io9 
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 2:02 AM
Tue Nov 10
25 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors: tips@io9.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Annalee Newitz | Email
News Editor:
Charlie Jane Anders | Email
Associate Editor:
Meredith Woerner | Email
Assistant Editor:
Lauren Davis | Email
Weekend Editor:
Graeme McMillan | Email
Contributors:
Joshua Glenn
Stephen Goldmeier | Email
Ed Grabianowski | Email
Austin Grossman
Paul Hogan | Email
Lauren Davis | Email
Chris Hsiang | Email
Lynn Peril | Email
Ann VanderMeer
Alasdair Wilkins | Email
Graphic Designer:
Stephanie Fox | Email
Interns:
Tim Barribeau | Email
Julia Carusillo | Email
Alex Eichler | Email
Cyriaque Lamar | Email
Caitlin Petrakovitz | Email
Mary Ratliff | Email
Josh Snyder | Email
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
03/10/09
"Howard Roark laughed."
03/10/09
03/10/09
Also I remember reading somewhere that Jack Kirby created Galactus as a kind of Semi-Omnipotent objectivist villain.
Makes akinda of sense but would love to have in confirmed.
03/10/09
03/10/09
Atlas Shrugged devotees say America's wealth builders will never go on strike the way Rand described, but they say a quasistrike is underway. "It's not organized, but it's happening," Joyce says.
For example, since the Enron scandal, CEOs are refusing to sit on boards of other companies, thereby withholding their business savvy from the market. About 60% of executives are turning down offers to serve on boards vs. 25% a year ago, Christian says.
[www.usatoday.com]
And that's six years ago.
Oh John Galt! Why hast thou forsaken us!
03/10/09
Though I seriously doubt any of them could make a half-decent hamburger or fix a stuck drain.
03/10/09
It stimulates the economy, gets people to use their brains, and might result in more book purchases in the future. I don't really see a downside.
03/10/09
We can't stop people from reading what they want, but be prepared for whatever BS they might glean from it.
03/10/09
I agree that there is a possibility of potentially harmful stuff being gleaned from books. But "Atlas Shrugged" is not the one that will do it. It's no "Mein Kampf." If anything, it encourages people to disorganize politically, which has never been much of a revolutionary rallying cry (see the recent political 'successes' of Anarchists and Libertarians).
03/10/09
03/10/09
Just saying.
03/10/09
03/10/09
It comes from those times not so long ago when we rode horses with bit and bridle, and to take the reins was to steer the horse where you wanted it to go. And Shel Siverstein taught me all about "the king who reigned for 40 years" as ruler (instead of rivalling Noah as bringer of flood). Subtle, but they are different.
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
*shakes head*
03/10/09
03/10/09
Daniel Barnes over at the Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature blog had this to say,
"Much is being made of the supposed "uncanny similarities" between "Atlas Shrugged" and the current financial crisis. Yet somehow I don't remember the chapter where at a press conference to announce a new initiative aimed at reducing the regulatory burden on banks, "Representatives of four of the five government agencies responsible for financial supervision used tree shears to attack a stack of paper representing bank regulations. The fifth representative, James Gilleran of the Office of Thrift Supervision, wielded a chainsaw." and where "Two months after that event the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of the tree-shears-wielding agencies, moved to exempt national banks from state regulations that protect consumers against predatory lending." In other words, contra Atlas, the regulations were being systematically repealed in the years prior to the crisis, not increased."
Source,
[aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com]
03/10/09
Exactly.
03/10/09
It's the kind of thinking from folks like Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman that got us into this mess.
03/10/09
03/10/09
Bush's governance was based on "business can do no wrong" and the idea that the banks would self-regulate themselves from imploding.
It doesn't work.
03/10/09
The book people NEED to be reading is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. That is one helluva book.
03/10/09
One helluva book about economics..written by a journalist with an agenda and no economic training. Yeah, I'll stick to my economics literature.
03/10/09
03/10/09
*The above comment was written on SARCASM DAY*
03/10/09
03/10/09
Many times sociopaths are geniuses, albeit evil ones.
03/10/09
03/10/09
Rand wasn't a terrible writer, but her philosophy is crap and always has been. Hopefully these people flocking to her books realize that.
03/10/09
03/10/09
Atlas Shrugged absolutely inspired Bioshock. It's just that it was a particular kind of negative inspiration.
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
oh and 'dated a guy' and 'well-thumbed' do not go well together in a sentence.
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
Since Alan Greenspan et al, are all documented devotees of the Individualist Anarchic Objectivist Communal Organized Church of Rand.
03/10/09
I mean if anyone wants to act like government intervention is what got us into this mess instead of what's trying to get us out, go right ahead. This is a science fiction blog after all.
03/10/09
Actually,it is what got us into this mess. Greenspan et al. fully embraced the failed policies of Keynesian interventionist economic policy; the policy of the "eternal boom" by artificially lowering interest rates and ballooning out the money supply.
The Austrian School predicted the collapse of this economy in 2008. As a side note, they also predicted the Great Depression, and no one listened to them then either. Keynesian interventionist economic policies only exacerbate the downturn in a bust period following a boom created by Keynesian interest rate meddling and currency printing.
The proper thing to have done when this all started was to let the banks fail, and ride out a year of tough times and let the economy readjust (see 1920 creash). Instead we're making the same mistakes made in the Great Depression expecting a different result. Expect 10-15 years of a slumping economy on par with the Japanese post-bust years (we're trying everything they tried to dig out fot heir hole for a decade and none of that worked either).
03/10/09
What saved Japan was that they nationalized the banks.