If we are to criticize, courtesy dictates we begin by giving credit where it is due. Ayn Rand, whatever else one might say of her, had the courage to defend capitalism not with apologies but with fire. She saw what others were too cowardly or compromised to admit: that a society based on voluntary exchange, merit, and productivity does not merely function—it flourishes. She understood that when you punish the competent, the productive, the innovative, or the risk takers, for whatever reason, you do not achieve fairness; you achieve ruin.
Amen to that! Let us nod to the insight—and to her courage.
But let us, with clear eyes, also ask the more important question: what did she get wrong? Because while Rand got many of the economic principles right, she built her worldview on a questionable understanding of capitalist fundamentals, and worse, on moral sand. And too many conservatives, dazzled by her militant individualism, mistake her for a beacon of light, even though the world she proposes is rather dreary.
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In Atlas Shrugged, Rand imagines an economic fantasy: the productive elite—industrialists, inventors, intellectuals—go on strike because of overregulation and nationalism of industries. They simply get together and collectively decide to vanish from the centralized economy, rather than be milked by the “moochers” and “looters.” They instead form a hidden colony, a kind of capitalist monastery, and watch the world collapse in their absence.
It’s a compelling image. But it betrays the very capitalism Rand claims to champion.
Real capitalism requires little to no group coordination. It posits that individuals, each pursuing their self-interest, will naturally cease to invest or produce when disincentivized. The magic lies not in some master plan, but rather in the very lack of a master plan. No hidden city. No group pouting. No manifesto. Just the invisible hand, as Adam Smith called it—guiding self-interest into social good without anyone needing to blow a trumpet or start a cult. When incentives vanish, productivity fades—not in protest, but in principle.
Put another way, Rand’s strikers look less like capitalists and more like collectivists in reverse: retreating, isolating, coordinating their withdrawal. It’s a deep irony she never acknowledges, and her admirers often miss.
But her greater sin—yes, sin—is philosophical. Rand held that altruism is poison. That helping others for any reason beyond self-interest is moral suicide. That charity is weakness, akin to parasitism.
This is not merely wrong. It is indecent.
Charity, properly understood, is not the indulgence of laziness. It is the moral obligation to aid those who cannot help themselves—not those who will not, but those who cannot. A libertarian may sneer that this is irrational. A Christian would call it human.
Here lies Rand’s fatal defect. Follow her logic far enough, and you arrive at something chillingly close to eugenics: let the weak perish, lest they dilute the strong. It has a ruthless coherence, so long as one accepts a world without pity, grace, or redemption.
But conservatives, if we are to conserve anything worth having, cannot afford that kind of nihilism dressed up as principle.
This speaks to a broader blind spot in libertarianism. Yes, markets generate prosperity. Yes, liberty fuels innovation. But the notion that freedom alone is sufficient to build a moral society is demonstrably false. Some people are left behind—not because they’re lazy, but because misfortune, disability, or tragedy found them. If liberty becomes an excuse to ignore them, conservatism has traded its soul for an abstraction.
To see where Rand’s gospel of self-interest fails, dim the lights and cue the film reel. Return to a fictional town called Bedford Falls.
In It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra gives us a conservative parable more humane, persuasive, and inspiring than anything in Atlas Shrugged. George Bailey, a man of modest ambition, forgoes his dreams—not out of weakness, but duty. He runs the family business. He lends generously. He stands between the townspeople and the predatory banker, Mr. Potter.
Rand would never have written this story. In her world, George Bailey is a fool—a martyr to mediocrity. Potter, meanwhile, is practically heroic: rich, shrewd, unsentimental. But Capra had something Rand lacked entirely: moral imagination.
And in the alternate reality of Pottersville—Bailey’s town, had he never existed—Capra offers his warning. Pottersville, unlike Galt’s Gulch, is not a fantasy. It’s what happens when capitalism loses its conscience.
There’s still commerce in Pottersville. The bars are full. The streets are lit. But what sells is vice. What flourishes is exploitation. It is capitalism ungoverned by virtue, unmoored from community, ruled by what the market will bear.
The irony? Pottersville is Rand’s world. A world where the strong prevail, the weak are discarded, and no one owes anyone anything. No one sacrifices, so no one is saved.
Contrast that with Bedford Falls. It is not a Marxist utopia. It is a free society—private enterprise, voluntary exchange, profit. But it thrives because the people are decent. Because George Bailey gave more than he got. Because the town works not by economics alone, but by trust, restraint, and mutual regard.
Capra, in short, shows what Rand cannot see: that capitalism works best when underwritten by virtue. That freedom, left to itself, decays into license. That men are not only rational, but moral—and that any economic system blind to that fact will eat itself alive.
Rand’s error—and the libertarianism she inspires—is the belief that liberty is enough. And while it is better than collectivism, it is not sufficient. Capitalism has lifted more people from poverty than any other system in human history—but liberty without love, like efficiency without ethics, is simply a faster route to decay.
Capra knew better. He gave us a hero who didn’t build an engine or start a movement. He gave us a man who stayed. Who bore burdens. Who gave when it hurt. Who—dare we say it—loved his neighbor.
George Bailey is a capitalist. But he is also a Christian. And that, to borrow a phrase, makes all the difference.
Rand scoffed at charity. Capra ennobled it. Rand exalted the strong. Capra redeemed the weak—and showed that true strength lies in selflessness, not selfishness. Rand imagined a utopia in exile. Capra imagined a flawed world, made livable by conscience.
So let us give Ayn Rand her due. She defended prosperity. She exposed the rot of collectivism. But she offered no blueprint for the good society—only the cold comfort of rational egoism.
Capra, in his old-fashioned way, offered something better. Not a rejection of capitalism, but its redemption. A vision where markets matter, but people matter more. Where liberty is tempered by love. Where the measure of a man is not what he earns, but what he gives.
Atlas Shrugged is a clever parable. But Bedford Falls is a home.
