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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Atlas Shrugged and unemployment

One of the most famous passages penned by Ayn Rand discusses the value of money, especially gold, as the epitome of value and virtue. In the United States, we have a simple way of placing value on things, we price them. While there is some talk about the dignitiy and moral worth of every person, at the end of the day we value the work that people do, which is an important part of their personality, by paying them different amounts of money. The basic idea is that money should usually approximate value and that people who contribute to society will obtain wealth. We believe this so strongly that there are scarcely other ways to express value. Engagement rings, large weddings, the price of a fancy dinner, private planes, nice cars, a chic apartment, a nice home, a good neighborhood, a large television, all of these things are ways of advertising status and displaying the value of our lives to strangers, family, friends, and lovers.

I am not advocating that we all give up creature comforts or that the things we buy are in some way all evil. My sole point is that they are not signs of virtue or talent either. The underlying statement of Ayn Rand is that property is acquired through virtue and innovation. That the accumulation of wealth is somehow morally praiseworthy. The converse was also argued forcefully; those who do not amass wealth are morally blameworthy, lazy, unintelligent, and destructive of society.

Neither of these things is true. For the most part, people want to be productive for reasons other than just money. Also, the most important predictor of social class at death, is what social class a person is born into. In other words, what seperates the haves from the have nots has more to do with differences in opportunities at birth than anything else.  

Nevertheless, we live in a society that places fundamental value on the myth that social status is conferred based on hard work and talent. For my part, even though I know that a broad downturn in the economy has led to my current personal long term unemployment crisis, I nevertheless ponder every day whether I have anything of value to contribute to our society. After all, no one so far is willing to pay me for my work.

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