And one of the greatest wits of American history. She deserves to be up there with Twain.

If nothing else, she should be remembered for all time for coming up with the phrase "what fresh hell is this?"

Also famously an early lgbt ally. Before the term gay existed in the 20s and 30s the polite way of asking if a man was homosexual was if they were a friend of Dorothy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy

I work in municipal development. You want to open a new business, build a house, or develop land in my city, you need my signature to do it.

I'm one of those officious pricks. I'm "the man" holding people down.

Because if I don't then all these rich fucks pave over everything, flood their neighbor's land, block traffic, poison their customers, and sell houses that'll collapse 10 minutes after The warranty expires.

So yeah, people have to get our permission to do things that affect the community.

Yes the world would be a better place if people looking to profit in the world didn't have to ensure that their products were safe, regulated, and taxed appropriately. Business owners should just be able to make their own rules.

Nah man I'd say that shit it stupid too. It's difficult to build a lithium mine in the United States for pretty good reasons, especially surrounding regulation and safety.

That's how you trick the gullible, start with a bit of truth they can understand and then jump off the deep end into lunacy.

I mean, why SHOULDN'T I be able to expose people and the environment to harmful conditions in order to maximize profit?

I'm allowed to do that in other countries, and I can also pay those slaves in beans so that I can make even more money.

Sure. Try it. Try making a railroad without eminent domain.

It seems to me this passage speaks against the bankers, intellectual property owners, monopolists, land owners and the like. All gate keepers of resources.

Perhaps Atlas is actually someone else than Rand thought.

Really elaborate plan that will probably end up failing because the book, and its author, only got big because it gave greedy bastards an excuse to be so unashamedly greedy. If not this trash then another work of trash.

Win easily and announce that I wrote it as a parody, mocking people

Then watch it backfire horribly. Conservatives (including those who call themselves libertarian) are blind to satire. You might remember that the_donald was satirical at the start. So was the game Monopoly.

In addition to her just being a miserable person, her actual composition is just awful. The following quote is a sentence:

“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only traveller you choose to share your journey and must be traveller going on their own power in the same direction.”

Just wait till you get to the last third, where the ideas that weren't subtly telegraphed in the first two thirds will be even less subtly shouted in a hundred page long speach.

I was lucky enough to read it young before I knew it was "a thing".

I loved the stream punky Sci fi stuff (yes I loved bioschock when it came out).

I enjoyed the rugged individualism stuff, but like, in the same way I enjoy James Bond committing extra judicial killings, Indiana Jones, cheesy ghost movies , or Hell in a Cell.

I was really confused when I found out it's got a cult. I just enjoyed my nifty train story.

The writing is dry, voluminous but not really good. I personally enjoyed getting lost in that much volume, but that's not going to be everyone. The philosophy stuff isn't bad or wrong within it's own universe, it's just not really applicable to real life. Basing a world view on it is like reading/watching the silo series and thinking that's how you should live in present day, rules about going outside and all. The conclusion isn't totally wrong, but the premise its valid under is so narrow it's useless, and that's how it got it's cult.

There are plenty of articles going into great detail- here is one- but essentially it is a showcase for Rand's moronic and hateful Objectivist philosophy and it has such ludicrous ideas in it as suggesting railroads would do great if it wasn't for the pesky government getting in their way and after society collapses, the brilliant industrialists will all live in paradise just as soon as we find a way to create electricity by violating the laws of physics.

For those who are already familiar, this cartoon summarizes the problem with Atlas Shrugged quite succinctly.

It's just one of those novels that many bookish 17-19 years have read. I think it is worth reading in the sense that I think reading the Bible is worth reading. It is popular enough that you sorta have to have some familiarity with it. Popular because it is popular at this point.

Basic setting is (I am going to steel man it) the world is falling apart from communism and the US is pretty much the last functional country. However instead of slowly drifting down like everyone expects suddenly the US is declining much faster. The reason is all the Jeff Bezoses are going on strike secretly.

The plot follows an heiress to a train company as she tries to hold things together and has an affair with one of her clients.

Eventually everything falls apart and the Jeff Bezoses launch a plan to rebuild but with a new rule that they are running everything.

The end.