Wishful thinking

David Boaz at Cato says Ayn Rand is in. Maybe. I've heard book sales are up. But you've gotta compare it to the competition. I haven't data on relative book sales, but we still have Google search data.

Google Search Insights shows a mild up-blip in Rand-related searches in the first quarter of 2009, then a drift back down; searches on Marx continue to dominate both in volume and in linked news stories. Boaz also notes resurgent interest in Hayek; Google Search Insights says nothing to see there.



Again, Marx in blue, Rand in red, Hayek in yellow. Clicking through on the Google link shows that in none of the top-ten Rand countries does Rand beat Marx in search popularity. Hitting any of the tags below will bring up previous iterations of the Rand vs Marx on Google Search Insights; do check there to see if your immediate objections to the use of this method have already been answered.

Ayn Rand villains

Caplan had to look back to the 30s and 40s to find real world examples of Randian villains.

The most recent Monbiot column does have a certain Ellsworth Toohey feel to it....

This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity.

It's hard for a species used to ever-expanding frontiers, but survival depends on accepting we live within limits.

...
The summit's premise is that the age of heroism is over. We have entered the age of accommodation. No longer may we live without restraint. No longer may we swing our fists regardless of whose nose might be in the way. In everything we do we must now be mindful of the lives of others, cautious, constrained, meticulous. We may no longer live in the moment, as if there were no tomorrow.

HT: NotPC

It's worse than I thought

The last word anyone would use to describe Tyler Cowen is shrill. He's often the first to dampen libertarian worries about some new egregious piece of legislation, showing that it probably won't have large effects; he's also often the first to bring in political second best arguments about overall social stability as counterarguments against free-marketers' preferred policy moves.

And so when I read him saying this, I get nervous

FOR years now, many businesses and individuals in the United States have been relying on the power of government, rather than competition in the marketplace, to increase their wealth. This is politicization of the economy. It made the financial crisis much worse, and the trend is accelerating.
...
Even worse, these political deals threaten open discourse. The dealmaking may be inhibiting some people in health care from speaking out in opposition to the administration’s proposals. Robert Reich, who served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, deserves credit for complaining about this arrangement, but not enough people are asking where such dealmaking might stop.

The banking sector has been facing similar constraints; if bankers criticize the Treasury or the Fed, they risk losing their gilded cages and could get a bad deal when the next bailout comes. When major economic sectors can be influenced in this way, are we really very far from the nightmare depicted by Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged”?

It's later than I'd thought....