West Bennett#Bioshock thoughts:
Rapture failed because Ryan started going against his own principles. He started trying to control others, and started making laws banning things he didn't like, like bibles and booze, from the outside.
THAT is what made Rapture fall, not the concept of the city itself. It gave Fontaine/Atlas the power he wanted.
All because Ryan wanted to keep control of Rapture's ideology. HE wanted to control the world of ideas within the city. That is what led to its downfall.
He should have never done that. He should have stuck with his original principles.
Rapture could have succeeded, just as America could succeed, as long as the communal infrastructure requirements (City facility and infrastructure maintenance, mostly) was paid for by a constantly adjusted Rapture Sales Tax on non-essential goods and services indexed SPECIFICALLY to the estimated cost of running the place (plus a small increased buffer to account for the uncertainty of future catastrophic events, lets say 5% to make up a number to stert with that can be adjusted as necessary if it's found to be insufficient) divided by the estimated Gross Domestic Product of the city.
Hell, a sales tax on plasmids, ADAM, and all that alone would probably pay for Rapture to run indefinitely, and that's not counting all of the other luxuries. It might have also slowed that booming market down long enough for people to realize for themselves the downsides of splicing.
This has always bothered me about the Bioshock series. Fans and even the writers of the games seem to suggest that libertarianism is the same as essentially anarchy, and that's why it failed.
It's not. Libertarianism is NOT anarchy. It's not NO government. It's the minimal government we can tolerate to protect ourselves from each other's worst inclinations and ensure the communal good (emergency services, etc.).
He forgot his own creed:
"A man chooses, a slave obeys".