Why does everyone hate Ayn Rand?

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Banned deucer.
I just finished Atlas Shrugged and thought it was a great book. The plot's a little dull at times and Rand's style can get tiresome, but it comes together and (contrary to popular belief) is ideologically sound. I've heard people criticize the book to no end, and I see nothing but hate for Ayn Rand and Objectivism in general on the internet. Why? Most justifications I see just boil down to "hurr durr she's a selfish, capitalist bitch" but I've always attributed that to the fact that the internet (reddit) is full up to the neck with college-aged libtards who haven't read anything other than Marx.

I'm wary of any form of collectivism so the entire theme of the individual > state resonated pretty well with me. Also, most criticisms of Rand's works come from a really immature neo-socialist standpoint; the kind often seen in proponents of the Occupy movement (think the ideology of your everyday white Protestant "Marx-and-Hegel" libarts major, or "everyone is equal" social justice bloggers). To be honest, it seems that a lot of the Ayn Rand hate is just a catchy, populist meme not unlike the KONY 2012 movement or MLP: FiM.

Discuss
 
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Her books read like an essay that's also trying to also contain an incredibly dull narrative, and her philosophy was at absolute best a poor version of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" with not even half of the intelligence that Smith had to support his ideas.
 
For one thing, reddit and 4chan seem to contradict your assertions about the internet being a bunch of liberals, see the love for Ron Paul on reddit and the general sheltered white male politics of 4chan, the internet is often libertarian, as is Ayn Rand, so the logic of stereotypes used in the OP yields a contradiction, as the logic of stereotypes is want to do.

Do you think that what is right or good is necessarily same as what you want, i.e, the same as your self-interest?

If you don't think morality and individual self-interest are equivalent, then you do not agree in principle with Ayn Rand.

The interesting thing about Rand, is that she collapses morality and capitalism into identical systems, capitalism is the only morally valid system if you start from Rand's premise that self-interest is the ultimate good. (The result is interesting because normally the field of economics and the field of ethics are regarded as separate, i.e, economics is thought to have its own math and logic separate from the logic of ethics, notice how many political denominations do not seem to mind that capitalist forces often cause events that we find morally reprehensible or, if not morally reprehensible, at the very least negligent and irresponsible to an unconscionable degree. So, while normatively economics is regarded as a discipline removed from ethical consideration, for Rand, capitalism and therefore economics, is unified with morality, and yet it does not change when unified with Rand's morality because Rand's morality is self-interest which is capitalism.)

also 'contrary to popular belief x is ideologically sound' is either a meaningless statement (an opinion) or a contradiction, for whatever definition of 'ideologically' you intend, unless you mean something very strange by 'popular belief'. Perhaps you mean Atlas Shrugged is consistent with Ayn Rand's philosophy, which is simply so obvious it doesn't need to be said.

tbf, Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology are on the surface not much different than that of British Empiricism, but the political and ethical claims Rand and her proteges have defended (such as permitting discrimination against homosexuals, discrimination against non-western knowledge formations, permitting colonialism, etc) have caused Objectivist thinking to be viewed as un-academic and more of a ideological movement (such as the temperance movement in the late modern period) rather than an intellectual movement.
 
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There isn't an internet demographic at all.
Personally, I don't see a whole lot wrong with what she has to say, but it sure is fun to hate the same thing that other people hate.
 
It's because her ideas are very elitist and extreme and there's people that actually buy into those ideas so she can't fade into obscurity or anything.

Also yeah Myzoza is right, you're more likely to see people sympathize with Ayn Rand on the internet than anywhere else except maybe a college dorm of armchair philosophers.
 
While I prefer to think that people hate her due to her idolisation of a child kidnapper/murderer and sociopath, I realise it probably has more to do with what Myzozoa said. "What is good for me is right," indeed. Also yeah, I've always associated reddit with more libertarian beliefs, albeit not necessarily objectivist ones. Obviously subreddits have their own separate cultures, though. It's easy to see why social justice types rail on her as well, considering her beliefs that ideal women are subservient to men (can't remember whether that's meant as sexual subservience or general subservience, though), that ideal men have to be dominant, her stupid views on homosexuality, etc.
 
myzozoa said most of what needs to be said already, but i'd also like to point out that even while everyone was saying after they read her books that she was a crazy bitch, she went and did a bunch of interviews that confirmed to the general public she was a crazy bitch. if you're a fan of extremist my-way-or-the-highway ideology, then her words are gonna resonate with you, but to 99% of people (who have all been raised to think that looking out for number one is selfish, greedy, and morally wrong) she sounds nuts. so myz is right, it's largely because of her ideology, but even if you're an uneducated layman who has never studied rand before, two minutes watching that interview and you'll start to dislike her. first impressions count.
 
