Greed is good

[bigbadwolf]

Absorbing essay by Mark Taibbi, who ties together GS, the Tea Partiers, and Ayn Rand. He forgot to mention Gordon Gekko. In the interests of full disclosure, I've loathed Ayn Rand my whole adult life and I don't much care for the morons who constitute the Tea Party movement either.

When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American housing bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had its roots in the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered back in the 50s and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.

While, outside of America, Russian-born Rand is probably best known for being the unfunniest person western civilization has seen since maybe Goebbels or Jack the Ripper (63 out of 100 colobus monkeys recently forced to read Atlas Shrugged in a laboratory setting died of boredom-induced aneurysms), in America Rand is upheld as an intellectual giant of limitless wisdom. Here in the States, her ideas are roundly worshiped even by people who've never read her books or even heard of her. The rightwing "Tea Party" movement is just one example of an entire demographic that has been inspired to mass protest by Rand without even knowing it.

 

[Joy Pathak]

Lol I was thinking of making a thread about the tea party movement, but I wasn't sure how the sentiment really is towards tea partiers in America. I have just been laughing it up at their signs and the 'epic fails'.

 

[Ergodic]

In the interests of full disclosure, I've loathed Ayn Rand my whole adult life

You've got to admit, though: Ellsworth Toohey was a brilliant creation. Ayn Rand understood the mind of a patient, manipulative sociopath and might have made a good one had she been born under different circumstances.

Maybe you could recast this post as a survey, e.g.

Q: What is your perspective on Ayn Rand?

a) Love her. Too much regulation is clearly what got us into this economic mess
b) Hate her. Lack of regulation is clearly what got us into this economic mess
c) I was inspired by Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead in my youth, but I eventually grew out of it
d) I'm female and fantasize about reenacting the Dominique-Roark rape scene
e) I nearly died of old age while trying to read John Galt's speech
f) Who?

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

In my case, I loved Anthem. And frankly, I think the free market does work. IMO, there's no need to regulate so much as just put every single traded financial instrument on an exchange so the market can price it instead of letting megabanks handwave their value and then have to get bailed out when the whole house of cards comes crashing down.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Ayn Rand understood the mind of a patient, manipulative sociopath and might have made a good one had she been born under different circumstances.

Rand was a sociopath and she hero-worshipped psychos. You might like to read this. And her fiction, with her cardboard characters serving as avatars of her half-baked ideas, is well-nigh unreadable. She has also shaped much of modern American character. For the worse.

 

[Ergodic]

You might like to read this.

Interesting read, although the quotes from her notebooks are clearly taken out of context.

When expressing one's opinion on Ayn Rand, confirmation bias is par for the course. People make up their minds ahead of time whether or not they agree with her, and then will go rushing to history textbooks, economic theories, news agencies, the internet, essays, quotes from "authorities" (in or out of context) and satirists to find evidence for their position. Just like religion and politics. And for newbies to Rand, it's the same: most people are predisposed to like her or to hate her.

 

[ExSan]

Gordon Gekko "Greed is Good"

Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Money Never Sleeps - Trailer

 

[Dibbs]

Money never sleeps looks bad... nothing will ever replace the original. I've bought my 1st gekko shirt today !

 

[bigbadwolf]

Wasn't it Ivan Boesky (on whom the Gekko character is based) who first said "Greed is good" in an address to Yale students in the early or mid '80s?

 

[bob]

Rand was a sociopath and she hero-worshipped psychos. You might like to read this. And her fiction, with her cardboard characters serving as avatars of her half-baked ideas, is well-nigh unreadable. She has also shaped much of modern American character. For the worse.

Totally agree. If Rand's work were merely boring, it would be harmless. But her ability to disguise nihilism as utmost virtue is socially pernicious.

Artistically, the delight she evidently takes in abusing her characters tells me everything I need to know. I disagree completely with Ergodic's claim that the content of her philosophy drives the response to her novels. For me, it was exactly the other way around: Reading The Fountainhead and seeing the degree to which she delights in playing the sadistic god--and the evident self-absorption and bitterness in her portrayal of Roark--was what made it clear to me that her social philosophy is the effluvium of a twisted soul.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Totally agree. If Rand's work were merely boring, it would be harmless. But her ability to disguise nihilism as utmost virtue is socially pernicious.

She exemplifies much of what I feel is wrong with the USA. There seems to be no conception of society and the common good in the USA. Instead the naive belief, propagated by Rand and others, that individuals seeking to grab everythig they can for themselves will -- through the mechanism of the "invisible hand" -- somehow contribute to general welfare. In other words, sociopathic behavior (by way of naked and unabashed egoism, utterly insensitive to the needs of others) is elevated to the status of a virtue.

