I would make the case that those who are successful in business are consistently focused on creating value for *others*. And of course benefit for oneself can accrue as one who provides value.

On the many occasions I’ve heard CEOs and business leaders talk (both in public and internally to staff), their talks are not about self-interest, it’s about how their vision for creating more value and what their plans are for doing that.

It’s when at the individual level, one becomes more concerned about self-interest, esp. short-term gain, that’s when the trouble happens.

Your post suggests that morality arises from a place of self-interest. I think that’s a particularly limiting point of view. There’s an increasing consciousness (which I believe transcends mere enlightened self-interest and motivates millions of people on this planet) that our fates are interconnected and that our talents and gifts are best utilized for the good of many, not just oneself, and that this is a truer path to fulfillment in life.

If you look at the phenomenon of “affluenza” in the US, that’s a sure indicator that a life dedicated to economic self-interest is not ultimately not what it’s cracked up to be.

Rand would never have cast a banker as a titan, nor could they have played a central role, because while certain types of bankers provide value, they are not producers. They produce nothing. They don’t innovate. They simply play a role in helping the producers.

In the real world, bankers thought they could innovate. And they innovated our way into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Thanks for your comment.

In reality, amoral bankers (unlike Mulligan) are the ones who loaned money based on either altruism or immoral greed… in either case, it has deep-seated philosophical and practical consequences.

To the author: Perhaps reading the book would save you the embarrassment of posing such a sarcastic rhetorical question about Bankers in Rand’s novel.

In this free-market of thought, you’ll have paid for your mistake by suffering this rebuke, and by having lost some of my credulity- an equitable end.

Any idea if the graph he showed correlating Obama’s economic announcements to sales of “Shrugged” is real? I’d be surprised if someone a) had access to that data and b) took the time to put it together, but maybe that’s what Colbert interns are for.

We’re optimists, though. We have faith in the Constitution and American Democracy. We believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s no coincidence that our forefathers added the elusive concept of “happiness” to the Declaration of Independence and that happiness is a key theme for Rand.

Our favorite quote from Atlas Shrugged is in Galt’s speech. “Life is the reward of virtue, and happiness is the goal and reward of life.”

The vision set forth by our founding fathers has surely been corrupted. The Left and Right have an equal share in this. But it’s not beyond repair. We now have the tools to take back our government. It won’t be easy and the path may not be direct. But we’re confident that we’ll get there.

As the character Francisco D’Anconia says at the end of his famous Money Speech:
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing -
When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -
When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you -
When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice -
You may know that your society is doomed”

Look around us. We are.

My paraphrase of Mark Twain’s definition of the term: “A book everyone talks about, but nobody actually reads”. In the case of compulsive capitalists: “But they still let what they think it says rule their thinking and behavior”.

Those who would hijack Rand to justify their immoral behavior and political agenda talk about Atlas Shrugged, but they haven’t actually read it. They don’t know what it means to be self-reliant and to value productivity and creativity.

These people are all too eager to gain from corporate welfare and for the advantages afforded by lobbyists like Abramoff and the corrupt politicians who they buy. Rand despised corrupt politicians and made no distinction about which way that corruption leaned, whether to the left or right.

De Rein: Your point is a good one, but capping income is not the answer. We simply need a set of laws to govern and insure integrity. People generally won’t act morally without a sufficient carrot-and-stick system of rewards and punishments. It’s not so much regulations as basic laws.

What we’ve had over the past decade is not a free market. Anything but. The destruction of our economy is not the result of the free market run wild. The market was manipulated by big business, lobbyists, and big government in favor of big business. That’s not free. Huge government subsidies and tax breaks for select industries (energy, agriculture, etc.) is not free. We need to return to a free market, which is something we’ve never really had.