Why is Atlas Shrugged selling well again?

I don't know for sure, because I have no real data. But that doesn't stop lots of people from speculating.

Take Reason senior editor Brian Doherty in Why Ayn Rand is Hot Again :

"Readers and pundits alike look at America and see a world scarily reminiscent of Rand's government-choked dystopia in Atlas. It's a world with a struggling economy where political pull matters more than success in the free market, where the government blithely takes over huge transportation industries."

His claim about readers and pundits might be absolutely true. But somehow he doesn't point out that the readers and pundits he's discussing are idiots. Because the real world is NOT like the conspiracy plot of Atlas Shrugged. If government "looters" WANTED to take over transportation industries, it would take over the most profitable ones. Not the losers. Likewise the banking industry. Did government take over the profitable rail freight industry? No. It took over the unprofitable passenger rail industry. Did government take over the profitable foreign-owned auto industry? No, it took over our failing domestic auto industry.

The right-wing echo chamber is full of stupid assertions that the economy is behaving as in Atlas Shrugged. They're patently false, but ought to pump the sales up as a side effect.

Another factor that would push up sales of AS are the Twin Biographies of a Singular Woman, Ayn Rand. I don't think the publicity of these two biographies is nearly as effective as the right-wing echo chamber, because the media are saturated with the latter.

A third possibility is that sales to Asia have increased. With around 3 billion people in India, China, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, one thousandth of a percent would be 30,000 sales.

Of course, book sales are a bad measure of how many readers a book actually has. Atlas Shrugged is such a miserable read that I suspect most people don't finish more than a small fraction of it.

The libertarian movement crested around 10 years ago, and has been conspicuously declining ever since (judging from the collapse of the US libertarian party.) Its strongest economic claims have been usurped by neoliberal corporatists who want economic liberty for corporations, and the hell with real people. They're already very powerful (plutocrats have always been powerful), and Rand is just more grist for their continuous propaganda efforts. A bump in the sales of AS is nothing I worry about: all it signals is that AS is a talking point for this month.

The Bitch is Back

GQ magazine has a reasonable article about Rand believers titled: The Bitch is Back.

There is no denying the effect of Rand's writing on teenagers. It's characteristic of propaganda aimed at teenagers. If they only believe in these true principles, they will find their triumphant place in life leaving their worthless competitors in despair! How exhilarating! Thus the emotional hook which fosters belief resistant to criticism, logic, and reality.

This sort of propaganda works on teenagers and other ignorants because they have not yet been vaccinated with enough worldly cynicism, let alone been exposed to more sensible alternatives and counter-arguments.

Even if you are not ignorant, it is difficult to answer Randian "when did you stop beating your wife" assertions that you must believe or you are a looter. The perverse framing is pervasive in Rand's books.

Reason Magazine has a hard on for tobacco

A reader emailed me this list of 4 recent articles from Reason Magazine. They illustrate a consistent opposition to government efforts to reduce smoking. We'd expect that sort of corruption from organizations that receive (or have received) large amounts of funding from tobacco companies.

He writes:

Apparently reason mag. has a serious hard on for second hand smoke. You know how cigarettes have a filter to take a bunch of gunk out of the smoke you breathe, apparently being on the other end breathing unfiltered smoke is less harmful. In fact, they argue that smoking bans increase heart attacks, no joke.
http://reason.com/blog/2008/08/05/smoking-ban-increases-heart-at

"has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and increases risk for heart disease and lung cancer.", they challenge this, well they really don't, but they really do :)
http://reason.com/archives/2006/07/05/a-pack-of-lies

This article seems to be of a type that helps carefully brand anyone who opposes smoking into emotionally driven idiots like environmentalist or liberals, great ad hominem while accusing the opposition of ad hominems. Apparently questioning smoking and cancer might cause the public to brand you something they don't like.
http://reason.com/blog/2009/02/13/if-you-question-the-deadliness

2) The science is irrelevant to the policy question of whether the government should dictate smoking rules on private property.
Classic your only freedom that is to buy argument. Property worship. If your only freedom is to buy or not, do you really have any freedom?
http://reason.com/blog/2006/06/28/no-safe-level-of-secondhand-sm

Apparently flavored cigarettes don't cause teens to start smoking, "duh!".
http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/28/sweet-lies-about-kids-and-smok

The Ostrom Nobel and organ donation

I was delighted to see Ostrom win a Nobel. I knew of her work from my previous researches into the nature of rights, when I found her descriptions of the rights bundles associated with common resources (Schlager and Ostrom, 1992).

Reviewing the various summaries of her work, I'm delighted that she's finding good support for non-market solutions. That should stick nicely in the craw of many market-uber-alles libertarians and neoliberals.

Now, some libertarians may claim that the solutions she documents and researches are not government solutions: and indeed they are not. However, they rely upon government supported special privilege to coerce rule-following behavior in ways libertarians would not consider freedom. In the frequent example of the alpine pastures, there is an enforced rule that you may not pasture more animals in the summer than you can maintain over the winter. Such coercion (I'm using the libertarian sense) is unjustifiable for libertarians, since there is either no ownership or communal ownership of the commons. Unless a commune is granted governance powers, it has no legitimate power to direct any behavior than any partner in a partnership does, nor even the power to exclude endless newcomers.

