• • Monday Medley 
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Novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand’s birth anniversary (1905) is Thursday. The author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” had some unique views on life — and a lot of people have never been exposed to them. Here’s a start: “To say ‘I love you,’ one must first be able to say the ‘I.’ ”      View blog reactions

• • George Selgin on Austrian finance, central banks and the Virtues of free banking 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | [Q:] You studied Ayn Rand's philosophy as a young man. How much of an Ayn Rand fan are you? [A:] Like so many others I became a fan of free markets by reading Atlas Shrugged as an undergraduate. But I didn't consider myself an objectivist for very long, if indeed I ever thought of myself as one. Encounters with self-styled objectivists while I was studying economics at NYU finally settled the matter for me. Their way of arguing reminded me of so many talking dolls – the same catch phrases would keep coming up, that were supposed by the objectivists to be unanswerable, but which mainly left me scratching my head. One I recall was, "You cannot have a market for a market." That was the explanation for why anarcho-capitalism wouldn't fly.      View blog reactions

• • Lew Rockwell on von Mises, Ron Paul, free-markets and the future of freedom 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Q: There has been a resurgence of Randism. Are you surprised? Do you approve? A: I met her and heard her lecture, and was always impressed. Recall that when Atlas Shrugged came out, Mises and Rothbard both wrote glowing reviews. Her works of fiction are profoundly effective in promoting the capitalist message, and this is all to the good. But there are some critical errors. I don't think she fully understood the cooperative nature of the capitalist social order, for example. She had less regard for the consumer than the capitalist, and in this respect she was only half right. But in general, if her books can disabuse people of canards against the free economy, that is great.      View blog reactions

• Nelson Hultberg on the power of the market, 3rd-party success and his new book 
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Capitalism  | Q: In the last depression during the 1930s, the government increased its power over the American economy and the lives of Americans tremendously. What makes you think it can be different this time? A: I think it can be different this time because we have the vast power of the Internet. In addition, we've had 60 years of free-market education put forth in this country outside the school system from thinkers like Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and several others. There are now millions of articulate voices out there who believe in free enterprise. They're not going to go along so eagerly with the collectivists and authoritarians as Americans in the 1930s did.      View blog reactions

• • Machan on the free-market, ‘mixed’ economies and the virtues of minarchism 
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Capitalism  | Interview with Tibor R. Machan.
[Q:] Where does Rand fit into the free-market pantheon - is she a lonely, modern voice at this point? [A:] Ayn Rand has laid out the best, most significant and most inspiring moral defense of individualism and the free society. But she comes out of a long line of free-market thinking.      View blog reactions

• • • Nathaniel Branden on Ayn Rand, her philosophy and the psychology of self-esteem 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Leonard Peikoff  |Personal life  | [Q:] Why did Ayn Rand consider charity to be misguided, or at least not admirable - or is this somehow a mischaracterization of her views? [A:] It is not a mis-characterization, it's a big mistake on Rand's part. She wanted the reader to understand that we have the right to live for our own sake, without shame or guilt. She was also aware how common it is to make altruism the moral underpinning of dictatorship. She held that teaching "others above self" is evil. People don't understand that altruism means others above self and that self-sacrifice is our highest virtue. It s not just about helping an old lady across the street.      View blog reactions

• Ingo Bischoff on land tax, Austrians and real bills, and Henry George 
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Capitalism  | Like Ayn Rand, we would like to see a society that runs fully on a free market.      View blog reactions

• • Dr. Ebeling: Bet against the dollar and hold gold 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |The Fountainhead  |The Virtue of Selfishness  |Capitalism  | Interview with economist Richard Ebeling.
[Ebeling:] When I was about 16 years old, I met two people who introduced me to the writings of Ayn Rand. I first read her non-fiction books, The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. It gave me a totally unique and different view of the nature of individual liberty and the nature of the free market. I then began reading her novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, in which she presents her philosophy of individual rights and freedom. At that time, back in the mid-1960s, I was living in Hollywood, California. I started attending a taped lecture series about her ideas.      View blog reactions

• Leonard Melman, the money supply and the bright future of money metals 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  | Interview.
Melman: [....] One of the earliest members of the Libertarian Party [....] and I engaged in numerous lengthy discussions about economic history, particularly including the Austrian School of Economics. These discussions led to my study of several authors and their works, particularly including Ludwig Von Mises' "Human Action"; Murray Rothbard's "Man, Economy and State" as well as Ayn Rand's novels “The Fountainhead” and "Atlas Shrugged."      View blog reactions