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Meet the CEO Who Followed Ayn Rand

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
The CEO of Sears Fails His Company by Believing in Ayn Rand and the Invisible Hand

Please discuss.

It has long interested me that so many people in America (but apparently not elsewhere to the same extent) take Ayn Rand's notion of human nature seriously. When I first read Rand at age 15, she made sense to me. By age 18 or 19, though, I had learned enough about human nature to know she was practically medieval in her grasp of human psychology, etc. Eddie Lampert appears to be someone who has reached the age of 50 or so while maintaining Rand's adolescent views on human nature. Strange, that.




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Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
If Ayn Rand is a philosopher, so is Chuck Palahniuk, and instead of "rational self-interests" his philosophy for adherents to live to is "never ever be boring."
It has long interested me that so many people in America (but apparently not elsewhere to the same extent) take Ayn Rand's notion of human nature seriously. When I first read Rand at age 15, she made sense to me. By age 18 or 19, though, I had learned enough about human nature to know she was practically medieval in her grasp of human psychology, etc. Eddie Lampert appears to be someone who has reached the age of 50 or so while maintaining Rand's adolescent views on human nature. Strange, that.
Well, I suppose those who find Nietzsche's herds, and sheeps/bird of prey, and emotional drainage ditches, and how pathetic communal efforts are, there are things to be found in Rand.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
I haven't read enough Rand to find the hidden depths. Or even be sure there are any.

If I was trying to distill corporate life through a single lens, I'd be looking at game theory, but ultimately (as alluded to in the OP) it seems juvenile to distill corporate life through a single lens.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
While I think some ego can be healthy to have, there comes a point where acting purely on self-interest does more harm than good. Unfortunately there are many people that are compulsive narcissists with those things.
Also, no matter what business philosophy one has, skill is necessary.
Always worth noting that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' was Divine Providence.
It was? I've never read the man's work, but I'd never heard this
before. Can you quote any of it regarding divine intervention?

You might want to correct the Wikipedia article....
Invisible hand - Wikipedia
...which doesn't attribute Smith's nascent understanding of stochastic systems
yielding emergent properties (broader than just economics) to the divne.
This comports with what I've gleaned from talking to economists.

Although it does mention one Xian socialist with the "God did it" view.....
Invisible hand - Wikipedia
Fortunately, this religious interpretation variant doesn't seem to infect
modern economic thought...what I'd label as "godless capitalism".
Nice ironic ring to it, eh?

Anyway, Adam Smith's work might be analogous to Charles Darwin's,
in that each gave us something of value, but it was incomplete, & is
made more useful by subsequent luminaries who build upon earlier works.
The concept of the invisible hand is still an important tendency, its
limititations notwithstanding.
 
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It was? I've never read the man's work, but I'd never heard this
before. Can you quote any of it regarding divine intervention?

Smith was more a moral philosopher than an economist in the modern sense and his religious views couldn't be separated from his philosophy. He also believed that people needed to be virtuous, rather than assuming that self-interest was a sufficient good in itself.


"But by acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, we necessarily pursue the most effectual means for promoting the happiness of mankind, and may therefore be said, in some sense, to co-operate with the Deity, and to advance as far as in our power the plan of Providence. By acting other ways, on the contrary, we seem to obstruct, in some measure, the scheme which the Author of nature has established for the happiness and perfection of the world, and to declare ourselves, if I may say so, in some measure the enemies of God."
Theory of Moral Sentiments
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Smith was more a moral philosopher than an economist in the modern sense and his religious views couldn't be separated from his philosophy. He also believed that people needed to be virtuous, rather than assuming that self-interest was a sufficient good in itself.

"But by acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, we necessarily pursue the most effectual means for promoting the happiness of mankind, and may therefore be said, in some sense, to co-operate with the Deity, and to advance as far as in our power the plan of Providence. By acting other ways, on the contrary, we seem to obstruct, in some measure, the scheme which the Author of nature has established for the happiness and perfection of the world, and to declare ourselves, if I may say so, in some measure the enemies of God."
Theory of Moral Sentiments
From this quote, I wouldn't infer the meaning of the "invisible hand" to be God's guiding us.
 
From this quote, I wouldn't infer the meaning of the "invisible hand" to be God's guiding us.

Then you will have to read his work in greater depth ;)

For a Christian moral philosopher who believed in the Divine Providence, what else do you think he meant by the Invisible Hand?

