"America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business" by Ayn Rand

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I shall ask you to consider the following questions. If a small group of men were always regarded as guilty in any clash with any other group, regardless of. Regardless of the issues or circumstances involved, would you call it persecution? If this group were always made to pay for the sins, errors or failures of any other group, would you call that persecution? If this group had to live under a silent reign of terror, under special laws from which all other people were immune, laws which the accused could not grasp or define in advance. And which the accuser could interpret in any way he pleased, would you call that persecution? If this group were penalized not for its faults, but for its virtues, not for its incompetence, but for its ability, not for its failures, but for its achievements, and the greater the achievement, the greater the penalty, would you call that persecution? If your answer is yes, then ask yourself what sort of monstrous injustice you are condoning, supporting or perpetrating.

That group is the American businessman.

The defense of minority rights is acclaimed today, virtually by everyone, as a moral principle of a high order. But this principle, which forbids discrimination, is applied by most of the liberal intellectuals in a discriminatory manner. It is applied only to racial or religious minorities. It is not applied to that small, exploited, denounced, defenseless minority which consists of businessmen. Yet every ugly, brutal aspect of injustice toward racial or religious minorities is being practiced toward businessmen. For instance, consider the evil of condemning some men and absolving others without a hearing. Regardless of the facts. Today's liberals consider a businessman guilty in any conflict with a labor union, regardless of the facts or issues involved. And boast that they will not cross a picket line, right or wrong. Consider the evil of judging people by a double standard. And of denying to some the the rights granted to others. Today's liberals recognize the workers, the majority's right to their livelihood, their wages, but deny the businessmen the minority's right to their livelihood, their profits. If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as social gains. If businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as selfish greed. If the worker standard of living is low, the liberals blame it on the businessmen. But if the businessmen attempt to improve their economic efficacy, to expand their markets and to enlarge the financial returns of their enterprise, thus making higher wages and lower prices possible. The same liberal denounce it as commercialism. If a non commercial foundation, that is a group which did not have to earn its funds, sponsors a television show advocating its particular views, the liberals hail it as Enlightenment, education, art and public service. If a businessman sponsors a television show, and wants it to reflect his views. The liberal stream, calling it censorship, pressure and dictatorial rule. When three locals of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Deprived New York City of its milk supply for 15 days, no moral indignation or condemnation was heard from the liberal quarters. But just imagine what would happen if businessmen stopped that milk supply for one hour. And how swiftly they would be struck down by that legalized lynching or pogrom known as trust busting. Whenever in any era, culture or society, you encounter the phenomenon of prejudice, injustice, persecution and blind, unreasoning hatred directed at some minority group, look for the gang that has something to gain from that persecution. Look for those who have a vested interest in the destruction of this particular sacrificial victims. Invariably, you will find that the persecuted minority serves as a scapegoat for some movement that does not want the nature of its own goals to be known. Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie. In Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people. In America, it is the businessman. America has not yet reached the stage of a dictatorship, but paving the way to it. For many decades past, the businessmen have served as the scheme cape God for statist movements of all kinds Communist, fascist, or welfare. For whose sins and evils did the businessman take the blame? For the bureaucrats, A disastrous intellectual package deal put over on us by the theoreticians of statism Is the equation of economic power with political power. You have heard it expressed in such bromides as a hungry man is not free, or it makes no difference to a worker whether he takes order from a businessman or from a bureaucrat. Most people accept these equivocations. And yet they know that the poorest laborer in America is freer and more secure than the richest commissar in Soviet Russia. What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates the freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion. The difference between political power and any other kind of social power, between a government and any private organization, is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical forces. This distinction is so important and so seldom recognized today that I must urge you to keep it in mind. Let me repeat it. A government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other other individuals or groups. And to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is coercive action. The nature of political power is the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury, the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment or death. Foggy metaphors, sloppy images, unfocused poetry, and equivocations such as a hungry man is not free. Do not alter the fact that only political power is the power of physical coercion. And that freedom in a political context has only one meaning. The absence of physical coercion. The only proper function of the government of a free country is to act as an agency which protects the individual's rights, that is, which protects the individual from physical violence. Such a government does not have the right to initiate the use of physical force against anyone. A right which the individual does not possess and therefore cannot delegate to any agency. But the individual does possess the right of self defense. And that is the right which he delegates to the government. For the purpose of an orderly, legally defined enforcement. A proper government has the right to use physical force only in retaliation. And only against those who initiate its use. The proper functions of a government are the police to protect men from criminals, the military forces to protect men from foreign invaders, and the law courts to protect men's property and contracts from breach by force or fraud, and to settle disputes among men according to objectively defined laws. These, implicitly were the political principles on which the Constitution of the United States was based. Implicitly, but not explicitly, There were contradictions in the Constitution which allowed the statist to gain an entering wage, to enlarge the breach, and gradually to wreck the structure. A statist is a man who believes that some men have the right to force, coerce, enslave, rob and murder others. To be put into practice, this belief has to be implemented by the political doctrines that the government, the state, has the right to initiate the use of physical force against its citizens. How often force is to be used, against whom, to what extent, for what purpose, and for whose benefit are irrelevant questions. The basic principle and the ultimate results of all statistic doctrines are the same. Dictatorship and destruction. The rest is only a matter of time. Now let us consider the question of economic power. What is economic power? It is the power to produce and to trade what one has produced. In a free economy where no man or group of men can use physical coercion against anyone. Economic power can be achieved only by voluntary means, by the voluntary choice and agreement of all those who participate in the process of production and trade. In a free market, all prices, wages and profits are determined not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or of the poor, not by anyone's greed or by anyone's need, but by the law of supply and demand. The mechanism of a free market reflects and sums up all the economic choices and decisions made by all the participants. Men trade their goods or services by mutual consent to mutual advantage, according to their own independent employers judgment. A man can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values, better products or services at a lower price than others are able to offer. Wealth in a free market is achieved by a free general democratic vote, by the sales and the purchases of every individual who takes part in the economic life of the country. Whenever you buy one product rather than another, you are voting for the success of some manufacturer. And in this type of voting every man votes only on those matters which he is qualified to judge on his own preferences, interests and needs. No one has the power to decide for others or to substitute his judgment for theirs. No one has the power to appoint himself the voice of the public and to leave the public voiceless and disfranchised. Volumes have been written by the status to distort, misrepresent and falsify the nature and the history of capitalism. And volumes would have to be written to refute all the popular policies on that subject. I cannot cover them all in a brief lecture. I can only indicate the essentials and refer you to some of the books where you can find the full answers, the evidence, the facts and the irrefutable proof of the case for capitalism. If you care to check it, I will refer you to Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt the Anti Capitalistic Mentality by Ludwig von Mises Socialism by Ludwig von Mises Capitalism the Creator by Carl Snyder. I shall mention only two popular fallacies originated and propagated by the status. It is not true that the mechanism of a free market, by its nature leads to periodic depressions. Depressions are caused by government intervention into the economy, particularly by government manipulations of credit. The depression of 1929 was brought about by the credit policies of the Federal Reserve System. It is not true that capitalism by its nature leads to to the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and to the establishment of coercive monopolies. A coercive monopoly is a business concern that closes the entry of competitors into a Given field of production and thus becomes exempt from competition, exempt from the laws of the free market, and able to make arbitrarily high profits by charging arbitrarily high prices. No monopoly of that kind has ever been or ever can be established by means of free trade on a free market. Every coercive monopoly was caused and created by government intervention into the economy by special legislation and special privileges such as franchises, subsidies, tariffs, government loans, tax exemptions granted to some persons and denied to all others. Now let me define the difference between economic power and political power. Economic power is exercised by means of a positive by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value. Political power is exercised by means of. Of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman tool is values. The bureaucrat's tool is fear. America's industrial progress in a short span of a century and a half has acquired the character of a legend. It has never been equaled anywhere on earth in any period of history. The American businessmen as a class have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats. A system of pure, unregulated laissez faire capitalism has never yet existed anywhere. What did exist were only so called mixed economies, which means a mixture in varying degrees of freedom and control, of voluntary choice and government, coercion of capitalism and statism. America was the freest country on earth, but elements of statism were present in her economy from the start. These elements kept growing under the influence of her intellectuals, who were predominantly committed to the philosophy of statism. The intellectuals, the ideologists, the interpreters, the assessors of public events, were tempted by the opportunity to seize political power relinquished by all other social groups and to establish their own versions of a good society at the point of a gun, that is, by means of legalized physical coercion. They denounced the free businessmen as exponent of selfish greed and glorified the bureaucrats as public servants. In evaluating social problems. They kept damning economic power and exonerating political power, thus switching the burden of guilt from the politicians to the businessmen. All the evils, abuses and iniquities popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism Were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy. The giants of American industry, such as James Jerome Hill or Commodore Vanderbilt or Andrew Carnegie or, or JP Morgan were self made men who earned their fortunes by personal ability, by free trade on a free market. But there existed another kind of businessman. Perhaps you prefer those who made fortune by means of special privileges granted to them by the government. Such men as the Big Four of the Central Pacific Railroad. It was the political power behind their activities, the power of forced, unearned, economically unjustified privileges that caused dislocations in the country's economy, hardships, depressions and mounting public protests. But it was the free market and the free businessmen that took the blame. Every calamitous consequence of government control was used as a justification for the extension of the control and of the government's power over the economy. If I were asked to choose the date which marks the turning point on the road to the ultimate destruction of American industry and the most infamous piece of legislation in American history, I would choose the year 1890 and the Sherman act, which began that great, grotesque, irrational, malignant growth of unenforceable, uncompliable, unjudicable contradictions known as the antitrust laws. Under the antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business. No matter what he does, if he complies with one of these laws, he faces criminal prosecution under several others. For instance, if he charges prices, which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful intent to monopolize. If he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for unfair competition or restraint of trade. And if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for collusion or conspiracy. If you like horror stories and have the patience to read a long technical one, I recommend to your attention an excellent book entitled the Antitrust laws of the USA by A.D. neel. Published by Cambridge University Press. It is a scholarly, dispassionate, objective study. The author, a British civil servant, is not a champion of free enterprise, as far as one can tell. He may probably be classified as a liberal, but he does not confuse facts with interpretations. He keeps them severely apart. And the facts he presents are such that they will make your hair stand on end.

