The Ayn Rand Institute bootstrapped its way to a PPP Loan of at least $350K.
The Ayn Rand Institute, a nonprofit(??) “devoted to applying Rand’s ideas to current issues and seeking to promote her philosophical principles of reason, rational self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism,” has recently accepted—I assume grudgingly—government assistance to the tune of a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan between $350K and $1 million, according to The Wall Street Journal‘s Pat Fitzgerald. (Read the replies—they’re mostly delightful.)
The Ayn Rand Institute received a PPP loan of between $350K and $1 millionhttps://t.co/EOhMBQh40f
— Pat Fitzgerald (@PatFitzgerald23) July 6, 2020
To quote Rand herself in The Virtue of Selfishness, “The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.”
This leaves me with only one question: would Ayn Rand wear a mask or nah?
Jessie Gaynor
Jessie Gaynor is a senior editor at Lit Hub whose writing has appeared in McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, The Glow was published by Random House in 2023. You can buy it here.
