“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
— Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist

Only two more blogs on Ayn Rand, I promise, that will be it. I love how Ayn Rand polarizes people. Folks either want to bed me for reading it, or they want to crucify me. I have on friend who reads it every year. Another would burn every copy. And to be honest, no one yet has asked me for coitus because I read Atlas Shrugged. It’s called hyperbole, son. Look into it.

So I had breakfast today with an Ayn Rand hater. He provided me with the quote that started this blog out. Yeah, love that. In some ways, Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged are similar. The men of Numenor were actually free market capitalists, but Sauron, read as Stalin, wanted to kill them. True story. But I think Atlas Shrugged has more in common with comic books than fantasy novels, though Atlas Shrugged has been described as science-fiction in some circles. I can see it. Reardon metal and John Galt’s perpetual motion machine and Martians, lots of Martians.

The universe, according to Ayn Rand, is a lonely, cold place and if you can’t compete, well, sorry. I will trod over your corpses on my way to fame, fortune and love. Do we really want to live in a world of jungle capitalism? The reality is that even if Ayn Rand was embraced by everyone, very few could it. We call them psychopaths. As tribal animals, we care about what happens to people we know. I’ve housed friends and I’ve offered money to friends because we live together in a society.

And you couldn’t raise kids using Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Well, I tried. With my two year old, I would say, “How come you don’t have a job yet? You’re a moocher and a looter. You’re worthless. You can’t compete. I disown you, looter.” Tears would follow. But if you can’t compete, well, you’re a moocher.

I find it’s funny that people are so enamored with Ayn Rand because really, it reads like an anti-communism tract and as we have seen, communism didn’t work out so well. So yeah, capitalism is the way to go, however, capitalism on its own is an ugly thing. The world would look like L.A. for one thing. And another, we saw how unregulated capitalism worked with companies like Enron and others. My friend says John Galt owes the American people 750,000,000,000 dollars. No, we need regulations.

So, yes, Ayn Rand has some interesting things in her work, but in the end, it’s a comic book. And I would hope we wouldn’t govern using a comic book.

On a personal note, as a writer and small businessman, I can’t write alone. I can’t sell and market alone. I need help. Does that make a moocher and a looter? Or does that make me a human being?