Lavos Spawn said:
but to 99% of people (who have all been raised to think that looking out for number one is selfish, greedy, and morally wrong) she sounds nuts.
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There's a real bloody big difference between "looking out for number one" and "looking out for number one and f*ck everyone else". Rand, for those confused, definitely was supporting the second option.
 
Trax said:
There's a real bloody big difference between "looking out for number one" and "looking out for number one and f*ck everyone else". Rand, for those confused, definitely was supporting the second option.
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yeah apologies for being unclear, i wasn't trying to imply that
 
I wouldn't say I hate her, really...I'm not the biggest fan of her hyperconservative ideology but I can respect the way she stuck to her philosophy. Same reason I respect Ron Paul, even though I disagree with him.
 
To be honest, the first time i heard of Ayn Rand was a few days ago, when I was searching up serial commas on Wikipedia. I have been enlightened.
 
If nothing else, Rand and many of her followers were/are ginormous hypocrites - "markets dictate morality, except when they dictate that I lose."; "Relying on other people's charity is the ultimate moral failing, and providing such charity is enabling them - but please donate money to our Kickstarter to make a sequel to the Ayn Rand movie, which the market dictated failed."

For the most part, its espousers use the philosophy as a justification for their 15-year-old-like self-obsession rather than an actual philosophically consistent framework.

EDIT: As a sidenote, I have never understood "capitalism" as a prescriptive philosophy. Capitalism is surely a descriptive mechanism that explains how markets find the equilibrium price given a set of input variables. I don't know where the morality arises out of that.
 
relevant, as it always is. Mouseover text basically explains how i feel about ayn rand

For one thing, reddit and 4chan seem to contradict your assertions about the internet being a bunch of liberals, see the love for Ron Paul on reddit and the general sheltered white male politics of 4chan, the internet is often libertarian, as is Ayn Rand, so the logic of stereotypes used in the OP yields a contradiction, as the logic of stereotypes is want to do.
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Are you kidding? OP is pretty much correct in his characterization of the internet as overflowing with neo-socialists. Just because many of them often lean libertarian in terms of some social issues like pot and internet censorship doesn't mean that they don't fervently support a welfare state and a government-imposed set of morals—which is the antithesis of Ayn Rand's philosophy. (also supporting pot legalization and opposing internet censorship doesn't prove anything except that nobody is giving you big $$$ to sell out your beliefs and constituents but i digress).
 
what part of 'the logic of stereotypes' doesn't make sense to you Pwnemon. Obviously the internet is overflowing with neo-socialists in the same sense that america is overflowing with democrats and republicans, there are neo-socialists on the internet, a lot of them? relative to other political orientations I would be prepared to wager that statistically they make up a far lower portion than 'most of the internet' (<50% is highly unlikely, but id be shocked if it was even as high as 1/10 that self-identify as neo-socialists). Also neo-socialist is some unexplained term here: if you ask me what it means my answer wont be the same as what you intended. I don't understand why it was introduced without some context.

I referenced 4chan and reddit as hubs where libertarians are represented more than they are in journalisticly-balanced content hubs, and plenty of this content is accepted as relevant because of libertarian ideals held by some users, i.e smaller government. Your assertion that most of this libertarianism is confined to areas of social issues seems to be contradicted by the support for libertarian candidates a la ron paul, who make it very clear how they stand on economic issues even more so than social issues. Some strains of libertarians like to gloss over social issues by claiming that they are not the jurisdiction of the state, and this is just so in ron paul's case, he invokes this type of thinking in his stance on gay marriage. I think that reddit at least has a slight pro-market slant and I don't think it's the only part of the internet that has this.

Classic libertarianism is hellllla popular and useful for framing the vast majority of political issues and its premises are agreed on by all 4 of the largest political parties in america (tho lol gov. shutdown shows what this is worth), it permeates western political thought, etc. It's not that surprising that people who discuss politics on the internet have a higher proportion of classic libertarians than the population as a whole as it is the most fundamental of the types of liberalism and most political orientations are liberally based. Where does the average american person, who hasn't studied politics at a university level (hey this could be you), learn about the flaws in liberalism when they don't even get taught liberalism in grade school? and yet the american political stage assumes liberal premises at the same time as calling someone a 'liberal' is an insult...

if you want to call me out on using stereotypes, just be aware that I, unlike some unscrupulous individuals, will always let you know exactly what im doing, as you can see i admit that logic was based on stereotypes immediately after i invoke it in my argument (when someone invokes it before i do, it is no trouble appropriate it). i pre-empt a shit ton, so you need to call me out on a point that i haven't already conceded.
 
