In the U.S. we have seen the central bank – which Rand sought to abolish – encourage excessive loan taking by keeping interest rates artificially low. We have seen the U.S. government force banks to give loans to people who are unable to pay them back. We have seen the government give bailouts to banks – a tragic example of a mixed economy’s mixing of political and economic interests.
According to Mahatma Gandhi, revolutionaries are first ignored, then laughed at, then attacked—and then they win. Reading George Monbiot’s piece on Ayn Rand, “How AynRand became the new right’s version of Marx” (The Guardian), has made me think that Gandhi could have included an intermediary step between laughter and attack: a step where the adversaries are no longer able to laugh, yet still lack the arguments necessary to launch an attack, thus do what they can to smear.
Monbiot makes his intention clear: He claims that Ayn Rand thought that empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive, that the poor deserve to die, and that those who seek to help them should be gassed. These are lies, and Monbiot knows it.
In spite of the lies, I do have a shred of sympathy for Monbiot – for what else could he say? It becomes clearer every day that Ayn Rand’s prophecy in Atlas Shrugged was spot on. Although the railroad industry in Rand’s novel has been replaced by a financial market, the same plot is played out: a mixed economy collapses and capitalism gets the blame.
In the U.S. we have seen the central bank – which Rand sought to abolish – encourage excessive loan taking by keeping interest rates artificially low. We have seen the U.S. government force banks to give loans to people who are unable to pay them back. We have seen the government give bailouts to banks – a tragic example of a mixed economy’s mixing of political and economic interests. We have also seen the economy on both sides of the Atlantic being driven to the breaking point by governments taking on great debts to finance popular welfare programs. The mixed economy is crumbling. The left seeks to give capitalism the blame.
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