12/3/2023 0 Comments Atlas shrigged os boring![]() 3 This theory is widely accepted today, especially by the Left. This is known as the “labor theory of value,” and it was originally advanced by classical economists including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. The general idea is that the economic value of a good or service reflects the physical labor that went into making it. Samuelson and company contend that wealth results essentially from labor applied to raw materials (or “natural resources”)-and by “labor” they mean physical or manual labor, not mental labor. To see the difference between the modern approach to economics and that dramatized in Atlas, let us consider the essence of each with respect to six key areas: the source of wealth, the role of the businessman, the nature of profit, the essence of competition, the result of production, and the purpose of money. But his text and those influenced by it, which represent the modern approach to the subject, have largely contributed to the way economics is taught and viewed today. ![]() Nor is people’s boredom with economics due to Samuelson’s book per se. Lest one assume that the reason Atlas is more exciting than Economics is merely a matter of the different mediums, one being fiction and the other nonfiction, observe that Rand’s nonfiction-and much other nonfiction-is hands-down more exciting than many works of fiction (ever read The Catcher in the Rye?). And whereas the truths in Atlas are dramatized with passion and excitement, the falsehoods in Economics are conveyed by way of lifeless, boring prose. Conversely, although Economics is a work of nonfiction, and although Samuelson was a Nobel-winning economist, his book is full of economic falsehoods. 1 Although Atlas is a work of fiction, and although Rand was not an economist, her novel is replete with economic truths. The second is the quintessential economics text of the 20th and 21st centuries, and is generally assigned reading for beginning students in the field. The first is a story about the role of reason in man’s life and about what happens to an economy when the men of the mind go on strike. The answers may be gleaned by comparing two books, each of which has sold millions of copies over the past five decades: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957) and Paul Samuelson’s Economics (1948). Why, then, do so many people regard this science as boring? And what could remedy the situation? In other words, economics studies one of the major means by which people live and achieve happiness. We live in a material world we produce material values in order to live and prosper and we exchange these values for those produced by others in order to live even better lives. Economics studies the production and exchange of material values in a division of labor society. But given what economics properly studies, this should not be the case. Author’s note: This essay assumes that the reader has read Atlas Shrugged it contains many spoilers.Įconomics is widely regarded today as dry, lifeless, boring.
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