Posted on 05/02/2009 7:46:31 AM PDT by Publius
Synopsis
Head of State Thompson meets with his economic brain trust: Wesley Mouch, Eugene Lawson, Jim Taggart, Dr. Floyd Ferris, Orren Boyle, Clem Weatherby, and Fred Kinnan, who is head of Amalgamated Labor of America. They are discussing Directive 10-289.
Wesley Mouch is upset that people are not sufficiently motivated to cooperate; he needs more power. Weatherby points out that the economic climate is deteriorating rapidly. Lawson says the people lack the proper social spirit, they don’t understand that production is a duty and that there is no such thing as a personal life. Thompson, the realist, says to make sure the Mainstream Media is on board. Ferris brings out an old George Washington quote about wise and honest men and disparages it as out of date.
Fred Kinnan says this is about jobs; he suggests forcing employers to increase their payrolls by one-third. Jim screams that he wouldn’t have any use for the extra men. Kinnan says it’s not about use, it’s about need, and need trumps profit. Jim is insulted by the word profit, but he thinks there might be room for agreement if the railroad can increase its rates. Orren Boyle says he can’t afford it, and Jim says that public need trumps Boyle’s profits. Boyle says no one can accuse him of ever making a profit! Boyle can absorb a rate increase if the government increases his subsidy, but Weatherby accuses Boyle of running a black hole for government money. Thompson says to go ahead with the directive, and he’ll widen the state of emergency. He leaves the meeting.
Mouch sums up. Deterioration of the economy is so great that the best solution is to freeze everything in place and hold the line. Freedom has been given a chance and has failed; stringent controls are necessary. He reads Directive 10-289.
There is agreement that this will provide security, although Jim gets a bit hysterical. Lawson says to hell with the little people; man’s mind is the source of all the problems in the world. Ferris says that genius is superstition, there is no such thing as the intellect, and man’s brain is a social product. A genius hoards ideas that rightfully belong to the society from which he stole them. Thought is theft.
Fred Kinnan brings them all down to earth. If the Unification Board isn’t owned by organized labor, the whole deal is off. Boyle says that Kinnan is trying to get a stranglehold on every industry in the country; Kinnan smiles and agrees. If Wesley Mouch agrees to let Mouch and Kinnan control the board, Kinnan can get the union membership to swallow the rest. Jim thinks the country won’t stand for it. Kinnan laughs and says that if there aren’t rules any longer, then it’s about who robs whom. Kinnan controls the votes of his membership. He knows he’s delivering his people into slavery and they know it too, but they also know Fred Kinnan will throw them a crumb once in a while. If they’re going to be under a whip, they would prefer that Kinnan wield it. He knows he’s a racketeer and his people know it, but they know he can deliver the goods. Mouch gives in.
Everyone agrees to shut down the nation’s research labs, but the State Science Institute is to remain, Dr. Ferris insists. Out of work scientists can work for Dr. Ferris – if they toe the party line. The unfortunate ones will starve.
Jim, still hysterical, says that they will create stability and security for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. Kinnan, ever the wit, says this is the Anti-Industrial Revolution; Mouch says that statement should not leave the room. Ferris says a planned economy maximizes productive efficiency; Boyle says that centralization destroys the blight of monopoly and leads to the democratization of industry. Ferris wants to apply the death penalty to industrialists that desert their posts, but Kinnan vetoes that.
The copyright issue will cause problems with intellectuals, Lawson points out. Mouch says that publishers will have to print as many books as they did in the Yardstick Year, and with no new books, they will have to reprint old ones. Kinnan points out that intellectuals are cowards; they were the first to sell out European nations to committees of goons like those in this room. A longshoreman may someday remember he is a man and take action. But intellectuals? Ferris agrees; just put a few intellectuals on the government payroll and buy them off.
But Ferris is worried about the whole issue of Gift Certificates; they have to look voluntary. They worry that Hank Rearden could blow their whole plan apart; they must create guilt. Jim drops a bombshell when he says he can deliver Rearden. This heartens Mouch enough to give him his rate increase, much to Boyle’s discomfort.
Kinnan asks how can the national emergency end when they are making everything stand still. Mouch tells him not to sweat the details. Will taxes be frozen, Kinnan asks; Mouch says no.
All leave the room with a window view of the Washington Monument.
