You know outside of the ‘preaching’ (so many preachy parts of that book) I don’t mind Rand. Atlas Shrugged is a decent love story. It also shows the evils of corporate/government love nests. The solution Rand wants (manic pixie dream exceptionalism) isn’t realistic - but the idea that big business using government to block out competition (like with Net Neutrality, and tort reform, and one sided binding contracts of adhesion , etc) are real, and hurtful. I could even stomach the dream of ‘manic pixie exceptionalism’ if the damn fools read any part of the rest of the book, because we’d all be on the same side fighting corporate money in politics. To be quite honest, some of the ways the government is abused right now does keep someone with a good idea from rising to the top - because a corporation is able to bury them in money until they give up and sell out, so even that idea has some merit.
The fact that Rand fled Russia and wrote about social programs as the victim of the worst abuses of them, honestly is something I can forgive her for as well. The weird way that parts of the book are fetishized and the context is tossed for a dream land vision of the world… is frustrating.
