Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has been completely unraveled by the pandemic

And yet all the wealthy people fleeing the cities to the idyllic countryside taking over small towns and building their own little versions of Galt’s Gulch…

And what to say of government here? The best reforming group out of this entire pandemic was private industry developing lifesaving vaccines while governments around the world took action ranging from pretending the virus doesn’t exist to outright denial that such a thing could even happen. And let’s not forget it was government researchers and labs that almost surely were working on gain of function research and accidentally let the virus escape.

So no. I’m not buying this one-sided argument. Governments around the word failed miserably at their jobs while corporations and supply chains did miraculously well. Donald Trump didn’t put food on my table. The CEOs of major corporations and front-line workers did. Ayn Rand is certainly worth of critique and there are a lot of things to say about Objectivism (which I do think is funny how up in arms people get over this silly book), but the arguments and discussion put forth in this article were quite poor, in my opinion.

> How would Galt’s Gulch have responded last year when COVID-19 arrived?

Idk. Seemed like all the small towns that all the wealthy software engineers and remote workers fled to did alright.

I can't read the article because it is behind a paywall. But, taking a stab in the dark, the title suggests that the article will follow the fairly standard formulation of "government banned the free market for your own good, and then the only way to make progress was via government. It worked, so libertarianism can now be written off"

So, note that the major government contribution in this pandemic was removing all the safeguards that slow down vaccine development and rubber stamping the first vaccines that look safe enough. The WHO failed spectacularly at nipping the pandemic in the bud - rather helping to slow the response by working with Chinese propaganda. Most governments were largely unprepared and powerless due to poor preparation, despite private actors ringing the bell for years.

The libertarians (like me!) would claim that the pandemic has shown why a free market approach would have been a better response to the pandemic. Ayn Rand's objectivism could have handled the situation fine.

This guy's main argument is that the objectivist, libertarian folks living in Galt's Gulch wouldn't wear masks, wouldn't have a health department to provide guidance, and would come from an older demographic (more susceptible to Covid). Galt's Gulch would have been ravaged by the plague, thus refuting Ayn Rand's grand philosophy.

Since this is a fictional outcome for a fictional town, I call bullshit.

I'm not saying that Rand had it right; I'm just saying that this guy has nothing to say about her.

I read and enjoyed Atlas Shrugged. Sadly I think the main points about Objectivism are lost and people substitute in Libertarianism.

While Objectivism isn’t the best philosophy in all cases, I don’t know any that are. It is still a useful way to think about the world to broaden your perspective.

>Like a lot of white males, I read Ayn Rand’s bestselling novel Atlas Shrugged when I was 18.

>Rand’s simplistic Objectivist worldview couldn’t be better designed to appeal to sheltered middle-and-upper-class suburban white boys like me

>As soon as I befriended people who were not suburban white dudes, and once I understood that they had to work five times as hard to enjoy half of the privilege that I enjoyed, I realized that Rand was singing a heroic ode to the comfortable.

Stop posting racism that's wrapped up as self-flagellation. It's getting tiresome.