'Atlas Shrugged': With America on the brink, should you 'go Galt' and strike?

[onehandle]

Irvine, Calif. – "Atlas Shrugged" has finally reached the big screen and, especially among tea partiers, Ayn Rand is being hailed a prophet. How could she have anticipated, more than 50 years ago, a United States spinning out of financial control, plagued by soaring spending and crippling regulations? How could she have painted villains who seem ripped from today’s headlines?

There’s Wesley Mouch, who in the face of failed government programs screams like Rep. Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts for wider powers. There’s Eugene Lawson, “the banker with a heart,” who like former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is ever ready with a bailout. There’s Mr. Thompson, who like President Obama seeks to rally the country behind pious platitudes. There’s Orren Boyle, who like President Bush says that we must abandon free-market principles to save the free market.

Time to 'go Galt'?And in the face of this onslaught, what can you do? Should you, like Rand’s heroes, “go Galt,” stop working, retreat to a secluded valley, and try to rebuild only when the country has collapsed?

Rand was asked these very questions in her own lifetime. Her answers might surprise you. In the 1970s, America was in a deep financial crisis (a new word, stagflation, had to be coined), urban violence was rampant, and power-seeking politicians like President Nixon instituted wage and price controls that led to, among other things, gas stations with no gas. How, people wondered, could Rand have foreseen all this? Was she a prophet? No, she answered. She had simply identified the basic cause of why the country was veering from crisis to new crisis.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110429/cm_csm/380380_1

I resisted posting this in the gungeon. Barely.

[SpiralHawk]

1. Ayn Rand goes SOCIALIST at the End of Her Days

Unable to cope with her badass butt & butter habits, she falls to her knees and pleads with Big Government to bail out her failed & sick Republicon-Objectivist butt. As usual.

Proving once again that hypocrisy is a core Republicon-Objectivist Family Value.

[regnaD kciN]

6. I remember when the Christian Science Monitor was a reputable newspaper...

How the might have fallen.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. The fact that there is such a thing as the Ayn Rand Institute

and this twit is a "fellow" at said institute is disturbing enough. I would equate the Ayn Rand Institute with Glenn Beck University insofar as intellectual rigor in concerned. How can the fanboy author of this bit of dreck be any older than about 19, since that's the typical age for maximum self-absorbed delusions of Galt-ness combined with total cluelessness about almost everything. Kid, go take a bong hit and finish your homework. What an idiot.

[sendero]

3. The economy is on its knees.

... largely due to the implementation of Libertarian policies as carried out by easy-money Libertarian Alan Greenspan.

AND due to the total lack of regulation as promoted by Libertarian philopophy based on the moronically naive belief that big business will always do the right thing.

These morons have a lot of nerve. THEY ARE THE PROBLEM.

Libertarian economics is nothing more or less than a system of talking points trying to add some kind of moral framework justification for pathological greed and selfishness.

[Turbineguy]

4. If our society was like this,

then yes, perhaps these fictional solutions might work. In fact it seems to me to be more like late 18th century France. And we all know how that ended.

[ikri]

5. If those who saw themselves as Galt all left...

Most wouldn't even notice the difference. Many would probably be better off since the "Galts" are usually insufferable cretins with a misplaced belief in their own abilities.

How many companies these days are run by inventors and engineers? If the company is big enough then it wouldn't be damaged by the MD going on strike, they'd have contingencies in place to make sure that the company keeps going. What happened to Microsoft when Bill Gates left? What has happened to Apple since Steve Jobs has gone on medical leave? Nothing. The companies are more important than any individual at the top.

The whole Galt fascination also ignores free-market theories. If the genius owner-operator of a business leaves a market and their company collapses then surely there's a massive gap in the market for new companies to move into. Galt is simply code for a belief in the inherent superiority of the ruling classes - We're better than you! Without us you'd starve. They believe that they are our betters without whom we'd suddenly forget how to rub two sticks together to start a fire.

[Buns_of_Fire]

7. They wanna "Go Galt?" Fine. Then GO, already!

I'm getting old and cranky enough so that idle threats mean less than nothing to me. They ain't going nowhere.

You're right, of course. Very few would even notice if they were raptured to Galt-Heaven tomorrow morning. The sun would still rise in the east, and the companies they're busily running into the ground would probably see a resurgence in inventiveness and vitality.

(Where's Bob the Angry Flower when you need him?)

[kenny blankenship]

8. Throat slitting begins at home?

Go for it, teabaggers, if you feel so strong. You've nothing to lose but your incomes, homes, families and next meal.

[johnaries]

9. Please, I'm begging you, if you think you're so damned important

that you feel any inclination to "go Galt" - DO IT!