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Heinlein was serious about the proposal.

• notahacker 6y ago
  Yep. It was written in a fit of patriotic enthusiasm for the Cold War, and Heinlein was still offering defences of the political system two decades later after his own politics had moved on. I do think there's merit in reading books that were utterly serious about their ideas as satirising them though. The conquistador heirs, oil barons and philosopher pirates in Atlas Shrugged make so much more sense as parody of how the 'self-made man' tends to accumulate wealth than in a parable about the ills of not enough capitalism