Cliff Asness: belief

Transcript context

…The contrarian answer. What’s the side of Ayn Rand’s philosophy that you feel is weakest? Economics. I’m going to get yelled at by every libertarian friend I have on earth. I’ve never been a very big gold standard person. I respect it. I respect it, I have friends who are fanatic believers in it. I don’t think it will be the disaster to a lot of people — but I don’t think it cures all ills. I have a lot of friends who I agree with who’ll say “we have too much regulation,” I’ll go “check. ” They go, “We have a byzantine crazy tax code that often — not just that they’re high — they create a lot of odd incentives for trade-offs that shouldn’t exist.” I’ll go “check.” “We should have hard money.” “No check,” and they think that would fix everything. I don’t fully get it. Ayn Rand, the name of her philosophy was Objectivism and she just told you it was objectively right that gold is the standard of value. She’s unkind to silver frankly. [laughter] You have succeeded in getting me making fun of Ayn Rand, that’s very impressive. But when she ventures into economics like that and makes very bold, strong statements, I don’t agree with them all. What’s her most underappreciated side or aspect or angle?…

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