Ayn Rand grew up in the Soviet Union, where productive people were killed or else forced to conform to the directives of the Supreme Soviet and only produce what was ordered, when ordered, as ordered.
Information theory and choice theory prove that no central bureaucracy is capable of obtaining and reacting to sufficient information to make the kind of choices that entrepreneurs and individual consumers make every day -- Adam Smith called it "the invisible hand" but it's really just enlightened self-interest.
Rand knew that entrepreneurs produce because they are selfish. Consumers consume because they are selfish. There's nothing wrong with looking out for yourself, that's what makes the economy work.
It's human nature to envy those who are better off than yourself, but killing entrepreneurs is like killing the goose that laid the golden egg. No more goodies.
In contrast, America has always had a majority of people willing to let the goose keep producing the golden eggs, and that is why America is a land of plenty.
I do pro bono bankruptcies for Legal Aid, not quite the poorest of the poor, but getting there. Most of my clients have telephones, TVs, VCRs, microwaves, CD players, CDs, radios, jewelry, automobiles, and other consumer goods that even well-off people don't have in many Third World countries. The trustee and the creditors and the judges don't even think about it because there is so much stuff in this country that these people's stuff won't go for much at a trustee's sale.
The poorest of the poor are the homeless. Yet, what is our mental image of homeless? For me, they're pushing around their worldly goods in shopping baskets! They don't have much stuff, but they still have stuff.
Much of it made in China, which is an excellent example of what happens when socialism takes its feet off the throats of the entrepreneurs and let them do their thing. |
