Bioshock is a shit criticism of objectivism and of capitalism in general >the people forced to work manual labor jobs were upset at their unreasonable working conditions and low pay, producing class hatred, which led them to making more money on the side out of desperation by working for Fontaine as smugglers. In a country full of scientists and engineers, where mundane work is a scarcity, it would produce a country where these people have more leverage to negotiate higher wages and better conditions, not less. This is a key component in the fall of Rapture, and only someone who doesn't understand how supply and demand work in relation to labor could come up with this. So taking that into account, the fishermen are not desperate, and they are not interested in smuggling for Fontaine. Fontaine is now in prison, or is restricted to a much smaller operation. >Fontaine made his fortunes by using the profits from smuggling (that he shouldn't have), to fund Tenenbaum's genetic research, producing ADAM, which can modify your genetic code, then by buying up patents for genes so as to benefit from the exclusive rights to them from the commercial sale of on-the-fly genetic re-engineering. This is another core element that a lot of people miss, objectivists and capitalists in general disagree with the concept of intellectual property, removing that makes ADAM a lot less profitable. It also means that a lot of the events, such as those in Arcadia, would not have been possible, since they relied on intellectual property. >ADAM has side effects, the way it works is essentially a viral stem-cell cancer, the new genetic sequences are unstable, and so when the modified cells replicate, they do so imperfectly at a higher than normal rate, resulting in an outbreak of tumors that can be removed by the use of more ADAM, which means tumors form faster and at a higher rate as more of the genetic code is now unstable and improperly replicating. tis is treated as being good for business. This is not good for business, while it means that your existing customers are now massive consumers of your product and heavily dependent upon it for their own survival, it means your customer base is literally dying off, they aren't having children, either. worse, other who have yet to use your product are seeing the people who had used it get sick and die. For any product, it's not going to be the entire population that instantly buys it up. Most people will not be using ADAM when it comes out, and they will see the people who use it benefit for a time, then die horribly. Keeping this as your business model does not equate to market dominance, but to a society where no one uses your product, and you have almost no customers. Even if it weren't killer, the very fact that it produces dependency is enough to cause issues. There's a reason why the really scary drugs aren't the ones that do well for drug dealers, instead it's the ones which have less obvious health risks for the consumers. If Fontaine was smart, he'd fix the issues with his product as soon as the solution was presented, instead of getting Tenenbaum to sit on the fix, precisely because making your product safe is good for business, especially in a place where the media is free enough to report the issues with ADAM as soon as they are uncovered.. Again, the makers of Bioshock know fuck all about basic logic of how things work in a capitalist economy. >they advertise their products as "100% safe" on the "Fresh Hair" radio commercials Consent is only meaningful is it is informed, an objectivist society would have arrested Fontaine for murder by selling poison, or for fraud in addition to murder. There's no way around this, no libertarian society would have tolerated this. If he gets off due to hiding behind his corporation, the it illustrates another misrepresentation, a lot of libertarians consider corporate personhood the same way they consider intellectual property, something to be abolished. so he'd have no such protections from accountability. That "fresh hair" ad is Fontaine's "guilty" verdict. At this point, Fontaine has no smugglers, he has no ADAM, he has nothing that makes him a threat to Rapture. Done in by actual economic patterns and actual ultra-capitalist policy, he's at most a two-bit gangster with a submarine running a small smuggling operation, maybe making a lot of money off of that, but very likely to be caught soon after, as he doesn't have the massive empire of organized crime or corporations to cover for him, most likely the fishermen turn him in as soon as he makes his proposal to them. Something else: >Tenenbaum discovers that an enzyme produced by a specific species of sea slug can regenerate wounds, and that it has the potential to also alter the genetic code of people to another programmed configuration with some tweaking, yet cannot find anyone to fund her research except smugglers. I found this too be very fucking hard to believe, it's not ever explained how this is the reality, but it just wouldn't happen, especially in the ultra-scientific society of Rapture, she has the slug, she can demonstrate the properties of it's secretions, it's not like she's asking anyone to take her word on faith alone. Just the medical applications of instantly healing small instances of nerve damage is groundbreaking in terms of profitability. The whole story of Rapture is based around deliberately changing objectivist and libertarian ideology to fit the narrative, then deliberately ignoring centuries of data regarding economic patterns in order to make the story work. All just to condemn ideas the authors didn't like. It's a hack job of a criticism.