Rand has traction among a broad section of middlebrow America -- the kind among whom, if you are careless enough to mention the word "society," will ask, "You a commie?" The kind who constitute the Tea Party movement and don't see the blatant contradictions in what they're espousing -- but are convinced they are absolutely right.

My humble opinion.

 

[Ergodic]

I disagree completely with Ergodic's claim that the content of her philosophy drives the response to her novels.

That's not exactly what I was getting at. I was mostly pointing out what I have observed about how people tend to debate Ayn Rand's character and philosophy. People tend to fall into one of the extremes of love/hate (for lack of better term), and many will go to great lengths to hold onto their position for dear life. If someone writing about AR falls into one of these camps (worshipper or demonizer) I can usually tell in a few lines, at which point I tune them out if they're writing at length. I've heard it all before.

Artistically, the delight she evidently takes in abusing her characters tells me everything I need to know...Reading The Fountainhead and seeing the degree to which she delights in playing the sadistic god...

I agree that it's much more important to pay attention to what someone does rather than what he (she) says. The version of this statement for a novelist would be that overtones are more important than stated philosophy. Ad hominem is not a logical fallacy--it is a window.

her social philosophy is the effluvium of a twisted soul.

Twisted by the horrors of Russian socialism or twisted inherently, regardless of circumstance?

 

[bigbadwolf]

Twisted by the horrors of Russian socialism or twisted inherently, regardless of circumstance?

She got out of the Soviet Union in 1926, at the tender age of 21. Well before the serious purges of the '30s or the trauma in the '40s of the "Great Patriotic War." Furthermore tens of millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, etc. endured all this without becoming what Rand became. This is scant excuse.

Rand herself -- as a sociopath or writer -- is inherently of little significance. The world is awash with thousands of more gifted sociopaths (of whom Hitler and Stalin are prominent examples). It is her impact on American popular thinking and the fig leaf of intellectual respectability she provides to some of the baser instincts in American political and economic life that is the problem. Her "philosophy" -- I use the term rashly -- is arguably the closest the US status quo has had to an official ideology.

 

[Ergodic]

She got out of the Soviet Union in 1926, at the tender age of 21. Well before the serious purges of the '30s or the trauma in the '40s of the "Great Patriotic War." Furthermore tens of millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, etc. endured all this without becoming what Rand became. This is scant excuse.

Nice move. I'll let you have the last word on this one. Like I said, I feel I have little to learn from engaging in Rand debates, or even listening to them.

So...there's more to "greed is good" than simply the works of Ayn Rand. (And, at the other extreme: making fun of the teabaggers.) Is there a master "greed is good" thread? Or a master "what-is-the-social-role-of-quant-finance-for-those-inclined-to-worry-about-such-things" thread?

 

[bigbadwolf]

Or a master "what-is-the-social-role-of-quant-finance-for-those-inclined-to-worry-about-such-things" thread?

If you read the posts on this forum, they are mostly written by people who want to fit in as well-paid technicians to the status quo -- and no questions asked. Speaking for myself, in other places I read all this cheap moral outrage against firms like GS -- which completely lacks any context. The asinine arguments I read are that GS was "greedy" and "immoral." As if by removing a few aberrant individuals, the functioning of the system could be restored to health. Typical liberal argument to not focus on systemic flaws. Whatever GS did has occurred in a certain economic and social context. Gordon Gekko, after all, was celeberated and feted in a society that values great personal power regardless of who gets trampled underneath. My argument is merely that people like Rand have contributed to building that backdrop.

 

[bob]

I agree--let's not overemphasize the importance of Rand in the larger discussion of greed as a supposed social good.

Harvard historians have done a good job of emphasizing the role of religious freedom in European conquest of North America, as usual downplaying the colonists in the South who were here first. Why did they come? To make a buck. (Excuse the anachronism.)

New York was originally settled by the most aquisitive bourgeois culture on the planet at the time, and famous authors of the first asset bubble:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

The whole myth of the American West was built on the idea that there was a place free of social constraints, where the strong would hack a living out of the land--and their fellow humans, if they could manage it.

In short, while it may be that Social Darwinists provide, as bbw points out, the fig leaf for unbridled greed, there is a far more powerful justification available: The history of the US is in large part one of greed and violence.

 

[bluechimp]

Just for laughs: Goldman Sachs Has a Greater Responsibility Than You Can Possibly Fathom.