Nolan’s Chart has been forked by other projects such as The Political Compass and iSideWith.com, where the axes remain the same but with a slightly different visualization or alternative question lists. In this brief article, a potentially more relevant, if somewhat arbitrary, version of the chart is proposed and a live, interactive implementation of the quiz is provided for your entertainment.

One of the major criticisms of the chart is that it uses terms from politics and political philosophy like “liberal” and “conservative,” which are not perfectly aligned with greater or lesser freedom (either personal or economic). One example is Second Amendment rights, wherein conservatives favor less regulation and therefore more freedom, although the term “liberal” was traditionally associated with greater liberty (and remains so on other issues, like abortion or gender). One might add that almost no one self-identifies as “authoritarian”, even if the descriptor is accurate. Some have also argued that there’s an imperfect separation between “personal” and “economic” freedom, as issues like immigration or clean energy may involve both inseparably.

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The proposed variant below attempts to address these shortcomings by not only updating the terminology and quiz questions but also by consolidating freedom into the vertical axis and using the horizontal axis to represent a preference for “velocity” of change. In order to preserve the alignment of political and directional left and right, I expressed this velocity as “resistance to change” ranging from radicals seeking major change now on the left end of the gradient to keepers of the status quo on the right.

It seemed to me that the horizontal gradient is relatively straightforward, whereas our all-encompassing freedom index on the vertical axis has a larger scope and is therefore more complex. For this reason, it did not seem important to allocate an equal number of questions to each of the axes. Instead, the preference for “velocity” of change is addressed with only two questions, which directly elicit the quiz-taker’s tempo1. The other eight questions cover personal, economic, and even technological freedom.

Although the political segments and axes above seemed to be the most relevant2 at the time of writing, you could readily create any number of other variations of the chart, all of which would have the potential to be equally or more valuable than this. This might be just relevant and interesting enough to justify answering the quiz’s ten simple questions. You can access the tool freely via this webapp and it will ask ten questions then show your results on a shareable infographic.

This “simplified”, or square, version of the chart is more appropriate in this paradigm because it more clearly depicts vanguard libertarianism as the “new Left” as is appropriate to a change-oriented high liberality group.

The phraseology is worth pausing on. Notice the juxtaposition of individual (“I”) and group (“a cult…

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Reason, even when being suppressed in action by addiction or fear, tells us that belief in ancient supernatural claims or chronic use of an expensive and fatal poison is absurd. Accepting unvalidated and questionably motivated claims on faith, if sustained, would quickly lead to one’s own demise. What if a street corner fentanyl dealer told you that a lethal dose of the drug was a safe amount to combat dental pain?

So why has religion been so popular and widespread? Religion has played an important stopgap role historically, granting early access to ethics and its benefits. Even today religion remains widespread and offers the most accepted solution to our ultimate and seemingly insurmountable problem of mortality, yet scientific objectivity has yielded us better alternatives, reducing or eliminating the need for religion. Meanwhile, the costs of faith include hatred, wars, and self-sacrifice.

The atheist American philosopher Ayn Rand frequently identified religion as “a primitive form of philosophy,” which, while once a justification, is now a reason for deprecation1. In ancient times, the most philosophically enlightened leaders might’ve established that murder and robbery are wrong, but lacked the ability to argue it rationally with their tribes. Saying that it was the will of god and is being demanded by that god under threat of eternal damnation probably served as a quick path to civility. That practical value of the leading philosophical thought of the age, combined with sincerely held supernatural beliefs, could account for most religion’s popularity. Given the smaller size of human brains at the time, a lack of scientific knowledge, and widespread superstitious beliefs, the seminal authors of the religions may have thought that they were in some kind of divine communication when feeling inspired.

Although this helps to explain religion as well as to appreciate its role in history, it also means that the development of ethical thought remains frozen for many at the beginning. Although religious scholars emerge, the basic tenets are fixed and scrutiny is largely replaced with mindless subservience. Since faith means acceptance of beliefs without proof, and those beliefs were set in stone (literally, in some cases) millennia ago, the dogma can’t truly be updated to include the enlightenment of mankind from our entire history of scientific and philosophical thought.

