Hacker Cinema
Atlas Shrugged
TV series · 1 season
In the near future, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden struggle against a socialistic government that continues to impede individual success.
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23 comments on Hacker News
Atlas Shrugged (and the fountainhead) is like a superhero comic book where the almighty good guys fight the flat, faceless "bad guys" with pure and fully justified moral righteousness. The "bad guys" are a slobbering caricature of a boogeyman that everyone can easily despise - wanting to do nothing except take from others like a bridge troll or a grey goo disaster scenario.
Nothing wrong with that I suppose but the second someone implies it has something to say about real life capitalists or social welfare or anything else then it gets weird; that makes as much sense as any of the marvel movies helping you decide how to vote for exactly the same reason.
I expect it's for this reason you're being downvoted - these books are often used as a motte and baily to imply something about real life (or often to ironically excuse their own selfish/bad behavior) and they just don't hold up for that in my opinion.
Things changed and 1980 looks like an inflection point although for China in particular the inflection point could have been when Nixon went to China in 1972.
Until then China was more aligned with Russia but Nixon and Kissinger really hit it off Mao and Zhao Enlai and eventually you got Deng Xiaoping who had slogans like "To get rich is glorious" and China went on a path of encouraging "capitalist" economic growth that went through various phases. Early on China brought cheap labor to the table, right now they bring a willingness to invest (e.g. out capitalize us) such that, at their best, they bu make investments like this mushroom factory which is a giant vertical farm where people only handle the mushrooms with forklifts
https://www.finc-sh.com/en/about.aspx#fincvideo
(I find that video endlessly fascinating because of all the details like photos of the founders using the same shelving and jars that my wife did when she ran a mushroom lab)
Contrast that to the "Atlas Shrugged" situation we have here where a movie studio thinks they can't afford to spend $150 M to make a movie that makes $200M at the box office (never mind the home video, merchandise, and streaming rights which multiply that) which is the capitalist version of a janitor deciding they deserve $80 an hour.
This book by a left-leaning economist circa 1980
https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibilities-Change/dp/0465085881
points out how free trade won hearts and minds: how the US steel industry didn't want to disinvest in obsolete equipment which had harmful impacts on consumers and the rest of our industry. All people remember though is that the jobs went away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnJp0oyOxs
That focus on winning at increased international competition meant that there was no oxygen in the room for doing anything about interregional inequality in countries.
Yeah you're describing me. I found Tom bombadill incredibly cheesy and just could not get past it.
I can appreciate the Lotr film trilogy as a fun war epic. And the cavalry charge was filled to the brim, with a kind of grace.
Opened Atlas Shrugged and a couple pages in, instantly knew I would intensely 'unenjoy' that book. There is a sharp, weaponized dryness to her style of writing. I watched a documentary about her life later on and her troubled love life made an equal amount of sense.
The Fountainhead made a good film though. The emphasis on excellence and images of skeletal verticality were fun. I am guessing cutting down her books to fit a film length helped to make a more friendly viewing experience.
Yeah, I’m aware of the Idiocracy take. But, Idiocracy is just a movie and Atlas Shrugged is just a book.
I think we all underestimate, that in reality, there are many abstract motivators that will continue to fill that bucket (status, reputation, for example).
I used to think Atlas Shrugged was a great book, same way I used to think Fight Club was the greatest movie ever made.
Both are still fun though.
Rephrasing: "It should be obvious to anyone who looks that rich, productive people deserve to be worshipped as innately superior god-like humans by the stupid, lazy, and innately inferior under-classes." -- A rich, productive, and lucky person. Lots of respect for John Carmack and what he's done, but I'm pretty sick of the kind of person who's born to a television reporter and given access to computers in the mid 70s having the attitude that everyone who is poor deserves it. If they're so poor, why doesn't their daddy just do another movie? Sometimes kids must be very stern with their daddies. "Please daddy, please! It's 20 million dollars daddy!" And so daddy does the picture.
