Why businessmen

I enjoy Ayn Rand's books. I also generally enjoy reading about philosophy and Rand's philosophy. However, I don't agree with all of Rand's philosophy or all of the premises in general. This is an interesting read. The examples are dated, but will still make you think. If you are a younger reader i. Overall, this book will add to the knowledge that you have about philosophy and may make you question the political developments of t I enjoy Ayn Rand's books.

Overall, this book will add to the knowledge that you have about philosophy and may make you question the political developments of the past 50 years and how they have changed the face of capitalism in the US and the world. After the two fictions, Ayn Rand should have stopped. For those who didn't understand her philosophy from Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, there is nothing you can do.

So, writing more books on Objectivism is just like skinning a dead cat or whatever the phrase. This book takes her philosophy over the top. The philosophy, which is great, is not practical in today's world. It is utopic, but not practical.

If you have read the two fiction After the two fictions, Ayn Rand should have stopped. If you have read the two fictions, save your time and admiration for something else. Aug 04, Tony Canas added it. This collection of essays inspired by Rand are very interesting. Some are very good while others are just extreme and downright wrong. The essays on Anti-Trust Laws are questionable while the one on Healthcare is simply wrong.

I still recommend reading it, just keep a critical mind and don't buy everything at face value. Feb 25, David Glad rated it really liked it. Only one of the essays in this book was by Ayn Rand. One of the sources of complaints about the book.

Was my first introduction to her designated successor Leonard Peikoff. Decent introduction on why businessmen should embrace philosophy and stop being on the defensive and start talking of the good they perform in the world. Aug 16, Waseem rated it did not like it. This was shockingly boring and robotic - hence perhaps the warning that I should have noticed 'essays' but damn this was boring Felt like work by someone a student expert of the field but nowhere near real authority that does this week in week out To Our Continued Success!

Really timely piece in our world of Occupy Wall Street. Not a light read, but worth reading. Excellent companion to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It thoroughly explains the key philosophic points in Atlas Shrugged with concrete and modern examples.

Aug 25, James rated it it was amazing. Great book with relevant topics. Interesting to hear about the Antitrust rules and the impacts to business innovation. Aryeh Newman rated it really liked it Mar 17, John rated it it was amazing Aug 05, Don rated it really liked it Dec 22, John rated it really liked it Jan 24, Andrej Drapal rated it it was amazing Nov 02, Gantumur rated it it was amazing Jul 14, Derek Nannings rated it really liked it Jun 03, J rated it liked it Jan 09, Cihan rated it liked it Mar 13, Joseph rated it it was amazing May 25, Stefa rated it liked it Jun 13, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.

Be the first to start one ». Readers also enjoyed. About Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Alisa Rosenbaum was born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg to a prosperous Jewish family. When the Bolsheviks requisitioned the pharmacy owned by her father, Fronz, the Rosenbaums fled to the Crimea. Alisa returned to the city renamed Leningrad to attend the university, but in relatives who had already settled in America offered her the chance of joining them there.

In fact, you really are selfish. You are selfish in the noblest sense, which is inherent in the very nature of business: you seek to make a profit, the greatest profit possible — by selling at the highest price the market will bear while buying at the lowest price. You seek to make money — gigantic amounts of it, the more better — in small part to spend on personal luxury, but largely to put back into your business, so that it will grow still further and make even greater profits.

As a businessman, you make your profit by being the best you can be in your work, i. You profit not by fraud or robbery, but by producing wealth and trading with others. It is not and cannot be your primary focus or motive. The great businessman is like a great musician, or a great man in any field.

The composer focuses on creating his music; his goal is to express his ideas in musical form, the particular form which most gratifies and fulfills him himself. His life is the exercise of his creative power to achieve his own selfish satisfaction. He could not function or compose otherwise. This is true of every creative man. It is also true of you in business, to the extent that you are great, i. Business to a creative man is his life.

The opposite of selfishness is altruism. Altruism does not mean kindness to others, nor respect for their rights, both of which are perfectly possible to selfish men, and indeed widespread among them. What would happen to a business if it were actually run by an altruist?

Such a person knows nothing about creativity or its requirements. Give up and give away; give away to and for others. Whatever is there; whatever he has access to; whatever somebody else has created. Either a man cares about the process of production, or he does not. If he cares about the process, it must be his primary concern; not the beneficiaries of the process, but the personal fulfillment inherent in his own productive activity.

