The fictional mirror opposite of Ayn Rand's 1957 masterwork ,"Atlas Shrugs" has been written by Ralph Nader and the name of the novel is "Only the Super-Rich can Save Us!". The similarities between the two novels are abundant,
1. Both novels are very large and have distinctive covers that include the world and a group/indivual holding up the globe or dominanting/ruling it.
2. Both novels are fictional accounts of what could happen in the US poltically, economically and so fourth.
3. Both are accounts of a utopian revoultion occuring (that reflects each others ideology).
4. In both both books, a group of rich and influential people get together and plot to make great changes within American socsiety occur.
However, the difference is that in Nader's new novel his ultra-affluent cabal are radical leftists guilty about there wealthy and organize to fight, essentially, against themselves and there businesses, they fight the evil mulitinationals that have made Buffet wealthy, they agaitate for huge taxes, massive regulation, and for goverment take over of huge parts of the American economy and other similiar liberal ends. Ofcourse in Rand's novel, the rich get together to make a ungratful nation that not ridicules there work that has helped society so much appreciate the gifts the selfish have given society by going on strike.
Most think that the title of Nader's novel is sarcastic but "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" isn't sarcastic at all of course. In the book, Warren Buffet outraged over the ineffectual reaction to Hurricane Katrina by the Bush Adminstration, assembles a group of leftist billionaires & celebrities (who are ofcourse friendly with Nader in real life) including George Soros, Bill Cosby, Paul Newman, Ted Turner & Yoko Ono who decide to save America by putting there billions into fighting against the evil corporations, raising taxes, regulation & the like.
"Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" is essentially a leftist version of "Atlas Shrugs" in which the John Galts of America go masochistic.
Although this novel is wrong about so much, I think it's an intresting book, the kind of un-pretenious accesible novel that more publishing houses should put out in favor of garbage by the many forgettable testerone deficient hipster American novelists like Micheal Chabon.
I wonder how Yoko Ono and Warren Buffet feel about it especially since Yoko Ono has a love scene around page 700.
Nader is a terrible writer to be honest. And the book reads like some kind of joke. Its a ridiclous fantasy as Rob Long points out in his review of the book in the Wall Street Journal,
"In fact, "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" reads less like a novel or "practical utopia" than a dream journal. At the Maui summit, for instance, Phil Donahue rises to address his fellow do-gooders: "Phil pulled a letter from his jacket pocket. 'This is an offer from the head of NBC. He wants to give me a national talk show, and get this—he specifically wants me to deal with injustice, hard solutions to the nation's problems, bold doings among ordinary people, and the plight of millions of Americans who get pushed around or shut out while they do the essential, grimy, everyday work that keeps the rich and famous sitting pretty on top. He says NBC wants a "new Dr. Phil" for the new burgeoning civil society.' "
And that's only page 68! (There are 700 pages total, in case I forgot to mention that.) The spine is barely creased and already there's a sensational parrot, a new TV talk show . . . oh, and a movement to change the national anthem to the more peaceful, labor-friendly "This Land Is Your Land." But even a first-time novelist like Mr. Nader knows that the story would begin to drag if he simply narrated a tale of how the country seamlessly eased into an idyllic state of pure Naderism, in which Ralph Nader's vision is finally realized and everyone sounds like Ralph Nader.
And so he throws a few hurdles in the way of the Meliorists. Following the unionization of Wal-Mart, there's some predictable push-back from corporate fat cats and power brokers. You know the type: the ones who force decent Americans to use energy-hogging lightbulbs and to sing a complicated national anthem. But then there's push-back against the push-back, which is eventually (spoiler alert!) successful, thanks to Yoko Ono's deployment of her ravishing personal beauty to dazzle and distract the guy leading the corporate opposition. His name, by the way, is Lancelot Lobo. It may be a blessing that Mr. Nader populated his book with so many famous people.
By novel's end, American society is thoroughly Naderized. Warren Beatty sits in the governor's mansion in Sacramento; the president has signed on to the Meliorist program; and Americans have embraced a new life that is dimly lit by awful fluorescent curlicue bulbs. But curiously, for a futuristic utopia, it all seems so tired. So old. So Jimmy Carter. This is a novel that should have been written in 1976. Honestly, though, it's feeling more like 1976 every day."
"Only the Super Rich" reads as if it could have been written by Rob Long or a consravative for it ultimately just shows what terrible and hopefully, untenable, ideas modern liberalism has for America. All this novel manages to show, amazingly, is how ungrounded Nader and the lefts ideas are. In Nader's world economics doesn't even exists as anything more than a after thought. Companys don't leave America after there taxed to death, the unemployment rate doesn't rise. It shows a lot about how unserious the liberal mind is. They see wealth in America as a pie that is simply cut up. The size of the pie never changes and it can't be decreased by high taxes and onerous regulations, it merely is cut up. America, in there eyes, doesn't compete with other nations for businesses at all. Prosperity is automatic in the world that liberals imagine.
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