Wow, judging by the narrative I at first though that I ended up on Encyclopedia Dramatica...

Ayn Rand fans should not read this, for they will experience severe butthurt...

I second that.

Considering the amount of attention Ayn Rand's ideas have been getting in the news lately, I expect plenty of potshots like these to come along.

Given the astonishingly bad reasoning behind those self-same ideas and the damage they have indirectly caused the US domestic economy - I'd say it's a well deserved potshot (compared to some of the vitriol directed at socialists).

Fair enough, that is your opinion. But why point to a badly written smear-piece full of "ad hominem" attacks.

Write what exactly do you find wrong with such reasoning.

Or maybe read the other point of view and see if it maybe makes more sense than you originally though...

The core philosophy of worrying about your own life and not others lives seems to really chide a lot of people here in the communist Republic of HN. If you don't like the idea of Objectivism feel free to follow your own. But for pete's sake stop looking like such wankers when doing so. The wiki post didn't cause butthurt any more than it does when some random dipshit tells you that your programming is crap.

People forget Ayn Rand would have been 12 during the Bolshevik revolution. It obviously deeply affected her. While I don't consider Objectivism to be a formal philosophy, I don't see anything wrong with the characters in Atlas Shrugged either. They were simply sick of being the doormats of humanity. Expected to do whatever necessary to make life better for everyone else even as they persist in misery. What I want to know is what kind of person thinks anyone should live like that?

Yet again I ask, what is this doing on Hacker News?