We shouldn’t pretend that the needs being addressed by religiosity aren’t valid or important. As with all living beings, human beings have a survival instinct to serve as their most fundamental and vital form of selfishness—a desire to preserve one’s own life. The intellectual development of our species clashes devastatingly with that instinct, because we have foreknowledge of the inevitability and irreversibility of our deaths. The worst possible outcome, the greatest fear of any mentally healthy adult, is inevitable and by definition involves the destruction of the mind (arguably invalidating any purpose or accomplishments as futile and ultimately meaningless).

Religion promises us a sorely needed solution, but without evidence and at great cost. By offering faith, however, individuals give up control of their minds. The immediate intellectual price is clear, given that the only working epistemological methods of understanding reality must be given up systematically in order for faith to fulfill its purpose as an anesthetic. The true price of religion is much higher because those who simply seek to control and manipulate others are able to take advantage of the believer’s irrationality.

Socialism demands mindless acceptance and obedience as well, but calls theirs “indoctrination” or “doctrine” rather than “faith” or “dogma”. The surprising number of similarities between religion and socialism is largely due to their mutual underlying collectivism. Collectivism views groups as having rights superior to those of individuals—and even supposed rights of groups to individuals. The resulting ‘values’ stemming from such a worldview typically involve self-sacrifice and subservience to an unquestioned authority.

In religion, a god or gods are presented as the ultimate source of authority—an all-knowing, powerful, infallible creator who stands ready to hand out negative reinforcement to any heretics. Proponents of the religion are quick to point out that god, as an authority, is no longer directly accessible; thus control flows to god’s alleged Earthly representatives in the church or whoever in the larger society most effectively claims association with the spiritual realm.

For centuries, sultans, kings, warlords, messiahs, and priests have all laid their claim to that role, extracting obedience and esteem when successful. How many have died because their geopolitical leader told them god needed them to invade a neighboring state and take its land?

“Opportunity cost” is an economic term that refers to the value of the best alternative. The opportunity costs of religion are quite high. Throughout history, everyone who’s ever deluded or distracted themself to avoid thinking about death objectively could’ve contributed to finding a way to prevent or better delay it. Consider the following hypothetical exchange between a believer (B) and skeptic (S):

B: Even if faith isn’t based on logic, that’s OK because it’s not harmful.
S: Doesn’t giving up reason make life harder? How can we work to avoid death if we’re accepting it as a great ascension into an unknowable paradise of heaven or another afterlife?
B: I’m not abandoning reason because I have faith. I don’t worry that this is distracting people like me from finding scientific solutions to the problem of mortality because we have a thriving healthcare sector.
S: Do you believe that your consciousness can somehow exist beyond death?
B: Yes, I believe that if you open your heart to (Jesus / Allah / G-d), that your name is written in the Book of Life, which means you’ll live forever in a paradise after your so-called death.
S: When you think about death, does this belief give you any comfort?
B: Of course, but I still have health insurance and I own stock in biotech companies because my religion says this life is also important.
S: Are you a member of a human cryonics institution, so that you can try to prolong life with cryostasis?
B: No, I want to have a religious funeral with an open casket and I’ll be in heaven when the hospital pronounces me dead.

The point is, of course, that the believer gives up opportunities to work against a real-world problem by finding a real-world solution because of the effects of faith on rationality. The example is also quite timely, because in 2024 researchers at Fudan University published their seminal experiment with a new human cryonics (cryostasis) procedure called MEDY, wherein they successfully froze part of a human brain and later reanimated it without tissue damage.

If the vast wealth spent on religion and religiously-influenced activities worldwide annually had been devoted to this sort of research, we might’ve had this technology 50 years earlier and developed it to the point of widespread, reliable use, with patients being revived regularly as new life-extending treatments they need are developed.

Opportunity costs are only the ‘glass is half empty’ perspective, though. The “half full” perspective is that more and more opportunities to advance our struggle against death are emerging. As AI continues to rapidly fuel new drug discovery and cryonics has had its breakthrough, philosophy and science are yielding more and more hope.

Contemplations of virtual reality and AI have led mainstream philosophers studying philosophy of mind, like Chalmers and Clarke, to believe that we may exist inside of (or as) AI in a virtual world—a trending idea in recent years among intellectuals.