If he does not care about it, then he cannot produce. If the welfare of others were your primary aim, then you would have to dismantle your business.

For instance, you would have to hire needy workers, regardless of their competence — whether or not they lead you to a profit. Why do you care about profit, anyway? As an altruist, you seek to sacrifice yourself and your business, and these workers need the jobs.

What if your customers need the product desperately? Why not simply give away goods and services as they are needed? An altruist running a business like a social work project would be a destroyer — but not for long, since he would soon go broke. Do you see Albert Schweitzer running General Motors? Many businessmen recognize that they are selfish, but feel guilty about it and try to appease their critics.

These businessmen, in their speeches and advertisements, regularly proclaim that they are really selfless, that their only concern is the welfare of their workers, their customers, and their stockholders, especially the widows and orphans among them. Their own profit, they say, is really not very big, and next year, they promise, they will give even more of it away. No one believes any of this, and these businessmen look like nothing but what they are: hypocrites. One way or another, everyone knows that these men are denying the essence and purpose of their work.

This kind of PR destroys any positive image of business in the public mind. If you yourselves, by your own appeasement, damn your real motives and activity, why should anyone else evaluate you differently? I do live for a higher purpose.

I really want primarily to serve the needy. If it is your motive, however, you will not be a successful businessman, not for long. Why is it shameful? Let me answer by asking the altruists among you: Why do you have such low self-esteem? Are you excluded from the Declaration of Independence merely because you are a businessman? Does a producer have no right to happiness?

Does success turn you into a slave? We deserve a reward, and we damn well expect to get it! Why then are businessmen supposed to be serfs? Why should you alone spend your precious time sweating selflessly for a reward that is to be given to someone else? The best among you do not believe the altruist mumbo-jumbo. You have, however, long been disarmed by it. That power is philosophy. The issue with which we began — selfishness vs. One of the important questions of ethics is: should a man live for himself, or should he sacrifice for something beyond himself?

In the medieval era, for example, philosophers held that selfishness was wicked, that men must sacrifice themselves for God. In such an era, there was no possibility of an institutionalized system of profit-seeking companies.

He took this idea from John Locke, who got it, ultimately, from Aristotle, the real father of selfishness in ethics. Why should you care about this philosophic history? As a practical man, you must care; because it is an issue of life and death. It is a simple syllogism.

Premise one: Businessmen are selfish; which everyone knows, whatever denials or protestations they hear. The inescapable conclusion: Businessmen are wicked. If so, you are the perfect scapegoats for intellectuals of every kind to blame for every evil or injustice that occurs, whether real or trumped up. Popular movies provide a good indication.

Do not bother with such obviously left-wing movies as Wall Street , the product of avowed radicals and business-haters. After which, the characters vanish, never to be seen again. It was a sheer throwaway — and the audience snickers along with it approvingly, as though there is no controversy here. Imagine the national outcry if any other minority — and you a very small minority — were treated like this. But businessmen?

Money-makers and profit-seekers? In regard to them, anything goes, because they are wicked, i. Incidentally, to my knowledge, not one businessman or group of them protested against this movie. There are hundreds of such movies, and many more books, TV shows, sermons and college lectures, all expressing the same ideas. Are such ideas merely talk, with no practical consequences for you and your balance sheets?

The principal consequence is this: once you are deprived of moral standing, you are fair game. No matter what you do or how properly you act, you will be accused of the most outrageous evils.

Whether the charges are true or false is irrelevant. If you are fundamentally evil, as the public has been taught to think, then any accusation against you is plausible — you are, people think, capable of anything. If so, the politicians can then step in. They can blame you for anything, and pass laws to hogtie and expropriate you. Some of the essays fall, sadly, into self-parody. Another one complains bitterly about how businesses are forced to have compliance departments—as if anyone had the right to insist that corporations should have to comply with regulations!

But there is enough that is sublime in this book to outweigh that which is ridiculous. Rand hates guilt, and attacks it robustly whenever it appears. Altruism and collectivism cannot appeal to human virtues; they have to appeal to human weaknesses.

It is in the nature of altruists and collectivists that, the more they need a person or a group, the more they denounce their victims, induce guilt, and struggle never to let their victims acquire self-importance or self-esteem.

Clears the mind of cant.