises1, we can model how much of a hit the field takes with the elimination of, say, the top 10 authors. With ⍺ = 2, the share of the publications of the top 10 authors is given roughly by H_10/H_N, where N is the total number of authors and H_N is the harmonic sum. This is just a mathematical statement of the fact that Rand's theory of prime movers depends both on how fat tailed the distribution is (determined here by ⍺), and the number of contributors in the field (denoted by N). Thus, for ⍺ = 2, chopping off the top 10 authors loses roughly 39% of publications if the field has 1,000 authors, 30% if it has 10,000 authors, and 24% if it has 100,000 authors. But an unexpected consequence of this is that this result is extremely sensitive to the value of ⍺ - if ⍺ = 3, then chopping off the top 10 authors loses roughly 4.2% of publications if the field has 1,000 authors, 0.9% if it has 10,000 authors, and a mere 0.2% if it has 100,000 authors.
What this means is that the validity of whether or not Rand's hypothesis of the world coming to a halt if the prime movers go on strike rests solely on the value of ⍺ in the presupposed Pareto distribution of contribution to global progress. In fact, we might not even need an extremely low ⍺ in order for this to hold, and the reason for this is network effects. So far, we have assumed that the only consequence of one of the prime movers disappearing would be the loss of their output. In the real world, especially in economic firms, a number of the best performers leaving would result in a lot of other able people leaving as well, assuming these individuals are all extremely skilled and in demand in the general labour market2.
Yet, even if ⍺ and its associated network effects were strong enough, it still wouldn't be enough to validate Rand's hypothesis that the motor of the world stops with the disappearance of the prime movers. The reason for this is a categorical error in our analysis thus far - we've moved forward with the assumption that if individuals contribute to world progress, then their removal would result in societal dysfunction and collapse. This isn't entirely true, and what we've failed to account for is the fact that there exist two different types of dependence. Society depends upon both scientists and plumbers, entrepreneurs and garbagemen, inventors and construction workers - yet the nature of this dependence is different. Society's dependence on the former, the people Rand would refer to as the prime movers, is positive - their continued activity determines how much better the future becomes. The loss of these individuals will not result in immediate collapse, but will instead manifest itself as stagnation and relative decline over a longer time period. Society's dependence upon maintenance workers and operators of infrastructure, like tradesmen and low-level government employees, is negative - their withdrawal destroys that which is already functioning. This dichotomy of dependences also parallels the roughly two different types of work that goes into maintaining and improving society, namely positive (which involves increasing the quality of future outcomes) and negative (which involves maintaining the current state of affairs and holding society back from sliding into chaos). A major difference between these two is that the distribution of output in negative work tends much more towards a normal distribution than a Pareto distribution: for example, optimally assigning bureaucrats for tax collection only increases revenue by about 26% relative to the status quo, not even a single order of magnitude. A consequence of this is that no single individual or extreme minority group of individuals doing negative work can bring down the entire system by going on strike - they either have to garner a significant proportion of the group to go on strike with them, or be situated in a sector where network effects make it so that downstream disruptions exponentially increase the efficacy of their strike (eg. steel, semiconductors).
In light of all this uncovered knowledge, we can finally answer the question of whether or not the prime movers exist. The prime movers do exist, but I believe Rand has their relationship to society wrong. Large amounts of positive, creative progress actually rest on the shoulders of an incredibly small portion of the population, to the extent where losing even a minority of that population would debilitate the future prospects of humanity. This, of course, is a statement that is near impossible to prove in real time because it’s trying to prove a negative - how different would the world have been without Gauss? Without Euler? Without Ford? We don’t know. Maybe someone would have picked up the slack. Maybe no one would have. Yet empiricism comes to the rescue when rationalism can’t do the job, because cursory observation shows us that the race for the AI frontier today obeys the prime mover law almost to a T. This is because the AI race obeys the two preconditions for the theory of prime movers to hold - ⍺ is extremely low (top performers contribute considerably more than the median), and the number of people involved is relatively small (90% CI 350,000 - 1,500,000). There are a few thousand researchers and engineers who lie at the fat-tail end of the Pareto distribution of model training ability, and the two best labs have a majority of this talent and are correspondingly outperforming basically all of the competition. Companies are also much friendlier to winner-take-all dynamics in Pareto distributions with lower ⍺ due to the much smaller value of N. This further corroborates our hypotheses that prime movers primarily exist at the frontier, where dependence upon their ability is positive.
But despite the indispensability of prime movers on the frontier, their disappearance wouldn’t have as large of a negative effect as one might think. Running with our AI example, if we lost the 1,000 best AI researchers, not a lot would change for those of us living in the present. The models that already exist would continue existing, maybe future pretrains get worse, but for the most part our day-to-day would continue as it is. The tragedy is that we would never even know what we’ve lost. For example, if Napoleon suddenly disappeared before drafting the Napoleonic code, there would have been people to fill his shoes, but the Napoleonic code and its specific initiatives might never have come to fruition, delaying a number of positive reforms for much longer. If Augustus was never emperor of Rome, some other lad might have picked up the slack, but a lot of the glory of the Roman Empire might have taken longer to manifest. This form of opportunity cost is devilishly hard to quantify, and in theory can be posited to have almost infinite upside. However, in reality, even this isn't enough to cause a company to collapse, let alone society as a whole. If an organization loses a lot of its process knowledge through a number of its capable employees leaving, it tends to survive even through catastrophes like a plane falling out of the sky and killing 346 people. But, if a company loses Steve Jobs, on the other hand...
In essence, the positive case for individual exceptionalism is extremely strong, in that you as a singular person can change the world for the better on a massive scale, but even if you and those like you suddenly disappear from society, it’s not going to slide into dysfunction. Another way of looking at it is that the possible space of outcomes is just so ridiculously large that there exists a considerable grey area between unimaginable prosperity and complete despair, between salvation and annihilation. The world would be worse off for losing its prime movers, but it would survive just fine. Thus, we conclude this section of our exploration by saying that prime movers do exist, they are the people at the fat tail end of the Pareto distribution at the frontier, their contribution to society is positive, and thus their disappearance would manifest as lost futures and opportunity cost instead of complete societal dysfunction.
Now that we’ve gained a decent understanding of the merits of Atlas Shrugged as a descriptive work narrating what would happen to the world if the prime movers went on strike, it is time to consider its merits as a normative description of how one must live one’s life. The internal economy of Rand’s ideal man seems to have been laid out much better in The Fountainhead, so I went ahead and read the entire thing in a day. And because of that, this is no longer a review of Atlas Shrugged by itself, but of Ayn Rand's three greatest works - The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and her greatest project of all - her life.
After reading Atlas Shrugged, I was filled with such an indescribable sense of hope and joy and respect, and even though I didn't know the word for it then, man-worship, that the afterglow of reading it lived on within me for the next few days. It put so many things to words that I didn't even know I needed to hear, and it showed me that people like Galt existed. In the words of Rand, "I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don't exist. That this book has been written - and published - is my proof that they do." And subconsciously, I felt that it was good to live in such a world, a world where not only had I read a book like Atlas Shrugged, but I had the Fountainhead waiting for me too, a promise of greatness and heroism that I carried in the back of my mind.
After reading the Fountainhead, I cried. I cried because I would never again get to live without the knowledge of these two great works of literature, to have the potentiality of discovering them and going through the ups and downs of voraciously reading them ever again. And more than anything, I cried because Ayn Rand was dead. In her books I felt her reaching across the decades and telling me that it was okay, it was okay to worship man, to hold life up as heroic, to go forth into the world and act like the world was just and joyful, because people like her existed. It seems a terrible injustice that a mind that could see humanity as she did, that could see man as she did, had to be taken away from the world. And in that moment I understood why Dominique Francon fought so hard to ruin Roark and his work, to rip him away from the world, because they did not deserve him. And in the years since her death, I see why she might have been justified.
The glee with which some people yell "Oh, Rand thought she was part of the elite, but she died on food stamps!" is shameful. Such smug happiness and self-satisfaction in the knowledge that a woman who said that man must live for himself, for his own joy, for his own happiness, in the pursuit of his own rational flourishing, had died small and dependent on another is shameful.
"Well, let's talk - in a purely contemplative manner - about how interesting it is to see people welcoming you into their midst so eagerly, accepting you, flocking to you. Why is it, do you suppose? They do plenty of snubbing on their own, but just let someone who's snubbed them all her life suddenly break down and turn gregarious - and they all come rolling on their backs with their paws folded, for you to rub their bellies. Why? There could be two explanations, I think. The nice one would be that they are generous and wish to honor you with their friendship. Only the nice explanations are never the true ones. The other one is that they know you're degrading yourself by needing them, you're coming down off a pinnacle - every loneliness is a pinnacle - and they're delighted to drag you down through their friendship. Though, of course, none of them knows it consciously, except yourself. That's why you go through agonies, doing it, and you'd never do it for a noble cause, you'd never do it except for the end you've chosen, an end viler than the means and making the means endurable."
- Ellsworth Toohey, pg 277, The Fountainhead
For all those who seem to take joy in the knowledge that Rand died small and miserable, dependent on the welfare state that she so thoroughly eschewed, I regret to inform you that this was not the case. Rand did not die on food stamps. She did avail herself of benefits from Social Security and Medicaid. If you think that is availing charity and that ideological chink in her armor is enough to invalidate all the things she contributed to the world, I would ask you to reconsider.
Ayn Rand did not die alone and miserable. She died like she lived - in full-blown pursuit of her work and affirming the joy of her existence. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982, in New York City at the age of 77. In the months preceding, she delivered her final lecture at the Ford Hall Forum, gave her final public lecture titled "The Sanction of the Victims", recorded her final television interview on November 22, 1981, wrote the final page of her uncompleted television miniseries adaptation of Atlas Shrugged on January 1st, 1982, spent much of February 1982 in the hospital, and on returning home, died of heart failure.
