ABSTRACT
In Objectivism, political principles rest on the social ethics of justice and trade. To be sure, Objectivism, the philosophical outlook she founded, has a politics, but Objectivism is a philosophical system in which politics plays a dependent role. One of the reasons Objectivism places rationality front and center as the prime virtue, is that people do not achieve it automatically. A similar assumption is made by Nicholas Dykes in relating anarchism with Objectivism. A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is befuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called "competing governments". Roy Childs's essay is a classic summary of a Rand-influenced approach to anarchism. In effect accepting Rand's charge that market-anarchists see no difference in kind between the basic activities of government and industry, Childs argued that the burden was on Rand to explain why individuals would not be capable of objectively choosing defense agencies.
