Atlas Moments revisited

I'd spent a bit of time last year arguing that the whole "going Galt" thing was overblown: that there was no evidence of any huge resurgence of interest in Ayn Rand's ideas with the recent economic crisis. Or, at least there was no evidence of it in Google search traffic data.

Now Google's released Ngram: a search tool that checks the relative frequency of different terms found in books scanned by Google, sorted by date. Unfortunately it only goes up through 2008 so we can't fully verify what was in the search traffic. But here's the Ngrams.

First, Rand by herself.

Book mentions of Rand peak in 2001 and are reasonably down by 2008.

Objectivism peaks in the mid 1990s.

And while Rand is doing better relative to Marx, that's mainly due to the latter's strong decline since the 1980s.

I'll expect that there's a mild upswing for Rand in 2008-2009 once that data comes out, but that there was no Atlas Moment.

Hipster Shrugged (updated)

Some of the best, from #HipsterShrugged.

ziege19  I just unlocked the "Helping Is Futile" badge on @foursquare!  #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via web3 Retweets

ModeledBehavior I invented a motor that ran on nothing but irony. It was kinda cool, I guess #HipsterShruggedabout 1 hour ago via web2 Retweets


petersuderman I used to like the government, but that was before it got big and popular. #HipsterShrugged   12 Retweets


radleybalko I stopped contributing to society way before "going Galt" was cool. #HipsterShrugged about 4 hours ago via webTop Tweet14 Retweets


normative Of course not, who names their kid Dagny? She was "Dolores" until the end of middle school. #HipsterShruggedabout 3 hours ago via TweetDeck1 Retweet


peejaybee Galt's Gulch used to be pretty cool. Now it's like, strollers everywhere. #hipstershruggedabout 3 hours ago via twidroid


jacobgrier Camping out for the new iPhone. Rearden Metal finish, Galt motor. Pretty sweet. #hipstershrugged #stilldropscallsabout 3 hours ago via HootSuite1 Retweet


conor64  People vilify Dagny Taggart, but I wish more corporate execs always traveled by rail #HipsterShruggedabout 3 hours ago via TweetDeck4 Retweets


willwilkinson  So you're playing the Mouch fundraiser? Cool, cool.#HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via web

evanbanks Taggert Transcontinental was so much better back when it was called Taggert Local and sold fixies. #hipstershruggedabout 4 hours ago via web


willwilkinson  PHU was my safety school. #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via web 2 Retweets


normative Actually, Francisco's got this trust fund, but he doesn't like to talk about it . #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via TweetDeck


willwilkinson Yeah, Francisco's super-rich, but he's totally cool politically. #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via web 2 Retweets


normative Yeah, Ragnar was in Sigur Ros for a while, but he bailed when the label got so hardass about piracy. #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via TweetDeck 3 Retweets


willwilkinson  20th Century Motor Company used to make a sweet hybrid. #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via web


grandmofhelsing  Galt's Speech really isn't as good as his earlier work. #hipstershrugged about 4 hours ago via web 7 Retweets


laughinghyena13 That hamburger sandwich is fine, but I've had much better at a diner in Wyoming #hipstershruggedabout 4 hours ago via twidroid from San Francisco, CA  1 Retweet


normative  No, it's *Rearden* Metal. I mean, it looks just like 80s metal, but it's ironic  #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via TweetDeck


normative   I swear by my life and my love of it, if I have to hear "Oxford Comma" one more f*ing time... #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via TweetDeck


SandyS1  They released my concerto on CD, so I went on strike because it's got more integrity on the 180-gram vinyl pressing.#HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via Tweetie for Mac


jacobgrier  I have John Galt's entire speech... on vinyl #hipstershrugged about 4 hours ago via HootSuite 5 Retweets


grandmofhelsing Richard Halley is the best musician ever because he only performs to select audience at new club, Galt's Gulch. #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via web


ziege19  I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own face on the T-shirt I am wearing.  #HipsterShruggedabout 4 hours ago via web

normative  Who is John Galt? Oh, you probably haven't heard of him, he's really obscure.  #HipsterShruggedabout 5 hours ago via TweetDeck

Yeah, appropriating these folks tweets makes me a looter. Meh. #HipsterShrugged

Update: Julian Sanchez, who started all this, has posted his favorites, here.

Objectivist parenting

Surely they, like us, would instead have reminded their little Johanna that if she shared the ball with Aidan, she'd be more likely to be able to play with Aidan's toys as well, and that opening with cooperate in tit-for-tat is generally optimal?

I'd like to start by saying that I don't get into belligerent shouting matches at the playground very often. The Tot Lot, by its very nature, can be an extremely volatile place—a veritable powder keg of different and sometimes contradictory parenting styles—and this fact alone is usually enough to keep everyone, parents and tots alike, acting as courteous and deferential as possible. The argument we had earlier today didn't need to happen, and I want you to know, above all else, that I'm deeply sorry that things got so wildly, publicly out of hand.

Now let me explain why your son was wrong.

When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, "Have a ball, peas [sic]?" And I'm sure you were very proud of him for using his manners.

To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, "No! Looter!" right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.

