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Who is John Galt?
By SnowMonster | March 11, 2009
There has been a lot of talk about “Going Galt” these days. It started in the blogosphere with Dr. Helen Smith (here and here) and Michelle Malkin (here, here and here), and has been picked up by the traditional media. If you haven’t read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, I highly recommend that you do. But I warn you: it is going to scare you to death.
Looking at the comments on the articles by the main stream media about this subject, it is obvious that those who think the idea ridiculous never read the book. They don’t know who John Galt was, what he did, or why he did it. A typical comment from the NY Times looks like this:
I wish they would take a John Galt. All the people who made stupid decisions to loan money to people they knew couldn’t pay it back, the people who designed the mortgage derivatives, etc. Please feel free to go on strike. We would be better off without you. I volunteer to make your salary and do your job.
— Chris Booker
Booker clearly thinks that the guys on Wall St. who helped create this mess are the heroes in “Atlas Shrugged”. If this guy (or gal, Chris could be either) were to look into how a bunch of risky loans became a deluge of risky loans, he would find that the Government, under the guise of “fairness”, required these institutions to make a percentage of their loans to minority and blighted areas, areas neglected by the banks, not out of any sense of unfairness, but because there was too much risk. So what happened was these Evil CEOs colluded with the Socialist members of our Government, to the detriment of all. The characters they mostly align with are “Orren Boyle” and “James Taggart” who lobby the Government to protect their endeavors from crippling competition of more competent enterprises. The reason being is that times are tough and if they go out of business, their employees will lose their jobs. Does this have a ring of familiarity about it?
All of the comments that I read, until I got so frustrated and decided to write this, seem to think that John Galt was an evil CEO type person, the quintessential greedy capitalist, exploiting the masses.
Warning: Plot Spoiler
Galt was actually an Engineer who worked for a now defunct automobile company. The reason the company is defunct is because the progeny of the founder decided that everyone at the plant should get an equal cut of the profits. Galt was in Research and Development and had just invented an engine that would revolutionize automotive power. The owners were too preoccupied with their social experiment to notice that this would have made the company a fortune and when Galt realized he would be carrying the company, should they produce the engine, he walked and no one left behind had the intelligence to put the device into production. He viewed the situation as having “his mind raped” by people of less capability. He knew that he would profit no more than the shop floor sweeper from his idea. All of society would profit by his invention, but he would not.
All of the protagonists in the novel are people who just want to do the best job they can, to improve themselves and their companies. The profit motive is secondary, but not inconsequential. Their understanding of the world is that reward for excellence is a lifestyle that would facilitate further innovation. You can come up with big ideas when you aren’t worrying about food and shelter.
The antagonists are a cabal that views these people as stealing other people’s sweat to feather their nest. The point of the book is that the sweating masses benefit from the largesse of innovation produced by the likes of Dagney Taggart and Hank Reardon and when they remove themselves from society, society is no longer sweating, but freezing because no one is left to fix the utility infrastructure.
The book doesn’t only focus on industry. It takes a hard look at science and the arts and how they suffer from the socialistic agenda. A writer (“Balph Eubank”) writes socially conscious novels no one wants to read and feels he should be subsidized by the Government to get the message out because of all of the unfair competition from “trivial” writers that don’t advance society. Meanwhile, a popular musician (“Richard Halley”) “goes Galt” to protest when he realizes that society wants to have access to his music at a price he is unwilling to sell.
A noted Scientist (“Dr. Robert Stadler”) is commandeered by an unscrupulous, but politically connected, Scientist (“Dr. Simon Pritchett”) to work on science that advances social causes, rather than true science. This is highly reminiscent of the “science” of Global Warming.
Stadler is an early mentor of Galt, but realizes too late what Galt understood about socialist motives. Their motive is only to enslave society and get the innovators to pay for the chains. In the end, Stadler is destroyed by the machine of his own invention that was designed to enforce public order (for the good of the public, of course).
While you read Atlas, you will spend most of the time thinking that each approach the socialist cabal takes is just too outrageous. It dispels the “reality” a good story needs to “willingly suspend the sense of disbelief.” That is, until you read a newspaper and you start to cry because it’s all too real.
For those of you who think that “Going Galt” is a bunch of hooey and society would be better off without those anti-social louts, read the book and learn who the heroes and villains are.
We are the heroes, those of us who come up with clever ideas, great and small, that progresses society ever forward.
We are John Galt.
See you in the Gulch.
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March 11th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I had read Atlas Shrugged several years ago. It is scary how it is being paralleled in real life. Unfortunately, people like Chris Booker do not understand that these “greedy” people do not loan money to people that cannot pay it back. The only reason to do so is because you are forced to. Yes, it was done, and many truely greedy people jumped on board to take advantage of the banks forced generosity, and now we are all suffering.
“We the Living” is also another good Ayn Rand book (it was actually her first, but published later because they publishers at the time decided that she did not know anything about the USSR)
April 14th, 2009 at 5:28 am
“We The Living” was published in 1936 and definitely should be read. “Atlas Shrugged” will explain how we will arrive at out destination, “We The Living” IS our destination if the policies of today continue on their apparent path. One must take a choice of either freedom or equality; can’t have both.