Ah, "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead", two works that have been very formative for my younger years. A good core set of beliefs can be extracted, but the philosophy, in order to work in real human populations, is incomplete in my opinion. The philosophy needs to be softened a little towards that bottom 10th percentile, IQ of 80 or below, equivalent to about 1 in 20 people. The reason being that those people have very little options remaining to be net-contributors to society, they often have difficulty in making the right financial, family, substance usage choices, and therefore will always need extra help and protection by the rest of the population. (The US military for instance has a treshold of 80 IQ points or so, below which they have determined that someone will not be in a position to be a net contributor to the mission). A philosophy that does not account for (almost) all members of the population, as well as (almost) all kinds of personalities, is doomed not to work. Another reason why communism can never work, neither can hard core libertarianism. Both can work perfectly with certain types of people, but not with an overall population.
I believe that the US value system, where charity is much more engrained into the culture, combined with Rand's philosophy, is why it had that much traction there. In Europe this charity in financial contributions, is much less present. Which is why Rand's philosophy was much less appreciated here and seen as way too harsh.
I don't get this IQ crap. There are some super intelligent people and there are super manipulative people.
Who highest the highest IQ:
Those who think they are exceptionally brilliant because of their book smarts and mega letters following their name yet don't know a thing about where their food comes from OR the farmer that knows how to grow food and butcher animals, can feed his family off the land and water, yet cares less about how the stock market works or how to get a rocket to the moon?.
To insinuate that military personnel are stupid, yet responsible for protecting an entire nation, are less or require more protection from those they are protecting or are less productive is utterly ignorant.
Or perhaps military personnel are stupid because military personnel are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect those that look down on their choice of professionalism.
As for financial planning those who are dedicated to making the military a career, make the best long term financial plan:
1. Retire with a pension starting day one after retirement starts: at 39 - 49+ years of age.
2. Work a second career as a government civilian or a civilian job till age 60 - 65+ paying into social security and perhaps an IRA or 401K for their future retirement.
3. Those service members that qualify also have Veterans Administration benefits as compensation and pension for injuries sustained while in service. Is another factor to be added into their retirement income.
4. Finally Social Security Income, and possibly 401k/IRA income and / or other investment ie stock market.
Compared to the financial planning a person whose so retirement income is solely based on continued employment until their choice of age to retire between age 62 - 65+ then will only receive SSA and perhaps an income from a 401k/IRA and/or selling their investment stocks.
Then there is the fact that 401k/IRA and stocks are no guarantee to be a significant income.
As for charity contributions: money vs material things vs labor assistance.
A look into matter of (donor) convenience:
Easier to blow off a person collecting for a cause by saying no or giving money.
After doing a preverbial "house cleaning" easier to call a charity to come and pick up or take items, get the (inflated) charitable tax deduction receipt.
Last option is physically assisting, actually choosing to help in the education, clean-up, building, etc, doing something to improve a person's situation or quality of life.
Option 1 just saying no or giving money is the primary attitude Americans have adopted.
