Ayn Rand

[sirbruce]

Elmore says:
"I just got a reply from the Ayn Rand Institute -
"Thanks for your note about Kindle editions. I understand from Ayn Rand's publisher that they will very soon be licensing eBook editions, but the ones you saw are probably unauthorized and Penguin will have them removed."

Oh well.

[Tattncat]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

The Amazon Kindle store now has

Atlas Shrugged $1.99

The Fountainhead $5.99 and

The Virtue of Selfishness $1.99

Some have complained about the formatting.....

Disregard if this has already been posted.

Great! Thanks DG I'm going there now.

[desertgrandma]

uh......I got a notice from Amazon today. Realize, I never contacted them.

I had bought two books for $1.99 each.

They refunded price of both books, and deleted them from my media library.

Apparently they were not authorized.

Sorry about that.

[desertgrandma]

This is a copy of the letter received 4 hours after the notice of refunds.........

Hello,

We recently discovered a problem with a Kindle book that you have purchased. We have processed a refund to the payment method used to purchase "Virtue of Selfishness" by Ayn Rand. The next time the wireless is activated on your device "Virtue of Selfishness" will be removed. If you are not in a wireless coverage area, please connect your device to a computer using your USB cable and delete the file from the documents folder.

We apologize for any inconvenience the removal of this title may cause.

Thank you for choosing Amazon Kindle.

[Elfwreck]

I wonder if Amazon can get sued for selling copyrighted material they didn't have the rights to sell. I know about DMCA and "safe harbor" laws... but I'm not sure they cover when it's your store that's doing the money exchange. AFAIK, Amazon doesn't claim to be a "provider of ebook selling services;" it tells customers that *it* has provided these ebooks.

Safe harbor protects the post office from being arrested for delivering criminal materials, but the post office doesn't claim to be providing those materials; it's very clear that they're just the messenger. Amazon expects customers to come to it, not the book creators, for their Kindle books.

Since Amazon can't be certain of getting rid of the distributed books, which may have been copied & converted many times already, they seem to be at least as culpable as Grokster or The Pirate Net--they're providing a service that allows, possibly encourages, people to share copyrighted content.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I wonder if Amazon can get sued for selling copyrighted material they didn't have the rights to sell. I know about DMCA and "safe harbor" laws... but I'm not sure they cover when it's your store that's doing the money exchange. AFAIK, Amazon doesn't claim to be a "provider of ebook selling services;" it tells customers that *it* has provided these ebooks.

I think safe harbor still applies if they take it down and refund purchases as soon as they are made aware of it, which they did in this case.

BOb

[Zapped]

Well, since the topic is "Ayn Rand" and not "Copyright Infringement" I've got to chime in about Atlas Shrugged. I'm almost 500 pages into what is an 1179-page tome on my Sony PRS-505, and I've been wanting to quit each time I finish a chapter. Honestly I've never read such dry prose, stilted dialog - nobody really talks like the monologues the main characters constantly recite to each other, do they? - nor endured such rigid, unchanging characters.

Each of the "good guys" might as well be wearing the white hats, and the bad guys wearing black ones; there's just no nuance at all in these cardboard cutouts! It seems like this lumbering beast of a novel could've been distilled into about 50 or even 100 interesting pages, novella-style, without missing any of the main plot points I've hit so far in nearly the 500 pages I've waded through.

On a slightly more positive note, the flashback sequence where Dagny Taggart is remembering her childhood friendship with Fransciso and Eddie (Willers) provided a fairly satisfying back-story when it was interjected in main storyline. And I can't argue that plot elements fail to build into a coherent, interwoven story - they do work well together. It's just that the whole experience feels as dry as dust to me.

If there are any Rand fans out there I'd love to know what I'm missing - and don't be afraid of the ad hominem attack either, I can take it

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Zapped

Well, since the topic is "Ayn Rand" and not "Copyright Infringement" I've got to chime in about Atlas Shrugged. I'm almost 500 pages into what is an 1179-page tome on my Sony PRS-505, and I've been wanting to quit each time I finish a chapter. Honestly I've never read such dry prose, stilted dialog - nobody really talks like the monologues the main characters constantly recite to each other, do they? - nor endured such rigid, unchanging characters.

Each of the "good guys" might as well be wearing the white hats, and the bad guys wearing black ones; there's just no nuance at all in these cardboard cutouts! It seems like this lumbering beast of a novel could've been distilled into about 50 or even 100 interesting pages, novella-style, without missing any of the main plot points I've hit so far in nearly the 500 pages I've waded through.

