Returning to his alma mater at the University of Texas,
Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute spoke to a packed lecture room at the
McCombs School of Business. Contrasting Bill Gates with LeBron James and Mother
Teresa, he said that we accept huge salaries for sports heroes because we can
conceptualize what they do. “We
all shoot baskets, and we know how bad we are at it.” Public opinion is that
corporate officers do not deserve their rewards because few people actually
operate businesses. Moreover, our
culture has a dominant morality of altruism; and business is
all about self-interest.
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an MBA, and a Ph.D.
His biography is on Wikipedia.
He is president of the Ayn Rand Institute.
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He then engaged the audience to identify the virtues
required by the marketplace. Hard
work, honesty, discipline, persistence, long-range thinking, and justice were
offered; and he expanded on each. He summed them up with the virtue of passion.
“Business is all about self-interest,” he said. In the popular mind, Brook said,
the worst thing about Bill Gates is that he enjoys charity. “We would prefer
that he give it all away, live in a tent, and if he could bleed a little, that
would be perfect.” On the other
hand, Mother Teresa is considered moral not only because her work was for
others, but also because she did not enjoy it. Brook also identified guilt as a dominant motivator for
charity.
Pointing to the Occupy movement, he agreed with their
condemnation of crony capitalism. However, he drew from the earlier discussion
to point out that few people can conceptualize what investment bankers do. We
shoot baskets, so we understand LeBron James. We own computers, so we “get”
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. In
order to appreciate investment capitalism, “people must be conceptual and must
think about it right.” He added
that in the hierarchy of production, bankers are responsible for the greatest
range of value creation.
Brook urged the UT business majors to reject the morality
of selflessness and to adopt a philosophy of self-interest, egoism,
rationality, productivity, and achievement.
During the Q&A he cited The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for
the Soul of Western Civilization, by Arthur Herman. Brook identified education as the only
way to reverse the trend of statism and decline. He asked his audience to think ahead to the year 2050. “It’s
going to take a generation or two or three.”
ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
In the popular mind, Brook said, the worst thing about Bill Gates is that he enjoys charity. “We would prefer that he give it all away, live in a tent, and if he could bleed a little, that would be perfect.” On the other hand, Mother Teresa is considered moral not only because her work was for others, but also because she did not enjoy it.
ReplyDelete---
I've never heard anyone make that argument. When I hear people talk about Bill Gate's negative character traits, no one has ever listed the fact that he enjoys donating to charity. What they say is that he stifled innovation, stole other people's ideas, and suppressed superior technology in order to gain dominance of the personal computer industry. And Mother Teresa is said to be moral because she devoted her life to serving the poor and the needy, not because she supposedly disliked doing so. What evidence is there to say she disliked doing charity work, anyway? I've never heard anyone say that about her.