I can't see holding yourself up in the Highlands of the Rockies, while the rest of the country goes down the shitter, as a particularly noble thing to do.
I take your point but have two points of disagreement. First, he isn't holed up in the Rockies 11 months of the year. He's lived in a shitty apartment on a track worker's wages for 12 years when he could have had a better standard of living by going along, and the vast majority of those he's persuaded to take an oath to shrug are living out in the real world as well.
Second, different enemies take different tactics and strategies. Just as the war on terror can't be fought using the same techniques that might have worked on 3 million Russians pouring through the Fulda Gap, so the most effective weapon against the looters may simply be to withdraw oneself from the field, or at least to withdraw one's brain from the market. I'm not saying this IS so, I mean the "maybe" quite literally.
On your answer for question #2 I think there is a qualitative difference between soldiers dying in battle fighting for freedom and people getting crushed in a war of attrition by the productive elite against the looters.
There certainly is, but nations know there will be collateral damage, and while they try to minimize it, they will still fight a fight if they have to, even knowing that. People who defend the nuclear bombing of Japan often say that doing so saved not just countless American lives, but countless Japanese as well.
I see this as if I burned down my shop with some of my employees inside because I have the tax looters trapped inside also. I admit an imperfect analogy but you get my point.
I think the analogy is somewhat flawed in the sense that if you were Galt and you had any good honorable workers, you'd probably have convinced them to shrug, so there would be none left in the factory except those believing in the looters way.
And your last point also is convincing PROVIDED the remaining employees where active accomplishes in the looting. Otherwise I still maintain that they would be like the poor salesman on the Comet killed when they mountain feel down. Just trying to get along in a FUBAR system. Is that a Capital Crime?
But your second point caused me to recall a statement by a Roman historian ( or was it Greek? ) that the Romans made a desert and called it peace. Your collateral damage argument made me wince.....and made me think that perhaps Galt made a desert and called it freedom.