That was why I failed to finish the book. Card board characters does not make you believe more in the philosophical argument. I read to just before the Galt speech but realized that the speech must be pretty bad philosophically if you need this totally unbelievable setup to make people accept the arguments so I did not finish the book.

[Gideon]

From a literary standpoint you pretty much nailed the problems.

From a philosophical position her arguments are utter and complete dreck.

And from a moral perspective... ugh, don't even get me started. Any ideology that doesn't understand how interdependent we all are I can pretty much write off as nonsense real quick.

[Greg Anos]

Well, I reckon somebody needs to take the other side of the debate.

On the writing - I agree it's too long, and very dry. But remember this was person for whom English was not her original language. We can't all be Joseph Conrad. I think the length came from a urge to cover as many possibilities, variants, if you will, of how she felt socialism degraded the human spirit.

On the impact - It may be a huge, lumbering beast of a book, but like it or lump it, it had more impact on the course of human events than any other 20th century work of fiction. Now you may think that is a bad thing, but it is a true thing.

As for as the philosophy, anything I would say about it would only start a flame war, which I have no interest in. I will say this. If you watch your world collapse around you, have virtually everything you own taken away, be told that you have no hope of anything better than the squalid existence you have, don't expect such a person to write love letters about the philosophy that did it to her. She managed to leave the USSR in 1926, just as Stalin was consolidating power. Remember the context when reading her works...

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by Gideon

From a literary standpoint you pretty much nailed the problems.

What Red said.

From a philosophical position her arguments are utter and complete dreck.

Why?

And from a moral perspective... ugh, don't even get me started. Any ideology that doesn't understand how interdependent we all are I can pretty much write off as nonsense real quick.

Not everyone feels we are all "interdependent". I , for one, would like to see more self reliance than is being shown today, especially here in the US.

I really am not fond of being told its the governments place to bail banks, car companies, and homeowners who make bad housing decisions outs.

[Elfwreck]

Rand's morality breaks down at the micro-level; there's no room in her philosophy for families. (Atlas Shrugged doesn't deal with children at all; it's like they don't exist.) There's also no consideration for how her super-meritocracy would deal with less-talented, not-brilliant, but honest & hardworking people; Eddie Willers and Cheryl Taggart-nee-Brooks get shafted along with all the lazy scam artists.

If you've started reading AS, and it's dragging horribly, I'd say don't bother. Maybe try Anthem, which is a much-condensed version of the philosophy without any notable plot, or Fountainhead, which is shorter and has a different flavor. Atlas Shrugged doesn't get any better on a literary scale, and does have, at one spot, a 50-page monologue. (Maybe you could just read that and ignore the rest of the book. If you want to know what happens to the characters, check Wikipedia.) I like Rand's writing style, but I was probably exposed to it too young to know any better.

However, I learned a lot of great things from Rand. Her books don't have The Answers, but they do have some important truths, some of which are often overlooked.

10 Things I Learned From Ayn Rand:

1. I learned that you should do work that pleases and inspires you, not work that pays a lot or gives you high social status (assuming high social status is not what pleases and inspires you).

2. I learned that deliberate incompetence is a sin.

3. I learned that one of the cruelest attacks a person can make is to withdraw his or her resources from the community.

4. I learned that true kindred will recognize each other, regardless of status or recent activities. That you will know your brethren, and it will trouble you when they don't seem to be acting like you expect your kin to act.

5. I learned that "the group" is not necessarily right, that democracy is only a good idea if the sensible votes outnumber the bigots and idiots.

6. I learned that people will attack those they perceive as enemies, even if those "enemies" are actively improving their quality of life in obvious ways.

7. I learned that a woman can insist on her own terms, and get them, if she's skilled enough to force the issue.

8. I learned that money cannot buy you admiration from the people whose opinions you care about.

9. I learned that the most obviously manipulative scheming leech will fight viciously to avoid facing that label.

10. I learned that it does not matter if people call you a liar, a criminal, a slut, a coward, an idiot, or any other insult... it doesn't even matter if you are one by their standards. You are not accountable to other people's standards, except inasmuch as their opinions matter to you personally.

[Gideon]

Regarding the problems with her philosophy, it's not something I care to get into in any detail... there's a lot of discussion all over the internet regarding Rand's thinking and its problems. There's a reason she is rarely taken seriously in the academic community. And by that, I mean she is largely a joke. Sometimes economists take her seriously (which has had rather unfortunate fall out) but that's generally because it really works with their 'religion' of some sort of magical 'free market' that doesn't exist and has never existed and could probably never exist.

