It's a bit like Warren Buffet complaining that he has a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, because long-term effective capital gains taxes are too low: He thinks it's wrong, but he still takes advantage of it. You can say, "These rules are unfair, they should be changed" while still playing the rules of the game the way they're written.

That said, there does seem to be something that smacks of hypocrisy in the case of the Ayn Rand case, more than in the Warren Buffet case. I think in particular, it's the idea that society would somehow be better without such safety nets: If you're using the safety nets, that's kind of proof that they're a good thing, isn't it?

"North Koreans wouldn't survive without government's daily handouts of rice. That's kind of proof that North Korean central planning system is a good thing, isn't it?"

Close, but not quite.

In your hypothetical scenario, North Koreans would certainly be able to sort themselves out without the daily handouts if they weren't being oppressed by the NK government.

Is it the case that the Ayn Rand Institute would have been perfectly capable of supporting themselves in this crisis if everyone had just been paying lower taxes and had fewer regulations? Perhaps people at the Institute think so, but I'm pretty skeptical.

If Warren Buffet wants to pay more taxes than legally required, I don't think he could do it. But Ayn Rand went out of her way to grab gvt handout while disparaging those doing the same thing. In my book, only of them is a hypocrite.