The ideas espoused by Ayn Rand are absolutely unconscionable and I'd argue anyone who doesn't see the "Atlas Shrugged" effect, where impressionable readers tend to become hyper-assholes for months (or the rest of their lives) after reading it, they are paying less attention than those who don't notice all the John Galts around them. Of course that upper-middle-class white male whose parents are paying for his college tuition is a John Galt, and of course all those Hispanic sons of migrant workers are stupid dirty lazy nobodies who should worship him. Aren't you paying attention!?
This is yet another case of yet another rich person saying we should all be deeply grateful they're bestowing their diving Jobs upon us and we should all worship them and not get angry when they don't pay taxes.
Relevant comment from John Carmack a couple weeks ago:
Atlas Shrugged popped up in a trend, reminding me of the remarkable level of vitriol against it. It is obviously grinding an anti-collectivist axe, and it can fairly be called cartoonish, but if you can't see its archetypes in the world around you, you aren't paying attention.
I can easily understand people not liking the book, but the level of loathing that some show for it is odd, as if someone could go off on a rant and redline judge everyone who enjoyed the movie Wall Street as obviously terrible people.
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1478389565094256642
She is an intellectual giant whose shadow casts long over Man.
I see everyone else is pretty frumpy about her (and philosophy for that matter.) She is a relic of another age.
In that age, before globalization and instant access to common knowledge, she exposes bitter truths of her contemporary humanity (and then America). Which includes the need of some people to exploit the talent and hard work of others in the name of social “fairness”. Her counter claim, that it is not amoral to be self interested (“greedy”) sounds obvious and cringe today, though at the time socialism was popular even in America.
To understand her contribution, one must see minds for the time and recognize that (for better or worse) she enlightened Americans on how to be free thinking and value capitalism in a more personal way (rather than the old world balance of capital owner and lay-labor proletariat.)
As for her writings, consider that she wrote anthem at 18. While atlas shrugged was her largest work, fountain head is more succinct and arguably better. She challenged an entire age of America. She is the grandmother of modern capitalism. Her works included a lot of (very boring) court room dramas (fun) which really set the internal dialogue for important modern critical thinking.
She wasn’t just a writer, she was an intellectual powerhouse who spoke out in great clarity on issues at the time few were constructively addressing.
Me too, in my youth some of the strangest super intelligent people I ever came across were Ayn-Rand Lovers, I'm talking PHD rocket-scientist type people. I think they're attracted to the ideal that people like them should be at the top of the pyramid. While in reality 'winning' in the USA is only about being the in the right place at the right time.
...
WRT Russia opinion, I know lots of Russian's I live in Asia. They're always the most intelligent people I ever meet, but the common is they have all left Russia, to make it else-where, especially USA, where its just so easy for them to get rich.
Ayn Rand essentially having read her in my youth, and watched all the new movies like 'Atlas Shrugged' depicting her paradise. I think is just pure Ideology, of course is not real, as we know Libertarians will always defend pollution, because it the right of everyone to get rich.
Ayn Rand was for an era, an Era where USA had won the war, where everybody in USA could get rich, where the commies were trying to sway public opinion, but they lost, until things just turned ugly post Y2K, and 2007 financial collapse. Now with COVID after-math & the reset the USA is a terrible mess. It ain't coming back. Living here in ASIA I can tell you everything is just fine, mostly because of the homogeneity people aren't at each other's throats with 'woke-ness'
Essentially for 40+ years USA with 5% of the worlds population, consumed +80% of the resources, today most USA citys are cesspools, and yet in ASIA most city's look like Disneylands 1960's "Tomorrowland", clean & beautiful. The problem of course is that post 1970's the Elite of the USA quit investing in the USA, so now 50 years later all the bridges are collapsing. Money always flows to where its most influential.
