Elon Musk looks increasingly like someone straight out of Ayn Rand's work. He's the present day Ellis Wyatt or Henry Rearden, tackling grand projects that others shy away from.
He deserves respect just for that — looking beyond the next quarter's bottom line. Just look at the contrast this creates with all the managers whose plans for the next quarter are "let's spend slightly more on marketing".
Elon Musk is the last big industrialist alive, after Jobs passing. If his endeavors succeed he'll be remembered alongside Edison, Franklin, Ford, Jobs etc. It's admirable.
I just don't think it has anything to do with Ayn Rand and her philosophy.
Strangely I just had a discussion about rational thinking and I kind of failed to make a point. Rational thinking is better than irrationality and crazy Bible-thumpers, but you really need to get over that. You need to see past this, you need to pass it by and leave it behind as a neat idea born out of the greatest misconception there ever has been: "I think therefore I am". The reality is - I am, therefore I can think.
> Elon Musk is the last big industrialist alive, after Jobs passing. If his endeavors succeed he'll be remembered alongside Edison, Franklin, Ford, Jobs etc. It's admirable.
I think you don't know enough about the world's industrialists. (And neither do I.) Most of them are less well known than Elon Musk. So just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist. My guess is that China has quite a few people with grand ideas and capabilities.
Industrialists in the developing world are disproportionately not those with grand ideas, but political connections and ties to resource extraction industries.
That's an unfair generalization. There are many industrialists in the developing world who started from scratch [1] and without connections, but managed to build something amazing.
Sure, it's a generalization. There are a lot of self-made entrepreneurs in the developing world. There are also a lot of tycoons getting rich in the oil and gas industries because of cozy relationships with corrupt governments.
The U.S. really was never as bad as many developing countries are today. In the age of the robber barons, the U.S. government didn't do anything to stop them, but wasn't in bed with them the same way as in China or Russia. Remember, a huge portion of China's businesses are still state-owned, and many of the rest have very incestuous ties with the government. Think of the defense sector in the U.S., except far less transparent, far more corrupt, and far more extensive.
well, Ayn Rand modulo all the public money he uses in his ventures (state environmental credits for Tesla, contracts with NASA ... ie. taxpayers money, research grants, etc, etc). Then again Ayn Rand did suck state bottle with medicaire and social security. I'm not saying the projects are not ambitious and amazing. But they would not grow so quickly without the State.
Why shouldn't Ayn Rand take medicare and social security? She paid for those services.
Ayn Rand said that of all the things public funds were ever spent on (outside of judicial and national defense), NASA was the most worthy. She wrote admiringly about NASA, revealing a deep respect for its technology, scientific pursuit, and its Apollo launches. They even specifically invited her to an Apollo launch.
I don't think someone that hated NASA - or supposedly would dislike a private SpaceX - would write: "Apollo 11: A Symbol of Man's Greatness." Clearly since Ayn liked NASA, she would love SpaceX as a step in the right direction over public space exploration.
> Why shouldn't Ayn Rand take medicare and social security?
Because she was against it?
Those things are based in principles. In principle I have the right to state funds for all of my children. Because I am against such subsidies I have decided not to request them, even though the state continues to insist that I should and that it is my right. And even though I pay for other people exercising this right.
For Ayn Rand to rail a life long in many different pamphlets against state run entities only to turn around and to use them when times were a bit tougher seems hypocritical to me.
I'm sure she was also against the government taking her money to fund those programs in the first place, but she didn't have a choice. Why does trying to recover some of that money make her a hypocrite?
Most people pay more into insurance programs than they get out. That's how all forms of insurance works. Sheesh.
Ayn Rand ended up taking government benefits because she had to, not because she was trying to get back what she paid in. That's the key part.
Even if she could afford to take care of herself and was just trying to game the system to get her money back, that's morally pretty suspect, too. Imagine trying to mount the same argument about someone who deliberately crashed their car to "recover some of that money" they had to pay in insurance premiums.
Rand spent her whole life decrying people who are dependent on government assistance as looters and parasites, and then she spent the last few years of her life completely dependent on government assistance without it changing her stated beliefs. If you don't see the hypocrisy there, you're trying awfully hard not to.
She is an illustration that you can lead a successful, productive, non-moochery life and still end up needing government assistance at some point.
Strange as it seems that I would defend Ayn Rand, presumably if she hadn't been forced to pay taxes she would have been contributing to some other form of health insurance that would have taken care of her when needed.
Actually Rand probably paid very little into Medicare which was started in 1965 when Rand was already 60 years old. She probably took out many, many times what little she put in.
Yeah, because all the taxes she paid during some of the highest progressive income tax levels in our history were completely separate from the "lock box" where they kept Medicare money.
Considering there was no lock box of money (we ran a deficit the vast majority of the time she was paying taxes - a world war and a depression will do that), yes... money she paid in income tax before medicare was completely separate from the money used to pay for medicare.
