Hacker News Reader

Comment by pitched | Hacker News Reader

It’s a very addictive, ego-boosting way of thinking but is very broken. It’s like this fantasy that you could be _the one_ like Neo from the Matrix. Except that doesn’t work in real life because everyone has the same fantasy of being _the one_.

Ursula K LeGuin covered the same subject but a lot more even-handedly. The Dispossesed is a good counter to Ayn Rand.

View on HN

Funny that throughout Her books, these are the same false allegations she describes as being cast against the protagonists by the villains. Competence and having a self serving moral code are attacked and labelled as evil behavior. "__the one__" meaning a competent talented architect or steel maker (the idealized heroes) are just people unapologetically capitalizing on their skills and the whole point is that in a fair capitalist system, competence should be rewarded, there is plenty of space for many "__the ones__" to co-exist and build a thriving economy. It is exactly the moochers/looters who feel threatened by competence and feel threatened by the success of a fellow human who try and turn these into negative behaviors and describe them as "ego-boosting" and "very broken". So thinking that a person might being exceptionally talented is a bad thing? Got it. Ayn Rand is warning of the consequences of what happens when too many people believe as you do.

Maybe The Matrix wasn’t the right power fantasy to compare it to? How about the DBZ over-9000 meme instead because he does have a big group of friends that help?

The problem with power fantasies is that they don’t really show all sides of the argument. If the intentions of moochers is a social safety net and the intention of the looters is infrastructure maintenance, those aren’t villains.

I understand what you are trying to say, but I don't think it is the correct interpretation of Ayn Rand. There is no power fantasy. She is quite adamant that nobody should ever try to hold power over another individual. Again, it is the antagonists who are trying to manipulate the wills of others and hold power over other people. The group of friends helps by exchanging money for good and services. This is another theme. The protagonists ask only for fair compensation for their efforts, not favors. The antagonists try to replace this system with a group dynamic where 'who you know' and 'who can do what favor for who' replaces business. To Ayn Rand this is very unhealthy and leads to destruction. If a people have to mooch to build a social safety net, and loot to maintain infrastructure, then they are villains.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com