I haven't read this in several years, but I remember agreeing with Rand on many ideas e.g. inherent value of a productive work ethic, capitalism yeilding the most good (quality of life, leisure time, etc.) for largest amount of people, and government aid's role in the breakdown of society.

I distinctly remember NOT agreeing with Rand in that she refused to conceed that by utilizing the economic system of capitalism, we are merely harnessing a prominent character flaw of mankind;greed,in order to produce a desireable effect for everyone. Of course, this sounds like Utilitarianism, which is fine as long as the author defines it as such and does not try to disguise flaws as virtues, as Rand does in Atlas Shrugged. I speculate that Rand may have tried to cover this fact in order to make her philosophy more appealing to the American masses of the time, which worked to her advantage. What red-blooded American doesn't want a pat on the back for being a capitalist? I guess Rand didn't want to follow with, "You're also a bunch of assholes, but luckily, it works out." because I certainly don't think that She was naive enough to believe that greed and ambition are synonymous and are actually virtuous qualities. I think it was a cop-out on Rand's part to support capitalism as if it were an infallible economic system in order to make the idea more marketable. In conclusion, I don't believe Rand had to compromise Her ethics in order to obtain the desired effect.

It was a fun read, though. I remember being motivated to self eduacate myself after reading it, ergo I'm better for it and I'd imagine that others would be as well.