Mixed Economy - Ayn Rand

We are not a capitalist system any longer: we are a mixed economy, i.e., a mixture of capitalism and statism, of freedom and controls. A mixed economy is a country in the process of disintegration, a civil war of pressure-groups looting and devouring one another.

A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls—with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. 

Self-Determination of Nations ... Ayn Rand

The right of 

“the self-determination of nations” 

applies only to free societies  

or 

to societies seeking to establish freedom; 

it does not apply to dictatorships. 

Freedom - Ayn Rand

The issue is not slavery for a “good” cause versus slavery for a “bad” cause; 

the issue is not dictatorship by a “good” gang versus dictatorship by a “bad” gang.  

The issue is  

individual freedom 

versus 

dictatorship.

What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus coercion or compulsion.

Utilitarianism - The case of John Stuart Mill - by Ayn Rand

Religious influences are not the only villain behind the censorship legislation; there is another one: the social school of morality, exemplified by John Stuart Mill. 

Economic Power vs. Political Power ... Ayn Rand

A disastrous intellectual package-deal, put over on us by the theoreticians of statism, is the equation of economic power with political power. 

You have heard it expressed in such bromides as: “A hungry man is not free,” or “It makes no difference to a worker whether he takes orders from a businessman or from a bureaucrat.” 

Charity : Coerced moral duty or personal choice ? ... Ayn Rand

The small minority of adults 
who are unable rather than unwilling to work, 
have to rely on voluntary charity;  
misfortune is not a claim to slave labor; 
there is no such thing as the right to 
consume, control, and destroy 
those without whom 
one would be unable to survive.

Morality and Ethics - Ayn Rand's Rational Perspective

What is morality, or ethics? 

It is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.

Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such the code.

The first question that has to be answered, as a precondition of any attempt to define, to judge or to accept any specific system of ethics, is: 

Why does man need a code of values?

The 'Myth" of the 'Common Good" ... Ayn Rand

The tribal notion of “the common good” has served as the moral justification of most social systems—and of all tyrannies—in history. The degree of a society’s enslavement or freedom corresponded to the degree to which that tribal slogan was invoked or ignored.