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Current Events » in reply to Literacy and Rand

John Galt
Greg — (archived)

I read everything by Ayn Rand when I was 16. It's pretty heady stuff and for a while I really believed it. The basic premise is always how wonderful you really are and that it's everyone else's fault you're a failure. One story is about someone who wants to build this beautiful bridge and the dreaded regulators want them to build an ugly bridge instead. Sort of "how can I soar with the eagles when I'm surrounded by turkeys". It's very flattering, Ayn Rand is telling you that you are this wonderful person and that it's really the parasitic others, they're the ones who are holding you back. Don't help anyone and you are so much the richer, but the rub there is then they might not be interested in helpin you.
The problem is it doesn't work, you can't go off with John Galt and form this separate society because the society is a mythical Utopia and is inherently unstable. What they really mean is to go off to a gated community together and still make money off the turkeys, but not have to give anything back.
That's the fundamental problem of laissez faire, because you need to have the rubes to make the money off. If everyone was equally smart people wouldn't fall for any of the tricks, and wouldn't need the John Galts. Put them in a community together and they can't make money off each other, everyone is too clever.
What these people want is no laws to say their products have to be safe and no liability if they don't work or hurt someone. Caveat emptor makes it a lot easier to do business. I'm sure most of them deep down think Enron did nothing wrong, that ripping off California was really the market in action. Poor Ken Lay soaring like an eagle.
Nothing is stopping these people from leaving if they don't like it. How many times have you heard people like O'Reilly say love it or leave it? You notice they never want to do a John Galt themselves. They know if they did leave enough would stay to do their jobs, to be the Fountainheads and so they would just deny themselves not the rest of the people. When it boils down to is Ayn Rand had it backwards, that the John Galts need the people more than vice versa. people have tried to make a worker's paradise and it failed, let them go off and make an employer's paradise and see how they like it. You'd think a few of the Ayn Rand disciples would have done it by now if it was so easy.

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