I also wondered if organ donation, which is strongly regulated and prohibited from markets, might benefit from this alternative approach. So I searched in google, and lo and behold:

"The Puzzle of Private Rulemaking: Expertise, Flexibility, and Blame Avoidance in Regulation." By David L. Weimer, 2005.
"My approach to the analysis of private regulation as an institutional form, although much
less ambitious, follows in the spirit of Elinor Ostrom’s study of self-governing common property
regimes."

Libertarians (and others) proposing marketization of transplant organs are opposed to Ostrom's sort of system in this case.

Objectivist Party

I guess I'm not up to date: I'm a year late in noticing the Objectivist Party.

It was bound to happen: the phenomenal success of the Libertarian Party HAD to spawn even more splinter parties. :-) Yet more evidence that getting libertarians to agree or cooperate is like herding cats.

See also: The Objectivist Party vs "Toxic Randroid Cultists".

Drug abuse.

Here's an idea that is not statistically valid, but may be a good indicator anyhow.

Think about how many of your relatives, friends and acquaintances have died from illegal drug overdoses or side effects. And how many have had serious addictions to illegal drugs.

Then think about how many rich public figures you can name who have died from illegal drug overdoses or side effects. And how many have had serious addictions to illegal drugs.

In the latter group, I can name at least 20 or thirty without trying hard.

Libertarians want to make it legal and affordable for everybody to enjoy addiction and death from overdoses. Free from oversight by government, doctors and pharmacists. Free from the expenses of black markets and dubious private doctors.

You too can have a pathetic side like Michael Jackson, River Phoenix, Janis Joplin, Rush Limbaugh, etc.

Jane Galt's Got a Gun

Over at Cogitamus, the recent post Jane Galt's Got a Gun has two excellent observations.

First, on carrying guns to town hall meetings:
The guns that people bring to these events are designed to kill people -- that is their sole purpose. When I strap one on and wear it to an event I am saying to my fellow citizens "if you fuck with me, I am willing to kill you." The gun is not designed to stimulate debate, it is designed to end it. It is not a symbol of civil liberty, it is an instrument of solipsistic incivility saying rather clearly that I intend to have the last word[...]

Second, echoing my dislike of the corporate propaganda of NPR's Marketplace program:
Maybe NPR should consider a show called "Workplace" which would focus on the 90% of Americans who really don't give a fuck about the "numbers."

Progressivism explained.

Tyler Cowen and Arnold Kling attempt comically inept descriptions of progressivism through libertarian blinkers. But worse, neither of them see the big picture.

I'll take a stab at describing progressivism.

Progressivism is a political philosophy that takes the "pursuit of happiness" seriously. Pursuit of happiness in a more Aristotelian sense: human flourishing. Not beer parties. Flourishing means being able to become what you want and do what you want. Progressives want more human flourishing. In this sense, early liberals were progressives and most modern liberals are progressives. And not just flourishing for elites, but for everybody at every age.

Progressives see many obstacles to human flourishing: poverty, disease, tyranny, corruption, monopolists, bigotry, ignorance, traditions, pollution, crime, war, etc.

Progressives believe that humans can flourish better if these obstacles are removed or circumvented, and that society can find solutions. This improvement is the progress in progressive.

Some of the solutions to problems of human flourishing include markets, regulations, unions, corporations, education, laws, publicity, privatization, takings, antitrust, buyouts, public works, infrastructure, balancing powers, social provision, etc. Progressives are pragmatic: they are not committed to one set of solutions (such as traditional solutions or markets): they will look at the history of experimentation with these solutions accross the planet and select what they think will work best in their situation, even if it is untried. In this sense, the founders of the US and authors of its Constitution were progressive.

Progressivism demands improvement, but not perfection. Early liberal enfranchisement of white, male landowners with the vote was progressive, but far from perfect. Later enfranchisement of blacks and women was further progressive improvement. And civil rights voting acts to enable blacks and other minorities to actually register and vote was further progressive improvement still.

This doesn't mean that progressives all perceive the same problems and would choose the same solutions. Progressives are a heterogeneous lot, and can disagree strongly. But their pragmatism and lack of perfectionism allows them to work together and with others easily through compromise.

It may appear that progressives turn away from markets and towards government, but that is because there is little progress to be made by markets that markets aren't already making. In some cases, markets create problems (such as redlining) that require regulation to undo. In some cases, conspicuous market failures require either government incentives or government provision (such as for roads and schools.) In some cases, government institutions were under-performing (such as representation of the indigent in courts: the solution was access to free legal services.) And sometimes government is oppressive: hence the ACLU.

Progressivism has often been defined by its history and people. The history of progressivism is usually a list of issues that progressives have fought for such as 8 hour work days, universal enfranchisement, antitrust, etc. What unites all these issues is that they were viewed by progressives as solutions to the problems they saw for human flourishing. Lengthy work days provided no opportunity for leisurely pursuits, education, family matters, health issues, etc. Voting restricted to men meant women's issues (such as their legal status, whether they could own property, etc.) were not attended to. Monopolies and trusts created hardship for farmers and the poor by keeping prices artificially high.

