The year 2017 marks the 60th publication anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, so we’re talking to the authors of chapters in Robert Mayhew’s book Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” First up is Edwin A. Locke, whose chapter “The Traits of Business Heroes in Atlas Shrugged” focuses on character traits and moral virtues shared by the novel’s many business heroes, such as Hank Rearden, Francisco d’Anconia and Dagny Taggart.
For months, various newspapers have been trying to associate Donald Trump and his administration with Ayn Rand and her philosophy. Learn Liberty just published Steve Simpson’s all-new essay titled “Crony-In-Chief: Donald Trump Epitomizes Ayn Rand's ‘Aristocracy of Pull,’” in which he not only sets the record straight, but he also offers a radical solution to “cronyism.”
Dr. Jaana Woiceshyn, associate professor of business ethics and competitive strategy at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, Canada, recently wrote an article explaining why businessmen should care about the right to free speech — and how Steve Simpson’s Defending Free Speech provides the intellectual ammunition they need to fight for that right.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Ayn Rand Institute has a YouTube channel that we are regularly updating with talks, lectures, debates, interviews, Q&As and seminars.
In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged businesspeople are portrayed as moral heroes by virtue of their enterprising vision and productivity. To help students identify their own purpose and pursue it with joyful conviction, ARI and STRIVE are co-hosting the Leven Foundation student conference on “The Morality of Value Creation and Trade.” Here, students will connect with professionals around the philosophy and business principles behind their success, informed by the ideas of Ayn Rand.
There’s something entirely fitting in the fact that the most sensible thing said about Sony’s decision not to release The Interview comes from a place not known for saying sensible things — Hollywood itself — while the most risible comments come from a place that is supposed to have serious responses to things like foreign nations threatening American citizens for exercising their constitutional rights. That’s Washington, D.C. (in case you’ve forgotten that it’s supposed to be a serious place). Comparing the two views expressed is illuminating and goes a long way toward explaining why North Korea felt free to threaten Sony — indeed, all of us—in the first place.
I had a strong sense of déjà vu when I read this Wall Street Journal editorial about Argentina’s harassment of a U.S. printing company for closing a plant in Buenos Aires. Why did this sound so familiar?
In an Economist article called “The coming tech-lash,” columnist Adrian Wooldridge predicts that “one of the big developments of 2014 will be the growing peasants’ revolt against the sovereigns of cyberspace.” According to the article’s subhead, high-tech elites will “join bankers and oilmen in public demonology.”
In the New York Times, entrepreneur Rebekah Campbell notes “The Surprisingly Large Cost of Telling Small Lies.” As an angel investor named Peter tells her, “The secret to success in business and in life is to never, ever, ever tell a lie.”
