Atlas Shrugged

Years ago, a friend dragged me off to a meeting of some university Libertarians. They showed a movie. My memory of it isn't too clear----I remember it as sort of a non-musical right-wing version of Godspell with Libertarian youth prancing around smiling whenever they talked about capitalism.

At one point, they had an animated segment in which they claimed that someone in the 1930s had invented a machine that made loaves of bread very cheaply, but the government came in and told them they couldn't produce bread with it because it was too cheap.

This was a variation of a story Ronald Reagan told--that General Electric had developed a way to make light bulbs very, very cheap but the government wouldn't let them do it. It wasn't true, of course. It was a lie like almost everything else Reagan said.

The movie offered no explanation, and it didn't say what law might be invoked to prevent a company from producing bread cheaply. It was just, "The government won't let them!" And this was enough to infuriate Libertarian viewers.

How could a machine make bread cheaper, anyway? What production cost would it cut? It's not exactly labor intensive, and even if it were, labor cost next to nothing during the Great Depression.

Turns out that Ayn Rand's science fiction novel, Atlas Shrugged, was full of crap like that.

Atlas Shrugged was written in the late '50s. It was set in the indeterminate future----an indeterminate future in which people traveled everywhere by train and got all their news by listening to the radio. Air travel was never fully developed and television was a novelty that never caught on.

It was written in 1957. Hadn't TV and air travel already caught on? The first movie about a stewardess having to land a plane was made a year earlier.

Atlas Shurgged, the movie (and it's only part one)

Well, last year they made a movie based on Atlas Shrugged. It cost $20 million and grossed $4.5 million. And it was only part one. There are supposed to be two more parts. And since the two sequels can't stand alone---you have to see the first one to understand the next two---you can bet that the next ones will gross almost nothing. They might want to give up now and not throw good money after bad.

From Roger Ebert's review:

It’s a few years in the future. America has become a state in which mediocrity is the goal, and high-achieving individuals the enemy. Laws have been passed prohibiting companies from owning other companies. Dagny’s new steel, which is produced by her sometime lover, Hank Rearden (Grant Bowler), has been legislated against because it’s better than other steels. The Union of Railroad Engineers has decided it will not operate Dagny’s trains. Just to show you how bad things have become, a government minister announces "a tax will be applied to the state of Colorado, in order to equalize our national economy." So you see how governments and unions are the enemy of visionary entrepreneurs.

And...

Oh, and there is Wisconsin. Dagny and Hank ride blissfully in Taggart’s new high-speed train, and then Hank suggests they take a trip to Wisconsin, where the state’s policies caused the suppression of an engine that runs on the ozone in the air, or something (the film’s detailed explanation won’t clear this up). They decide to drive there. That’s when you’ll enjoy the beautiful landscape photography of the deserts of Wisconsin. My advice to the filmmakers: If you want to use a desert, why not just refer to Wisconsin as "New Mexico"?

Ayn Rand was a crude Nietzschean. She believed in the Übermensch. She thought she was one, of course. She thought rich industrialists were all Übermenschen and that society couldn't function without them. Corporate leaders in Ayn Rand's bizarre fantasy world are also uber-scientists who personally invent the products their companies produce.

In this story, the country is falling apart. Factories are closing. Cities are falling to wrack and ruin. It's because some rich guy has convinced the other rich guys to leave the ordinary folk--all of us untermenschen--to our own devices.

Apparently the rich guy who organized all this is called John Galt.

Another Libertarian film

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I once saw a "fan film" on YouTube. It was a Star Trek movie that some guy apparently spent a fortune to make. It had a couple of the less successful members of the original cast. And the auteur who made it was obviously an Ayn Rand enthusiast.

First, we see Lt. Uhuru talking to some Vulcans. She tells them they should quit using their slogan, "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few," because it "leads to genocide". Apparently Libertarians believe that Hitler was just trying to help the largest number of people possible.

Later, during a space battle scene, the commander of another space ship says, "I am Captain Galt of the star ship Liberty!"

I don't know if it violated any Libertarian ethic that the fan filmmaker was infringing on various trademarks and copyrights. Libertarians may not know either. They are completely confused by copyright, patents and such.

When my friend dragged me to that Libertarian bread movie all those years ago, we stayed for the discussion at the end. He asked them a question. Do they support copyright and patent laws?

The question completely stumped them! How does a Libertarian justify intellectual property rights---the government giving certain people monopolies on certain things? On the other hand, isn't that the whole point of Atlas Shrugged---capitalist Ubermenschen getting rich off their brilliant ideas and not letting the lower classes have any?