Atlas Shrugged

This post is going to be similar to Fountainhead post and if you have not read the book, you might be motivated(unmotivated) to take it up.

I must have spent hours (days) reading this huge book (and also repenting that I could have studied 2/3rd of my course books, had I studied the same amount of time) and although I love some of the philosophies presented in the book but still I would maintain that the books of Ayn Rand are wordy. Once a character starts giving a speech, it goes on forever. Although, she believes that one should respect the intelligence of the human, and believes in the heroic in humans, she treats her readers as fools. Fools, who cannot understand what she is trying to tell with all those illustrious anecdotes and explanations. Fools, who need the repetition of the same things again and again and then a monstrously huge speech by John Galt to summarize the book.

She writes such a good plot with so many examples in favor of Capitalism and presents her dream of an ideal society. Some of the reasons help me confirm what I had always suspected to be wrong with the Indian Economy. For instance, I always wondered when the government can print as many money as they want, why do they need to collect taxes. When they own all the infrastructure, all property, why do the Government agencies, still are the ones always in the losses.

She writes about the moral code of a trader and the policy of viewing money as a means for trading virtues. Her vehement disagreement with any form of charity and philanthropy is backed up with solid reasons and makes one believe in it. She supports monopolies and although Mark Shuttleworth won’t agree with her on this, her points still leave an impact on me. But, all things stated, I am not much into economics, so it might be that while her business anecdotes look logical to me, it might not be as close to real business scenarios.

But I was disappointed with the lack of purposeful ending in the book. Also, I did not like the numerous love affairs portrayed for Dagny Taggart, her choice of John Galt and the ending for Eddie Willers. I did not like the numerous dialogs of self-righteousness between the protagonists of the novel, their way of keeping secrets and talking. I know its Ayn Rand’s signature style which makes her different from others, but I do not approve of it.

In any case, whatever be the down-points, I learnt two very important things from the book. Firstly, that economy is a fairly complicated mechanism, with so many interdependencies, that one action leads to another and then another in a domino effect. It is more or less like the butterfly effect of physics(if you know about it) and I think, economic regulators should learn this fast. They change one small thing, and it may snowball to affect everything, all the more in today’s world.

Secondly, one should always think in terms of absolutes. I like Rearden’s relationship with Wet Nurse(The non absolute). I liked the fact: that there is no middle point sometimes. One should take some hard decisions and never think of relativity(although it is so true in Physics, there is no reason to apply the philosophy of Quantam Physics in real life), otherwise, you might not get the results you want.

But all these are my views, would love to hear your comments on the book.