As, in Atlas Shrugged, the Taggart Comet was being propelled towards the Winston Tunnel by a coal-burning locomotive, one of the people being carried to certain death was ‘the woman in Roomette 9, Car No. 12, a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge’.
Had this been fact rather than fiction, it is unlikely that this woman, clearly an intending voter, would have known nothing of the politician for whom she intended to vote. At the very least, she would surely have known to which party he or she belonged, and for many voters that would be sufficient; their votes might in theory be for a person, but registering them is part of the mechanism by which a government is elected. However, Rand was never averse to setting up a straw man or, in this case, a straw woman, to bolster her arguments, and this particular person was assumed to know nothing of the giant industries that the government she helped to elect would control.
Would she really have known NOTHING about them? She may have known nothing about how they were run and the processes they used to produce the things or services on which their profitability depended, but in some cases at least she would have known one vital fact. She would have known the effect that some of those giant industries were having on her life. And even if that was all she knew, that could well be a sufficient and valid reason for her to cast her vote in a particular direction.
Last Tuesday, the fifteenth of July, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, attended a Mansion House dinner where she spoke to the assembled City of London notables about the “Leeds Reforms” that she had published that morning. The policy changes she outlined were, she said, designed to cut out unnecessary red tape and encourage more financial risk taking. The doomed housewife on the Taggart Comet might not have understood the how and why of the 2008 financial crisis, but she might have remembered its effects, and been aware that regulations had since been introduced by previous UK governments to reduce the chance of it happening again. She well have wondered, had she been a UK voter and had voted for Labour in 2024, whether she had really wanted a government that would reverse those regulations, and have considered placing her vote elsewhere when an opportunity came to do so.
Her death penalty for her belief that she had a right to do so seems somewhat harsh.
Other people have actually died.
The workers on the Deepwater Horizon platform may not have known anything about blowout prevention, but they would have trusted those who did to have safety as their primary object, and the expertise required to ensure it.
The occupants of the Grenfell Tower may not have known anything about building materials, but they would have trusted those who did to have safety as their primary object, and the expertise required to ensure it.
The fact that in both cases that trust was misplaced reinforces the message. Vote for the people you believe have your interests at heart, not for those who, following Ayn Rand, would place the interests of giant corporations above those of the people their actions affect..