I have solved my dire reading situation

No more about Atlas Shrugged. That book is so massive that even after I put it down, it somehow lives on!
I think the thing to remember is that the contractors who build the homeless shelter do as much if not more for the people inside than the people who run it. More importantly, their good is objective, while social interventions can be corrupt. For example, the guy who put the nails in the roof literally and inarguably did that, while inside could be a completely mismanged and dangerous place. The people raising funds for the building of the shelter have completed something objective, but the builders themselves could build the shelter without the fundraisers, while the fundraisers could not build the house without the builders, engineers, and suppliers. Do we often think of construction workers as people who dedicate their lives to helping the homeless? No, but they literally do more to help the homeless than anyone else! They turn homeless people into homeful people! If there were no builders, everyone would be homeless. If there were no fundraisers, a small percentage of the population might be homeless. I don't know why it should be one versus the other though. The Rand argument comes in when people try to diminish the role of industry in improving peoples lives. Suppose a guy drives a truck full of food to a town - it's full supply, for some reason - and feeds the 90% of the population who can afford to pay him, while community workers work to make sure the other 10% get some of the food as well. The truck driver may become rich, and people might look to him to feed the rest. But why would it be up to him to make sure that additional 10% get food? If the other 90% won't help, why would he, who fed 90% of the town be held in contempt for the 10% he did not feed?

The real world is of course more complicated, but also simpler, I think. Simpler in that I don't think it would be that hard to find agreement for some people to chip in so that that the alzheimers patient could eat, and the legless guy with no money, and the guy with the mental age of a four year old, and heck, even the chronically drunk guy would probably get a pass. That's kind of how it works now.

But no more about that! I pushed it away. For those of you following my reading travails, I have settled on Toilers of the Sea, by my man Victor Hugo, who has never let me down so far, and on the side Plato’s Republic. I feel like I should probably write a paper or something on the Republic, since it’s a college type of book, but the philosophy writing style of the book-about-which-I-will-write-no-more, along with Candide earlier this year got me interested in philosophical discourse in general. I’m not really hooked yet, but still interested. I think I like the slow and methodical way the writers make their points. Instead of long run on sentences, they explore each point before moving on to the next which either debunks or elaborates or both on an earlier point. Patience seems to be the permeating feeling of the Republic, because they haven’t said much yet, but I suspect they are going to say so much more (than not much). I haven’t picked up on a thesis yet.

Toilers of the Sea has a playful tone, full of the kinds of details that characterize the writer. A tongue in cheek description of the causes of misunderstanding of a person’s nature. It’s early, but as of now, Toilers of the Sea has washed the bad taste that a Thousand Little Pieces and Atlas Shrugged left in my mouth.