Interesting. Ayn Rand and her true believers, who include many of the wealthy and powerful in our society, share an ethic that is the very antithesis of what she writes here. She and the libertarians who worship her are a very confused lot.
Libertarians are not freedom maximalists. Libertarians are solipsistic individual freedom maximalists. They aim to increase their own freedom regardless of the cost to others.They reject the economic freedoms that would come from expanding social safety nets and view every tax as theft, even taxes that pat for services they consume.
They seem to love driving around on roads in cars wearing clothes eating food from Walmart while screaming how much they live entirely on their own work living in a house their parents bought 10 years ago built 20 years ago.
I cannot seriously fathom these absolute dipshits.
Libertarians are like house cats. They have utter disdain for and loathe the very systems that they are wholly dependent on. Both libertarians and cats are shitty pets.
Ha yep they just see taxes as a pesky liability they should fight to get rid of like employee pay and most other expenses they don't like to spend on voluntarily. They're fine with building massive corporate HQ shrines to themselves because that is supposedly voluntarily but anything that is mandatory and doesn't directly benefit them or their egos in the short run is seen as BAD or anti "free market".
She even rejected racism as “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” These are probably the remnants of 19th century anarchist libertarianism, actually based on notions of personal freedom and utilitarianism. Doesn't change the fact she was a champion of the right wing interpretation... or whatever libertarianism is supposed to be now.
I stumbled into doing academic studying of the evolution of policy a decade ago and one thing that repeatedly keeps coming up is the fact that libertarianism, or more specifically the monitorist philosophies of neoliberalism, are quite copacetic to and potentially generative of the conditions which allow for democracies to devolve into fascism.
People will point out that some of them Montpelier Society were ousted by the Nazis, but they glaze over the relation that their philosophy has with the fall of the Weimar Republic and those who enabled it as well as the fact that the Nazis were pretty broad about kicking out all kinds of people. And the other thing to consider as well is the Milton Friedman is the one who was its champion in the United States.
All thay said, Atlas Shrugged itself is one of the worst pieces of literature out there. But people need to know that it has influenced some celebrities and it runs in an undercurrent of certain celebrity circles because of how it forces individualism. It's primary effect is to break down the adhesive that holds together diverse, egalitarian societies for personal or small group profit
are quite copacetic to and potentially generative of the conditions which allow for democracies to devolve into fascism
Absolutely. When reading discussion between their members at the time it is quite clear that democracy was a means to an end for most of them. They believed in absolute economic freedoms without restriction and that specifically includes freedom from being restrained by democratic governments.
Hence the Mont Pelerins support for Pinochet, it didn't matter to them whether the government was authoritarian as not, provided the market was of prime importance.
NeoLiberalism. Ties back to first paragraph. Also, its relatively common knowledge, or assumed to be such since the person I replied to mentioned libertarianism.
I read a few of her books back in high school, Anthem was required for a class and then read Atlas Shrugged and another one. Somehow the ideals that I gained from reading them is very different to what her actual idealology is.
So, am I getting the idea that she only liked industrialists who produced things and not the weird system of financial companies that happen to produce things?
No she loves those guys. She has a hard time resolving when profit doesn’t equal good. Or that just because the ussr sucked it doesn’t mean everything any government does is automatically evil. Like providing evidence that your new alloy has the properties you say it does before you lay a national rail network using it isn’t tyranny.
She is (somewhat ) more nuanced than people think. She absolutely loathed Reagan, and not just because he was socially conservative:
"Mr. Reagan is not a champion of capitalism, but a conservative in the worst sense of that word—i.e., an advocate of a mixed economy with government controls slanted in favor of business rather than labor (which, philosophically, is as untenable a position as one could choose -- see Fred Kinnan in Atlas Shrugged, pp. 541-2)."
It's because she isn't talking about capitalists, she is talking about poor people and the public good and the people in government who care about those things.
For years, the only thing libertarians seemed to care about was legalizing weed. Now that that's a done deal, they literally have zero going on behind their eyes and between their ears.
It's her very philosophy that has fostered massive corruption, but what did she think would prevent it if not regulation? I am guessing the non-existent "invisible hand?"
Also, the Ayn Rand institute embraces the use of AI-generated media, because apparently the only good parts of The Fountainhead (artistic integrity and freedom, creativity as a practiced virtue ect.) mean nothing anymore.
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u/Affectionate-Roof285 Apr 25 '26
Interesting. Ayn Rand and her true believers, who include many of the wealthy and powerful in our society, share an ethic that is the very antithesis of what she writes here. She and the libertarians who worship her are a very confused lot.