"This economic system, known affectionately in 2020 America as Democratic Socialism, is what leads to the cherished equality of a train toilet becoming a private dining room. Thankfully, it is expertly explained by a passenger as: “if you’re not a speculator, you’ll starve, but if you are, you can buy anything you want, but if you buy you’re a speculator, and then look out.”

"Another way to illustrate this cognitive dissonance is the greeting the train passengers received upon arrival at Petrograd station in Chapter 2. The first banner read: Comrades! We Are the Builders of a New Life! The other banner read: Lice Spread Disease! Citizens, Unite on the Anti-Typhus Front! The comparative irony Rand presents with these is stunning – to be a comrade is to be lice, citizens are builders where building is forbidden, and life is defined as avoiding death."