People often think Objectivism is right wing conservative. In some ways it is, but in others it is pretty far to the left as well. Rand spends quite a lot of time attacking crony "capitalism".

The book creates exaggerated scenarios in order to illustrate certain principles and beliefs.

Some of those beliefs are:

1) If you created value as a producer then you deserve to keep and use that wealth you created. Others don't have a right to it and must trade with you through voluntary win/win means.

2) There are devious individuals who will use their influence to make government force others to provide them with benefits and harm their competition.

3) Being competent and producing value is one of the highest moral virtues. It is what advances society forward and promotes the "common welfare".

4) Objective thought should be relied upon rather than the opinion of others. You don't need to have a title in order to have an opinion. You just need to be competent on the subject matter.

5) Society will try to make you feel guilt for your success. As long as you created wealth through moral means then you should be proud, not full of guilt.

> People often think Objectivism is right wing conservative. In some ways it is, but in others it is pretty far to the left as well.

If nothing else, Objectivism is a pretty convincing argument that the left/right political binary is bullshit.

Have you ever read Socratic dialogues? It's a bit like that, where characters come to embody certain philosophical positions, except the scope is broadened beyond just discussion/debate and into action (which allows it to be a novel).

Yeah, each character is like a caricature. I think even if you don't like Rand's ideas, it's still a pretty good book. Also, you can always read The Fountainhead first. It's shorter than Atlas Shrugged but very similar. If you like The Fountainhead, then you'll almost certainly like Atlas Shrugged.

It is much more the latter than it is the former, but I would classify it more as a cautionary tale in many ways. That is, the "good guys" don't really win.

For comparison, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World present cautionary examples in a fictional context, but can still be seen as political works in their own right.

This is not to say that you'll enjoy the book (it is a long book, and anybody who has read it will remember the 70-page speech by Mr. Galt, even if they ended up skimming much of it) or even agree with the philosophy; often it seems that well-intentioned approaches that result in disaster by the "bad guys" (e.g. job security measures -- nobody can be fired) are disastrous only because they are taken to an extreme (e.g. everybody gets paid the same).

As for why I would recommend reading it, I grew up in the 80s, and I feel like the view I got from reading most casual fiction of the time and even from my early education was that communism (especially Soviet-style communism) was as valid an economic system as capitalism, and in the future imagined by scifi authors, the USA and the USSR were side-by-side in the conquest of space; and that much of the anti-communist sentiment, and the Cold War itself, was more of the Dr. Seuss "Butter Battle Book" argument over which side of the toast should be buttered, or pointing out specific leaders of the USSR (like Stalin) as being aberrations, rather than an indication of problems with the system of governance. Reading Ayn Rand (and later, Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative, and various works by von Mises and Hayek) gave me a more complete view in a lot of ways as to why the Cold War happened (even though most of those books postdated the start of the Cold War significantly), and how McCarthyism could have existed in a country that to my young eyes seemed extremely tolerant to controversial ideas.

It is a epic history based on a novel philosophy. The philosophy defines "right/good" values based on objective observation of reality, and then concludes that the top value for a being with reason is it's own life. So good/right things are those things that enhance your life and the things you value (your family, your love, your principles). One top principle is to "respect others reason and will, do not start aggression or go against the will of another reasoning being"

Except that humans are incapable of making objective observations in practice with anything resembling consistency.

So you are saying your above observation is not objective and doesn't resemble anything consistent?

I think the entire history of engineering is a testament that we can make observations on a consistent enough basis to be practical.

I haven't read Atlas Shrugged, instead opting for her non-fictional works. I'd recommend Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal as a reasonably concise introduction to her philosophy.