Modern life has evolved into a battle for individual primacy, and nowhere else do you find it practiced as fiercely as in libertarianism. A theory which is just pie in the sky idealism about individualism and capitalism (based on a male model), also practiced as simple selfishness and greed which throws empathy and social adjustment into the waste bin, if not directly, then under the guise of charity and foundations which privately mold public policy and can influence elections. It comes today in the form of technology, not industrialization, but the sweatshops and robber barons have merely been brought into the 21st century in a different form. And nowhere does libertarian ideology and technology mesh more perfectly than on the internet, a kind of do-it-yourself entertainment central.

There is a blind faith in technology, just as there was in industrialization, which will continue to allow this type of thinking to influence people and dominate their lives, but the human cost may be just as great, or greater. Technology won’t change the human condition or our behavior, it will just speed everything up. When you look at what the influences are on the internet, for instance, such as social media, and examine them closely, it can be depressing and negative as people exploit their own need for recognition and parlay it into just more crap to wade through in an increasingly junkified world while they avoid real life consequences out there in the ether. And when anger becomes the dominant emotion in any venue, we’re in serious trouble—and it can be contagious.

But do we really want kings in just another name? In just another form? Where women are simply tolerated even as they play the game? Libertarians can quote and “respect” a woman who took up and promoted this kind of thinking because because she was in thrall to an ideology of male supremacy which she allowed to dominate her own thinking. I mean, in real life would John Galt have gone the way of SS and Medicare and living off the charity of others as Rand did?

Even Ayn Rand couldn’t practice in reality what she preached in fiction because it’s an impossibility. In any event, she would have wound up second class in a world of her own invention because it’s not the cheerleaders who achieve top dog status, it’s the players. And winning is always the goal, no matter how dirty you play the game.

What has really changed in the course of humanity? Basically, we humans have not—we just think we have. The settings, the venues, the superficialities of life, are what change, not the needs, the wants, the desires. How we express those is what’s important.