A correspondent wrote "Was just curious if you thought that the vast economic problems we're now facing could possibly be tracked to ideologies that Ayn Rand so cleverly designed and sold?"
A lot of people are trying to pin this down on Rand. But that makes no sense to me.
The basic source is the plutocracy of corporations and their owners. They are the first class citizens: government, business, and entrepreneurs serve them first. Rand was merely an entrepreneurial repackager and popularizer of plutocratic ideologies. As was Hayek, Mises, and Rothbard. As are CATO, Heritage, and a host of other think tanks.
I'm sure that the plutocracy would much rather we misdirected the blame at libertarians and other cats paws.
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3 comments:
Very well said. As a left libertarian, I couldn't ask for a more fair and insightful analysis.
The U.S. had a deeply entrenched hereditary ruling class based on industry and finance long before Alyssa Rosenbaum stepped foot on Ellis Island or wherever she arrived. Ferdinand Lundberg explains how this minority ran the U.S. in his 1968 book, The Rich and the Super-Rich. While we've seen some new players (not inheritors from old rentier families) join the top ranks of wealth since then, Lundberg's analysis of who really makes the important decisions in our country has worn surprisingly well in light of recent events like the bailouts.
Cato has just posted a relevant essay by Roderick Long here: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/11/10/roderick-long/corporations-versus-the-market-or-whip-conflation-now/
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