Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand is one of my most influential writers. Her books and articles have influenced my thinking during my teen age. Ayn Rand has also been a significant influence on Alan Greenspan who has been the proponent of market fundamentalism that had led to the current financial crisis.

Sofia Ghori Saleem in The Hindu, writes about this:

She has inspired politicians, presidents and economists across the globe. One notable and illustrious follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy is former United States Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan’s policies dominated the world economic situation for decades. In his early years, Greenspan was part of her close knit and exclusive club called the “Collectives” that met every week to write, discuss and promote her ideas. In those days he wrote spirited commentary for her newsletter with the fervour of a new convert. So great was her influence on him that he invited her to attend his swearing in ceremony in Washington D.C.

Sofia also questions,

Last year, when the world banks came crashing down and the housing market was brought to its knees owing to the mortgage crises, Greenspan expressed shocked disbelief at the magnitude of the credit crisis and admitted that there was a flaw in his hands-off unfettered free market ideology. The laissez faire philosophy whose cornerstone is self regulation of financial institutions proved to be an oxymoron.

In the Universe defined by Objectivism, with the absence of a supreme being, who will shoulder the responsibility for the free fall of the free markets? If selfishness is a virtue, then what is greed?

Contrary to this view that Ayn Rand's Objectivism is at the root of the crisis, many ayn rand's followers are clamoring against the Bail out.

from a Time Article, "What would Ayn Rand have done?"

But as the largest bailout in government history unfolded in almost dizzying waves over recent days, a very different view prevailed at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, an outpost of free-market, anti-government thinking located just a few blocks from the newly aggressive and highly interventionist Department of Treasury in downtown Washington.

"It's a complete disaster," said Yaron Brook, the executive director of the center. "Its a form of national socialism of the financial markets...This is socialism 101."

They are implying that selfishness of a few should not undermine the capitalist view.

Maybe capitalism of Ayn Rand is also idealistic?

is Globalization a giant ponzi pyramid scheme

was Globalization sustained by a giant ponzi pyramid scheme supported from schemes such as privatization of public resources, economic colonization etc.?

Automatic Earth provides a stark vision of globalization

1. Ponzi Schemes

"Everyone has heard of pyramid, or Ponzi, schemes. In their simplest form they are short-lived deliberate frauds where a small number of existing members are paid from the buy-in of a larger number of newer members until the supply of newer members is exhausted, whereupon they collapse. Typically, the founders, and perhaps a few others who got in early and out before it was too late, end up making a lot of money at the expense of later entrants, who end up holding the empty bag. There are always many more losers than winners. What most do not realize, however, is that Ponzi dynamics are far more pervasive than people think. There are many human systems that ultimately rest on the buy-in of new entrants, and every one of them will ultimately meet the same fate, although it can take far longer for complex constructions than for simple pyramid frauds.

What allows a more complex pyramid to last for longer than a simple one is a supplementary source of funds to pay members, besides merely the buy-in of newer members. The more such sources there are, legitimate and otherwise, the more complex the pyramid can become and the longer it will last, as the apparent on-going success of early entrants will attract many more new ones. There's nothing like seeing one's friends and neighbours seemingly making a lot of easy money for a long time to eventually overcome the mental defenses of even the most skeptical."

2. Ponzi Scheme applied to Globalization

At the largest scale, empires are also grounded in pyramid dynamics, which is why they too have a limited lifespan. They grow by assuming control, either politically or economically, of new territories, positioning themselves to cream off surpluses from an ever-expanding geographical area in a form of involuntary buy-in. In the past political control through invasion or physical colonization was more common, but latterly globalization has enabled the development of a sophisticated system of economic control based on international debt slavery, supplemented with economic colonization for the purpose of resource extraction. Both resources and financial surpluses, in the form of perpetual interest payments, could be efficiently extracted from the periphery and accumulated at the centre, where they led to the development of an unprecedented level of socioeconomic complexity.

Such wealth conveyors in favour of the economic centre, at the expense of the hinterland, are the very heart of empire, but without continual expansion to feed rapidly developing central complexity, they eventually fail, leaving the centre unable to sustain its existing complexity level. As with economic bubbles, empires hollow out in the latter stages, consuming their own substance in a catabolic manner in order to compensate for the inability to strengthen wealth conveyors sufficiently quickly to keep pace with the expanding requirements of the centre.

Soros also been saying the same about the Super Bubble based on US Dollar as Reserve Currency of the World. Ponzi Scheme metaphor definitely suits Globalization well.

Globalization ka Side Effects

Privatization of Public Assets was one of the core tenets of Globalization. Keeping pace with the never ending stream of bad news for globalization, BBC reports about the spurt of deaths among men due to privatization in erstwhile USSR. The sideeffects of privatization has indirectly led to the death of about a million people, reports the BBC.

he rapid mass privatisation which followed the break up of the Soviet Union fuelled an increase in death rates among men, research suggests.

The UK study blames rapidly rising unemployment resulting from the break-neck speed of reform.The researchers said their findings should act as a warning to other nations that are beginning to embrace widespread market reform. The study features online in The Lancet medical journal. Lancet researchers have said

Great caution should be taken when macroeconomic policies seek radically to overhaul the economy without considering potential effects on the population's health

They conclude that as many as one million working-age men died due to the economic shock of mass privatisation policies. The latest analysis links this surge in deaths to a 56% increase in unemployment over the same period. However, it found some countries with good social support networks withstood the turmoil better than others. Where 45% or more of the population were members of at least one social organisation, such as a church group or labour union, mass privatisation did not increase mortality.

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