Andrew Ryan is the Type of Capitalst who could only exist under Government Regulation. Ayn Rand was very careful to Separate The Jonathan Galt’s from say, the Michael Bloombergs who made their billions by exploiting a system that was set up by a heavily regulated economy and Government. (this is why these people vote overwhelmingly democrat)
Robber barons monopolies could not exist without government interference and regulations.
Ayn Rand is criticized on this basis but it’s a false dichotomy. She called these types of people in her novels and philosophy as parasites.
She considered a true capitalist to be someone who made it on his own, competed in a free market and was constantly improving his product and business because the free market forced him too. These modern Robber barons don’t want a free market, There’s nothing they want less. That’s one of the fallacies Ken Levine uses to prop up the false premise of the game.
The problem is that ultimately there is no such thing as a “Self made billionaire”. Show me any “self made billionaire” and I’ll show you someone who benefited from centuries, nay, millennia of scientific progress, millennia of agricultural breakthroughs producing the most nutritious and bountiful harvests, centuries of infrastructure giving them a warm home, centuries of education techniques to stand on the shoulders of previous giants, and most important of all decades of the labor from hundreds if not thousands of employees working under them.
Billionaires aren’t made in a bubble, and that’s ultimately the problem with these kinds of narratives pushed to prop up ubermensches; they forget the they live in a society.
Contrary to popular belief, Altruism is not taboo in objectivism and in fact, the kind of Mad science and cruelty seen in Rapture is anathema to objectivism. If you could criticise anything about objectivism it’s that it can be too moral. What Ayn Rand believed is Altruism could only exist if you made the choice to do so at your own expense, not if the Government made the choice for you and took your property to distribute as they see fit. An objectivist is no one’s master and no one’s slave.
Rand very much believed that morality is ultimately secondary/servile to the person’s own feelings. Altruism is fine, but only if the person performing it gets to feel good about it. If the person doesn’t get any positive feeling from acting altruistically? Then he’s
lame and not cool.
@Background Pony #6F1D
By the By, While Atlas Shrugged is an important book, Its not so much a story as it is an exploration of Ayn Rand Philosophy.
And that’s why Atlas Shrugged is a universal punchline.
@Background Pony #6F1D
See, that’s the thing. Bioshock simply followed Objectivism to it’s conclusion, especially with Andrew Ryan.
According to Objectivism anything and especially everything is “moral” and acceptable as long as it benefits the individual. Ryan “betrayed” his principles when he started nationalizing everything and instituted taxes, except he didn’t. According to Objectivism he was just doing what he needed to do in order to keep winning at the game.
And therein lies the problem. Everything was “fine” when the leader of Rapture was the top dog, when he was the best player. But when Fontaine started to beat Ryan at his own game
incidentally by deconstructing another flaw in Rand’s philosophy. Atlas Shrugged went on and on with, you guessed it, filibuster after dozens of pages of filibusters (not an exaggeration) over how religion is dumb and lame in no small part because religion says to put God above yourself. Which is a big no-no in Objectivism, in Soviet Objectivism you are put above God!. So Fontaine simply took the people’s need for spiritual fulfillment and smuggled in banned religious texts.
So should Ryan have just let Fontaine become the top dog? No, according to the Objectivist interpretation of “you are the main character in your own story”, Ryan had to be a bigger ubermensch than Fontaine. But since Fontaine was beating Ryan at his own game, that meant Ryan had to change the rules. Which ended up in disaster when those new rules ran into everyone else still playing their own game of “be the ubermensch” telling them to throw off Ryan’s rules.
