Tag Archives: Ayn Rand

Rand, Markets and Sadism

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Ayn Rand

When I see condemnation of the journalistic standards of “The Times of India” filling my news-feed, a question posed by Gail Wynand whose media empire spread like bubonic plague comes back to me: “Do you think it took no talent to create the Banner?”  Gail Wynand, the publisher of the New York Banner owned twenty-two newspapers, seven magazines, three news services and two newsreels. He burnt prodigious energy and will power to achieve perfection in serving every perverse need of his ultimate boss-the imbecile on the street who consumes news, gossip and lurid stories like drugs. It took spectacular talent for Wynand to achieve extraordinary perfection in the ordinary.

One of the most powerful scenes in “The Fountainhead” is when several newspapers cornered Gail Wynand, the publisher of New York Banner, to censure him for debasing public tastes. Gail Wynand replied in his characteristic manner: “You give them what they profess to like in public. I give them what they really like. It is not my function, to help people preserve a self-respect they haven’t got. Honesty is the best policy, gentlemen, though not quite in the sense you were taught to believe.”

In the New York Banner’s first public campaign, they appealed to the charitable sentiments of the public by displaying pictures of a pretty girl waiting for her illegitimate child, and a starving scientist side by side. The campaign raised one thousand and seventy-seven dollars for the unwed mother when the young scientist had to be content with nine dollars and forty-five cents. At the end of the campaign, Gail Wynand had decided how the Banner deserves to be run. Continue reading »

The Distant Cheeping

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They are so clever!

A week ago, I felt that pressure was suddenly building up inside my head. There was a mild heaviness that didn’t seem to go away. I have never had a headache in my life. But, one night, I was turning back in my bed, trying to sleep. I never had sleeping problems. There was suddenly a sharp pain that never came back. I was having mild bodily disturbances on and off which I have never had before. Doctors often dismiss it telling me: “Wait, you are confusing me now.” I almost never sleep in the morning-even during Magazine production when I often have to skip sleep. But lately I am sleeping at my desk or office sofa for hours. While I was listening to a talk, I noticed that my eyes were drooping, even when I had slept six hours the night before.

When I went to a hospital nearby, the doctor asked me many questions: “Where do you work? How many hours do you work? Do you read a lot? When you read, do you read from a computer? How many hours do you sleep?” I have averaged four hours of sleep for many years.  I am always hooked to the web. I rarely read hard copies.  He just asked me to do a vision test, brushing off everything else. Continue reading »

The Mind And The Conscience

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The symbol of fire in one's mind!

One evening, when I was in a restaurant, the waiter pointed his finger at a very young girl standing outside and said to me with a sly smile: “Look, she is smoking”. I looked at her, assessing the merits of the notion that a woman’s good looks will purchase indemnity for even her most grievous sin. Perhaps I should join Goethe in admitting that baseness attracts everybody.

Men and women are not expected to go beyond a certain point, when these are precisely the points they want to cross. When even the bravest man or woman tries to push these boundaries with self-righteous iconoclasm, they do it hoping against hope that the harshest judgment of the world wouldn’t be reserved for them.

Manu Joseph expresses it so well: “Sometimes I am amazed at how women in India go through life being women. No matter what they do, they can never be invisible, and it is very important to be invisible. There is a peculiar stoic expression they have when they stand out in the open and smoke. They know everybody on the street has judged them. Even on my lane in South Bombay it is true. I’ve not conducted a poll yet, but I am certain that nobody on Third Pasta Lane believes that a woman who smokes can also be a virgin.”

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Bullies, Sissies And Other Libertarian Nutjobs

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Abstractions aside, we have come so far from the schoolyard!

Truth might be a bitter pill to swallow, but we are all better off with it. There are truths which many of us do not feel compelled to go overboard in stating, while some others state it cheerfully, as these are brutal facts their taste wouldn’t conceal. The economist David Friedman called the former ‘wimps’ and the latter ‘boors’. Or bullies and sissies. While wimps keep away from stating truths like that of the high rate of teenage pregnancy and criminal tendencies among blacks, boors state it with much enthusiasm and delight.

Like Friedman, I too have mixed feelings. It must be obvious that if rightly analyzed and interpreted, knowing all the Non-Politically Correct (Non-PC) facts will have a positive impact on the way many people look at economic policy in particular and the world in general. But, an incurable obsession with such issues is more often than not a sign of bigotry.

