Posted on 03/28/2009 7:39:14 AM PDT by Publius
Couldn't agree more. When you state it in its barest terms, these are guys who have arrogated to themselves the ability to control the economy based on a fairy tale. This beats Lysenko and the Piltdown Man for pure fraudulence. It is absolutely astonishing.
What is worse about it is the fact that it will work to depress manufacturing in the United States when we most need to re-establish it. And it will work to encourage it in the places where the eco-zealots least want it. Nobody gains except the folks taking their generous cut off the top for running the scam. Those would be the folks flying the private jets into Bali for a Global Warming conference until the place couldn't physically park any more. Those would be the Al Gores, whose mansion squanders energy as if there were no tomorrow.
Who elected these people? Well, it turns out they elected themselves. Nice work if you can get it.
Yes, I saw that too. I’m not sure if was taking over companies or If it was dropping the dollar and going with a one world currency. But yes, he was absolutely at a loss understand what she meant by “where in the constitution”, much less how it could be allowed.
Earth worship was something that was not on anyone's map in the Forties and Fifties. The very concept would have been laughed out of the room.
My major was chemistry, and I ended up learning Fortran. Then I picked up Cobol and became a business programmer for 31 years before my retirement in 2005. Along the way I picked up a host of minor languages and dabbled in MS/Access before I packed it in.
My timing was right. There are twelve year olds out there that are better qualified in today's languages, such as Visual Basic or C Sharp. As they say in the Mafia, "The old must make way for the new."
Nock is a pretty popular fellow around here, or at least he used to be.
Good for you. Thousands of Atlas’s are beginning to shrug.
“Earth worship was something that was not on anyone’s map in the Forties and Fifties. The very concept would have been laughed out of the room.”
I agree. I plan to thumb my nose to earth worship in 1:45 and counting.
And what if Atlas punched their lights out? Why does good have to surrender to evil? Except for one character, no one is fighting back. Nonviolence is only a virtue to those who submit under rules of the totaliarian state, or to those who are statist parasites. In the eyes of God, I am convinced that the totalitrian state is evil and that permitting it to destroy us is the ultimate cowardice.
But you've given me a thought for a better title than Rand chose. How about Atlas Punched?
Which act requires one to expend the most effort on a worthless cause?
Perhaps a simple push towards a trashcan would be a compromise.
If you are going to be, for certain, taken “out”? Would you rather go to your judgement, punching or shrugging?
Funny - I did my masters thesis and had to punch a full box (2000 cards) of data. Fairly straightforward program, but lots of data. When I found out I could read that into a data file and read that instead of feeding the box of cards every time, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven! :-)
Actually, some of the best programmers I’ve worked with have had “odd” majors like music and philosophy. Go figure... Music I can kind of understand, but philosophy surprised me a bit. I guess it was the logic part of philosophy.
We have many conversations over dinner about having to work with incompetent people. It’s sad, but I’m afraid it’s here to stay. Of course, it makes it much more refreshing to find someone good to work with.
In Aristotle's Ethics he maintains that a superior man " will not take petty risks,and is no lover of danger, because he holds few things in honor; but he is ready to meet great danger,and in the face of it he is unsparing of his life, knowing that one can buy even life too dearly". So even though in the end we are led to believe that Galt's War of Attrition will succeed, I always found the strategy of pulling the producers out of society and not confronting head on the evil destroying the world strangely unheroic in an Aristotelian sense.
As whodathunkit put it, the punch vs shrug enigma. I look forward to this great thread to settle this issue. Thank you again Publius for doing this.
Your presumption is that 'they' will take someone out. The fact is that 'they' need to have you submit to their will to keep their power. The deck is stacked against anyone who would fight back.
Carbon credits require the sanction of the victim. Producers must pay tribute to those who do not produce.
“they” have taken out about 150 million of their own citizens in the last century. I don’t look at this as a hypothetical situation, if you know what I mean about communists and socialists.
Have you read the thread on FR about the Frankfurt School? It, along with, Alinsky is a blue print for the takeover of the US from within. I wonder if Rand was prescient or writing about what she had learned in school in the Crimea or what she observed in the old USSR.
A couple of weeks ago, I was wondering why more people didn't fight back against these looters. I guess that goes into the Atlas Punched file.
BTTT for later reading.
Right. In the discussion questions, Publius had this (sorry, I haven’t been able to figure out how to italicize items I pull from other responses) -
In an earlier chapter, I wrote of the concept of “rent seeking”, the pursuit of government subsidy for the sake of profit. Jim Taggart was chosen by the board because of his connections in Washington, and now he is making subsidies the lifeblood of the railroad. Where else is this going on today?
One big situation in this regard that just came to light has to do with Goldman-Sachs. I got hit by this myself. When the investment banks were going belly-up, the only one that seemed immune (of the big ones anyway) was Goldman-Sachs. Everyone knew that they must have toxic assets on their books and it was only a matter of time before they succumbed, but their stock kept rising, they kept having good profits, etc. Come to find out, as a by-product of the AIG situation, that they had very quietly received $13Billion dollars through AIG that kept them afloat. Other companies were destroyed - they profitted. Because of the revolving door between Goldman-Sachs and the Feds. I shorted their stock and had to cover. Now I know why.
Oh, that and the rule by the Feds that, for a certain period of time nobody was ALLOWED to short those specific stocks. All of this to benefit investment bankers, by people who very freely go into and back out of government on a regular basis.
“they” have taken out about 150 million of their own citizens....
Yes you are correct. It does reinforce my point, however, that when the deck is stacked against you, even if you choose to fight, you will likely lose.
View it this way, out of control government is a beast that needs to feed in order to stay alive. It feeds itself with excessive taxes on the populace that supports it. It is so large that an individual or small group of people cannot defeat it. Any resistance to it will be quelled and the beast will grow stronger. It demonstrates to those who are left that it is, well, unbeatable.
The efforts that are directed toward defeating the beast will be absorbed by it and help to feed it. Your time and effort that you feel are working to bring down the beast are instead making it stronger and you weaker. It uses up your time and energy.
You stated in an earlier post
In the eyes of God, I am convinced that the totalitrian state is evil and that permitting it to destroy us is the ultimate cowardice.
I agree with some of the statement but have a different take on your conclusion. "permitting it to destroy us..." implies that we also have the ability to 'not permit'. How shall we 'not permit?' History is full of martyrs and they are very often used by the beast itself in order to coerce us into submitting to their will. The denial of our skills, talents and efforts which permit the beast to survive is more effective, in my opinion, than any direct confrontation that I can imagine.
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