I've now lived long enough to see "everyone" be both Keynesians and Friedmanites. They can't both be right.
Apologies given to anyone "in the field" who takes offense, but the whole profession needs to constantly be reminded that economics is a social science and not a hard science. And the hard sciences are fudgable enough (witness the fact that nearly everything I learned about a] planets and b] dinosaurs when I was growing up is now presumed to be wrong, including the very existence of one of the most famous dinosaurs of all time, basic facts like their blood temperature type, and the likely cause of their demise. Thanks, guys.).
I distrust both pure ideologies and appeal-to-experts dismissals of those ideologies. Human behavior is messy. Unless you're ready to make a reductio ad absurdum argument, you won't convince me that "all human behavior" is either rational or economic. You want to have a lousy conversation? Mention the word "altruism" to somebody presently studying economics. It's topped only by asking a first year psych student to name the conditions they suffer from.
If anything appeals to me about Atlas Shrugged, it's not the nutty philosophy, the anti-human prescriptions or the stilted writing: it's the needed (and unfortunately also driven into the ground) reminder that "I know better than you" is always a slippery slope.
That said, anyone who can actually read the 46 pages of John Galt's radio address restating what's already been stated hundreds of times before in the 1,000 page novel has way more patience than I do.
Christina: The "love scenes" in The Fountainhead are pretty messed up for the time it was produced. How did that thing ever make it past the Motion Picture Review Board?
