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"Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

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Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#71

Post by ojbyrne »

unalone wrote: post #65
maxharris wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the rest of the book seems ridiculous to you? The first time I read it, I thought that everything in Atlas Shrugged was perfect. Even with repeated readings, I never once thought anything was ridiculous. Be specific in your answer.

Other people have responded in other ways, so I won't respond regarding her philosophy. I'll respond in a purer way that nobody else has: she writes bad prose. Her sentences are ugly, overlong, and lack concise flow. So by the definition of literature as the beauties of language, her work is imperfect and, in the case of Atlas Shrugged , actively bad . I daresay I've read Atlas Shrugged more times than you have. Furt…

Just happening to be reading the book at the time. There's so many pathetic pieces of prose. "He lighted his cigarette."

Just to chime in on all the other stuff, Francisco inherited all his wealth, and spent his life quite literally destroying it (rather than give some of it up to the "looters"). I can't think of a better allegory for crony capitalism.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#72

Post by andreyf »

unalone wrote: post #67
andreyf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part - that making money is not equivalent to creating value, or the specific example of teachers creating more value than MBA's?

The latter.

I guess you're right that it isn't cut-and-dry, but my hypothesis would be that a great X-er can most of the time inspire children to be great X-ers themselves. Hence, whatever she would accomplish on her own, she can accomplish tenfold by inspiring her students.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#73

Post by ojbyrne »

jfarmer wrote: post #57
sgharms wrote: post #8

I read _AS_ when I was 18 and I've thought about this quotation a lot through the last 20 months, as Reddit frothed about Ron Paul, Gold Standard, Banking collapse, etc. As I've thought more and more about it, something seems off about Francisco's speech, namely: Money is _no longer_ the representation of value in green paper; no, it is the representation of transferrable obligation, i.e. debt. http://bit.ly/14idwP R…

Ayn Rand was opposed to the labor theory of value, which is a central tenant of Marxism.

While I'm not a marxist, I think she goes too far in her opposition to this. All of the protagonists are capitalists (mostly with inherited money) and those who actually work to advance the cause of the "great men" - i.e. Eddie Willers - are given short shrift, and little chance to advance. Instead we have great men with inherited fortunes, doing very little actual work, preferring whining about "looters" and in one case (Hank Rearden) spending a month flying a plane over the Rockies looking for another great person.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#74

Post by unalone »

andreyf wrote: post #72
unalone wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter.

I guess you're right that it isn't cut-and-dry, but my hypothesis would be that a great X-er can most of the time inspire children to be great X-ers themselves. Hence, whatever she would accomplish on her own, she can accomplish tenfold by inspiring her students.

What about "teach by example"?

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#75

Post by unalone »

ojbyrne wrote: post #71
unalone wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other people have responded in other ways, so I won't respond regarding her philosophy. I'll respond in a purer way that nobody else has: she writes bad prose. Her sentences are ugly, overlong, and lack concise flow. So by the definition of literature as the beauties of language, her work is imperfect and, in the case of Atlas Shrugged , actively bad . I daresay I've read Atlas Shrugged more times than you have. Furt…

Just happening to be reading the book at the time. There's so many pathetic pieces of prose. "He lighted his cigarette." Just to chime in on all the other stuff, Francisco inherited all his wealth, and spent his life quite literally destroying it (rather than give some of it up to the "looters"). I can't think of a better allegory for crony capitalism.

To defend Rand a little - I do like her quite a lot - Francisco's idea is that by doing so he's eliminating the "looters" from society. It's entirely fantasy, but it's very fun fantasy.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#76

Post by SapphireSun »

unalone wrote: post #2

This is one of my favorite speeches from that book. It doesn't make false assumptions like many of the other speeches and plots do - it stays focused on debunking the idea of money as bad, and as such while a lot of the rest of the book seems slightly ridiculous, this speech remains quite powerful.

Ironically, I'm in the middle of writing an ethics paper on Aristotle. We will be considering Ayn Rand's position starting next class.

On point, there is a flaw in her speech. Many people produce money for themselves at the expense of other things of value. The problem is that money is not valued as a medium of exchange, but as an end in itself.

For people that not only say, but act, in the proper way, Ayn Rand is right. In the real world, it falls apart. Not everyone is a philosopher, and they will be tricked by hollow artifacts of social acceptance and material wealth.

I like pg's position where people produce because they like to build and solve problems using their reason ( A position much like Aristotle's I'm finding. ) Material things lose their fun after enough time and you have interacted with the static object enough. People are interesting because they can be dynamic because of their reason.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#77

Post by SapphireSun »

andreyf wrote: post #49
jacoblyles wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is less sexy and less popular, but the engineer that invents a more efficient manufacturing or distribution process that slightly reduces the resources used in products enjoyed by millions of people, perhaps becoming rich in the process, does far more good for the world than an elementary school teacher. Sam Walton did more good for humanity than any thousand average teachers combined.

Had Sam Walton been a teacher, teaching thousands of children throughout his life, what are the chances he would have inspired some them to be great engineers?

If becoming a teacher is the ultimate instrumental good, then we would all become teachers, then nothing would get done.

Since that is obviously the worst of all worlds, it tells me that teachers do a good thing, but not the greatest thing.

However, without teachers, few things would get done as everyone would reinvent the wheel. This is also, while not the worst scenario, it is far from the best.

