Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism

[CapnAwesome]

Would it be fair to say that her philosophy amounts to how she thinks things would actually work, regardless of the fact that they don't?

A bit like some theists tell us what atheists "would be like", ignoring the fact that they almost entirely aren't.

I think so. I mean, that's my objection to it for sure, or rather one of my objections. I was a libertarian (although not an objectivist) for years, mostly during college. Eventually I had to quit because libertarianism just doesn't work. It's all hypothetical, but in reality the 'free hand of the market' doesn't have any sort of positive morality to it, the hypotheticals put forth by Ayn Rand and others just don't translate into reality.  In addition the claims of Libertarians that it's an untried philosophy is just not true. Although the miniarchist society advocated by Rand hasn't been tried as a whole, you do see individual pieces of it tried in different places. Take for example a lack of regulation in the fishing market that happened in Africa. It's lead to massive environmental damage and the near extinction of countless species. Or the lack of regulation that cell phone chargers had in the US. Was that at all beneficial to the consumer? No. In fact both of them, and an enormous number of other libertarian and objectivist ideas all lead to the exact same basic principle of a prisoners dilemma, where with no market controls all parties suffer. Not just the consumers, but businesses as well. Fishing quotas made by the government mean more fish for everyone in the long term. The market fails.

That's a real critique of Ayn Rand. Saying 'She's a greedy bitch who wants to fuck over poor people' is not.