At the core of Rand's philosophy is a sense of radical joy, one sure of man's capacity, his place in the world, his ability to shape nature in his image and use his powers of creation to bring forth utopia on this earth, one that proclaims that the only duty of man is to use his reason to pursue his purpose and his work with unbending sincerity and devotion. It is a form of rational egoism. But Rand's respect for man is not limited to the singular individual - it is extended to all of humanity. A lot of people tend to interpret her work as "I'm willing to do anything to make myself happy, including enslaving and abusing others, to whatever ends." That's not true. The motto by which Rand’s ideal man lived was written on Galt’s masterpiece, his generator: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." Respect for man as a rational animal extends both inwards and outwards, an acknowledgement not only of one’s drive to pursue one’s own rational self-flourishing, but to leave others free to do the same.
Rand’s man-worship was not a form of contempt for those unable to do justice to their lives. Her rejection of charity based on the need of another and the idea that one man’s need gave him a claim to another man’s property stems from an utmost respect for all of humanity. To her, the highest honor one could bestow upon another who was suffering and in need was an opportunity to make something of their lives again and become self-sufficient. To give them respect, not pity. Charity given for the value of a life, not its need. In some cases, this might look like temporary financial assistance. But to glorify one’s need, to make a man's lack his defining characteristic, to be the reason why he receives support, is to betray the value of his ability and his capacity for reason. For Rand, charity must be given freely and in cognizance of the values of the receiver, not out of pity.
Keating rose and stood looking uncertainly at his briefcase for a moment, then picked it up. He mumbled some vague words of parting, he took his hat, he walked to the door, then stopped and looked down at his briefcase.
"Howard. I brought something I wanted to show you." He walked back into the room and put the briefcase on the table.
"I haven't shown it to anyone." His fingers fumbled, opening the straps. "Not to Mother or Ellsworth Toohey ... I just want you to tell me if there's any...”
He handed to Roark six of his canvases. Roark looked at them, one after another. He took a longer time than he needed. When he could trust himself to lift his eyes, he shook his head in silent answer to the word Keating had not pronounced.
"It's too late, Peter," he said gently.
Keating nodded. "Guess I ... knew that."
When Keating had gone, Roark leaned against the door, closing his eyes. He was sick with pity. He had never felt this before - not when Henry Cameron collapsed in the office at his feet, not when he saw Steven Mallory sobbing on a bed before him.
Those moments had been clean, But this was pity - this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed.
There was shame in this feeling - his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect. This is pity, he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.
- pg 583, The Fountainhead
And if they're great and I'm not - isn't that exactly why they should bow to me, because I'm not? Wouldn't that be an act of true humanity?
It takes no kindness to respect a man who deserves respect - it's only a payment which he's earned. To give an unearned respect is the supreme gesture of charity…. But they're incapable of charity.
They're not human. They feel no concern for anyone's need... or weakness. No concern... and no pity...
- James Taggart, pg 361, Atlas Shrugged
My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
The fact that a man has no claim on others (i.e., that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance.
It is altruism that has corrupted and perverted human benevolence by regarding the giver as an object of immolation, and the receiver as a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the lives of others - a doctrine which is extremely offensive to both parties, leaving men no choice but the roles of sacrificial victim or moral cannibal....
To view the question in its proper perspective, one must begin by rejecting altruism's terms and all of its ugly emotional aftertaste - then take a fresh look at human relationships. It is morally proper to accept help, when it is offered, not as a moral duty, but as an act of good will and generosity, when the giver can afford it (i.e., when it does not involve self-sacrifice on his part), and when it is offered in response to the receiver's virtues, not in response to his flaws, weaknesses or moral failures, and not on the ground of his need as such.
- Ayn Rand Lexicon, Charity
It is this fundamental respect for man as a heroic being that makes Ayn Rand shun the existence of man, either as a sacrificial victim, or as a moral cannibal. Both states of being are unfitting to the glory of the individual. Charity as an obligation makes the giver a sacrificial victim and the receiver a moral cannibal. Understand that calling the receiver a moral cannibal is not looking down upon an individual that is in need or denigrating him for needing help from another. It is a rejection of the doctrine that states that one's need is what gives one value, that the meek and poor and disabled are virtuous because of their need, because of their inability, because of what they lack. There is no right of weakness. There is nothing virtuous about being small and downtrodden. It is indeed a deplorable state of being, and people who end up in such situations through no fault of their own do deserve a chance to do their lives justice. However, the proper, virtuous state of man is one where he fully utilizes his own mind and his reason to pursue the rational flourishing of his life and his values, not a state where he is meek and small and incapable. Where I do differ slightly from Rand is in the space of possible justifications for such charity - not only can you offer charity on the basis of the value of another, but also in the pursuit of moral ideals. From Nintil:
You can defend that there exists a general moral duty to help the poor, but not because they deserve it, but just because it is good to help others, and doing more good is better than doing less good, so if you are going to dedicate resources to helping others, if you target the poor you will get lots of helping done.
Rand's views on charity stem from the underlying view that although man's highest duty is to engage in the rational flourishing of his life, he can act to keep certain values, and when acting in accordance with these values, even to go as far as giving up one's life for another is not an act of self-denial or self-immolation. But this sacrifice must be a voluntary one, made with full knowledge of the rational hierarchy of one's values. It is not virtuous ex ante, and it is not something that can be demanded from another as a paramount moral good.
Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one's selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a "sacrifice" for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.
Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. In the above example, his wife's survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.
...
If the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is greater in proportion to the greatness of that person's value to oneself. If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one's own life to save him or her - for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable.
- "The Ethics of Emergencies", from the Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
Apart from her views on charity and selfishness, another common criticism of Rand is that she propounds a form of elitism, where the industrialists and capitalists are at some deep level fundamentally better than the common man, the looters and the moochers and the incapable. This couldn't really be further from the truth. Yes, she does have a vision of the ideal man as one that pursues the rational flourishing of his life and lives only for himself, a vision where one doesn't live as a second hander in the pursuit of status or power, but as a completely self-contained individual. But by their very nature as someone that stands alone and has a duty only to themselves, the question of comparison is a non-sequitur. As long as they remain true to themselves and use their reason to flourish, there is not really a sliding scale of value on which they are situated and can be compared to other human beings on. In this sense, the Randian view is one of radical equality where all men have it in them to approximate her ideal man, as long as they are willing to use their reason and their own mind to carve their path in this world. No one man is fundamentally better or worth more than another - one's value is determined only by his willingness to trust his mind and use his reason rather than engaging in the willful suppression of one's consciousness.
At this point it would be useful to distinguish between two different types of value. What does it even really mean for a human being to be worth something? The first type of value follows from one's existence as a conscious being: everyone alive is afforded value simply due to their existence as a human being. This sense of absolute value is equal and unchangeable, in that there is no way of increasing or reducing the stock of this value in any one person. No one human is worth more than another in this extremely fundamental sense. This is because this value is intrinsic to life itself, and is not measured towards any end. It does not follow that all human life should be worth the same to you, because then we've introduced a notion of value towards some end, or according to an external measure of worth. Nobody is going to fault you for valuing your mother more than a stranger except for the most stringent utilitarians, but to say that she is objectively worth more than somebody else is treading into murky territory. Similarly, certain individuals can be worth more due to their ability, or their morality, or the actions they've taken in the past, but they are only worth more in the specific context and towards the ends in which we evaluate them. For Rand, the only such context is the extent to which one utilizes their reason and their thinking for their rational flourishing. In this context, she does think that individuals who refuse to buckle to irrationality, refuse to become second-handers, and unceasingly place full faith in their own reason without striving to compromise another's capacity for self-determination, are better people. "Better" here is used as it is in a typical moral sense - there are good things, there are bad things, those who act in accordance with the "good" are better, and those who act in accordance with the "bad" are worse. If this too is considered elitism, then every moral system in all of human history is elitist as well.
Since men are born tabula rasa, both cognitively and morally, a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that, he judges them according to the moral character they have actualised. If he finds them guilty of major evils, his good will is replaced by contempt and moral condemnation. (If one values human life, one cannot value its destroyers.) If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues.
-"The Ethics of Emergencies", from the Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
A good counterpoint to Rand on human value is Nietzsche. Rand holds that all men are fundamentally equal, yet can strive to be worth more through the utilization of their reason. To Nietzsche, some men are innately better than others, and society should do all it can to further the projects of these few great men. Those who are not fortunate enough to be born with this royal decree are out of luck - they will never, ever, ever achieve anything even close to the projects of the few great men who were born to rule. People tend to conflate Rand and Nietzsche due to their mutual worship of man, man's greatness, and the pursuit of individual flourishing as an end in and of itself, but the two of them couldn't be more different in their fundamental tenets. For those well-versed in Nietzsche, a way of looking at this would be to consider the Randian view as considering all humans as potential übermenschen.
As she completed and revised her novel, she not only took out the Nietzsche quotations, but also endeavored to eliminate several negative Nietzsche-like elements. Nietzsche implies that there are different moralities for the noble and the others, that the will to power is an expression of strength, that the world is a hostile place for the noble man, that spiritual nobility is innate rather than self-made, that the noble soul has no commerce with reason. All that, Ayn Rand repudiated....
