Photo for Headline Surfer / An image of Ayn Rand, noted book author.
A simple explanation of the bumper sticker is that it is a protest against big government. In the novel “Atlas Shrugged,” John Galt leads a sit-down strike of the successful and productive people against the system.
In the 1957 novel, Ayn Rand is very prophetic in forecasting the directions of liberal thought and American politics. For example she predicts:
1 The academic tendency to deny the existence of facts and logic.
2 The societal tendency to glorify indolence and failure while vilifying hard work and success.
3 The concept that need should be the driving concern rather that productivity.
4 The concept that the entrepreneurs and producers exist for the pure benefit of the needy and have no merit of their own and deserve no consideration.
5 Successful people should feel guilty and apologetic for their success.
6 Needy people should feel that the successful people owe them something.
7 Human rights take precedence over property rights. Thus the needy are free to take from the less needy.
8 Results count for nothing; it is the intentions that are important.
9 Individuals don’t count; it is the group that is important.
10 There is no such thing as right or wrong.
11 Good and bad is determined by the will of the majority.
She also takes the successful, hard working people to task for feeling guilty over their accomplishments and allowing people to put them down and making them appear to be morally inferior. Atlas Shrugged is a tale of the disasters that happen when you try to run your society according to the faulty premises outlined above.
There are numerous incidences illustrating this point in the novel.
For example, there is an incident where a large number of liberal thinkers cause their own painful deaths by ignoring the existence of facts and logic. They then use their political pull to force the event, which kills them all.
In another incident, a young Ivy League graduate inherits a business from his father. He decides to run it on the Marxist principle that everyone should produce according to their ability, but should be paid according to their needs.
Ayn Rand details how the abilities disappeared while the needs proliferated. The business quickly failed and the owner didn’t seem to understand why. In yet another incident, a banker tries out the policy of loaning money according to need rather than whether the borrower could put the money to good use.
The incident ends with the bankrupt banker moaning that he didn’t deserve to fail; after all he was doing so much good for needy people. In this particular scenario, Ayn Rand predicted the sub-prime mortgage debacle. In the novel, the government passes laws that handicap the really efficient producers to allow the inefficient producers to keep up with them.
For example, the leading railroad is constrained in the number, speed and length of the trains they can run to reduce their productivity. The government keeps passing laws and regulations that hamper business. As things deteriorate, businesses start dropping out and cutting back and really productive people retire or disappear.
To try to halt this downward progression, the government passes a law that every business must stay at the same level as in the “benchmark” year.
Production must stay level, people must stay at their present jobs, no new inventions can be made or come into use. The rights to all patents must be turned over to the government. And finally all prices and wages are frozen.
In other words, they try to freeze every facet of the economy at the same level. As a result of all these disastrous government moves, the economy goes into a severe tail spin.
When the government leaders ask the novel’s heroine, Dagney Taggert, how they can correct the economic woes of the country, she replies cut taxes and remove the controls. The government leaders reply that that just cant be done.
To round out Ayn Rand’s prophecy observe that many of today’s entrepreneurs and businessmen have “gone into hiding” in the sense that plans to build or expand businesses have been put on hold till the business climate gets better.
Right now there are several trillion dollars of capital sitting on the sidelines waiting for better times.
You could say, figuratively, that many of today’s businessmen, investors, and movers and shakers have figuratively “gone into hiding in Galt’s Gulch” to escape the present business climate.
Many will continue to hide there until things change.
About the Writer:
Peter Mallory was co-publisher of Headline Surfer (originally called NSBNEWS.net when it was launched in April 2008) until mid-20012 when he abruptly retired due to illness and passed away. Orioginally from Cincinnati, Ohio, He grew up in New Smyrna Beach where he resided most of his life. He was widowed with two grown children and lived in New Smyrna Beach. He received his master's degree in engineering from MIT.
Blog Posted: 2010-09-16 10:29:09