A popular peer-reviewed study claimed mathematical evidence of newly discovered law of the physics of information (Infodynamics) which claims evidence that we exist in a virtual world (simulation) by identifying apparent rounding errors in astronomical phenomena. Hardware advances and improvements to neural networks meanwhile, make it sound more and more plausible that our consciousnesses could extend beyond, and perhaps one day entirely even leave, our physical bodies.

It’s an exciting time to be alive, but far less so than it would be if more attention were diverted from religion and the massacres or wars it has created at any given time to furthering these advances. Fortunately, because of technological and philosophical advances, it’s never been easier to have the intellectual and emotional maturity to accept reality.

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As a candidate and president, Donald Trump is also the most influential leader among the "America First" and “MAGA” crowds. Like Trump, philosopher Ayn Rand was a fiercely patriotic American, voicing her view that that America’s interests come before that of foreign nations1 or other entities (Rand 1986, pp. 175).

Surprisingly, a 2017 article published by a senior member of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), the think tank and educational center established by Objectivist co-founder Leonard Peikoff, claims expert knowledge that Ayn Rand would've “despised” him. ARI remains the gold standard online resource for learning about Ayn Rand, and is located in California23.

Ayn Rand served as a star witness to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), helped the FBI identify “It’s a Wonderful Life” as Communist propaganda4, and touted America as the greatest and only nation on Earth founded on moral principals5. At least some of the anger at the president seems to stem from the author's negative view of the president's social media and overall blunt, egocentric, or brash tone, which the author felt was "anti-intellectual".

The disdain at the level of maturity, respect, and scholarship in modern American politics is fully understandable, but it is not clear a priori that the celebrity billionaire and capitalism-first individualist is the source of the culture6. Although politics is a high-pressure, bitingly competitive arena where politicians jockey for social media engagement, the current US President better reflects the values of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff, than his predecessors and political opponents.

The ‘Anti-Intellectual’ Claim: Fact or Smear?

The article cited Rand’s comments on intellectual and cultural bankruptcy, attempting to apply them to the President. The explicit and implicit accusations and arguments against Donald Trump were compiled and reviewed. Aside from the common groaning over the President’s effective but sometimes controversial or “politically incorrect” social media presence, they generally fall into three categories:

1. Attempts to apply the “anti-intellectual” label by implying a link between Trump and culturally conservative groups Rand disliked within Reagan’s camp and the larger conservative movement.

2. Accusations of poor character: dishonesty, being a neo-Nazi supporter, and fitting miscellaneous derogatory labels.

3. Accusations of tribalism.

Accusations

The accusations in the article were numerous. They generally followed the themes of dishonesty, tribalism, and heterogeneous assertions offered as a basis for an “anti-intellectual” label. Beyond these, the author also compared the President to the Atlas Shrugged character Cuffy Meigs and claimed that Donald Trump has a “disdain for virtue”7.

As evidence, the news stories disputing White House staffer Sean Spicer’s erroneous estimation of Trump’s inauguration attendance figures, which he calculated using D.C.’s Metro transit authority’s ridership figures as the basis. Trump’s comments calling a large political rally and counter protest with attendees spanning all walks of life “fine people on both sides”.

Trump is claimed to have “demonized” major segments of the population, namely “Hispanics, immigrants, journalists, free traders and elites,” although without a specific basis cited (Ghate 2017). We are told that Trump “was a part of the swamp” that he so frequently discusses draining. The leak of an unintentional behind-the-scenes audio recording of then-candidate Trump’s use of a slang term for a woman’s genitals was offered as evidence of the future president breaking some implied level of decorum8. Finally, the President is said to engage in “tribalism” by seeking loyalty from his most trusted associates like his cabinet9.

Claims as to Knowledge of a Counter Factual

The author is a self-described ‘expert’ on Ayn Rand, which he touts before making a radical claim—that he’d wager he can give Ayn Rand’s opinion on today’s politicians, going well beyond any public claims made by her co-founder and top student Leonard Peikoff, but that she would’ve counter-intuitively “despised” the president. Outstanding claims require outstanding evidence, hence the need to review if the strength of the evidence has warranted the prominence with which this official website of the Ayn Rand Institute has given it for the past eight years or so.

Analysis

Time has elapsed since the article was written, making verification of its claims easier10.

