Ayn Rand Institute Live!

Ayn Rand’s original screenplay for The Fountainhead was 283 pages long. The final screenplay for the 1949 film was less than half that length. Much of her work, therefore, has never been available to the public. The OCON program includes a performance of several scenes as originally planned and written. This follow-up talk provides additional information about Ayn Rand’s choices in the 1944 screenplay regarding the order and contexts of scenes and includes scenes rendered visually with no dialogue.

Recorded live on July 4, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Having spent much of the past two years offering psychological support to entrepreneurs, Dr. Gorlin has witnessed how much support the most ambitious people need—even, sometimes especially, when they already have the right philosophy. This talk will recount what she has learned about the psychological needs and challenges of entrepreneurs, and what this has taught her about the work we all need to do on ourselves in order to build the lives and careers of our choosing.

Recorded live on July 5, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Emil Kocher, Swiss surgeon in the late 1800s, is known mostly for revolutionizing surgery of the thyroid. In his hands, the mortality rate of thyroid removal dropped from 50% to less than 1%. But tragedy soon followed triumph: before Kocher, no one could take out the thyroid gland. So no one asked if you should. The consequence of his surgical genius was the belated realization that the thyroid plays a crucial role in growth and development — much to the dismay of his young patients. This is the story of one man’s professional crisis, and how he met the challenge.

Recorded live on July 5, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

The most significant figure in the history of logic after Aristotle is 19th-century German philosopher Gottlob Frege. Frege’s work in logic and philosophy is foundational to the “analytic” tradition in philosophy and has had a strong influence on mathematics and computer science. This lecture discusses his revolution in logic and critiques its philosophical foundations.

Recorded live on July 6, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Dr. Binswanger defends a radical position on immigration: the moral imperative to end all forms of governmental interference with freedom of travel. Crossing a national border, he argues, should be as free, unregulated, and unsupervised as crossing a state border. He takes on all the common objections to open borders, including: “Immigrants take our jobs away,” “Open borders abandon sovereignty,” “Immigration is harmful in a welfare state,” and “Immigrants will vote the wrong way.” He concludes by explaining why freedom of entry is of special importance to Objectivists.

Recorded live on July 2, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Mr. Douglas will describe how insider trading laws criminalize several forms of economic inequality. Property law generally protects a business owner’s freedom to profit from trade secrets and business opportunities, and by setting prices. By contrast, the prohibition on insider trading undermines the usefulness of information for its owners and treats less informed investors as victims of investors with information advantages. The result is a system of regulation that actively redistributes and even nullifies investors’ wealth—all in the name of protecting property rights in information.

Recorded live on July 5, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

The Bolsheviks began as an insignificant, minority group that seized power in 1917, yet they maintained it for seven decades and established an empire with global reach. The regime struggled from day one, and yet it managed to sustain itself and expand. There are useful lessons to draw from this for the student of history and ideas. What does the Soviet Union’s history teach us about the nature of evil? How does it survive, and how important is the role played by the sanction of the good?

Recorded live on July 7, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Rapid economic opening and growth since the 1980s led many to expect the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to undergo political liberalization and assume a business-friendly environment. This panel will explore contemporary conditions in the Communist Party–ruled state and seek answers to the coming challenges posed by its approach to economics: What are the implications for foreign corporations investing in the PRC? What risks do they face to their intellectual property? How is the Party leveraging technology for geopolitical gain?Recorded live on July 6, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

During the seventy-plus-year history of the People’s Republic of China, it has transformed from a Leninist state, through chaos and technocrats, to what has been dubbed “market authoritarianism.” How can this change be accounted for under the continued reign of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? This talk will explore the consistencies and inconsistencies in the CCP’s governance that have brought us to today and lay the groundwork for exploring what it will become tomorrow.Recorded live on July 6, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Ayn Rand made abundantly clear that the morality of altruism had no basis in reason. Where then, if not from logical arguments, did it originate? It is not enough to point to irrational philosophies: the ultimate question is, where did philosophers get the idea? This talk will explore Ayn Rand’s own views on the motives that led thinkers to adopt this irrational morality. The talk will also examine how her views on this subject developed and deepened between the writing of The Fountainhead and her later nonfiction essays. It will also compare her views to Nietzsche’s views in The Genealogy of Morals, which are similar in certain respects but profoundly different in others.

Recorded live on July 3, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.