Rand, or her followers at least, have marketed her very well. Sadly once you read one of her books, the substance falls out pretty fast in my opinion. She has a tendency to take some basic ideas, which are decent on the face of it, and extend them to irrational extremes. She seems to be into the idea of Übermenschen (super humans), except instead of being super because they're smart, they're super because they have piles of money. To her money in itself is a virtue, one that should neither be stolen nor given away at any time, but despite that her characters, even the heroes, will often steal and give away money in any case. They also tend to be pretty rapey, but evidently she believed that all sex is rape, so I guess she couldn't really write it any other way. In fact, she frowns on altruism of any kind, preferring what she calls rational-selfishness. But it doesn't seem to really work. I remember at one point reading her struggle to explain why it's okay to have and take care of kids if rational-selfishness is so important. She almost implies that you ought to bill your kids for the cost of care plus profit, but seems to just drop the subject before really getting anywhere with it, ultimately relegating spouses and kids to being some kind of necessary evil.
Basically, on the surface her philosophy can seem attractive, but once you get into it in depth it ends up making a lot less sense. I'd say it might be worth looking into just for knowing what she said, since so many people are enamored with it, but at the end of the day it's too looney to actually abide by.
