Who's the millionaire that Rand didn't like?

In a free market, the millionaires are usually the most moral. Having a load of cash is evidence of virtue. It's because of what money is. However, there was at least one millionaire whom Rand didn't like -- she said something like "But [so-and-so] isn't even a true capitalist" -- implying that he got rich via immoral means (that his load of cash is evidence of evil, not virtue).

And, for the life of me, I can't find this quote -- about this millionaire whom Rand mentioned disdainfully. It was a popular millionaire, like Rockefeller, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know who he is?

Ed

Post 1

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 3:12pm

Ed,

I can�t help with who Rand may have mentioned by name. I don�t recall any. Don�t be surprised at her disapproval of lots of millionaires. She states that many got rich by government favor and she makes clear those millionaires are not virtuous.

Regarding �load of cash� always = virtue in a free market: What about televangelists? They operate freely and become millionaires.

Also, in a free market heroin would be legal. Branded leaders in that market would become millionaires, or more likely, billionaires.

Users have the right to ruin their lives and hire others to help and all that, but I�m not ready to say that those who excel at helping reach that pinnacle due to their �virtue.�

Post 2

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 3:29pm

Jon,

Okay, but let's carry your heroin example to the extreme -- where it would, in reality, go. If you don't think that heroin is something that wouldn't -- in reality -- be taken to the extreme then you must live in a cocoon. I don't think you do, so I will take your example to the extreme because I am justified in doing that. So, what would the extreme look like?

In the extreme scenario, there would be thousands, perhaps millions, of lives that would be ruined -- or all but ruined -- by heroin. Therefore, in this example (which I've shown would become the reality), there would be thousands, perhaps millions, of dead bodies -- along with the friends and families that would surely number in the millions, perhaps multi-millions. Now, with this "trail of bloody bodies," in the wake of this kind of destruction -- there would be free market blow-back. Sooner or later, enough folks would be touched by the disaster that heroin can be and something remarkable would happen ...

heroin dealers would go out of business.

Now, I'm not saying that heroin dealers would ever completely go out of business -- only that a free market would guarantee that they wouldn't stay billionaires for long (unless they decided to become virtuous and produce value).

Ed

Post 3

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 3:47pm

Heroin Lite �

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 3:56pm

I believe it was Joseph Kennedy she was referring to...

Post 5

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 4:00pm

And no, Ed. I don�t live in a cocoon. And why do you think this fact shows anything at all?

You wrote: �which I've shown would become the reality� What you had �shown� up to that point was: �If you don't think that heroin is something that wouldn't -- in reality -- be taken to the extreme then you must live in a cocoon.� Since I do not live in a cocoon, it must be that heroin is something that would -- in reality -- be taken to the extreme?

You haven�t �shown� anything. And you got the double-negation wrong. I hope I�ve said all this nicely.

Post 6

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 5:25pm

She didn't think much of Howard Hughes as I recall, but I know that quote isn't referring to him.

Post 7

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 7:06pm

Sometimes it is tempting to thing that the perfect implementation of free-enterprise would give us utopia. No, it would give us great wealth - an explosion of money, technology, and improvements in the sciences and especially education. But some problems don't fall within the sphere of government or economics. There are still values and virtues and skills and knowledge and self-esteem, and personal relationships, and spirituality - (all of which, at best, would be encouraged in good directions by a free market, but many would not be much affected)

Post 8

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 10:38pm

Jon,

You haven�t �shown� anything. And you got the double-negation wrong. I hope I�ve said all this nicely.

I didn't show anything which someone, someone who didn't want to see it, would have seen. I used "show" colloquially.

In order to see what it is that I "showed," then you would have to look in the direction in which I pointed. I pointed to an imagined reality -- not to a fantasized re-writing of it. Now, if you don't want to imagine reality as it would be under a totally free market -- if you don't want to integrate the fact that markets teach producers and consumers how to get and hold objective values -- then we're at an impasse (due to you being disagreeable).

Conversely, you are positively right about my double-negation being wrong. You said it nicely but you didn't have to. Thank you for that.

Ed

Post 9

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 10:49pm

How can "show" be used colloquially? Ed must mean something else.

Post 10

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 11:02pm

Steve,

Sometimes it is tempting to thing that the perfect implementation of free-enterprise would give us utopia.

If that is directed at my post 2 -- and it really seems that it is -- then I think that you have misread me. As I can't be sure of your intentions (or whether you now think you might've misread me), I will leave it up to you to let me know if you think that a debate on this point might be a good way forward -- or if think that either you or I have already said enough to put it to rest.

Not being an excellent writer (just a pretty good one), I get misread a lot. I'm a tremendous thinker with only a moderate talent for writing. It makes me a pretty good writer (having lots of true and cool thoughts), but not an excellent writer.

Now, George Cordero, a fella who used to participate in discussions here, is an excellent writer who stands out in my memory. He wrote so much better than I do, but he didn't think better than I do -- though it's hard, yet not impossible, to prove this to readers here (me being only a moderately-talented writer, and all).

