I’m a huge fan of Ayn Rand. In her famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, she showed what happened if the “men of the mind” — the innovators, the capitalists, the ones who take all the risks and build our prosperity — went on strike. Everything would falter and collapse, gradually. She argued that the men of the mind too often feel guilty for their talent and their strength, which makes them vulnerable to the socialists and all the other moral leeches who impair or even destroy business and civilization. They do it primarily through trying to make productive, competent people feel guilty for their capabilities.
Even Ayn Rand, brilliant as she was, did not appear to anticipate the precise situation we have today. The capitalists who made billions under the system of (more or less) economic freedom — and then who turn on it, using their billions to destroy it. The most horrifying example: Bill Gates innovated in the tech market, and made billions — and now he’s openly, proudly buying up farms and financing mandatory “vaccines” in order to reduce the population. From innovation on the scale of a Randian hero — to true genocide, all within a decade or two. The same can be said of Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros and others, people who made a mega-fortune under the system of free enterprise they now use that money to destroy. Hollywood actors, musicians and other wealthy celebrities cheer them on, in essence saying: “Hey, I made millions and feel guilty for it. So now you will never do the same, because we’re going to become a Communist country.”
Rand called the moral capitulation of wealth creators to the statists and socialists “the sanction of the victim.” But today’s capitalists-turned-Communists (and they are EVERYWHERE) are not victims. They are victimizers. It’s a tragic sight to see, and it would be fascinating to get Ayn Rand’s take on it all, if she were still alive.
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