Posted on 08/06/2012 5:39:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
Entrepreneurs must take action. Now. And by ‘action,’ I mean protesting the federal government’s unconstitutional taxes and regulations. Or, the guilt is theirs if the economy tanks. Luckily, entrepreneurs have two role models to help them develop action plans: John Galt and Steve Jobs.
Last week, I wrote that in order to save our economy and culture we need more entrepreneurs to emulate Ayn Rand’s fictional hero in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt . Certainly, emulating Galt is a challenge as he is a fictional hero who seems larger-than-life. But it is hardly an impossible feat; the late billionaire co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, was a true-to-life John Galt.
If you are an entrepreneur, I challenge you to pick the role model you most identify with—Galt or Jobs—and take action before you lose your profits, freedom and ability to innovate.
Become involved in public policy
Entrepreneurs can no longer stand by and “take it” when the federal government unveils excessive taxes and regulations. Instead, they must push Congress for their overhaul.
Repeat this loudly if you are an entrepreneur: "Get the hell out of my way!" This was Galt's response to the government puppets trying to control him. Jobs, a lifelong Democrat, also took this attitude toward the federal government. Jobs told Obama that he needed to ease up on regulating businesses and catering to unions or American jobs would inevitably flow to China. He also challenged Obama’s notion that every American should get a (taxpayer-subsidized) four-year college degree. Galt too balked at how higher education was becoming a branch of the state.
Both Galt and Jobs believed that entrepreneurs, not the federal government, should retain ownership and oversight over production. If the government is telling you as an entrepreneur how to run your business or if you are spending more time filling out forms for government inspectors than you are growing your business, then you must speak up.
‘The guilt is ours… If we who were the movers, the providers, the benefactors of mankind, were willing to let the brand of evil be stamped upon us and silently to bear the punishment for our virtues—what sort of “good” did we expect to triumph in the world?’ steel magnate and friend of Galt, Henry Rearden, ponders in Atlas Shrugged.
Rand’s philosophy is that when someone creates something, they have a moral obligation to oversee its production. For example, when the government tries to use Rearden’s metal for a mystery “Project X,” he says: “I do not wish to sell my Metal to those whose purpose is kept secret from me. I created that Metal. It is my moral responsibility to know for what purpose I permit it to be used.”
If you don’t speak up, and your company achieves success, the government will use your name to try marketing socialist policies to the American public. The government stooges in Atlas Shrugged did this with a gun to Galt’s back as they pitched the “John Galt Plan.” President Obama essentially did this when he used Steve Jobs’ name (after he was dead and could no longer defend himself) at the 2012 State of the Union Address where he pitched socialist policies like the Buffett Rule as a way to create “…the next Steve Jobs.”
Be a ‘flame-spotter’
You can’t protest the federal government alone. You must recognize and recruit other entrepreneurs and bring out the best in them. Encourage them to push themselves, be courageous and join you in defending entrepreneurial freedom in the marketplace. Both Galt and Jobs did this.
When Galt walked off the job at a company (Twentieth Century Motor) that had become a socialized bureaucracy, he said: “I went out to become a flame-spotter. I made it my job to watch for those bright flames in the growing night of savagery, which were the men of ability, the men of the mind—to watch their course, their struggle, and their agony—and to pull them out… I gave them the pride they did not know they had.”
Galt brought his ‘men of the mind’ into a secluded community called Galt’s Gulch to rest, preserve their ideas and innovate freely before they would return and restore American capitalism: “The road is cleared. We are going back to the world.”
Likewise, Jobs recruited the best and brightest into Apple—a company that created wealth, jobs and built products that revolutionarily improved the lives of countless ordinary Americans. One of his employees, Debi Coleman, explained Jobs’ charismatic management style thus: “You did the impossible, because you didn’t realize it was impossible.”
Jobs also rallied his fellow Silicon Valley tech giants like Eric Schmidt, Mark Zuckerberg, John Chambers, Larry Ellison, Carol Bartz and Reed Hastings; he organized a meeting where they attempted to advise Obama on how to be more pro- business.
Galt’s motor. Jobs’ iPad. Both innovators had a vision—which they executed in a virtuous way—thereby attracting other talented people to their vision and revolutionizing the world. Now, go. Be like them.
nice article..We the People need to become as politically active as the left has been in the USA since the 1930’s...
” We the People need to become as politically active as the left has been “
I’ll get right on it - as soon as I get all of these forms filled out and filed with the ‘leventy-seven Gummint Agencies that are just aching to put me in jail if I misplace a decimal.... ;)
Bookmark for later
Atlas ping.
That has turned out to be an epic fail.
Here's the thing--for productive people, being "politicially active typically means staying informed and voting on pro-business candidates. We might occasionally write a letter to the editor (which is usually a left-wing nut that tosses the e-mail or letter, but that's neither here nor there.) For everything else, we consider it counter-productive and antithetical to our lives. Stage a protest? Join a sit-in? Walk in a march? We consider it superfluous and non-productive. We're too busy working at our jobs, raising our families, and paying our taxes that the rest of the country is so dependent upon.
missed pt 1 -ping me pleeze
Wonder if this happened before or after Apple sent all of their manufacturing overseas?