They did mine.

Mr. Neal points out that the prohibition of restraint of trade is the essence of antitrust and that no exact definition of what constitutes restraint of trade can be given. Thus, no one can tell what the law forbids or permits one to do. The interpretation of these laws is left entirely up to the courts. A businessman or his lawyer has to study the whole body of the so called case law. The whole record of court cases, precedents and decisions in order to get even a generalized idea of the current meaning of these laws, except that the precedents may be upset and the decisions reverse tomorrow or next week or next year. Quote the courts in the United States have been engaged ever since 1890 in deciding case by case exactly what the law prescribes. No broad definition can really unlock the meaning of the statute. Close quote this means that a businessman has no way of knowing in advance whether the action he takes is legal or illegal, whether he is guilty or innocent. It means that a businessman has to live under the threat of a sudden, unpredictable disaster, taking the risk of losing everything he owns or being sentenced to jail with his career, his reputation, his property, his fortune, the achievement of his whole lifetime left at the mercy of any ambitious young bureaucrat who, for any reason, public or private, may choose to start proceedings against him. Retroactive law, which means a law that punishes a man for an action which was not legally defined as a crime at the time he committed it, is rejected by and contrary to the entire tradition of Anglo Saxon jurisprudence. It is a form of persecution practiced on only in dictatorships and forbidden by every civilized code of law. It is not supposed to exist in the United States, and it is not applied to anyone except to businessmen. A case in which a man cannot know until he is convicted whether the action he took in the past was legal or illegal is certainly a case of retroactive law. I recommend to you a brilliant little book entitled 10,000 Commandments by Harold Fleming. It is written for the layman and presents in clear, simple, logical terms, with a wealth of detailed, documented evidence, such a picture of the Antitrust clause. That nightmare is too feeble a word to describe it.

Read it.