- Nietzsche's Influence on the Fountainhead, Tom Bowden
When her interviewers asked her to distinguish her treatment of “superior” people such as Howard Roark and Henry Rearden from Nietzsche’s discussions of the superior individual, she had this to say:
It’s an equivocation on the word “superior.” If you mean “superior” in the sense of excellence – and “superior is a bad word to use here – if you mean that some men excel, are better, than others, by means of self-developed, self-made virtue, that is a different thing entirely than Nietzsche’s concept, which divided men in effect into two species. You see, the word “superior” is more applicable to Nietzsche’s philosophy. It is a word which we never use. I never describe my characters as “superior” men, I describe them as ideal men. Now in Nietzsche’s concept, a man is superior or inferior by birth: it has nothing to do with morality.
To illustrate the differences between their philosophies further, let us walk through an argument furthered by Nietzsche and try to model how Rand would respond. Nietzsche would (and did) consider it perfectly just, and even ideal, for the natural-born lesser men to serve as slaves in the great civilizational projects of the übermensch3. Arguments have been made that this interpretation is not as tyrannical as it seems on the surface, that the best possible life for these "lesser men" is to transcend themselves by contributing to the project of a greater man, but that is besides the point. The fundamental reason why Rand would oppose this, at least from my reading of her so far, is due to its presumption that it may dictate the ideal life for other men. Each individual's life is their own, and it is up to them to live it as they see fit using their mind and reason. Granted, the capacity to launch civilizational projects is extremely g-loaded, which implies that not all men who want to contribute to something of this scale have the capacity and ability to do so by spearheading it themselves.
Yet, it does not trivially follow that the just course of action past this is for them to take part in such a project by working for someone else. Maybe, through introspection, they discover that they value the act of leadership over the scale of the project, in which case they can start something of their own on a smaller scale. Or they realize that they want to pursue civilizational prosperity by spreading the teachings of the Buddha. Or they realize that the struggle wasn't for them and settle down and become a family man. As long as they are true to themselves and utilize their reason to determine the right course of action, that is fine by Rand's measure. This doesn't mean that people shouldn't embark on a shared journey to work on something great if they don't have the capacity to do so alone - rather, they should only do so if their reason tells them that this is the absolutely right course of action, and the choice which leads to their flourishing. The primary area of agreement between Rand and Nietzsche is a worship of ability and the greatness of man, and an overwhelming respect and utter lack of contempt for the human spirit - despite disagreements on how people should do so, the two would definitely agree that embarking on such grand civilizational projects is almost an imperative for humanity.
Coming back to the discussion on elitism, apart from the fact that Rand's belief system lends itself to the sort of radical equality discussed earlier, a simple reading of her characters will dispossess you of any convictions of her supposed elitism. In the Fountainhead, Roark is an architect. His closest friends include a newspaper editor, an electrician, a sculptor and a hotel executive. In Atlas Shrugged, although Rearden is the President of his own company, Dagny is "only" the Operative Vice-Executive of Taggart Transcontinental, and the closest thing we see to a villain in Rand's eyes is her brother, who is the President of Taggart Transcontinental. To Rand, the causal relationship between one's rank in society and the extent to which they utilise their reason doesn't run either way - a high rank in society doesn't imply a pristine capacity for the utilization of reason, and the impeccable utilization of reason doesn't guarantee a high societal rank either. This is pretty evident in the veritable mountain of scathing commentary in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged on the vapid emptiness of most of high culture, of how everyone exists only in the eyes of everyone else, and how they don't really exist as individuals at all.
“There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture post cards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him nor answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.”
- pg 162, The Fountainhead
"This is the kind of a wife you'll have. A clumsy little girl who won't know where to put her hands or feet. A sheepish little thing who'll run and hide from any important person that you'll want to bring to the house. So you think you're so good? Don't kid yourself, Peter Keating! No great man ever got there alone. Don't you shrug it off, how much the right woman's helped the best of them. Your Francon didn't marry a chambermaid, you bet your life he didn't! Just try to see things through other people's eyes for a bit. What will they think of your wife? What will they think of you? You don't make your living building chicken coops for soda jerkers, don't you forget that! You've got to play the same as the big men of this world see it. You've got to live up to them. What will they think of a man who's married to a common little piece of baggage like that? Will they admire you? Will they trust you? Will they respect you?"
- Mrs. Keating, to Peter Keating, pg 155, The Fountainhead
“Keating redrew his project five times. He hated it. He hated every girder of that building before it was born. He worked, his hand trembling. He did not think of the drawing under his hand. He thought of all the other contestants, of the man who might win and be proclaimed publicly as his superior. He wondered what that other one would do, how the other would solve the problem and surpass him. He had to beat that man; nothing else mattered; there was no Peter Keating, there was only a suction chamber, like the kind of tropical plant he'd heard about, a plant that drew an insect into its vacuum and sucked it dry and thus acquired its own substance.”
- pg 173, The Fountainhead
"No. What have you been thinking?
"I've thought of it for some time - all by myself. I haven't mentioned it to anyone. And nobody suggested it. It's my own idea."
"Why, that's fine. What is it?"
“I think I'd like to move to the country and build a house of our own. Would you like that?”
“I’d like it very much. Just as you would. You want to design a home for yourself?"
"Hell, no. Bennett will dash one off for me. He does all our country homes. He's a whiz at it."
“Will you like commuting?”
"No, I think that will be quite an awful nuisance. But you know, everybody that's anybody commutes nowadays. I always feel like a damn proletarian when I have to admit that I live in the city."
"Will you like to see trees and a garden and the earth around you?"
"Oh, that's a lot of nonsense. When will I have the time? A tree's a tree. When you've seen a newsreel of the woods in spring, you've seen it all."
"Will you like to do some gardening? People say it's very nice, working the soil yourself.”
"Good God, no! What kind of grounds do you think we'd have? We can afford a gardener, and a good one - so the place will be something for the neighbors to admire."
"Will you like to take up some sport?"
"Yes, I'll like that."
"Which one?"
"I think I'll do better with my golf. You know, belonging to a country club right where you're one of the leading citizens in the community is different from occasional weekends. And the people you meet are different. Much higher class. And the contacts you make..." He caught himself, and added angrily: "Also, I'll take up horseback riding."
“I like horseback riding. Do you?”
“I’ve never had much time for it. Well, it does shake your insides unmercifully. But who the hell is Gordon Prescott to think he's the only he-man on earth and plaster his photo in riding clothes right in his reception room?"
"I suppose you will want to find some privacy?”
“Well, I don't believe in that desert-island stuff. I think the house should stand in sight of a major highway, so people would point out, you know, the Keating estate. Who the hell is Claude Stengel to have a country home while I live in a rented flat? He started out about the same time I did, and look where he is and where I am, why, he's lucky if two and a half men ever heard of him, so why should he park himself in Westchester and…”
And he stopped.
- Peter Keating and Dominique Francon, pg 424, The Fountainhead
This thing, this mindless, shambling monster that lives not in any single person but in the relationships between them, is what is destroying Roark's world in The Fountainhead. The crabs remain happy as long as no one tries to scramble out of the bucket. Rand sets us up to know this monster intimately, to see its tentacles spread throughout the narrative, before she lines up the final blow with an insight so succinct and on the nose as to make you gasp in horror and realization.
"What have you been thinking about these past weeks?"
"The principle behind the dean who fired me from Stanton."
"What principle?"
"The thing that is destroying the world. The thing you were talking about. Actual selflessness."
"The ideal which they say does not exist?"
“They're wrong. It does exist - though not in the way they imagine. It's what I couldn't understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating."
"You look at him. I hate his guts."
“I’ve looked at him - at what's left of him and it's helped me to understand. He's paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he's been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness - in other people's eyes. Fame, admiration, envy - all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn't want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn't want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There's your actual selflessness. It's his ego he's betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish.”
- Gail Wynand and Howard Roark, pg 605, The Fountainhead
This particularly insidious form of selflessness is something that I've been trying to put my finger on for a very, very long time. It is curious in that it's all-pervasive. In every culture, across all socio-economic strata, social capital through the perception of others is so absolute as to take priority over almost anything else. The richest, smartest, most able people building on the absolute cutting edge of technology are not that different from a small town of gossiping housewives in the most destitute of countries. San Francisco is full of Peter Keatings. All elite educational institutions are full of Peter Keatings. They don't exist. You look at their eyes and you see the opinions of their friends looking back at you. Or the latest internet trend. Or what their self-selected in-group thinks. "What do you think of this?", you ask, and they hack up worthless platitudes or alphabet soup and shibboleths so egregious you can almost hear the egregore that's taken over their brain chittering and snapping its mandibles in glee. "What do you think of this?", you ask, and they turn to the rest of the world for a suitable opinion.
What really breaks my heart is that some of these people, especially those frolicking amongst the societal elite, are incredibly capable. They have some of the sharpest minds and skillsets you will ever come across, and they bend all of their considerable skill and ability towards satisfying their appetite to gain approval from others. I want to take these people, grab them by their shoulders, look straight into their eyes and scream, "YOU'RE ALIVE! YOU'RE ALIVE AND BREATHING AND YOU HAVE A SOUL! DO JUSTICE TO THE INCREDIBLE CREATURE THAT YOU ARE AND LIVE A LIFE THAT FULFILLS YOU INSTEAD OF THROWING IT AWAY CHASING THINGS YOU DON'T WANT FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T CARE FOR APPROVAL THAT DOESN'T MATTER!"
There is no moral imperative for you to change the world, or to use your ability to do something on a civilizational scale. But there does exist a duty, perhaps the only one, to stay true to yourself and use your reason to live a life that you truly enjoy. Don't let fear dictate the course of your life. Don't be afraid to take the leap. Very, very few people form their opinions authentically and through the use of their reason. Groupthink has never been easier to succumb to than today, where you constantly have people telling you what to think on every social media site, 24/7, for all eternity. But it is still possible to live a life of radical authenticity, and it is incredibly rewarding. To be truly free you must reject the sanction that you have given others to judge your life, even subconsciously.