The claims of dishonesty involved intermediaries who had made mistakes of fact or miscalculations, as with the inauguration crowd size claims. The collectivist concept of “tribalism”, much more the territory of socialism, was used to mask the same rational, self-interested requests for personal loyalty that any leader should expect from their closest partners.

Who was Ayn Rand?

The Most Emblematic American Patriot

Ayn Rand’s values were individualism, its compatible economic system, capitalism, and its geopolitical manifestation in the form of American patriotism, with American citizens’ interests put first, ahead of the rest of the world.

“Isolationism is the attitude of a person who is interested only in his own country and is not concerned with the rest of the world.” The real meaning was: “Patriotism and national self-interest. ”What, exactly, is “concern with the rest of the world”? … the concept of “concern” was switched into “selfless concern.” The ultimate result was a view of foreign policy which is wrecking the United States to this day: the suicidal view that our foreign policy must be guided, not by considerations of national self-interest, but by concern for the interests and welfare of the world, that is, of all countries except our own.”

"'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing,"
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 175

Rand saw the United States as profoundly revolutionary for the subjugation of society to moral law (might subjugated by right). She also called America the “freest” nation and the most moral country on Earth.

Since the golden age of Greece, there has been only one era of reason in twenty-three centuries of Western philosophy. During the final decades of that era, the United States of America was created as an independent nation. This is the key to the country—to its nature, its development, and its uniqueness: the United States is the nation of the Enlightenment.

Leonard Peikoff,
The Ominous Parallels, 10

In her letters Ayn Rand said that America’s founding ideal was the principal of individual rights and that American capitalism was “the economic implementation of political freedom”. Rather than applauding the self-sacrificing civil servants and religious adherents, her examples of greatness were the builders, inventors, and sales people. Ayn Rand spoke of the United States with the esteem a Christian mystic might reserve for heaven, and it was second only to the ideals she said it uniquely represented, namely individualism, capitalism, and freedom.

Who is Donald Trump?

Business, Capitalism, and Individualist Psychology

President Trump's life is an open book (not only in the literal sense, but given his long-running high visibility in the press and social media). Throughout his life, Donald Trump has been a man who believes only in the power of himself as a productive force. Far from a mystic, the real estate mogul only abruptly became “Christian” with Republican Christian PAC leaders at the last moment possible before his Presidential election, avoiding potentially losing his victory to voters afraid of electing the first overtly atheist President.

His psychology, like many high-achieving ultra-privileged leaders, is based on living up to the expectations of his father, a builder, like ‘The Donald’. Both are reminiscent of Rand's Howard Roarke from The Fountainhead (Rand 1943). Business, not politics, was his path to wealth and success, a self-made man whose critics and opponents attack for self-interest, greed, and unfiltered capitalism. In all his statements to the media, friends, foes, books, and in so many years on camera, he has consistently painted a picture of a market-loving big business capitalist. His critics complain of narcissism, but the personality and career of this free-market champion could easily have been the next John Galt if this were a Rand novel. As a self-interested high-achiever whose ever-growing ego is fastidiously tied to their production, Trump is also practical and always willing to make mutually beneficial deals.

America First Patriotism

President Trump’s patriotism may be secondary to his individual aspirations, but that only bolsters his similarity to Rand's ideals, while costing him little with the “America First” crowd, of whom he is clearly the most influential leader. Donald Trump's primary foreign policy issue has been his commitment not to lead America into costly foreign wars, which is in keeping with Rand's view that force should only be used as a response to aggression or to invade a dictatorship. His hands-off approach stops short of passivism, which Rand denounced, as witnessed by his readiness to swiftly end the Israel-Iran war this Summer by destroying Iran's underground nuclear weapon facilities11.

Combats Antisemitism, Jewish Parent, Jewish Grandparent, and Israel’s Top Ally

The idea that Donald Trump supports neo-Nazis or is a neo-Nazi12 is absurd (PerryCook, 2024). Behaviorally, one could argue there’s more evidence that the president has a preference for his Jewish constituents, which include his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson, than for Christians. Trump’s record-breaking high domestic popularity is mirrored among Israelis. Before his life-saving assistance in response to Israel’s existential threats, President Trump had already earned this status from prolific combating of antisemitism, combined with recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Of course, it was immediately obvious that Trump never endorsed neo-Nazis13.