Dagny unintentionally sleeps over at her office, then starts work, all the while wondering why her staff has not approached her this morning. She reads a report from her chief engineer: repairs to Colorado track have been shelved in favor of repairs to the Miami line due to a three hour delay created by a derailment that caused government bureaucrat Tinky Holloway to be late. Although the rail on the Miami line is in better shape than Colorado, there is a social need for the Miami line repairs to have a higher priority. Dagny slashes her remarks on the margins.
Francisco calls and tells Dagny to check the newspaper. Eddie Willers brings her the paper and tells Dagny that no one wanted to tell her about this. Upon reading Directive 10-289, Dagny’s reaction is more than shock; she feels she is having an out-of-body experience. Only her anger grounds her. Dagny walks into Jim’s office and resigns; she returns to her office and breaks the news to her staff. She is going to her cabin in the Berkshire Mountains. She tells Eddie not to communicate with her any information about the railroad and to tell only Hank where she is. She calls Hank and delivers the news; when she ready to return, Hank will come for her. Dagny leaves the building with a sense of repose.
Hank Rearden’s rolling mill foreman quits. Even the Wet Nurse is on Hank’s side, telling him to pour as much Rearden Metal as he wishes, and he’ll juggle the books; for once in his life, he wants to do something moral. He tells Hank not to sign the Gift Certificate. More and more of Hank’s men disappear, but the personnel office isn’t notified. Instead, new men using the names of the former employees take their places at the mill. Unnumbered industrialists vanish, but the Mainstream Media won’t report it.
Dr. Floyd Ferris arrives to obtain Hank’s signature on the Gift Certificate; he wants to get the signature in time for the nightly news. Hank looks ironically at the Gift Certificate with the Statue of Liberty on it and the name “Rearden Metal” replaced by “Miracle Metal”. Ferris’ lever is the evidence of Hank’s adultery with Dagny Taggart; he points out to Hank that with experts in the art of smearing like Bertram Scudder called to the task, Dagny’s reputation will be ruined. Remembering how he met Dagny and fell in love with her, Hank signs.
The Never Ending State of Emergency
In 1933, as one of his first acts as president, Franklin Roosevelt placed the country under a state of emergency via executive order and navigated his way around the Constitution. Successive presidents signed one executive order after another, declaring overlapping states of emergency.
Following Watergate, Congress decided to examine presidential misuse of states of emergency and executive orders, repealing many of them, but not all. Congress understood that if it removed all states of emergency and restored genuine constitutional government, Congress would lose much of its power and reduce the overall power of the federal government. The result would be Congress meeting for three months every year and then going home; this was considered unacceptable.
As Paul Begala said during the Clinton years, “Stroke of the pen, law of the land, kinda cool.”
Wage and Price Controls
Upon entering World War II, Franklin Roosevelt imposed wage and price controls upon the country. This was only a small part of the conversion of America from a depression economy to a wartime economy. Full socialist industrial planning turned consumer product factories into war materiel factories.
War is about credit. To keep money flowing into war bonds, more than wall-to-wall advertising was utilized. (“It’s bonds or bondage!”) Rationing was established to prioritize certain resources for the military, and people’s money had nowhere to go except war bonds. One good thing that developed from this was that war bond money moved into the economy in a controlled pace for 25 years after the war, setting of an economic joyride. It was not until 1970 that the country finally had to face the travails of a postwar economy.
Truman removed wage and price controls in 1946. That set off a short spike in inflation and a huge wave of labor unrest, which led to the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, reducing organized labor’s power.
In August 1971, Richard Nixon closed the gold window to foreign payments and imposed wage and price controls. Unlike the World War II experience, this time there was no rationing, and that led to shortages. Because price controls confused the usual seasonal refinery switches from gasoline to heating oil and back, the summer of 1972 saw occasional gasoline shortages and talk of rationing. Upon the removal of controls in 1974, a wave of labor unrest swept the country as workers tried to keep pace with inflation.
In Rand’s world, the government is about to repeat the mistakes of the Seventies, with catastrophic consequences.
Upton Sinclair and the 1934 California Gubernatorial Campaign
Need, use, profit. Rock, paper, scissors. In the book, it’s a rhetorical game where people claim that one trumps the other to seek economic advantage. In 1934 it became serious enough to force California’s Democratic and Republican parties to climb surreptitiously into bed to stop muckraking author Upton Sinclair.
"The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label.” – Upton Sinclair, 1951
In 1934 Sinclair left the Socialist Party to run for governor of California as a Democrat under the slogan, “End Poverty in California”, otherwise known as EPIC, or “Share the wealth”. It featured the concept of “production for use” as opposed to production for profit. Sinclair proposed to repeal the laws of economics and human psychology to end the Depression in California, in effect creating a New Socialist Man. His victory in the Democratic primary galvanized the party’s New Deal wing but caused much of the institutional party to team discreetly with Republican Frank Merriam behind the scenes.
