The logic espoused by Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged” and taught in business schools is followed by a large segment of society, though successfully applied by relatively few. It dictates three steps: (1) that every opportunity for personal gain should be seized; (2) the benefits extracted in a manner hostile to restraint and empowered by ownership until exhausted; and (3) leave a bankrupt corporate shell and poisoned nature behind to move on to the next opportunity: another bioregion to drill, mine, or monocrop. If you don’t, someone else will; it’s money left on the table!

A thought experiment: assume a world populated by creatures living in hull-side cabins below the waterline of a great ship. They profit, peculiarly, by harvesting seawater (think fossil energy) through holes they drill in the hull. When that world’s population was much smaller and drilled smaller holes, a form of equilibrium existed. Now that their numbers have grown toward eight billion, aided by aggregations called corporations that compete to drill bigger holes, they wallow, slowly sinking in a sea of vast and complex energies.

Ms. Rand’s adherents are certain that they must increase their drilling, mining and monocropping ancient bioregions. It’s logic.

Or is it?

Bill Appel

Friday Harbor