Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen
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Book Reviews of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Book Review: not everything to every one
Summary: 5 Stars
Read this book. My whole life i had questions i couldn't answer. Why did god create me and give me a free will for the sole purpose of forcing me to subjugate my will to his? How can they draft some one into a war and still pretend to uphold 'the right to life'? How come my parents should pay taxes to pay for a highschool drop out's unemployment? Why should education be paid for by everyone when my parents had 5 kids but there are some people who didn't have any? If there are people who are good at earning money with money, and there are people who can only waste it, then why tax the people who are good at making it and give it to the ones who will waste it? Why can't money stay with the person who made it in the first place?
As i grew up... these questions still bothered me. I started reading philosophy... I started with Nietzche and Satre and even opened Kant a few times. They all said that truth was unknowable and that reason has no place in reality. Nietzche wasn't a very happy fellow. He told me to do what i want and that it was the right thing to do just because i wanted to. None of this particularly appealed to me or seemed right. Nietzche was fun to read.. but only because I would imagine playing drinking games with him..
Then i read my first book by Ayn rand. She never expected you to accept anything on faith or on her good name. Every premise that she introduces starts at its base axiom then extends into the upper foliage of her brilliant philosophy. Nothing is added as a legacy to older thought or on faith or as some cloudy vague notion of spirituality or 'humanity'.
Pointed in the right direction, i saw the answers to my questions.
I understand that there are those who refuse to function on a logical level. (I wonder how these people hope to contribute anything but trivia to our culture. Feelings never built a bridge or even churned butter.) This book is not for them.
If you fancy yourself a rational mind, this book is for you. This is one of her more eloquent and poingant works. This a good place to begin reading Rand. If you have the time, go pick up a copy of Atlas Shrugged and then the Fountainhead.
Book Review: An important and much-maligned truth.
Summary: 5 Stars
Ayn Rand is one of recent history's most prominent defenders of the ideals - and as she would say, morality - of capitalism and the free market. For her it is not a question of wealth, but of individual rights that are protected only by a capitalist system and get trampled by socialism, communism and altuism. Rand's clear thinking is as important today as it has ever been in America's history. It seems the wealthier our country becomes, the harder it is to remember and retain the basis, and the nobility, of the system that brought us that wealth.
Even within the reviews of this book there are cries against Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil, but for what? We are constantly fed the idea that they are bad, or malevolent entities, but how? Wal-Mart provides low-cost items to tens of millions of Americans and jobs to untold thousands and yet the story we hear is how the jobs aren't good enough or how local stores have been run out of business. Who is forcing people to take those jobs? Who stops shopping at the local stores when Wal-Mart comes to town? By what right are people owed something more by Wal-Mart? Exxon Mobil puts billions of dollars at risk searching for new energy reserves and for twenty years endured horrible energy prices set by the free market. Now that prices have risen, thery're evil? By what standard? The fact that I preferred $1 gasoline doesn't make the company who provides my gasoline bad.
We need constant reminders of the good that business people and businesses do in our society without any charitable intent or giving. Through their very actions and existence, they form the base that allows the rest of our country to function. They cannot exist, however, without policies, freedoms and rights protected by the goverment. That is why Rand's work continues to be critical to our future.
This book is intended as Rand's non-fiction compliment to the fictional "Atlas Shrugged." I don't believe you need to read "Atlas Shrugged" to get a lot from this book and this is certainly a less time-consuming option.
Very highly recommended. Please read this book and share it with your friends.
Book Review: An Excellent Collection of Essays on Ayn Rand's Political Views
Summary: 5 Stars
This book contains an excellent collection of essays on the political branch of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and is appropriate for anyone seeking to obtain a deeper understanding of her political philosophy beyond reading her novels. A few of my favorite essays contained within include:
* What is Capitalism? -- Ayn Rand's delineation of Capitalism as a political system where individuals live according to the Trader Principle and have a minimal, but central government to prevent the initiation of physical force and fraud.
