• • Are online sales taxes only fair? 
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The Marketplace Fairness Act, which Congress is expected to approve soon, sounds like something out of an Ayn Rand novel. But it reflects understandable complaints from brick-and-mortar retailers who believe their online competitors have been enjoying an unfair advantage for way too long, thanks to Supreme Court rulings that bar a state from requiring a business to collect sales tax unless the company has a physical presence in that state.  

• Sheldon Richman Talks About Bastiat, Left-Libertarianism, and (shudders) Jimmy Buffett 
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Longtime libertarian thinker and Reason.com columnist Sheldon Richman was just interviewed by University of Wisconsin music student and WashingtonTimes.com "Business of Living" columnist Joseph S. Diedrich as part of his interesting "Libertarian America" series. It's a fun read, covering everything from Ayn Rand to corporatism to pipe-smoking to Pink Floyd.  

• • Is Bill Maher Right That "Libertarians Have to Stop Ruining Libertarianism"? 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Video  | On a recent episode of his HBO show, Bill Maher created a “new rule” concerning libertarians: “Libertarians have to stop ruining libertarianism! Or at least do a better job of explaining the difference between today’s libertarian and just being a selfish prick. Now, many years ago on a television network far, far away, I expressed support for libertarianism because back then it meant I didn’t want big government in my bedroom, in my medicine chest, and especially not in the second drawer of the nightstand on the left side of my bed. And I still believe that. But somewhere along the way, libertarianism morphed into this creepy obsession with free-market capitalism based on an Ayn Rand called Atlas Shrugged, a book that’s never been read all the way through by anybody with a girlfriend....”  

• Love in the Future 
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Bruce Sterling’s new novel Love Is Strange (40k) is indeed strange. The latest from the founding father of cyberpunk, known in the biz as Chairman Bruce, invokes Brazilian voodoo, Italian fascism, Seattle royalty, time travel, and technology conferences as the backdrop for the confused and confusing courtship of two dashing and astonishingly self-absorbed romantic leads. The main characters spend a great deal of time in transit, looking for themselves and each other, all the while holding forth in quasi-Randian style about their ideologies, which center around the exciting, accelerating technological future.   

• Come See Matt Welch Talk About Wacko Birds vs. Angry Birds April 4 in New ... 
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Rand Paul  | On Thursday, April 4, beginning at 8 pm, I will be giving a sure-to-be-contested talk at The New York City Junto, a group dedicated to "libertarianism, Objectivism, investing," about the split within the Republican Party between Rand Paul/Justin Amash-style libertarian conservatives and John McCain/Karl Rove-style GOP establishmentarians.  

• • How Debt Ruins Systems 
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[Nassim Nicholas] Taleb: [....] I’m more of a left-wing conservative, if you want. reason: Ayn Rand called libertarians right-wing hippies. Taleb: There you go.  

• Stimulus, Obamacare, & The New Republic 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Going Galt  |Video  | In "How Government Killed the Medical Profession," Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer explains how increasing government intervention is harming patient care and pushing doctors to go Galt.  

• • Soaking the Rich 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | High-income earners’ response to changes in taxes is an issue that academics have studied extensively. In 2000 University of Michigan economist Joel Slemrod published Does Atlas Shrug?: The Economic Consequences of Taxing the Rich (Harvard University Press), a book in which he challenged the free market belief that raising taxes on the rich would lead them to secede from the work force, as famously described in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged.  

• • Rational Man 
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Atheism  |Rand Paul  | [In The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought, Susan] Jacoby [...] makes snippy remarks about the atheistic origins of the first name of former Texas representative Ron Paul’s son, Kentucky senator Rand Paul (who denies, by the way, that he is named for Ayn Rand).  

• How Big Government Undermines Freedom and Prosperity 
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Recently, the California Air Resources Board sent out a press release celebrating a $300,000 fine it imposed on a business. The quotation from CARB’s chief enforcement officer included this warning: “All business owners should pay attention to this case.” That’s like something uttered by a villain in an Ayn Rand novel.  

• • 6 Video Games Every Libertarian Should Play 
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BioShock  |Individualism  | The villain [in Bioshock] is clearly intended as a riff on Ayn Rand’s super-individualists, but in a mid-game twist, he shows he’s not simply a bad guy. The revelation elevates Bioshock from satirical, action-driven homage to Rand into a clever riff on the perception of individual freedom and the nature of choice.  

