It did work in the real world. Look at the success of this country. Now you see it being destroyed by “trying to balance Altruism and individualism”. Don’t you see that they are incompatible. It’s either one or the other. Capitalism and the free market, private property and free speech can not exist under the Altruist morality. And as the moral code of Altruism comes to be practiced more fully as it is today you see all of these things being destroyed. We are not made for each other. We are social beings but not in the way it is preached in our society. We are created as individuals. Every man is an island. There is nothing wrong with helping people and being kind to others and giving money to those who are struggling, so long as it is voluntary. But if you accept the premise that you exist to serve others, that it is your duty, then what objections can you have when you are taxed at a higher rate or your property is taken and given to someone else? Really. Objectivism will work precisely because it is based on the real world and on Human nature. Look at the Declaration of Independence and you see Objectivism so eloquently stated in a single paragraph. This country was founded on the principles of Objectivism but from the very start it was infected with Altruism and as has happened all throughout Human history the majority have chosen to follow that path and take a look at the result: Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Hillary Clinton, Tim Geitner, Chuck Schumer, George W. Bush. How about Social Security, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, Obamacare, The war on Poverty, The minimum wage, the National Labor Relations board, the EPA, the Green Energy Initiative, Farm Subsidies, Ethanol subsidies, the National Endowment for the Arts, NPR, Affirmative action, Slavery, Jim crow laws, racism, multi-culturalism, political correctness and the list goes on and on. All of these evils are based on the moral code of Altruism. The basic premise that a man’s life is not his property but belongs to the state or his brothers or God. That he has no right to exist except to serve others.
You can’t cut altrusim out of human nature. That only works in fiction. Objectivism, in the end, became just another cult. Human beings are never going to be some kind of cut-out figures in an Ayn Rand novel. There’s a reason why must people move past Ayn Rands’s philosophy after they reach college age. Altrusim is part of human natue....it’s not some kind of philosophy that we pick up from a book. It’s all about balancing the needs of ourselves & others in making a society work. I love the individualism that the United States has, until the recent troubles, been founded upon; but the Randian world-view that altrusim is the cause of mankinds downfall is foolish. Life is more complicated than the screaming cardboard figures that Rand has drawn.