Ayn Rand's philosophy- an excuse to be a sociopath.

[MichaelM]

3. Ignorance is no excuse ...

Your eBook is off to a bad start, since your chosen theme is inherently self-contradictory. At the root of the Objectivist politics is an ethical mandate that one may not use force for any purpose other than to stop the use of force. Anyone intent on forcing something onto the world is ipso facto NOT obsessed with Objectivism. He would have to be some stripe of left-wing liberal or right-wing conservative.

That error then gives lie to your second contention that producers caring for their own success are harmful to others. Just the opposite is true. In an Objectivist society where force is forbidden, the only way to become wealthy is to satisfy the desires of the masses better than anyone else (the 99% have in aggregate more pennies to spend than the 1% do). Take Sam Walton, for instance. He died the wealthiest man in America after having raised the standard of living of America's poorest more than all the welfare/charity programs combined that existed throughout his lifetime. So much for the evils of rational selfishness. Your problem is that you take the crony capitalism of Obama and Bush et al to be the permanent status quo, and you are obviously unable to imagine anything else.

And if you had researched the Hickman subject before spouting your internet hearsay, you would have discovered that Rand's interest in him was not for his depraved acts, which she specifically condemned. You are obviously unaware of the literary convention of the "noble thief" or the "flawed hero" ... from the Wikipedia page on "Romantic Hero":

Literary critic Northrop Frye noted that the Romantic hero is often "placed outside the structure of civilization and therefore represents the force of physical nature, amoral or ruthless, yet with a sense of power, and often leadership, that society has impoverished itself by rejecting".

In principle, that literary device involves the heightened focus on certain good characteristics of a subject by their stark contrast with his bad characteristics. The greater the contrast the more effective the focus. None of the specifics of his horrible deeds inspired her to do anything. You owe an apology to your readers whom you have misled with that dishonesty.

Re Greenspan, long before he met Rand he was a Keynesian. He was also infatuated with Rand's fame and he toyed at the time he met Rand with Austrian economics and may still agree with some principles therein. She hoped he would follow through when he became Reagan's economic adviser, but his record at the Fed after she died clearly demonstrated that he was nothing more than a hanger-on in respect to Objectivism. None of his policies there bear any resemblance to the Objectivist preferred economics of Ludwig von Mises.

That economics is, by the way, NOT social-darwinism, and restoring liberty to the American worker is NOT a stranglehold by a long shot. If you will review your own comments, you will find that you are hurling characterizations throughout just like these, not one of which is or can be substantiated to actually apply. There is no evidence in such epithets that you are actually capable of dealing with Objectivism on the same level as its principles are defined and applied.

If opponents of Rand's steadily increasing infusion into the mainstream of American thought wish to slow or stop it, they will have to bite the bullet and attack her on the battlefield she has already staked out as her own: ideas. Just throwing rocks from afar won't cut it.