I’ve been scuffling around trying to find a decent model for Galt’s motor and what its likely arc of development and effects might be in post-Shrug America. I’ve got one to try out, at least. We have discussed the impact of unlimited free energy forever on the likely development of Rand's future world, but so far we have not addressed an equally radical turn in technology that did take place and promises to alter humanity in ways yet unimaginable. That is the advent of information technology.
Naturally we can't blame Rand for failing to anticipate little beige boxes filled with real magic. Her death in 1982 was at the very dawning of the real era of computation in the hands of the individual citizen. It was a notion that even some of the era's experts found as unlikely of success as their predecessors did the ridiculous idea of multi-ton steel vehicles hurtling toward one another at a mile a minute guided by "mere housewives" as one unfortunate pundit opined. Best not to underestimate the adaptability of the common citizen. I think Rand tended to do just that in her contemplation of the ubermenschen that she felt would result from a perfected moral code.
So who would build one of these personal computers in Galt’s world? That part seems fairly obvious inasmuch as we know who did in ours – these were entrepreneurs operating on venture capital and in the near-total absence of governmental interference. To a great degree the Silicon Valley of the 80’s was Galt’s Gulch taken concrete form. Some Gulcher engineer, Quentin Daniels perhaps, might cobble together his own Altair. And he’d have a valley full of customers, Midas Mulligan being probably the first and then the other visionaries as they could see how their own fields would be enriched by the new device. It would be, it was, it is, a considerable edge in competition.
But there were only a very few actual manufacturers in the beginning, and far more failed than succeeded. I think that Rand would have approved of Silicon Valley in the early days.
How far can we take this model in considering what might happen with Galt’s motor? Well, for one thing the exclusivity of the design and manufacture of the personal computer very rapidly became subject to proliferation through reverse engineering and the advent of competitors in places that were imperfectly respectful of patent law. That certainly describes post-Shrug America – no central government means no patent protection, and we are reminded that one of the last acts of the central government that did exist was to expropriate all the patents for its own use anyway. And so Galt’s motor will be his own for a time, but not for all time. The explosion of industrial redevelopment that he is doing his best to set off will, at last, be his own undoing. Unless, of course, he comes up with a new and improved model, which will also, in time, be copied. It isn’t altogether fair but it’s a fact of life that such pioneers tend to end up in a protracted competition with themselves.
And so, to bound the problem, lots of cheap, not free, power pulled down from the sky, multiplying like Commodore 64’s in the old days, each vying with the other for its share of the static in the clouds. There would be cheap clones that will blow up. So what? The cork’s popped out of the bottle and the genie has flown away laughing maniacally. Galt can insist on moral free trade all he wants to for all the good it will do him. He’ll wind up competing again, just as Rearden did when the Rearden metal he produced wound up competing with the steel he produced.
It is ironic that the only protection that a patent will accord is a function of the federal government that Rand, as we, came to regard with suspicion and derision due to its indisputable abuses. It is one of the few legitimate roles she will grant government (and must somehow reconcile with the Narragansett Amendment regarding government not making laws with respect to production and trade). In the absence of government as this sort of guardian Galt had better hope his magic spell for turning the thing into dust upon unauthorized examination is a strong one. In Silicon Valley, it wasn’t.
But to continue a comparison already stretched beyond credibility, I’d see a pattern of development centered in Colorado and then punctuated by the popping up of similar oases across the country, and then the world. Not all of its oases would be equally committed to Galtian ethics. That system would find itself in competition with the others just as it did in Rand’s historical model, and as then would likely prevail until an oppressive government and a false moral code rises once more. Galt and his pioneers would be long dead at that point and their old-fashioned (by then) moral code attacked just as it was in the first page of Atlas Shrugged. We have come full circle. He holds the globe once again. Poor fellow.
I don't see the conflict, Bill. As I (inadequately) tried to expound in an earlier post, I think the Narragansett Amendment is intended to keep government from taking a proactive stance with respect to free contracting among traders. But patent law is property law, protection of the legal right to the intellectual property of the patent holder. It is not an interference with contractual agreements to use that property.
At least that's how I see it; Justice Sotomayor may have more empathy for the plaintiff.
K