I quote from Mr. Fleming. Quote 1 of the hazards that sales managers must now take into account is that some policy followed today in the light of the best legal opinion, may next year be reinterpreted as illegal. In such case, the crime and the penalty may be retroactive. Another kind of hazard consists in the possibility of treble damage suits, also possibly retroactive. Firms, which was the best of intentions run afoul of the law on one of the above counts, are open to trammel damage suits under the antitrust laws, even though their offense was a course of conduct that everyone considered at the time quite legal as well as ethical, but that a subsequent reinterpretation of the law found to be illegal. Close quote what do business may say about? I quote from a speech entitled Guilty before Trial made by Benjamin F. Perlis then president of United States steel Corporation on May 18, 1950. Quote Gentlemen, I don't have to tell you that if we persist in that kind of a system of law and if we enforce it impartially against all offenders, virtually every business in America, big and small, is going to have to be run from Atlantis, Sing Sing, Leavenworth or Alcatraz. Close quote the legal treatment accorded to actual criminals is much superior to that accorded to businessmen. The criminal's rights are protected by objective laws, objective procedures, objective rules of evidence. A criminal is presumed to be innocent until he's proved guilty. Guilty. Only businessmen, the producers, the providers, the supporters, the atlases who carry our whole economy on their shoulders are regarded as guilty by nature and are required to prove their innocence without any definable criteria of innocence or proof and are left at the mercy of the whim, the favor or the malice of any publicity seeking politician, any scheming statist, any envious mediocrity who might chance to work his way into a bureaucratic job and who.

Feels a year to do some trust busting.

The better or more honorable kind of government officials have repeatedly protested against the non objective nature of the antitrust laws. In the same speech, Mr. Ferris quotes a comment written by Supreme Court Justice Jackson when he was the head of the Antitrust division of the Department of Justice. Quote, it is impossible for a lawyer to determine what business conduct will be pronounced lawful by the courts. This situation is embarrassing to businessmen wishing to obey the law and to government officials attempting to enforce it. Close quote that embarrassment, however, is not shared by all members of the government. Mr. Fleming's book quotes the following statement made by Emmanuel Seller, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, at the symposium of the New York State bar Association in January 1950. Quote, I want to make it clear that I would vigorously oppose any antitrust laws that attempted to particularize violations, giving bills of particulars to replace general principles. The law must remain fluid, allowing for a dynamic society. Close quote I want to make it clear that fluid law is a nice euphemism for arbitrary power, that fluidity is the chief characteristic of law under any dictatorship and that the sort of dictionary dynamic society whose laws are so fluid that they flood and drown the country may be seen in neither Germany or Soviet Russia. The tragic irony of that whole issue is the fact that the antitrust laws were were created and to this day are supported by the so called conservatives by the alleged defenders of free enterprise. This is a grim proof of the fact that capitalism has never had any Proper philosophical defenders. The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms. It means forcing people to be free at the point of a gun. It means protecting people's freedom by the arbitrary rule of unanswerable bureaucratic edict. Now, what were the historical causes that led to the passage of the Sherman Act? I quote from the book by Mr. New the impetus behind the movement for the earliest legislation gathered strength during the 1870s and the 1880s. After the Civil War, the railways with their privileges, chapters and subsidies became the main objects of suspicion and hostility. Many bodies with revealing names like the National Anti Monopoly Cheap Freight Railway League sprang up. Close quote this is an eloquent example of the businessman serving as a scapegoat, taking the blame for the sins of of the politicians. It was the politically granted privileges, the charters and subsidies of the railroads that people rebelled against. It was these privileges that had placed the railroads of the west outside the reach of competition and had given them a monopolistic power with all its consequent abuses. But the remedy written into law by a Republican Congress consisted of the destroying the businessman's freedom and of extending the power of political controls over the economy. The only actual factor required for the existence of free competition is the unhampered, unobstructed operation of the mechanism of a free market. The only action which a government can take to protect free competition is laissez faire, which in free translation means hands off. But the antitrust laws established exactly opposite conditions and achieved the exact opposite of the results they had been intended to achieve. There is no way to legislate competition. There are no standards by which one could define who should compete with whom. How many competitors should exist in any given field? What should be their relative strengths or their so called relevant markets, what prices they should charge, what methods of competition are fair or unfair? None of these can be answered, because these precisely are the questions that can be answered only by the mechanism of.

A free market.

With no principles, standards or criteria to guide it. The antitrust case law is the record of 70 years of sophistry, casuistry and hair splitting. As absurd and as removed from any contact with reality as the debates of medieval scholastic. With only this difference, the scholastics had better reasons for the questions they raised and no specific human lives or fortunes hung on the outcome of their debates. Let me give you a few examples. In the case of Associated Press vs United States of 1945, the Associated Press was found guilty because its bylaws restricted its membership and made it very difficult for Newly established newspapers to join. I quote from Mr. Neal's book, quote. It was argued in defense of the Associated Press. That there were other news agencies from which new age entrants might draw their news. The court held that Associated Press was collectively organized to secure competitive advantages for members over non members. And as such, was in restraint of trade. Even though the non members were not necessarily prevented altogether from competing. Close quote. The Associated Press news service was considered strong, important a facility that, quote, by keeping it exclusively to themselves, the members of the association impose a real hardship on would be competitors. It is no defense that the members have built up a facility for themselves. New entrants must still be allowed to share it on reasonable terms. Unless it is practicable for them to compete without close quote. Whose rights are here being violated. And whose whim is being implemented by the power of the law? What qualifies one to be a would be competitor? If I decided to start competing with General Motors tomorrow, What part of their facilities would they have to share with me in order to make it practicable for me to compete with them? In the case of Milgram vs Lowes of 1951, the consistent refusal of the major distributors of motion pictures. To grant first runs to a drive in theater Was held to be a proof of collusion. Each company had obviously valid reasons for its refusal. And the defense argued that each had made its own independent decision without knowing the decisions of the others. But the court ruled that, quote, consciously parallel business practices. Close quote. Are sufficient proof of conspiracy. And that, quote, further proof of actual agreement among the defendants is unnecessary. Close quote. The court of appeals upheld this decision, Suggesting that evidence of parallel action should transfer the burden of proof to the defendants, quote, to explain away the inference of joint action. Close quote. Which they had not apparently explained away. Now consider for a moment the implications of this case. If three businessmen reach independently the same blatantly obvious business decision, do they have to prove that they did not conspire? Or if two businessmen observe an intelligent business policy originated by the third, should they refrain from adopting it for fear of a conspiracy charge? Or if they do adopt it, should he then find himself dragged into court and charged with conspiracy on the ground of the actions taken by two men.

