Posted on 10/15/2014 1:46:03 PM PDT by Rusty0604
Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,
“John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.”
Sick of the overbearing regulation, taxation, and entitlement mentality in society—in the book Atlas Shrugged, John Galt went to one entrepreneur after another to convince them that they just didn’t need to put up with it anymore.
They didn’t need to keep propping up a system that was trying to destroy them. Where’s the point in continuing to feed a parasitic system?
So one by one, these innovators and producers simply closed up shop, deciding to just “shrug” and abandon what they were providing thanklessly to the looters.
Today many companies are doing the same. They may not be abandoning their businesses altogether, but they are moving them out of the hands of the parasites by moving their tax bases abroad.
In Ayn Rand’s book, the Economic Planning Bureau dealt with this by legislating that no businesses could leave: “[a]ll the manufacturing establishments of the country, of any size and nature, were forbidden to move from their present locations, except when granted a special permission to do so.”
In real life today, we have a string of policies being proposed to similarly discourage companies from leaving, or failing that, to try to claw as much money as possible from them first.
First, take the H.R. 5278: No Federal Contracts for Corporate Deserters Act, which bars federal contracts for American companies that have gone overseas for tax purposes.
Then take the H.R. 5549: Pay What You Owe Before You Go Act, which seeks the seizure of unrepatriated corporate revenue.
Even the language used by these bill’s supporters is eerily similar to the novel, as politicians call for corporations to pay their “fair share” and bemoan that Americans have to “pick up the tax burden inverted companies shrug off.”
At the time, Rand might have thought that she was writing about an extreme, fictional society. But it seems that the Land of the Free is eager to exceed even her worst expectations.
When she wrote about the “Economic Emergency Law”, which forbade any discrimination “for any reason whatever against any person in any matter involving his livelihood”, she was likely thinking about criteria such as race, gender, and age.
She might have even considered they would try to prevent employers from making judgments based on a person’s ability, though I’m sure she would not have even imagined what politicians have actually come up with in the US.
Try the S. 1972/ H.R. 3972: Fair Employment Opportunity Act that proposed to prohibit discrimination according to a person’s history of unemployment.
Or even worse, the S. 1837: Equal Employment for All Act that would have prohibited employers from even looking at prospective employee’s credit ratings.
The literary similarities don’t just stop with corporations either. Compare the fictional Project Soybean, designed to “recondition” people’s dietary habits to the actual H.R. 4904: Vegetables Are Really Important Eating Tools for You (VARIETY).
Tell me, which one sounds more ludicrous to you?
With each new piece of legislation being proposed in the Land of the Free, Atlas Shrugged seems to be ever more prophetic.
While even the most terrifying elements of the book are coming true, so are the reactions.
People and companies are leaving, refusing the put up with the looting of their efforts any longer.
Despite politicians’ desperate attempts to stop it, Atlas is already shrugging.
I’ve heard that “Atlas Shrugged” is near the top of the list of abandoned books, so I decided to force myself to finish reading in prior to the release of the 3rd movie (I made it by about a week!). I wish I’d read it 30 years ago, but it would not have had the same sense of irony and that we are actually living the decline of a nation that Rand wrote about half a century ago. The bills cited just underscore the fact that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
It’s getting closer:
“Directive 10-289
In the name of the general welfare, to protect the people’s security, to achieve full equality and total stability, it is decreed for the duration of the national emergency that:
Point One. All workers, wage earners and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment, under penalty of a term in jail. The penalty shall be determined by the Unification Board, such Board to be appointed by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. All persons reaching the age of twenty-one shall report to the Unification Board, which shall assign them to where, in its opinion, their services will best serve the interests of the nation.
Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business, under pentalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of any and all of their property.
Point Three. All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, processes and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift by means of Gift Certificates to be signed voluntarily by the owners of all such patents and copyrights. The Unification Board shall then license the use of such patents and copyrights to all applicants, equally and without discrimination, for the purpose of eliminating monopolistic practices, discarding obsolete products and making the best available to the whole nation. No trademarks, brand names or copyrighted titles shall be used. Every formerly patented product shall be known by a new name and sold by all manufacturers under the same name, such name to be selected by the Unification Board. All private trademarks and brand names are hereby abolished.
Point Four. No new devices, inventions, products, or goods of any nature whatsoever, not now on the market, shall be produced, invented, manufacturered or sold after the date of this directive. The Office of Patents and Copyrights is hereby suspended.
Point Five. Every establishment, concern, corporation or person engaged in production of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth produce the same amount of goods per year as it, they or he produced during the Basic Year, no more and no less. The year to be known as the Basic or Yardstick Year is to be the year ending on the date of this directive. Over or under production shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification Barod.
Point Six. Every person of any age, sex, class or income, shall henceforth spend the same amount of money on the purchase of goods per year as he or she spent during the Basic Year, no more and no less. Over or under purchasing shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification Board.
Point Seven. All wages, prices, salaries, dividends, profits, interest rates and forms of income of any nature whatsoever, shall be frozen at their present figures, as of the date of this directive.
Point Eight. All cases arising from and rules not specifically provided for in this directive, shall be settled and determined by the Unification Board, whose decisions will be final.”
To amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to provide an incentive for households participating in the supplemental nutrition assistance program to purchase certain nutritious fruits and vegetables that are beneficial to good health.
Section 1. Short title
This Act may be cited as the “ Vegetables Are Really Important Eating Tools for You (VARIETY) Act of 2014 ”.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr4904/text
“Atlas Shrugged” is now a documentary.
I bought Atlas Shrugged about ten years ago on a whim at an airport bookstore to while away the hours in departure gates. Took several weeks to finish. While reading I kept saying to myself, holy crap, that’s happening.
Subjects, not citizens.
Oh, yeah. I did too. Anyone who thought it far-fetched (and that was almost everyone at the time) must be wondering about that old deja vu.
A shameless link to Publius' and my book on the topic. It started here on FR. Who Is John Galt?
Rand is laughing at us now, and it isn't nice laughter... ;-)
What do all of those bills have in common?
They all sound like something that would have appeared in Atlas Shrugged.
And all would likely gain the enthusiastic approval of 70% of our low-info electorate.
“Directive 10-289 aka Hillary’s platform for recovery.
It seems to me that Ted Kennedy was the one that implemented the deserters act that allowed him to remove his trust fund from US taxes.
Are any of these going to pass?
I hope the Convention of States amends the Constitution to ban juvenile titling of legislation..
I’ll tell you what seems more ludicrous to me ... that people use a work of “meh” fiction to use as a foundation, or argument, for anything. Personal economic beliefs aside, I find the fixation with this fixation an utter waste of time.
I’ve been halfway expecting a modern 10-289 directive to be proclaimed any day.
I wished I read it as a teenager. Rand explains a lot. I have a few differences with her but not many.
bkmk
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Something about your comment hit me in a peculiar way. It is just a realization that we have always had low information voters, which was just fine with very limited government that didn't propose to manage everything AND as long as the low-info voters were a least moral.
Those safeties no longer exist.
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