Joseph Lazzaro, IBT: Ayn Rand's Economic Views, Backed By Paul Ryan, Would Result In A US Dystopia

From the International Business Times:

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/375126/20120819/ryan-paul-rand-ayn-romney-vice-president.htm

If Rand's, and by extension, fan Ryan's policies are implemented -- businesses and multinational corporations - which already structure and dominate American life - would return the United States to something akin to Charles Dickens' England - one in which the state, save for the protection of individual rights and the enforcement of contracts, does not intervene. The determiner of economic and social conditions would be: 1) power, 2) economic power, and 3) your ability to defeat your opponent in competition. In Rand's world, there is no social safety net, nor redistribution of income and wealth. The poor, the sick, the working poor, senior citizens, veterans, the handicapped, the lesser-skilled, and all others less-fortunate in society are left to fend for themselves. And if they suffer and die, so be it, says Rand. Simply, Rand's world is Social Darwinism - a cruel, harsh, and savage environment only slightly removed from the brutality of the Roman Empire.

A corollary propaganda screed is Rand's view of civil servants, public policy professionals and the public sector. In Rand's world, civil servants are "moochers" and parasites who do not add value, do not contribute to society, and essentially gum-up the economic works. Reflect for a moment on Rand's utter, sheer nonsense regarding the public realm: public school teachers, firefighters, police officers, water safety professionals, public electric and water system operators, regulators, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Aviation Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Park Service, the U.S. Department of Education, National Weather Service, the U.S. Census and many other essential public agencies...they're all "moochers," in Rand's interpretation.

And of course the social safety net - including the vital Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid systems - and, mostly likely, any other social program that achieves the common good - are, in Ayn Rand's interpretation, opposed because they are "theft."

Few would deny the harshness of the U.S.'s current economic system - corporate capitalism. To be sure, the American economic system has many benefits, the chief among these being: entrepreneurship, innovation, ingenuity, dynamism, reward for work, risk taking, wealth building, a more-efficient deployment of resources, and the primacy of science-led commerce. But to deny the harshness of the American economic system - a system that's much more harsh than the European economic system - is to refuse to accept a matter of incontrovertible fact. In Rand's world, that harshness that exists is something that should exist - the state is not capable of reducing suffering and should not be permitted to do so - and if the individual / corporations / free market do not reduce suffering, so be it. Ayn Rand's worldview is the antithesis of Vatican II - there is no common good.

Great two-page article on Rand's views and her influence on Ryan, and the political implications. Lazzaro quotes Gore Vidal -- who called Rand's worldview "nearly perfect in its immorality" -- as well as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' statement that Paul Ryan's budget fails the "basic moral test."