[unalone]

I think Atlas Shrugged assumes a fantastic future in which the amount of people who CAN step up to the plate have dwindled immensely, and in which many of the ones who COULD are already broken.

In real life as it stands today, Atlas Shrugged is not a plausible scenario. The trick to reading it without casting it aside in horror is realizing that Rand knows that, and that she's drawing things to their extremes to make a specific point about how she thinks human beings work. People who mock Atlas on that point are missing the point of the book.