Viewing progressivism by its history and people, rather than by its basic objective, causes a "can't see the forest for the trees" problem. But a moderately good list is available at Progressive Living.

Libertarian corporate catspaws.

The American Enterprise Institute has published a very successful propaganda piece opposing Michael Pollan that is being widely circulated on the web. But it's not a real argument: it's denialism. Luigi over at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog noted the black and white framing: that's a good guideline for spotting the propagandistic nature of the article.

As propaganda, you can't trust any provided numbers or anecdotes: the turkey drowning story is an urban myth. His calculations on the amount of table scraps needed for fertilizer make all sorts of ridiculous, inefficient assumptions.

And of course, the techniques that he endorses such as no-till were developed precisely to deal with "agri-intellectual" complaints against loss of topsoil to erosion. And they were developed by "agri-intellectual" researchers at public universities. And it took a whole lot of convincing to get farmers to begin using them.

50 years ago, Hurst would have written a screed against "agri-intellectual" concerns about topsoil loss. He wouldn't have had the vision to dream that solutions could be found, so he would deny the problem, ridicule the identifiers of the problem, and claim it couldn't be solved anyhow. Hurst has that same lack of vision for these newer concerns.

The American Enterprise Institute is a propaganda organ for conservative corporate capitalism. They don't really care about Pollan's book: all they care about is that they can present another
denialist club for bashing liberals and progressives who criticize capitalists for trampling over our health, environment, politics, and culture.

There's a good criticism at The Big Money.

Austrian Economics can't count.

Austrian economists are notorious for their rejection of mathematical models in economics. Considering this evidence that they can't count, we can guess what their REAL reason is.

Seven Periodicals

Our monthly The Free Market examines the economic and political scene from a classical-liberal viewpoint. The Austrian Economics Newsletter links our academic network with in-depth interviews. The Mises Review surveys new books. The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (the successor journal to the Review of Austrian Economics), is the premier setting for new research and ideas in economics. The Journal of Libertarian Studies is the scholarly venue for political theory and applications.

They say seven, but only list 5 (or 6 if you give them the benefit of the doubt.) Taken from About the Mises Institute.

Now why would they want that?

I asked for silly Reason articles, and here's a doozy:

Hands Off Hitler! It's time to repeal Godwin's Law by David Weigel.

Now, Godwin's Law has several interpretations:
(1) If a discussion goes on long enough, EVENTUALLY a Hitler/Nazi analogy will be made.
(2) An observation that when a Hitler/Nazi analogy is invoked, meaningful argument is over.

Since the invention and popularization of Godwin's Law, libertarians feel hobbled when they want to lump all their opponents with Nazis and Hitler. The propaganda and hyperbole don't work when they can be so easily ridiculed with a pithy invocation of the words "Godwin's Law".

Now, Weigel assembles a well-documented pseudo-intellectual argument for "repeal" of Godwin's Law, exploring special cases, history, and persecution when this victimless crime is committed. Why pseudo-intellectual? Well, how can you respond to howlers such as "Thus, despite all efforts at regulation, the market has repeatedly decided in favor of the N[azi]-bomb." What regulation? What market? If anything, you'd expect a libertarian to claim this is an example that should be in Ellickson's book "Order Without Law". Here we have a social institution that has developed without government and without markets. Without markets? Libertarian heresy! There must be a way to purchase the institution!

Evidently Weigel misses the corollary to freedom of speech that others are free to laugh at you for whatever reason. Knowing that others will punish you with derision must make him feel unfree. Poor baby. If only propaganda was easy, and you could always simply tarbrush your opponents without anybody understanding how they were being manipulated!

"We'll be better off rolling back Godwin's Law and admitting the all-purpose usefulness of Nazi analogies. It's exactly what the Germans wouldn't want." Ah, and here we have the ultimate justification. Stick it to the Germans! Wow, what a lot of intellectual traction THAT argument has!

I think Reason Magazine should be more properly named Prejudice Magazine. The article-writing process is rather obvious: start with the conclusion and bend facts, history, and argument until your point is "supported". A dark ages scholastic approach. About the only nice thing I can say about Weigel is that he's far from the only one at Reason who writes this way.

Extreme cases.

I saw this over at Marginal Revolution and just had to laugh.

Imagine the extreme case -- a 100% income tax. No matter how much you make, you actually receive nothing. Therefore, no one works. Result: 100% unemployment and GDP=0.
Obviously, smaller taxes will have less extreme effects. But increasing a tax can surely make a recession worse.
Posted by: Robert A. Book at Jul 7, 2009 12:47:48 PM

I love the world of economics. Imagine the extreme case--no taxes. Assuming we weren't taken over by some other country, we would have no army, a fragmented system of private toll roads, unlimited immigration, warlord armies fighting over territories. Kind of like Somalia. Obviously this proves the more taxes the better, and that taxes will make everything better.
Posted by: es32 at Jul 7, 2009 1:33:11 PM