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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Why shouldn't Ayn Rand take medicare and social security? She paid for those services.

Ayn Rand said that of all the things public funds were ever spent on (outside of judicial and national defense), NASA was the most worthy. She wrote admiringly about NASA, revealing a deep respect for its technology, scientific pursuit, and its Apollo launches. They even specifically invited her to an Apollo launch.

I don't think someone that hated NASA - or supposedly would dislike a private SpaceX - would write: "Apollo 11: A Symbol of Man's Greatness." Clearly since Ayn liked NASA, she would love SpaceX as a step in the right direction over public space exploration.

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> Why shouldn't Ayn Rand take medicare and social security?

Because she was against it?

Those things are based in principles. In principle I have the right to state funds for all of my children. Because I am against such subsidies I have decided not to request them, even though the state continues to insist that I should and that it is my right. And even though I pay for other people exercising this right.

For Ayn Rand to rail a life long in many different pamphlets against state run entities only to turn around and to use them when times were a bit tougher seems hypocritical to me.

I'm sure she was also against the government taking her money to fund those programs in the first place, but she didn't have a choice. Why does trying to recover some of that money make her a hypocrite?

Most people pay more into insurance programs than they get out. That's how all forms of insurance works. Sheesh.

Ayn Rand ended up taking government benefits because she had to, not because she was trying to get back what she paid in. That's the key part.

Even if she could afford to take care of herself and was just trying to game the system to get her money back, that's morally pretty suspect, too. Imagine trying to mount the same argument about someone who deliberately crashed their car to "recover some of that money" they had to pay in insurance premiums.

Rand spent her whole life decrying people who are dependent on government assistance as looters and parasites, and then she spent the last few years of her life completely dependent on government assistance without it changing her stated beliefs. If you don't see the hypocrisy there, you're trying awfully hard not to.

She is an illustration that you can lead a successful, productive, non-moochery life and still end up needing government assistance at some point.

Strange as it seems that I would defend Ayn Rand, presumably if she hadn't been forced to pay taxes she would have been contributing to some other form of health insurance that would have taken care of her when needed.

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