ARI News

New essay on Learn Liberty: “Crony-in-Chief: Donald Trump Epitomizes Ayn Rand’s ‘Aristocracy of Pull’”

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.”
Government And Business

Intellectual Ammunition — Campaign Finance, Cronyism and Inequality

Recently, I debated Professor Rick L. Hasen of UC Irvine School of Law at a Federalist Society event at Southwestern School of Law in LA. The subject was campaign finance law, and Professor Hasen took the opportunity to outline the case he makes in his new book, Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections. From the title, you might guess that he is both not a fan of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and that he thinks money in politics is leading to a kind of plutocracy, in which the wealthy end up influencing government far out of proportion to everyone else.
Government And Business

United Airlines’ “Chairman’s Flight” Is an Example of Extortion, Not Bribery

Stories about government officials getting perks from those with business before them aren’t exactly rare today. Remember those amazing loan deals Senator Chris Dodd received from Countrywide Bank while he was the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee? Or the millions in donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign governments and companies that stood to benefit from arms deals with the U.S. while Hillary was Secretary of State?

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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