Friday, October 31, 2008

Ayn Rand & Alan Greenspan

This FT piece by James Boyle reminded me of when I wanted to see what all the fuss about Ayn Rand was about and decided to read Atlas Shrugged. Ricardo Hausmann, who is one of the smartest persons I have ever met, told me: why are you reading that? The characters are very flat.

I didn't listen to him and read the book (the whole 645,000 words or 1168 pages, this is 30,000 words more than the 2nd longest book I've ever read ). Why? Well, I thought that if somebody as smart as Alan Greenspan worships her, she must have said something interesting. Of course, Ricardo was right. The book is a piece of junk. I often watch cartoons with my three-year old daughter and find that most cartoon characters are much more complex than the "all good" or "all bad" characters of Ayn Rand. So why does Greenspan like her so much? Who knows?
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