Sales of Atlas Shrugged are surging. It has been a good long while since I read the book, but my bet would be that the current economic downturn will reduce rather than increase the circulation of Rand’s ideas. Moments like these tend to bring home the role of luck in determining people’s economic fortunes. Everyone knows someone who is struggling not because of any lack of talent or industry but because of forces beyond his control. That doesn’t, I think, undermine the case for free markets on the merits, since that case has never really rested on the idea that everyone gets what they deserve. But it does undermine it psychologically.