This was California’s first modern media campaign. The Merriam forces received full support from Hollywood, in particular Louis B. Mayer of MGM and Harry Cohn of Columbia. Cohn’s studio produced a short subject starring Andy Clyde, late of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops, as a Sinclair supporter who works enthusiastically for the Share the Wealth campaign – until he receives a telegram informing him he has inherited a fortune. Merriam’s people even recruited theocratic evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson to speak on his behalf, thus making it a religious issue. No expense was spared, and Merriam won comfortably.
Missing from Sinclair’s campaign was the enthusiastic support of President Franklin Roosevelt – who knew better.
Discussion Topics
Others I would say are Mark Levin and Thomas Woods ( author of "Meltdown"). As far as politicians, the pickings are few. I am a personal supporter of Sarah Palin. More from the stand point that she is hated by the same people I hate. She must be doing something right. But I think she needs to flesh out her belief system. But I feel her instincts are right. And Governor Sanford from VA seems promising.
But it's also about power. All these men have power and seek more of it.
That I agree with. I have a question though.
In AS, power = money and money = power. Aren't these two terms interchangeable? There are many human elements lacking in Rands writing and this probably affects my ability to understand her point.
If we accept that money is power, the only difference between this group of looters and a similar group of capitalists is that one group is seeking wealth/power by producing while the other is seeking wealth/power by destroying. A basic element of AS.
Kinnan therefore is a capitalist accepting looting as his only viable option. The 'capitalist without conscience'.
In the book they are somewhat interchangeable.
Jim Taggart and Orren Boyle may speak disparingly of profit, but they have no problem sucking up government money and putting their profits in d'Anconia Copper if it suits their purposes.
However, Wesley Mouch has power but no money that we know of. Power is a pursuit in and of itself. Eugene Lawson was so uninterested in profit that he had his bank shot out from under him, but he has power and intends to use and keep it.
There is a difference between a genuine idealogue and a corrupt capitalist.
Sorry to say it, but right now I think the time is coming for the street fighters and bomb throwers a la old Sammy. Remember he mobilized the mob in Boston to push the Liberty Agenda. Unfortunately we have the left organizing the Acorn scum to do the same thing. It troubles me to say this because at my core I am a man of Faith and Reason.
But in the end somebody has to throw ice at the redcoats, tar and feather the tax collectors and man the Alamo. And like my friend said, "I don't want these pricks running my life". And when they mean to, and have the power of the State behind them, your choices become few and dangerous
I'm otta here until tonight. Later
In my estimation, that’s the raison d’etre of all liberals, especially the wealthy and sanctimonious ones.
And now Chapter 16, “Miracle Metal.” The meaning of the title won’t be apparent until the end of the chapter when the dust has settled. We are at the halfway point through Atlas Shrugged, and at last we see the bad guys, the Aristocracy of Pull, make their move. And what a move it is!
“But can we get away with it?” asked Wesley Mouch. No one answers him right away, and at last the only one with the courage to do so is one Mr. Thompson, in whom Rand personifies the legitimate government for whatever that term is worth. Thompson is the “Head Of The State” – one notices that Rand does not use the term “President,” largely after the pattern of the sketchy European countries who are all now “People’s States.” It’s all the structure we need for the moment – it is apparent that the true power lies elsewhere.
In fact, most of it is sitting in the room with them. We have the industrialists, a beaten and subservient crowd at the beck and call of the bureaucrats, traded like cattle. We have the unions, represented by their capo de tutti capi Fred Kinnan, their own membership traded in exactly the same manner. And lastly we have the bureaucrats themselves, the ruling class, the cadre. It is their moment.
Why the trepidation? They have the official if tacit support of the sitting government, the media, the academics, and in another bit of Randian prescience, the popular entertainers. It is a combination that seems bitterly familiar to contemporary conservatives. What could they have to worry about?
Well, responsibility, for one thing. There is a truism of command that one can delegate authority, but never responsibility. That stays with the delegator. But not in the Aristocracy of Pull, whose residents are adepts in the opposite: maintaining authority while passing responsibility. It is the ladder to the top of a very unstable structure.