An excessive focus on gender, race, sexuality and nationality, whether legitimate or not, while turning a blind eye to war and immigration restrictions is like complaining of one’s mother-in-law’s nagging when someone is raping your wife and mugging your children. Needless to mention, it only means that your hatred for your mother in law trumps your hatred for explicit violence by a wide margin.

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An Anomaly That Completes The System

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Manu Joseph makes an interesting observation on bleeding-heart liberals. The iniquitous social system which persists in stuck-up countries like India strengthen a minority elite which leverages the unfair privileges, and before long slowly turns against the system which made their wealth and self-righteous indignation possible. They are, like Arundhati Roy, “an anomaly that completes the system”. Their heart of course, lies with the real India waiting to get in, but is still kept out by the elitist middle class. With misty eyes, they tell us that the dull masses will never go away. It might be their only hope, but they have something called vote which will humiliate their betters. When the middle class and the rich are busy partying, they will doggedly march to the polling booth in hordes once in every five years and press the button with glee, throwing all the rascals out. It would be quite an inspiring sight!

The great 20th century polemicist H.L. Mencken had hinted that democracy originated in the poetic fancies of refined men who felt like putting the donkey into the cart to revolutionalize transport, saddened by the fact that it is over-laden.

There was no mass movement which was different. The Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises had pointed out that behind all socialistic ideas we see the dark, ugly hands of the wicked scion of one of the prominent aristocratic families of royal France. Marx never did a honest day’s work, and lived off Engels, who was a wealthy industrialist and a much more original thinker. The anti capitalist ideas were by no means an achievement of the masses, but of that of much pampered intellectuals and artists who never had to wonder where the next meal would come from. Rustic poetry on the pleasures of country life was never written by shepherds or village idiots, but by urban poets. Murray Rothbard was one among the many who noticed that most intellectuals who complain about the ugliness of cities and worship primitivism were firmly ensconced in these crowded cities. Continue reading »

The Church Of Randroidism

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The internet can be amusing. Yet, some of our experiences on the internet can strike us as bizarre. A few days back, I happened to talk to a middle aged woman based in the US.  I was in a playful mood. I asked her how “Randroidism” is going on. She suddenly lashed out saying that Objectivism is a complete philosophy and the term I used was derogatory. She suggested that I should soon get myself psychologically treated, proceeding to remove me from her list. I found her behavior immature for a woman of her age, and as I barely knew her, I laughed it off and soon forgot the whole incident.


I never understood people who hold personal grudges against ones who disagree. I have friends who disagree with me on issues in which I can turn really emotional, and I haven’t held this even slightly against them. I am certainly convinced that they are wrong, but I am better off debating a well read, intelligent socialist than an abysmally read libertarian. After all, what is the point in a debate if we agree on everything? Continue reading »

Drunk On Books!

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“There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.”- H. L. Mencken

One of my earliest memories is that of pondering over dusty Magazines piled up in an unused room of my house. I have always had a liking for the written word. I am lately being deeply suspicious of the “Nurture Assumption”, as when I was a boy, no one encouraged me to read anything beyond school work. If anything, I was actively discouraged whenever I ventured beyond my course material. I used to hide novels inside my school books and read. Continue reading »

Leave Us Alone?

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“I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”, so ends the speech of John Galt, the hero of heroes of Atlas Shrugged.

The above sentiment is echoed by many in the libertarian movement, especially Ayn Rand’s followers. Objectivists single out Altruism as a scapegoat for most, if not all of the problems faced by mankind. I myself believed much of the rhetoric years back, when I came across her works for the first time in my life. I still find much merit in them. Given the fact that Voters have systematically biased beliefs, selfishness is likely to significantly improve the way democracy works.