The rich … consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Then you will have to read his work in greater depth ;)

For a Christian moral philosopher who believed in the Divine Providence, what else do you think he meant by the Invisible Hand?
I'm prejudiced by conversations with economists, but I inferred what I said earlier (albeit with
more arcane teminology), ie, that in an economy with many people behaving as they naturally
would, there are emerging tendencies (market behaviors). These arise without any authority
dictating the result.
If Smith believed that economics is nothing more than God telling us what to do, he wouldn't
be much of an economist. (He could never earn a PhD with a thesis based upon that.)
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Although it does mention one Xian socialist with the "God did it" view.....
Invisible hand - Wikipedia
Fortunately, this religious interpretation variant doesn't seem to infect
modern economic thought...what I'd label as "godless capitalism".
Nice ironic ring to it, eh?
The "invisible hand" is supposed to be the concept of the "unseen market forces" that drive Capitalism and supply/demand. (supply, consumer demand, scarcity, overhead costs for businesses) Adam Smith coined the term in Wealth of Nations, and it seems about as ill-thought and impotent as the "invisible hand" of god. Or maybe it did work that way during Smith's time, but today there is far too much clear, blatant, and obvious manipulation to believe in such fairy tales.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
The "invisible hand" is supposed to be the concept of the "unseen market forces" that drive Capitalism and supply/demand. (supply, consumer demand, scarcity, overhead costs for businesses) Adam Smith coined the term in Wealth of Nations, and it seems about as ill-thought and impotent as the "invisible hand" of god. Or maybe it did work that way during Smith's time, but today there is far too much clear, blatant, and obvious manipulation to believe in such fairy tales.
If one sees the "invisible hand" as solely the hand of God, so be it.
But I see it as his realization that basic processes lead to emergent properties,
ie, observable higher order systems with no single direct cause.
Example: The invisible hand of natural selection & evolution.
I side with economists on the usefulness of this metaphor.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Example: The invisible hand of natural selection & evolution.
There isn't really an "invisible hand" though because we can explain natural selection and evolution as a process driven primarily by an organism's environment and random chance.
As for Capitalism, we see far too many examples of blatant manipulation, direct involvements, and things that just would not have happened if someone didn't "push a button" to dismiss it all as an "invisible hand."
I think "puppet" is a better word for it because there is nothing "invisible" about all these factors and variables that go into supply/demand or Capitalism in general.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
There isn't really an "invisible hand" though because we can explain natural selection and evolution as a process driven primarily by an organism's environment and random chance.
As for Capitalism, we see far too many examples of blatant manipulation, direct involvements, and things that just would not have happened if someone didn't "push a button" to dismiss it all as an "invisible hand."
I think "puppet" is a better word for it because there is nothing "invisible" about all these factors and variables that go into supply/demand or Capitalism in general.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the "invisible hand"
being about emergent properties of stochastic processes rather
than control by God or other nefarious central forces.
 
If Smith believed that economics is nothing more than God telling us what to do, he wouldn't
be much of an economist. (He could never earn a PhD with a thesis based upon that.)

He was a moral philosopher ;)

Anyway, it is not 'God telling us what to do', it was 'it works because of Divine Providence'. Something that works due to DP, doesn't necessarily work if people lack virtue, which goes back to Smith's moral philosophy.
 

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
One should learn about both objectivism and communism as adolescents so the two adolescent ideologies can cancel each other out before you actually become an adult and have to live in reality.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the "invisible hand"
being about emergent properties of stochastic processes rather
than control by God or other nefarious central forces.
I'm not trying to say there are nefarious central forces, but rather the actions of decisions and choices of people that we can see having an influence on the market. During the mid-18th century it was a lot to take in and may have seemed invisible, but today our economic texts are filled with terms and concepts that drive this so-called "invisible hand."
It's more of an argument of semantics, that the hand isn't invisible, and that it's a lazy dismissal of things that are driving markets, and "invisible hand" suggests a quasi-religious connotation that all we need is faith and it is beyond our control.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
He was a moral philosopher ;)

Anyway, it is not 'God telling us what to do', it was 'it works because of Divine Providence'. Something that works due to DP, doesn't necessarily work if people lack virtue, which goes back to Smith's moral philosophy.
And yet people who lack virtue do not cease to exist on thin air, do not float away due to gravity no longer applying to them, do not lose the ability to learn, act and interact with other people.

It is a curious thing, that divine providence. It has a knack for being irrelevant despite presumably being incredibly important.
 
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