Naked Randianism

There is so much perversion pervading all of Ayn Rand's work and life, it's hard to separate one bizarre strand from another.

Brad Reed at Crooks and Liars focuses on the wealth perversion:

What I've always found especially weird about Rand is how she frames economic success as a matter of moral virtue. That is, the only virtue that exists in the world is the pursuit of monetary gain through the maximizing of one's natural talents and abilities. Or as John Galt himself put it in the opening of the Atlas Shrugged trailer, the ideal person is someone who "works for himself and [does] not let others feed off the profits of his energy."

The trouble with this, of course, is that it's a ridiculous pile of bulls***. In reality a person's success has nothing to do with their inherent "morality" and a lot more to do with genetics, education and just plain luck. There are plenty of people in life who work hard and are not successful. There are plenty of people who are successful but who are then hit with a catastrophic illness that sucks up their life savings. There are people who are extremely rich who have never done one godd*** useful thing in their entire lives (Helllloooooooo, Richard Mellon Scaife!).

The point is, if someone retires rich it ain't because they're a virtuous, rational self-interested individual and if someone is broke in their old age it ain't because they're a lazy, unscrupulous "looter." And this is sort of the point of Social Security: The goal is to say, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are in the rest of your life, here's some cash to make sure you don't spend your final days freezing to death on the street (or, as I'm sure Gillespie would prefer, sewing Nike sneakers for five cents a day). This is why it's called Social Security, Nick. Because people who have matured beyond the age of three know that sometimes bad stuff happens in life that is completely out of our control.

At any rate, it's stuff like this that makes me confident that Randianism as a philosophy will never make anywhere outside of corporate boardrooms and smoke-filled libertarian dorm rooms. After all, most people will have trouble embracing a doctrine that holds all of them in hostile contempt.

If only all the Randians would hurry up and Go Galt before they destroy everything for the rest of us.

The truth, of course, is that there never has been and never will be a real John Galt. Even in the heyday of the Robber Barons, none of them could have survived genuinely cut off from government and the working class. Without thousands of miles of free land stolen from the natives by the government, and thousands of illegal Asian immigrants working for slave wages, Rockefeller's railroads would still be in blueprints.

Behind every great fortune, they used to say, is a crime. Today, behind every great fortune is a pile of no-bid government contracts.

All the welfare checks ever cut to every non-rich person in this country added together don't amount to the tower of tax dollars showered on just one corporate parasite on Wall Street.

Go Galt, indeed. They wouldn't last five minutes out on the street with nothing but their addled wits.