I really don't think Ayn Rand saw anything of this coming. Today China is 100X more "capitalism" than USA, where the USA is just a third world country with nukes. Most the world talking "Ayn Rand" wouldn't even get you a cup of coffee. All the people who used to love Rand, are long dead. Orwell & Huxley have far more influence, because their ideas is our present reality.
In case someone actually wants to read Atlas Shrugged, I did actually read it. It's a fictional world where the strawmen business people are happen to always be good and moral, and are oppressed by the strawman government people who are bad and greedy. Also the author occasionally has her characters go on multi-page speeches, for instance about how we ought to be using gold for currency.
In case it's not clear, Atlas Shrugged is a piece of fiction and using it to draw parallels to reality is like saying "I recommend watching Disney's The Lion King. Zoos keep hogs apart from lions because they think they can't get along".
As a sidenote to balance my scathing review, I rather liked one of her earlier novels, Fountainhead. If you want to read an Ayn Rand novel I'd go for that one, as it's more about a type of "rugged individualism" than an economic system. It directly grapples at the question of the nature of invention/innovation: whether as a product of individual genius or standing on the shoulder of giants. Obviously the novel has an answer but it's not exactly a solved question in real life, and at least some of Ellsworth Toohey's quotes aren't half bad.
New Year’s Resolutions 2020
Family
2019: Dinner with family 4/7 nights a week (success, mostly)
2020: Continue status quo
2019: 10 vacations and/or road-trips and/or weekend get-aways (success)
2020: Increase to 14
2019: Park/Recreation together 20 of 40 non-winter weekends (success)
2020: Continue status quo
2019: No non-emergency office work on weekends (complete failure)
2020: Aim for more realistic 8 or less weekends in office spent on non-emergency work
Health
2019: BMI 30 → 25 (complete failure)
2020: BMI 30 → 25
2020: 25% reduction in triglycerides
2019: Gym 3x week (success)
2020: Gym 3x week -- but with HR reaching cardio zone at least 30 cumulative min each visit
2019: Bike/Walk to Work at least 20% non rainy/snowy days (success)
2020: Bike/Walk to Work at least 40% non rainy/snowy days (success)
2020: Added Goal: Cumulative Bike+Walk+Peloton mileage of 1000mi for the year
2019: Track all meals with data (failure, tracked ~20%)
2020: Track all meals with data
2019: Sleep no later than 3am every day except 5/yr (failure)
2020: Sleep no later than 2am every day except 5/yr, use weight training to force exhaustion
Personal Growth
2019: 12 books for the year (wild success)
2020: 24 books for the year (audio or dead-tree), double-time with exercise hours
2020: Added Goal: 24 long-form articles (audio or dead-tree), double-time with exercise hours
2019: Write 5 blog posts (failure)
2020: Write 12 blog posts
2020: Create Podcast Series with at least 5 episodes
2003-2019: Read Atlas Shrugged (failure)
2020: Read Atlas Shrugged
Training
2019 Three certifications in tech I want (failure -- did only 1 -- on NVIDIA RAPIDS)
2020 Certifications: Fast.ai; Azure Cloud (any 2 certs); Google Cloud (any 2 certs)
2020 One CGE at grad school with credit
2020 One CGE at grad school just auditing
Career and Networking
2019: 3 talks/presentations at conferences (success)
2020: Continue status quo + 1 major main-line talk
2020: 3x/month talks/meetups
2020: 2/year meetups speaker/presenter
2020: Meet 2/month new interesting people
2020: Dinner with former work colleague 1/month
2020: Phone catch-up with former work colleague 2/month
Job
2019: Mentor 3 interns (success)
2020: Mentor 3 interns
2020: Three brand new demos for marketing Achieve 95% test coverage on my code
Family Office
2019: 5 deals (failure)
2020: 52 in-person meets with angel-stage teams
2020: 10 deals (albeit smaller dollar amount) or high-conviction PME, if that is better
Side Hustle
Convert 3 of my graduate school projects into working projects (not business successes, just working projects to ensure I have the tech process locked down.) Outsourcing and managing is OK, delivery is the key here.