As her background, yes, I'm sure that impacted her thinking and Stalinism was a nightmare but that doesn't mean "let's all run in the opposite direction and declare that true" either. Neither are rational projects. Sympathy for her life doesn't equate into giving her thinking (or writing) a free pass.

Her book did have enormous impact. So did the Communist Manifesto... that worked out well, no? Enormous impact also doesn't mean anything in terms of quality. 'The Secret' has had a lot of impact too... Regrettably.

We ARE interdependent. It doesn't matter if one likes it or not. in the vast majority of cases, the food you get is grown by farmers somewhere else. The clothes you wear made by someone else. The economic system we live in, for good or ill, is enormously dependent on the economies of other places. Men like Galt mean exactly zilch if there are not people to do the work. But this isn't something that only Rand deals with, I know of religious communes that are just as misguided - if everyone lived like them everyone in the cities would starve to death.

The biggest problem with that line of thinking is that it is in no one's best interest to have an enormously 'have' and 'have not' society (which is one of the results to her line of thinking). Even if you ignore the human suffering that entails somehow, on a pragmatic level it is also a problem as that creates a very unstable political and economic situation, too. And that's not good for anyone's business.

It's like the bailouts... It sucks, it sucks a lot. But what happens if GM goes under, or the big banks, etc? The economic disaster that would happen would be monstrous. Unemployment through the roof, God only knows what would happen with inflation, etc. And those things don't just effect those unfortunates who become unemployed. It's not just about THEM, the people who made bad decisions, etc.. it's about what happens to our entire culture should it happen. It effects everything... unemployment rates, how much money the banks lend out (which is how almost every big business runs.. my family is in construction, and it is very hard to get jobs now because people who would hire us to build their projects cannot get financing even with great credit). My family didn't do anything wrong, but we might be in some serious trouble should this trend continue - and that's how all of this is, these effects are enormous and they reach out and touch us all.

Economic systems are complicated affairs, and so are political ones... her philosophy is, essentially, overly simplistic and does not really account for the 'real' situation we are in. It sounds nice on paper, it seems very romantic and super individualistic and all that but it's still drek. We are all very, very, very interconnected and involved with each other. Unless you're off on a commune generating your own power and water and growing your own food, you're in it. And so to be objective, to be reasonable, means we look at that situation dead in the face and we deal with it and we do everything we can to create a stable economy and a stable political situation because in the end that is what results in the highest freedom AND quality of life. Because one without the other is worthless.

Just about the closest you can get to Rand's dream would be the 19th and early 20th century.. great time, enormous poverty, workers being exploited to death (literally), child labor, crappy quality of life for almost everyone. Oil barons, steel barons, monopolies.... The only thing a 'free market' really means is that certain economic forces will end up winning (in some way or another) it doesn't say much at all regarding the collateral damage in the meantime. How many people will be unemployed, or go hungry, or sick or whatever... doesn't say how many small businesses or individuals will be rolled over by enormous corporations.. how much ecological damage will be done in the process...

So from an (as objective as I can be) intellectual standpoint I find her ideas terrible.

Personally, in the subjective, I think her ideas are monstrous and point to so much that is wrong in the world. I think it is, at best, dressed up selfishness. I don't think it's good for the person practicing it and I sure don't think it's good for anyone else. It tries to turn selfishness into a virtue and I don't think it is. A certain amount of 'enlightened self-interest' is fine and useful and good, but like everything else it has to be checked and moderated. Ideally, I don't want to live in either extreme.

[Moejoe]

10 things I learned from Ayn Rand

1-9. Any old dreck can be published if there's enough broo-ha-ha surrounding it.

10. After one chapter of Rand's drivel I actually could enjoy the writing of Dan Brown (this is theoretical and I will in no way put myself either through any more Randian tripe or risk being exposed to any more Dan Brown)

[desertgrandma]

So...............spending hundreds of billions of dollars that we do not have is somehow going to make this all better?

As far as I can see we (the US) are still in a unstable and political economic situations.

No new jobs have been created. The banks still refuse to loan out money, and people are still losing their houses because of it.

Schools are losing funding daily, teachers are being laid off right and left.

Its a smoke screen. Its a way to make people feel as tho something is being done when in fact all that is being done is yoking our future generations with a debt that will never be paid.

If I had a choice, I would cheerfully go back to the 19th and 20th century, where you at least had a chance for an honest life, poor it may be, than being part of government sponsored cradle to the grave existence.

Ayn Rand may not have had all the answers. But at least she stood for honesty to ones own values.