Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's magnus opus, is finally set to become a movie blockbuster. This follows the novel having been planned as a Hollywood movie for the last few years.

Vadim Perelman has been confirmed as the film's director, whilst Angelina Jolie will play Dagny Taggart, the railroad executive who encounters so much opposition and resistance - until she meets the protagonist, John Galt.

These exciting developments follow the 50th birthday of the ground-breaking novel, often said to be the second most infleuntial book in America - second only to the Bible. Andrew Bernstein wrote an article, 'Productivity a moral virtue' published in The Australian on October 8 this year, to commemorate the anniversary.

Atlas is set in the early 20th century, in an American society with socialistic moral values which promote altruism and collectivism, and an economy which is increasingly being crippled by market-destroying government regulations. The more Dagny tries to advance the interests of her company, the more she is opposed by Government bureaucrats who resent her abilities and despise her successes.

The major lesson from Atlas Shrugged still has great relevance today, particularly since the left today are continually questioning economic rationalism, and accusing its proponents of being "market fundamentalists", among other silly labels. Simply put, the primary message of Atlas Shrugged is this: that values which promote innovation, productivity and genius are superior to morals which do not value these traits. As a result, rational ethics will value individualism, moderate selfishness and freedom of choice above values to which many of us are more accustomed, such as self-sacrifice and substantive equality. A social system which rewards people for creating their own wealth, rather than enjoying the wealth of others, is always going to produce a wealthier and more peaceful society than one which does not provide such incentives.

Not only would I recommend that you go see this movie when its out, I would also recommend that you bring as many lefties along as possible, so that they too can witness the ultimate consequence of sympathies towards socialism and relativism.

http://leonbertrand.blogspot.com/2007/10/altas-shugged-to-be-screened.html

AJFA wrote: "A social system which rewards people for creating their own wealth, rather than enjoying the wealth of others, is always going to produce a wealthier and more peaceful society than one which does not provide such incentives."

Hear, hear. And the present social system rewards people for "enjoying the wealth of others" rather than "creating their own wealth"!

Under our system, the surest path to "wealth" is the ownership of assets that people CANNOT create for themselves. Such assets may be products of nature (e.g. land, minerals, the capacity of the environment to absorb pollution) or of the economic system (natural monopolies) or of the political system (statutory monopolies). Because the supply of such assets is fixed while effective demand increases due to economic growth, ownership of such assets is a means of appropriating the fruits of economic growth -- i.e. of other people's work!

Adding insult to injury, the tax system favors capital gains over earned income. The only assets that reliably yield capital gains are those that cannot be produced by private effort -- because if they could be produced by private effort, any increase in their values would induce more production until their values returned to normal.

If the social system is to give maximum encouragement to productive effort, public revenue must come from the fruits of public effort as manifested in the values of non-replicable assets, while the fruits of private effort -- including wages and salaries and the returns on privately produced assets -- must be free of tax.

When the political Right speaks of rewarding effort and penalizing idleness, it silently exempts the owners of non-replicable assets.

A social system which rewards people for creating their own wealth, rather than enjoying the wealth of others, is always going to produce a wealthier and more peaceful society than one which does not provide such incentives." (Quote:AJFA)

This tripe always amuses me.

'Creating their own wealth' eh? Now, how do they do that I wonder?
All on their ickle own some?

Those that create their 'own' wealth do so with the combined efforts of many others. The ethic you and your little film/ book espouses has NOT created 'a wealthier and more peaceful society'. Look around this orb.

Your so-called Lefties grasp this simple fact with ease; why is it so hard for you to do the same?

Actually, often 'Market Fundamentalist' is precisely the term to be applied.

As with any belief system, there is a sliding scale of belief or faith - those at the extreme end, are characterised as fundamentalists.

Fundamentalists tend to invest a great deal of faith in their preferred belief set and in their view, the virtues of the system take on an exaggerated state, while the flaws are often overlooked.

Market fundamentalists are no different. Same deal with socialists. Anyone who espouses the glory of either socialism or a completely deregulated market, is a dangerous fool.

Yes, capitalism as it stands delivers better outcomes for the vast majority of people when compared to a communist system, which tends to be unsustainable anyway.

