Who is John Galt?

[fadetree]

Ayn had some good points. There is a kind of slavery imposed by institutional 'altrusim', and I think she makes a valid point that very rarely gets made, for fear of being branded as someone who selfishly hates people across the board. If you teach a hungry man to fish, you free him, but if you just give him a fish every day, then you enslave him. If you do it on purpose, you're a government [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Government handouts, when done in an indiscriminant manner, financed by extorted money, do more to foster dependence than they do anything else.

But I do think Objectivism takes it too far...not all altrusim is evil, and there's no point in having a society if you don't have some kind of safety netting. People do need help, and I still get value from helping them, even if it is second hand by the government using my money. I don't believe that idealized Mankind is all there is and that it's somehow an end in itself.

So I take some of her points as valid, but I find Objectivism as an ethical (?) system to be too extreme.