• • NFL Player Chris Kluwe on Being a Libertarian 
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Atlas Shrugged  | [Q:] You tweeted recently that you had just read Atlas Shrugged. What did you think?[A:] Not a huge fan. I like some of Rand’s ideas. I think the core aspect she’s missing is empathy. Without empathy you don’t have stable society. What do you do when the real world intrudes? What do you do when there are earthquakes or disasters? If you don’t have concern for the people around you, eventually society is going to collapse. I think that’s one of Rand’s flaws. She doesn’t consider empathy to be a worthwhile trait.  

• The Libertarian Case for Gary Johnson 
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If you don't vote for the (liberal) Democrat, this line goes, then mere anarchy will be loosed. All that is decent and civilized about America will forever be destroyed and we will be bombing indiscriminate countries into the Stone Age, women will go barefoot and be forcibly impregnated and shoved back into the kitchen and Paul Lynde will once again be closeted in the center square. The skies will once again be filled with the choking fumes of plutocrats lighting cigars with $1,000 bills featuring the image of Ayn Rand and power plants will once again exclusively be powered by grinding the bones of the poor, the tired, and non-unionized illegal immigrants. It will be the Hunger Games, but without the laughs.  

• • • Atlas Shrugged Part II: Election Edition 
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Altruism  |Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Paul Ryan  |Image  |Video  | The film cannot do everything the novel can, and it must aggravate the filmmakers that Ayn Rand fans like me can’t help but judge the movie’s aesthetic impact against the novel’s. The movie largely reduces Rand’s message to the Tea Party friendly one of being against government economic management and stealing from the productive to be “fair” to others. Fortunately, there is one hat tip to Rand's deeper defense of reason and rationality (more important to her than being against altruism or statism) when Rearden snaps back to a smarty-pants young liberal that rigid principles are necessary to pour steel. It’s a fun moment.  

• • • Atlas Shrugged Part II: What We Saw at the World Premiere in DC! 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Individualism  |Video  | Atlas Shrugged Part II, the second of three films based on Ayn Rand's controversial 1957 novel, hits movie screens across the country on Friday, October 12, 2012. [....] Reason's Matt Welch was on hand for the movie's world premiere in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, October 3 to ask viewers why they thought Rand's ideas about individualism and free-market capitalism remain so popular - and yet so embattled - in contemporary America.  

• • • Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Part II: Behind the Scenes 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Nathaniel Branden  |Yaron Brook  |Image  |Video  | ReasonTV visited the set of Atlas Shrugged Part II, the second installment in the new film adaptation of Ayn Rand's epic 1957 novel. The movie is set to hit theaters on October 11, 2012.

 

• • Obama’s Controversial Remark 
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The Fountainhead  | “Don’t bother to examine a folly,” Ayn Rand has a character say in The Fountainhead. “Ask yourself only what it accomplishes.”  

• • • Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand vs. Big Government 
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Altruism  |Ayn Rand Center  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  |Yaron Brook  |Video  |Syndicated  | "People don't vote their pocketbooks, people vote what they think is right," says Yaron Brook, president of The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and author of Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government. “So we need a moral revolution in this country, and that’s how we get a free market revolution.” At FreedomFest 2012, Reason's Matt Welch sat down with Brook to discuss what Obama has meant for sales of Atlas Shrugged, why big government hurts the poor, and how Ayn Rand inspired the Tea Party.

 

• • • On the Set of Atlas Shrugged Part II 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Image  | The movie is now shooting (digitally, with Arri Alexa cameras) around the Los Angeles area. On Wednesday I visited a giant empty warehouse in downtown Los Angeles (near, naturally, a train track) to witness day 10 of a planned 31 day shoot (slightly longer than Part I’s 27 days, but with a far more leisurely couple of months of pre-production). This warehouse will be Rearden Steel’s foundry and Hank Rearden’s office. In the novel, Rearden invents an amazing amalgam known as Rearden metal only to have his industrial progress hamstrung and his property stolen by an ever-more-repressive state attempting to centrally control an economy already choking under too much government management.  

• Meet Some of Reason’s Donors! 
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Name: Bill (and Kathy) Schjelderup. [....] How would you describe your politics? libertarian — Free Minds, Free Markets. How long have you had them? Since my teen years. Probably from reading a lot of science fiction, Ayn Rand etc.