Tinkering
2019: Play with Jetson Nano (failure)
2020: One mini-demo with RPI
2020: One mini-demo with Jetson Nano (colab w/ friends OK)
2020: One mini-demo with Google Coral (colab w/ friends OK)
2020: One mini-demo with Azure Kinect DK (colab w/ friends OK)
Arts
2020: Discover 5 new amazing artists i’ll listen to forever
2020: Finally finish watching series I love (The Americans, The Good Wife)
Self Organization
2019: No loose articles (everything in Evernote/Pocket) (FAILURE)
2020: No loose articles (everything in Evernote/Pocket)
2020: No one-off reading -- everything through RSS reader or tracked
Okay! The most reliable audience score metric -- in that it can't be brigaded by a relatively small number of online fans mobilized to affect the score of a movie because they want to prove a point[1] -- is probably CinemaScore, which has been polling actual moviegoers on opening nights since 1978. The Last Jedi's CinemaScore is A.
[1] While this is usually to drive down a score, you can find the reverse occasionally, such as the Atlas Shrugged movies. It's hard not to notice that the point the brigades are making usually revolves around "stick it to the Hollywood liberals," although I don't think that's true in TLJ's case.
One should read "Atlas Shrugged". That way, you can avoid seeing the appallingly bad 3-part low budget movie version. The book is preachy, and the movie is faithful to the book, which means long monologues.
"The Fountainhead" was made into a movie in 1949. It's a decent movie, and Amazon has the DVD. It's amusing today because the protagonist, who is an architect, designs buildings that he insists are insanely great, but are just slab-sided office blocks. (His hatred of decorative spires has something going for it. There used to be a thing for putting useless pointy spires on top of office buildings, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building being the classic examples. That's mostly died out in the US, although it still has a following in Dubai and some Asian cities.)
Taking Ayn Rand seriously is not good for you.
Here's the text of the article for those behind a paywall...
A GROUP of self-described anarchists, libertarians and Ron Paul supporters fleeing the crumbling world economic system have founded Galt's Gulch, a community in Chile inspired by Ayn Rand's “Atlas Shrugged”—and with an economy based entirely on Bitcoin. Or that's the goal, anyway.
"Our farm workers and suppliers still want to get paid in pesos,” Ken Johnson, the project’s founder and managing partner, explains. "But Bitcoin as the John Galt coin? Why shouldn't it be?”
If the world economic system "goes sideways," as Mr Johnson puts it, residents will retreat to their self-sufficient gated community, where they will enjoy a shooting range, equestrian facilities, and spa and fitness center. The 6,874-hectare site (pictured) also includes a 100-hectare farm, although it is not clear who will pick the lettuce when the world ends.
Galt's Gulch Chile—a name impossible for local Spanish-speakers to pronounce—will also boast an innovation centre, where expatriate libertarian dentists and chiropractors may ply their trade. In exchange for Bitcoin, of course.
In the event the world economic system fails to collapse on schedule, however, Mr Johnson has a plan B—his new trademark, Galt's Gulch Organics. "The farm came with 65 hectares of lemons," he says. "The US and Japanese markets pay a premium for organic, non-GMO produce." Plans are in the works to plant herbs, spices, fruit, nuts, and vineyards, and organic certification is not far off.
A quirk of Chilean law makes land, mining and water rights independent of each other. Mr Johnson made sure to acquire all three, particularly the water rights. "In the future, wars will be fought over water," he says. Two rivers border the land, and the community sits atop 56 known water wells. Galt's Gulch bottled mineral water may soon be in the offing. Mr Johnson is also building guest haciendas to house not only prospective buyers, but also, he hopes, tourists.
