4 ms·
We’re living in an Ayn Rand economy
- duncan_bayne 13y agoI can only presume the author hasn't actually read any of Rand's writing. Either that or this is an intentional smear piece.
- seehafer 13y agoSalon is well known for intentional smear pieces (against Rand and others) EDIT: Not that I want to draw attention to hackery, but here is another example: http://www.salon.com/2013/01/19/ayn_rand_is_for_children/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/19/ayn_rand_is_for_children/
- duncan_bayne 13y agoRight, that makes sense. I'm totally okay with strongly-worded debate over Rand's philosophy; she was (intentionally) inflammatory in a lot of cases. But Salon's piece was ... well ... so much of a strawman that I really didn't understand how the author could characterise Rand's work in that way.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- maxharris 13y agoSo we're living in an economy with no regulations, enabled by a strong but limited government dedicated to protecting the individual rights of its citizens and absolutely nothing more? The author is so far off the mark here, that I'll stop with two charts that show that we don't have anything close to an unregulated economy. As a proxy for the size of our economy's regulatory burden, here's a chart showing the length of the federal register, in pages: http://research.columbian.gwu.edu/regulatorystudies/sites/default/files/u43/2014-3_FR%20pages_webimage2013.jpg http://research.columbian.gwu.edu/regulatorystudies/sites/de... Here's a chart showing the inflation-adjusted budget spent just on administering those regulations: http://research.columbian.gwu.edu/regulatorystudies/sites/default/files/u43/Budgetary%20Cost%20of%20federal%20regulation%2C%20gwu.jpg http://research.columbian.gwu.edu/regulatorystudies/sites/de... Here's the context for both of those charts: http://research.columbian.gwu.edu/regulatorystudies/regstats http://research.columbian.gwu.edu/regulatorystudies/regstats