They’re going to take over the economy, and hence the country itself. And they’re going to establish a fully centrally-planned and centrally-directed economy by simple fiat. This is Directive 10-289. A lesser author might have preferred to be vague about it, but Rand gives the specifics. This is how a country is taken over by a gang of thieves:
Point One – workers can’t quit. Non-workers over 21 will report to the Unification Board and work where it tells them. Point Two – companies and their owners can’t quit or they’ll be nationalized or imprisoned respectively. Point Three – no more patents, trademarks, or brand names. Patented objects and their income will be ceded to the government, by force if necessary. Point Four – no new inventions. Point Five – no changes in production. Point Six – no changes in consumption. Point Seven – wage and price freeze. Point Eight – any problems go to the Unification Board, whose decisions are final.
It is, in essence, an economy built after the Fascist model – the means of production remain nominally in private hands but their control and their product are strictly in the hands of the State. It is a frantic attempt to freeze a collapsing economy in a state of pre-collapse. It is also an outright coup d’etat on behalf of this Unification Board, whose membership will wield an arbitrary, dictatorial control over the country from which there is no appeal. Membership on this board is the acme of power, and the bureaucrats consider that to be reserved for themselves.
Not so fast. First the program has to be sold to the unwilling, or at least enough of them to force the remaining unwilling to play along. And that’s where union boss Fred Kinnan comes in.
“All I’ve got to say is that you’d better staff that Unification Board with my men,” he said. “…Or I’ll blast your Point One to hell.”
(Point One states that nobody can quit).
“I intend, of course, to have a representative of labor on that board,” said Mouch dryly…”
“No cross-sections,” said Fred Kinnan evenly. “Just representatives of labor. Period.”
“But that will give you a stranglehold on every business in the country!” [objects Orren Boyle]
“What do you think I’m after?”
“That’s unfair!” yelled Boyle. “I won’t stand for it! You have no right!”
“Right?” said Kinnan innocently. “Are we talking about rights?”
“But, I mean, after all, there are certain fundamental property rights which – “
“Listen, pal, you want Point Three, don’t you?”
(Point Three deals with the government expropriating all patents and copyrights).
“…Then you’d better keep your trap shut about property rights from now on.”
Kinnan is forcing the gaggle of self-deluders to face what they really are doing. He certainly knows what he is doing.
“…Only I’m not going to say that I’m working for the welfare of my public, because I know I’m not. I know that I’m delivering the poor bastards into slavery…and they know it, too. But they know that I’ll have to throw them a crumb once in a while if I want to keep my racket, while with the rest of you they wouldn’t have a chance in hell…I’m a racketeer – but I know it and my boys know it, and they know that I’ll pay off. Not out of the kindness of my heart, either, and not a cent more than I can get away with, but at least they can count on that much. Sure, it makes me sick sometimes, but it’s not me who’s built this kind of world – YOU did – so I’m playing the game as you’ve set it up and I’m going to play it for as long as it lasts – which isn’t going to be long for any of us!”
I hope no one considers me overly cynical for observing that this arrangement is essentially indistinguishable from that between employer and employee in Rand’s ethical world, although the latter is expressed in somewhat more idealistic terms. Francisco’s Mexican employees, for example. And these are the terms under which Rearden is purchasing black-market coal. Kinnan is a brute observing an ineluctable law of the universe; Rearden and d’Anconia are refined intellects observing that law as well, and the law remains the same. Kinnan knows he must keep his word. From this I suggest that Rand may have considered Kinnan a more moral individual than the bureaucrats who were trying to disguise the fact that they were jobbing the system for their own good on behalf of the People. Certainly he gets the best lines. Like this:
“Well, this, I guess,” said Fred Kinnan, “is the anti-industrial revolution.”
“That’s a damn funny thing for you to say!” snapped Wesley Mouch. “We can’t be permitted to say that to the public.”
“Don’t worry, brother. I won’t say it to the public.”
...and...
“It’s a total fallacy,” said Dr. Ferris. “Every expert has conceded long ago that a planned economy achieves the maximum of productive efficiency and that centralization leads to super-industrialization.”
“Centralization destroys the blight of monopoly,” said Boyle.
“How’s that again?” drawled Kinnan.
For a brute he isn’t doing badly, is he? They’re playing under two sets of rules. For Kinnan words have meaning and for the others, they don’t. But the latter is only an intellectual fantasy, and it comes at a price. Where words have no meaning, evil becomes very difficult to recognize as it sits down to dine.