Set in a secluded valley 17 kilometres from Curacavi, Chile, on the road between Santiago and the luxurious beach resort of Viña del Mar, Galt's Gulch is a mere forty-five minutes by car from the Santiago airport, but, as Mr Johnson says, "it feels like you're at the end of the Earth." Yet his goal is not isolationist, he adds. "We're not trying to hide from the world. In fact we want people to find us.”
Indeed, of the 430 lots for sale, only 12% have sold so far, and Mr Johnson is marketing vigorously to the libertarian and Bitcoin communities. Lots are priced in both dollars and Bitcoin, with big discounts for buyers who pay in that crypto-currency. Many early adopters of Bitcoin find themselves sitting on small fortunes, and Mr Johnson hopes to tempt them to diversify into real estate. So far nine clients have paid in Bitcoin, totaling around $1.5m in revenue.
Mr Johnson, a former California real estate agent and evangelist of water ionizers (devices supposed to slow aging and prevent disease, but derided as snake oil by many scientists) has become something of a celebrity in libertarian circles. Authors such as Ben Swann, Josh Tolley, Luke Rudkowski, Bob Murphy, Angela Keaton, Tatiana Moroz and Wendy McElroy have visited the site of his future utopia, and a television production company is pitching a documentary series on the community.
Most buyers so far, he says, are expats or second-home buyers. For Mr Johnson, the appeal is easy to explain. "It's like California, only forty or fifty years ago. Feels like you've stepped back in time.” Mr Johnson plans to break ground in 2014, and estimates five years to fulfill his vision of a place where he can "live and let live, thrive and let thrive.”
Why does he think his project will succeed where similar schemes have failed? "We're a freedom-minded community, but we're not trying to create a sovereign state," he explains. "We pay our taxes, we obey the law. Our goal is to lessen the effect of the rest of the world without telling the world to go take a flying leap."
As for Ayn Rand, just how much have her ideas influenced the community's design? Mr Johnson admits he never finished “Atlas Shrugged”. "I'm not actually much of a reader," he says. "Watched the movie and skimmed the Cliff's Notes, though. Good stuff."
I was reminded of this quote from a recent episode of The Simpsons: "Conservatives only get more conservative, because every year they get a little further through Atlas Shrugged."
"As for Ayn Rand, just how much have her ideas influencedthe community's design? Mr Johnson admits he never finished “Atlas Shrugged”. "I'm not actually much of a reader," he says. "Watched the movie and skimmed the Cliff's Notes, though. Good stuff."
Awesome ;)
If you name the forum, I'll show up. I also realize that I'm older, and when I was younger, I thought those who were older were completely off the mark-- and from the perspective of someone who is now older, I realize they were on the mark in many ways, but outdated in others.
So, I don't mean to come off like a pompous ass. I'm also keen to learn from the people who don't have as much experience, but do have a different perspective....
I don't think it should be too difficult, all that's necessary is to make arguments over the differences, or ask questions... rather than try and beat people over the head with politics.
Anyway, as for your guinea pig offer, lets see if I can sum up the things I've had to learn the hard way in a very succinct manner, that isn't also highly repetitive of common advice--
- always have something original to sell
- investing is made extra easy when your competition thinks they can't win (e.g.: if they think the market is efficient they won't look for opportunities.)
- you can earn %25 a year with only 5 hours a year of time invested.
- If you're buying any long term investment, know what your return will be with calculable accuracy before you buy. (Timothy Vick's books on investing like Buffett are good here.)
- Everyone in the world think their country is special and unique.
- Get outside of the USA to see how different the world is from how it is portrayed within the USA
- Internationalize your products. It isn't that expensive and you'll get most of your sales abroad
- Read "Economics in One Lesson". Economics is really key. Understanding it will give you amazing powers of prediction.
- People are the same everywhere, but also different. Every new culture you live in, levels you up. You'll be surprised at what you learn. And going and living somewhere for 2 months is much better than the tourist thing. You can get work done while you do it too.
