Ayn Rand thought that the bureaucrats and leeches were holding back the greatness of society. This is somewhat a tenet of libertarianism, that we all need to be free to soar as high as possible, free from the regulations that would tether us to mediocrity. Those tethers include anything beyond minimal taxes, gun restrictions, licensing for professions, FDA drug testing, regulations, and paperwork showing compliance with vast numbers of government rules, etc. They also include the social safety net. I'm going to focus on the safety net.
Some people need the social safety net. That's why we have it. Before governments got into that business, there were churches and charities that tried to handle the load but were often overwhelmed. I assume charities were overwhelmed. Perhaps they weren't and it was just a trick some liberal busybodies dreamed up in order to make jobs for themselves. But I bet charities were frequently overwhelmed.
So we've had and needed a social safety net. Yet Ayn Rand was against that net. I can understand if she thinks it's better never to use the safety net, but why should it not even exist? It exists because people have needed it in the past, some need it now, and other will need it in the future. But other people's needs are unimportant to the Ayn Rand archetype. The Ayn Rand hero will never be that needy person. The superman doesn't need the safety net, and the world should be for the supermen, not for the sheep. So, no safety nets for you sheep either.
In the Ayn Rand view, it's too bad that the sheep of Europe even pushed for these safety nets starting back in the 1800's. The sheep of America followed. That's a problem, having these sheep make decisions about what government is going to do. They make sheep-like decisions. The sheep become more sheep-like and dependent, and the supermen are weighed down. Government should be limited so the sheep can't decide what's to be done. [By the way, doesn't this sound suspiciously feudal? The nobility should make the decisions, and the peasants should shut up and be good mules.]
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I hope I've shown a strong similarity between the philosophy of Ayn Rand and Neitzsche. Perhaps I'm overreaching here, but I don't think so. I wondered for a long time why people are so adamantly against Social Security, a program that has such broad appeal. Why isn't it good enough for anti-SS folks that large numbers of people want the program? Isn't that democracy?
No, democracy isn't a good enough reason. First and foremost, the country should be as free as possible. That's what libertarians strive for. Nothing, not the wishes of the majority for a social safety net, should overrule the primary guiding principle of the country.
On one hand I can see the logic in this. On the other hand, in practice the people of this country (as in "we, the people") took the country in the direction it has gone. This country wasn't invaded and hijacked by Russians who changed our government by fiat. WE changed it. And there was a logic to the changes that we made.
So the libertarians aren't the only ones who have a logical, reasonable view of how our government should work. They have lots of competition, and they've been losing. We, the People, don't want the Ayn Rand or Nietzsche philosophy. The elections tell us that.
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