Yay! Nobody Cares about Tickle Me Elmo Musk

[Noodles]

I've tried to read it; honestly. But then I learned SparkNotes put out a study guide on it...

I got like, I think 2/3rds or 3/4th through it and just could not anymore.

It's soooooo bad and the sex scenes are sooooooooooo bad.

 

[Govi]

From 50 years ago, what I remember most vividly about Atlas Shrugged was the 30 odd pages of John Galt's radio/tv rant on why all the true mover-shakers had withdrawn from the world and the terms on which they would return. I skipped that part. Dagny Taggert was difficult to identify with, too; she lacked business skills that seemed necessary for running a railroad. And the attitudes that Rand imbued in working people was completely at odds with my experience of working people.

 

[Essence Lumin]

For some reason I tried to read Atlas Shrugged in the 10th grade or so. I got a chapter or two in and decided I couldn't read this.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Casey Pelous]

From 50 years ago, what I remember most vividly about Atlas Shrugged was the 30 odd pages of John Galt's radio/tv rant on why all the true mover-shakers had withdrawn from the world and the terms on which they would return. I skipped that part. Dagny Taggert was difficult to identify with, too; she lacked business skills that seemed necessary for running a railroad. And the attitudes that Rand imbued in working people was completely at odds with my experience of working people.

Setting aside all the other crackpot notions in that "book," it is almost charming that she thought a 30-page rant on radio and TV would make any difference in anything.

 

[Free]

Setting aside all the other crackpot notions in that "book," it is almost charming that she thought a 30-page rant on radio and TV would make any difference in anything.

It did in her book, and that's all that mattered to her.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I never read Atlas Shrugged (I did eventually watch the first movie), but I had to read Anthem for a class in high school and I didn't enjoy it at all. Rand's "objectivism" is largely absent or waysided in it, it's just a straightforward morality play about individualism, but it still shares some DNA with Atlas in that in order to make her point she has to build an absolute clown-world for the hero to fight against that would never evolve or function in real-life for as long as the story needs it to.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

absolute clown-world

Gestures broadly at everything

 

[Noodles]

I never read Atlas Shrugged (I did eventually watch the first movie), but I had to read Anthem for a class in high school and I didn't enjoy it at all. Rand's "objectivism" is largely absent or waysided in it, it's just a straightforward morality play about individualism, but it still shares some DNA with Atlas in that in order to make her point she has to build an absolute clown-world for the hero to fight against that would never evolve or function in real-life for as long as the story needs it to.

Ayn Rand's Objectivism works great.

In a perfect work commune environment of like 200 people, who all have things they can contribute to the whole. Like basically every Conservative and Libertarian policy, it completely fails to understand the concept of "large numbers", especially those involving population. Not everyone can invent Rearden Steel or the perfect Train System. There are BILLIONS of people in the world. There are not a billion things to create so we can all be rich "captains of industry" if only "the government would keep it's dirty hands off of everything." The VAST MAJORITY are going to be boring fucking nobodies. Rand's philosophy strongly appeals to the folks who are also completely unable to accept that "life is literally just being a nobody until you die".

That sounds negative and nihilistic, but it's a fact.

"In Theory" you could set up a few tens of millions of little communes of people and maybe they all work out in this little Collectivism bull shit world, but that's extremely inefficient and the planet would never sustain that. It's also why the whole thing is so anti-union probably, because unions are useful when you have a lot of people doing the same thing in support of the greater good/whole. Which is what the world needs to keep things sustainable.

 

[detrius]

Ayn Rand's Objectivism works great.

In a perfect work commune environment of like 200 people, who all have things they can contribute to the whole. Like basically every Conservative and Libertarian policy, it completely fails to understand the concept of "large numbers", especially those involving population. Not everyone can invent Rearden Steel or the perfect Train System. There are BILLIONS of people in the world. There are not a billion things to create so we can all be rich "captains of industry" if only "the government would keep it's dirty hands off of everything." The VAST MAJORITY are going to be boring fucking nobodies. Rand's philosophy strongly appeals to the folks who are also completely unable to accept that "life is literally just being a nobody until you die".

That sounds negative and nihilistic, but it's a fact.

"In Theory" you could set up a few tens of millions of little communes of people and maybe they all work out in this little Collectivism bull shit world, but that's extremely inefficient and the planet would never sustain that. It's also why the whole thing is so anti-union probably, because unions are useful when you have a lot of people doing the same thing in support of the greater good/whole. Which is what the world needs to keep things sustainable.

First of all, you don't really need some sort of philosophy to run a small society like that. Humans have been living in tribal societies for millennia without a need to develop the kind of weird, capitalism-centric, anti-social rituals and restrictions Ayn Rand was obsessed with.