He had never heard of?

And how then is he to explain our his presumed guilt and prove himself innocent? In the case of patents, the antitrust laws seem to respect a patent owner's right. So long as he is alone in using his patent and does not share.

It with anyone else.

But if he decides not to engage in a patent war with a competitor who holds patents of the same general category. If they both decide to abandon that alleged dog eat dog policy of which businessmen are so often accused, if they decide to pull their patents and to license them to a few other manufacturers of their own choice, then the antitrust laws crack down on them both. The penalties in such patent pool cases involve compulsory licensing of of the patents to any and all comers or the outright confiscation of the patents. I quote from Mr. Neal's book quote the compulsory licensing of patents, even valid patents lawfully acquired through the research efforts of the company's own employees, is intended not as punishment, but as a way in which rival companies may be brought into into the market. In the ICI and Dupont case of 1952, for example, Judge Ryan ordered the compulsory licensing of their existing patents in the fields to which their restricted agreements applied and improvement patents, but not new patents in these fields. In this case, an auxiliary remedy was awarded which has become common in recent years. Both ICI and dupont were ordered to provide applicants at a reasonable charge with technical manuals which would show in detail how the patents were practiced. Close Quote this mind you is not regarded as punitive. Whose mind, ability, attribute, achievement and rights are here sacrificed and for whose unearned benefit? Have you read? Attle shrugged. Did you think I was exaggerating? Do you still think so now? The most shocking court decision in this grim progression up to but not including the year 1961 was written, as one would almost expect, by a distinguished conservative judge. Learned Hand. The victim was alcohol. The case was United States versus Aluminum Company of America of 1945. I quote from Antitrust, a paper presented by Allen Greenspan, economic Consultant at the Antitrust Seminar of the national association of Business Economists at Cleveland, Ohio on September 25, 1961. The capital market acts as a regulator of prices, not necessarily of profits. It leaves any individual producer free to earn as much as he can by lowering his costs and by increasing his efficiency relative to others. The history of the Aluminum Company of America prior to World War II illustrates the process envisaging its self interest and long term profitability in terms of a growing market. Alcohol kept the price of primary aluminum at a level compatible with the maximum expansion of its market. At such a price level, however, profits were forthcoming only by means of tremendous efforts to step up efficiency and productivity. Alcoa was a monopoly, the only producer of primary aluminum, but it was not a coercive monopoly. That is, it could not set its price and production policies independent of the competitive world. In fact, only because the company stressed cost cutting and efficiency, rather than raising prices, was it able to maintain its position as sole producer of primary aluminum for so long. Had Alcoa attempted to increase its profits by raising prices, it soon would have found itself joined in the primary aluminum business. Close quote in other words, Alcoa held a monopoly by reason of the fact that no other producer of aluminum could match its efficiency under the antitrust laws. Monopoly as such is not illegal. What is illegal is the intent to monopolize. To find Alcoa guilty, Judge Lanh had to find evidence that Alcoa had taken aggressive action to exclude competitors from its market. Here is the kind of evidence which he found and on which he based the ruling that has blocked the energy of one of America's greatest industrial concerns. I quote from Judge Hand's opinion. Quote it was not inevitable that it Alcoa should always anticipate increases in the demand for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before others entered the field. It insists that it never excluded crime competitors. But we can think of no more effective exclusions than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization having the advantage of experience, trade connections, and the elite of personnel. Close quote. Here the meaning and purpose of the antitrust laws come blatantly and explicitly into the open. The only meaning and purpose these laws could have, whether they are authors intended or not. The penalizing of ability for being ability, the of success for being successful, and the sacrifice of productive genius to the demands of envious mediocrity. If such a principle were applied to all productive activity, if a man of intelligence were forbidden to embrace each new opportunity as it opened for fear of discouraging some coward or fool who might wish to compete with him. It would mean that none of us in any profession should venture forward or rise or improve, because any form of personal progress, be it a typist's greater speed or an artist's greater canvas or a doctor's greater percentage of cures, can discourage the kind of newcomers who haven't yet started, but who expect to start competing at the top. And if you want to hear a small but crowning touch, I will quote Mr. Neal's footnote to his account of the Alcoa case. It is of some interest to note that the main ground on which economic writers have condemned the aluminum monopoly has been precisely that Alcoa consistently failed to embrace opportunities for expansion and so underestimated the demand for the metal that the United States was woefully short of productive capacity at the outset of both world wars. Close quote. Now I will ask you to bear in mind the nature, the essence and the record of the antitrust laws when I mention the ultimate climax which makes the rest of that sordid record seem insignificant. The General electric case of 1961. Ladies and gentlemen, if the concept of justice still retains any meaning in your mind, consult it now. That case was truly a national disgrace, but not in the way all the states, state's subsisters and brothers have been screaming in the press. The disgrace does not lie in the alleged conspiracy of the executives of the electrical industry, but in the fact that they were sent to jail and in the fact that no single public voice so far has reason to defend them. The list of the accused in that case reads like a roll call of honor of the electrical equipment industry. General Electric, Westinghouse, Alice Chalmers and 26 other smaller companies. Their crime was that they had provided you with all the matchless benefits and comforts of the electrical age, from bread toasters to power generators. It is for this crime that they were punished because they could not have provided any of it, nor remained in business without breaking the antitrust laws. The charge against them was that they had made secret agreements to fix the prices of their product and to rig bids. But without such agreements, the larger companies could have set their prices so low that the smaller ones would have been unable to match them and would have gone out of business, whereupon the larger companies would have faced prosecution under the same antitrust laws for intent to monopolize. I quote from an article by Richard Austin Smith entitled the Incredible Electrical Conspiracy in Fortune magazine for April and May 1961. Quote, if GE were to drive for 50% of the market, even strong companies like ITE Circuit Breaker might be mortally wounded. Close quote. The same article shows that the price fixing agreements did not benefit General Electric. That they worked to its disadvantage. That General Electric was, in effect, the sucker and that its executives knew it wanted to leave the conspiracy but had no choice. The best proof of the fact that the antitrust laws had forced the conspiracy upon the electrical industry can be seen in the aftermath of that case in the issue of the consent decree. When General Electric announced that it now intended to charge the lowest price as possible, it was the smaller companies and the government, the antitrust division, who objected. The article by Mr. Smith mentions the fact that the meetings of the conspirators started as A result of the opa. During the war, the prices of electrical equipment were fixed by the government, and the executives of the electric industry held meetings to discuss a common policy. They continued this process practice after the OPA was abolished. Now I will ask you to consider the following question. By what conceivable standard can the policy of price fixing be a crime when practiced by businessmen, but a public benefit when practiced by the government? There are many industries in peacetime trucking, for instance, whose prices are fixed by the government. If price fixing is harmful to competition, to industry, to production, to consumers, to the whole economy, and to the public interest, as the advocates of antitrust laws have claimed, then how can that same harmful policy become beneficial in the hands of the government? Since there is no rational answer to this question, I suggest that you question the economic knowledge, the purpose and the motives of the champions of antitrust. The electrical companies offered no defense to the charge of conspiracy. They pleaded no law contender, which means no contest. They did it because the antitrust laws place so deadly a danger in the path of any attempt to defend oneself, that defense becomes virtually impossible. These laws provide that a company convicted of an antitrust violation can be sued for treble damages by any customer who might claim that he was injured. In a case of so large a scale as the electrical industry case. Such treble damage suits could conceivably wipe all the defendants out of existence. With that kind of threat hanging over him, who killed, can, or will take the risk of offering a defense in a court where there are no objective laws, no objective standards of guilt or innocence, no objective way to estimate one's.

