Obama has a childish, simplistic, and faulty, understanding of the ideas as evidenced here: <Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a "you're on your own" society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party. >
Self-interest is different from selfishness.
He should listen to some Steve Jobs interviews.
Obama mistakenly thinks that self-interest means building absurd monuments to self without reference to other people other than as units of work to produce the monument.
I'm right now in the legal throes of lining up money and technological talent to build a dairy factory. It's self-interest that drives me. It is a battle, stressful, with sleep loss, major financial risk, but if successful, as it now seems I will be, I will have been instrumental in turning sunshine, CO2 from exhaust pipes, dirt, rain, and grass into Made in China children, who will buy my mobile Cyberspace devices when they get older.
The dairy factory and distribution won't be quite how I want it, but it will be a lot better than the alternative.
As the sun was setting yesterday, I was feeling proud of myself. There is still only grass at the site, but the stars are aligned for reality to come to fruition. My neighbour said "I owe you cases and cases of honey". He has hives in his garden and was going to lose his money because the investment had gone bung, which I have saved [well, more accurately, it seems now very likely].
Qualcomm was similar. Globalstar is still a battle and I have major financial battle scars from that, but I'm now winning. When I look back on my life, I see decades of wealth creation. When Obama looks back on his, he will not [though he will have grabbed a lot of loot so will have much greater personal money than me]. The greatest wealth I have created is not mine, it's that of billions of people [literally] who are benefitting from what I have created out of thin air. What anti-Randists don't seem to understand is that the Rand ideology doesn't mean doing things alone out in the wilderness. Co-operation of hordes of people is the process. And it's not just the co-operation of the inventors and producers, it's the co-operation of the customers too.
I am enjoying the pleasure of hiring a very expensive lawyer and seeing him create out of thin air the legal context in which my ideas can be established. I could not possibly do it myself. I am paying him big bucks. Today, being self-interested, I got agreement from others in the process to accept the lawyer's cost as their burden to bear if they want to enjoy the proceeds of success. That was self-interested negotiation.
The lawyer gets not just the money, but my appreciation of his talented efforts. But he doesn't really need my appreciation, just as I don't really need my neighbour's honey or appreciation. I know what I have done. It's nice to know that he knows what I have done though. I have already appreciated my neighbour's honey because over the years he has given me some, and our grandson has a special affinity for "Don's honey". Not that it tastes anything particular, but grandson Hayes has been and seen the bees at work, and Don, and seen how it all happens, and the interactions with Don and Hayes loves to have shared in that whole process. So eating Don's honey is sharing in that process.
None of us need Obama to "spread the wealth around". Don can spread his honey wealth around very well without Helen Clark or kleptocrats in Helengrad confiscating his honey, keeping most of it for themselves, then spreading a bit around as bribes to get a criminal class to vote for them to take more.
When the infant formula factory is producing, we will "spread the wealth around" among hordes of infants in China. We can do that through the internet. Their parents are working in Foxconn factories producing iPhones for you to buy so they get money to buy my milk. Hopefully you do something useful that I can buy from you. But I guess you just rob somebody who is doing something useful to get your money to buy my iPhone. That means they can't buy my iPhone. It's a puzzle why you think you should be the one to buy the iPhone and not the person who actually earned the money.
By robbing that person, you will stop them producing wealth, which will mean you won't get money, which will mean the Chinese person won't get money, which will mean we won't get money which means we won't be able to pay the farmer to produce milk so the Chinese children will have to eat something else, such as ground up corn husks, or maybe just die of starvation, or preferably not be born rather than simply starve.
Randians produce children, healthy, happy and thriving. Obama and your ideology kills children off.
My self-interest results in happy children, mobile Cyberspace and me feeling pretty pleased with myself with a job well done and big piles of profits to do even more good works. Your and Obama's altruism does not.
My mother, born in China 100 years ago, would be proud of me. My half-Chinese 1 year young grandson is too. Neither has to express it. I know it. That's enough. Call it selfish. Denigrate it if you like.
There is a problem though. Creating wealth results in wealth. Leaving a big pile of money at the end of life can be harmful as people will fight to get it. $ill Gates has recognized the problem and has been working to resolve it. Andrew Carnegie built Carnegie libraries. As a child I went to the Carnegie library in Onehunga where I made my start getting books on science, technology, volcanoes, marine life and stuff. The self-interest has spanned centuries, flowing from Andrew Carnegie to me to two generations into the future. Andrew made steel and libraries, I made Cyberspace and milk and BP Ultimate and stuff. Grandsons will no doubt create wealth too. I don't know what. Grand daughters might too, but wealth-creating battle seems to be a peculiarly male effort, like climbing Mount Everest, sailing over distant horizons or firing each other into space onto the Moon. I guess it's male because it's like the peacock's tail.
Obama clearly has a comic-book caricature idea of what Rand's ideas involve. BTW, the ideas are not simply Randian. I had the same ideas long before I had heard of Ayn Rand [in 1995]. All I did was read Atlas Shrugged which seemed a musty and stilted novel from a bygone era. There was no revelation, no epiphany. In fact, it's a bit simplistic. Newtonian compared with Einsteinian. True as far as it goes. But there's more.
Mqurice |