The cardinal sin of the Bad in Rand's books is the fact that they choose to live their lives primarily through others, in varying fashions and to varying degrees. The only one that seems to subvert this pattern is one of the primary antagonists of the Fountainhead, Ellsworth Toohey, but I will explain why that's not the case. Toohey is a writer who bursts onto the scene as an architectural critic writing for various journals, a seemingly selfless man who cares only for the common good and donates most of his wealth to various charities. He organizes collectives like the Council of American Builders and the Council of American Writers, where he holds discussions about the moral duties of these individuals to the common good, and uses his influence over the newspaper he works at to socially engineer the success of the works of the writers and builders of these councils. But these works have no substance - they are works of mediocrity of the highest order, meaningless drivel whose only purpose is to sabotage the public's capacity for judgement and ensure that they fail to recognize greatness even if it is right in front of their face. All of this is not yet damning, because Toohey achieves this entirely through his own effort and through the utilization of his reason towards his own ends, without forcing another to abdicate his free will and agency.
Where Toohey falls short of being moral is the method he uses to ensure the radical equality of man - his true goal is not the empowerment of the oppressed, but the destruction of the great. The culmination of his worldview is a monologue he gives to Peter Keating where Toohey says his true goal is power, but I wasn't entirely convinced by it. It seemed to be too much of a strawman to take at face value and treat as the motive force behind his actions. But it doesn't really matter what his true motivations were here - even if he was motivated by a genuine altruism for the oppressed rather than using it as a cover for his own drive to power, the very fact that he chooses to achieve this equality by bringing men like Roark to their knees makes the crux of his life dependent upon the downfall of another, and thus fits him into our pattern of the Bad.
He got up, walked over to her, and stood looking at the lights of the city below them, at the angular shapes of buildings, at the dark walls made translucent by the glow of the windows, as if the walls were only a checkered veil of thin black gauze over a solid mass of radiance. And Ellsworth Toohey said softly:
"Look at it. A sublime achievement, isn't it? A heroic achievement. Think of the thousands who worked to create this and of the millions who profit by it. And it is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages, but for a dozen men - less, perhaps - none of this would have been possible. And that might be true. If so, there are - again - two possible attitudes to take. We can say that these twelve were great benefactors, that we are all fed by the overflow of the magnificent wealth of their spirit, and that we are glad to accept it in gratitude and brotherhood. Or, we can say that by the splendor of their achievement which we can neither equal nor keep, these twelve have shown us what we are, that we do not want the free gifts of their grandeur, that a cave by an oozing swamp and a fire of sticks rubbed together are preferable to skyscrapers and neon lights - if the cave and the sticks are the limit of your own creative capacities. Of the two attitudes, Dominique, which would you call the truly humanitarian one? Because, you see, I'm a humanitarian.”
- Ellsworth Toohey, pg 281, The Fountainhead
Apart from Toohey, most of the other antagonists fall pretty neatly into this categorization. In Atlas Shrugged, Mouch and his government boys intend to rule by appropriating the work of Rearden, Dagny, Danagger and the other industrialists, by bending their productive capacities to the ends of the government, for the "common good". Orren Boyle can't compete solely on the basis of his ability, so he co-opts his friends in the government to pass anti-competitive legislation to let him take over some of Rearden's mills, and promptly runs them into the ground. Lillian Rearden only really exists as Henry Rearden's wife, and instead of doing something about this and attempting to stake out a life of her own through her own achievement, she instead just tries to destroy Hank and bring him down to the level of her miserable existence due to her resentment and envy. James Taggart is an offender on multiple counts - he appropriates Dagny's work as his own, lives only for the opinions and perceptions of others, runs to the government to pass anti-competitive legislation when he can't succeed on his own merit, and struggles to destroy all that is great because the admission of the greatness of another in the realm of man highlights, in stark contrast, where James falls short.
"Yes! And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money. Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose - to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury - he's completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They're second-handers. Look at our so-called cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all that means nothing at all to him - and the people who listen and don't give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers."
"If I were Ellsworth Toohey, I'd say: aren't you making out a case against selfishness? Aren't they all acting on a selfish motive - to be noticed, liked, admired?"
" - by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance - the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought - they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it."
"I think Toohey understands that. That's what helps him spread his vicious nonsense. Just weakness and cowardice. It's so easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is the strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence - such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence."
"That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: 'Is this true?' They ask: 'Is this what others think is true?' Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation - anchored to nothing. That's the emptiness I couldn't understand in people. That's what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It's everywhere and nowhere and you can't reason with him. He's not open to reason. You can't speak to him - he can't hear. You're tried by an empty bench. A blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. Steve Mallory couldn't define the monster, but he knew. That's the drooling beast he fears. The second-hander."
"I think your second-handers understand this, try as they might not to admit it to themselves. Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. By instinct. There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them - because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man. Look back at your own life, Howard, and at the people you've met. They know. They're afraid. You're a reproach."
"That's because some sense of dignity always remains in them. They're still human beings. But they've been taught to seek themselves in others. Yet no man can achieve the kind of absolute humility that would need no self-esteem in any form. He wouldn't survive. So after centuries of being pounded with the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it in the only way it could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand. And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn't have conceived. And now, to cure a world perishing from selflessness, we're asked to destroy the self. Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me.' Then he wonders why he's unhappy. Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven't even got a word for the quality I mean - for the self-sufficiency of man's spirit. It's difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they've come to mean Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once - and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters."
"I'm glad you admit that you have friends."
"I even admit that I love them. But I couldn't love them if they were my chief reason for living. Do you notice that Peter Keating hasn't a single friend left? Do you see why? If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others."
"To hell with Peter Keating. I'm thinking of you - and your friends."
Roark smiled. "Gail, if this boat were sinking, I'd give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you."
"Howard, what were the reasons and standards?" Roark looked at him and realized that he had said all the things he had tried not to say to Wynand. He answered: "That you weren't born to be a second-hander." Wynand smiled. He heard the sentence - and nothing else. Afterward, when Wynand had gone below to his cabin, Roark remained alone on deck. He stood at the rail, staring out at the ocean, at nothing.
He thought: I haven't mentioned to him the worst second-hander of all - the man who goes after power.
- pg 607-608, The Fountainhead
Gail Wynand of The Fountainhead is a unique case. Wynand is a news magnate who, by all accounts, seems to be just as much a depiction of the ideal man as Roark. He appreciates excellence and competence when he sees it, made his way up in the world solely through his own efforts, and doesn't seek approval in the eyes of others. The two become the best of friends, for Roark sees that Wynand was not born to be a second-hander. But to Rand, Wynand committed the biggest sin of them all - though he was not born to be a second hander, he gave it all up for power over another. His work appeals to the lowest common denominator: sensationalist slop whose only purpose is to excite and reach as many eyeballs as possible, with no regard for Wynand's principles nor truth. He saw the truth, yet gave it away for power. Striving for power is still living through another.
Then he looked up, across the city, to the shapes of the great skyscrapers. He saw a string of lights rising unsupported in black space, a glowing pinnacle anchored to nothing, a small, brilliant square hanging detached in the sky. He knew the famous buildings to which these belonged, he could reconstruct their forms in space. He thought, you're my judges and witnesses. You rise, unhindered, above the sagging roofs. You shoot your gracious tension to the stars, out of the slack, the tired, the accidental. The eyes one mile out on the ocean will see none of this and none of this will matter, but you will be the presence and the city. As down the centuries, a few men stand in lonely rectitude that we may look and say, there is a human race behind us. One can't escape from you; the streets change, but one looks up and there you stand, unchanged. You have seen me walking through the streets tonight. You have seen all my steps and all my years. It's you that I've betrayed. For I was born to be one of you.
He walked on. It was late. Circles of light lay undisturbed on the empty sidewalks under the lampposts. The horns of taxis shrieked once in a while like doorbells ringing through the corridors of a vacant interior. He saw discarded newspapers, as he passed: on the pavements, on park benches, in the wire trash-baskets on corners. Many of them were the Banner. Many copies of the Banner had been read in the city tonight. He thought, we're building circulation, Alvah.
He stopped. He saw a paper spread out in the gutter before him, front page up. It was the Banner. He saw Roark's picture. He saw the gray print of a rubber heel across Roark's face.
He bent, his body folding itself down slowly, with both knees, both arms, and picked up the paper. He folded the front page and put it in his pocket. He walked on.
An unknown rubber heel, somewhere in the city, on an unknown foot that I released to march.
I released them all. I made every one of those who destroyed me. There is a beast on earth, dammed safely by its own impotence. I broke the dam. They would have remained helpless.
They can produce nothing. I gave them the weapon. I gave them my strength, my energy, my living power. I created a great voice and let them dictate the words. The woman who threw the beet leaves in my face had a right to do it. I made it possible for her.
Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness. Alvah Scarret can be forgiven. He had nothing to betray. Mitchell Layton can be forgiven. But not I. I was not born to be a second-hander.
- Gail Wynand, pg 662-663, The Fountainhead
Apart from placing their primary concern within other men, another characteristic of the Bad is their incessant demand for the unearned. Vying for the unearned is a subset of behaviours that are enabled only by placing your primary concern within other people. You cannot vie for the unearned with your own ego and consciousness, because at some level your dignity doesn't let you lie to yourself without disastrous consequences. However, placing your primary concern within others doesn't necessarily imply that you have to vie for the unearned - you can justly earn admiration, love, respect or power over another through your own efforts. Gail Wynand is a great example of this, in how he gains power over the public through his own efforts. Rand is aware of the distinction between the two but doesn't give it much weight, universally condemning any activity that places your primary concern in the realm of others as a betrayal of your duty to yourself.