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The thing about logic and stereotypes is that they have at best a tenuous relationship.

Myzoza: what you're calling Classic libertarianism sounds a hell of a lot more like Classical liberalism to me -- what's typically called Liberalism today is strongly influenced by the ideas of social democracy.

It's fair to say that the average person on the internet (beyond Facebook at least) is far less conservative than the average American, partly because older people (who are more conservative as a rule) don't use the internet (and when they do, don't often use it in the same way), and partly because residents of most other developed countries are far less conservative than Americans.
 
Trax i am guilty of conflating the terms, but I do assert that classical liberalism is the motivator for libertarianism as a political position. so if i wasn't clear, I assert that libertarianism is the political position resulting from the belief that 'classical liberalism is a sound philosophy, both its premises and conclusions are true, and its conclusion follows from its premises.' And the premises (not necessarily the conclusions) of classical liberalism are accepted by all major political parties in the US, and most of the rest of the world as well, they form the basis of our understanding of politics, as classical liberalism asserts the existence of rights, and pretty much everyone in the mainstream accepts that rights are a good way of framing political issues (as evidence: all non-academic discussion of politics in the usa). But people don't realize that politics hasn't always been about the rights of the individual, as it is today.


apparently i was also confusing when i discussed the logic of stereotypes, though I maintain that some of it has been misread, perhaps intentionally:

the op held up some stereotypes and used them to justify some belief. I merely showed that the logic of stereotypes can always be used to produce a contradiction, which is why it is useless. When someone props their argument up with appeals to stereotypes, it seems perfectly natural to me that I pervert the logic for a contradiction, in order to fully reveal the absurdity. I do not actually believe any of the claims I supported using stereotypes, i was merely showing how irrational such arguments are.
this is why i was annoyed when pwnemon tried to assert some nonsense about neo-socialists on the internet, idgaf about who is on the internet nor claim to have any authoritative knowledge about the political demographics. I do know that stereotypes aren't valid justifications for anything, and that is what i attempt to show.
 
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Myzozoa said:
what part of 'the logic of stereotypes' doesn't make sense to you Pwnemon. Obviously the internet is overflowing with neo-socialists in the same sense that america is overflowing with democrats and republicans, there are neo-socialists on the internet, a lot of them? relative to other political orientations I would be prepared to wager that statistically they make up a far lower portion than 'most of the internet' (<50% is highly unlikely, but id be shocked if it was even as high as 1/10 that self-identify as neo-socialists). Also neo-socialist is some unexplained term here: if you ask me what it means my answer wont be the same as what you intended. I don't understand why it was introduced without some context.
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Yes, a lot of people give lip-service to the OWS movement on the internet.
Maybe they'd do it more if their lips weren't usually firmly locked around the shaft of the president who gets a vast majority of his campaign contributions from the very corporatist structure he helps support that the ows movement is protesting.
Perhaps it's just my cynicism but I don't see the democratic party making a move away from its corporatist trends, and most people are perfectly complacent with the current administration. At the same time, the government cracks down on many freedoms granted in the Bill of Rights. If supporting a corporatist economic structure, larger government role in consumer "protection," and a government-imposed set of morals isn't neo-socialist, I don't know what is, so I generally classify supporters of the Obama admin as neo-socialist (whether or not they label themselves as such). I will grant you that there are far more people on the internet than in real life who are further to the left than the neo-socialists, but there are also far less who are further to the right (and thus far less who are likely to support ayn rand's philosophy); in general, i feel like it's a net gain.

can we at least agree you're far less likely to meet an ayn rand supporter on the internet than in real life?

edit: i'm not really sure what you mean by "the logic of stereotypes." However I do know that you're probably treating this more like a debate than me who is just treating it like a more casual discussion. Stereotypes may not prove shit in a political thesis, but they're (to an extent) useful in everyday life, when we can't spend hours analyzing every possible facet of the argument and dividing into the billionth subculture.

edit2: "and yet the american political stage assumes liberal premises at the same time as calling someone a 'liberal' is an insult..." <- this is the difference between the phrases "you have a heart of gold" and "you have the heart of a goldfish." don't confuse classical and modern liberalism.
 
