2009 Bestselling Author Ayn Rand?

I know it's been ages since I last made a post. Master's degrees seem to do a marvelous job of sucking away every free breath I have. When I am done with my final next week for my current class, I intend on talking a lot more about current events. However, an article in The Economist really caught my eye... Apparently, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is selling better than ever.

This definitely isn't shocking. And even though I've become far more of a damn bleeding heart tree-hugging hippie liberal since singing the praises of objectivisim after I finished Atlas Shrugged when I graduated from college, I still regard the book as a major influence in my life, and there's still a great deal of objectivist philosophy that I believe in.

What's really interesting about The Economist blurb as well as well as the comments are the number of people who seem to think, "Look! It's happening! Life imitates art! Rand's predictions are all coming true!"

To which I must say... "Um... no."

And I say this for one reason and one reason only. The heroes in Ayn Rand's books have one unique difference from our current situation: those characters ACTUALLY MADE THINGS. They didn't make money from air, they made railroads and machines and designed buildings and homes. Stuff you can touch. The assholes who got us in our current mess made "financial products" where wealth was somehow generated without actually making anything and all of the sudden we're all shocked when we find out it's not worth anything. Let's just say in my older age I'm becoming quite the physiocrat.

Now, granted, the car companies could fall under this rubric, because they make things, but a lot of people (i.e., the unions and retirees) also insisted on getting money for NOT making things, but for just having worked there before, and I feel this is a major factor of why the car companies are in trouble (oh, that and they make really shoddy cars that don't reflect the interests of the market, but they are admittedly getting a little better with that -- and no, I'm not talking about the smoke and mirrors act that is the Chevy Volt).

Anyway, if you've never read Atlas Shrugged before, you probably should. It's just one of those really important books. However, if you want the main point of the whole thing, I found a copy of John Galt's speech online that sums up the whole thing pretty nicely.

See you again in spring break!