[reggieband]

I'm reminded of an interview I saw with Ayn Rand a long time ago. I can't find the exact interview anymore but I did find an interview where she describes the general idea [1]. It is a central tenant of Objectivism that we should be doing more for gifted children based on the assumption that gifted adults contribute more to society.

We see echoes of this philosophy in our culture of belief in 10x engineers. I see it in Jeff Bezos' management philosophy of doubling down on success or in Google's philosophy of killing off under-performing projects. It is the mantra of VC capitalism where we'd rather kill middling projects that are limping along in the hopes or redirecting capital to the one 100x return behemoth.

I find Rand's ideas repugnant myself but I always admired that she plainly and unabashedly spoke them. Nowadays people who believe that kind of stuff are much more subtle.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1HD8KXn-kI