GMU economist Bryan Caplan puts it well: “Why? If selfish voters misinterpret markets as a method for the rich to exploit the poor, at least the rich will still favor markets. They’ll want what they falsely see as their “pound of flesh.” But if unselfish voters misinterpret markets as a method for the rich to exploit the poor, the rich and poor alike will unite against the imaginary evils of the market. Instead of petty squabbling, we get a consensus for folly.” It should be obvious that it is important to emphasize that altruism is not an unconditional virtue in a world where most people wrongly believe that we are our brother’s keepers and get that notion institutionalized. Self interested actions are generally virtuous, as long as it doesn’t involve taking advantage of others. When Caplan says: “I often wish the people around me were more selfish – or at least better at being selfish. I know how to deal with rational, self-interested actors. They’re really quite charming. If I want them to change their behavior, I offer them a deal. While they might hold out for more, at least they don’t take offense.”, I tend to agree. Continue reading »

The Case For Libertarian Anarchy

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It has become the dream of every social democrat to brand himself as a classical liberal. Every such “limited Government” statist is a socialist in disguise, as unaware of it he might be. When he criticizes Central Planning or interventionism, he never really believes his own words. If he does it at all, he doesn’t appreciate it as much as he should. All this is true of Sanjeev Sabhlok-former “Aristocrat of the Bureau” who later found a more comfortable shelter in the Department of Treasury and Finance, Victoria, and is presently nurturing grandiose political ambitions. The emperor of the world’s largest democracy, that is. He even promises to sacrifice his Australian citizenship and return to his motherland if he clearly gets a signal that India badly needs his social engineering.  A laudable act of self abnegation, it would be! His viable solution to India’s mis-governance is critically important for our survival and success, he patronizingly reminds us.

Sanjeev Sabhlok’s critique of libertarian anarchy strengthens my position that every statist criticism of anarchy actually projects all the evils of the state on anarchy.  I was filled with dismay after a casual glance at his ad hominem attacks on innocent anarchists. We are utopian dreamers with no understanding of social contract, red-tapism or the free rider problem and still spend our time conjuring up imaginative schemes. What’s worse? We haven’t ever drawn up any real contract in our life! Is there any good thing to be said of his article? Yes. Finally, the harsh reality has struck him that anarchists are not simpletons who believe that all human beings are angels. And that is it. Continue reading »

Sarcasm And Social Acceptability

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Sarcasm and socially unacceptable behavior has nearly ruined my life in all normal ways. It has also made it incredibly amusing and funny on a deeper and much more important level.

As every human action boils down to trade, I have to admit that overall my strategy was not at all a rip-off. In fact, it was a wonderful deal, a reasonable trade-off.  I have behaved in such a manner for various reasons which are rather complicated. I would say it is often because of my honesty, good-will, benevolence, deep love for humanity-and of course, my naïve, gullible nature!

It is often said that “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit”. We also hear “A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility.” I have always wondered whether there could be notions which are so far from the truth. How someone of normal intelligence can seriously hold any of these moralistic, “church sermon” like rationalizations is completely beyond me! Rational inquiries of moral philosophers were confined to politically correct, “mushy” virtues like unconditional love, kindness, compassion and benevolence. Even moral philosophers who took pride in their political incorrectness had confined their rigorous analysis to more worthy virtues like integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride and of course, selfishness. Very few have anything good to say on one of the most feared, despised, sickening, malevolent, humiliating form of doublespeak which makes people flee and shun the light of the day: sarcasm. When even apostles of selfishness like Nathaniel Branden say “Aside from cases of violent coercion, as when someone points a gun at you, you are responsible for your reactions. No one “makes” you become sarcastic”, we should know that the fate of sarcasm is bleak indeed. A bit of iconoclasm is therefore in order.

We might say that sarcasm is a “conversational scapegoat”, and unfairly so. The socially beneficial effects of sarcasm need to be defended hard. Sarcasm goes against the inflicting person, but it helps the truth reach him faster, in ways which are not too obvious. A man faces a painful dilemma when he faces deeply insulting sarcasm. He is compelled to prove his backbone by a tight slap-or he can listen silently, smiling like an imbecile thinking he is being smart & tactful. The sad fact is that it proves that he has neither intelligence nor a backbone, as the one who hurled the insult might know too well that it is true and didn’t expect a slap, precisely for that reason! I remember an instance when I hurled an insult which hits where it hurts the most-family, and the victim listened silently, not out of fear of a more public humiliation, but because he knew it was just another general, categorical statement intended at no one in particular- and because only truth hurts-and because he was a man of immense self esteem. Well crafted sarcasm puts such a person in the position of a mink that walks blindly into a scented trap. If it hurts so much, it can only be because it is true and such sarcasm deserves the highest praise, not condemnation. Given certain narrow assumptions, truth as such should never hurt the innocent. Like happiness, “Truth” should be considered an Aristotelian “chief good”, pursued for its own sake. As scathing sarcasm is often truth, it should be ranked higher. Continue reading »