- Never be involved in a franchise unless you're the one selling franchises.
- "The Millionaire Fastlane" is a hokey books, and written for seemingly the lowest common denominator, but it contains great wisdom.
- Atlas Shrugged is the most important book I've ever read.
- All capitalism works by enriching the lives of your customers. The path to wealth is seemingly "altruistic" because it comes form improving other's lives. They're inextricably intertwined.
- If 4 out of 5 businesses fail, start 6 businesses.
- 1 out of 5 businesses fail in my experience, 2-3 break even, and 1 does rather well.
- This one from fight club: "Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat. It's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO!"
- And again: "Only after disaster can we be resurrected."
- The above two are very taoist / buddhist concepts. You have to let go of you and see what the market says. "hitting bottom" is getting to the point where you take in the response of the market to your product or your idea as the ultimate reality.... you have to let go of your idea that you have a clue what the market really wants. Only after a product launch disaster can you be resurrected as an entrepreneur. Or at least, it was something like that for me. Stop trying to control everything, because doing so keeps you from hearing what the market is telling you.
- Always be Closing. Ok, too many movie quotes, but they resonate with me.
- Always have a marketing strategy. Have at least an idea of something that customers will stop and take notice of. Something outrageous could be good- the Virgin method of promotion might work for you. But you gotta be able to wake people up with just a handful of words that immediately resonate with them and make them go "damn, I've been having that problem! Sign me up!"
- If you value the education you receive from failure, you can't lose in business. That said, might as well go into it whole hog. When you can't lose, it is impressive how much fear you can eliminate.
- Never start a business that costs more than $4,000 to get going (for the essence of the business. ) Never put in real money... it should either make money on its own right away, or if it requires some investment in technology, it shouldn't require any real capital. People are great at shopping and it is easy to rationalize a lot of spending... don't.
- Options, if properly used, greatly reduce investment risk, while also boosting returns. Stock options (calls and puts) are the least understood investment vehicle among the mainstream.
- I never spent money on a book, including a $90 "Due Diligence" book that I barely ever read, that didn't pay for itself many times over, on topics such as investing, business and marketing. Even the bad ones were worth many times the cover price.
I'm sure a lot of that is obvious... maybe I'd be better talking about specific topics or sharing specific experiences.
If you wanted to relate to the topic in the article you should have said Anthem. It gets most of Rand's ideas on collectivism into digestible form (which is surprising, considering Rand might be one of the most long-winded writers I've read). I made it through that one, Atlas Shrugged, started on The Virtue of Selfishness and decided I'd had enough. While Anthem is easy enough, I couldn't suspend disbelief for Atlas Shrugged, and it just would not end. After reading it, I had no desire to read the Fountainhead...as I wasn't sure what else Rand could write that wasn't both new and contradictory to something she wrote down in Atlas Shrugged. To me, the whole thing felt like a religion than it did a philosophy, where the God was an amalgam of wealth, actualization, satisfaction, indulgence, personal growth, and whatever else Rand said was good. Is the book without any merit? Of course not. Can you get that merit somewhere else? Probably.
My Feelings on Atlas Shrugged in Retrospect:
WARNING SPOILER ALERT. I AM NOT JOHN GALT.
Unbelievably perfect protagonists (your disbelief probably won't be suspended) battle for personal freedom by sticking it to a group of bumbling antagonists bent on taking their toys (read livelihood) away. Insert lots of dialog for the author to repeat what she wrote in her non-fiction pieces where stupid antagonists can't come up with decent comebacks from buddies of protagonists who don't ever seem to shut up. All the while another protagonist is constantly mentioned by everybody in the book, yet nobody knows who he is, but he's chilling underneath some kind of holographic forcefield in the mountains somewhere WHILE HIS BUDDY floats around on a pirate ship (wait, what time period are we in?) blowing up shipments of copper. The main characters are either trying to build a railroad or trying to drive fast trains while wearing simple, yet elegantly fitted clothing. All of this boils down to a speech that lasts a hundred pages and put me to sleep multiple times because anybody can see where the book is going from three miles away (it's a huge book, like 1200 pages or something). The ending flips from some film noir type scene to something out of the Twilight Zone and I could no longer stay interested.