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Pwnemon said:
Yes, a lot of people give lip-service to the OWS movement on the internet. Maybe they'd do it more if their lips weren't usually firmly locked around the shaft of the president who gets a vast majority of his campaign contributions from the very corporatist structure he helps support that the ows movement is protesting (might i note he gets far more than the 'more conservative' (bahaha) republicans, who they dislike).
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Watch out guys... I'm about to confront a conservative with math and facts:
http://cfinst.org/Press/PReleases/12-02-08/Small_Donors_in_2011_Obama_s_Were_Big_Romney_s_Not.aspx
 
srk1214 said:
Watch out guys... I'm about to confront a conservative with math and facts:
http://cfinst.org/Press/PReleases/12-02-08/Small_Donors_in_2011_Obama_s_Were_Big_Romney_s_Not.aspx
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oops, i had never heard the 2012 totals so i was going off of the 2008 totals and i figured they hadn't actually shifted that much... guess I was wrong ._.

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edit@below: if you looked closer you'd see that they are the top 20 donors to each campaign, i never claimed for them to be all the data. i figured it was a logical conclusion that the big-ass corporations would be the big-ass donors
w/e either way i did edit the point out of the original post when i first posted this response to srk so can we drop it?
 
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Pwnemon said:
Yes, a lot of people give lip-service to the OWS movement on the internet. Maybe they'd do it more if their lips weren't usually firmly locked around the shaft of the president who gets a vast majority of his campaign contributions from the very corporatist structure he helps support that the ows movement is protesting. Perhaps it's just my cynicism but I don't see the democratic party making a move away from its corporatist trends, and most people are perfectly complacent with the current administration. At the same time, the government cracks down on many freedoms granted in the Bill of Rights. If supporting a corporatist economic structure, larger government role in consumer "protection," and a government-imposed set of morals isn't neo-socialist, I don't know what is, so I generally classify supporters of the Obama admin as neo-socialist (whether or not they label themselves as such). I will grant you that there are far more people on the internet than in real life who are further to the left than the neo-socialists, but there are also far less who are further to the right (and thus far less who are likely to support ayn rand's philosophy); in general, i feel like it's a net gain.
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What is a neo-socialist? You have to understand, pwnemon, this is an extremely ambiguous term compared to 'neo-conservative.'

1. Neo-conservatives have identifiable politicians such as Newt Gingrich (not bringing him up to hate on him, but just as an example)
2. Neo-conservatism has a wikipedia page that documents the existence and history of Neo-conservatism

So you and I could talk about neo-conservatism with the expectation that we are referring to the same ideology, but I have no idea what neo-socialism is. The OWS is a politically ambiguous movement, so if you don't like OWS or w.es that isn't a good enough reason to pigeon-hole them into a 'made-up' political orientation. Also google search neo-socialism and then tell me that it doesn't normally refer to a 1930 's conservative french movement.

I will grant that most people are neo-socialists in the sense that they think it is permissible for the government to do some economic planning, but if this is what you mean, youre being misleading as this is not a position that defines an ideology, instead it is a feature of many ideologies. Basically, if youre using neo-socialists to refer keynesians this is a really bad conflation.


can we at least agree you're far less likely to meet an ayn rand supporter on the internet than in real life?
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I see no reason to assent to unfounded opinions, thats why im not a conservative...



No, I've never met an Objectivist in real life or on the internet (though I could have forgotten), I have met a (very educated and partisan, though I am just as partisan when it comes to arguing these things) conservative who invokes her thinking when defending certain political positions. As it is, I haven't been moved by any arguments itt about the location of Ayn Rand supporters, nor do I think it is useful or important compared to discussing Rand's work and its relation to classical liberalism and therefore modern libertarianism (as the term is used in american politics), as my argument is that libertarianism is the political orientation resulting from the belief that classical liberalism is sound.
 
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Part of why Obama got a lot of big contributions from corporations is because he was considered a lock to win.
 
My eyes glazed over after reading some of the replies here, so I stopped. These are my relevant thoughts:

1. Atlas Shrugged ISN'T COMPLETELY TERRIBLE (but this isn't a euphemism for "good").
2. I can definitely see it blowing the mind of an impressionable teenager, especially given the current political/social/economic environment.
3. The Fountainhead is better.

Lots of people have opinions of things that they know little about. Ayn Rand is a perfect example of this. I doubt that many of those strongly opposed to her ideas have actually read her work (or they read it with preconceptions, and merely sought to confirm existing beliefs). I mean, Atlas Shrugged is neither an easy read, nor an entertaining one, but should it engage the mind of a reader, it's one of those rare books that can be really influential. Some become blindly indoctrinated.

It so happens that ignorant people and impassioned people tend to shout the loudest. Therefore, the Ayn Rand "debate" (I use the term loosely) is characterised by shit thrown between idiots and idealists. Both sides should move on to something more worthwhile.

On a related note, did you know that Ben Bernanke has Ayn Randian roots? How people change...
 
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