Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002
The free market shrugged
Thomas M. Miovas, Jr.
Even after reading this article several times, I can't decide if Arianna
Huffington is attempting to praise Miss Rand or to smear her by saying she
was wrong to consider American businessmen to be "the symbol of a free
society -- the symbol of America. If and when they perish, civilization
will perish." She's certainly smearing a lot of businessmen with the quote
from the article below:
<HB: <snip> There is one snide remark at the end, but basically I read this
not-clearly-written) article as an attack on American businessmen for *not*
being as AR said they should be.>
Arianna Huffington: The free market shrugged
www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/national/huffington/story/2264028p-2671631c.html
> In "Atlas Shrugged," Rand extolled a two-fisted
> capitalism personified by the kind of businessman
> "who earns what he gets and does not give or take
> the undeserved" and who "does not ask to be paid
> for his failures." Does that description sound
> remotely like anything or anyone you read about in
> the business pages these days?
I think she's trying to say that Miss Rand's idealistic view of the
American businessman is an unrealistic (and perhaps unrealizable) fantasy.
In other words, she's trying to smuggle in the idea that freedom leads to
corruption without coming right out and saying it.
<HB: I don't get that. For one thing, she praises Warren Buffet as " a
living, breathing John Galt.">
One could probably make the case that it was precisely a mangled regulatory
policy that lead to the Enron breakdown in the first place, rather than
attempting to say it was a capitalistic system that will inevitably lead to
such corrupt business practices.
