# Most people get Ayn Rand's philosophy wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 1, 2025, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474 "2025-11-01T11:57:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2025, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/101 "2025-11-04T22:19:30Z")
> [@Clearbluesky](#): > > But honestly I don’t think 95% of Americans have ever heard of her. [Googling](https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/1899-61-have-heard-ayn-rand-35-have-favorable-view): > 61% have heard of Ayn Rand, 35% have a favorable view So, a _lot_ more than that. ---
**Author:** ![Clearbluesky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Clearbluesky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clearbluesky)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2025, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/102 "2025-11-04T22:27:31Z")
I have a favorable view of Tom Clancy and his books. That doesn’t I mean I subscribe to his political views I don’t know what his political views are. I’m guessing he was conservative. ---
**Author:** ![Clearbluesky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Clearbluesky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clearbluesky)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2025, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/103 "2025-11-04T22:37:17Z")
61% of Americans couldn’t identify Urkraine in a map. But ok, 61% of Americans have heard of her, weighed the pros and cons of her so called philosophy and 35% percent agree with her. Assuming google AI is correct. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/104 "2025-11-05T01:04:04Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Galt’s Gulch wasn’t some high tech utopian “White Man’s Wakanda” or even a particularly luxurious gated community IIRC. As I recall it was just a normal typical Middle-American style town they had created. The point was that the Strikers were content to just live simple lives on their own terms rather than run giant world-changing corporations that could be nationalized or have their wealth redistributed at the whim of some corrupt government official. That’s the statement she wanted to make, but the underlying supposition is that all of these really smart guys could’ve made a working society without workers. Like, if you just make really awesome tractors, and a guy who writes really good symphonies, it will be a paradise. Just add a magic machine that makes infinite free electricity out of thin air, and the fruits of living in “objective reality” will be yours to reap! ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/105 "2025-11-05T01:28:17Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Well, someone had to invent that stuff. Sure, but my point is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a legendary workaholic asshole who “made it all happen”. Those figures may stand out more sharply in our consciousness because they make more dramatic stories, but they’re not necessarily the ones responsible for most of the progress. > [@msmith537](#): > > Rand didn’t hate the concept of prosperity being rooted in people of varying degrees of intelligence and ability and initiative. You left out my key point about “the communal participation of” all sorts of such people. Most things aren’t the brainchild of one heroic inventor/entrepreneur who’s singlehandedly dragging humanity forward into a better future. Most innovation is crucially dependent on a whole lot of participants and contingent circumstances, not on one mighty man bending the uncooperative universe to his relentless will. But that illusion was the core of Rand’s romantic narratives, where this small minority of the population is just so outstandingly superior in its gifts and its intelligence and work ethic that its withdrawal from the larger society causes that whole society to crumble to destruction. It’s the masturbatory fantasy of an egotistical white-collar worker trying to make selfish disdain and intellectual snobbery into a moral principle. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/106 "2025-11-05T02:00:11Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > That’s the statement she wanted to make, but the underlying supposition is that all of these really smart guys could’ve made a working society without workers. Like, if you just make really awesome tractors, and a guy who writes really good symphonies, it will be a paradise. Just add a magic machine that makes infinite free electricity out of thin air, and the fruits of living in “objective reality” will be yours to reap! Again I think that misses the point. It doesn’t matter if these guys could make a self-sustaining community. The point is what they aren’t doing is inventing and building companies that employ thousands of people selling new-fangled alloys, perpetual motion machines, transcontinental railroads and whatnot. And society would be worse off for the loss. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/107 "2025-11-05T02:27:53Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > You left out my key point about “the communal participation of” all sorts of such people. Most things aren’t the brainchild of one heroic inventor/entrepreneur who’s singlehandedly dragging humanity forward into a better future. Most innovation is crucially dependent on a whole lot of participants and contingent circumstances, not on one mighty man bending the uncooperative universe to his relentless will. > > But that illusion was the core of Rand’s romantic narratives, where this small minority of the population is just so outstandingly superior in its gifts and its intelligence and work ethic that its withdrawal from the larger society causes that whole society to crumble to destruction. It’s the masturbatory fantasy of an egotistical white-collar worker trying to make selfish disdain and intellectual snobbery into a moral principle. See I would say it’s the opposite. In Rand’s romantic narrative, an ordinary engineer (Galt) or really any bright, ambitious member of society could come up with a world-changing invention and reap the rewards of their ingenuity. It is the classist snobbery and disdain of the egotistic white-collar bureaucrat who feels that they should be rewarded by virtue of their station Rand seem to object to. In Atlas Shrugged, society wasn’t really crumbling because the strikers checked out. It was crumbling because society had adopted a mentality where people in general were taking out more than they were putting in. People, companies, even entire nations were dependent on various forms of welfare and bailouts. Workers and executives were placed into roles due to politics rather than competency. Ingenuity and initiative were actively discouraged. Various protectionist laws were created that stifled competition and prevented companied from hiring the best workers and firing the incompetent. