I was on a Zoom discussion on Friday put on by the Atlas Society, an organization whose employees and contributors subscribe in various degrees to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. David Kelley, who ran the discussion, noted that we are coming up next month to the 65th anniversary of the publication of Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. It was published on October 10, 1957.
The discussion caused me to go back to my dog-eared copy and reread various passages I had noted. Between now and October 10, I’ll highlight some of my favorite passages.
Here’s one that caught my eye Sunday morning. It’s a statement by James Taggart, one of the villains in the novel, about Hank Rearden, who has invented Rearden Metal, which is much more durable than steel:
He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.
The person talking to Taggart, Cherryl Brooks quickly points out that all those other things were there for quite a while and asks, “Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”
In short, Brooks gets that there’s a division of labor without which Rearden could not have invented Rearden Metal. But none of that means that he didn’t invent Rearden Metal.
This passage, which I first read when I was 17, reminds me of President Obama’s famous 2012 statement to business people and entrepreneurs: “You didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
READER COMMENTS
Paul Sand
Sep 5 2022 at 9:52am
If you’re taking nominations: Francisco’s Money Speech
David Henderson
Sep 5 2022 at 12:09pm
Thanks. Yes, that’s on my list.
John hare
Sep 5 2022 at 10:28am
I still get annoyed about that speech. Followed your links and read many of the. Comments as well. A proper response would trigger moderation.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 5 2022 at 11:26am
Both thesis and anti-thesis is true. Should Rearden be able to keep the entirety of the benefit of the Metal, the power of the State used to prevent by force if necessary anyone else from copying his invention. No, becasue he did not create it ex nihilo. Should the entirety of the benefit be confiscated by taxation of socialization of the enterprise with which he will exploit the invention. No, becasue he mixed his labor and capital with the pre-existing knowledge base and because others in society wish to encourage other people to invent other wealth creating products and processes.
I had not been aware of how long that false dichotomy had been around. It wasn’t invented JUST to criticize Obama,
Jose Pablo
Sep 5 2022 at 6:06pm
Should Rearden be able to keep the entirety of the benefit of the Metal? (meaning be able to keep all the benefit that market forces (voluntary exchanges) allow him to keep. Don’t understand what “entirety” means here)
Yes, of course, no dichotomy here.
the power of the State used to prevent by force if necessary anyone else from copying his invention.
Only to the extent that this “prevention by force” benefits society as a whole. The laws protecting this should be designed to increase the global wealth being (whatever it means). Certainly not an easy task (particularly when trying to define “benefiting society”) but no dichotomy involved.
There are no false dichotomies in Obama’s speech. Just the plain defense of a normative position.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 6 2022 at 12:54am
I just mean that I think progressive taxation at less than 100% is legitimate.
Jose Pablo
Sep 6 2022 at 1:06pm
Taxation is a different topic and is never legitimate (absent the previous consent of all citizens with a specific taxation code)
Even if you believe that there are no natural property rights because those rights are “created” by governmental decree; even in this case, it does not follow that government has the legitimacy to impose, based on that belief over property rights, its chosen distribution of resources. Absent the previous consent of everybody, any distribution chosen by the state would have to be imposed in some members against their will.
Where is the political authority to do so, coming from? Only from the raw physical power of the State used to impose their will on their citizens. That’s tyranny and it is never legitimate.
Mark Brady
Sep 5 2022 at 2:40pm
Should Hank Rearden be able to patent his metal and prevent independent inventors of the metal from making and selling their own discoveries? I suggest the answer is No!
Jeff Allen
Sep 5 2022 at 7:55pm
“independent inventors”?
“… Cherryl Brooks quickly points out that all those other things were there for quite a while and asks, “Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”
even the shopgirl gets it.
I suggest the answer is Yes!
MarkW
Sep 5 2022 at 8:38pm
Should Hank Rearden be able to patent his metal and prevent independent inventors of the metal from making and selling their own discoveries? I suggest the answer is No!
The problem is that allowing independent inventors to duplicate inventions will reduce the incentive to innovate. Often all that a ‘clean room’ re-inventor would need to know about your invention is that it exists, what it does generally, and that it is possible. What about somebody who started working on it at the same time? Shouldn’t they, too, be able to sell the invention? But again the quicker, more industrious inventor, who was first to market, shows the laggard that it is worth pursuing to the end because there is a market for the product (when otherwise the laggard might never have persisted). Society doesn’t just benefit from useful inventions, it benefits from useful inventions sooner rather than later. There are good reasons to reward the first to file.
Jose Pablo
Sep 5 2022 at 11:20pm
Hank Rearden has every right to get all the benefit he can get thru voluntary exchanges involving his metal.
The fact that he was able to develop his metal because somebody in Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago started playing around with copper and fire, is totally irrelevant to this discussion (something Obama did not seem to get).
Patents are a different animal since they don’t involve voluntary exchanges. The end goal of patents cannot be, in any way, to benefit Hank Rearden at the expense of others. They should never be designed to that end.