:-)

Sometimes, the guy who writes the best wins the argument -- but that's when arguments are judged not on provable truth, but on rhetorical "debate points" instead. There's the truth and then there's the showmanship. It's best when the guy who writes the best is also the most correct man in the room (so we all learn from him), but that is not always the case. Sometimes, the guy who's wrong is a better writer.

Obama is an excellent example of a guy who writes and speaks very, very well (even though he is wrong).

Ed

Post 11

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 11:19pm

When I said "colloquially" I meant "metaphorically" -- i.e., I metaphorically showed Jon something that is visibly true once you point your mind at it (if you are willing to honestly do so).

Post 12

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 11:26pm

Here is an example of what would mitigate lasting profit for a free market heroin dealer (because of the nature of reality):

A microscope is of no value to a little stenographer struggling to make a living; a lipstick is; a lipstick, to her, may mean the difference between self-confidence and self-doubt, between glamour and drudgery.

This does not mean, however, that the values ruling a free market are subjective. If the stenographer spends all her money on cosmetics and has none left to pay for the use of a microscope (for a visit to the doctor) when she needs it, she learns a better method of budgeting her income; the free market serves as her teacher: she has no way to penalize others for her mistakes.

From:
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/marketvalue.html

The key point is that the market teaches. A shorter way to say this is: "a fool and his money are soon parted". A more indignant way to say this is: "produce objective value or starve".

It's because heroin is only of minor value to the majority that it could not keep dealers rich (under free market mechanics). In order to get and stay rich in a free market, you would have to produce something more objectively valuable than that.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/24, 11:33pm)

Post 13

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 11:44pm

Ed, my post was inspired by your post #2, but as a related observation, not a criticism or an argument. We have so many problems in our culture. We can see that a truly free market would cure many of them. But when we look closer, we can see that not all would be cured. However, the right philosophy would cure many of the remaining problems. Even then, there would be problems that arise out self-esteem issues.

I was only cautioning. If one spends a lot of time with a hammer in their hand, everything starts looking like a nail - if a free market advocate isn't careful, they will, on occasion over promise what a free market will do. There are other tools.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 1/24, 11:50pm)

Post 14

Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 4:56am

I've always thought that a free market doesn't necessarily provide for much of anything as far as problem solving goes, it just provides the best possible environment for solutions to problems to be found and implemented.
That applies even for misguided or flawed ideologies. If socialists were confined to a free market system, and pursued their stated goals with such a system, spending the money they now spend lobbying the gov't for feeding the homeless or whatever, they would do more than under the system they support. Prices would be lower. Just an example. That is my opinion anyway.

Post 15

Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 6:51am

Good Business by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explores the idea of the businessman with a conscience who deliberately chooses only life-affirming rather than life-diminishing endeavors and fuses his soul with his productive achievements. I listened to the Audible version of the book. I did not agree with all of his assertions but still consider it worth reading or hearing.

Intermixed with the book's valid message, the author condemns as "immoral" the tobacco industry and everyone in it whereas I do not. He does the same for the television industry for its mind-numbing qualities. He and I have different views on these and other subjects.

Briefly, given that we all know we will die with certainty, the only question remains how well we live and how we choose to consume our finite lives. Our disagreement arises in how much freedom one ought to have in "burning" that finite life. Evidently the author wants to condemn as "immoral" some who help others to "burn" that life on tobacco or television. He may have even hinted at laws to curb these activities though I do not recall him saying it outright.

I do not smoke nor do I watch much television but these would not stop me from working in either industry.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 1/25, 6:59am)

Post 16

Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 2:27pm

Getting back to the first question: I never heard of Rand mentioning Hughes or Kennedy Sr. Once in The Objectivist Newsletter Branden wrote an Intellectual Ammunition Department feature taking up the question of whether inherited wealth gives one an unfair advantage in a market economy. He said that an in the old days an heir who didn't use his money productively ended up no longer rich; "he did not become governor of a state" [or words to that effect]. This was an unmistakable swipe at Nelson Rockefeller, who at the time was shaping up as Goldwater's rival for the Republican nomination. The article is in CUI.

In "What is Capitalism" Rand mentions Elvis Presley as an example of someone who got rich without much real merit, comparing him to Einstein, who had merit and did not get rich.

(Edited by Peter Reidy on 1/25, 4:16pm)

Post 17

Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 7:29pm

Got that, Mindy?

He didn�t �show� in the usual sense (in the sense of pointing to reality,) but in the �colloquial� sense of pointing to his �imagined reality,� which reality, if I wasn�t so "disagreeable," if I was "honest" enough to look at, etc�

Go fly a kite, Ed. Or just imagine flying one. Almost the same.

(Edited by Jon Letendre on 1/25, 7:42pm)

Post 18

Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 8:21pm

I do see, Jon, but I, being a somewhat lesser thinker than some of the writers who are better thinkers than their writers' personae might show, I being somewhat better a writer than such, I knew from the beginning that it was all your fault! ;-)

Post 19

Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 9:44pm