Atlas Shrugged Part II – The Movie

I just went to see the second of a planned three-part movie based on Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.” I was greatly impressed. The acting was great, and the message was clear. It’s definitely worth a visit to the movie theater to see this. It wouldn’t hurt to see Part I beforehand, but it’s not absolutely necessary.

When I heard that all the actors in Part II would be different from those in Part I, I was a bit dismayed. I thought the actors in the first movie did a superb job given the budget and time constraints and feared the new actors would not do as well. However, I understood that the low budget of the first movie and the possibility that it would not earn enough money to produce the second one resulted in the producers not being able to negotiate future options for the actors. This meant that if the original actors had moved on to other projects, new actors would have to be contracted. This is what happened. However, my concerns were soon allayed. The second group of actors was also superb. Actually, there were more actors I recognized from other shows and movies in Part II than in Part I.

For those of you not familiar with “Atlas Shrugged,” the premise is that the American government is putting more and more pressure on businesses to conform to a number of laws and mandates. Because of this, the creative people of the country are one by one disappearing, leaving their floundering businesses behind. In essence, the men and women of the mind, those that make the motor of the world run, are going on strike. We often hear of workers for various businesses going on strike to protest what they perceive as unfair treatment by their employers. Well, in this movie, it’s the employers who are striking by withdrawing themselves, along with their talents, totally from the world. They are tired of being the ones that work tirelessly to create products that benefit all of mankind only to have their businesses raided by the government and their wealth confiscated. They feel that to comply with the government’s mandates only implies that they sanction those mandates. So, rather than comply, they in essence say, “Adios. Take my business and run it the best you can without me.”

I, for one, realize that people who are able to move the world in a massive way are few and far between. It requires a lot of guts to put your money and reputation on the line in order to create something of value. Think of people like Edison, Ford, Gates, Jobs, and so on. These are people who gave it their all to produce products that would transform the world. They didn’t force anyone to support them, but rather had a vision of producing products that the people of the world would want so much they would voluntarily part with their money to obtain them. Yet, there are those who claim that a large part of the money they obtained by voluntary trade should be paid back to society in some form or fashion. By some twisted logic, they believe that the products they produced were not sufficient payment regardless of how much benefit those products conveyed to the world. They believe that those who are successful either did something wrong or they just simply have a duty to share their success with those who are less successful.

Ayn Rand understood what happens to a country where government attempts to equalize wealth by force. She was a young girl living in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. To escape the madness, she immigrated to the United States. However, to her dismay, she soon saw that the US was moving in the same direction that Russia had, albeit at a slower pace rather than through revolutionary means. Over time she developed her philosophy of freedom and began writing justifications for it via fictional novels and non-fictional articles and books. She truly understood what makes the motor of the world work, and she desired to warn Americans that they were going down the wrong path. Let’s face it. There are many talented people in the world, but only a fraction of them have the brains and the brawn and the wherewithal to pull together a multitude of resources and jump through all the hoops necessary to bring a successful product to the marketplace. We need to be applauding these people and encouraging more of this behavior by letting them keep the fruits of their labor, not discouraging them with over-regulation and heavy taxes. After all, the more successful they become, the more help they will need, and thus the more people they will hire. This type of growth is the real engine of job creation.

Even though Atlas Shrugged, the novel, is now 55 years old, its warning still rings loud and clear. Let’s stop punishing the producers and rewarding the looters. Let’s see how bright our nation can shine when the entrepreneurial spirit is totally unleashed. This is the message of true hope and change.

GREED

I recently posted a one-sentence thought about greed on several social media sites. I decided to expand on this thought with a blog post. Here is what the original post said.


“Greed can be found more in the poor who demand the goods of others than in the wealthy who earn their own.”


I have found that a number of people balk at such comments and may think I have something against poor people. But just the opposite is true. I want all of us to live in a society where it is possible for poor people to become wealthy. I have nothing against poor people, but I do have something against being poor. Therefore, to better understand my one-sentence thought, let’s take a look at a typical definition of the word greed.


“An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.” -- The Free Dictionary


Most people tend to concentrate on the first part of this definition, “…more than one needs”, rather than the second part, “…more than one deserves”. I tend to think of the former as a good type of greed and the latter as a bad type of greed. Why? Because of the consequences of each. Let’s take a closer look.

