“that impulse is mitigated by the affects such a disruption would have on those innocents who are dependent on the creator’s work”
This is the “sanction of the victim” that when finally overcome lets the Creators fully shrug. Remember Rearden’s deadbeat mooching family?
As far as the partial shrugging goes, that is most certainly what’s going on. Before Galt went on “strike”, he took up a job as a manual laborer.
When you’re moving entire industries, you’re creating countless billions in wealth and only receiving a small percentage of it back. When you’re digging a ditch, you’re consuming almost all that you produce.
Designing a new engine adds to the wealth of all mankind, beyond its direct consumers. There is no trickle up benefit to mopping a floor.
Industry giants of growth firms will settle for accepting management jobs in mature firms, entrepreneurs will become run of the mill salesmen, privately employed professionals will continue to work for friends and neighbors but not hire, expand, or take on new clients, and the next generation of rising star executives will become middle management card punchers.
Atlas probably won’t shrug in the form of a fast, hard crash, but a slow lasting slump. And then we’ll be France, Japan, Sweden...eeking out a mediocre living with our decisions made for us.
Spread the poverty!
I’m not sure he was referring to the victims of Atlas’ shrug as Rearden’s family, I suspect he was meaning those who work for the producer - the employees that put his vision out in the marketplace.