Go read Atlas Shrugged.
In it, you'll find COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC CHARACTERS with COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC MOTIVATIONS, leading COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC LIVES. Notice how she puts forward her arguments for objectivism (her brand of philosophy) primarily through novels instead of philosophical tomes? It's because her ideology only stacks up in her (shoddily) written novels. I mean, seriously, go read Atlas Shrugged. I got to the 10th Chapter (which I realize is not very far into the book) before I gave up in despair. It's hundreds of pages of blatant preaching, revolving around a ludicrous plot. The Fountainhead was only marginally better.
In Atlas Shrugged, every single proper businessman/businesswoman is a perfect, idealistic, wonder of power and ingenuity, completely and utterly self-made, while all those around them are completely evil or useless.
People rag on communism for being unrealistic and impractical (and right well they should), but Ayn Rand's Objectivism is just as unrealistic and impractical, not to mention contrary to human nature, for the following reason:
1) Humans are naturally collective. We form societies. We have social ladders. We elect leaders or are ruled by leaders. In every single society, there has been at least some degree of collectivisation, even in the US. This is also the reason why anarcho-primitivism can never work, because humans naturally form states and societies. Always have, always will. We'll never have a society in which only the individual matters.
2) Collectivisation is good in some ways. I am not a marxist or a maoist or even a socialist. I support capitalism somewhat. You only have to look at history to realize that communism just doesn't work. But the government, and collective efforts, can do good things. The Internet was first developed by the government. So was laser technology. Government labs were the first to build computers and the atomic bomb project would never have succeeded without direct government control. Many great public infrastructure works were created by the government. Privatization doesn't always make things more efficient - we privatized the power industry here in Queensland, Australia recently (about 5 or 6 years ago) and it has been nothing but constant price hikes and spotty service.
3) No man/woman is an island. In Ayn Rand's novels, all her heroes are COMPLETELY SELF-MADE MEN AND WOMEN, OWING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO ANYONE, EVER. Such a figure does not really exist. We are always in someone's debt. Even Issac Newton, widely regarded as one of the smartest men who ever lived, stated that if he saw farther than anyone else, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. In science, we are made well aware of the contributions of those who came before us and those who work alongside us. Einstein, Newton, Watson and Crick, all those luminaries, however smart they were, did not develop their theories in a void. The collaborated, argued, and learned from those that came before. Science is a collective effort, with each generation of scientists building on what came before. Businesses need law and order and stability, and that is only achieved by a well-funded police and army, which again means government. The only people who can truly claim to be self-made are those living in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest with no technology. As for everyone else - YOU OWE SOCIETY. WE ALL DO.
Plus, in this globalised world, we depend on other countries and we need to co-operate with them.
4) We need government. Ayn Rand hated government, but the fact of the matter is that the US would be sunk without its federal government. America secures itself in the world through its huge industrial-military complex (which republicans are so fond of). Yet such a huge, enormous military (which is about 10x larger than it needs to be by the way), requires MASSIVE government spending and MAAAAAAAASSSSIIIIVVVEEE government oversight. Republicans, strangely, never complain about this at all.
Few here would be against a public education system, yet such a system requires government. Few here would want to cut the CIA or the NSA, yet both of those agencies requires a lot of government employees.
Face it America, you want big government. Successive republican and democratic administrations have failed to cut government. Government spending grew under Carter, Reagan, Bush Snr, Clinton, W.Bush and Obama. Recently, the US government cut funding for the F-22 raptor, which was a fine jet except for the fact that it was expensive and unnecessary, yet both Democrats and Republicans cried bloody murder because it meant the loss of jobs in their states, and mid-terms are coming up.
Objectivists and conservatives are always going on and on about cutting government spending, yet when it comes to cutting things they care about, they suddenly fall silent.
No one wants the government interfering with their lives. I understand that. I certainly don't want the government to get in the way of stem-cell research. But government is necessary, and I think many Americans don't fully appreciate everything the feds do for them.
I mean, Americans want free schools, a big army, a well-trained, expansive intelligence service to protect them, they want government labs to continue to make government research, they want public police, public ambulance, public fire-fighters, yet they don't want government?!
You know what Americans? Taxes in your country are LOW. Yeah. They are. When compared to the rest of the world at least. And your salaries are high when compared to many nations in the rest of the world. You can afford to pay your taxes, provided you save and don't spend like a drunken sailor. With a few modest, easily affordable tax increases, you could have slashed crime and poverty, funded great works of public infrastructure, and developed new technologies that made your lives better and your food cheaper.
Ayn Rand's objectivism seems to be just "Hell No-ism". For someone who apparently praised logic and only logic, Rand wasn't very rational when it came to examining her own belief. If the stories are true, she was notorious for throwing complete hissy-fits if anyone dared to contradict her on even the slightest thing, and that's always the sign of a rational, stable thinker, right?
No, Rand was just as biased and irrational as anyone else that walks on this earth (and that includes me). Her philosophy doesn't work in the real world. A society run purely along her way of thinking would be disastrous, and would almost certainly default to a corporatocracy or capitalistic oligarchy.
Because you see, unlike in Rand's novels, Businessmen are not perfect, idealistic creatures striving to only do good. Most are bloody greedy. And I don't resent them for that. But to believe that businessmen and women don't need government oversight is ludicrous. Businessmen can be just as bad as G-men, and the actions of Shell in Nigeria, or Nestle in Southern-Africa prove this. Private companies have been dumping poisonous waste chemicals in Africa for decades, resulting in the destruction of the local fishing industries in nations such as Somalia. You can't tell me to my face that the corporate world wants what's best for me.
But then again, I do support capitalism. I just want the government to watch the businesses like hawks. Should companies have lower taxes? Yes. But should they have looser regulation? NO. Absolutely not.
People say it's stupid to trust the government, and that's true. It's equally, if not more, idiotic to put your faith in Business people and companies like Monsanto. Such companies are necessary and are good for the economy. But the minute you let them, they'll cut out your organs and sell them behind a shed.