It's Not Cheap Being an Ayn Rand Fan

Alyssa Bereznak’s account of being raised by an Objectivist father in a divorced household makes for fascinating reading. Her narrative discusses the real world consequence of having a father who not only bought into the Objectivist philosophy wholesale, but who also ended up supporting its main organ, the Ayn Rand Institute. The piece hints at just how insular the world of hard-core Objectivism really gets:

It was odd growing up, at least part-time, in an objectivist house. My father reserved long weekends to attend Ayn Rand Institute conferences held in Orange County, California. He would return with a tan and a pile of new reading material for my brother and me. While other kids my age were going to Bible study, I took evening classes from the institute via phone. (I half-listened while clicking through lolcat photos.)

Our objectivist education, however, was not confined to lectures and books. One time, at dinner, I complained that my brother was hogging all the food.

"He's being selfish!" I whined to my father.

"Being selfish is a good thing," he said. "To be selfless is to deny one's self. To be selfish is to embrace the self, and accept your wants and needs."

The whole story is worth a read.

From my own knowledge of the world of Objectivism, it occurred to me that the materials that Bereznak’s father was using to sustain her Objectivist education might not have come cheap. You can end up paying $150 for some of the CD lecture series or $60 for a lecture titled “Friendship: Who Needs It”. (Other items can be browsed at the Ayn Rand Bookstore.)

As for the “Objectivist Summer Conferences” that the piece mentions, those will cost you around $600.

While the cost of being a full fledged Objectivist is probably cheaper than the dues you pay to be a Scientologist, there are a some uncomfortable similarities. The main one being that you end up paying more and more to gain access to “true” knowledge from scholars whose credentials carry little weight out in the real world.

It's appropriate that Rand’s hyper-capitalist philosophy resulted in her movement charging upwards of $100 for the latest philosophical revelation.