John Galt is alive and well. He once bought a farm that the previous owner had been forced to clear as a condition of the grant of title. He spent decades quietly assisting the regeneration of the full suite of the original native species. But when it became time to thin the trees to maintain the health of the resulting forest, he was told by powerful political activists who owned no trees that his now "pristine" forest was too special to be left to his own management discretion.

They went on to deprive him of markets for his timber by encouraging consumers to buy wood from clonal, monocultural plantations that provide minimal habitat values while they grow and are then clear felled to the boundary, with, wait for it, full certification as environmentally sustainable.

They then set up a system of carbon credits that will reward those who plant the above mentioned clonal monocultures after 1990 and impose a penalty on those who started decades earlier and produced a forest that wildlife actually thrive in. And it was all done in the name of environmental stewardship and intergenerational equity.

And if you think Ayn Rand was a bit melodramatic, then take a look around you and ask yourself why people who have spent their entire life tending a native forest are now quite willing to sit back and wait for the inevitable conflagration that will wipe what was once their proudest achievement from the face of the earth.

There was a time when "how you get there" was what the journey was all about. Not so in the brave new green utopia. Communities get the environment they deserve.

Hohum - I am with you.

Capitalism was Pinochet murdering workers in support of free market, Bolivians workers being suppressed for the same cause, Chinese suppressing their own people to ensure a free market, South Africa, Poland, Iraq - all in teh name of the free market.

I agree - if the market is the only thing that matters, if families and pensions for our old don't matter, if we are to be economic units rather than people and merely be part of a market rather than live in a society or community, Ayn Rand is wonderful.

Naomi Klein has exposed the true nature of societies governed only by free market principles - a la Ayn Rand and as interpreted by economists who follow Milton Friedman.

"Atlas Shrugged" was a lumbering, soporific book. I expect that the movie will be much the same.

"... it is true that capitalism has resulted in far fewer deaths than socialist dictatorships, whether they be fascist or Communist in name."

Really?

http://www.versobooks.com/books/cdef/d-titles/davis_m_late_victorian.shtml
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article408636.ece
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/kiss_nssm_jb_1995.html
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch17arab.html
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/5846.php
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2004pres/20040309.html
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2003/12/12/iraq6582.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2005/Geopolitics-GM-Food6mar05.htm
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20070918122056800
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_history_events#Covert_operations.2C_coups.2C_military_advisers_etc.
http://www.stateofnature.org/southAmericaUsHegemony.html

Of course it's true, because the capitalism idealised by Ayn Rand has never existed. It never could exist and never will exist.

I might as well say, socialist dictatorships never killed anyone because there has never been a "truly socialist" dictatorship.

Real capitalism is the real world: capitalist countries' governments have health and trade and agriculture and energy policies and aid budgets and armies and police forces and presidents that launch offensive wars.

"Capitalism" refers to real societies with real landowners and real people and poverty and illness and hunger, dominated by governments who wield big sticks and businesses which view the world as a chessboard. Capitalism refers to the system of revolving doors that shuffle senior officials between corporate boardrooms and national executives.

Of course capitalism has caused more deaths than socialist dictatorships. Imperialist powers have abetted, installed, propped up and torn down more brutal dictatorships and regimes with devastating economic policies than socialist governments of any origin have ever existed.

Poverty in market-oriented countries and in countries assaulted or beseiged by "capitalist" armed forces, is the biggest killer of them all.

Socialist dictatorships are awful, and I wouldn't choose to live under one.

But don't lie to yourself regarding the callous brutality of the real, existing capitalist system. For sheer numbers, it can't be beaten.

Whilst there might be some value for people who've never read a serious work before to have Rand's fiction question some their assumptions, the author is seriously misguided if he thinks Ayn Rand's shallow objectivist philosophy, which is hammered down our throats throughout her work, is some kind of revelatory tour de force. Just as in real life, where she regarded anyone who disagreed with her as morally evil, her fiction exhibits the same pigheadedness with an use cardboard cutout deviants and unconvincing controlled consequences to push her unrelenting opinions. I would suggest that anyone predisposed to libertarian politics & ethical egoism could easily find far worthier proponents elsewhere, eg. Nozick. In the real word, Rand gets no respect from the philosophical community because her ideas are caricatures. It succeeds because it plays on emo right-wing college student type sensitivities, where there is comfort and succur knowing you're really a repressed genius and everyone else is just jealous and dragging you down.

I reckon the author should go play the game Bioshock. :D

The reason capitalism has always had such a good press is because the press is owned by capitalists. Otherwise, the notion that the more selfish the individual is allowed to be, the more compassionate the society becomes, would be exposed for the absurdity it is. Capitalism is the runaway train. Socialism is the brake.

Xoddam … I agree. These socialism versus capitalism body counts are often skewed to surgically remove the hundreds of millions of deaths caused directly and indirectly by capitalism throughout its two-hundred year history – especially when it operates hand-in-glove with its partner-in-crime, imperialism.

BBoy … Love your “everyone’s just jealous” comment. It sums up the conceit of this essay beautifully.