Never try to engage with Ayn Rand's work in good faith: worst mistake of my life. She and her fanboys are basically the human version of brainy smurf. Even the name, Objectivism, is her bragging about herself. Thus since they are akin to brainy smurf, don't bother arguing with them because they will claim omniscience. Instead, deal with them as the rest of the smurfs dealt with brainy smurf.
Me: "Oil companies are using their private property to inflict environmental pollution that I do not consent to. Since they are using their property for evil, we should limit their use of a property. This way no one gets physically harmed, not even the oil tycoon."
Rand's Response: "This is stupid, how dare you tell someone what to do with their property. Live and let live! It is actually moral to let people use things that rightfully belong to them for immoral reasons."
Native Americans: "I just want to be left alone please."
Native Americans: "Didn't you just say people who own property should do whatever they please with it, and anyone who has a problem with it should mind their own business?"
Rand's Response: "Ugh, you fucking IDIOTS! Clearly you know nothing about my philosophy of IKnowEverythingIsm."
Me: "Uhhh...okay. I gotta say, insisting that you are the standing authority on all knowledge is a little dogmatic, it sounds kind of like a reli..."
Rand's Response: "UGH! RELIGION IS FOR IDIOTS AND IS AN INSULT TO THINKING!"
I genuinely wanted to read something from the right's POV so I could better understand them, lest I become as dogmatic as Rand here. So far, the closest I got was reading some classical liberal stuff like Plato's Republic, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and some Nietzsche. But it seems like anything further is just full on pompous dogshit. The Chapo book had more depth than this.
I ended up reading Atlas Shrugged; both out of genuine curiosity for where someone on the right might be coming from and also for the memes. I also read an essay or two she wrote.
Atlas Shrugged is shitty fiction, but it's also her iconic book that lays out objectivism.
In a nutshell, Atlas Shrugged does the meme and basically describes late stage capitalism the elites are rigging the system for their own gain and the poor are getting poorer. But it does the same anti-populist bullshit that dems have been doing. It's not a battle versus the rich and the poors, it's a battle between the "dirty rich" and the "clean rich". All the poverty in the world is caused by populist rubes trying to alleviate poverty instead of simply setting up a corporate technocracy where the special boys can save the rest of the rubes from themselves. When they do, the working class just shuts up and accepts the shit-tier minimum wage jobs for the sake of porky, who knows what's good for everyone.
This book has an "individualism good" message which is fine to sympathize with, but "individualism" is NOT distributed equally, only for the main characters who really matter. The background characters of the working class eventually gladly bear any burden for the benefit of our protagonist. Also, another message of the book is "do whatever you want. YOLO!" Although as I mentioned in the post, Rand supported the Genocide of Native Americans simply because she thought they were dumb. This message is clearly not intended for everyone, and she also told minorities to stop noticing racism because liberals brought it up (unfortunately, the source is paywalled lol)...implying they should act altruisitcally and serve as a lightning rod for any dysfunction among white people. Granted, to her credit, she is famously quoted with calling racism the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism, but this makes her bone to pick with Native Americans all the more confusing, especially when you bring into question that the Aztecs rivaled the Romans in indoor plumbing, and Hawai'i was a totally independent nation before the Hawaiian league swooped in.
Again, so many contradictions. At least Marx offers thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
I'm genuinely impressed you were able to get through Atlas Shrugged. Not only is it just an incoherent mess that is by any literary standard absolute dreck; it's an absolute unit of a book, length-wise. Like, one of the characters does a monologue rant for like 50 pages or something.
I've only ever read Anthem which was mercifully short. Pretty good for what it was (unabashed propaganda), but I couldn't help but notice that the existing capitalist empire just as often crushes individuality and technological innovation as the primitivist, anti-meritocratic, collectivist state she imagined out of whole cloth. Ayn Rand obviously never bothered to put as much work into knowing her enemy as you have done here.
Thanks for bravely going into the Bullshit Mines for the rest of us. The nice write-up is appreciated.