Oh, don't we wish!!

The sad reality is that there is just too much money and too many people dependent upon the money they are taking from others. They have a vested interest in promoting the concept that you have an obligation to give them your assets.

Even teachers, who provide value for what they do, are caught up in the game because they are not paid by their customers, but by the government so they promote ever more taxation as a way of growing their 'business'. And everyone gets taught by teachers.

With deficit spending the government is able to make ever more people dependent on money from the government and invested in the rightness of getting that money. They can ostensibly give more than they take because the money they take via inflationary debt is invisible.

I don't really like the idea of throwing in the towel on promoting self-sufficiency, but I am more focused on getting rid of government interference in the economy. If somehow we can persuade the moochers that there will be more for them to mooch if they leave producers alone to produce we could at least be able to make things.

Sadly the same people who think that "you did not build that" also think that "we have to share THE wealth" -- a zero sum game.

The pessimistic comments already made tell me the work to integrate Objectivism into the culture is seen as a long way off. Peikoff's Dim Hypothesis makes the case for integration but he believes its a long way off as well. I beg to differ.
While philosophy is in lala land science is making great strides towards what I call the Glass Slipper moment; when it is discovered that only Objectivism fits science. From that moment on Miss Rand's vision of man's potential will be realized at an accelerating rate. The theory in science is done but the hard work of exposition in still to come. I say 5 years to the glass slipper moment and then the gulch grows. Its coming because its true.

This is on par with her expectation that AS would find some critical acclaim, which it did not. She systematically overestimated general intelligence, based on the limited sample size of the "ordinary" people who loved her book, and underestimated the venality and corruption of elites, especially cultural elites, for reasons at which I can only guess. Absent some sort of rewiring of the human race, her future is many centuries hence.

I don't think that even A.R. could fortell the slide down the depths that America has taken since her death.

Agree with Wm Shipley...my daughter is a fourth grade teacher...she is the only teacher in her school that does not rave how wonderful the Big O lier is.

As much as I think AS is an accurate predictor of the way the present is turning into, I also believe that "Idiocracy" isn't too far off either... Granted, it was made as a spoof movie (unlike AS), it does bring up some interesting points of when "stupid people are allowed unchecked breeding".

in retrospect Ms. Rand was optimistic with this comment. With all of what see saw taking place in the country with respect to education as well, see may not have realized how dumb the population would become in such a short period of time. Therefore, due to a lack of cognitive thought of the major part of the population they could not possibly comprehend her views.

Does anyone know if she ever clarified if this would happen before or after the need to Gulch. When I was young the world I knew contained no more than 10% moochers. That is now probably somewhere between 60% and 75%. Only a politician could call that progress.

I think she is right. Pull back a few eons to see evolution moving from wriggling creatures to mammals, ever advancing in complexity of adaptability, developing more efficacious brains. View today's world as a transition stage from the hybrid animal/hominid to the full human enlightenment that our ever more highly developed brain equipment will make possible.

As the past is coded into our DNA, so Rand's ideas will be coded into our mental software. Some evolutionary leaps can happen very quickly, just like some ideas going "viral". Today we are seeing the final struggle between consciousness emerging towards fully rational thought and the last deathgrip of the stage where we were predatory animals. Rand iwrote the blueprint for that future. What an adventure, to be living in these times and being the rungs of that ladder.