Why is it so underrated?

Rude

It’s true. Atlas Shrugged isn’t underrated, it’s rated just about where it should be. There’s a reason Keynesianism is praised on here: because economic systems which use the free market as a tool are much more efficient than those which fall victim to it.

I think Ayn Rand deliberately made Atlas Shrugged stretch just past 1000 pages to act as a pleb-filter. Its too much for a normal person to even consider reading.

So any critic would have to read through 800+ pages of mediocre writing in order to legitimately critique the ideas presented on the spread out other 200 pages.

Atlas Shrugged did have it's stand-out pieces of good fiction, the train accident, the factory thing, Galt's Speech, the other factory thing. The rest is basically filler. The part where the protagonist, buying a pack of smokes from a newspaper stand near her work, waxes poetic in an internal monologue on how awesome smoking a cigarette is. Cause Ayn Rand smoked a fuck-ton of cigs IRL.

Also how the government looters, that union mobster guy I think and some drunk soldiers took control of the doomsday weapon, did a three-stooges with the control panel and killed everyone in a 700 mile swath of states full of people Rand didn't like.

Rand is/ was always a better philosopher than a playwright or novelist. It shows quite a bit in Ayn Rand which was supposed to combine the two.

>deliberately putting filler in your book
stop giving me more reasons to hate Ayn Rand

Kinda this
Most people i know that read the book said the same "artificial difficulty: the book"
The good moments shine, but are overshadowed by lots of pathing and filler.

How does this support Objectivism? What is the angle of departure she takes from this to reach her conclusions? I am hesitant to read Ayn Rosenbaum because she's an anarchist, and that form of society is just an ideal and even if it were possible it would strip the soul of the people. Also cultures and nations are organisms that are always faced with sickness and health, life and death. (See: Spengler).

>The Academy resents competition
projecting hard

Heh, I guess you just don't have a very high iq

It doesn't make sense because it's shit

>Galt's speech
>Good
wew

To be a complete philosophical argument, it's got to establish the fundamentals it's working on. So to most people Ayn Rand's objectivism is just a fringe reactionary political concept, but most Objectist literature will include a bunch of well trodden philosophical concepts, reworded from the texts it comes from, reinforcing the idea of human free-will and the suchlike.

Metaphysics are always talked about in ways like this.

Kant does this in spades and 100 times as worse.

Did you ever hear the tale of Eddie Lampert of Sears? I thought not. It's not a story a Randian would tell you...

Sears is totally bankrupt.

This is the truth. No one that believes in God should be a Randian, it is inherently a greed-based philosophy and sinful at its core

Did you ever hear the tale of Pol Pot of Cambodia? I thought not. It's not a story a Communist would tell you...

It gets overly long in places but overall it's a great book.

I see that Ayn Rand is the latest topic for brainlets to make threads about incessantly. I can't tell if that's better or worse than the Memerson threads.

>conservative woman
I wonder why

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Atlas Shrugged is a good book. I get annoyed when people say it isn't, because it is very well written, has an interesting plot, and the characters are all fun to read about.

Ayn Rand is retarded though, and anyone who takes the "philosophy" in this book seriously is a dumb ass. Her proposal for a utopia is the most autistic dumb shit I've ever read. Uncontrolled capitalism is bad. I don't care how big of a strawman you draw up socialists (literally every character in this book who is competent is an idealistic capitalist, every character who is incompetent is a dumb bleeding heart liberal socialist), greedy businessmen who care only about profit will eventually destroy the society. You need some checks and balances. Honestly, as dumb as it is, I think Bioshock is an excellent parody of Atlas Shrugged. It's an example of a society of greed running itself into ruin.

I'm a conservative and some of this shit made me shake my head.

No, but I can stomach 1000 pages of shitty bodice-ripping romance.