Secondly, Objectivism has a horrible track record even at that scale. There have been attempts to create communities like the one described in the book, they all ended in failure and lawsuits - most notably "Galt's Gulch" in Chile.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Second, Objectivism has a horrible track record even at that scale. There have been attempts to create communities like the one described in the book, they all ended in failure and lawsuits - most notably "Galt's Gulch" in Chile.

The libertarian town in New Hampshire where a lady insisted on feeding bears. And if those bears started after her neighbours for food, not her problem.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Ayn Rand's Objectivism works great.

In a perfect work commune environment of like 200 people, who all have things they can contribute to the whole. Like basically every Conservative and Libertarian policy, it completely fails to understand the concept of "large numbers", especially those involving population. Not everyone can invent Rearden Steel or the perfect Train System. There are BILLIONS of people in the world. There are not a billion things to create so we can all be rich "captains of industry" if only "the government would keep it's dirty hands off of everything." The VAST MAJORITY are going to be boring fucking nobodies. Rand's philosophy strongly appeals to the folks who are also completely unable to accept that "life is literally just being a nobody until you die".

That sounds negative and nihilistic, but it's a fact.

"In Theory" you could set up a few tens of millions of little communes of people and maybe they all work out in this little Collectivism bull shit world, but that's extremely inefficient and the planet would never sustain that. It's also why the whole thing is so anti-union probably, because unions are useful when you have a lot of people doing the same thing in support of the greater good/whole. Which is what the world needs to keep things sustainable.

It even fails at its most fundamental premise; that there is such a thing as an "individual."

I haven't seen one yet -- all the humans I see (and many other species) seem to exist in an interdependent relationship with all the other humans and the physical environment.

 

[detrius]

The libertarian town in New Hampshire where a lady insisted on feeding bears. And if those bears started after her neighbours for food, not her problem.

And the guy who started that town in Chile is currently in prison for shooting at protesters.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/former-u-citizen-sentenced-chile-225727149.html

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Gestures broadly at everything

The real world sucks, but it sucks in a believable way. Unpredictable things happen, but people, nations, and companies react to them in mostly predictable or at least understandable ways. Many people and organizations have bad worldviews and priorities, but as long as you know what those are their motivations and actions make sense.

In Ayn Rand's world the villain is always an uber-powerful, unrealistically disentangled government that does things that make no sense whatsoever - like, in Atlas Shrugged, the government allows mega-corporations to exist, but they also sometimes selectively nationalize individual projects and assets on a whim without just taking over the corporation itself. These mega-corporations have no lobbying power or political influence whatsoever, the government headhunts corpos by promising them government jobs. Rand intends it to be social commentary but it doesn't work because the world she builds is Opposite World.

 

[Casey Pelous]

... Rand intends it to be social commentary but it doesn't work because the world she builds is Opposite World.

It's also hampered by incredibly clunky prose that makes Chinese furniture assembly instructions look like William Faulkner wrote them.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

It's also hampered by incredibly clunky prose that makes Chinese furniture assembly instructions look like William Faulkner wrote them.

A Farewell to Hemnes: Ernest Hemingway Assembles an IKEA Daybed Frame with Three Drawers

July 21 2021 July 21 2022 7/21/23 7/21/24

www.mcsweeneys.net

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I skimmed for awhile and did not find a reply that appears to understand the letter.

 

[detrius]

It's also hampered by incredibly clunky prose that makes Chinese furniture assembly instructions look like William Faulkner wrote them.

This is how the main character of the book, Dagny Taggart, is introduced:

Her leg, sculptured by the tight sheen of the stocking, its long line running straight, over an arched instep, to the tip of a foot in a high-heeled pump, had a feminine elegance that seemed out of place in the dusty train car and oddly incongruous with the rest of her. She wore a battered camel's hair coat that had been expensive, wrapped shapelessly about her slender, nervous body. The coat collar was raised to the slanting brim of her hat. A sweep of brown hair fell back, almost touching the line of her shoulders. Her face was made of angular planes, the shape of her mouth clear-cut, a sensual mouth held closed with inflexible precision. She kept her hands in the coat pockets, her posture taut, as if she resented immobility, and unfeminine, as if she were unconscious of her own body and that it was a woman's body.

I can't read this shit without starting to giggle.


Ayn Rand actually wrote this, and was serious about it. And people believe she was a profound thinker.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I skimmed for awhile and did not find a reply that appears to understand the letter.

It's rather like the replies to announcements from our Crown Prosecution Service about prosecutions for using social media to incite racial hatred, which are all about the First Amendment.

I think a lot of Elmer's followers are unaware of Twitter as anything other than a US platform, subject to laws other than those of the US, and I'm not sure he is, either.

I rather hope that he continues down this path, finds his company subject to massive fines in the EU and the UK sometime next year, and retaliates by blocking Europe from Twitter altogether, thus precipitating a massive move to Threads and Bluesky by European governments and news organisations, which will mean serious US news organisations also increase their presence there, thus adding to their value for anyone looking for an alternative to Musk's platform.