McConnell Should Unleash Our Inner John Galt

By Edward Hudgins

GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says that Republicans "have often lost sight of the fact that our average voter is not John Galt." The Kentucky Senator, fresh from a primary victory over a Tea Party-backed candidate, was referring to the inventor-hero in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged who favored complete free markets and who rebelled against a government that persecuted him for the virtue of being productive.

McConnell believes that the GOP appears too elitist when it emphasizes policies that seem most to help to rich. But the problem is that, in addition to not understanding Ayn Rand, McConnell needs clarity about the country's problems and, thus, their solutions.
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Desperate exchanges in the kidney black market

Economists claim that a voluntary exchange has to be mutually beneficial, and that such an exchange can never be exploitative or unjust. But in desperate circumstances, an individual might, with full knowledge, accept a short-term benefit in exchange for a great benefit to the other party and a long-term harm to himself. For example, a woman might sell her kidney for a sack of rice if her family is on the brink of starvation and she knows of no better alternative. Neera K. Badhwar argues that heroic figures like Dagny or Rearden would never give a starving woman only a sack of rice for a kidney, because they would regard it as unjust. But pinpointing the injustice of the act is not so easy. Read more >