* Antitrust -- Alan Greenspan's excellent essay that attacks Antitrust legislation as subjective, harmful and immoral.
* Gold and Economic Freedom -- Alan Greenspan's essay on the need for objective currency. In particular, he suggests a return to a 100% gold standard.
* Patents and Copyrights -- Ayn Rand's views on the necessity and morality of intellectual property rights.
* Theory and Practice -- Ayn Rand's views on the invalidity of the "Mind-Body Dichotomy", which is also known as the "Theory-Practice Dichotomy" or the "Thought-Action Dichotomy".
* The Wreckage of the Consensus -- Ayn Rand's views on the debacle that was the war in Vietnam. In my opinion, reading this essay really suggests how she would view the current war in Iraq.
* Man's Rights -- in this essay, Ayn Rand discusses what individual rights are and where they come from. Specifically, she argues that rights come from the nature of man (not from divine origin, society or law) and what they mean in practice.
* The Nature of Government -- this essay contains Ayn Rand's view on government's as an agency of force, how the only proper purpose for a government is to safeguard the rights of men, how the only legitimate functions of government are those necessary to preserve individual rights (i.e., police force, army and a court system) and the necessity for a strong, central government to serve as a final arbiter on the use of retaliatory force. This last point is in stark contrast to various anarcho-capitalists such as David Friedman and Murray Rothbard.
Book Review: People still have yet to discover capitalism...
Summary: 5 Stars
When Ayn Rand wrote this book Capitalism was completely out of "fashion" because people had yet to discover what capitalism is. Today, capitalism is in "fashion"--yet, unfortunately people still don't fully grasp what it is, what it stands for, and what it requires to exist. Quoting Miss Rand:"No politico-economic system in history has ever proved its value so eloquently or has benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism -- and none has ever been attacked so savagely, viciously, and blindly. The flood of misinformation, misrepresentation, distortion, and outright falsehood about capitalism is such that the young people of today have no idea (and virtually no way of discovering any idea) of its actual nature.
"...[I]t is capitalism's alleged champions who are responsible for the fact that capitalism is being destroyed without a hearing, without a trial, without any public knowledge of its principles, its nature, its history, or its moral meaning. It is being destroyed in the manner of a nightmare lynching -- as if a blind, despair-crazed mob were burning a straw man, not knowing that the grotesquely deformed bundle of straw is hiding the living body of the ideal.
"The method of capitalism's destruction rests on never letting the world discover what it is being destroyed -- on never allowing it to be identified within the hearing of the young.
"The purpose of this book is to identify it. [It] is addressed to the young -- in years or in spirit -- who are not afraid to know and are not ready to give up."
"What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the "practical", but the only moral system in history."
Wow! Can this woman write or what!
Book Review: At Whose Expense?
Summary: 5 Stars
Ayn Rand, best known for her best selling fictional works outlining her own philosophy of Objectivism, presents a collection of thoughts on economics that provides one of the best explanations of laissez-faire capitalism available.
Rand discusses the subject from a moral stand point which proves to be both refreshing and intriguing. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal was my introduction to the Austrian economic school of thought and to this day, after considerable research on the subject, I cannot think of a better introduction.
Rand, in combination with Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen, provides an admirable compilation of thought portraying the very essence of laissez-faire capitalism. The book is based on the founding principals of America and an understanding that "America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the `common good', but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes."
If you resent the fact that your life is your own responsibility and no one else's, then you will not like this book. This will account for the less than perfect overall rating this book inevitably will acquire as there are many among the masses who just cannot accept that they might have to be accountable for their own decisions. Such thoughts clearly do not speak to the quality of the book, rather frustration with the ideals; an understandable and anticipated response to a book of this nature.
Anyone seeking to understand the logical and objective ideals of laissez faire capitalists will discover all they are searching for with this book and I highly recommend this to readers and critical thinkers of all views of economic thought.