Patents should be always justified using a utilitarian calculus along the lines of the one sketched by MarkW. But this utilitarian way of reasoning, implies somebody evaluating benefits and cost to some other people, making the calculations always arbitrary and so, requiring from the government to impose these arbitrary calculations upon others.
But to do that governments should have a political legitimacy that any known form of government lacks.
The only legitimate alternative would be everybody voluntarily agreeing on a patent regime (a la Buchanan, so to speak) that compensate the innovator for his/her invention on top of what a mechanism of pure voluntary exchanges would have done.
Alex B
Sep 5 2022 at 11:38pm
David, what is your view of objectivist ethics? In your view, did Rand solve the is ought to problem?
David Henderson
Sep 6 2022 at 10:15am
Good question. No, I don’t think she did.
bb
Sep 6 2022 at 2:31pm
Am I the only person who is annoyed by how bad the science is in Atlas Shrugged? Metals are elements, as in periodic table. They only way to “invent” a new metal is through nuclear fusion, and it would be an unstable element of no practical use. Also, The big innovation at the end of the book is a “static electricity” motor? LOL, a static electricity motor would have less power than a lightbulb plugged into a potato. And it’s true throughout the book. I’m surprised that so many people aren’t annoyed with how lazy she was when it comes to the science in the book.
David Henderson
Sep 6 2022 at 4:08pm
You’re correct. I hadn’t realized until I googled it that steel, for example, is not a metal.
But it’s completely legitimate for a guy who invents an alloy to call it Rearden Metal.
bb
Sep 6 2022 at 8:27pm
That’s fair, but the static electricity machine is pretty laughable. And for a book about philosophy, it would have been better if she had more of an understanding of philosophy. It’s chock full of logical fallacies. To be honest, it reminds me of Harry Potter- there’s a spill that allows you to live forever, but no-one every uses it.
Capt. J Parker
Sep 6 2022 at 4:41pm
I don’t think I’d use the term lazy and Ayn Rand in the same sentence. There is so much in Atlas Shrugged that I find astounding. The most astounding thing is that every paragraph in the entire book contains an expression of some aspect of Rand’s philosophy. If John Galt’s engine is hard to swallow it has to be at least partially offset by Ellis Wyatt’s Colorado oil boom which became reality thanks to horizontal drilling.
Rand didn’t know how to build the the things she might imagine. But she did know how such innovation is easily stifled.
bb
Sep 6 2022 at 8:39pm
I disagree. I find the book to be full of weird contradictions. Look at the sectors she chose. Mining, drilling, steel, and railroads. Everyone of these industries exist due to government subsidy and government capture. She could have created heroes that work in truly innovative spaces. Plus, most of the heroes inherited great fortunes. And they decide to live in a weird commune that has no division of labor. Plus the speeches make lazy arguments grounded on objective truths that are in no way objective. I can see why people like the book, but it surprises me that more people aren’t a little bothered by its flaws.
And horizontal drilling predates the book.
Thanks for the reply. You do shed incite into why folks like it so much.
Capt. J Parker
Sep 7 2022 at 3:57pm
The book is an exposition of her philosophy. Her philosophy had relevance in 1957 and those industries had relevance then. Her philosophy has relevance today and those same industries have relevance now. We are on the brink of our energy sector being destroyed by government regulation. Why?
That’s not right. They exist because they produce things that people want. It’s absolutely true that you can find regulatory capture and government subsidies at work in those industries and Rand was totally aware of this. She writes about actors trying to use the government for crony capitalist reasons. Those actors are the villains. Her heroes compete based on their ability.
Innovation was not necessarily Rand’s highest ideal. Running a railroad competently and efficiently and without crony capitalist interventions was every bit as valuable as inventing a new alloy for the rails. Plus, government has just as much power to stifle the efficient performance of old technology as it does to stifle innovation and to demonstrate this you need to include both in your story.
Some did like Dagny Taggart and Franscisco D’Anconia. Reardon and Wyatt, I think, were self made. But don’t forget all the other heroes in the book. Rand’s heroes were anyone that was using their wits and the tools available to them to make life better for themselves. There was the waitress who left a dead end existence to try a new life in the city and the competent maintenance man on Taggart’s train doing his job to the best of his ability. Those characters weren’t there just for color or scene setting. They were there for Rand to express her ideas. Those characters were working to achieve their own happiness and in so doing made things better for those around them.
Again, I don’t think anything associated with Rand can be fairly called lazy. I’m not going to claim objectivism is the perfect philosophy for life. But I take inspiration from Rand and Atlas Shrugged for many reasons. Among them are:
I think the default position of most people is “we need government to solve all the big problems” Rand was my first exposure to government actually being the cause of the big problems.
Even if Objectivism uses difficult to prove claims of what is objectively truth (I don’t necessarily agree,) it still has great power in explaining both good and bad real world outcomes we see happening all the time. Latest example – Viasat wants government to block a competitor.
