Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal is a collection of essays about capitalism, primarily from Ayn Rand with contributions from Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen.#

For the most part is predictable, but persuasive.#

What Is Capitalism?#

Ayn Rand refers to a encyclopaedia entry on socialism and why "investing in people" is the best position for a government.#

The collectivization of Soviet agriculture was achieved by means of a government-planned famine--planned and carried out deliberately to force peasants into collective farms; Soviet Russia's enemies claim that fifteen million peasants died in that famine; the Soviet government admits the death of seven million.

At the end of World War II, Soviet Russia's enemies claimed that thirty million people were doing forced labor in Soviet concentration camps (and were dying of planned malnutrition, human lives being cheaper than food); Soviet Russia's apologists admit to the figure of twelve million people.

This is what the Encyclopaedia Britannica refers to as "investment in people."

In a culture where such a statement is made with intellectual impunity and with an aura of moral righteousness, the guiltiest men are not the collectivists; the guiltiest men are those who, lacking the courage to challenge mysticism or altruism, attempt to bypass the issues of reason and morality and to defend the only ration and moral system in mankind's history--capitalism--on any grounds other than rational and moral. [p. 34]

America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business#

The name says the whole of it.#

The Property Status of Airwaves#

Ayn Rand thinks this "public property" rests on a fallacy.#

There is no essential difference between a broadcast and a concert: the former merely transmits sounds over a longer distance and requires more complex technical equipment. No one would venture to claim that a pianist may own his fingers and his piano, but the space inside the concert hall--through which the sound waves he produces travel--is "public property" and, therefore, he has no right to give a concert without a license from the government. Yet this is the absurdity foisted on our broadcasting industry. [p. 122]

The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus#

What early 20th century party wrote this platform?#

We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunities for employment and earning a living.

The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power the financial interests.

We demand profit sharing in big business.

We demand a broad extension of care for the aged.

We demand ... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments.

In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education. ... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents. ...

The government must undertake the improvement of public health--by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor... by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth.

[We] combat the ... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good. [p. 219-220]

Other Notes#

I find it very interesting that one of Alan Greenspan's articles is about what is wrong with the Federal Reserve System. What happened there?#