In 2008, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert decided to restructure the company according to Rand’s principles.
Lampert broke the company into more than 30 individual units, each with its own management and each measured separately for profit and loss. The idea was to promote competition among the units, which Lampert assumed would lead to higher profits. Instead, this is what happened, as described by Mina Kimes, a reporter for Bloomberg Business:An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.
Instead, the divisions turned against each other — and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered. Interviews with more than 40 former executives, many of whom sat at the highest levels of the company, paint a picture of a business that’s ravaged by infighting as its divisions battle over fewer resources.
Special bonus link: Ayn Rand Once Cursed A Guy’s Dick So Bad He Moved Across The Country
It is amazing to me that not only do people take this woman seriously, but people who take this woman seriously get appointed to offices like fucking Fed Chairman. (And Greenspan knew her personally, for God's sake! He had to know what a mess she was.)
I mean, not to say that a person with a fraught personal life can't have some good ideas about economics, but I think perhaps a person who responds to a breakup by cursing her ex's penis should maybe not be treated as a paragon of rational thought. If I heard Paul Krugman had cast a curse on somebody's wang, it would probably color my opinion of his reliability.