Part of this demand for the unearned comes from the Bad's insistence on the absolute equality of all men4. If this is taken to be true, then why should it be so that men like Rearden get admiration and success while men like James Taggart don't? What makes them so great, anyways? Isn't there some value to be had in the moral considerations and charity that Jim advocates for? Arguments of this kind are put forth by the Bad pretty consistently across both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. It's kind of disconcerting because you see such discourse being taken seriously and used as a basis for policy in a number of extremely left-wing spaces. Yes, all humans are afforded some basic dignity and respect by virtue of their existence. No, it is not reasonable to demand by fiat that all people get exactly the same amount of respect in light of their achievements and work in the real world. Inequality is not injustice.
"Yes, Jim, I do. That's what you want - that's what all of you really want - not money, not material benefits, not economic security not any of the handouts you keep demanding." She spoke in a flat monotone, as if reciting her thoughts to herself, intent upon giving the solid identity of words to the torturous shreds of chaos twisting in her mind. "All of you welfare preachers - it's not unearned money that you're after. You want handouts, but of a different kind. I'm a gold-digger of the spirit, you said, because I look for value. Then you, the welfare preachers... It's the spirit that you want to loot. I never thought and nobody ever told us how it could be thought of and what it would mean - the unearned in spirit. But that is what you want. You want unearned love. You want unearned admiration. You want unearned greatness. You want to be a man like Hank Rearden without the necessity of being what he is. Without the necessity of being anything. Without...the necessity…of being."
- Cherryl Brooks, pg 810, Atlas Shrugged
“Whenever you rebel against causality, your motive is the fraudulent desire, not to escape it, but worse: to reverse it. You want unearned love, as if love, the effect, could give you personal value, the cause - you want unearned admiration, as if admiration, the effect, could give you virtue, the cause - you want unearned wealth, as if wealth, the effect, could give you ability, the cause - you plead for mercy, mercy, not justice, as if an unearned forgiveness could wipe out the cause of your plea.”
- John Galt, pg 950, Atlas Shrugged
Certain characters in Atlas Shrugged take this even further, suggesting virtue resides solely in giving to the undeserved, and that weakness gives one a right to the labour of the strong. In so many words, this is the primary negative vision that Rand is against, this idea that the weak or those in need have a right to the labour and property of the strong and those with ability.
She got up. Her head was drawn into her shoulders, and the righteous bitterness of her voice seemed to push the words upward at his tall, straight figure: "That's your cruelty, that's what's mean and selfish about you. If you loved your brother, you'd give him a job he didn't deserve, precisely because he didn't deserve it - that would be true love and kindness and brotherhood. Else what's love for? If a man deserves a job, there's no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is the giving of the undeserved."
- Hank Rearden's Mother to Hank Rearden, pg 197, Atlas Shrugged
"It's your sin if I suffer! It's your moral failure! I'm your brother, therefore I'm your responsibility, but you've failed to supply my wants, therefore you're guilty! All of mankind's moral leaders have said so for centuries - who are you to say otherwise? You're so proud of yourself, you think that you're pure and good - but you can't be good, so long as I'm wretched. My misery is the measure of your sin. My contentment is the measure of your virtue. I want this kind of world, today's world, it gives me my share of authority, it allows me to feel important - make it work for me! - do something! - how do I know what? - it's your problem and your duty! You have the privilege of strength, but I - I have the right of weakness! That's a moral absolute! Don't you know it! Don't you? Don't you?"
- James Taggart, pg 839-840, Atlas Shrugged
James' dialogue only sounds so objectionable because he's referring to himself in the first person. If you change it to the third person, it becomes pretty much exactly what the conception of negative responsibility implies in utilitarianism (you're equally responsible for outcomes you allow as ones you cause), except in this case this morality is only selectively applied to the strong.
Another prominent feature of the Bad is their envy. They are aware that the world of reason is the world of the prime movers, and living in it would mean accepting a system of values in which someone else was better than them. Actually utilising their reason would also reveal to them the truth of their existence and the nature of their failures, in that they cheated and they lied and lived off of the work of another. And in their unwillingness to confront the truth of their situation, they blank out and refuse to use their reason at all, retreating instead to the realm of feelings and emotions and intuition, if deigning to form an opinion about things at all.
"I don't care! I want to break him! I want to hear him scream! I want-"
And then it was Taggart who screamed. It was a long, sudden, piercing scream, as if at some sudden sight, though his eyes were staring at space and seemed blankly sightless. The sight he was confronting was within him. The protective walls of emotion, of evasion, of pretense, of semi-thinking and pseudo-words, built up by him through all of his years, had crashed in the span of one moment - the moment when he knew that he wanted Galt to die, knowing fully that his own death would follow.
He was suddenly seeing the motive that had directed all the actions of his life. It was not his incommunicable soul or his love for others or his social duty or any of the fraudulent sounds by which he had maintained his self-esteem: it was the lust to destroy whatever was living, for the sake of whatever was not. It was the urge to defy reality by the destruction of every living value, for the sake of proving to himself that he could exist in defiance of reality and would never have to be bound by any solid, immutable facts. A moment ago, he had been able to feel that he hated Galt above all men, that the hatred was proof of Galt's evil, which he need define no further, that he wanted Galt to be destroyed for the sake of his own survival. Now he knew that he had wanted Galt's destruction at the price of his own destruction to follow, he knew that he had never wanted to survive, he knew that it was Galt's greatness he had wanted to torture and destroy - he was seeing it as greatness by his own admission, greatness by the only standard that existed, whether anyone chose to admit it or not: the greatness of a man who was master of reality in a manner no other had equaled. In the moment when he, James Taggart, had found himself facing the ultimatum: to accept reality or die, it was death his emotions had chosen, death, rather than surrender to that realm of which Galt was so radiant a son. In the person of Galt - he knew he had sought the destruction of all existence.
- pg 1048, Atlas Shrugged
That about sums up all I have to say about Rand's philosophy without introducing my own personal opinions into the picture. I have tried to present her views as honestly as possible to the best of my ability in order to ensure that any criticisms of her work do not stem from a misunderstanding of its core tenets. One might question why I spent so much more time talking about Rand's conception of the Bad as compared to the Good. It's because the conception of Rand's ideal man is quite simple. Rand's ideal man is one who uses his reason to pursue his own rational flourishing, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. This, I hope, was implicit throughout the discussion so far. Furthermore, there are only so many ways to go about this, while there are incredibly many ways to flout this maxim and to betray yourself, which is why the Bad were graced with so much more analysis. Also, there's really no point in me trying to dictate exactly what this definition of the ideal man entails for every individual, since it's bound to be different based on each individual's hierarchy of values.
I have an immense amount of respect for Ayn Rand and her work. She has shown me a radically different conception of what life could be like, and presented a heroic conception of the individual like nothing I have ever seen before. For this, I owe her a great debt.
Assuming that your primary concern is not in others and that you live only for yourself without demanding that others sacrifice themselves for you, do you automatically become a model of the ideal man? The answer, through my own experience, is no. Just like with our analysis of the prime movers, there is considerable middle ground between salvation and annihilation. You can be completely self-sufficient and still pathologically lie to yourself because you're afraid to face the truth of your failure on objective grounds.
A lot of self-help today centers around feelings of charity and kindness and unconditional respect towards oneself. Maybe you're beginning to see where I'm going with this - if this charity is based upon your need, then are you not implicitly glorifying your lack? What if no amount of understanding and coaxing and gentle parenting can help you? Sure, you can grant yourself kindness and understanding, but not unconditional respect. Respect should be granted on the basis of your ability to stay true to your moral code and embody excellence.
Two possible explanations I've given for people choosing to "blank out" are a refusal to accept a system of values in which someone else was better than them, and a refusal to see the truth of one's failures and shortcomings. Although these two reasons for blanking out almost always come packaged together in Rand's works, they are quite distinct and can appear independently in the real world. You need not be envious of another to not want to confront the reality of your situation. If you have standards, if you have ambitions, if you know exactly what you need to do and you still waste your time away indulging in cheap pleasures, you are engaging in the act of wilfully suspending your consciousness. Because turning to reason would mean grappling with the reality and magnitude of your utter and complete failure over the years, you instead suspend cognition entirely and run from one escape to another, bouncing between different escapes in the hopes that denying the existence of your behaviour and utter and complete failure would make it go away.
No. The only way to do the work is to do the work. No amount of wishing or planning or whinging or resentment or claims of "I don't know what's wrong" is going to fix it. You have failed yourself, miserably, day after week after month after year, and all the time that you have thrown down the drain is never coming back. You could have been a Napoleon, an Alexander, a World Strider, and you threw it all away because you couldn't control your own impulses. Are you proud of yourself, looking at where you stand now? You have not broken yet, but your ascent towards the heavens has stopped abruptly and unceremoniously, forever to languish and exist only as potential because you did not have the courage to face the truth and use your reason.
But this is not the end. It is never the end, as long as you have more life to keep on living. Accept it. You have failed. You have wasted your time. You continue to betray your ideals and your potential with every waking moment. Understand the magnitude of your failure, how much you could have done with the time you have wasted. Understand it, rage over it, let the pain wash over you, and let it go. Reason is your only stalwart. Use it. Use your mind. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think. THINK. Are you doing justice to yourself? Is this the right path for you? Why do you fail? How can you set up your environment to bend the world towards your ends? Think. Think harder. Think until you win. Think until every last barrier crumbles against the sheer force of your mind. Think until the universe ceases to exist and renders you unable to walk or breathe or live, because until then all the world is yours for the taking, to mold in your image.
