"There is this very, very old puzzle/observation in economics about the lawyer who spends an hour volunteering at the soup kitchen, instead of working an extra hour and donating the money to hire someone to work for five hours at the soup kitchen."
Of course, in that simple quote nothing is included about how much the Lawyer is enjoying the work, what value she gets from it in other ways than that expressed directly in money. So it may still be a "rational" exchange.
Atlas Shrugged changed my relationship with money, also changed my self esteem. As someone brought up in a, what I can only call, overly social way, a very christian way (self-sacrifice is holy etc), rational self-interest is liberating. And indeed I find it more ethical.
Us westerners in Christian based societies somehow always like to say that money is the root of all evil, but I feel that that stance (at the very least) doesn't take into account what the alternative is to money, and what money has enabled for us.
This quote sums it up for me:
"The act of donating money is not the momentary act of writing the check, it is the act of every hour you spent to earn the money to write that check—just as though you worked at the charity itself in your professional capacity, at maximum, grownup efficiency."
(Edit, I know, I shouldn't say this, I apologize Dang, I deserve the downvotes, but this is one of those posts that generates a lot of replies and I see it going up and down in karma. It's somehow "engaging". Mentioning Ayn Rand does that every time.)