The world is socialist

> All these people who are so great aren't really that much greater than the average schmuck on the subway. There really isn't that much range in the smartness or fitness of human beings.

Whelp, you've lost me. The difference in productivity and smartness---as measured by the consistent ability to impact the world---of people is enormous (the additional importance of luck notwithstanding). I'm not sure why you thought you were going to make progress on these deep philosophical issues with a 400 word blog post, but you're even more sunk if you throw in empirical claims that contradict both intuition and the data.

The existing medical regulatory regime administered by the FDA requires shedloads of clinical trial results to be filed before a medicine can receive a product license, allowing it to be prescribed or sold to the public. There's a good reason for this (the Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/ProductRegulati... ) but the way the system works makes it prohibitively expensive to gain such regulatory approval for a new medicine, thus pricing non-profits, academia, and small companies out of the market and restricting new developments in pharmaceuticals to a small privileged elite not-quite-a-cartel of large corporations.

'Twas not ever thus. Indeed, as late as the late 1970s, small companies were still producing new and interesting pharmaceuticals.

Moreover, drugs aren't the only source of cures. Certainly surgical interventions don't generally come from commercial drug companies. And some categories of useful product don't come out of commercial drug companies at all -- their record on new antibiotic development in the past three decades is dismal to the point of near-criminality.

Ayn Rand's philosophy is widely criticized for being contradictory. This seems pretty accurate to me.

But I don't think modern readers of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, et al., are listening to her as a preacher, to apply her ideas to the entirety of their lives, but rather as inspiration for their own philosophy. That is, after all, one reason to read literature that challenges your opinions.

That's why I read and appreciate Rand. It's not because the American Libertarian movement made her a mascot.

Take her introduction to The Fountainhead that she wrote in 1968, years after it was published and became successful:

> It is not in the nature of man--nor of any living entity--to start out by giving up, by spitting in one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential. There are very few guideposts to find. The Fountainhead is one of them. This is one of the cardinal reasons of The Fountainhead's lasting appeal: it is a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming man's glory, showing how much is possible.

By posting this I hope to defend Rand in the sense of helping people realize she does more then what the modern political landscape has created for her. I was certainly inspired by her approach to self, as I imagine countless others have been.

I don't think I've ever read such a patronising dismissal of objectivism.

>It's a beautiful story for a person caught between childhood and adulthood

I could say the same thing about every religion, I doubt it would get a warm response.

John Galt never made it past adolescence. He ultimately used his talents to make the world suffer, all along possessing the wherewithal to make the world a better place. But HE didn't think THEY deserved it. I shudder to think people wanted a John Galt admirer for U.S. Vice President (and were supporting him for that very reason).