You come into this world with nothing, and you leave with nothing. But the universe hands you a blank check at the moment of your conception filled with infinite potentiality, in the form of your mind. Do not eschew its gift. Use it to the greatest extent possible. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that good night. It is all too easy and comfortable to blank out when the world is not to your liking. Refuse to acknowledge the truth, the pain, the misery, the failure, the betrayal. But A is A, and that is a fact that you will never change.
"Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is’. Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality, But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say 'It is,’ you are refusing to say ‘I am’. By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?' - he is declaring: ‘Who am I to live?'”
- John Galt, pg 931, Atlas Shrugged
To eschew the unearned is to commit yourself towards an austere purity. You must eschew the unearned not only in the eyes of others (which you have, for a considerable amount of time, given your emancipation from their judgement), but also from yourself. Your respect and goodwill is something that you must earn, continuously, through prodigious effort and the demonstrations of your competence. There will be no quarter given. No forgiveness. No sympathy. If you wish to throw off all shackles, then you must be willing to judge yourself by the purest reason. You failed. Recognize it. Do not run away. Seek your flourishing through effort and competence. Moral condemnation in the absence of this striving is not undeserved. An apathetic, limp, spineless existence where you refuse to acknowledge your failures and float along in perpetual denial of your consciousness is not deserving of your respect.
You must see this with utmost clarity to embody the ideal man in any way, shape or form. Realize that the first step to be taken is to see the truth as it is, not as you will it to be. As things stand, you are not on track to do anything of note. You waste your days chasing the cheapest pleasures, and you have not systematically exercised the will and effort to overcome adversity and do great things. The nature of this failure remains opaque to you. That is not an excuse. The nature of the failure does not matter. All that matters is your effort and your striving. The only way you can garner respect from yourself is through competence. The hollowness that you felt within you is not a consequence of a lack of drive or purpose, but because you cannot see yourself as someone worthy of respect.
[You got hit in the head with the Randian hammer, adopted her worldview, yet remained one unworthy of respect in it in the real world. Times are-a-changing.] Do not indulge your impotence. The only avenue forward to self-respect is through the accomplishment of your goals and relentless striving, because it is only through this competence that you can garner any sort of worth or value past that which is assigned to all living human beings. To give yourself sympathy or unearned kindness is to turn yourself into a victim of charity. Are you that kind of person? Are you the kind of person whose worth is determined solely by their need? No. You value yourself based on your virtues. So show yourself that you are worthy of that value. Push. Push for something greater. Think. Think harder. You are not to be accorded any pride for starting or in view of your potential. Admiration is only due when you have worked relentlessly and have completed a project worthy of your admiration. Pride in the process or in intention is in and of itself a form of charity.
You were not born to be a second-hander, not even off your own charity. There must be no charity of the self, if you wish to be truly great.
Despite my immense respect for Rand, I disagree with her on a number of counts. At a high level, I can summarize most of my ideological disagreements by saying that Rand radically changed my conception of the individual, but hasn't really budged me on matters of political and societal organization. This is because I think humans and human civilization are to be treated as ontologically different, and thus their teleologies can differ as well. The purpose of Rand's state stems from humans, but I think the purpose of the state should derive from human civilization5. And thus, before we continue, we need to answer a very important question.
What is the purpose of human civilization?
I do not think that there is a conclusive descriptive answer to this question, and thus the answer that I propose is completely normative. The first constraint on the answer to this question is that this purpose must find its end in man. Human civilization must exist for humans, not towards any other end, not for itself, not to immanentize some abstract Absolute at the end of history, not to fuel the projects of a few great men, but for humanity as a whole. The second constraint is that the answer must be clear in its implications and meaning, not an overly abstract repackaging of the question that leaves us with as many questions as we had when we began.
With these constraints established, a good place to start would be before civilization itself, in a hypothetical state of nature6. At this stage, humans have no technologies whatsoever, not even the most primitive ones. Let's assume that the atomic unit at this period of time is the family. We have a male and a female, and they give birth to a son and daughter that have a 50% chance of dying before reaching puberty. The first possible answer to the purpose of human civilization lies here - it exists to give humans a better chance at growing up and passing on their genetic material. This is possibly part of the answer, but it can't be all of it because it's indifferent to the quality of each individual's life. By this criteria, a civilization that had its entire population on indefinite life support but allowed them to reproduce in cages is perfectly alright. So we'll keep this aspect of civilization in mind, but our search for a better answer continues.
Going back to the life of our primitive family, we see that they've fashioned some tools and have met a few other families, and are now part of a small tribe. The tribe goes out to hunt and gather berries, they have animal hide tents to sleep in, they vary rarely run out of food, and life in general is looking pretty good for our family. Until one day, a tribesman decides to kill the father of our family because he wanted the family heirloom, a spear with a spearhead of wolf bone. Now we have a dilemma, because if this continues to happen regularly in the tribe, everyone will have to live in constant fear of physical violence. Although the tribe provides each of its members mercy from the elements, it currently has no way to protect them from each other. After a bit of deliberation, each of the tribe members comes together and decide to sacrifice a bit of their freedom to ensure a much better quality of life for each of them - they appoint a tribe chief and say that none of them will steal another's property or take their life, and if they do, the tribe chief has the power to cast them out of the tribe or kill them depending on the severity of the transgression7. Absolute power is enshrined in an external sovereign to maintain peace and security. The takeaway here about the purpose of a state is pretty obvious (it exists to protect its citizens' property rights and punish the initiation of use of force), but what does it say about the purpose of civilization? It lends further credence to the theory that civilization exists to give humans longer lives and better reproductive chances, but what role do property rights play here? If spreading human seed was civilization's only concern, caring about property rights seems out of character.
Maybe fast forwarding a bit will help us figure out what the motivation for protecting property rights is. Our family mourns the death of the father but eventually moves on, and as the centuries pass their bloodline prospers, splits from their old tribe, and joins a group of settlers on the bank of the Euphrates. The fecundity of the soil lets them start planting crops, agriculture becomes the primary mode of subsistence, pottery production leapfrogs, they live in mud brick houses instead of animal hide tents, cuneiform bookkeeping is now a thing, and the family's descendants generally just build a lot of cool things. But why? What is the point of all this? Why not just keep hunting and living in animal hide tents? Why farm rather than hunt? Why live in mud brick houses rather than animal hide tents? Why try to make better pottery and better tools?
These answers can be chalked up to two things: revealed preference8 and evolutionary fitness. Things like mud brick houses and better pottery gained popularity because they increased the average quality of life, and agriculture helped produce more food from a smaller area and supported larger, more permanent communities that outcompeted hunter-gatherer tribes in the long run. The initial push for agriculture was probably motivated by decreased seasonal uncertainty and the fact that permanent settlements protected property and children, and after a point settlements grew so large that they could only subsist off of agriculture, after which governance structures probably locked the system into place9. So here we have two more possible answers to our question about the purpose of human civilization: the first one explains property rights, the urge for better houses and pottery, and basically anything that you can answer with "they did it because it made their lives better!", which is that human civilization exists to better human lives, and the second one is the evolutionary fitness argument which states that human civilization exists to produce the most evolutionarily "fit" society, on whatever adaptive trait improves the reproductive success of individual societies. Note that this doesn't necessarily need to be human happiness, or even positively correlated to human happiness10.
We reject the second answer because it fails to meet the second constraint due to a lack of clarity about its implications. Also it's so blatantly obvious (thank you Darwin!) that "better" societies thrive and pass on their qualities while worse ones don't that the answer is next to worthless without knowing what "better" means in this context. The first answer, on the other hand, holds a lot of merit. In fact, I think it's a superset of our first answer - reproductive fitness and safety are simply one of many things that determine the quality of a human being's life. Looking at civilizational progress over the last five millennia, it feels reasonable to normatively say that the purpose of human civilization is to better human lives. Or, to take it a bit further and bring it in step with the vocabulary we've been using all this time, I believe that the purpose of human civilization is to enable human flourishing11.
Now that I've put forth this argument, I've realized that this is just as good as saying "The government should work to make everyone's lives better!", except with a few additional steps in between, but one thing I've learned from Marx is that if I use enough big words and complicated reasoning people will believe me ("Details? What details? Trust in the process of dialectical materialism, comrade!"). I'm also not removing the argument in the hopes that it can introduce someone to Hobbes' theory of the social contract.
Anyways, yes, I do believe that the purpose of human civilization is to enable human flourishing, and I think the state exists to aid in that mission, which is why I take issue with Rand's claim that the ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. The primary problem is that there's really no other viable alternative to solving negative externalities and perverse incentives in markets except through some sort of state mechanism. I would even go as far as to say that not only is a state necessary, preventative measures are pretty much the only way to solve such problems. Any arguments put forth to solve negative externalities through the court mechanism after the event has happened (for example stating that negative externalities are violations of property rights in some scenarios and are thus valid grounds for suing a company in court) are unviable as far as I'm concerned, primarily through empirical observation of how long court cases tend to take to move through the system in larger countries, and how many ways there are to delay verdicts and pressure settlements outside of court. And this is with an extremely strong regulatory state.
Another reason to emphasize the necessity of preventative measures is that in certain cases, negative externalities are only addressed once they get to a point where they're irreversible and nothing can be done about them. Climate change is one such example. Preventative measures are pretty essential in cases like these, and require a state that does more than just protect property rights. A comprehensive treatment of why anarchist and minarchist accounts of government might be insufficient can be found here, and counterarguments to the same can be found here.