>I love you Dagny
>I love you too Hank
>Cool let's spend our lives together
>Actually I love this other guy I just met, even though the last 800 pages has been about our love
>Dagny... I'm so sorry I put you in this awful situation. I truly am, for I know you love John, even though you've just met him. I can't believe how selfish I've been by wanting to be with you, when you so clearly love this other guy. I should have called it off before you said anything.

Hank is a fucking cuck, and Dagny is a whore.

Because Lampert tried to restructure the company along what he believed to be Randian principles, and then it all went to shit.

>implying I'm some filthy commie

Entry level, high school, "I'm a grown up now" material. If you're lucky, it's a phase you go through (hopefully a short one) as you encounter life experience, and develop into an adult. On the other hand, some never get beyond it, and become a meme for life.

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I liked everything though. Builds suspense for Galt.

>Bioshock is an excellent parody
lol
I don't think Rand was trying to argue for only uncontrolled capitalism, but also for the values of her characters. If everyone was more like Dagny and Rearden, then untrammeled capitalism would work. At least that's what I think she's also trying to show in the book.

She didn't really show that though. She just showed how socialism doesn't work. The book doesn't even bother to explore the reality of her world. Galt's Gulch has what, 200 people in it? Even as a thought experiment it doesn't say anything.

Also, the society had dumb rules like "Nothing is given, everything has to be traded at market value" So sorry, no birthday gifts. You have to trade me 10kg of rearden metal if you want this cake I baked

I shudder to think at what viewing life through a Randian lens would be like

YEUGHHH

Oh no, she never represented Socialism in Atlas Shrugged.

Tell me where is the enforcement of the intellectual property rights she likes so much going to come from? The non-existent taxes? The system is fucking retarded, Rearden Steel wouldnt last a fucking minute in her utopia before the vultures of free market competition swooped in and copied everything Rearden did. It would actually be worse than the capitalist situation described because in reality the product would be copied WITHOUT any compensation or notification being delivered to Rearden

Thanks free market, this idea is fucking RETARDED.

Yeah, like I was saying earlier, there needs to be checks and balances. Uncontrolled capitalism is bad.

I don't like socialism, but you are correct. Atlas Shrugged is a giant strawman, and you can tell just reading it. James Taggart would never exist in real life.

Objectism supports having a small government. She doesn't advocate anarchy. The idea is to have a government that consists of the military, police, courts and not much else. The state would have monopoly of violence and would enforce contracts.

The state would be funded through court fees, fines, works for courts and police and idk how the military would be funded. Bake sales, donations? A libertarian would say property taxes, since people with property benefit the most directly from the military keeping foreign soldiers and barbarians off their land so they an foot the bill but Rand detested the idea of compulsory taxation for any reason, so they'd have to be funded through charity or something.

What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t know about you, but I distinctly remember as one of Rand’s axioms that taxes are bad. Unless you believe in a corporatized police force like in that An Cap Rand copypasta, that means no government.

This nigga is literally suggesting bake sales to find the police force. Just go ahead and unironically advocate for the ‘25 cent’ powered gun too why dontcha

iirc that poll was mainly voted on by retards trying make their religion (Scientology) or ideology (muh objectivism) relevant.

Why is she popular though? My impression is that she's just an edgy commieblock immigrant dickriding nietzsche and capitalism.

No, the bake sales are for the military. Police would be funded through fines or property collected from criminals, like they are now anyways. Fines and fees are not compulsory taxes, since you are paying for a service.

Rand insists on a government, it's not ancap. The government would be voluntarily funded, like how you'd voluntarily pay for insurance. How that would work exactly, Rand could'nt figure out but assumed it must be possible.

If you were to ask her how the government would be funded she would literally say something like "I don't know, I'm a philosopher I don't create public policy."

>Police would be funded through fines or property collected from criminals
fucking insane, such an awful idea

The point of her philosophy is ill-founded then. If it can’t impact public policy what is the point of philosophizing this way?

She obviously obsesses over weakness, but I would honestly say obsessing over the free market constantly is pretty weak. Philosophically, obsessing over the free market is akin to simply just rewarding the idea of consumerism, that’s all. Pretty fucking weak. Controlled economies, which are managed from an intelligentsia, as opposed to a corrupt plutocracy, are by far the most rewarding times in a government’s life.