Conclusions

Without a doubt, President Trump is an avid and controversial user of social media. His political views seem to be primarily classically liberality and self-interest applied at the sector and national levels. He was lauded as an all-American liberal capitalist by most of his current critics when he was a registered Democrat, but is now demonized by the collectivist left, including those within the Ayn Rand Institute. His personality is reflected in his “America First” and “MAGA” priorities, likening him to Ayn Rand, but his (successful, yet) provocative social media presence also puts him at the messy forefront of competing to grab Americans’ attention online, which the author and many others find unbecoming or perhaps even unacceptable.

Rand was a radical for not only capitalism, but also freedom from censorship. Objectivists have always been a challenge to authority. Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff were able to influence generations through carefully considered essays and other traditional means. President Trump, on the other hand, though prolific, has secured influence within the inherently problematic and unscholarly culture of major social networks. It is not truly possible to imagine how Ayn Rand would’ve divided blame for the low-brow style of social media between the originators, users, and President Trump.

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President Trump says that political correctness is killing the country (Zimmerman 2025). Although Trump is generally not a cultural conservative, only a patriotic champion of the market, across his (at least) tens of thousands of social media posts, he's exhibited sensitivity as a function of expediency to his larger aims. In doing so, he can be very blunt, brash, or intentionally rude in a mocking way with regard to other celebrities and politicians. It's understandable that someone might take exception, even if the extent to which this is a deviation from Rand's values seems limited.

"That’s what President George H. W. Bush said in 1991, on the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Political correctness “arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred,” Bush acknowledged, in a graduation address at the University of Michigan. But PC “replaces old prejudice with new ones,” he added, and “declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.”"

Jonathan Zimmerman,
TheHill.com

The article was justified in taking on Trump and team’s tones and over-the-top posts (especially via official accounts). However, proving its virality, the article seemed to do more to promote fake news stories, such as the neo-Nazi claim, which is an indirect aggression against members of the affected groups (i.e., Jewish people) than to identify any pattern of dishonesty or wrongdoing.

It is plain to any reasonable American adult that Donald Trump's life and leadership are well-aligned with Ayn Rand's brand of individualism, capitalism, and American patriotism. The necessity of less sensitive posts in a self- and America-interested competition for influence is debatable. If ARI has risked a divergence from its fundamental function due to California’s unmatched level of foreign and domestic American collectivist control, it should consider moving to the state most associated with individualism, capitalism, and patriotism in the US, which is Texas.

Ayn Rand and Donald J. Trump put American interests first, supporting business, capitalism, and individualism. America’s interests are typically well-aligned with the rest of the world, but when not, President Trump is an unmatched deal-maker. Capitalism is derivative of individualism, where individualism gives rise to respect for one's virtues in others, from which sensitivity is derived.

A sitting US President has to balance the needs of more stakeholders than anyone. He has to balance influence with the amount of muckraking he can tolerate. He balances refinement with freedom of speech, which is under constant attack from app store policies to town halls and networks. Policy goals are pitted against public relations. The net value of those social media posts is murky, but what’s unquestionable is that Donald Trump represents capitalism, individualism, and the American way, like his favorite author, Ayn Rand.

REFERENCES

Donald J. Trump, "Remarks by President Trump in the State of the Union Address," The White House, February 5, 2019, Last accessed [August 14, 2025], https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-state-union-address-2/.

D’Souza, Dinesh. United States of Socialism. New York: All Points Books, 2020.

Ghate, Onkar. “The Anti-Intellectuality of Donald Trump: Why Ayn Rand Would Have Despised a President Trump.” Ayn Rand Institute. Last accessed August 14, 2025. https://ari.aynrand.org/the-anti-intellectuality-of-donald-trump-why-ayn-rand-would-have-despised-a-president-trump/.

PerryCook, Taija. "No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists 'Very Fine People'." Snopes, June 20, 2024. Updated June 21, 2024. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/.

Rand, Ayn. "An Untitled Letter." In Philosophy: Who Needs It, 117–28. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982.

Rand, Ayn, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Penguin, 1986.

Rand, Ayn. 1943. The Fountainhead. New York, NY: Bobbs Merril.

