Yeah, John Galt's speech is a bit of drag and is so cause AR stated the whole of her philosophy (Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics and Aesthetics) in that one lengthy chapter. But that's an excusable flaw when taking into consideration the novel's worth as a whole. The reason I like Ayn Rand so much apart from her incredible writing itself is the fact that she was very consistent, inviolable and unrelenting when it came to what she thought was right and wrong. Not to mention she expanded on Aristotelian Metaphysics, which is the most rational one there is.
Plus her lead characters are easily some of the most unique and fascinating ones there are, on top of being absolute and dare I say, inspiring. There is a big difference between her characters and those of other authors. For example, Margaret Mitchell made an amazing creation in the form of Scarlett O'Hara who is far more popular than both of Ayn Rand's most celebrated heroines Dagny Taggart and Dominique Francon, but you can still see that the latter are mental giants and in a whole different league altogether compared to Scarlett, who is nothing more than a Southern Belle that overcomes great odds and obstacles based solely on her common sense and obstinacy.
Most of what Rand wrote was pretty obvious: no matter how you try to bend it, individual achievement is the engine of history, and no political or economic system can truly restrain individual achievement because Humans are status creatures and, even in an egalitarian system, people would create artificial ways of distinguishing themselves from others. Virtue itself is a vice, one that people practice to earn esteem in the eyes of others. And even if people were exactly equal in capacity, there would still be no true equality because volition and personalities would result in some people producing far more than others, meaning that some people would parasitize society in
any system where individuals are not accountable for their own successes or failures.
But where Rand fails is that she didn't acknowledge that what we call success exists
in relation to others. A man who were alone in the World would be the wealthiest man ever, in the sense that he would have the whole planet to himself, and yet he would have no status whatsoever because there would be no one to acknowledge him as the welathiest man in the World, and the lack of any other people means that his enormous wealth would allow him only to live in a mud hut eating bananas, because there will be no one to make crafted goods for him to purchase with his enormous wealth.
Furthermore, the end of all individual achievements is death. After you die, all the wealth and power you had in life means nothing, and the only thing that will matter is the memory of your achievements in the eyes of others. This is why some rich men give large sums to the poor at the end of their lives: so as to be immortalized
in the memory of others. Likewise, this is the reason some people help their nephews and distant relative even though there is no individuial reason to do so: the survival of your genes via your relatives is more important than your individual survival. A rich man is only rich because there are people that make goods that allow him to use his money to purchase goods that he can't make himself; if he were alone in the World, his money would purchase him the leaving standard of a monkey on a rock. Likewise, the powerful man is only powerful because there are people to grant him this status and for him to rule over; in a World where he's the only person, he would have no status or power because there would be no one to recognize his status and obey him. So Rand fails in that she is unable to understand that altruism can be rationally selfish, and that the mightiest Caesar is only Caesar because there is someone to put a laurel crown on his head, and because there is a crowd to applaud him.
SUCKMYMUSCLE
