At first sight it might seem that one of Ayn Rand’s dreams has come even more true than she could ever have imagined. In her novel Atlas Shrugged it was necessary for her hero, John Galt, to take over the entire US radio network in order to get his message across. Elon Musk, his nearest modern incarnation, had a much simpler way of achieving the same ends. He bought Twitter.
After Rand had finished gloating over the impending demise of the woman in Car No 8, who considered that she had a right to travel on a train merely because she had bought a ticket to do so, there were still plenty of other passengers who were awake and about to meet their well-deserved ends. They included a professor of philosophy.
Gold seems to be enjoying a resurgence, and its fans are promoting the Randian fantasy of a return to a gold standard. But how would that work?
Ayn Rand hated altruism. How would she have responded to natural disaster?
Ayn Rand thought that only government bureaucrats had immunity for the consequences of their mistakes. She was wrong. In today’s world, businessmen share that immunity.
One of the things about which Ayn Rand had something to say in one of her essays on capitalism was the emergence of monopoly. It is clear she had not grasped some of its essential features.