First a “disclaimer”: “Atlas Shrugged” is the only book by her I have ever read, including an insert in that book I read about “objectivism”, plus a few excerpts from her writings, plus summaries of her ideas by those who support them like the Ayn Rand Institute.
I agree with the “libertarian” parts of her philosophy, but sharply disagree with others. But in general, we agree on what a government should do.
Some who object to the libertarianism claim that her ideas are conducive to letting a few individuals lead, even using the word “hand-picked”.
But “hand-picked” is definitely not part of the ideas, quite the opposite. Nobody should be able to pick winners and losers was her point.
There were a few points that she wanted to make, although she made like they were part of the same package, although they are not.
The one that makes sense is that interference in the free market by government to make things “fair” end up hurting the people and the economy it is supposed to benefit. Tilting the field in favor of the less capable or less productive at any level only hurts productivity and hurts the consumer.
One I sharply disagree with is that charity freely given is wrong. Elevating selfishness as a virtue contradicts the other message and cedes “moral high ground” to the undeserving ideas, making it a virtue to let people just die who are caught up in disasters, for example.
Another I sharply disagree with even more is her irrational rant against God, about 100 pages or so. It was hard to slough through, but knowing that the book is a sort of Bible to some would-be elites (that’s true), I read it. The stuff she said about the Garden of Eden is totally irrational, no objective reasoning in it, and the denunciation of God totally ignored the realities of history. Ignoring the realities of history is a common fault of anti-Christian atheist writers.
The way that is justified by one executive at the “Ayn Rand Institute” is that no one person has any natural moral claim to anything that belongs to another person. That principle is true, but it misses the point that the moral imperative of genuine charity is not a claim by the recipient –that’s theft, opposite of moral– the question of morality or lack thereof pertains to the side of the giver.
“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth [it] not, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17) That’s a principle most people intuitively believe in, along with not doing anything to anybody else that they don’t want done to themselves.
Now pay attention to the detail here, it is immensely important. Everybody has a problem actually doing either aspect of the Golden Rule, the passive side or the active side. To assuage the conscience for the lack of “do unto”, they go into philosophy.
To justify the act of selfishness, they restate the question to put it from the perspective of the recipient instead of the giver. But they have to do more than that, so they say that anybody who does give something for free like that is doing it for “selfish” reasons.
But they’re torturing the meaning of “selfish” when they say that, because in that sense, they’re just pointing out that people have their own reasons for doing something whatever it is, meaning they’re just stating a meaningless tautology.
I believe in getting government out of the business of helping the poor because the way they have to do it only hurts the poor. That’s my main reason, although another equally valid reason is that the government has to ROB some people in order to do this “helping”.
I also believe in getting government out of the business of helping the poor because they only get in the way and tend to stop the private activities that would actually help the poor.
Some of those activities by private parties include just natural free market activity, like putting people to work in productive jobs with the investment capital that is freed up by stopping the government theft of it.
Other activities include those that benefit from the availability of resources that result from a more prosperous economy. In the 20th century, people in the United States were by far, way far, the majority contributor to missions of all kinds to the poor areas of the world. Most missions, by the way, included lots of physical and material helps, like elementary schools, vocational schools, and the like. Salvation Army type works.
Usually those charities are Christian charities, motivated by the need to offer the Gospel of Love to a world that is starving for it.
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