story
It's all the other things she said, wrote, and even more so, practiced -- in other word her ethics and ideology -- that make her appalling as an author and as someone people aspire to be like.
From what I've seen of AS, she believes that the creation of value is good, and that trying to create a system where effort isn't rewarded will lead to people not putting in effort.
There's also all the discussion of sex in AS, which, assuming it's actually relevant to the story, leads me to believe that Rand thought of emotional and physical pleasure as being two sides of the same coin--that is, there's no shame in either. However, sometimes sex is just sex, to paraphrase Freud.
Well, that's a very normal idea, and quite widespread. Rand goes far beyond that (and in other directions), praising selfishness and ruthlessness, allowing individuals to trump others, viewing the masses as subhumans who exist solely for the pleasure of the few ubermen, etc.
Here's a quite accurate description:
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/29/10_insane_things_i_learned_a...
But her life story and that of the group of "disciples" she controlled is also enlightening.
That having been said:
She represents two "selfish" heroes as good; one (Rearden) buys up the supply chain tonreduce costs and deliver his new alloy at lower prices, and the other (Galt) is an extremist-capitalist who refuses to give anything away because he believes that it leads to the kind of thing the villains of the book have done. Speaking of, Rearden actually offers to give ten thousand dollars to his brother's charity...and is chastised for it by his brother, who complains that Rearden isn't a true believer, and then demands that the money be delivered in cash so as to not besmirch the charity with a greedy capitalist's name. While Rearden was not giving for the charity's sake so much as he was giving for his brother's sake, it's hard to argue that giving ten thousand dollars to make your brother happy is a "selfish" thing to do.
Allowing people to trump others is presented as good only in the sense that competition encourages improvement. It's not that you've beaten someone, it's that you did so by creating a better metal, or engine, or or or. By letting one man's (better) design become more successful, even at the expense of another man's design, you encourage better design overall. Recall the bright young engineer who made an exceptionally efficient diesel engine, and was worked to the bone for 12 hours a day in response. Were he given a raise instead, others would have found that innovation is rewarded. If the ones who do not make new, better engines are given the same money for less value, then why should anyone make new engines?
As for the problem of the great minds versus the small ones, that's where Rand falls flat. She is right on the money re: value and rewarding it, but she fails to consider that the people who have great ideas are a fairly small group, and that the people on the assembly line are still worth rewarding for other kinds of hard work.
I only know that Rand came to the USA in the midst of the cold war, which explains why she'a so upset over commies.