Please note, I'm not condemning or condoning what Apple (and Jobs) did. I just think that the article is pretty disingenuous.
Have you been to a Tea Party protest?
I've been to several. Most of the attendees (like me) fit this description to a T.
If I was a politician and had 5000 Tea Partiers - remember that these are police, and firefighters, and (former) military, and businessmen, and so on...all people who get things done - on my front lawn protesting *anything*, I'd think that was an intimidating sight indeed.
You mean, enterpreneurs should start dropping out and liquidating their business so they can live in a secret enclave until it’s all over? I read Atlas Shrugged. It’s crap. Who is John Galt? Who cares. Ayn Rand was a militant atheist, btw.
I just finished that wonderful book!
Although I am not in agreement with Ayn Rand on Spiritual Matters, she did a remarkable thing. In 1957, the world was very different than it is today. Yet, she nailed it...we live in The Dagney Taggart World NOW. It took less than a half century.
She was WAY more accurate than Nostradamus could have ever even hoped!
Who is John Galt? Who cares. Ayn Rand was a militant atheist, btw. . . .
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You are correct that She was an atheist. But because a persons religion or lack of it is not yours is not a good reason to completely dismiss their philosophy. Ayn Rand wrote her book several decades ago. It has been close to a half century since the first time I read it. I have re-read it a few times. It’s prophecy of our cultural decline is amazingly accurate. Her depiction of what goes on in our government is right on. Her understanding of “progressives”, is what it is.
While I loved President Reagan it was not because of his religion. President Reagan seldom attended church even though he supported one financially most of his adult life. Reagan’s religious ideas are not what brought me to love him. He was an honest man. He was a lover of liberty and freedom. He believed in God. He may not have had the same relationship I have with God but that has nothing to do with why I voted for him and wept at his death.
Atlas Shrugged was a fairy tale, but then again so was Gulliver’s Travels, both are political commentaries. You don’t have to believe in fairies to understand the moral of the story.
Atlas Shrugged should be required for every student before graduating from high school. It was in many ways a great book. Even though I thought the “liberated woman” model she presented was silly, most of the book tells a story that needs to be told.
Galt’s Gulch will never exist but there will always be enclaves where business can succeed, like the oil fields in the Dakota’s, like the Cuban sector in Southern Florida and in at least a few other places. As long as there is still the chance to earn a profit there will be men willing to work harder than others in order to make more money than they could working for somebody else.
Your name sounds like you were in Nike Missiles.
I read We The Living, and thought she showed promise, and appreciated her first-hand view of post-revolutionary Russia. Then I read Atlas Shrugged. While I did like her descriptions of PoMo pseudo-intellectuals, at some point the novel simply fell apart, and her exposition of her philosophy along with it, and huge vistas of ignorance opened up in the ever-expanding bad prose and weak characterisation. I read Anthem, and got downright annoyed. By the time Roarke and his lover whatserface were explaining to each other why she had married his arch-enemy, and he was explaining to her why she was wrong, I put down Fountainhead and never picked it up again. The G-d she doesn’t believe in really does not exist, but she never really bothered to understand religion, just dismissed it out of hand. I’m sorry, but that makes her philosophy unpalatable. G-d is not a “bureaucrat you come to for a special favor,” but the Great Manufacturer of the universe, Who simply wants to be paid His due for services rendered. The fact that she failed to understand that is a major flaw in her philosophy, not a side point.
But try telling that to the Rand-ies. The idea of questioning the Great Ayn’s core beliefs is a threshold they fear to cross, and as a result they’ve become that for which Ayn Rand herself would have had nothing but disdain, people who let others do their thinking for them, ironically in this case, Ayn Rand.
If you think AS is crap, that's your right, even though I heartily disagree with you.
Although the author is an atheist, she had no problems with people donating to charity/church, so long as it was THEIR MONEY, THEIR CHOICE. When I donate to my parish, I do it because I'm getting value for value, not because I feel compelled to do so.
Last night, I struck up a conversation with a woman at Wal-Mart. We were both browsing in the video section, and I asked her, "are you looking for something different?" I told her she was either going to love it or hate it...there would be no in-between. I tried to give a brief overview of the book as well.
I handed her a Blu-Ray copy of AS, Part I, selling for $12.96.
As luck would have it, we met again at the same check out line. I joked that she must be thinking that I followed her to ensure she was taking it home with her.
A grand evening all around.
Agree. To simply dismiss because of the atheist tenet is stupid. Atlas Shrugged is about 85% economics and 15% religious bashing. Its actually easy to gloss over that part. And if you do, it is a dead accurate analysis and dissection of the collective movement.
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You've hit upon a good point, leaving aside you neither approving nor disapproving. When read in another way, Hank Rearden's statement "I created that Metal. It is my moral responsibility to know for what purpose I permit it to be used" can be retooled as, "I earned my dollars. It is my moral responsibility to make sure that my dollars don't encourage slavery [or some other evil]."
Rand was an odd bird, and requires some careful reading to get what she really said. When you consider the above, it's true (albeit ironic) that a liberal Fair Trader or Ethical Fund guy can claim to be a legitimate heir of Henry Rearden!
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