Though I lean more toward individual rights than most, I've always had a problem with like-minded friends who pushed Ayn Rand books at me. I just don't get how

Though I lean more toward individual rights than most, I've always had a problem with like-minded friends who pushed Ayn Rand books at me. I just don't get how a work of fiction is going to convince me that the world works a certain way. Obviously I could write a story where people were collectivists and everything turned out just fine. If you want to convince people of how the world works, use real-world evidence. Make your case for why more individualistic societies have fared better/worse, dig out stats, and tell me how you see the connections. As for economics, the more I studied it in and after college, there more I see that ecology is what economics courses actually need to contain. The interaction of agents with the environment, leading to changes in both, is just like the economy. All the weird stuff you see on Attenborough has a business-world analog. It's also a refreshing pause from applying inappropriate mathematical abstractions that eat up a heck of a lot of time.