Who's a libertarian?

I finally read Atlas Shrugged.  It was a good read.  I wanted to see how the story came out.  I liked the protagonists, but they were a little bit on the superhuman side, like comic book heroes. 
     The bottom line is, the book preaches a philosophy, and that philosophy apparently continues to have an influence on social and political debate today, particularly amongst libertarians, including the libertarian wing of the Republican Party.
     The book makes some excellent points, but its major premise--that one's own self-interest is the only legitimate motivation--is about 87.5 per cent wrong, in my opinion.
     Self-interest is indeed a legitimate motivation, and the author is correct to defend it as such.  But people are legitimately motivated by other things as well.  Most people would lay down their lives for their children, and many do give their lives for their country.  Policemen and firefighters risk their lives for total strangers. We could argue about what they should be motivated by, but the fact is that people do have various  motivations, and the mixture of motivations varies from one person to the next.
    A problem arises, in a socio-political context, with a common human motivation: to help others.  Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged, believes this is a bogus motivation that has been drilled into us by pernicious moral preachers over a period of centuries.  However, many people actually do want to help others, and it is not because it has been drilled into them.  It is their actual motivation.  That's just how they are.
     Nevertheless, Ms. Rand correctly points out a number of serious problems that can arise in connection with this simple desire to help.
     The human condition is complicated and often difficult.  We all need help from time to time, and some of us need more help than others.  The difficulty arises in figuring out what actually does help and what just makes things worse.
     There is also the question of the actual motivation of some of those who say they want to help.  This is an often-overlooked factor of human motivation.  It has something to do with the "smiling faces" factor.  You know that song: "smiling faces sometimes, they don't tell the truth." 
     Politicians are notoriously bad on this subject.  They will say anything to get elected.  Do they care about the people who are looking to them for leadership?  Some do, some don't.
     There seems to be a lot of talk lately about income inequality.  It seems to be generally assumed by everyone that it is a bad thing if some people make a lot more money than others.  Why?  Is it written somewhere that everybody should make about the same amount of money?  Oh yeah: "All men are created equal."  Are we to take that to mean that everybody is literally the same as everybody else?  Is it supposed to translate into income equality as well as equality in the eyes of the law?
     Some people say that it is just basic fairness that people's incomes should be somewhat close to each other.  But who is it fair to?  It seems fair to those who have their incomes supplemented.  But is it fair to those from whom money is taken?
     You say, oh well, they can afford it.  But a lot of money is also taken from people who can't afford it.  And you say, well, we should take more money from those who actually can afford it.  Sounds easy, right?
     The question is, who does it help?
     Are we making the government the brokerage house of help?  Do we really think that the government is the best arbiter of who needs help and for what?  Are there no other sources of help?  What about the vast network of charities that exist in our society?  What about neighbors, family, friends?
     You may say, well those things are puny compared to the vast needs.
     But the point is, first of all, no one is going to starve.  Secondly, we have voted voluntarily (though I would say misguidedly) to redistribute some of our wealth.  The vast majority of people are pretty generous.  If we decided on a method of help that cut out the government as the middle man, we could make it work.
     First of all it would be much more intelligent. Bureaucracies are notoriously stupid and blind. The way our government distributes money is often arbitrary and unfair.  People who don't deserve money get it, and people who do deserve it often don't get it.
     How much better it could be, for example, if folks in need were helped by people in their own neighborhoods who knew them and could see first hand whether their need was real?  Come to think of it, so much help does come in that way.  Despite all the governments' largess, local resources step in when the big shotgun in the sky misses the mark with the money it spews out.
     Secondly, how much harm does it do to the society and the economy when we remove resources from the control of people who know how to use them and put them into the hands of people (i.e., bureaucrats) who don't understand them and don't know how to use them?  The government certainly doesn't understand the vast resources placed at its disposal, and it does not use them well.
     Thirdly, if we help one set of people, does it necessarily follow that in order to do that we have to harm another group?  I.e., are "the rich" a mean, greedy bunch of oppressors from whom we need to be set free?  Are they selfishly keeping too much of their "ill-gotten" gains, and are we justified in tapping a little of it for ourselves?   
     This opens up another can of worms (so to speak).  Shall we consider that a whole group of people is uniformly bad?  This is an error (unless we were talking about the mafia, prison populations or other groups that are obviously primarily criminals). 
     Are all rich people bad?  Are all corporations evil?  Even bankers--are they all bad? I think if you were to go on a case by case basis, you would find that these postulates are incorrect.  Do they perform a needed social service?  I think they do.
     In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand makes a very persuasive case in favor of the social value of people who invent things and lead corporations.  In political debates, this is often short-handed to: they create jobs.  They raise everybody's standard of living.
     How much more would living standards rise if such leaders were not fettered by confiscatory income taxes, onerous regulations and general hostility?
     Of course, it is obviously true that there are some bad apples.  There is no doubt about that.  The intelligent thing to do would be to identify and appropriately punish the bad apples and let the good ones thrive.  Our current approach, on the contrary, is to assume that white-collar crimes committed by a few are common to the whole group, and to pass laws that are supposed to prevent the crimes form happening.  However, criminals always find ways to commit crimes; thus the whole cycle keeps repeating itself.  We end up with endless laws and regulations that excessively hamper law-abiding and honest people without doing much to prevent crime.
     And of course to prevent people from having money we can vote to take it away from them.  But as time goes by, and inflation puts us all in higher tax brackets, eventually the vast majority of the population is being sucked dry.  The government has vast resources to dispose of, and it does a bad job of it.  And we are trillions of dollars in debt!