Government And Business

Is It Immoral to Buy Nice Shoes?

The moral foundation of the welfare state is altruism: the doctrine that we have a duty to sacrifice for the needs of others. (See my interviews with Onkar Ghate and Peter Schwartz.) If you want to get a real sense of the meaning of this doctrine and its implications for human life, the best source is Ayn Rand. But Rand is often accused of caricaturing altruism.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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