There has been a shift in the television commentary these past few days about our economy. A few clever pundits have dusted off their old copies of 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged tells the story of an economy in chaos and the decision by the wealthy to strike and disappear rather than continue to use their money and influence to support the poor and the sinking economy. In my opinion, the politics of altruism are complex and too simplistic to be applied in the context of a macroenconomic crisis, especially since the world we live in now is so different from the world created by the characters in the story and Hollywood in the 1950's when Rand lived there.“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” a scheme that resulted in enslaving the able to the unable. The first man to quit was a young engineer, who walked out of a mass meeting saying that he would put an end to this once and for all by “stopping the motor of the world.”
Quoted from 'Atlas Shrugged'
We are all in this together and if our elected and appointed leaders can't get us back on track then we all need to work harder and invest our time, vision and money in wiser ventures in the future.
Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read and two years later discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, thus capturing the heroic vision which sustained her throughout her life. During her high school years, she was eyewitness to both the Kerensky Revolution, which she supported, and—in 1917—the Bolshevik Revolution, which she denounced from the outset. In order to escape the fighting, her family went to the Crimea, where she finished high school. When introduced to American history in her last year of high school, she immediately took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be. Long an admirer of cinema, she entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screenwriting. In late 1925 she obtained permission to leave Soviet Russia for a visit to relatives in the United States. She spent the next six months with her relatives in Chicago, obtained an extension to her visa, and then left for Hollywood to pursue a career as a screenwriter. On Ayn Rand’s second day in Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille saw her standing at the gate of his studio, offered her a ride to the set of his movie The King of Kings, and gave her a job, first as an extra, then as a script reader. During the next week at the studio, she met an actor, Frank O’Connor, whom she married in 1929; they were married until his death fifty years later. Ayn Rand lived from 1905-1982
Quoted from AynRand.org
Cartoon Credit: Lawrence Gilson
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