Disclaimer: I just finished Atlas Shrugged.
Short version: Atlas Shrugged is deeply flawed, in numerous ways. It ignores reality in favor of fantasy land, pretends that human emotion can be, at all times, subservient to reason and rationality, and is poorly written.
Long version:
It's written as if the world and humans could be completely rational beings, if only we wanted to.
It's written as if all rational beings will want the same things she thinks we should want.
It's written as if everybody who isn't a capitalist is a waste of space.
It's written as if everybody in a company, other than the current owner is a parasite.
It promises that hard work and diligence will pay off, without addressing the times when it won't.
It promises that opportunity exists for everybody, while ignoring the fact that opportunity is nearly always determined by parental wealth.
It implies that being successful is a sign of deserving success.
It says that organized labor can never be a good thing.
It says that if you work for a capitalist they will do right by you by doing right by them.
It says that entrepreneurs would never act unscrupulously to get ahead, or to prevent someone else from challenging their dominant position.
It says that all regulation is bad.
It says the people are either complete idiots who are lying to themselves, or heroic entrepreneurs.
It says that people who start companies are the only people that drive the economy.
It says that there's nothing good about taxes (including fire departments, garbage collection, and police)
It ignores that regulation helped end the Great Depression.
It ignores that government provided services for everybody
It ignores the fact that any business, left sufficiently long, and grown sufficiently dominant, will use their position to their advantage
It ignores the benefits of the Clean Air Act
It ignores what happened before she was born -- the fact that the Wild West was largely lawless, and robber barons worked people to death and threw them aside.
It ignores thousands of years of evidence which states that if you let a company (or before companies, a merchant) behave however they want, you will end up with despots, murderers and tyrants, even if that's not what you start with.
It ignores the fact that entrepreneurs are human. Everybody is human.
There's a lot of talk in Atlas Shrugged about how the world would work if everybody behaved like the entrepreneurs, largely ignoring the fact that they don't. That there are thousands of reasons people don't behave that way. She writes as if her image of the perfect person is what we should all aspire to be, while ignoring the fact that we live in a world where we can choose what we want, and that choosing our aspirations is as important as choosing how to get there.
In short, it's fantasy. It ignores reality in favor of wishful thinking. Since it's supposed to be a warning on what not to do, or a treatise on how to behave, the fact that it's based on flawed logic, incorrect assumptions, and lies, makes it a complete failure. It does not, in any way, do what it sets out to.
The truth is, if you live in America, the government gave you your home. Whether it was the English in New England, the Spanish on first landing, or the American government during the days of Manifest Destiny, there isn't a single inch of American soil that wasn't taken from another people, through force, by people of the government, or directly supported by them.
Ayn Rand states at the end of the book that she was never given anything. She ignores (at a minimum): roads, police, fire departments, schools (for herself and her children), garbage collection (imagine if it was paid for on an individual basis. Now imagine your neighbor can't afford it, or doesn't want to pay for it), emergency care, military, subsidized corn (which allowed her to live on all the cheap American food), railroads (laws passed and property taken from existing owners), western expansion over territory that belonged to another people first (and who the government forcibly dislodged).
In other words, she is either lying about what she has been given, or takes for granted all the government programs that do work, while demonizing government in general. She was, whether she intended it or not, a hypocrite.
