myrmepropagandist
In Atlas Shrugged the pro-capitalist novel by Ayn Rand that celebrates and mythologizes the power of the singular inventor, new technology, innovation and the markets Hank Rearden is a CEO and a material scientist. He invents a new alloy that is greenish blue, stronger than steel but also much lighter. In that era unicorn technologies were imagined to be advances in material science.
Everyone is scared to try the new metal even though testing shows that it is clearly better than steel.
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myrmepropagandist
Danny Taggart runs a railroad company given to her by her dad. She is the only one brave enough to use it for rails. The evil government wants to regulate it, but it's just plain better than steel and I think Danny breaks the law to use it anyway? (I read this book 30 years ago.)
I remember being disappointed that Danny was only a CEO because of nepotism.
I also distinctly remember an oddly defensive bit of the book where Rand justified Rearden naming the metal after himself.
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myrmepropagandist
I only read all of Rand's books so I could enter that essay contest. They still only give away $25,000 like it's 1994, which seems little stingy in this economy.
If you have a teen who's trying to game it: tell them to try generating the essay with an LLM and then bragging about why they did it in the essay itself. I think that might work.
Although, I don't really think it's worth it anymore with inflation. They need to increase it to $250K at minimum.
But, about the blue-green metal.
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myrmepropagandist
A key point of the book is that the Rearden metal is, in fact, really useful. It really is lighter than steel and much stronger. The evil socialists from the government in the book worry about how the new metal will destroy the good-paying jobs in steel mills across the country.
I wrote my essay on an Apple II at my grandmother's house in Homestead, PA. This small town just outside of Pittsburgh was once the steel capital of the whole world.
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myrmepropagandist
The sensible brick houses clustered on the hills. The ruins of the factory were down by the river and I spent many hours exploring the crumbling buildings and mysterious pits. I'd try to imagine what it was like when the factory was active producing spools of steel wire as tall as a shed, like thimbles of thread for a giant.
The steel "wire" was so thick that you couldn't even bend it. That was the scale of that place.
But all of it was gone.
And Rearden metal isn't real.
5/5
Deb Nam-Krane
@futurebird I read The Fountainhead as an adult, and then was like, nope, not going to touch Atlas Shrugged.
I've gotten bits and pieces of the real story about those mills. Best bits so far were from The New American Poverty by Michael Harrington.
myrmepropagandist
And make no mistake I would easily agree with Ms. Rand if the metal were real. But, the disappearance of the mills is a different kind of story, one without a heroic inventor, or a magical new metal.
peachfront
same, Deb, except i read The Fountainhead in high school, so i found it even more TOO LONG as well as too much "this dude thinks he's better than everybody else"
the girl who told me to read it still had Atlas Shrugged checked out so i checked out that one-- being shocked at how openly preachy The Fountainhead was, i was quite happy to conclude i need never read another book by this author...
i should have known, the girl who recced it was also the one who told me to read Time Enough for Love, Heinlein's TOO LONG manifesto on a man's right to **** anyone including his immediate female family members...
EEK
chop this nonsense down to 200 pages apiece with just the most ridiculous parts remaining & publish them as satire & you might actually have something fun (maybe a la Chuck Palahniuk) but these "libertarian" authors wouldn't know satire or fun or a sense of humor if it bit them on the butt
gbsills
@futurebird I am so glad I avoided essay contests. It's Phillip K. Dick all the way for this lazy boy.
Jonathan Schofield
@futurebird I read a couple of Rand books in my late teens via my obsession with Rush.
I don’t remember much about the books other than them being pretty boring.
The realisation about what Rand stood for unfortunately came later
swope
On the topic of steel, maybe part of the story is unions inventing non-disposable people.
myrmepropagandist
That guy in the video is a puller! It's kind of hard to explain, but that is a very glamours and well-respected job among steel workers because it's very dangerous and takes a lot of skill and strength.
My grandfather wanted that job very badly, but my grandmother got him a job in the steel mill hospital instead as a janitor.
Now "why did they need an onsite hospital at the mill?" you might ask. Why indeed.
I can still remember grandpa gushing about the wirepullers... good lordt
JWcph, Radicalized By Decency
@futurebird As should be painfully obvious thanks to *gestures at everything* the Rand class still, despite all evidence to the contrary, believe in the singularly transformative invention by that one guy who happens to be, well, a guy & also already upperclass & rich.
Their entire world view rests on a complete fabrication, magical thinking as only a child can possibly believe.
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