I enjoyed the book, but I don't really agree with her philosophy. There are certain parallels that translate to real life, but for the most part, the book illustrates two extremes that would never work.
On one side are the need based people. Basically, she goes to illustrate how complete socialism could never work, but a book isn't necessary to tell this. I guess historically, I can see where she is coming from, when this book was written, the government had grown massively up to about a decade ago what with the world war and great depression programs. American socialist programs that really benefited us were not really that common yet, but time has told us that sometimes, government control is necessary. If Rand had her way, we wouldn't have consumer safety laws or cheap prices on a lot of our necessities in which competition is not possible, nor would there be any oversight on men like Madoff of present day.
The other extreme is represented with Galt and Francisco and that philosopher who are completely capitalist. It's great that their little town works out when everybody is willing to work to produce, but the world simply isn't like that. In a real life, monopolies lead to inefficient companies that become the real looters of society. Have you seen the summer homes of the oil, train and electric barons of the past? They are too massive to be supported by any large group of private investors, the state is the only entity capable of preserving these estates. Though Rand claims that people like Orren and James are the ones who would become the looters, its clear as day in historical anecdote that the opposite is also true. She is simply too optimistic about self-fulfillment, the people of highest caliber have proved time and time again to be just as greedy as any other man.
She completely idolizes working only for personal gains, saying that the only reason to help others is to help the self. No act is completely selfless, yet she completely dismisses anybody who does things in the name of common good... sure, the antagonists in the book act selfishly, but people like Dagny, John, Francisco, these are sociopaths in real life.
Anyways, I read it more as a dystopian novel than anything else. A battle between complete self interest and complete self sacrifice. Of course the novel is written with sway towards self interest, but nonetheless, it was pretty reflective to me. Since she produces one extreme argument so well point by point, it was kind of nice reading through and trying to think of a counterpoint so that I could settle on where I stood. It wasn't exactly life changing, but it kind of did reaffirm my belief that the right course is somewhere between the two extremes provided in this book.
This post was edited by FFN on Apr 6 2009 09:41pm