LAKE BLACKSHEAR — Twice in recent weeks you have published a letter deriding the philosophy of Ayn Rand, in particular using her flaws as a method to discredit VP candidate Paul Ryan due to his adherence of her economic philosophy. Your readers deserve to read the un-skewed truth.

Ayn Rand was a deeply flawed individual. As a follower of Christ, I understand the concept of a flawed character; I own no redeeming qualities except those granted to me without condition by Christ. However, economically, she was an unabashed, pure capitalist.

She understood that people produced out of pure, unadulterated selfishness. With that as the central drive behind capitalism, others benefit when they can make a contribution —  in Rand’s terms, when they are “producers.” Those who cannot produce have no claim to the results of the producers’ efforts. This, in a nutshell, is the philosophy that the class warfare promoters see as evil. That puzzles me.

When the economy operates under this system, the economy flourishes. Those striving to make profits build businesses to do so; they hire workers to help them make money (who work for money, not for some greater societal good). They purchase goods from venders who in turn hire other people and purchase raw materials from other producers. This is a relatively simple system.

Those who profit put their money in the bank- where it can be lent to other businesses or individuals- or they invest it in other businesses, where the cycle is repeated. If they become wealthy, they can live lavish lifestyles with what they have earned, and as a result, the producers who provide their luxuries (and who employ people to do so), benefit, for the selfish motive of profit.

Unskilled and uneducated laborers find work as servants, waiters, cooks, construction workers, etc. to support themselves with dignity, rather than be wards of the state.

Altruism is the duty of the individual or of organizations created by individuals, not the economic system and certainly not the government. I have three “bosses”— all venture capital firms. They exist for one single purpose — to make money. Between the three of them, they currently allow approximately 50 US corporations to exist (yes, just like Bain Capital).

My company employees 45 people and supports dozens of vendors, bank employees, auditors and attorneys; if we are an “average” portfolio company, that suggests that my owners’ “greed” is employing over 2,000 employees directly and many others indirectly right now; we are paid well and receive generous benefits not because of altruism but because other “greedy capitalists” might treat us better if they don’t.

Ayn Rand was an atheist but she understood something that Christians also get; rarely if ever does pure altruism exist. Human beings are by nature selfish and self-centered (we call it “sinful”) — do you have to teach a baby to say “no” or “mine”?

Liberals in this country claim to be tolerant and “giving”, but studies clearly show that the “greedy right wing” consistently out-gives them. This implies that they are more generous with others’ money than their own.

 People often “do good” for recognition, to promote their self-image, or to gain political power. Other believe, falsely, that they are earning their salvation. Perhaps the purest motivation is to please God, but even that has a selfish component, and is certainly an individual, not a collective motivation.

Rand’s 1957 classic, “Atlas Shrugged”, painted a picture that mirrors 2012 America — an economy crippled by government regulation and class warfare, where the “producers” are punished and the “moochers” are lauded. For those who don’t want to read a 1,200-page book, let me suggest a simpler read — Aesop’s fable of the goose who laid the golden eggs. The moral is the same — if you demand too much from the producers, or eventually destroy or dishearten them, production will suffer and the economy will crumble.

Our economy limps from over-regulation, not under-regulation. Leftists say that the Wall Street fiasco proves a need for more regulation; I believe that if selfish political interests were not trying to pick winners and losers, the Wall Street (and Detroit) failures could blame only themselves, and they should have been allowed to fail.

They were poorly regulated by investors, and investors would have born the price for their failure. However, we have been driven to such a hybrid of Socialism and Capitalism today that it may well have been appropriate for Washington to bail them out (but it was taxpayers’ money).

Capitalism in its purest form, with all of the flaws inherent by its management by sinful men, created in the United States the greatest economy in the history of mankind; the greater the slide toward socialism the worst our economy has become.

The non-producers may now outnumber the producers in today’s electorate; if so, the slide will accelerate after November. But if we have hope of ever being the greatest economy on earth again, it will be due to a shift towards Rand’s economic beliefs and not from a continued slide toward greater socialism and continued jealousy toward the successful.



Paul W. Williams

Lake Blackshear