Ayn Rand’s warning was not about some distant dystopia. It was about the moment a country starts punishing production and rewarding political access.
Look at Liberal Canada.
If you want to build, drill, mine, farm, hire, invest, or expand, you need permission from people who produce nothing but paperwork. If you play the subsidy game, hire the right lobbyist, repeat the right slogans, and flatter the right ministers, money magically appears.
Work gets taxed. Risk gets regulated. Failure gets funded. Competence gets buried under process. Graft gets renamed “partnership.” Waste gets called “investment.” Favours get dressed up as policy.
This is how countries decline. Not all at once. Slowly, stupidly, and with press releases.
Canada does not need more managers of decline. It needs a government that respects the people who actually produce the wealth in the first place.