The author of the piece says Rand "rationalizes greed," which is false, as there are many forms of greed, not just financial. My understanding is that she says that society is most moral when people are able to trade without coercion, and therefore the wealth generated from free trade cannot be classified as "greed".
The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
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Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#12> When you work for an hour, you increase society’s wealth (and your own) by an hour’s worth of wages. true. > When you save a dollar rather than spending it, you increase society’s (and your own) wealth by a dollar um no. spending only transfers the dollars, and normally you trade the dollar for something worth more to you than the dollar & vice versa, and society's wealth increases due to trade.
Yeah, this is total bs. The economy needs the money to circulate, then everybody gets richer. Money has no value but as a share of the economies' production. When money flows, production goes up. The problem is when some people who are so rich that they can barely spend a few per cents of their income. Instead of getting spent, the money gets invested. But that's not really circulation, it's the opposite: Stuck money…
Money not spent/deferred means that the person producing basically volunteered their time.
Money invested is spent - it's spent by people who it's given to.
There is no such thing as "stuck" money.
Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#13> When you work for an hour, you increase society’s wealth (and your own) by an hour’s worth of wages. true. > When you save a dollar rather than spending it, you increase society’s (and your own) wealth by a dollar um no. spending only transfers the dollars, and normally you trade the dollar for something worth more to you than the dollar & vice versa, and society's wealth increases due to trade.
When you save the dollar you don't immediately increase wealth of society, that's true.
But there's more to that: if you save a dollar and still manage to get on with your life then it's clear that you didn't need that dollar in the first place. Spending it right here right now would be a waste of it.
So instead you put your dollar in a bank, and bank lends it to someone who needs it. Preferably to some business that is going to invest and expand. So, saving is a process of transferring money to people that can put to the best possible use.
Contrast that to what we are told by mainstream economists: they encourage mindless spending, even to the point of going in debt, which means that your dollars would be wasted on overpriced things that you don't really need, and might even be bad for you (like when you buy cigarettes or alcohol, or shiny new smart phone). That's a recipe for disaster: inflation, market bubbles and crises will follow.
Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#14"Chances are that will be Ayn Rand and her extreme form of capitalism, which she called objectivism." Rand's views on capitalism are only a small part of her philosophy and not at all the most interesting or compelling by far. By reducing objectivism to a form of capitalism, the author and most contemporary Rand proponents show they know little to nothing about objectivism and understand little to nothing of Rand's p…
Rand failed by her own metrics: a little old lady requiring social help... Not a philosopher, or much of a novelist.
Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this is total bs. The economy needs the money to circulate, then everybody gets richer. Money has no value but as a share of the economies' production. When money flows, production goes up. The problem is when some people who are so rich that they can barely spend a few per cents of their income. Instead of getting spent, the money gets invested. But that's not really circulation, it's the opposite: Stuck money…
Money not spent/deferred means that the person producing basically volunteered their time. Money invested is spent - it's spent by people who it's given to. There is no such thing as "stuck" money.
depends on how that money is "produced".
Is it obtained by labor or by extracting rent.
When labor is added (get paid for building a house) real value is generated. In comparison having a piece of land go up in price, no real value is created for society.
In a society with 100 dollars, having zero velocity of money means trade using money is stopped. That's "stuck".
Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money not spent/deferred means that the person producing basically volunteered their time. Money invested is spent - it's spent by people who it's given to. There is no such thing as "stuck" money.
depends on how that money is "produced". Is it obtained by labor or by extracting rent. When labor is added (get paid for building a house) real value is generated. In comparison having a piece of land go up in price, no real value is created for society. In a society with 100 dollars, having zero velocity of money means trade using money is stopped. That's "stuck". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
The purpose of money isnt' wholly to create value for society; its also to serve as a medium with which to measure the allocation of scarce resources.
If land prices go up, the resources associated with them then get allocated to those who find the greatest utility, and the money goes to other who will then spend it on other things.
If you force prices to stay static, you just get the Bay Area where whoever plopped themselves on the land first gets to keep it, like some kind of landed aristocracy.
Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#17I have a lot of respect for Georgists and geolibertarians, unlike the much more common Randroids and propertarians (which one geolibertarian author quite rightly calls "royal libertarians" both because of where their wealth came from and the role they aspire to). The central Georgist/geolib idea of a land value tax has been tried quite a few times, generally with quite positive economic effects even before factoring in the moral effect of taxing rents instead of productive enterprise. The author's right that these ideas deserve more exposure than the melange of crappy fiction and crappier ideology that is Ayn Rand.
Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
depends on how that money is "produced". Is it obtained by labor or by extracting rent. When labor is added (get paid for building a house) real value is generated. In comparison having a piece of land go up in price, no real value is created for society. In a society with 100 dollars, having zero velocity of money means trade using money is stopped. That's "stuck". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
The purpose of money isnt' wholly to create value for society; its also to serve as a medium with which to measure the allocation of scarce resources. If land prices go up, the resources associated with them then get allocated to those who find the greatest utility, and the money goes to other who will then spend it on other things. If you force prices to stay static, you just get the Bay Area where whoever plopped t…
tokyo is ahead of bay area in the process. Prices go up but then will go down as people decide its not worth it, and other places become "cooler".
Also tech (autonomous cars, hyperloop, flying cars , VR/AR ) or econ (UBI) disruption is coming in the next decade or two...
Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#19The author of the piece, Michael Kinsley, is a flat out genius. That is and has been apparent going back to his both incisive and funny comments on Crossfire.
I started reading the article and was blown away within the first paragraph by the quality of the writing and I scrolled up to see the author and.... Michael Kinsley.
Re: The Obscure Economist Silicon Valley Billionaires Should Dump Ayn Rand For
#20on the other hand, nobody built a world-changing global repository of information based on Henry George's principles, so as much I dislike her, empirically speaking Ayn Rand has that going for her.
Ayn Rand's principles invented the internet? Someone should write the history of how all those government-funded research institutes weren't really involved.