I've read the "No! Looter!" line three times now and am still laughing. I'll probably go back and read it again tomorrow and laugh more. I also love that the looter kid's name is Aidan. Lovely touch.

HT: Haimona's shared items. Every now and then, I check through the shared items of folks who follow my shared items or who've clicked the "like" button on my posts, on the basis that if they like my stuff, they probably have pretty good taste overall and are probably more discerning than other people.

Update: The bit quoted above is of course satire. Satire that will be having me laughing all week. Read the whole thing.

In other news, the ritual disemboweling of the ACT party is just too depressing to blog about, so I won't.

Going Galt

Reprising my earlier skepticism, here's the current Google Search Insights trends on objectivist libertarianism versus communism, with searches on "recession" given as a benchmark. Embedding these charts still not working right (why can't Blogger integrate with Google Insights for Search in Chrome? Where is John Galt?)

Blue gives total searches on any of ("Das Kapital", "Das Capital", "Communist Manifesto", Marxism, Communism, "Karl Marx", "Carl Marx").

Red gives total searches on any of ("Atlas Shrugged", Objectivism, "Ayn Rand", "Ann Rand", "The Fountainhead", "Virtue of Selfishness", "John Galt", "Going Galt"). The last term added just for Alex.

Yellow gives searches on "recession" as a scaling term. Note that I didn't put in "depression" because then I have to figure out all of the keywords to exclude to knock out searches on psychiatric disorders.

A slight up-blip around February of this year. Top ten countries for the Objectivist searches? USA, India, Canada, Phillipines, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, New Zealand, Sweden, Australia. In none of those ten countries are the Objectivist search terms more popular than the Communist ones, though this surely is affected by the number of schools requiring reports on communism (huge seasonality in the Communist searches that corresponds to Northern Hemisphere school year, no such seasonality in Objectivist searches.)

Of course, we wouldn't expect a true "Going Galt" moment to be evidenced by lots of Google Searches on objectivism. Rather, we'd see lots of Google searches on things like "Where did Sergey Brin disappear to?" "Going Galt" was always meant to be something for the top 0.1% anyway: Eddie Willers isn't invited. But continued evidence against a mass surge of interest in Objectivism.

An Atlas moment?

10 April 2009 Note: check updated results here!

Lots of chatter on the libertarian blogs about whether we're in an Atlas moment, how sales of Atlas Shrugged are peaking, and how folks finally might be coming round to rejecting the moochers and embracing their inner Galt.

Here's some fun, courtesy of Google Insights.

"Ayn Rand" versus "Karl Marx"


The two lines show us search trends over the last 12 months on the terms "Ayn Rand" (red) and "Karl Marx" (blue). Scales are normalized as a proportion of all searches, with 100 being the largest number of searches. Marx is by far the more popular search term.

Where are folks most interested in each? Well, Google's Search Insight tells us that too. Maps below show search intensity on Karl Marx (in blue) and on Ayn Rand (in red).


So, in lots of the developing world, we're seeing lots of searches on Marx and very little on Rand. Rand only registers in the Philippines. In the US, Rand beats Marx by a small margin; same in India. In Canada, Marx beats Rand; same in Norway and New Zealand and ... pretty much every country that makes the top ten in searches on Ayn Rand. The green bars show searches for "Atlas Shrugged". Only in the US and India do searches on Rand beat searches on Marx.

Search Insights is powerful enough for us to drill down onto country-specific searches. So, we find in Canada, that Rand beat Marx from mid June 08 through August 08, but Marx wins just about the rest of the time. This one shocked me: the proportion by which Marx beat Rand in Ontario matched that in Alberta. Only in British Columbia, Canada's "loonie left coast", did Rand beat Marx. In Manitoba, ancestral home of Barbara Branden, Rand didn't show up at all.

We can drill down even further. Marx beats Rand by a larger majority in Edmonton than in Calgary; Edmonton is the seat of government and sometimes is disparaged as Redmonton. Turns out it's just a matter of degree.

In book sales, Atlas beats Das Kapital. The paperback edition of Atlas is currently #29 in Books at Amazon; Capital is at #5,213. I'd love to know what the rank movement is since a year ago, but I don't know how to access historical Amazon data. Sales of both certainly seem to be up, but I can't compare trends without a decent handle on base rate sales from a year or two ago.

So, Randians, be a bit careful about calling this a Randian moment. Economic crisis seems to intensify interest in alternatives at both poles, at least as evidenced by Google search trends. You can, of course, object that maybe all the searches on Marx are to find out just how Marxist Obama really is: it's Objectivists doing the searches. There certainly are a lot of searches on Marx + Obama, but I can't evaluate the searchers' normative assessments of any such link. I've tried adding a few disambiguating terms like evil or bad to add to the searches; doesn't seem to affect much. If you can think of better ways of disambiguating, I'd love to see the results!

Other fun searches: Capitalism and Communism are about neck and neck in the search races, with very collinear time series: massively parallel movements since November. And "Objectivism" doesn't garner enough searches to much show up anywhere, at least not in comparison with either capitalism, communism or socialism.



HT: Many thanks to Hal Varian for telling me about Google Search Insights! It's pretty awesome.