I think that’s a misrepresentation of her views. She opposed self-sacrifice but she wasn’t against charity. She supported it when it came from a genuine personal desire to help others (as opposed to a moral duty).
>She wanted to let the disabled starve or beg on street corners so she'd have a tiny fraction more wealth
>She opposed self-sacrifice but she wasn’t against charity. She supported it when it came from a genuine personal desire to help others (as opposed to a moral duty).
These do not seem like contradictory statements. They are just different ways of phrasing the same concept: There is no moral duty to help others, and if people can't get somebody to desire to help them, they deserve to die.
When you say that those unable to work "have to rely on voluntary charity" it is functionally equivalent to saying that people should be left to starve when others don't have extra money (IE - During a recession). She was either a short-sighted simpleton who couldn't see that, or evil enough to see it and ignore it.
You're engaging in a false dichotomy. The possibilities are not "Rand was a dum-dum" or "Rand was evil". There's also the (very likely) possibility that either she was wrong, or you are wrong (and yes, you could be wrong in your analysis even though I don't blame you for not thinking you are), through no fault of character. These sorts of big issues are hard to analyze and get right.
You are half-right. She did say that it should be left to charity, but that of course implies that when nobody gives the street corner beggar money they will starve.
The question then becomes, whose money are you going to take against their will and give to the beggar?
And you may believe that this would be a greater good, and a proper role of government... different people may think differently about that, and discussions can be held. Don't gloss over the fact, though, that the only alternatives to voluntary charity are either no charity or involuntary charity.
Money and property do not exist by themselves. You can grab, use, and carry things — and at other times, you may not be holding or using anything. Beyond this, concepts like "my money" or "my property" are social constructs; they exist only because society creates and enforces them.
The same society that upholds these constructs can also create others — such as human rights and the idea that everyone deserves dignity. In early societies with limited resources, survival often took precedence, and it was sometimes accepted that the old or disabled be left behind. Today, however, we have an abundance of resources — so much so that, in theory, hunger shouldn't even exist.
Yet we live under an individualistic and selfish ideology, where some argue for a return to a brutal indifference toward those in need, despite society's capacity to care for everyone. All this in the name of a self-centered ideology.
