Likewise, today’s Roarks and Galts either abandon or scuttle projects they consider too gutted or poisoned by government parasitism to be allowed to survive. Creators euthanize their businesses or sell them to suckers before the government’s taxes, regulations, and mandates overtake them.

The egalitarian statists take pride in attempting to kill the golden geese, but do not understand that those entrepreneurial geese also provide eggs that average people eat…they provide jobs. Rather than wait to be killed, the creators simply lay off their employees and withdraw to retirement.

Those that think Rand’s allegories are infantile do not understand that meritocracy is required for long term human survival. It is the kindergarten philosophy of equal sharing of all goods that is infantile, and deadly if adopted by adult society.

As Harry Bailey says at the end, George is the “richest man in town.” That is, he has friends who do not desert him when he is in trouble. Any other kind of riches is an illusion.

I think the movie very well captures the frustration that George has because his dreams are for something else and he continually makes choices based upon his moral and ethical world-view. I agree that his view as a child, and young man, as to what will make him happy may not be what will actually make him happy, and that the choices are valid ones for him–but I’m not sure why those choices had to make him so poor. I often wonder what development decisions his building and loan would have gotten involved in in the post-WWII period when things began to boom–although we know that Bedford Falls–which is very specifically set in Upstate NY–in fact a strong case has been made that it is patterned after a particular community in the Finger Lakes area around Rochester (Seneca Falls–they even market themselves that way in some places) did not thrive, for macroeconomic reasons and high taxes. So the movie ends at one particular historical point in time–when everything else will change.

But the reason the movie is so successful is that no matter what choice one makes, it is a choice, so that it almost always fails to live up to the ideal that may exist in one’s head of what might have been if the other choice had been made. Everyone can relate to that emotion, to the frustrations of everyday living, to the fact that living with other people always means that you have to give in some of the time. Sure, this particular person has been selfless–if marrying the one you love is considered selfless– so he’s more heroic; but even he shows glimpses of being a little down to earth–those wonderful scenes when he grabs Uncle Billy by the collar and says-”Where’s that money, you silly, stupid old man?” Or when he’s mean to the teacher, or yells at his kids, or is sarcastic to the angel–at least I could relate to those scenes. Most of the time his heroism isn’t grand–just doing the right thing in the circumstances–who could deny his brother the opportunity to do what he’s good at? And at that point he could have shut down the building and loan–except he gets married and she wants to stay in town, and then they have a baby. So, I can still identify with the movie, and I think it has a lot of valid points, but on the economics I think its a little too black and white–which kind of lessens it for me now.

Regardless of the political theorems we engage in, since the dawn of time humans have always been torn between our better and worst natures; George Bailey and Mr. Potter are their personifications.
If we are honest with ourselves, as much as Bedford Falls seems to delight us with its virtue and rectitude, who here hasn’t even for a time, longed to visit and indulge in Pottersville?

The message of self-sacrifice is and always will be subversive, as long as humans are confronted with the choice between surrendering our self and aggrandizing our self.

Ther is nothing instrinsically evil about commerce, anymore than there is anything evil about sexuality. Its only when robbed of the ennobling aspects of selflessness that they become destructive.

The film’s truth is that robbed of people like George Bailey and his self-sacrificing ways, Bedford Falls does in fact turn into Pottersville.