Atlas Shrugged is a personal admonishment and an inspiration to be a producer, to work hard to your best ability and don’t expect other people to bail you out. Rand did just that in her own life. By hard work and intellectual effort she became a public intellectual and widely read author.
bb
Sep 7 2022 at 8:42pm
Capt,
Thanks again for the reply. I didn’t read this book until my 40s, and I found it simplistic, full of contradictions, and a little bit crude. It seems many people who love it read it when they were young. Not sure if that applies to you? And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I probably would have greater appreciation if I read it as a young man. You make some very good points, particularly about the heroes, but I disagree with you on two items.
First:
“They exist because they produce things that people want.”
These industries are very dependent on rights of way for rails and pipelines, government leases for mines and drilling sites, government built/subsidized infrastructure like rail stations and ports, and lots of direct and indirect subsidies. We’ve literally gone to war multiple times for these industries. I would argue that this is a particularly odd mix of sectors for an anti-government book. The fact that people want what they produce does not offset those points. People really like roads and bridges too, most of which are provided by the state. Not an expert on 1957, but I think examples of innovative industries at that time (and the ones that arguably defeated the USSR) were home appliances, electronics, hospitality, automobiles, and entertainment.
Second, while it does provide “inspiration to be a producer”, it’s hard for me to overlook the amount of disdain it promotes. I believe the book promotes the idea that very few people are producers and the vast majority of humanity are takers. I just don’t think that is true and I don’t think it is a viewpoint we should try to teach young men. In my experience most Americans work very hard and earn every cent they make. Does the inspiration eclipse the disdain that is promoted in the book? I don’t think so.
Again, thanks for sharing why you like it. It’s helpful for me to hear the other point of view.
Capt. J Parker
Sep 8 2022 at 10:57am
bb,
Thanks for the discussion. I read Atlas Shrugged at 18 and got very little out of it. Somewhat engaging story – way too long with too many tedious soliloquies. Around age 30 I started developing a healthy skepticism for the idea that progressive government is an unmitigated force for good. I also had read more about Rand and Objectivism and then Re-Read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
On this second read there were too things about A.S. that stood out for me. One was, as I mentioned earlier, that every bit of the novel, every sentence practically, is an expression of some part of her philosophy. It really is a masterful construction. The second thing that resonated was that it was a strident intellectual defense of classical liberalism and a rebuke of progressivism.
Vivian Darkbloom
Sep 7 2022 at 7:28am
“Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”
By coincidence, I read the following in “Writings” by Eduardo Chillida this morning:
“Let’s not forget that original comes from origin.”
I trust that is the same sense that Rand and perhaps Obama were using the term “invent” and “invention” while both (inappropriately) failing to acknowledge that all progress is made at the margin and that those *marginal developments* are really want patents are there to encourage and protect (I think this is a better explanation than “division of labor”). The fact that I may use pre-existing knowledge (including other patents for which I have a license) doesn’t render that pre-existing knowledge out of bounds for others.
As far as patents and other protections of “intellectual property” are concerned, I can’t think of a better organized system to reward and incentivize those who do make progress at the margin and thus to serve the interest of the general public. If you want to invent something using knowledge that is in the public domain (unavoidable), that knowledge was and still is open to everyone. We can, and should, debate the details of the existing system, in particular, the duration of such protections which strike me as very often too long, especially for descendants in the realm of copyrights. In the US we can thank Sonny Bono for that, along with the Walt Disney Corporation. Sonny’s Copyright Extension Act is sometimes referred to as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”.
Jose Pablo
Sep 7 2022 at 12:07pm
There always will be arbitrariness in any system devised to protect “intellectual property”. Like in any “system” not based on voluntary exchanges rewarding some people at the expense of some others.
Or do you really believe that a “system to protect intellectual property” designed by you (obviously, after extensive “debate”), will be free of arbitrariness and “details that could be improved”?
robc
Sep 7 2022 at 4:26pm
Zildjain solved the problem with patents. They are in their 14th generation of making cymbals using the family secret.
Whether trade secrets are better or worse than patents for innovation is up for debate, but it solves the problem of patents.
Capt. J Parker
Sep 7 2022 at 5:02pm
But how would you know you were really getting Zildjain cymbals with the family secret sauce without Zildjain having the benefit of that other government imposed artefact: Trademark Protection?
robc
Sep 7 2022 at 6:07pm
Of all the IPs, I am actually okay with trademark protection, as that is a method of fraud prevention. That is one of the handful of legitimate government tasks. I am not sure “encouraging innovation” is one. The one good thing I can say about patent and copyright is that, like the post office, at least it is constitutional.
There might be better methods, such as civil suits if you discover you were sold a fake Zildjain.
Or just deal directly with Zildjain.
Or a Zildjain authorized dealer, that you verify thru Zildjain.
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