Chances, Try to project what clamor, indignation.

And what protest would be heard publicly all around us if some other group of men, some other minority group were subjected to a trial in which the offense was made impossible or in which the laws prescribed. The more serious the offense, the more dangerous the defense. Certainly the opposite is true in regard to actual criminals. The more serious the crime, the greater the precautions and protections prescribed by the law to give the defendant a chance and the benefit of every doubt. It is only businessmen who have to come to court bound and gagged. Now, what started the government's investigation of the electrical industry? Mr. Smith's article in Fortune states that the investigation was started because of complaints by TVA and demands by Senator Kefaur. This was in 1959, under Eisenhower's Republican administration. I quote from time magazine of February 17, 1961. Quote, Often the government has a hard time gathering evidence in antitrust cases. But this time it got a break. In October 1959, four Ohio businessmen were sentenced to jail after pleading nolo contender in an antitrust case. One of them committed suicide. Suicide on the way to jail. This news sent a chill through the electrical equipment executives under investigation. And some agreed to testify about their colleagues under the security of immunity. With the evidence gathered from them. Most are still with their companies. The government sewed up its case. Close quote. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not gangsters, racketeers or dog peddlers that are here being discussed in such terms, but businessmen. The productive, creative, efficient, competent, talented members of society. Yet the antitrust laws now in this new phase are apparently aimed at transforming business into an underworld with informers, tool pigeons, double crossers, special deals and all the rest of the atmosphere of the Untouchables. Seven executives of the electrical industry were sentenced to jail. We shall never know what went on behind the scenes of this case or in the negotiations between the companies and the government. Were these seven responsible for the alleged conspiracy? If it be guilt, were they guiltier than others who informed on them? And why? Were they framed? Were they double crossed? Whose purposes, ambitions or goals were served by their immolation, we do not know. Under a setup such as the antitrust laws have created, there is no way to know. When these seven men who could not defend themselves came into the courtroom to hear their sentences, their lawyers addressed the judge with pleas for mercy. I quote from the same story in Time magazine, quote. First before the court came the lawyer for John H. Charles, Jr. 57, a vice president of Westinghouse, to plead for mercy. His client said the lawyer was a vestryman of St. John's Episcopal Church in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and a benefactor of charities for crippled children. Close quote. Another defendant's lawyer pleaded that his client was, quote, the director of a boys club in Schenectady, New York, and the chairman of a campaign to build a new Jesuit seminary in Lenox, Massachusetts. Close quote. It was not these men's achievements or their productive ability or their executive talent or their intelligence or their rights that their lawyers found it necessary to cite, but their altruistic service to the welfare of the needy. The needy had a right to welfare, but those who produced and provided it had not the welfare. And the rights of the producers were not regarded as worthy of consideration or recognition. This is the most damning indictment of the present state of our culture. The final two touch on that whole gruesome farce was Judge Ganny's statement. He said, quote, what is really at stake here Is the survival of the kind of economy under which America has grown to greatness. The free enterprise system. Close quote. He said it while delivering the most staggering blow that the free enterprise system had ever sustained. While sentencing to jail seven of its best representatives and thus declaring that the very class of men who brought America to greatness, the businessmen, are now to be treated by their nature and profession as criminals. In the person of these seven men. It is the free enterprise system that he was sentencing. These seven men were marchers. They were treated as sacrificial animals. They were human sacrifices, as truly and more cruelly than the human sacrifices offered by prehistorical savages in the jungle. Ladies and gentlemen, if you care about justice to minority groups, remember that businessmen are a small minority, A very small minority. You can see. Consider the total number of all the uncivilized hordes on earth. Remember how much you owe to this minority and what disgraceful persecution it is enduring. Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of of minorities. Now what should we do about it? We should demand the re examination and revision of the entire issue of antitrust. We should challenge its philosophical, political, economic and moral base. We should have a civil liberties union for businessmen. The repeal of the antitrust laws should be our ultimate goal. It will require a long intellectual and political struggle. But in the meantime, and as a first step, we should demand that the jail penalty provisions of these laws be abolished. It is best bad enough if men have to suffer financial penalties such as fines under laws which everyone concedes to be non objective, contradictory and undefinable. Since no two juries can agree on their meaning and application. It is obscene to impose prison sentences under laws of so controversial a nature. We should put an end to the outrage of Sandy men to jail for breaking unintelligible laws which they cannot avoid breaking. Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups, workers, professional men, scientists, soldiers Exist under dictators dictatorship. Even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery and in progressive self destruction. There is no such group as businessmen. Under a dictatorship, their place is taken by armed thugs, by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society, the symbol of America. If and when they perish, civilization will perish. But if you wish to fight for freedom, you must begin by fighting for its unrewarded, unrecognized, unacknowledged yet Best representatives, the American businessmen. Questions and Answers with Ayn Rand on America's Persecuted Minority big business.

