I didn’t mean Rand herself. I meant the other guy was taking too broad strokes when it comes to participation. If a socialist becomes a capital owner and someone says calls them out for not being a socialist you can’t be “well they have to participate in the capitalist system so the criticism is moot”. They have to participate only to the extent of what is effectively forced upon them, but it doesn’t mean they have to go and start exploiting others. Same with Rand. Yeah, she had to participate in the taxation part of the process. She didn’t have to participate in the getting benefits part but she still chose to participate.

And the entire argument here is over whether or not she’s a hypocrite for not practicing what she preached. I think in that sense we’re in agreement that she’s a hypocrite because even if she herself has no standard she still preached about a certain standard. I honestly don’t care if it’s her lack of standards or too high standards of whatever ideology is present in her works, I simply see a disconnect between what she’s said and what she’s done and to me that’s hypocrisy. The other person however is trying to hold her to her own standard by trying to argue her actions are consistent with the ideology she presented.