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Novo Wagondia wrote:

Ah yes, I forgot the ultimate objective in Atlas Shrugged is for the capitalists to repopulate the Earth once the workers had killed each other off. Perhaps this entire annual NS event has been engineered by Francisco D'Anconia, Andrew Ryan, and Meredith Stout, from beyond the fourth wall. With Rapture playing the role of Galt's Gulch.

That’s a bleaker interpretation than I think Rand was going for: the “strike of the mind” has devastating effects but from the rest of the book it’s clear that a disaster was imminent anyway; people were starving across the country due to disastrous decisions and poor quality equipment and such. They are trying to hurry things along and get the inevitable collapse and rebuilding over with, rather than prolonging things even further.
They certainly don’t mind the looters killing each other though. I don’t think any of them outright wanted anyone to die though, except when they killed several looters/guards rescuing Galt; several of them had excellent relationships with their staff, like Dagny with Eddie Willers.