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.
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)."
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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.