Below The Beltway

Yaron Brook explains why a fifty year-old novel is still relevant today:

In “Atlas,” Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?

The novel’s eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. “If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society,” Rand wrote elsewhere in “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” “you can predict its course.” Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don’t just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society — particularly its dominant moral ideas.

Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote “affordable housing,” which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.

The message is always the same: “Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good.” But Rand said this message is wrong — selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue. By this she did not mean exploiting others à la Bernie Madoff. Selfishness — that is, concern with one’s genuine, long-range interest — she wrote, required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit.

On some level, I think, this message still means something to a significant segment of the public. They may not understand Rand’s ideas fully, and they may even recoil when they find out what she has to say about things life religion, but, in the end, there’s something in them that appeals to people far more than the mindless self-sacrifice of the left, or the idea that people who achieve should feel guilty for doing so.

I’m not sure that this whole “Going Galt” movement will amount to anything — as I noted earlier, I have my doubts about it — but if it leads people to start taking individual liberty seriously, and questioning the logic of those who tell them they must put their interests aside in favor of those of the group, then it will do some good.