But what we have now isn't a pure form of capitalism - but anyone who espouses market regulation is branded as a socialist.

Take the recent Amcor-Visy case. They worked against the market and it was the government that stepped in - in a truly deregulated market however, government wouldn't have the ability to step in at all.
This thread, and this movie, is having a dig at government regulation - I ask, what happens when a duopoly colludes? What if woolworths and Coles decided to do the same for our groceries, and there was no government to stop them?

Market theory dictates that a new player could emerge with more competitive prices. Market 'theory' however, doesn't take into account that powerful players won't play by the rules.

In fact, in order for this to be possible, you would need more of that hated 'government regulation.'

Thus, some regulation in the market becomes necessary, though powerful vested interests will strenuously deny that.

The real question then becomes how much - yes, it's true you can obviously over regulate. The problem becomes when people who oppose this, take it too far.

Plus, market mechanisms have a way of screwing the weakest people in society.

Pure capitalism would be a recipe for disaster. What we need, and have always had in Australia, is a marriage between capitalism and socialism.

Yes innovation, productivity and genius, and greed to a fair extent, are traits that need to be fostered. But there also must be strong mechanisms for the distribution of wealth across society. Otherwise we would end up with an elite class and a total underclass.

That’s pretty damn straightforward. So how anyone can argue the virtues of pure capitalism is beyond me.

I might also add that the prevention or mitigation of overproductivity has become one of the greatest virtues, but one which still goes practically unrecognised by anyone.

When the chase for productivity means ever-increasing rates of production, deliberately fed by the absurd notion that the economy has to be continuously increasing or else we’ll fall into recession, and that the population has to be rapidly increasing in order to provide the necessary skills and labour base, then we are in deep doo doo….which is exactly where we are, in Australia.

So while productivity can be a virtue, it can also be scourge. Similarly with innovation and greed.

The trouble with pure capitalism is that it openly fosters these traits and doesn’t work to keep them under control, as does socialism.

So again, a marriage of capitalism and socialism is the ONLY way to go.

As TRTL says; “Anyone who espouses the glory of either socialism or a completely deregulated market, is a dangerous fool.”

I look forward to seeing the movie.

Ginx wrote: "Those that create their 'own' wealth do so with the combined efforts of many others."

The opportunity to benefit from the "combined efforts of many others" is reflected in the value of the LOCATION at which the opportunity is taken. So, to account for Ginx's observation, it suffices to tax the value of the location -- not the actual "efforts" or the use of them.

LOCATION, a.k.a. land, is one of those non-replicable assets to which I referred in my earlier post.

Even if you accept that "values which promote innovation, productivity and genius" should take priority over all other considerations, it's simply false that completely laissez-faire capitalism is a system that embraces those values. In a system where short-term profit is rewarded over any other concern, then individual corporations can just as easily get ahead by some combination of

a) stifling and/or buying out competition,
b) manipulating consumers to convince them that they need ever more of a product
c) passing the costs of environmental damage on to others, including future generations
d) paying workers ever lower wages

as they can by innovating and improving productivity. So if your main goal is innovation and improving productiviy, you need laws in place to prevent alternative methods of increasing profit. Funnily enough, that's more or less exactly the system we have, after learning the lesson the hard way innumerable times. We don't have the regulations and government oversight we do now "just in case" - it's there because corporations have repeatedly demonstrated their inability to self-regulate adequately.

And FWIW, I don't see captains of industry running away from Sweden and Norway in droves, given their oppressive taxation and incessant government interference.

"wizofaus" leaves out the biggest rort of all, which is:

(e) acquiring an essential and irreplaceable asset and waiting for its price to go up.

This practice is purely exploitative, and not at all innovative or productive or ingenious. Yet "the system we have" not only does nothing to prevent it, but positively encourages it by giving it preferential tax treatment. Hence we have too many people looking for unearned windfalls, and not enough people creating wealth and jobs.

Good posts from most participants here - I heartily agree with everything put forward by grputland, wizofaus and Ludwig.

For too long, the economic debate has been framed in terms of competing ideologies - regrettably, market regulation has been painted in terms of a socialist outcome, which is to be regretted. Now, in Australia, the US and Britain, mainstream party politicians are wary of any policies that could be construed as market regulation, as they know the market fundamentalists will scream 'socialist' from the top of their lungs.
Just have a look at how Costello tried to smear Rudd as a Christian Socialist, and how quick Rudd responded by placing himself firmly in an economically conservative camp.