Zimmerman, Jonathan. "The New Republican Political Correctness." The Hill. March 6, 2025. https://thehill.com/opinion/5179368-trump-gop-political-correctness/.

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To the credit of the researchers and journalists responsible for the various rankings, there was only a limited correlation between rankings and partisan politics. Although the sample of indices had a slight tilt towards liberal sources, most of the political bias was netted out by the inclusion of “right-wing” sources like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Overall, America’s average freedom ranking dropped from 6th to 43rd this century.

Although the graph depicts a critical period when improvements in technology and capital growth from increasing international trade have been marred by eroding freedom and privacy, the trend began earlier than that. By the early 1960s, college students were already clamoring about limited intellectual freedom. After giving a lecture at MIT in March 1962, Ayn Rand received a letter from one of the students she met, detailing his observations on the pressure to accept the status quo, to imitate, and to adopt the institution’s predominant beliefs without question. Those espousing individualistic values were harassed or disregarded.

Today’s institutions, not only academic but also governmental, and even corporate, have become the all-seeing eyes of Big Brother, not only monitoring individuals’ speech in official capacities but also manipulating their thoughts and behaviors at home, after hours, and across all social contexts. From PRISM data to impromptu phone interviews of everyone you’ve ever met, socialist organizations and their town halls audit the beliefs and opinions of the individuals over whom they have leverage, intervening at will with practically unlimited social and financial pressure to correct any unapproved attitudes. Affected individuals are often told not to discuss their victimization and may face retaliation if they do.

Rand’s response to the letter she received from a student following her lecture at MIT, culminated in the 1966 essay “Altruism as Appeasement” wherein she wrote that acceptance of an altruistic moral code is an intellectual “sellout” that results in a loss of self-esteem. Rand described collectivists’ dogma as “altruism” because altruism is the subjugation of the individual and their self-serving motivations to the group and its well-being. The appeasement she described was giving in to altruistic morality from social or other pressures. The self-esteem allowed to the altruist is not from personal achievement, but the admiration from others for one’s humble self-sacrifice. Rand called this a “secondhanded” self-esteem.

In today’s world, appeasement is no longer enough to satisfy the collectivists. Institutions too often demand conformity under threat, which is to say that they indoctrinate, at least in some way (given whatever leverage they can muster and are willing to exploit, which is usually substantial).

“Indoctrination” is usually used to describe mindless, forcible acceptance of external direction, doctrine, and alleged facts. This term has been increasingly applied to the intellectual climate of American colleges and universities, but it is not limited to scholarly contexts. In cases ranging from the political and philosophical exploitation of mental hospitals in Soviet Russia to the “shops” of California, indoctrination is usually backed up by a threat of overwhelming force. American socialists credit themselves for sometimes including more minor and usually non-physical escalations of the force relative to their foreign predecessors, but the threat or use of force remains integral to indoctrination. Is there any justification for this? How did it come to be?

Emergency conditions are used as excuses to reduce the extent to which individuals’ rights are respected. Poverty and starvation in nations with fast-growing populations are excellent examples of such conditions. The population’s great need for economic success is the excuse used by international socialists to intervene with a centralized command-and-control approach. Since compliance of individuals and organizations with centralized plans can be enforced, productivity and certain levels of economic output, although not innovation or happiness, can be guaranteed. This is not a miracle or a brilliant innovation in workforce development. It's a cheap, shortcut path to economic success, at least along certain metrics, that comes with the cost of lessening the standing of individuals to that of serfs or peasants, with fewer rights and less freedom.

No one wants to have to live under such conditions, unless the alternatives are much worse. When living under them, the last thing you want is to be reminded of what you’ve lost (or never had) by those who are living more freely. That’s one of many reasons for the workers of predominantly socialist countries to immigrate, taking their global socialist brand of collectivism to comparatively more individualistic and free destinations. Starting in the mid-1990s, the US became that destination for many students and labor force participants.

One of the first large-scale unofficial messages sent to the people of the United States from the incoming migrants related to a reduction in freedoms of the press and speech. Rand wrote that no dictatorship has ever survived without censorship and the same is true when the dictating authority is an unelected, shadowy network of collectivists. Emergency conditions that once existed abroad were used as excuses to reduce freedom and assert more control, and that reduction in freedom federated itself to America, where so-called “liberal” domestic socialists were all too eager to take advantage, so that indoctrination is not limited strictly to the practices of the international labor force, but to the left’s political philosophy as well.