“I’m inclined to think,” said Dr. Ferris hastily, “that Point Two is the most essential one…we must put an end to that peculiar business of industrialists retiring and vanishing. We must stop them…in times of crisis, economic service to the nation is just as much of a duty as military service. Anyone who abandons it should be regarded as a deserter. I have recommended that we introduce the death penalty for those men, but Wesley wouldn’t agree to it.”
“Take it easy, boy,” said Fred Kinnan in an odd, slow voice. He sat suddenly and perfectly still, his arms crossed, looking at Ferris in a manner that made it suddenly real to the room that Ferris had proposed murder. “Don’t let me hear you talk about any death penalties in industry.”
They weren’t quite that reluctant in Soviet Russia, which is where Rand learned most of this process. And once it started they weren’t reluctant in the least. For those for whom words have no meaning, “death” is one of them – as long as it happens to somebody else. For the soft-handed discussing it in a boardroom or salon, death is simply another of those abstractions that may be played with like counters on a board, an unfortunate necessity – no, not always that, but a necessity – for the building of an imagined world whose inhabitants are as abstract as the words that denote them: bourgeoisie, capitalist, counter-revolutionary, wrecker, spy. Kulak. Jew. Not real people, merely abstractions.
This is a culture of death, and Rand calls it by name.
Dagny’s reaction to this systematic outrage is predictable, so much so that both Francisco and Eddie make sure they’re on hand when somebody – it turns out to be Eddie, who gets most of the dirty jobs around there – has to tell her. She quits. Oh, it isn’t legal, of course, and had Ferris his way she might end up at the business end of a firing squad for it, but nobody stops her. It’s off to a remote cabin where she can transition to a new life. Not at the hand of any Destroyer, not because she’s given up, but because of what Francisco terms, derisively and accurately, the “moratorium on brains.”
Rearden’s trusted foreman Tom Colby quits as well, and for the same reason. The sides are lining up now, and Rearden’s minder the Wet Nurse has made up his mind which one he’s on.
“Mr. Rearden,” he said, “I wanted to tell you that if you want to pour ten times the quota of Rearden Metal or steel or pig iron or anything, and bootleg it all over the place to anybody at any price – I’ll fix it up. I’ll juggle the books, I’ll fake the reports, I’ll get phony witnesses, I’ll forge affidavits…”
“Now why would you want to do that?” asked Rearden, smiling, but his smile vanished when he heard the boy answer earnestly:
“Because I want, for once, to do something moral.”
“That’s not the way to be moral – “ Rearden started, and stopped abruptly, realizing that it was the way, the only way left, realizing through how many twists of intellectual corruption this boy had to struggle toward his momentous discovery.
The Wet Nurse begs Rearden not to sign over his ownership of Rearden Metal to the government. He knows it isn’t right. He thinks there is no right or wrong, and yet he knows it isn’t right. That is a contradiction. Check your premises, young man.
And yet, when Rearden is closeted with the representative of the Unification Board, Dr. Ferris, that is precisely what Rearden does do. It is the Orren Boyle school of management - they have the goods on him, courtesy of James Taggart, who has those goods from Lillian Rearden. She has closed her transaction with the Aristocracy of Pull and has delivered her husband to them.
Hank hasn’t the least concern that a scandal will damage him, but he knows who the one Ferris proposes to stir up will damage. It is a vulnerability he has handed them. They are threatening Dagny. And so Rearden has to decide which he cares for more, his life’s work, or the woman who represents the ideals under which it was achieved.
He thinks back to their first encounter. Even then she was brave and free and admirable; now she is his lotus floating spotless in a pool of filth. The decision is not a difficult one.
“Well, Mr. Rearden? Are you going to sign?” asked Dr. Ferris.
“Oh, that?” said Rearden.
He picked up a pen and with no second glance, he signed his name at the foot of the Statue of Liberty and pushed the Gift Certificate across the desk.
And so Rearden Metal becomes Miracle Metal with the sweep of a pen, and we have an explanation for the chapter title. No more trademarks, remember? It’s Point Three of Directive 10-289. Stroke of the pen, law of the land.
Have a great week, Publius!
If we accept that money is power, the only difference between this group of looters and a similar group of capitalists is that one group is seeking wealth/power by producing while the other is seeking wealth/power by destroying.
The difference is in Francisco's Money Speech from a few chapters back. The capitalists are producing value. Money is the representation of that value. The looters such as Kinnan are trying to grab the money thinking that they will grab the value with it. But they cannot grab that value because they do not trade in values.
The power that the producers gain through their money is a by-product of their production, not the goal of it. Look at the composer... can't remember his name... who produces value in his music.