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/108 "2025-11-05T02:38:20Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Words like “fair” and “deserve” are generally used to try to mentally cushion people from thinking about that reality. This is a straw man. Everyone (or most) people understand that if your argument is that subjective moral frameworks are irrelevant you can’t use a subjective moral framework to argue against them. No one is arguing against randianism by claiming that it’s unfair or immoral. They are making rational arguments about the (allegedly) objective claims ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/109 "2025-11-05T05:47:05Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > No one is arguing against randianism by claiming that it’s unfair or immoral. I wasn’t actually talking about people actively arguing against the philosophy, although I can see from context that it would seem that way. I was thinking about the vast majority of people who shy away from objective reality by thought patterns that include such ideas as how life can be unfair and how so-and-so didn’t deserve to die so young from some disease. Not to mention all the religious pabulum people are fed to take away the stings of life. A lot of this stuff seems to leak into more serious discussions as well. Going back and re-reading the various posts for context, I can see that this particular statement of mine was not clearly worded, and should not have been posted as a reply to your post. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/110 "2025-11-05T14:18:03Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Again I think that misses the point. It doesn’t matter if these guys could make a self-sustaining community. The point is what they aren’t doing is inventing and building companies that employ thousands of people selling new-fangled alloys, perpetual motion machines, transcontinental railroads and whatnot. And society would be worse off for the loss. It’s true that this is the point Rand wants to make – that society would collapse without the types of people she worships. But the point only works if you stipulate the underlying assumption, that the “producers” can make a go of it without workers, administrators, and so forth. And the novel simply doesn’t engage with that idea at all. It’s simply taken as settled fact, like most of Rand’s “philosophy”, and greased along with the help of magical technology. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/111 "2025-11-05T14:51:18Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > wasn’t actually talking about people actively arguing against the philosophy So again you haven’t actually pointed out a way rand’s philosophy is misunderstood. > [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > people who shy away from objective reality by thought patterns that include such ideas as how life can be unfair and how so-and-so But that’s not a misunderstanding. Its a perfectly valid philosophical view, just as you cannot argue against a philosophy of objective reality by bringing up subjective moral frameworks, the reverse is also true. If my moral philosophy is based on subjective moral frameworks not objective measurements, no amount of objective measurements can disapprove it. In fact given how utter incapable of objectively measuring reality humans are (as demonstrated by pretty much every experiment quantifying it) relying purely on your senses measuring objective reality is a fairly poor choice IMO. Angels, UFOs, miracles, ghosts etc are all the result of people relying on their measurement of reality to be objective and accurate. At least Epicureanism recognized this and had the nuance to state that while the senses are objectively true their interpretation can be totally false. Not that I’m saying Epicureanism is the way to go. But I never knew an Epicurean to spend a decade prattling on about personal freedom and protecting us from government tyranny only to turn around and elect a fascist tyrant who is diametrically opposed to personal freedom. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/112 "2025-11-05T14:57:18Z")
Philosophical differences aside, I think Rand would agree that you can sing this thread’s title to the tune of “Sweet Betsy from Pike.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/113 "2025-11-05T20:45:29Z")
? Oh, you mean by coming in with “PEOple” on the first downbeat. … Damn you, @Q.Q.Switcheroo. 🤣 ETA: _“Most people get Ayn Rand’s philosophy wrong;_ _I ‘spect it’s them books being so gol-dang long,_ _Full of socialist grifters not earnin’ their wages,_ _And speeches that go on for twenny-six pages._ _Singing dang fol dee dido, singing dang fol dee day…”_ ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2025, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/114 "2025-11-06T13:50:50Z")
John Galt babbles on through another long page While looters and moochers steal your well earned wage It doesn’t scan well as first line of the song Most People Get Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Wrong. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2025, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/115 "2025-11-06T15:51:54Z")
That has to be one of the most random musical references I’ve seen. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2025, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/116 "2025-11-06T17:43:56Z")
Hey, [some of us are just prone to thread title earworms](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-elmo-and-his-tesla-heist/1002838/70). Your sympathy and understanding are encouraged. 🤣 ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2025, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/117 "2025-11-07T16:57:22Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Basically a cautionary tale about creating a system where people take more out of it than they put in. > > It wasn’t that everyone who wasn’t one of the captains of industry was a parasite. It was that there were so many parasites who only took out of the system without putting anything back that the economy no longer worked. Competent people who actually wanted to work couldn’t find jobs because they were filled by idiot political appointees. But what’s wrong with being a parasite? I thought selfishness was good and altruism was bad? I thought Rand was _pro_-parasite? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2025, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/118 "2025-11-07T17:29:02Z")
No, it’s more like a double (or triple?) negative. She was anti-exploitation, against parasitism disguising itself as a cry for pity and mercy. Against what she saw as basically a charity scam. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2025, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/119 "2025-11-07T17:35:56Z")
Rational self-interest seems to be misinterpreted here. I would think that participating in a sustainable market system and all that went with it would be in your rational self-interest. Selfishness and greed would not be rational. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2025, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474/120 "2025-11-07T19:21:45Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > No, it’s more like a double (or triple?) negative. She was anti-exploitation, against parasitism disguising itself as a cry for pity and mercy. Against what she saw as basically a charity scam. I think that’s where the disconnect is. People have been conditioned to equate “business” with “greed”, “selfishness”, “exploitation” and other negative forms of “self interest”. OTOH, people on the Right have been conditioned to believe that society couldn’t function without “producers” like CEOs, private equity, and hedge fund execs writing large checks. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-people-get-ayn-rands-philosophy-wrong/1024474.md?page=7)