OK, one more comment.
In his initial response to Doug’s essay, Roderick argued that Rand’s “pyramid of ability” contradicts “most people’s everyday experience.” He cites Kevin Carson: the “ ‘people who regulate what you do, in most cases, know less about what you’re doing than you do,’ and businesses generally get things done only to the extent that ‘rules imposed by people not directly involved in the situation’ are treated as ‘an obstacle to be routed around by the people actually doing the work.’”
Whereas I’m not familiar either with Carson’s work or with the empirical studies Bryan Caplan uses to dispute Roderick’s and Carson’s contention, it does seem that even if the statement above is true, all that follows is that the masses are not dull, but not that there is no pyramid of ability, or that “the people at the ‘bottom’ ” carry “the people at the ‘top.’” I have no doubt that assembly line workers, carpenters, plumbers and so on know more about their work than the owners of the business who would regulate them. But the owners know more about their work than the people they regulate. Who does more carrying of whom depends on whose intelligence, productive energy, and vision are greater. In my experience, in every area of human endeavor a few people stand out above others and benefit others much more than they are benefited by them: in school and college, in science, philosophy, medicine, music, technology, sports, and art. It would be odd if this were not the case in business.