I read this years ago, when I was like 11 (Strangely, I'm not kidding lol) and I remember thinking that it was like the weirdest book. So, discuss, good or bad?
Well, first and foremost, I haven't read Atlas Shrugged. But I do know a thing or two about what it has to say (it's a famous book, after all). Ayn Rand was the principle developer of the philosophy of objectivism, which has been translated politically into libertarianism. There's certainly an allure to libertarianism, no doubt about that. I do, however have serious qualms with some of the implications. In my view, (and I've been consistent in this over the course of quite a few threads here in the ol' FH debate forum) the source of just about all the problems we see today, in just about every aspect of modern society from animal exploitation to the private prison industry, stem from what is known as the profit motive, and corporatism. I'm sorry to say, but the best weapon we have against this trend is appropriate government regulation. The government is the representation of the people, and not a thing to be afrad of. If it is the case that the government is a fearful, untrusted thing, then reform is needed. Anything I have to say (about absolutely everything) has been said better by Thom Hartmann. The dude is a genious. He semi-regularly debates a representative of the Rand Institute (Ayn Rand's prodegy) named Yaron Brook on his radio program, which is always fascinating. Long story short... Atlas Shrugged is deeply flawed (take that for what it's worth, considering I haven't read it). I'm a social libertarian all the way, but economicaly, libertarianism is a disaster.
This is really interesting, because I just started to read this book starting from Friday. I've logged about 6 hours reading, and I'm only at the beginning of Part 2. It's loooooooooong. It's safe to say that Ayn Rand is very...persuasive in pushing people into the libertarian-conservative movement. A month previous, after reading multitudes of essays and other books by liberal, anti-corporation authors, I was very much in the liberal side of the Nolan Chart. I'm usually very centrist. After reading up to Part 2, I retested with the same chart, and found myself rather dangerously far into the conservative and libertarian side of the plane. I can understand why Ayn Rand is such a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism and individual rights. After all, she grew up in Soviet Russia.