Tonight, Ms. Rand will answer questions on her lecture America's Persecuted Minority Big Business. Let me begin by saying that my position in this interchange will be solely that of questioner. This will not be a debate, but simply a question and answer period. Now, take questions first from those mailed in and then add some of my own. And I'll try to act chiefly as a catalyst, that is, to ask those questions that will be most likely to bring out the points in Ms. Rand's position that people desire clarification on, on which they are confused or puzzled, or on which they'd like a somewhat more detailed treatment than was possible in the lecture. Questions on interpretation and on explanation will be favored, not those that merely express agreement or disagreement, and not those that are so broad that it would take hours to answer them. I'll begin with a few questions that have been mailed in and ask Ms. Rand to reply. Here's one very brief, but a rather broad question. Do you think that a laissez faire, free capitalist society is possible for America in the 1960s? How could it be put into effect now as a practical matter?

First, I would have to clarify one point. The question doesn't quite make clear whether he means the time element, that is, could we have a free capitalist society achieved in in the decade of 1960? Or whether he means that in the present trend or the present state of our society, we can no longer hope to have capitalism? I believe that he probably means the second, but I can briefly answer both. But I will start with the second. To ask, are we too far gone to return to a proper and rational society is the same thing as asking if a man is dangerously but not hopelessly ill. To ask, is it too late for him now to be healthy? Should we do anything about it? Why not let him die? That is the meaning of any question which asks, in effect, capitalism may be a good idea, but in our present state it's too late for us, or we can't do it, or are we ready for it? The answer, of course, is so long as men are alive, it is never too late to take the right action or to adopt the right policies. In laissez faire, capitalism is the only society under which man can live properly, the only society proper to a human existence. Man can begin planning for it, advocating it at any time, so long as they are not under a total dictatorship. When they are under a total dictatorship, they cannot speak Then the only thing to do is to escape or to upset that particular regime. But so long as we're talking about the semi free society, it is never too late to advocate the right political system. Therefore, I would say no, it is certainly not too late for us. And a free capitalist society is certainly possible for America. Now, whether we could establish it in the 1960s or when, that is a question which nobody can answer. It is certain that nobody could establish a perfect system overnight. And if we today decided to have a free capitalist society, it would take quite a long time, as I'll explain in a moment, to achieve it. Well, now, nobody can predict how quickly a society, a group of men, will accept an idea. Therefore, time guesses here would be impossible and in fact irrelevant. My guess, and strictly a guess, would be that yes, we could have it. In the 1960s, even enough people chose to think about what they are doing and where they are going. A second part of the question how could we put into effect? As a practical matter, my answer is that every change in practical political action in society has to be preceded by a cultural change, that is a change in the philosophy dominating the culture of a certain society. And therefore, as a practical matter, and before one thinks of political action, one has to concentrate on cultural actions, on spreading the right philosophy, the right ideas which would make it possible for an enlightened society to adopt the proper enlightened rational political action. And that action will be an advocacy of total laissez faire capitalism to replace our present mixture.

One listener writes as follows. I would like to know if Ms. Rand would care to predict what the final result of statism will be in regard to the private practice of medicine in the United States. This questioner is presumably a physician or a physicist position to be. The idea of being my own boss in medical practice appeals to me strongly. And the thought of being coerced into being a federal drone is most disquieting. As I am not yet in private practice, I'm trying to see which way the current is flowing before I jump into the stormy waters.

This is a very good question, and it bears a certain relation to the preceding question. This question is almost an answer to the person asking, can we have a free capitalist society? This is one indication or proof of why we cannot afford to have anything else. Here's a young man who is considering whether he will or will not adopt the career of medicine if he is threatened with federal enslavement. This is how the best people go on slavery strike without knowing it and without a Formal strike under any regulated, controlled, semi controlled or total dictatorship. The answer to this young man is as follows. Certainly if America goes further and further into full statism, Then socialized medicine will probably more likely be one of the first professions. As slaves. However, the other professions will not take long to follow. This young man should not believe that he would save himself from slavery by abandoning medicine Merely because medicine is on in the first line of attack. When medicine is enslaved, very shortly thereafter, all other professions, professions will be enslaved as well. Therefore, one should not give up a profession merely because it is threatened. Today. I would say the practical action for this young man is most certainly to get into medicine if that is what he wants to do, and to work from within the profession, to advocate freedom, to persuade his colleagues to refuse to function under controls, to persuade them to protest, to persuade them to fight properly and intellectually, not apologetically and timidly as they seem to be doing today. According to such literature as I have seen. Therefore, yes, I would say, do go into medicine, but remember that you have a very hard feel fight ahead of you, and so do all the rest of us. The issue is the same for every profession. What is important, however, is never to accept the idea that the government, society, or any form of collective has the right to enslave any man, any group, or any profession. This is the sort of thing which we must realize and realize why it affects every one of us personally. This is not an issue of sacrificing oneself for the future for society. It is an issue where the interests of society and interests of the creative individual do not clash. We must fight for freedom, or there will be neither medicine nor any other profession, nor in civilization.

In view of that, let me ask this question of Ms. Randall. If you were elected president of the United States tomorrow, what changes would you institute to set up the type of government that you favor? That is, what measures would you take first and in what kind of succession would they occur and why?

Well, first of all, this is the.

Last thing in the world I would.