America then witnessed the most outrageous series of events in economic history. American socialists hoped to take advantage of rapid technological advances to secure control of American business, news, and culture. The political left, advocates of big government and high taxes, roping in foolish or cowardly Republicans, managed to pass the most monumental tax loophole in America’s history, granting blanket exemptions to sales taxes for online retailers. This is as close as we could’ve come to a law that says “high taxes for everyone except socialists, who are exempt”. Although it highlights one of the many incredible unfairnesses of the so-called ‘business war’, it did not prevent the disastrous impacts of the collectivists’ dot-com bubble, which soon burst, paralyzing the economy.

That moment could’ve been a turning point. It could’ve been a point when America realized its expectations of a globalized workforce didn’t match reality. America could’ve allowed many traditional companies to survive and flourish by giving them equal tax exemptions to their internet competitors’ or by eliminating the exemptions. Instead, they looked to greater partnership with the government and collusion across competitors as a means to recover the broken economy. Then, on September 11, 2001, the unthinkable happened.

In response to the terrorist events, the emergency conditions were, of course, used as an excuse to reduce the extent to which individuals’ rights are respected and liberties granted. Enter PRISM. Enter ubiquitous mass surveillance and the casual hacking of American citizens’ computers and accounts by their government, without significant oversight, rights afforded to the affected, or limitations on the scope of how or by whom spying on citizens can be used to manipulate their lives.

Greater productivity can be extracted from individuals (short term, at least) through greater harassment, violations of their rights, and by allowing their leaders or “stakeholders” to hijack their decision-making. It results in a lower, less enlightened, less just, and less actualized level of existence but in at least some areas, greater productivity can be extracted than under freer alternatives (or so they’d like us to believe – the reality is more complex and variable). With near-perfect surveillance, compliance with limitations on speech, espousal of only permitted opinions, and consistency with prescribed altruistic principles can be enforced nearly perfectly. By disallowing significant privacy, collectivists are able to replace self-determination with social-determination. You are what your group makes you, according to their tastes and needs. The side effects of this approach include a loss of identity, less creativity and innovation, a monoculture, and groupthink. A common collectivist practice is to identify and attack the sources of an individual’s ego so that they might be “broken” with their only self-worth being secondhand self-esteem derived from the approval of one’s socialist master or from those who admire them for their self-sacrifice, as Rand wrote. Instead, individuals should be encouraged to take pride in their accomplishments, embracing their egos, and building their egos up by living according to their values.

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What has not been done to any significant extent, is to cleanly extract the value realized by the international workforce from their approach, without politicizing it or using it to conduct a wider assault on individual rights and freedom. In the short term, for example during an authentic emergency, efficiency may benefit from top-down, unquestioned acceptance of information or adaptation of practices from trusted sources. Individuals would give up their rational capacity, yes, but only during short, well-defined periods, with transparency and accountability around the rationale of the intervention and clear limits to its extent and duration. In the wake of an event like September 11th, even short-term reductions in privacy could be warranted. However, the value is only cleanly extracted without its nightmarish correlates if the intervention is truly temporary. In the case of college classrooms, this could mean, for example, that students are encouraged to soak up their professors’ knowledge and even subjective opinions, imitating them without question, but only during a certain period each term to accelerate their learning, with the unabridged right to question or dissent outside of the classroom and within it by the end of each course.

It’s understandable if other nations have had to give up more to attain an acceptable level of living in their home countries. Individual international migrants certainly cannot be blamed for trying to federate their system. However, it is the responsibility of businesses, citizens, and the government to limit these incursions into personal freedom and self-determination. Differing human rights conditions have a complicating effect on international trade policy. On one hand, free trade – international capitalism – can benefit all involved parties, growing the size of the “economic pies” in both the home nation and for trading partners abroad. On the other hand, if there are worse human rights conditions in nations with whom we trade openly, then each trade increases the momentum of the system with reduced rights. History has shown that it will directly impact rights in the home country, through aforementioned pathways and others. For this reason, a capitalist whose ideal political scenario involves universally respected individual rights and completely free international trade might still support tariffs levied on trade partners whose production is generated from the sweat of workers living under conditions that we ourselves do not wish to endure.