She didn't buy her own insurance. She got sick and in order to avoid bankruptcy and continue living, she got on medicare just like all the "takers" she so famously railed against.
She certainly didn't pay her fair share for the insurance. Heck we don't even know if she paid any taxes during that 5 year period which was after she stopped writing and Objectivism had ebbed quite a bit.
(a) They were financially incentivized to repay early.
(b) They got the sweetheart-deal to end all sweetheart-deals: a gigantic cash infusion structured as a loan with a market-beating interest rate, rather than as equity which would have entitled the government to a share of the upside.
Isn't that a standard deal as far as government loans go? It's nothing compared to the auto industry bailouts, where even the equity taken turned up a loss.
Interesting. So if Tesla did well, they would be able to repay the loans and keep the (more valuable) equity. If they failed, the DOE would have some worthless stock...
Still, compared to the other similar loans offered by the US government, I have to judge the Tesla loans as a success.
They are successful in a sort of spot measurement sort of way. Most of us are happy to see what's become of Tesla. The problem with Tesla as a model for government intervention is that, if the government continued to involve itself in industry this way, it would inevitably lose money for the taxpayers. VCs mentally write off the majority of their portfolio and make their profits on the 1-2 smashing successes, which works because VCs purchase a large share of the upside of the whole portfolio. That model would not work at all if the best the VC got from those 1-2 successes was interest payments.
The missing part of the equation is successful businesses generate taxes, failing ones don't. So, as Tesla grows, it pays more taxes. That's how the government will collect the upside. If Tesla doesn't do as well, the government will also collect the (deferred) upside through stocks. The only way the government can lose is if Tesla goes bankrupt. That way the government can make their profits on all the businesses that don't fail, rather than just 1-2 smashing successes.
There's also the taxes the government collects through suppliers to Tesla, as well as sales taxes generated when consumers purchase electric vehicles, etc, taxes from capital gains and dividends of tesla stock, taxes from salary taxes.
I'm simplifying here because I haven't talked about the opportunity cost of the taxes from a petrol car the consumer didn't buy or the other job employees could have held. In general, however, the government will profit as long as value of taxes from economic growth and other benefits exceed the cost of the loan. And remember, for the government, the cost of the loan isn't for taxpayers to bear, but for all holders of US dollars, which include foreign nations and other non-taxpayers, through temporary inflation; Since the government can always print money to lend, and destroy money when the money is repaid, unless the business fails, in which case every US dollar holding person suffers.
Overdoing it, however, will mean displacing existing investors who are arguably better posed to select winners and negatively affect the economy. What I am saying is some level of government intervention may actually be profitable for taxpayers, even if the investment structure doesn't appear so on the surface.
It's like the "Why do governments invest in loss-making airlines?" The answer of course is to bring more tourists to their country by undercharging plane tickets.
Either I don't understand your comment, or you did not understand mine. I used examples of (fictional) characters portraying impressive industrialists/entrepreneurs. I am not sure why you would call these characters 'kooks'.
Pick another example if you don't like mine — my point does not depend on this particular choice.
I want to archive your comment and bring it up again next time there's a discussion of Rand on HN. Musk is her idea of a businessman-hero (yes, government loans notwithstanding... he doesn't have the luxury of playing in a free market to begin with, energy is already highly regulated and subsidized), not the current crop of Wall Street bankers.
Actually, I didn't intend to discuss Rand. I just wanted to use an example of some characters that she created. I'm surprised people get immediately worked up once Ayn Rand gets mentioned.
A lot of people who read and talk about her works turn in to (or reveal themselves as) babbling idiots, so it's easy to mistakenly associate the babbling idiocy with her. From what I've read, she was much more pragmatic than the angry anti-government types who glom on to objectivism.
Love Rand or hate her, she was one of the few authors that glorified successful people instead of vilifying them. Objectivist principles may not be perfect, but they are a far healthier base for society than "you didn't build that".
Simplistic moralizing is problematic whether it's pro/anti government, corporation, or anything else. I don't know if Ayn Rand's writing is like that since I can't stay awake through all the exposition, but it seems like a lot of simple-minded people love her books.
The "you didn't build it" thing kind of makes my point for me, but I don't want to just call you an idiot and move on since I might be misunderstanding your intent. The speaker had a long, well-presented message with that one line that became a slogan for the more idiotic of anti-government talking heads and their followers, and it's a gross mis-representation of the truth to present it without context [1]:
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn't – look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)"
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."
"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires."
You are of course free to disagree, but at least show the basic respect of not misrepresenting the statement or the people who agree with the overall message. Yes, it sounds a lot like he meant it as he worded it in the heat of the moment--by many accounts, he often goes off-script--but you can't possibly believe he meant it the way it's been taken given the speech that surrounded it.
I think the problem is that most people at least have a reasonably clear idea on what colonising Mars would look like. I doubt that there's two people on Earth who agree on exactly what a todo app should do.
