Tough times for the disciples of Ayn Rand
FEW, if any, literary philosophers have had as much influence on American business and politics as Ayn Rand, especially now that Donald J Trump occupies the White House.
Trump named Rand his favourite writer and The Fountainhead his favorite novel. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has cited Atlas Shrugged as a favourite work, and the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, said the book “really had an impact on me”.
As Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, put it in an essay, “This new administration hates weak, unproductive, socialist people and policies,” he wrote, “and it admires strong, can-do profit makers”.
In business, Rand’s influence has been especially pronounced in Silicon Valley, where her overarching philosophy that “man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose”, as she described it in a 1964 Playboy interview, has an obvious appeal for self-made entrepreneurs.
But lately, many Rand devotees have been running into trouble. Travis Kalanick’s departure as CEO of Uber, the internet-based ride-hailing service he built into a private corporation worth $50 billion or more, is the latest Icarus-like plunge of a prominent executive identified with Rand.
Though people close to Ka- lanick said he has distanced himself from many of Rand’s precepts while undergoing an intense period of personal reassessment, they all acknowledged she’d had a profound influence on his development.
Uber disrupted a complacent, highly regulated and often corrupt taxi industry on a global scale, an achievement Rand’s heroes would have admired. Many of her ideas were embedded in Uber’s code of values.
But Kalanick was urged to step down as CEO by the Uber board and Uber’s major investors over less heroic issues, including: that Uber fostered a workplace culture that tolerated sexual harassment and discrimination; and it ignored legal constraints, poaching intellectual property from Google’s self-driving car endeavour. (Kalanick remains on the board.)
“Rand’s entrepreneur is the Promethean hero of capitalism,” said Lawrence E Cahoone, professor at the College of the Holy Cross. “But she never really explores how a dynamic entrepreneur actually runs a business.”