"When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making . . .
In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong."
The engineer is a worker too, and so were those who built the factory. A capitalist got the factory built because he is the only one who has the capital to do so, workers can't just start up their own factories under capitalism. That's kind of the point of capitalism. The only interesting argument she makes is how the machinery a worker works with is also accumulated labor, but it's not like we exclude that. But we still state that construction workers, architects, engineers and factory workers are all exploited for their labor value. Ayn Rand clearly is unable to see exploitation in aggregate, nobody here believes that only assembly line workers are exploited and construction workers, truck drivers, shelf fillers and the other hundreds of types of workers who stand between the assembly line and a finished product in the supermarket aren't exploited.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Stephen Jay Gould
Intellect is only one part of the equation. Opportunity is another.
Equally, Rand's quote there says the man at the bottom who contributes nothing receives all the benefit of their brains. Aside from the fact that the man at the bottom's labour will allow the inventor to invent, the engineer to engineer, and so on, it's also true that every person in the system benefits from the inventor's brain. If everyone, even the inventor, benefits equally from the invention, does it make sense to use the word exploitation? Surely the word benefits would fit better than exploit. "Such is the pattern of benefits for which you have damned the strong" doesn't sound so bad.
Robert Gray
This is such a simple fucking problem, that she missed it says an enormous amount about Rand's fucking intellect. It was both the laborer and the designer who both made it fucking possible, but it is the laborer who fucking works and could injure themselves in the manufacturing proccess that labor rights exist.
That and whichever designer is getting far prettier a penny to begin with; that's the point. Unless we live in some kind of fantasy world, the laborer doesn't earn as much as the people upstairs, and Rand's argument relies on the idea that there is an unfair disparity towards the top, rather than the bottom.
That doesn't exist
Carson Jackson
me, 2 years ago: wall of text explaining why she's talking shit and how even modern bourgeois economics can be used to disprove her point leading into an argument about whether or not bitcoin is deflationary me, today: shoot her square between the eyes
Connor Rivera
Engineers, scientists, and other brain-workers are working class. With the case of engineering, while its true that engineers can make good money because there are relatively few of them and leverage their knowledge, social prestige, and financial resources to either create their own businesses or join upper-management, most engineers are workers. Lifetime earnings among engineers and many other technical fields that pay well off the bat actually aren't as grand as they are made out to be.
Jackson Stewart
not sure I said otherwise, but very true.
Evan Sullivan
Shes already dead though after living on welfare for years on end like the leech she accused others of being
Asher Lopez
I was just adding onto what you said for the lurkers benefit. I didn't mean to imply that you didn't think so or that I took issue with anything in your post.
Nolan Perez
This is permitted precisely because individual inventors are usually forced to sign out of any claim to intellectual property when they get employed by a company.
Charles Parker
How many members of the Bell Labs team that invented the transistor became billionaires owning multinational companies? None! How many members of the Xerox team that invented the graphical user interface became billionaires owning multinational companies? None! How many members of the ARPA team that invented the internet became billionaires owning multinational companies? None! How many members of the CERN team that developed the HTTP became billionaires owning multinational companies? None! How many college dropouts who ripped off an OS already on the market became the richest man in the world? I can think of one.
Ethan Hill
Notice how she doesn't even try to come up with any justification for the obscene earnings of the financier or landlord.
Carter Phillips
I've heard this retarded argument a few times before. Fortunately the LTV empirically proves that the market in a capitalist system judges the value of a commodity based on the average amount of labour time put in to produce it. This isn't a biased spin, its literally just the economic reality. Vague, untestable feelsy bullshit like "mental energy" doesn't reliably predict a product's price, a representation of its value. The worker is measurably robbed of fair compensation for his work.
But this is just how civilization functions, some people contribute a lot and others don't. Was Ayn Rand mentally retarded?
Jack Cooper
Fuck ayn rand with a razor tipped dildo
Nicholas King
Was Rand technocrat gang?
Gabriel Collins
Not sure if that is the point - it is not the value of the commodity that is invented, but the commodity itself. the LTV is an accurate model of describing value, but it doesn't describe why the product would be produced in the first place (I think)
Ryan Wilson
Ayn Rand is unbearably retarded and people who take her or her "philosophy" seriously should be put down.
Schockley semiconductor never expanded overseas, went bankrupt after all the talent left, and William Schockley died a bitter old man rambling about eugenics.
Anthony Adams
Her argument relies on the idea that these inventions or ideas can be attributed to one specific person. This ignores that all scientific advances are built on knowledge and ideas that other people came up with. Or even that they are in a position to succeed based on other people's labor. Bill Gate's success is predicated on him being born into a society where he could succeed. How would he have gotten educated without the people who built the university he went to?
Aiden Foster
PEAK IDEALISM
Grayson Rogers
reminder she died using big gubmint socialist medicare like the parasites she hated
Brandon Brown
Just outright wrong.
Like, the first paragraph is pure fantasy.
Ryder Clark
I know, but he's responsible for creating silicon valley and would've been a fucking gorillionaire if he wasn't a paranoid autocrat.
Jacob Moore
1/mental energy is always assumed to be immanent but never measurable, when materially it can only ever be a portion of the body's food-energy expenditure. 2/the intellect is assumed to be a world of its own, which is why the scope of the nvm i got to go
And how all this money fit in tiny Chinese foxconn workers wage?
Lucas Moore
This argument could easily be used to justify capitalism
Landon Phillips
...
Nolan Clark
Unless you start out with enough capital to get a business going, none of your productive genius will do you a lick of good. Anyone who is moneyed can just go out, buy stocks in reputable companies, and he will never lack for income. No productive genius involved - at most some due diligence in picking what you buy.