Thus, the best scenario seems to be that people should try to accomplish something, then go back and teach the next generation. The bonus is that these people will know how to get to the top.

However, people who are good at getting things done are not necessarily the best teachers, and for the people that are...

Perhaps, like we have today, those who are good at teaching and want to should teach, and those who want to produce should produce (and then later teach). The whole system relies on there being a good balance between the two. How to calculate the balance is very hard.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#78

Post by davidw »

pg wrote: post #70
davidw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think there's something of an opportunity cost, though? If someone like Linus had dedicated all his time to a startup (he did spend some time at Transmeta, but still had time for Linux), perhaps he would have never accomplished what he did. Perhaps similar arguments could be made about people like Guido van Rossum. Obviously there are various paths to success, but how many people made their cash, and then w…

I wrote an essay about this: http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html The relevant section is called "Two Routes." Linus seems to have taken organic route, gradually arranging his life so he could spend more time on Linux. Startups are usually an instance of the other strategy, the two-job route, of which they are the most extreme form. (For a few very lucky people, a startup can also be one's life's work. But it's usuall…

Yes, I've read that essay, and liked it. What I'm getting at, though, is that isn't it possible that by taking the startup route, by the time you 'get there', yes, you have time to do whatever you want, but you've blown your chance to do something else?

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#79

Post by MaysonL »

dpatru wrote: post #59
MaysonL wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best argument for the inheritance tax I've seen lately.

A theme in Atlas Shrugged is that wealth properly belongs to the people who make it. This includes the right to give it away or pass it to one's family. The fact that inherited wealth may ruin an heir who is not worthy of it does not entitle others to take the wealth by force, contrary to the will of the true owner. Rand's argument does not justify the inheritance tax; it's a warning to the wealthy.

Well - I would argue that anyone inheriting wealth should pay tax on that inheritance, just like on any other income. Wealth is created as much, if not more, by society as by the owner.

Re: "Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand

#80

Post by dualogy »

thras wrote: post #9

Wow. Are people impressed by that article because of the sonorous prose? Because the content definitely isn't impressive. Rand's first mistake is not realizing that the love of money quote speaks to individuals and not to societies. An individual who loves the material world more than the spiritual world (not god necessarily, maybe just the world inside his own head), is pitiable. The saddest thing I've ever heard wa…

Actually the content is incredibly impressive. There are quite a few problems with Rand and her writing, but its not to do with content or presentation imo. It depends a lot on how the individual reader deals with it. For one, she doesn't care of her readers' definitions, concepts or connotations of words like reason, egoism/egotism, rationality, which have developed, maybe manipulated, maybe not, over generations but which she kind of redefines, trying to be as exacting and smart as possible about it but coming to definitely other (in my mind more sensible, but other) concepts/connotations/definitions than the more blurred ones people think they share. So take a quote or passage of one of her works out of the context of the book and just present it to someone who has never read her from start to finish and applies their own, learned connotations, concepts and definitions, and they will cry how in-humane and pitiable it seems.

Her heroes, herself and her argument is that there shouldn't be a conflict between the material and the spiritual in the first place --- i.e. the 'ideal spiritual being' (in her literature) is the creator and individual of independent thought, for whom money is 'merely' the 'material manifestation of their spiritual height', a spirit that is, unlike others, admittedly celebrating this-life on this-world (not an otherworldly afterlife), 'reason' (she defines it for herself and her story characters, agreeing or disagreeing with that one is a different matter) and 'rational choice'.

While we're at it, when she's advocating 'rational selfishness', she's also not advocating the 'mindless brute going over corpses or a plundering thug' but rather implies that ultimately it is in your self-interest to create, and the best and most useful you can, then trade that voluntarily. This is pretty consistent with the YC/PG idea of wealth creation where ideally in the marketplace (except maybe for crass bubble markets) you make a lot of money most likely when you create even more wealth/value for those who choose to pay you. (Whether that's freemium subscribers, advertisers or a big corp buying you is beside the point of the argument -- in the end, the principle applies regardless of that.)

So I think the 'pitiable individual' you had in mind and the one she had in mind might well be the same or very similar --- there's unthinking zealots (MBA or not ;) who strive for money not knowing what to use it for, deal in personal connections and think it's all about 'striking deals with the right buddies' --- and then there's what in the 30s were 'the great industrialists' who started from nowhere (or since the 70s started in garages) and had a grand vision of something immensely useful they wanted to see in the world, then went ahead 'against all odds' to build it. Of course, she's using the heroism rhetoric of old warrior tales immensely, and I think she just did it for fun and maybe because her heroes (in books and real life) needed that 'missionary sense of urgency' to actually do what they set out to do.

Maybe for insanely great stuff you do actually need a reality distortion field. Although in another way she was all about 'facing, not blanking out reality and seeing it in the eye all the time'. But thats physical reality and basic laws like you cannot consume more than you produce etc. I'd actually say, to ultimately disrupt and reshape reality, you need to distort it first. Some of reality is ours to reshape, but that doesnt mean wishing-will-it-so.

Hmm. Mindboggling. There was a time when I could express such thoughts less confusingly. Guess I've been working too much lately and not doing enough intellectual reading/talking/writing. Gotta take that daily bike-ride now before getting to work -- laters!

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