I'm an almost perfect Rawlsian, so my ideal society looks like a constitutional liberal democracy with strong civil liberties, competitive markets, extensive equality of opportunity, and institutions designed to permit economic inequalities as long as they genuinely improve the lives and prospects of the least advantaged members of society. In short, Rawls reasons from an original position behind a "veil of ignorance" where people design an ideal society without knowing their eventual place in it, thus mitigating self-interested incentives. Assuming that the individuals behind the veil are rational agents, Rawls posits that they would be risk averse, trying to maximize how well off the least fortunate person is. From here, they would converge on two principles - the first principle guarantees equal basic liberties (speech, conscience, political rights, etc.) to everyone, and takes strict priority over the second, ensuring that you can't trade away liberty for economic gain. The second principle governs social and economic inequality and splits into two parts: fair equality of opportunity (positions must be genuinely open to all, not just formally open), and the difference principle - inequalities are permissible only if they work to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society. Rawls' name for this whole framework is justice as fairness.
But one caveat I'd add is that, in practice, I don't think inequality is that big of a problem and I think wealth redistribution should be an absolute last resort. This is because i) more money is not the solution to most of your problems (based purely on vibes, federal debt increases have not done a lot to increase quality of life), ii) a lot of wealth taxes are incredibly poorly designed, oftentimes on purpose12, and iii) there are many, many bigger fish to fry to improve living conditions before proposing wealth redistribution. For example, effective regulation is much better at mitigating cost disease than wealth redistribution: policies like updating zoning laws to permit more housing and unregulating the medical market to combat rising costs do a much better job at advancing general prosperity than subsidies. Inequality is not why your house is unaffordable - your house is unaffordable because there aren't enough houses in your area due to lacklustre regulation and terrible zoning laws. This doesn't mean I'm completely against welfare - I support it if it's accompanied by a massive push to solve the underlying problem as well, rather than just a statement made as an appealing campaign promise. As far as I'm concerned, redistribution that takes place without solving the underlying problem first is just throwing money down a bottomless pit. I also vehemently believe that the fate of a civilization rests disproportionately upon how much it invests in infrastructure development and how conducive its conditions are to massively accelerating the development of technology and catapulting progress forward orders of magnitude. I love science! I love technology! I love progress! All of these things are good and we need as much of it as we can get. Nuclear power, solar panels, data centers, you name it.
Unrelated, but a common problem is that it's hard to decipher whether someone supports taxing the rich because they hate the rich or because they love the poor. A good way to weed out the former is to ask whether they would support a hypothetical situation where the wealth of the 100 richest billionaires in America just straight up evaporated without being redistributed to anyone at all, and these billionaires all mysteriously died.
Coming back to Rand, another aspect of society that she fails to take into account is how arbitrary the initial conditions of your life are, and how big of a role that plays in your eventual success. This arbitrariness, which Rawls' veil of ignorance does a great job modelling, is why I think zero taxation is unviable, or even taxation only to maintain the minarchist state. In such a state of affairs, there is zero progress being made toward furthering equality of opportunity except through charity, which is completely insufficient in my opinion. I think Section 5 of Scott Alexander's Non-Libertarian FAQ (the same piece I've linked for accounts of why anarchist/minarchist governments could be insufficient) does a great job at addressing the importance of the context of your birth, with the most relevant sections reproduced below.
If we define “rich” as “income in the top 5%” and “poor” as “income in the bottom 5%” then children of rich parents are about twenty times more likely to become rich themselves than children of poor parents.
But maybe that’s an extreme case. Instead let’s talk about “upper class” (top 20%) and “lower class” (bottom 20%). A person born to a lower-class family only has a fifty-fifty chance of ever breaking out of the lower class (as opposed to 80% expected by chance), and only about a 3% chance of ending up in the upper class (as opposed to 20% expected by chance). The children of upper class parents are six times more likely to end up in the upper class than the lower class; the children of lower class families are four times more likely to end up in the lower class than the upper class.
The most precise way to measure this question is via a statistic called “intergenerational income mobility”, which studies have estimated at between .4 and .6. This means that around half the difference in people’s wealth, maybe more, can be explained solely by who their parents are.
Once you add in all the other factors besides how hard you work – like where you live (the average Delawarean earns $30000; the average Mississippian $15000) and the quality of your local school district, there doesn’t seem to be much room for hard work to determine more than about a third of the difference between income.
...
Studies show that increasing government spending significantly improves social mobility. States with higher government spending have about 33% more social mobility than states with lower spending.
- Scott Alexander, The Non-Libertarian FAQ
Tangentially related to this, I also think that Rand's list of primary virtues is too short. The only primary virtue Rand really cares about is the pursuit of one's rational flourishing through reason, and a short list of immediate corollaries: you must treat your life as an end in itself, you must not curtail anybody else's ability to pursue their own rational flourishing, your primary concern must not lie with others, and more. Apart from this, Rand says that one can hold a rational hierarchy of values and act according to said hierarchy, but gives no guidance on what values to include. I'm a bit more stringent than that, in that I think bounded compassion is a very important virtue - I value a stranger's life enough to sacrifice the tail end of the diminishing marginal utility of my money through taxation to give them a better chance at life if they were born into circumstances worse than mine. In more formal terms, I think there's a Goldilocks zone for selfishness where you value the last 10% of your yearly income less than a human life.
I would believe this even if the government were maximally efficient in its allocation of capital, which is very far from the case now - there are a LOT of things the government does with my money that I vehemently oppose and that matter a lot less to me than better social infrastructure, so you might as well redirect it toward doing some actual good. I think Rawls' conception of justice as fairness is a good one. The counterargument a lot of conservatives make to this is that they value those close to them much more than a stranger two states or continents away and would rather their taxpayer dollars be used to better the immediate conditions of their loved ones, which is a perfectly valid demand. My response to this is very similar to my stance on wealth redistribution, which is that there are many, many worse uses of your money that you can optimize and redistribute to better your conditions before having any social welfare on the chopping block at all. Our economy is nowhere close to Pareto-optimal, so there are plenty of win-win trades to be made.
Like with most things, Scott beat me to the punch in articulating this conception of valuing things through the lens of decreasing marginal utility, so here's him on freedom:
Freedom is one good among many, albeit an especially important one.
In addition to freedom, we value things like happiness, health, prosperity, friends, family, love, knowledge, art, and justice. Sometimes we have to trade off one of these goods against another. For example, a witness who has seen her brother commit a crime may have to decide between family and justice when deciding whether to testify. A student who likes both music and biology may have to decide between art and knowledge when choosing a career. A food-lover who becomes overweight may have to decide between happiness and health when deciding whether to start a diet.
People sometimes act as if there is some hierarchy to these goods, such that Good A always trumps Good B. But in practice people don’t act this way. For example, someone might say “Friendship is worth more than any amount of money to me.” But she might continue working a job to gain money, instead of quitting in order to spend more time with her friends. And if you offered her $10 million to miss a friend’s birthday party, it’s a rare person indeed who would say no.
In reality, people value these goods the same way they value every good in a market economy: in comparison with other goods. If you get the option to spend more time with your friends at the cost of some amount of money, you’ll either take it or leave it. We can then work backward from your choice to determine how much you really value friendship relative to money. Just as we can learn how much you value steel by learning how many tons of steel we can trade for how many barrels of oil, how many heads of cabbages, or (most commonly) how many dollars, so we can learn how much you value friendship by seeing when you prefer it to opportunities to make money, or see great works of art, or stay healthy, or become famous.
Freedom is a good much like these other goods. Because it is so important to human happiness and virtue, we can expect people to value it very highly.
But they do not value it infinitely highly. Anyone who valued freedom from government regulation infinitely highly would move to whichever state has the most lax regulations (Montana? New Hampshire?), or go live on a platform in the middle of the ocean where there is no government, or donate literally all their money to libertarian charities or candidates on the tiny chance that it would effect a change.
Most people do not do so, and we understand why. People do not move to Montana because they value aspects of their life in non-Montana places – like their friends and families and nice high paying jobs and not getting eaten by bears – more than they value the small amount of extra freedom they could gain in Montana. Most people do not live on a platform in the middle of the ocean because they value aspects of living on land – like being around other people and being safe – more than they value the rather large amount of extra freedom the platform would give them. And most people do not donate literally all their money to libertarian charities because they like having money for other things.
So we value freedom a finite amount. There are trade-offs of a certain amount of freedom for a certain amount of other goods that we already accept. It may be that there are other such trade-offs we would also accept, if we were offered them.
For example, suppose the government is considering a regulation to ban dumping mercury into the local river. This is a trade-off: I lose a certain amount of freedom in exchange for a certain amount of health. In particular, I lose the freedom to dump mercury into the river in exchange for the health benefits of not drinking poisoned water.
But I don’t really care that much about the freedom to dump mercury into the river, and I care a lot about the health benefits of not drinking poisoned water. So this seems like a pretty good trade-off.
And this generalizes to an answer to the original question. I completely agree freedom is an extremely important good, maybe the most important. I don’t agree it’s an infinitely important good, so I’m willing to consider trade-offs that sacrifice a small amount of freedom for a large amount of something else I consider valuable. Even the simplest laws, like laws against stealing, are of this nature (I trade my “freedom” to steal, which I don’t care much about, in exchange for all the advantages of an economic system based on private property).
The arguments above are all attempts to show that some of the trade-offs proposed in modern politics are worthwhile: they give us enough other goods to justify losing a relatively insignificant “freedom” like the freedom to dump mercury into the river.
- Scott Alexander, The Non-Libertarian FAQ
I am also essentially in agreement with Scott here, in that I feel like the freedoms that I do "lose" with a government are well worth what I get in return (political stability, documentation, public infrastructure etc). What I get in return also needs taxation to be funded, so I'm not too opposed to that either. I also think that having an organization whose stated goal is to take care of all the people in its territory is just a good idea since at the very least, it nominally sets up some good incentives. The typical libertarian/minarchist counterargument is that these services could just as well be provided by a private firm in a market. My criticisms on this front largely derive from Scott's treatment of it in his FAQ, like the fact that private enforcers have perverse incentives to introduce disorder into a neighbourhood so more people use their services, so I won't be reproducing them at length here.
