Following the weekly Wednesday Meetings at Americans for Tax Reform, two gentlemen from the Ayn Rand Institute held a Newsmaker Lunch in order to talk about their new book, Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government. Yaron Brook and Don Watkins recently published this book in order to help promote Ayn Rand’s philosophy of pure capitalism. Their intended audience is right leaning individuals, Tea Party followers, and generally all the people who do attend ATR’s weekly meetings. This book was not written for the liberals who claim to hate capitalism and self-interest, slandering Rand because of the fear they have of her rational ideas and major influence.
Both men spoke at the beginning of the luncheon, giving a brief outline of why they wrote the book, and how it can help influence people. Yaron began by reminding the group that capitalism, pure capitalism and not crony capitalism, has been empirically proven to be effective. It has been shown again and again to raise the both the standard of living and working wages. This pure form of capitalism includes every individual basing their choices on their rational self-interest. These people live and work for themselves, neither for their neighbors nor for their mothers, as Yaron pointed out. A capitalistic economy can have absolutely no ties to the national government.
After giving brief speeches, Brook and Watkins fielded questions both about the book itself and how Ayn Rand’s philosophy is still relevant in politics today. The men believe that the reason GOP candidates shy away from promoting capitalism is that society has been taught that self-interest is bad and total altruism is good. They gave many examples of how this is seen every day. In order to follow the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and gain the benefits that a capitalistic economy can provide, people must recognize how they add more to the community through their hard work. People need to become proud of being makers, rather than going out of their way to provide for the takers.