I'm sure you'll get plenty of comments on hacker fiction, so here's some "business" fiction:
* "The Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe. The classic novel of 80s Wall Street at its peak.
* "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis. A pretty terrifying picture of greed and excess, again on 80s Wall Street. If you've seen the movie, you know what to expect -- only in greater detail.
* "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Some people hate it, but others find it an inspirational novel. The heroes are driven, smart, competitive entrepreneurs; the antagonists are greedy, pilfering government regulators. Whether or not you like this will probably depend on your pre-existing ideological preference.
I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting...
I loved Atlas Shrugged (though it did take me a while to complete the speech), and coincidentally, I'm working on Dune right now, but I'm honestly struggling, and I haven't even reached page 100 yet.
It's just a little slow for me. Though having seen the movie and the miniseries, and knowing a fair bit of the Dune lore may be taking some of the "discovery" out of it.
Except for the speech, I didn't think Atlas Shrugged was slow at all, just LONG
While that's kind of true (after reading a book which extols rationality and logic above all, seeing constant irrationality in daily life does tend to make someone a little apprehensive), I find another common symptom of the post-Shrug reading is a feeling of helplessness and even to some a sort of depression - you see how society crumbles around the heroes in the book, only to see many parallels in reality. The feeling that society cannot be fixed is an overwhelming one to someone who takes Rand's ideas seriously, and does unquestionably lead to the feelings of anger (this feeling is not just isolated to Rand readers either, but to anyone who looks at the "big pictures"). It usually takes a while for new Objectivists to shake that feeling and start focusing on the good things in life, rather than the bad. But before that, the desire to "Go Galt" and abandon society for your own quasi-utopian refuge becomes very strong.
Personally, though, I find the "selfish jerk" thing more as a result of "The Fountainhead" than "Atlas Shrugged," though at the same time, I think TF is the right book to read before AS. TF prepares you for the "self", while AS applies all that to society.
All that said, while Atlas Shrugged can be an extremely depressing book (the constant feeling of "How can this get worse" coupled with the inevitable "Oh, this is how"), it's also a very uplifting book. After almost every reading session with AS, I found myself with a burning desire to work, to improve my business, to "go get it" and seize life. The heroes resonate very well with those who absolutely love their work.
The only other book that has come close to as uplifting a feeling as Atlas Shrugged (for me) is Founders at Work, because many of the people interviewed in that book share the same passion for their work as the heroes in AS, and pull off monumental achievements.
Will the movie be any good? I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see someone like Cate Blanchett play Dagny.
That's Atlas Shrugged 2, due out a month after the main movie.
(Is it too off-topic/nerdy to make comparisons between that speech and the Spirit Bomb week from Dragonball Z? Something about way-too-long things is extremely hilarious.)
I don't know how I feel about this. It's my favorite book, and I've read it many times, but I feel like it's something that either means a lot to you or means nothing. It doesn't translate very well beyond how you personally take it, and I'm afraid of flamewars breaking out over the content, which can have no winner. Or the studios missing the point to make it more mainstream. I also just have a very good internal idea of what it looks like, and I'm somewhat afraid of it being ruined by a movie which misses the mark, but that's remedied easily enough by me not seeing it.
Atlas Shrugged is a powerful book, but the arguments it makes highlight fundamental disagreements between sections of society. We'll do as we will, and others will do likewise. Bringing it to a national stage I don't think would cause many to go "Oh! I get it now!". At worst, it could cause sentiment to turn against entrepreneurs given the current political climate, casting them as arrogant and malicious towards the rest of society. Not that popular opinion should influence the entrepreneurs, though.