If you haven't read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, READ IT NOW!!!!

Riker - this is my favorite book of all time, hands down.

Summarize it.

No.

Read.

I am (sheepishly) reading it for the first time, and I am absolutely blown away...

And to read it now, with what is going on in the world, in government and the economy...

Crazy!

Last Edited by Riker on 05/20/2009 01:33 PM

Good, but I also have some reservations too.

Eer...


Give an introduction at least.


Why should I read it?

We can discuss them when I finish it :-)

That's what the amazon link was for! You can even read an excerpt.

Atlas Shrugged audio book with e-book

[link to www.mininova.org]

will read tonight

Do uis a favor... when you finish... don't go around posting anything with the name John Galt.

Hands down, the most incredible work of fiction EVER written. It changed my life.

atlas shrugged summary die you useless eaters .

Great book!

But what's the point?

We have socialists dominating the Democratic party and religiously inspired anti-abortionists dominating the Republican party. Corporate interests and labor unions now run the country behind-the-scenes to distort and manipulate markets and get public subsidies in one form or another.

There is no free market capitalism in our country anymore.

Last Edited by Andromeda on 05/20/2009 01:39 PM

I agree. I was 30 or so when I read this. I wish I'd read it sooner.

As in...?

As the novel opens, protagonist Dagny Taggart, executive of the railroad company Taggart Transcontinental, attempts to keep the company alive in difficult economic times marked by collectivism and statism. Dagny's brother, James Taggart, the railroad's President, seems peripherally aware of the company's troubles but will not make any difficult choices, preferring to avoid responsibility for any actions. While this unfolds, Dagny is disappointed to discover that Francisco d'Anconia, her childhood friend, first love, and king of the copper industry, appears to have become a worthless playboy who is destroying his own business.

In the final section of the novel, Taggart discovers the truth about John Galt, who is leading an organized "strike" against those who use the force of law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments of society's productive members. With the collapse of the nation and its rapacious government all but certain, Galt emerges to reconstruct a society that will celebrate individual achievement and enlightened self-interest, delivering a long speech (fifty-six pages in one paperback edition) serving to explain the novel's theme and Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, in the book's longest single chapter.[23]

The fuckin phone book has truth, your choice doesn't

and it really sucks the big ole wiennie.

There is no true way to summarize this book because it is a life-changing experience and only through the experience do you 'get it'. But not all people can read it. Not sure why.

read it if you want. I read it years ago and again recently.

[link to www.informedtrades.com]

There is an interesting article in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal which is entitled Atlas Shrugged: From Fact to Fiction in 52 Years.

For anyone who has not heard of this book it is a novel written by philosopher, author and playwright Ann Rand in 1957. The purpose of the book was to outline her belief that any government intervention into the economy is not only wrong but end the end causes more harm than good.

As a Russian immigrant to the United States Rand had seen the destruction that communism had caused first hand. In her novel, which is set at an unspecified future, she shows how government intervention during a time of economic sluggishness ends up exacerbating the problem rather and sending the economy into a tailspin.

Many of the stories in the novel bear a very eerie resemblance to what is happening today in the United States and give a strong argument to those who feel that the government intervention that we are seeing today will end up causing more harm than good. It is also a good overview of the macro argument for the short US Stock Market, Government Bonds, and US Dollar points of view.



Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand

Plot Overview
[link to www.sparknotes.com]

Only the entirety of the Illuminati master plan. That is it.

Ayn Rand makes you think. You may or may not agree with her but her book is brilliant.

I smile that she would never want to be called an idealist but her main characters are an expression of her ideals. :)

A good read, much to think about, much to discuss, and certainly a book I could relate to modern world power struggles, the elite, philosophical difference, responsibility, free markets or regulation, free energy ......

Have fun Riker.

Thanks! :-)

Awesome, thanks for posting!

Exactly!

Totally irrelevant fantasy world to what we are in today.

There's one scene where the protagonist goes into a big speech about what money means, like the dollar represents work and the product of one's labor.

If a capitalist when into that kind of rave over the dollar today, he'd be laughed off the panel of talking heads.

:dollartp:

The whole free market capitalism thing is dead, corrupted by insiders and a negligent government.

The book is worth reading as it is a work of existential philosophy that Ayn Rand has described.

lol, for real.

How did the book change your life? Did it give you just another excuse to hate all forms of government -- even the ones that protect average citizens from the abuses of corporate power?

In Atlas, the hero Nat Taggart murders a state legislator who attempts to revoke a charter granted to him.

Basically, the only heroes for Rand are the Super Rich. She opposes any form of regulation to protect ordinary people and workers from the rapacious greed of the chosen Elite.

As she says in the book, the rich are "really alive" while the average working citizens are "savages", "refuse," "inanimate objects," and "imitations of living beings."

Ayn Rand is nothing but a shill for the Corporate Elite.

She has nothing but pure contempt for the working class.

She can go to hell.

[link to www.cliffsnotes.com]

the cliff notes.

The country is in a downward economic spiral with businesses closing and men out of work. Other countries in the world have become socialist Peoples' States and are destitute.


unlike now?