When someone says that another person is greedy because they have a great desire to have more than they need, a number of questions need to be asked. How much does a person truly need? Does need end at the point of survival? Or does need mean having enough to live comfortably? What do you consider to be an excessive desire as opposed to a moderate desire? Does a person’s actions in pursuit of more possessions play into the equation at all?

Here in the United States as well as other developed nations, the free enterprise system has provided its citizens with the means to become wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations. In countries where free enterprise is non-existent, the populace tend to live in poverty. Sure, the leaders may live a life of opulence, but the average person does not, and has very little chance of getting out of his situation apart from leaving for a freer nation. Most countries today have mixed economies, meaning that the economy is free to some degree, but controlled by the government to some degree also. In general, the wealth of a nation increases with the degree to which it is free.

So, what happens when a greedy entrepreneur decides he wants more than he needs. WEALTH! That entrepreneur, in order to gain what he so desires, must develop a product or service that other people want and are willing to pay him more than he put into creating it. That provides the entrepreneur profit. But it also benefits the buyer because they needed or wanted the product or service more than the money they paid for it. It also benefits all those people the entrepreneur had to hire to design, develop, and produce his product. Most people understand this. When people think of greedy people, most are probably thinking of the ones that are willing to cheat or steal to get their wealth. Yes, those actions are wrong. But one must keep in mind that it is not the greed that is wrong, but rather the means by which they went about satisfying their greed. Let’s simplify. There is nothing wrong with my desiring to have a new flat screen TV, and there is nothing wrong with me working at a job to earn the money to buy the TV. However, if I just went down to Best Buy and took it without paying, that’s stealing, and it is wrong. Yet, my desire for the TV was still not wrong, just the means I chose to satisfy my desire.

This leads to the second definition of greed: an excessive desire for more than one deserves. What does one deserve? This should be easy. A person deserves whatever they can obtain honestly. If a person has skills that only earns them $10,000 per year, then $10,000 in goods and services is what they deserve. If a person has skills where they can honestly earn $6,000,000 per year, then they deserve $6,000,000 in goods and services. To say otherwise is to create artificial boundaries. Yes, it sometimes appears that there are a large number of people who become wealthy by cheating and stealing. I personally believe this is mostly perception rather than reality. The press writes a lot about rich crooks, but very little about rich honest people. So, in our minds, we tend to think that a large proportion of rich people got that way by cheating. But even if I am wrong, my point is still valid. It’s the actions one takes to satisfy his greed that determines right and wrong, not the greed itself.

So, can poor people be greedy in the sense of having an excessive desire for more than they deserve. Well, of course they can. And they can cheat and steal just like rich people can. They may not steal as much as the rich, but the principle is still the same. It is wrong to cheat and steal to obtain that which we did not earn. Acting on this type of greed almost always requires one to do wrong. Why? Because how else can one obtain more than they deserve? I can only think of one moral way. Charity. This is where people voluntarily donate time, goods, and money to help those who got a bad break in life though no fault of their own. Yet, there are quite a few people who believe they are due more than they can obtain honestly or through charity and are willing to commit a crime to obtain it. Or, and this is a big OR, they get government to obtain their largesse for them.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing more and more of these days are able-bodied people mooching off the working public via a state-sanctioned welfare program. If one were to suggest that these particular people should be removed from the rolls, many protests would arise because this charity is now thought of as something deserved.

So, let’s summarize. Desiring more wealth is not wrong in and of itself regardless of your status in life. Call it greed if you want, but don’t call it wrong. I call it wanting to improve your lot in life. Even if you consider it wrong for the super wealthy to desire more, surely you can’t believe that it is wrong for a person to desire more, even strongly desire more, if they live at subsistence level (meaning they have just what they need and no more). Would you be willing to walk up to a frail person in a third world country who is surviving, but not thriving, and tell him he is greedy for desiring more out of life? If so, then shame on you. All people should be free to pursue whatever status they so desire. And therein lies the problem. The countries where the people do not thrive are the ones where the leaders are oppressive. Most of these nations’ citizens probably desire a better life, meaning more wealth. What they need are new leaders that allow them to be free.

