"In Atlas Shrugged, Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?"[27]
—Yaron Brook, "Is Rand Relevant?"
The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2009
Atlas Shrugged endorses the belief that a society's best hope rests on adopting a system
of pure laissez-faire. Rand's view of the ideal government is expressed by John Galt, who
says, "The political system we will build is contained in a single moral premise: no man
may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force," and claims that "no
rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality—to think, to
work and to keep the results—which means: the right of property." Galt himself lives a
life of laissez-faire capitalism as the only way to live consistently with his beliefs.
