That is the obvious argument that to take back is not hypocrisy in this case. It seems persuasive to me. I'm willing to take back what has been taken from me, when I can get away with it. It's just self defense. I wonder why people reject it out of hand.

This is not based on future taxation, but instead on increasing the money supply that would in theory increase inflation. Unless the Ayn Rand institute has massive cash reserves, it is a huge positive for them.

The rest of the article is complete confabulation trying to say that if the government didn't do anything the crisis wouldn't have been a big issue, which is a speculative assumption that goes contrary to evidence. In any case, if the government didn't create a PPP, they would be much worse off. Therefore, it is hypocrisy and not restitution.

Does it go contrary to evidence? We have prior examples of pandemics where things were not shut down and the economy did not collapse.

They are specifically saying that the fact that the epidemic has ripped through the country is because the government intervened too much. Not the economic impact, simply the progression of the epidemic.

The economy did not collapse in the vast majority of countries, due to governmental intervention. Those countries also have much less infection.

> They are specifically saying that the fact that the epidemic has ripped through the country is because the government intervened too much

You're conflating things. You are making it sound like they are blaming the spread of the virus on the lockdown. It does not say that in the article. In fact, the article laments "America’s unpreparedness, the slowness of our response, and the byzantine maze of regulations." To the extent that it does blame the government for the spread, it doesn't blame it on the quarantine but on regulations preventing the medical industry from working efficiently. It does criticize the "entire nation under house arrest," but only as an outcome, distinct from part of the problems spreading the virus.

The fix for unpreparedness is not the free market, it is preparedness. Less regulation would not have fixed the issue. No country in the earth managed to curtail this pandemic using less regulation. Making the medical industry work more efficiently didn't help any country. What worked was the public sphere imposing non-pharmaceutical interventions, and distributing massive amounts of tests, in that order.

None of those problems can be fixed by less government.

Pandemics of this scale of infection rate, hospitalizations, and deaths?

Yes, the Spanish flu infected 1/3 of the world and resulted in 50 million deaths. It's possible covid-19 will get there as well but we're not anywhere close to that yet.

The Spanish flu had absolutely massive economic effects that would have undoubtedly led to a massive crisis if it wasn't for a minor event called World War One.

And the places that recovered economically the quickest are those that locked down more and earlier.

But in that case, cities that shut down earlier recovered more quickly. http://news.mit.edu/2020/pandemic-health-response-economic-r...

The same reason electric cars are pointless. The gas is already out of the ground at the gas station.

This statement ignores the dynamic pricing of markets.

The gas station is full today, but the marginal electrical care affects the supply/demand curve for gas today and in the future. If the current point of the supply/demand curve drops too low, supply will start to shut off.

Hence, electric cars are only "pointless" in the past before they were invented.

You can advocate for electric cars and still consider that making good use of an old gasoline car might be less carbon intensive than buying a brand new electric one.

Once the budget for the loan program was fixed, taking the loan wasn't going to cost us all any more money.

The broader point is that, by and large, her ideological stepchildren (even if we can't call them "adherents" per se; you know, the "get the government off the backs of the people" crowd) -- are, when push comes to shove, more than happy to dip their hand at the public till when it serves their self-interest.

So it's not like they are "forced" to temper down their principled stand against socialist interventionism (and only in exceptional circumstances, we are led to believe). It's more like that principle stand just doesn't exist, and never did exist. It's just a matter of who gets to benefit from it.

BTW, it's not like any support is needed for this observation - but just a tasty morsel from the recent news:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/07/fossil-f...

The principled stand exists - they were against government distribution before, and they are now.

That's no reason not to get some of your money back when it's available.

In that case why should anyone be against any kind of welfare? If they will take welfare when its in their interest why shouldn't I take welfare when it's in my interest, as well as vote for it to continue existing?

Also, as the link you posted says, it's those that have savings that lose from government printing money. The Ayn Rand institute does not have enough in savings for the PPP to be merely restitution. In fact, the PPP is a huge net positive for them.

That entire article is seldom more than lies and rhetoric.

Even Ayn Rand gladly accepted social security in her later years.[1] That doesn't stop her or her followers from "being against" government welfare.

However, it does show that they are willing to bend against their principles. In the words of a great movie "Principles only mean something when you stick to them when it's inconvenient." [2]

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social-security/

[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208874/quotes/qt0396978

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it is morally consistent to take something that you paid for, while putting forth an argument that you should not have been made by others to pay for it in the first place.

I read that comment as well, but you are choosing to argue philosophy in a different frame of reference by arguing "morally consistent" versus my "principles".

To put it another way: it would have been against her principles to not take something she was made to pay for.

Except that in this case the Ayn Rand institute, having such low profits and cash reserves, isn't taking something they paid for. They are taking much more than they paid for, even though they didn't have to.

If you follow the philosophy that as long as you do not have the power to change your material circumstances that you should follow your interests, your philosophy is no more useful than nihilism.

There are so many grave misunderstandings of monetary theory, how government functions, or the net value of services provided for government in that article. It's fun to watch them get bent out of shape to justify their actions. In a way, if a parasitically selfish person is going to find a way to justify their selfishness with some pseudo-philosophy, they will find Ayn Rand, if there was no Ayn Rand, they'll find some other -ism supporting their position.

Politicians operate much the same. They find one set of economists or another to support whatever policy they've already settled on.

On its strongest form - many people tend to form an opinion first, based on whatever biases they have, and then go out and look for arguments in support of it. Including writers of this article. They decided to take the $, and then assigned someone to write a blog post to justify it :)

I like this part:

> As is well known, but seldom publicized, the growth of state power has enmeshed doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and biomedical firms in an ever-tightening web of regulations. Their every move is held suspect. Commercial test developers were prevented from getting early access to samples of the novel coronavirus, while the government bungled its own testing. Even when private hospitals want to add more hospital beds, they have to plead with government overlords for permission to do so.