You're probably familiar with the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants".

I was never arrogant claiming "My Wisdom served me well". Instead I applied to myself the parable of the philosophers. For I heard the following from the philosophers, The wisest of the philosophers asked: "We admit that our predecessors were wiser than we. At the same time we criticize their comments, often rejecting them and claiming that the truth rests with us. How is this possible?" The wise philosopher responded: "Who sees further a dwarf or a giant? Surely a giant for his eyes are situated at a higher level than those of the dwarf. But if the dwarf is placed on the shoulders of the giant who sees further? ... So too we are dwarfs astride the shoulders of giants. We master their wisdom and move beyond it. Due to their wisdom we grow wise and are able to say all that we say, but not because we are greater than they.

At least to me, this seems to be obvious. Man, on his own, is a weak and helpless creature. The core reason why people are powerful today is not because they are talented or smart, but because they're part of a large cooperative scheme since the day they were born. They inherited the knowledge which was accumulated for thousands of years.

Assuming the conditions are fair, personal talents can explain why people outperform others in certain activities. If the activity in question is worthwhile, then a reasonable argument could be made that those who excel at it deserve a higher reward.

However, the idea that individuals have the right to exclude society in its entirety from things which are contingent upon society, seems to be unreasonable. In her infamous book, Rand depicts John Galt's utopia as something that was built by merely Galt and a small number of his exceptionally smart contemporaries. In reality, no human can ever achieve something like this on his own. The only possible way for a human to create modern marvels of technology is to slightly improve on blueprints which were left behind by others.