[who_would_fardels_bear]

The main characters is Atlas Shrugged were CEOs of major companies. They were against government encroachment.

Our current set of CEOs seem to be OK with government encroachment, and are even helping to participate in it.

I see no John Galt's out there.

Was McAfee trying to "Go Galt?"

[Political Junkie Too]

Maybe the new "John Galt" are the boomers who are retiring with their IRAs and pensions and retreating behind their community gates to be left alone to play golf and go cruising, while the new college graduate snowflakes try to figure out what the boomers left behind.

-PJ

[Soul of the South]

“Our current set of CEOs seem to be OK with government encroachment, and are even helping to participate in it.”

In the 1950’s, when Atlas Shrugged was written, the career path to CEO was through sales and marketing or manufacturing. Either career path required measurable accomplishment and actual creation of value for the organization and its customers.

Today the career path to CEO is through finance or legal. These are administrative careers, not value creation. The path to CEO is more a political walk rather than creating products of value to customers, finding customers, or making things more efficiently. In fact many of today’s financial CEO’s destroyed value by offshoring production to contractors, stock buybacks, and failed mergers and divestitures. It is noteworthy the CEO to worker pay ration has increased 1,000 percent since 1950. Financial CEO’s manipulate numbers to pad their wallets. Few create real lasting value for the shareholders or customers.

Look at the destruction of once great companies and industries in the US since 1950. Auto industry, steel industry, consumer electronics, consumer appliances. Retail - Sears, JC Penney, Kmart, and hundreds of other retail companies. Leverage buyouts, private equity takeovers, and mergers have resulted in assets being offshored, cash siphoned off to management and investment banks. Competitive advantages were squandered and innovation stifled.

Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged knew CEO’s who made things, created things, and sold things of value. The concept of a CEO stripping assets to buy back stock to drive the stock price and the value of his stock options was inconceivable in 1957.

[Levy78]

current fortune 500 CEOs are on the government dole one way or another and therefore are easily persuaded to adhere to the gov’s agenda. Pretty darn sure that’s a core feature of fascism.

[rlmorel]

Not all the main characters were CEO’s, but I get your valid point.

Atlas Shrugged had heroes like Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon. The USA has scum like Susan Wojcicki and Jack Dorsey.