I was wondering who serves as the garbage men and sewer workers in Galt's Gulch? Even free, technologically gifted supermen produce human waste.
The morons who are currently "serving the public" as Deputy Assistant Undersecretaries in the Department of Redundancy Department.
And they're getting gigantic pay cut.
If you want to see a city breakdown quickly, stop the pickup of garbage. While it's been many, many years since I read Atlas Shrugged, I believe that he was getting everyone who society depended on and who was good at what they did. But I could be wrong.
Mark
Anyone who takes pride in his work would be welcome at Galt's Gulch...at least that is what I took from the book (the only book I have read/enjoyed multiple times)
My guess is that technologically gifted supermen would find a way.
The closest answer is probably "Who was Eddie Willers?".
I grew up on a farm snuggled deep in the Maine woods - living with my grandparents in the 30-40's (Grampa was a Maine Guide, blacksmith, woodworker, etc.) We grew and canned, sewed and made, fished and hunted, producing most of our needs ourselves. (There's a big difference between "need" and "want"...the "garbage" produced was minimal. There was no need for garbage trucks.)
Milk, soda, and such came in glass bottles, which were returned and washed and reused. If you bought a comb, you got only that, a comb - without plastic and cardboard packaging. We traded eggs and berries and butter for flour, molasses, sugar and such.
People can live much simpler and be more content doing so - else why do people save and yearn all year to get a fews days vacation in a little cabin somewhere - "away from it all?" Our houses, our kitchens, our closets, our lives, are stuffed with things-things and more things...many times more than we need. We fowl our own nests, or keep them uncluttered.
Galts Gulch always sounded good to me. I love to horse trade and barter my art work or eggs for, say, seamstress work or firewood. Swapping honest goods for honest goods and labor for labor is a heck of a lot more fun than working like a drone ant for some low-level high mucky-mucks's.
Somewhere in between how we lived back on the farm and the way we live now, there's a gentler way to live - to be more producers of our needs instead of mega-consumers. (I have to chuckle when I see the "kitchen makeovers" with a dozen or more lights, and enough cabinets and islands and paraphernalia to open a four-star eatery. Grammie put banquets - real meals = on the table three times a days in a "cook room" about 12' x 14" - including the big oak table. Her water came from the little red pump on the side of the soapstone sink. Hot water was heated by the stove, etc.)
Oh - and as to your "human waste" worry - That was also handled far more efficiently back then" - and left no permanent scar on the land.
Altho; I wouldn't want to give up my indoor facilities , (I don't miss the two-holer out at the end of the granary.) There are more efficient methods than what we use today.
Our biggest problem is that we live to close to one another. No elbow room. At the same time, we spin from task to task - flit-flit-flit - In the long run, accomplishing less than folk used to.
I don't live "too close" - I'm back snuggled into the woods - it's rural, we have septics tanks. Doesn't take sewer workers. I 'produce' an average of one garbage can out to the curb per month. I could cut that down if I got serious.
Bottom line - there are ways and there are ways. The ways of a Galt's Gulch is to simplify. Whittle life down to the basics. Get unfettered with overabundance. learn to make and grow and trade.
We make our own prisons...