This argument shouldn't be about economic conservatism or socialism, it should be about the best system possible.

What's more, there has not been a persuasive case made for an extreme free market approach. The foremost free market economy, the US, has shown that while it does generate huge profit, that profit isn't used to benefit society as a whole.
It doesn't necessarily award the most innovative or the hardest workers - it tends to reward the most exploitative, as well as the large players who have more influence.

As another poster pointed out, industry isn't running from Scandinavia - in fact, when I observe the scandinavian economies and the average income of their citizenry, compared to the leading economically conservative market, the US, which has the added benefit of being the most powerful and all the leverage that implies.

There was an excellent OLO article on this, which rebuts this perception that laissez-faire economic systems are superior.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4744

Oops - a few typos in that post. Should have finished that second last paragraph "When I observe the scandinavian economies.... all the leverage that implies, I see little basis for adopting policies in line with this extreme free market approach.

I also shouldn't have used regrettably twice in that early paragraph.

Alas, t'would appear that I'm a pedant.

I agree entirely with your remarks that pure capitalism is hardly desirable.

On my blog I said as much, but was only able to provide a truncated version for this forum.

"Good posts from most participants here - I heartily agree with everything put forward by grputland, wizofaus and Ludwig."

Now you've really gone and hurt my feelings, TRTL!

AJFA - "pure capitalism is hardly desirable"? So deep down you're a pinko commie after all!

Funnily enough, I think pure capitalism *is* desirable, as a philosophy - but it would require re-engineering the human psyche for it to work.

The problem with pure capitalism is that it's as much doomed to failure as most other political and economic systems.

When it runs out of markets and uses up all the available resources, where can it possibly go?

The only system that appears to ensure mutual survival is "the family unit" which is more akin to small scale socialism or a type of monarchism but without the likelihood of corruption or violent revolution.

I personally found Atlas Shrugged to be pretentious, overblown and dull. I can't imagine it being any kind of popular movie blockbuster.

Eep. Whoops, Ginx as well.

I tend to be of the view that ultimately, any economic system is flawed - though the purest forms are more extreme and thus, the inevitable collapse is more harsh.

Ultimately, capitalism is doomed to collapse one day, unless certain aspects are scaled back in the socialist direction, without adopting a socialist structure.

However, I doubt this will happen. I tend to think we'll head for both resource collapse and as a consequence of this and widening income equality, we're going to be in for a great deal of trouble.
This is largely because capitalism has a longer lifespan than socialism.
Socialism fails quickly - capitalism succeeds for some time before tottering. When it does collapse however...

AJFA
“set to become a movie blockbuster.” Have you bought 100 million tickets in advance?
“ I would recommend you bring as many lefties along as possible, so that they too can witness the ultimate consequence of sympathies towards socialism and relativism.”
I think you are a bit optimistic about the potential influence of any medium. If you took lefties along to watch an authenticated documentary about the relative standards of living of North Korea / South Korea; East Germany / West Germany; post war (WWII) Britain / post war Japan, they would still all come out remaining deep seated socialists with perhaps creative reasons why the doco was biased and unreliable, or perhaps declaring that there were more important things than having food on the table.
It is an unfortunate truism in this world that no one ever changed their mind due to rational argument.
The film, if it is made well, will in all probability have a great influence on those with an open mind who have never heard of Ayn Rand, but at the same time it is going to induce a LOT of criticism. The more so the better film it is.
I predict it will be a commercial failure which will cause the backers to regret making it.

It is still too early to make this kind of film. It needs to be made in celebration of when the world becomes somewhat more rational: When we no longer have to apologise for our financial success, when it is no longer a crime for a Richard Pratt to sell something (after colluding or not) for a price that the buyer beforehand freely agrees to pay, when employer and employee are allowed to freely negotiate for ANY conditions of the workplace, when the sanctity of the contract is returned and when it is no longer a virtue to be meek and humble.
If you have read her works you would be familiar with a certain oft used phrase about flinging pearls in a porcine direction. In contemporary times this is all that will happen.