On Contact: Ayn Rand with Prof. Lisa Duggan

Why do so many young people like Ayn Rand? Well, they lived under authority all their lives and suddenly they start to get  some of the freedom of adults, and Ayn Rand tells them to rebel against the collective and take everything they can. The heroes in her books are all good looking, powerful people and this enthralls the young. Her books are also full of sex and those pages will be the most worn out in her books.

Ayn Rand was a Property Absolutist, and believed you can do as you please with your property regardless of the neighbours or society. But when it came to the Native Americans she said they deserved to lose their land to white people because they hadn't utilised properly.

Ayn Rand had very little understanding of how capitalism worked, or that the regulations were put in place to stop crony capitalism taking hold, and that without them the market could become fixed (less free) by the big corporations.