Where is John Galt? Part Two

Townhall.com ^ | August 6, 2012 | Katie Kieffer

[wbill]

Well, frankly, I don't approve of Apple sending their manufacturing overseas. But, that point wasn't really germaine to my argument, namely, that Jobs couldn't be held up as a paragon of American Industry while he was simultaneously spending the profits from shipping all of his company's work overseas.

To me, at least, "going Galt" involves an unplugging of yourself from the workforce, if not society in general. For instance, my father was a contractor. After a certain point, every year, he wound up paying 2 out of every 3 dollars he made to the government. Eventually, he said "This is stupid. My time is worth more than 30 cents on the dollar.", and retired to play with his grandkids. IMHO, that's about as "Galt" as you get, in the real world (and without buying a self-sustaining compound in the Montana wilderness...).

Given the current state of affairs, I re-read Atlas Shrugged awhile back. Wordy. Preachy. If Dagny Taggart spent as much time taking care of business as she did sleeping around (or Endlessly Pondering sleeping around...), then she'd have been better off. :-) But, all of the flaws aside, Rand had some exceptional ideas in the book. Too bad that the only people who read and pay attention to it, don't really need to.

[danielmryan]

To me, at least, "going Galt" involves an unplugging of yourself from the workforce, if not society in general. For instance, my father was a contractor. After a certain point, every year, he wound up paying 2 out of every 3 dollars he made to the government. Eventually, he said "This is stupid. My time is worth more than 30 cents on the dollar.", and retired to play with his grandkids. IMHO, that's about as "Galt" as you get, in the real world (and without buying a self-sustaining compound in the Montana wilderness...).

That's just plain awful. I'm tempted to offer condolences, although I'm sure he's happy now.

As for going Galt, it's going to be really tough for a lot of people. It's one thing to thrill to the great John Galt working on his inventions in a tenement (which, for some odd reason, never attracted the attention of anyone...even though building a secret room in your apartment is very, very far from normal tenement life.) It's another thing to actually move into a project and eke out a poverty-level existence for the sake of "going Galt." Those tenements ain't what they used to be, that's for sure.

I'm not knocking AS as a novel, but I am pointing out that it's a work of fiction. Novels don't make good self-help books.