Ever want to or advise anyone to attempt. But taking it simply as a hypothetical question, Question meaning what would I advocate if I were in a position for my advice to be immediately put into effect? I would say that I would start decontrolling the economy as fast as rational economic considerations permitted. What do I mean by rational economic considerations? I mean the following. Today, every. Every class of the population is enormously dependent on government controls. Most professions, certainly most businesses, have to function under certain controls, and their activities are calculated on that basis. Therefore, if I or anyone else were to repeal all controls overnight by legislative fiat, that would create a disruption disaster and would be an arbitrary dictatorial action. What a free country would do in such a case is to give all the people concerned sufficient notice to readjust reorganize their economic activities. Therefore, after working out with economists the kind of program necessary to decontrol the country and what control should go first, I would then advise that one pass legislation announcing that a certain type of control will be abolished within a year or three years, or five years, whichever the case may be, the time element being calculated to allow the people involved ample opportunity to readjust their activities gradually. You see, under a pre enterprise system, no change happens out of the blue and overnight every economic change, every development is gradual. And therefore in a free society there are no immediate and disastrous changes. However, in a position where we are today, any sudden change can create enormous disastrous dislocations. And therefore that would be the reason why one would have to decontrol gradually. Now, to be more specific, you ask me what particular legislation I would advocate to be removed. First, it would be the antitrust laws. As my lecture presented last week, I consider antitrust laws the most disastrous legislation that has contributed the most to the destruction of free enterprise. And therefore, once you remove that particular cancer, all the others will become much easier to remove. Once you free the most essential, most productive group of our society, namely the industrialists and the businessmen, once you free them from controls, and great many, if not most of our economic problems would vanish. Even here, one would probably have to combine such the control with a tax reduction law. Otherwise you are leaving the society in a very improper, unbalanced condition. Namely, any company which is large today has an enormous advantage over competitors who never had any a chance even to rise to that level because their earnings had been undercut by taxes. Today, many companies, which in a free society might have been the economic leaders, struggle somewhere halfway down the line or perhaps never start going properly, because whatever profit they make are taken away from them in taxes to such an extent that they have no chance to to rise to the level of competing with the big companies who were established before today's tax rate went into effect. I'm saying this only very tentatively, because these are concrete, specific questions and an exact answer would depend on the specific facts that one would be facing. However, I'm answering only as a matter of principle. What kind of principle would advise people to follow in such an issue? And I would say that one would have to remove the antitrust provisions one by one the first one to go, and this one should go overnight. If there were enough people with a sense of justice in this country who care to be active about it. The first thing to go is to repeal the jail penalty provisions of the antitrust laws and to stop sending men to jail for undefined offenses which they had no way of avoiding. First remove this particular injustice. Not only will it be a matter of plain humanitarian decency, but also it would remove the terrorization of businessmen. It would remove the sword, the threat hanging over their heads, which they have no way of avoiding and which they cannot predict at what time the execution would occur. Therefore, first remove the terrorization on businessmen. Then a move the rest of the provisions, all of which today, as I have pointed out in my speech, amount to merely penalizing ability for being ability and sacrificing productive genius to mediocrity. Remove the enforcement of this kind of policy and you would be surprised at the kind of intellectual, moral and economic renaissance that the country would experience almost immediately. Then proceed with all the other lesser decontrols. That would be my answer.

Here is a question which was asked Ms. Rand from the audience on the evening of her talk at Columbia. I'll ask it of her now. Should antitrust be applied to labor unions as well? That is, should labor unions be broken up into smaller unions under the power of the antitrust?

My answer is most emphatically no. The antitrust laws are so vicious, so non objective and injustice that one does not correct the situation by extending the same evil, the same injustice to another part of the country or another group of people. I know that there are many conservatives, so called, who instead of advocating a reform or a repeal of antitrust laws, think that they can solve the situation by simply victimizing labor unions in the same way as businessmen are victimized. They advocate extending the controls of antitrust with all of their monstrous, non objective irrational abuse and injustice. They advocate extending it to labor unions in apparently the hope that this would equalize the bargaining position of business and labor. Well, in effect, nobody gained from those laws. Nobody gains from that type of legislation except the bureaucrat and the government. The extension of antitrust to labor unions would certainly not help business. It would only help helped to enslave a group of the population which today fortunately is still comparatively free. You can never correct an injustice by performing another injustice and you don't correct an evil by extending an evil, much as labor unions today are in a more privileged position in regard to the issue of antitrust than our businessmen. Nevertheless, the only Correction is to free the businessman, not to enslave labor. Labor on many occasions has proved itself much more philosophically alert and aware of the issue of freedom than have businessmen. Probably because labor leaders are still free to speak. But businessmen are not, precisely because of the antitrust laws. Therefore, labor today is one of our very powerful forces for freedom. In this particular sense, they are aware of government encroachment and are very sensitive to it. As witness the opposition of Mr. Minney to Secretary Goldberg's attempt to sacrifice labor as well as management to the alleged public interest and to dictate in labor negotiations. What is the public interest? Observe how quickly and properly Mr. Meaney answered him in the name of labor. That is the best example of why, if you want to protect freedom, you better leave labor and every other group of the population free rather than advocate there and enslavement. In this sense, if labor leaders and industry leaders, who also protested against Mr. Goldberg's idea, if they saw fully what mutual interests they have in common and that they have a much stronger interest in common than any of them may have in government regulations or an enlargement of government power, if they could see that they should unite politically and philosophically to fight the further growth of the government, that would be one of very desirable and very effective ways in which we could speed up the liberation of this country.

Here's a question with many parts, but I think it's capable of a relatively brief answer about the exact sphere in which the government is entitled to operate. Does the government have any place in the following activities? Legislation to prevent monopoly? I think that's been answered already. Patents and copyrights, building codes and housing codes. The licensing of physicians and dentists. The requiring of inoculation against diseases or of quarantine of families having communicable diseases. What about fire departments, Municipal water, electrical supply? Now, if the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no to these questions, why the difference?