Now, back to my one-liner. “Greed can be found more in the poor who demand the goods of others than in the wealthy who earn their own.” Here I am using the word “greed” in the sense of desiring more than one deserves. As such, I believe my statement to be true.

On Wealth and Giving

This morning I heard David Jeremiah on the radio talking about tithes and offerings. He talked about how he and his wife had recently discussed what they felt like the Lord was leading them to do in the way of giving. He said that the older he gets the more he realizes how little a person really needs to live. Although he didn’t state it explicitly, Jeremiah seemed to be implying that Christians needed to scale back obtaining things they simply want and give more to the Lord instead. I would like to express my view on this matter.

First, one has to be clear about what is meant by needs and wants. Do needs only include those things required to survive at a subsistence level or can they also include things that elevate us some degree above subsistence level. If the former, then it really is true that very little is needed. These would consist of: a small shelter to protect us from the elements, a minimal amount of basic foods for nourishment, and very basic clothing to protect us from the winter cold and the summer sun. Multi-roomed brick houses with fine decorations are not needed. Twenty-dollar steaks and other high end culinary delights are not required. Designer clothes are not essential. Throw out those TVs, radios, game machines, phones, computers, fine furniture, dish washers, clothes washers and dryers, plush mattresses, etc. None of those things are necessary to maintain a subsistence level existence.

But I doubt seriously that Jeremiah was talking about scaling our lives back this much. He hasn’t done it and I don’t see a mass movement amongst believers to leap into a poverty level existence. So, if God’s people are allowed to live above the poverty line, how far above it can they go? Once one steps above that line, I can see no logical stopping point. At every step along the way, one can question his own actions. You want to sleep on a nice $500 mattress rather than the floor so your back won’t hurt. But is preventing your hurting back more important than preventing a destitute person from starving to death? Is the convenience of having a machine wash your dishes more important than providing shelter to a person exposed to the elements? And on and on the questions can be asked. At what point should the answer be that my comforts are less important than another’s survival?

Rather than questioning his spending habits, a person could choose to go the route that Jesus told the rich ruler in Luke 18 he must follow to inherit eternal life: sell everything and give to the poor. This Biblical story has been repeated so much that we sort of gloss over how incredibly radical this command is. Sell everything and give to the poor! I have often wondered how this would play out in real life should a person actually do this. First, the rich man would himself immediately become poor and need the assistance of others who are selling everything and giving to the poor. That is unless the rich man had a source of income to sustain him in the future. Assuming he does, is he required to continually sell all new possessions that come his way or is this just a onetime event leaving him free to accumulate wealth in the future with impunity? It would seem that the answer to this is that he would have to continually turn over his wealth to the poor lest his new possessions take control of his life as the old possessions had.

I personally think that as long as a person has earned his possessions honestly, then he is free to live at any standard of living he can afford. In countries where this has been allowed, wealth beyond what even a king could have imagined 500 years ago has been created. Look at society today here in the US as well as in other relatively free nations around the world. It is absolutely phenomenal! Now think with me about what would happen if everyone decided to quit buying things not necessary to simply exist. The world economy would be decimated. If people quit buying TVs, iPods, appliances, large houses, fancy clothes, and so on, worldwide unemployment would probably top 50% or higher. This is due to the efficiency in the current production of necessary items. It does not take the entire working population to produce these things. So, for there to be work available for everyone else, they of necessity must produce wanted items rather than needed items. Just look at what has happened in the last couple of years with the economic downturn. Just a small number of people withholding spending on luxury items has caused unemployment in the US to top 10%. That is nothing compared to what would happen if there was a mass exodus from high-on-the-hog living.

So, is it better to stop living an affluent life, thus putting billions of people out of work; or is it better to continue to acquire more and more unnecessary stuff, thus keeping billions of people employed. It seems to me that it is much, much better for everybody to live as affluently as possible and keep people employed than live modestly and cause many to go on welfare, assuming there’s any welfare money available under such conditions. In addition, it is affluence that allows us to provide an abundance of emergency help to people in dire straits like the people of Haiti. If those who are able to live abundantly fail to do so, then they can cause as much devastation and suffering for the poor of the world as can a natural disaster.