Although most of my overt disagreements with Rand reside in matters of the state, I still do think she holds some objectionable beliefs, along with her philosophical project having a few blind spots owing to its nature, or if one is being more uncharitable, due to her failure to accurately model certain types of people.
It's pretty obvious that a lot of the characteristics of Rand's ideal men and women are just self-inserts of Rand and her own quirks, and nowhere is this clearer than her depiction of infidelity and her unwavering obsession with cigarettes. Hank Rearden cheats on his wife with Dagny Taggart because he's unsatisfied with his marriage. Dominique Francon is such a floozy she bounces between three men in some twisted ceremony of rebellion and self-punishment. I'm not even going to refute these using my own arguments. Here's Rand on integrity:
The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not “selflessness” or “sacrifice,” but integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one’s convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one’s values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent, inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.
- "The Ethics of Emergencies", from the Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
Enough said. And with the cigarettes, it seems blatantly obvious that anyone acting in their own rational self interest would have enough foresight to not smoke. Doing so is them capitulating towards their emotions and forcefully blanking out.
Moving on to a few structural issues in her works that are a consequence of her stated goal rather than objections I have to things she's faithfully argued. In Rand's own words, the motive and purpose of her writing is the projection of an ideal man, which I think she does beautifully. But an upshot of this is that her works are inherently normative, and fall short on a number of descriptive counts.
The first assumption that gets thrown out of the window almost immediately is the extent to which there is a perfect division between those with ability and the second-handers in Rand's work. The only second-hander portrayed with any sort of genuine ability is Gail Wynand, while everybody else is almost completely incompetent. Again, this is a case of ignoring the considerable grey area between the two extremes of total incompetence and genius, and there are plenty of people who fall somewhere in the middle of the scale on both competence and degree of second-handedness. Almost everybody plays status games of one kind or another, and a lot of people are basically competent at their jobs without the kind of single-minded obsession and passion exhibited by Rand's protagonists. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the majority of upwardly mobile individuals fall into this in-between category, and live perfectly happy lives. But I do still think that Rand's model of the ideal man still holds at the absolute tail end: for example, Jensen Huang, Steve Jobs, Oppenheimer, etc.
The second assumption we defenestrate is Rand's assertion that society would collapse without the egoists and the prime movers. We already refuted this in Section I.
Finally, Ayn Rand's attempted formalization of Objectivism in "The Objectivist Ethics" has been nothing short of obliterated by Huemer, and I haven't read the book itself, so I am explicitly withholding judgement for now. I know that on all counts it seems extremely hypocritical for someone who champions reason to not take heed of a systematic dismantling of a philosophy, but my counter to that (you can call it a cop out if you want) is to tell you that this decision of mine might not be epistemologically rational, but it is instrumentally rational. Rand's conception of man has had an extremely powerful influence on me, and I give it an extremely high probability of radically changing my life for the better. Thus, it is rational to let its effects persist even though I know that that underlying philosophical project has more holes than a hunk of Swiss cheese. Ergo, "I like how Ayn Rand makes me feel, because it's not always about logic!". Another win for the continentals!
I owe a great debt to Ayn Rand. Despite my many disagreements with her work, I deeply admire her respect for man and her conception of man as a heroic being. Her worldview was so unorthodox and absolute that it hit me like a train and had me write 20,000 words trying to grapple with it, and I have advanced my worldview and the stability of my beliefs by leaps and bounds in grappling with her ideas almost half a century after her death. Nobody else has ever done that for me. My life is better for knowing that people like her exist. Despite my contentions with her ideas about how man should relate to his brothers, I deeply, deeply resonate with and agree with her conception of man as a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. What other way is there to live?
But at the end of the day, I think Rand’s philosophy is just not enough. It has nothing to tell you about what values to choose, what exercising your reason really even means, and I’ve already outlined my disagreements with its treatment of the state. I think Objectivism and its treatment of the individual is best taken as a premise from which we look at the rest of the philosophical world and its implications on our personal lives. Hold your life in the highest regard and abhor self sacrifice, but think about policy and niche questions using the appropriate moral frameworks. Because, as it turns out, frameworks like utilitarianism and deontology were initially drafted as systems of morality to help draft better policy and law, not necessarily to serve as functioning moral systems for individuals. Rand doesn’t haven’t much to say about convoluted tax credits, and utilitarianism doesn’t have much to say about how to treat yourself and look at the project of your life. The two systems could be complementary if you just treated the most fundamental tenets of Rand’s philosophy and the way she looks at man as a premise! And all things considered, that is what I take away from Rand. These fundamental tenets have made me a lot more fulfilled, but have not taken over my life entirely. It’s also taught me that greatness lives and dies in the considerable grey area between salvation and despair. It’s easy enough to live a life that’s good enough, but to be a prime mover requires an austere purity that is to be the project of my life for as long as I’m alive13.
Sometimes, my friend, know that I will look over the spread of lake and hills, with not a sign of men, not another house anywhere, just water, tree and sun, a world of our own, and I will think of you, and the fact that we belong together. I will never stop looking in the faces of men for a sign of that brilliant spark, for a shadow of John Galt or Howard Roark looking at me through the eyes of another, and knowing, in that instant, that we have a mutual understanding: that men are capable of such exultant and rapturous joy that, for that moment, nothing else in the whole rest of the world matters. I know, irrationally, in my heart of hearts, that such men do exist. I do not live for them, but the idea of them gives me strength. Know that I will be looking. Always looking. And if you see me, reach out and tell me that you are here. That you exist. That you live.
Rand, A. (1996). Atlas Shrugged. Signet.
A formal statement is as follows: A(n) is proportional to 1/n⍺, where A(n) is the number of authors who publish n papers. So if ⍺ = 2, authors with 2 papers are 1/4 as common as authors with 1 paper, authors with 10 papers are 1/100 as common, and authors with 100 papers are 1/10,000 as common. Lower alpha means the drop-off is slower, so highly productive authors are relatively more common. That means a fatter tail and more concentration among top authors. Higher alpha means the drop-off is faster, so highly productive authors are much rarer. That means a thinner tail and less domination by the top. ↩
I include this caveat because job security is a major concern for a lot of people, and only ceases to be so when your ability is not only a local outlier (in the context of the firm), but a global outlier (in the context of the market), giving you the ability to demand a competitive wage anywhere you go. ↩
"The essential thing, however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but as the SIGNIFICANCE and highest justification thereof - that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, FOR ITS SAKE, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is NOT allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher EXISTENCE: like those sun-seeking climbing plants in Java--they are called Sipo Matador, - which encircle an oak so long and so often with their arms, until at last, high above it, but supported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and exhibit their happiness." - Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter IX (What is Noble?) ↩
This is as opposed to the fundamental equality of the moral value of men discussed before. Absolute equality goes beyond this and states that men are equal in all respects, in ability, skill and any other such dimension, and thus any inequality in outcomes is a grave injustice that must be corrected at once. ↩
To understand why what is good for humans might not always be good for human civilization and vice versa, we need to understand that the fitness of a system is oftentimes independent from the welfare of its parts. Evolution is extremely beneficial to the species as a whole, but it's not always to the benefit of current individual members of the species that die early due to adverse selection. For a body to function, a huge number of cells have to die on a regular basis, without which we'd all suffer from cancer. If an extremely safe environment fails to exert evolutionary pressures on a whole species, it might be beneficial to each individual of the species but disastrous to the species as a whole. So on and so forth. ↩
Shoutout Hobbes and Locke. ↩
This is basically just Hobbes' theory of the social contract. ↩
Not in a strictly economic sense, but more so in the sense of what people choose to pursue and do with their time. ↩
There's an interesting dynamic here where the most "evolutionary fit" societal paradigm doesn't always maximize utility and quality of life. The transition to agriculture often brought worse average health, but increased total population faster and generated institutions that reproduced themselves effectively: stored property, inheritance, territorial defence, taxation, armies, and centralized government. This could be argued to be a real-life repugnant conclusion, but I disagree because the institutions we have today would be impossible without agriculture, so things worked out pretty well for humanity in the long run. Early civilizations had just the right amount of slack. ↩
This is quite concerning. So far revolutions have been a kind of release valve on societies that were evolutionarily fit but treated most of their citizens horribly, but an increasing concentration of power means an increasingly small percentage of the population can crush revolutions with ease. Not a good thing. ↩
Look, I know my reasoning here is extremely shoddy, but I'm not claiming that this conclusion is airtight. I'm just putting forth a reasonably argued claim that I believe to be at the very least instrumentally rational for looking at the state, if not epistemically rational. ↩
I'd like to add that I'm a big fan of well-designed taxes, like Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax that is set to raise over $500 million dollars. I think the tone of the campaign was a bit too hostile, but taxing second houses over $5 million dollars is about as perfect as you can get in minimizing the loss in utility for the person being taxed. I rebut refutations of this on the grounds of property rights with the Rawlsian veil. ↩
Talking of purity, one thing I've consciously chosen not to address at all is the conflict between my commitments as a Buddhist and Objectivism. Not even going there. At some level I know Buddhism is more fundamentally in conversation with our true nature, but I feel like it's so all encompassing that True Buddhism™ would just dissolve my ego and any concept of the self, rendering me unable to communicate my points to anybody pre-enlightenment. Not that I'm anywhere close to enlightened. Thus I choose to leave it out of the conversation entirely. ↩