I agree with that statement and do not find it contradictory to the money/power relationship.
The power that the producers gain through their money is a by-product of their production, not the goal of it.
I'm not quite following you here. You say that 'power is gained through money'. Could this be rephrased as 'power is gained using money'? If so, this would be an indication of capitalism, reinvesting and using the accumulated wealth to continue growing.
If power(to reinvest and grow)is not a goal wouldn't the producers just do enough to subsist?
The looters such as Kinnan are trying to grab the money thinking that they will grab the value with it. But they cannot grab that value because they do not trade in values.
What indication is there that the looters are aware of value? They are aware of money and power and they need to steal it from someone who has it, be it a producer or one of their own, it doesn't matter to them.
Your post also opens up the concept of an economy based on manufacturing versus an economy based on moving pieces of paper from one pile to another (the financial industry). Is one a real economy and the other a mirage?
.The point is that they are not aware of the value. They think that the piece of paper holds the value not the production that piece of paper represents.
As for the power question, I think we are defining terms differently. I was reading the looter's grabs for power as power over others. The producers are not interested in power over others but rather a fair trade with others.
It's all about trading value for value. If I need someone to move paper from one pile to another, I trade something I value to compensate them for their effort.
I am in a service industry... architecture. People pay me for my ideas and experience. I don't produce an object, I produce the means for making that object (a building). I pay accountants to keep track of the piles of paper because it is more valuable for me to spend my efforts on the architecture side of the business.
For that matter, I pay the people who work for me to produce the drawings... not because I cannot, but because I am more valuable to my business in the client/public relations end of the business. Now that I think about it, the drawings that I do produce are presentation renderings. I do that myself becuase I can do it better and for less money than hiring it out or delegating it to an employee.
Fair enough.
And this is where it gets messy. Is "value" defined in fiat currency the same as "value" defined in gold? It's messy because that is next week's major topic. Some economists would agree, but others would not.
(I'm already getting heat for spoilers, so I guess I should quit while I'm ahead.)
I don’t think we have to be spoilers to answer this. Fransico, in the money speech, pretty clearly says that currency is not an appropriate representation of value because it has nothing of real value behind it as gold does.
I would have to agree with that... especially as Dear Leader cranks the printing presses to warp speed 4.
I see, that clears it up for me.
I was thinking in terms of power in a more encompassing sense.
The power to control others is indeed their desire and does distinguish them from the producers.
Publius, at the risk of making things even messier, how would a gold standard compare to a barter system?
Isn't the fact that some nations are richer in gold deposits an arbitrary selector of wealth?
Barter is perfectly fine. But the strengths and weaknesses of a polity created a need for a medium of exchange. In some places that was seashells. In others, precious metals came to the fore.
Isn't the fact that some nations are richer in gold deposits an arbitrary selector of wealth?
True. But the concept of the nation-state is fairly recent in Western civilization, dating from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the Teaty of Versailles in 1919. Is the nation-state still relevant? (Just trying to make trouble.)
Rand pictures producers as internally motivated. Produce, and produce well, is just what they do; it's who they are. I know a lot of people like this. Many of the producer characters continue to produce long after the government starts taking from them the external rewards of doing so. Rand/Galt have the difficult task of telling producers not to do the only thing they care about, in order in the long run to restore the kind of system that values them for doing so.
Physical violence, for one thing. The public seem for the most part to react to stupidity and privation passively, but not always, and if they ever decided to literally fight back, these boys without meaning would be in serious trouble. I'd probably set the population of AS's America at 80-100 million, against maybe a few hundred thousand of the looting class.
Only I’m not going to say that I’m working for the welfare of my public, because I know I’m not. I know that I’m delivering the poor bastards into slavery…and they know it, too. But they know that I’ll have to throw them a crumb once in a while if I want to keep my racket, while with the rest of you they wouldn’t have a chance in hell…I’m a racketeer – but I know it and my boys know it, and they know that I’ll pay off. Not out of the kindness of my heart, either, and not a cent more than I can get away with, but at least they can count on that much.
I actually kind of like Kinnan. He's a crook, but he's an "honest crook" so to speak. I wouldn't cooperate with the guy, I'd do everything I could to defeat him, but he's not pathetic and he doesn't arouse the sense of disgust the others do.
Oh, r-q-tek, get it.
I can truly say that this describes the majority of the people that I've worked with.
The water keeps getting warmer but to them it's not time to hop out yet.
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