Alex Burns

I remember writing an immediate response for the website Disinformation to the dotcom crash that occurred on 14th April 2000. I researched and wrote a post-mortem on the dotcom crash in 2003 as a Masters essay in strategic foresight. I read Robert Shiller, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and Charles P. Kindleberger on how speculative bubbles form. But for some people like fallen entrepreneur Jennifer Sultan the 2000 dotcom crash continues to have a personal fallout.

Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand influenced Paul Ryan‘s sociopolitical outlook. Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney has picked Ryan as his Vice President nominee so now the United States media is re-examining the Ryan-Rand connection and how it might influence the VP role (and Ryan’s possible foreign policy choices). Rand biographer Jennifer Burns suggests that Rand has moved from the libertarian fringes to “the heart of American politics” due to her philosophical appeal to business elites. Rand’s Objectivist philosophy is under greater scrutiny: The New Republic‘s former journalist Jonathan Chait once dubbed Objectivism as ‘wealthcare‘. Former Objectivists like Jonas Blank are also re-evaluating their earlier lives.