President Obama has stated that voters are faced with a choice between between “two fundamentally different paths for America.” For those who attended the Cato Institute’s private screening of Atlas Shrugged Part II Sept. 20, those words became resoundingly clear.
Expected to hit theaters October 12, producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglioloro are hoping their message of individual achievement, smaller government and free markets will make that choice more evident in time for Election Day.
Based off of the Ayn Rand novel written in 1957, Atlas Shrugged Part II begins with a creepily familiar depiction of the economy: decay is rampant, businesses are failing, and companies face shortages. People respond with a sense of helplessness, an apathetic ‘shrug’ and a dream of something more. Fast forward to 2012, and our economy looks quite the same. Today, Atlas Shrugged Part II stands as prophecy fulfilled, as we see the same narrative happening in our present economy.
Part II highlights a debate over which philosophy serves a society best—individualism or collectivism. Rand paints a society in which the government hides behind a façade of “protection” through laws and regulations, but in reality its collective nature actually cripples society. Rand argues that when men are compelled through collectivism rather than their own self-interest, the result is economic chaos.
That realization became abundantly clear to co-producer John Aglioloro after reading Rand’s 1964 book, The Virtue of Selfishness, which inspired him to attain the rights to the film in 1992. “It’s so simple to see that the laboratory of collectivism, that centralized power does not work, does not free its people,” Aglioloro said. “Show me where capitalism has failed.”
According to Kaslow, Part II celebrates the themes of capitalism and questions what life would be like if the best intellectual minds went on strike. What if government’s regulatory state became so great that the innovators behind Apple products or Google services simply failed to produce and create value for your everyday life? According to Aglioloro, the greatest enemy of entrepreneurs is the government political class. They “denigrate their own players, they don’t encourage them to win, so what happens? They will underachieve and finally they will tire of the denigration and they will leave.”
Today we see this happening as government regulations continue to come down the pipeline, making it harder for entrepreneurs to innovate and create value. In California especially, many businesses are fleeing the state to seek friendlier business climates. Even Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, a fan or Ayn Rand, said that big government zaps us of our creativity, our entrepreneurial economy, and of our prosperity. By providing individuals with the government option, we drain them of their incentive to produce value for the economy. This is the paradigm that Rand was trying to get readers to realize.
According to Kaslow, young conservatives should care about the themes in the film because it affects their economic future. “In order for this country truly to change, it has to start with the younger generation, having the courage to embrace these ideas. The greatest thing we can do is engage with younger minds who are already are predisposed to this message of individual achievement, smaller government and free markets.”
