If you've got the right interpretation, than I don't have much of a problem with Rand. I suppose the issue would be just how much more productive are these "highly productive" people. I remember something more like the Wikipedia description of the novel.
I see where you are coming from. The "cliff notes"/wiki summary of the book really focuses on the plot, and the plot primarily concerns the highly productive people going on strike and essentially shutting down the world's economy. But when you read the whole book, it is really filled with the theme that interfering with anyone's right to act in their own rational self interest puts a damper on the entire economy which we all rely on in our own self interested ways.
I can't recall specific examples, but something along the lines of "If the guy shoveling coal into the train engine's furnace isn't acting for his own benefit, then what motivation does he have to do his job?"
The main point of Rand's philosophy is rational self-interest. One should act in accordance with this principle. The strikers are doing so, not to hurt others, but to force a societal collapse and then to rebuild the system according to rules of rational self interest. But the strikers are striking because they can and because it serves their own self interest best. Each has to make their own decision to strike. The concept that striking and causing a collapse of society is bad for the general public does not enter into the equation.
The conflict between the strikers and those who have yet to strike can be seen by looking at Dagny's efforts to keep her railroad in business even as all the other strikers are leaving (as they all do one by one). She fights to the end, until finally she realizes the futility of operating in an environment that does not recognize her right to pursue her rational self interests. Then she strikes.
Although the end result is societal collapse, it isn't the main purpose of the strikers. They simply refuse to work under a confiscatory system of economics and governance that refuses them the gains of their own hard work. It is all about individual freedom.
from the wiki of Atlas Shrugged:
"The strikers believe that they are crucial to a society that exploits them, denying them freedom or failing to acknowledge their right to self-interest, and the gradual collapse of civilization is triggered by their strike. This is not to say that they believed that giving the creators their due would cost civilization. Rather, the strikers believe that the current irrational altruist/collectivist culture impeded them and therefore the rest of society as well. Thus it would serve no one's interest to continue to allow himself to be exploited,
although the strike is not primarily motivated by the harm the current state of society does to others as well."