Understanding Ayn Rand | 5 Minute Video — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:02Who is John Galt?
2. 0:03This is one of the most famous  questions in modern literature.
3. 0:07Even today, over 50 years after it was  written, you'll hear people asking it.
4. 0:13Why?
5. 0:14Because it recalls the riveting  suspense story, heroic characters,
6. 0:18and powerful ideas portrayed in the  bestselling novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
7. 0:24Born in St. Petersburg, Russia on February  2, 1905, Rand became one the most celebrated
8. 0:30authors and philosophers of the 20th century. Her  most famous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas
9. 0:37Shrugged, still sell hundreds of thousands  of copies every year around the world.
10. 0:42Rand lived through the early  years of the Russian Revolution,
11. 0:46saw her father's pharmacy business confiscated  by the Bolsheviks, and experienced the horrors of
12. 0:52communism firsthand.
13. 0:54She longed to emigrate to America. In  1926, she did—and never looked back.
14. 1:00To Rand, the United States meant freedom.
15. 1:03She saw the Founding Fathers as heroes. They  created a country based on individual rights.
16. 1:10"Man's right to his own life, to his own liberty,  to the pursuit of his own happiness," she said,
17. 1:17means that every individual has a "right to  exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing
18. 1:23himself to others nor sacrificing others  to himself"—nor to the government.
19. 1:29The practical results of the American  system, Rand said, could be seen in the
20. 1:33skyline of New York City.
21. 1:35"America's skyscrapers," she noted,  "were not built by public funds
22. 1:40nor for a public purpose: they were built  by the energy, initiative, and wealth of
23. 1:46private individuals for personal profit.  And, instead of impoverishing the people,
24. 1:52these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher,  kept raising the people's standard of living."
25. 1:59Rand advocated pure  capitalism, which she described
26. 2:03as a system in which
27. 2:04"the government acts only as a policeman  that protects man's rights."
28. 2:09No bailouts, no special favors for big business,  no government intervention into the economy.
29. 2:16When people are free to produce and  trade, and when the government is limited
30. 2:20to protecting rights, everyone benefits.  Individuals thrive. Societies prosper.
31. 2:27How do we know this?
32. 2:28Compare freer, more capitalist societies  to less free, more statist ones:
33. 2:34In Rand's day —
34. 2:35America compared to the Soviet Union.
35. 2:37West Germany to East Germany.
36. 2:39More recently:
37. 2:40South Korea to North Korea.
38. 2:42Colombia to Venezuela.
39. 2:45Such differences were painfully obvious to Rand. So were their causes.
40. 2:50In Atlas Shrugged, she showed how  easily a free society can collapse
41. 2:54into a dictatorship. The heroine, Dagny Taggart,
42. 2:58works tirelessly and brilliantly to  save her family's railroad business,
43. 3:02while ever-increasing government interventions  destroy businesses and crush the economy.
44. 3:08Meanwhile, one by one, the top producers across  various industries mysteriously disappear. No
45. 3:15one knows where they have gone. The only clue is  a question they leave behind: Who is John Galt?
46. 3:22As the economy crumbles, how do politicians,  bureaucrats, and academics react?
47. 3:27They blame "the greedy businessman" and  decry the profit motive and free markets.
48. 3:33Their solution: more government intervention  which, of course, only makes the problem worse.
49. 3:39Sound familiar?
50. 3:40Atlas Shrugged is a cautionary tale about pursuing  equality over excellence—state control over free
51. 3:47markets—but it's also about the power of  the individual and the power of reason.
52. 3:53The individual's reasoning mind, Rand argued,  is his tool of knowledge—his only means of
53. 3:59understanding what is true or false, how the  world works, what is good or bad for his life.
54. 4:05This is the theme of Rand's work more broadly:  In order to thrive, to achieve happiness,
55. 4:12the individual must think for himself  and live by the judgment of his own mind.
56. 4:17To do this people must be free— free to voluntarily exchange ideas,
57. 4:22goods, and services for mutual benefit; free  to speak their minds without fear. For this,
58. 4:29she regarded capitalism not only as the  best, but as the only moral social system.
59. 4:35"Capitalism does not tell men to suffer, but  to pursue enjoyment and achievement," she
60. 4:41argued. "Capitalism does not preach  passivity, humility, resignation,
61. 4:46but independence, self-confidence,  self-reliance." Above all, Rand emphasized,
62. 4:53capitalism does not permit anyone  to expect or demand the unearned.
63. 4:58Is this the system America lives under  now? No, said Rand. She called capitalism
64. 5:04the "unknown ideal" because it has never  been fully implemented, even in America.
65. 5:09Ayn Rand's ideas on capitalism,  individualism, and reason
66. 5:13have attracted millions of people  to her novels, essays and lectures.
67. 5:17And still do.
68. 5:19Who is John Galt?
69. 5:21I'm Gloria Alvarez with the Objective  Standard Institute for Prager University.