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kane · 11-20-2009, 07:18 PM

Atlas Shrugged is the only think of her's that I have read. I liked it and thought it was good. I also thought it made some good points, but is an over simplistic view as far as how an economy works.

Sure, if you take away all the incentive for someone to develop something good, they will stop trying to develop it (at least in many cases). I have made this argument about torrents and some tube sites. If people insist on downloading movies for free and not paying for them eventually we might come to a place where the return on a movie doesn't justify the means and those that make the movies will just give up and crank out low budget shit that makes a profit instead of actually developing decent ideas. We will end up like Idiocracy says with all TV shows being either monster truck rallies or people getting hit in the balls. The same can be said for industry. If you work hard to come up with a great concept and are forced to give it to your competitors for free, your motivation for working hard to create new concepts will be nearly zero.

Where Rand falls short in her vision, IMO, is where she fails to show how completely unregulated capitalism eventually fucks over the little guy and give them less and less including less incentive to work hard and add something of value to the companies they work for. The same can be said about true communism. When companies control every aspect of the market they can conspire to keep wages at whatever level they want and working conditions at any level they want. This can cause a shrinking of the middle class and makes something like the typical "American Dream" harder to reach for many people. Uncontrolled capitalism also makes it very difficult for an average guy to start his own business and prosper because it allows for large companies to grow unchecked and control everything. With pure communism you end up with a central government controlling everything, with pure capitalism you end up with a central core of big businesses controlling everything. Neither can last forever and neither is good for a healthy society.

Still, I don't see it as a blueprint for a new world order or a one world government. I see it more as a warning that too much regulation is bad and that we need to let people who create. invent and revolutionize things do their thing.

11-20-2009, 07:18 PM
kane Too lazy to set a custom title Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: portland, OR Posts: 20,684	Atlas Shrugged is the only think of her's that I have read. I liked it and thought it was good. I also thought it made some good points, but is an over simplistic view as far as how an economy works. Sure, if you take away all the incentive for someone to develop something good, they will stop trying to develop it (at least in many cases). I have made this argument about torrents and some tube sites. If people insist on downloading movies for free and not paying for them eventually we might come to a place where the return on a movie doesn't justify the means and those that make the movies will just give up and crank out low budget shit that makes a profit instead of actually developing decent ideas. We will end up like Idiocracy says with all TV shows being either monster truck rallies or people getting hit in the balls. The same can be said for industry. If you work hard to come up with a great concept and are forced to give it to your competitors for free, your motivation for working hard to create new concepts will be nearly zero. Where Rand falls short in her vision, IMO, is where she fails to show how completely unregulated capitalism eventually fucks over the little guy and give them less and less including less incentive to work hard and add something of value to the companies they work for. The same can be said about true communism. When companies control every aspect of the market they can conspire to keep wages at whatever level they want and working conditions at any level they want. This can cause a shrinking of the middle class and makes something like the typical "American Dream" harder to reach for many people. Uncontrolled capitalism also makes it very difficult for an average guy to start his own business and prosper because it allows for large companies to grow unchecked and control everything. With pure communism you end up with a central government controlling everything, with pure capitalism you end up with a central core of big businesses controlling everything. Neither can last forever and neither is good for a healthy society. Still, I don't see it as a blueprint for a new world order or a one world government. I see it more as a warning that too much regulation is bad and that we need to let people who create. invent and revolutionize things do their thing.