Her system just wouldn’t work. Her ideal state couldn’t enforce any of the laws and if certain economists are right about the interest rate in highly competitive industries continually going up with no restrictions, they are destined for an economic collapse.

This is how it already works in the USA. Police departments collect a portion of the fines they levy and most of all, they seize property connected with crimes, especially for drug trafficking. Like, they make $7000 on average when the court orders a fine for a DUI. Why they are so aggressive in targeting drunk drivers.

Why these small town police departments can afford $9000 sniper rifles, armored vehicles, brand new sportscar interceptors, helicopters and all pay their employees 70k/yr.

So that is one solution to fund a Randian police force. I don't think Rand advocated this exactly, but this is a very old principle in US law that tries to collect funding for government services from individuals that actually use those services. The tax on fuel is directly used to fund road repair, ect. That sort of thing.

Rand didn't believe the government should havee anything to do with building or maintaining roads either, so the free hand of capitalism was supposed to work that out.

Yeah, it probably would'nt work unless people were culturally wired to make it work. Same thing with Marxist styles of communism.

Her general mindset was that capitalism produces more prosperous and developed societies than socialist ones. This is obvious by comparing different countries. Singapore is a nicer place to live than Cuba ect.

Famously she was extremely black and white with concepts. If capitalism is good and government is bad, than unrestricted capitalism taken to the extreme must be the best thing ever. But capitalism doesn't work without a government, since a government is needed to protect individual rights and enforce contracts. So the Rand government would do those things and not much else. The government would be confined to those roles. They would not set interest rates, tax or anything else. She was not against the economy being regulated by voluntary bodies, customer advocacy groups, ect, so long as it wasn't the government doing.

Individuals would have to be extremely well educated and sauvy to avoid being ripped off at every turn but education would neither be compulsory or free of cost, so you'd have your elites and probably your illiterate underclass peasants doing lord knows what. Rand would probably suggest private corporations educate people since it would be in their best interests to have an educated workforce.

So yeah, I think the economy in such a hypothetical Randland would have extreme bust-boom cycles. Still, it would probably still be a better society than say, communist Cambodia or the suchlike.

It would devolve into anarchy. Sheer anarchy.

It would probably devolve into a state with a regular-ass government. Anarchy always devolves into a tyranny as warlords go and exploit power vaccums.

It might be a pseudo government, like if the corporations decide to fund private security forces, enforce bylaws on their properties, maintain roads, enforce enviromental protections, ect then collect special rents from people to fund it all. Basically if the government did'nt provide public services, some private entity would and I believe Rand would think that's just great, so long as the privately-held peusdo government didn't violate anyone's actual rights while they exploited the fuck out of people.

This is all pretty well-trodden ground for ancap/ Rand/ libertarian type discussions. Some people think this is ideal, since if you don't like X corp's public policy, you could move to Y corps property, ect. It would be voluntary association, but the real government would at least in theory prevent private governments from violating peoples property rights or whatever.

It would be a very convoluted shitshow and a difficult society to live in, but it would probably be functional, since all you really need is rule of law to avoid anarchy and Rand was all about that.

because the fountainhead was better

>They could not see the world beyond the mountains, there was only a void
of darkness and rock, but the darkness was hiding the ruins of a continent:
the roofless homes, the rusting tractors, the lightless streets, the
abandoned rail. But far in the distance, on the edge of the earth, a small
flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt's Torch,
twisting, being torn and regaining its hold, not to be uprooted or
extinguished. It seemed to be calling and waiting for the words John Galt was
now to pronounce.
"The road is cleared," said Galt. "We are going back to the world."
He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign
of the dollar.
THE END

OH NO NO NO. Seriously, I'm pretty libertarian and very much pro capitalism, but I just can't take this book seriously.

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>He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar.

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