I'm growing increasingly tempted.
But I gotta ask; why is there no middle ground between capitalism and collectivism? I don't think the majority of people against unregulated capitalism want the pro-capitalists to be poor, yet that's how they're described here. Is that how the Rand books describe them (me)?
I think most people against unregulated capitalism just want some fairness. I don't care if someone (say a CEO of a health insurance company) can make $100 million a year as long as the lowest wage earners can afford insurance or aren't relying on SNAP benefits or other subsidies to survive.
I think it's a common mis-belief and rather knee-jerk to think that by "fairness" it means "everybody be poor". Those aren't the only two choices. If that's how Rand describes her characters, I'm already turned off.
I think the middle ground is lacking because so many have been trained that compromise is bad. To some, 'fairness' means they get to tell others how much to give to others and to a different group, 'fair' means they get to keep what they worked for and they can decide for themselves how much to give, and to whom. To the first group, they say they don't have a problem with the government taking from them, so others can have more and some even want those with less to have
as much as others, without requiring them to do more for themselves, as a way to climb out of their current level in life. Some feel that those who
can't do for themselves should be helped, but when someone decides that they'd rather do as little as possible, they need a reality check and an end to their benefits.
This is obviously just a small list of what people argue about, but another list has to do with the extent to which government should involve itself in peoples' lives. Some say they don't mind and others want the minimum from the Federal government, while accepting a bit more on the local level. Some have the finances to afford to want the government to leave them alone, completely, while others have absolutely nothing.
In the middle, is a group that would like to see the government stop wasting money on all kinds of pet projects, want to see members of Congress act like they give a rat's butt about what they're doing to most of the citizens of this country and want to see people treat each other with respect, rather than resort to all of the name-calling that I have seen over the years.
When I was a kid, my dad would ask "This is the best we have?" when election time rolled around. I thought he was being negative at the time, but now, I think he was just frustrated by the depths to which government had slid. I can't imagine what he'd think now.
Honestly, I think the number of people who truly want unregulated ANYTHING would hate it if they had it and I don't think that's what they really want. I think they actually want less regulation of THEM, but the rest can be as regulated as necessary unless they stand to find themselves in the position of those others at some point. De-regulation doesn't always work and the cable TV industry is a shining example of this.
If you have read about any of the utopians, I always find it interesting that none of those who designed them wanted to be one of those who lived in that way. Pullman (as in the luxurious railroad cars) is a prime example and he started communities in several locations. None of them worked. He had ideas for other people (generally, his employees) that they didn't share and when they realized what he was trying to do, they revolted.
The thing about provocative books like Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead is that so many people read things they strongly disagree with and then hate the whole book, rather than reading the whole and reaching their conclusions later. It's possible to come away from reading it and finding that some of it resonates positively, yet other parts cause the reader to find the author a totally abhorrent person. Plus, there's nothing that says we have to agree or disagree with anything.
Personally, if I had experienced what she did before leaving Russia, I'd hate collectivism, too. I know someone from Ukraine and he DOES NOT like what's happening here, in the US.
