This is clearly a response to ATLAS SHRUGGED, and it both succeeds and fails to achieve its full potential as a response. Because I knew it was a response to Rand, the frequent lecture breaks annoyed me a lot less than they certainly would have lacking that warning. 
 This story succeeded at painting a compelling world, moving the reader along at a good pace, and developing believable characters with understandable motivations. However, the John Galt surrogate was presented as a flat moustache-twirling devil. I could understand it if we only saw the villain from an outside POV, but it's inexcusable to have someone be that flat whose POV we move into. If you want to make your point and show the world in shades of grey, then make every character believable; this was wasted potential and could have elevated the book from good to great. On the flip side, the hero was also shown to be right; neither extreme explored was the right answer. Idealism of all varieties show cracks and falls apart under the stresses applied by the real world.