Yes, sometimes yes and sometimes no. Because these are not all questions of the same category. So let's take them in order. Legislation to prevent monopoly. We have discussed in great detail. It is certainly not the place of the government to regulate by force any productive activities, any issue of production or trade. Now, patents and copyrights are a different issue. Because what is the role of government in patents and copyrights? Here the government merely acts as a witness who registers the time when an inventor has produced an invention or a writer has written a book, and therefore protects that inventor's writers right to the exclusive use of his own product of his own idea. In use of patents and copyright, what is really involved? It is the right of the inventor to use his invention socially, to use it in trade, and at the same time to protect his right in it and to prevent anyone from making use of his intellectual property without his consent. Therefore, the government role here is not to control the individual inventor, but to protect that inventor from any forcible violation of his right by other men with whom he deals. Forcible in the sense of someone copying his invention, stealing it, and using it without his consent, thus undercutting his own way of earning his living by the result of his own mental effort. The government does not force anyone to take out a patent or a copyright. If a man wants to give away his invention or his book, he is free to do so. It is up to him to decide whether he wants to use it exclusively and wants to be protected, or if for any reason he wants to give it away. The government will not force him to patent it. Therefore, it is his choice when he wants protection. As for it, the government merely acts as the protector of his property in exactly the same way as the government protects physical property. If someone were to steal a piece of jewelry, it is the policeman's job to try to apprehend, deceive, and return the property. Exactly the same principle applies in intellectual issues, particularly since we must remember that the mind is the source of any form of material production, material wealth. You cannot protect material property rights without protecting the rights of a man to the result of the work of his own mind. Therefore, the right to protect your own invention by patents or copyrights is certainly a basic inalienable property right, and it is quite proper of the government to protect it from unauthorized infringement or stealing. This, however, is not a control. The government properly does not have the right to tell a man how to use his patent or his copyright. All the government can do is stop those who attempt to infringe this patent or copyright and to use it without the owner's consent. So here the government's function is to strictly protective and comes strictly within a proper government's moral function. Now, building codes and housing codes is the next question. This is a different issue, because here the government does not act to protect anyone, but to regulate, namely to enforce certain kind of rules or decisions arbitrarily on the men involved in building. Here the government is enforcing its views or its ideas of what is proper building on a certain profession, and as such is certainly one of the primary forms of improper government interference. Now the question is asked, but what would protect us from faulty housing? And shouldn't we have government inspectors to protect us from collapsing building? The answer is A this protection does not protect us from anything and we have as many badly built or dangerous building as we would have without any government housing code. And A and B, in a proper free society, it is the laws of produce, in a broad sense of the word that would protect tenants from unsafe building. In other words, builders would not be ordered in advance to obey some kind of arbitrary and very often contradictory and impossible regulations. But if a builder rents a building and the building is unsafe or collapses, or is a fire trap and its tenants are damaged, there would be very severe penalties and the tenants could sue a landlord for fraud for presenting a building as being safe, when in fact it wasn't. Of course there would have to be very objective ways of proof that the landlord or the builder had neglected the building in some issuance, some structural method which he knew to be unsafe, which he could have prevented. One could not blame him blindly for not knowing how to prevent something which nobody knew how to prevent. But this is assuming deliberate, bad or shoddy building. If it could be proved that a landlord or a builder misrepresented his product, then the laws of fraud would punish him and then his own self interest would prevent him from ever resorting to such practices. In other words, one wouldn't have to have many building accidents to prevent builders from dishonest or improper building. The mere existence of this kind of code of law would be sufficient protection against the rare dishonest builders who could always exist at any time as individuals. The laws would be set to discourage them and to punish them if necessary. But all honest builders would be free. And in building as in any other profession, it is not to a man's self interest to cheat. The majority of a profession would do an honest job. It is only against the criminal minority that the laws would protect us. Rather than tie up honest men in advance on the assumption that they are guilty before they have approved themselves guilty and that it is the government's place to protect them from dishonesty. This is immoral and impractical and it cannot be done. And no building codes or housing codes have ever achieved their alleged purpose. The same applies to the next question, the licensing of physicians and dentists. Again, the government does not have the right to pass on the fitness or unfitness of professional men. What would protect us from quacks in a pre society? The free judgment of individual men and the protection of any professional organization. Professional publications which could make reports to its members understanding of various practitioners. But the mere issuing of a licensing by a government or of a diploma by medical school does not protect us from quacks. Today. We, we still have to exercise our judgment in selecting a physician, and that is what we would properly do in a free society. Government licensing protects us from nothing, but may progressively keep the better people out of any licensed or controlled profession. Now requiring inoculation against disease. Should this be a jail for the government? Most definitely not. And there is a very simple answer for it. If it is medically proved that a certain inoculation is in fact practical and desirable, those who want it will take that inoculation. Now, if some people do not see it that way, do not agree or don't want to take it, they only they will be in danger since all the other people will be inoculated. Those who do not go along if they're wrong in this case, will merely catch the disease. They will not be in danger to anyone else. And nobody has the right to force them to do anything for their own good against their own judgment. They will merely be ill then, but they could not infect others. The next question in regard to quarantine is somewhat different. Because in the state, state of sense of a quarantine, if someone has a contagious disease against which there is no inoculation, then the government would have the right to require quarantine. What is the principle here? It's to protect those people who are not ill. To protect the people who. To prevent the people who are ill from passing on their illness to others. Here you are dealing with a demonstrable physical damage. Remember that in all issue of protecting someone from physical damage, Before a government can properly act, there has to be a scientific objective demonstration of an actual physical danger. If it is demonstrated, then the government can act to protect those who are not yet ill from contacting the disease. In other words, to quarantine the people who are ill is not an interference with their rights. It is merely preventing them from doing physical damage to others. Now, the fire department, water and electrical supply, that certainly is not the province of the government. All that are private activities and should be private, voluntary activities, just like any other business or economic issue. I think that is the last one of the questions I believe. And in conclusion, I would say to sum it up, what I and the objectivist philosophy advocate in economics and politics is the complete separation of state and economics in the same way for the same reasons as we have the separation of state and church. In other words, the government then should only function in its proper policing, protective activities, but would have nothing to say about the issue of production or trade. Those activities, all of them, should be conducted by. By the voluntary choice and the free ability of free men.

Since there's only about two minutes left, how about this additional matter? Parents who are abusing their children. Does the state have a right to interfere?

Yes, in a case of physical and demonstrable abuse. And this would come again under the issue of protecting individual rights. Since children infected pact cannot protect themselves from physical abuse and they're dependent on their parents, the government would have the right to interfere in the protection of a child's right. But interfere against what? Against any physical maltreatment, beating, starvation or any physical demonstrable damage done to a child. The government will have the right to prevent it. Just as it would have the right to to prevent an adult beating up or locking up and starving another adult. Since the child is dependent for his survival on the parent, the government will have the right to see to it that the child's life was safe. But this right would never extend to intellectual issues. The government has no right to interfere in the upbringing of the child, only in any physical injury done to a child. As to the upbringing, it is entirely the responsibility and the right of the parents.

How about deciding which drugs should be by prescription only?

Well, that is a technical question and I am not even sure whether there should be such a regulation. That would be an issue that doctors would really have to decide. And as to the danger of selling poison, this would be a very small technical issue to be decided by lawyers and doctors.

You have been listening to Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged, in a discussion of America's persecuted minority big business.