Since Spring of this year, Harvard and Stanford universities, as well as three of the leading University of California campuses – Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Irvine – have faced investigations by the Department of Justice under the False Claims Act due to (“soft”) quota policies, raising questions over the extent to which race can affect admissions decisions. In the business world, DEI has been a major hiring and post-hire progressive campaign, but has been met with overwhelming opposition from the Trump Administration. Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand, reacting to the Democratic National Convention’s 1972 racial quota policy for selecting delegates, wrote in her essay “Representation without Authorization”:

A critical point made in Rand’s essay is that quota-based systems deprive individuals of the ability to determine for themselves which issues matter most, i.e. which representatives would best serve as their agents, or which political interests define them. Self-determination is a fundamental right, without which there is no concept of personal freedom. What good is it if your government officially grants the liberty to move about your country at will, if the same government empowers your town hall to prevent you from doing so? The town hall, not the individual, determines where a person may live.

Non-interference in private life of ordinary citizens by royalty, government, the rich, and the elite was a foundational principle for the United States. It was flawed, with slave labor and some of the worst parts of politics from day one, yet leaps ahead in rights for those included in the scope of the Constitution. Government by and for the people should maximize responsiveness of the government to the will of the people with direct voting where practical. Voting for individual representatives, not limited by involuntary group membership, allows individuals to choose their proxies to the government on whatever basis they deem most important intellectually, rather than to be forcibly defined by their demographic characteristics. Despite Rand’s surprise and outrage at the violations of individual rights associated with quota-based representation, she still didn’t believe that the collectivists would manage to get away with quota systems in the US.

Although collectivists in this country have made only modest progress in formally instituting a quota system for elections, such quotas have been widely adopted in other important aspects of life, including university admissions, grant and scholarship selection, and hiring practices. Unofficially, physiological quotas are applied not only in politics, but in all positions of power, wealth, and influence, including achieving celebrity status or appointment to critical roles in government bureaucracy. Yet in some cases, serious contemporary or historical injustices have been committed against the groups intended to benefit from quota policies.

It’s important then, when condemning quota systems, to recognize the damages suffered from racist or other physiologically-driven discriminatory cultures or policies over time. Given that quota-based representation, hiring practices, or reward systems are not an ethical remedy to very severe wrongdoing against minority groups, other solutions should be identified and pursued. Eliminating any ongoing discriminatory practices is merely a “stop-loss” and does not offset damage suffered for wrong that has already been done. If the injustice had been on an individual level, personal injury claims could've been sought. If it had been one individual wronging another, torts might've been alleged, and the legal system could've potentially provided adequate remediation of the damages. In the case of large-scale oppression, class-action lawsuits are warranted and appropriate settlements of such magnitude may be termed “reparations”.

The extent to which reparations are called for varies from group to group, with the most well-motivated and discussed being descendants of former American slaves. Reparations need not be considered impractical or terrifying. An expert panel of economists from philosophically stratified high-reputation universities and private market think tanks could be selected to simulate the average wealth of the group’s members if their ancestors had entered the United States as free citizens rather than slaves. Major non-wealth attributes affected by past wrongdoing could be valuated (measured) through economic or actuarial means. Any gap between the actual and simulated overall levels of wealth constitutes the gross damages due. Subtract the dollar value of any programs used as partial substitutes for reparations and that amount is, roughly, the net due. This amount might be paid out over decades, with a portion going into trust funds for younger recipients.

One of my favorite variations on this idea is one wherein instead of all reparations being paid out directly, a large chunk is facilitated by the Small Business Administration in the form of business loans with unenforced repayment terms, similar to those issued as COVID-2019 relief. Of the many interesting potential effects of that strategy, the economy would boom with a never-before-seen wave of non-stop African American small business capitalism and entrepreneurial innovation. Reparations alone are not enough to fully undo the effects of America’s shameful history of slavery. Nothing is. To at least approximate an adequate job of addressing that injustice, reparations would need to be combined with ongoing public education and anti-racism laws preventing quota policies just like those being implemented in some of the finest universities.

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