Can't seem to remember. But on the island with the other creative minds and thinkers live. Who the hell builds all their stuff. Their machines, their roads and buildings etc.
Do they hire workers, or is it robots.
Not a critism , just wondering I mean I get he can create all these awesome stuff but who helps build them.
Was it robots?
Robots are cool.
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.
They built it.
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Once upon a time, we had a love affair with fire.
http://athinkersblog.com/
Okaaayy.
Let me put it this way. If John wants to build a building does he mix the concrete, clear the land. Move the heavy girders work the wiring with the power of his mind. You know , logically you going to build something you need to do it with a group of people.
If the aim is self reliance , does he ask the others on the island for aid. Or do they reach a mutual group of assistance regarding projects.
That kind of stuff.
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.
There are employers and employees. Instead of taking, they earn everything. If they want to build something, they have their employees do it, but they are well compensated. It's not so much self-reliance as it is that they want to be forced to pay for something; they don't want to have their money taken without something to show for it.
--
Once upon a time, we had a love affair with fire.
http://athinkersblog.com/
What does the employer do except mooch off the efforts of his employees? Galt was an employee, but his employer would legally own everything he created as part of the conditions of his employment.
shareThat's why Galt left it behind- not that anyone could make heads or tails out of it at the factory he worked at.
But no, an employer offers a certain sum for the efforts of the employees. They are not obligated to accept that offer and are free to renegotiate at any time. That's not mooching. Of course this is also based on the employer knowing how the hell to create their own product. Sadly, that is something that is lost in today's world- where a CEO of a pop company can run a computer company.
"De gustibus non est disputandum"
#3
It doesn't matter who is compensating whom--if you're not inventing things for profit then you're part of the problem and should be put against the wall as a traitor to capitalism. Show me one executive who actually gets his hands dirty down on the factory floor. You can't BECAUSE THEY SIT IN THEIR OFFICES POCKETING ALL THE PROCEEDS.
shareI'm fine if they don't get dirty. They hire people to get dirty for them. I have a problem with those who are incapable of going down and getting their hands dirty should the need arise. If a boss is incapable of producing then yes, they are part of the problem.
But I see no problem with a business owner who hires people to free him/her up to do other things for the company. But when a business owner knows nothing about the nuts & bolts of the business, and simply buys a company because it makes money, then I find that owner to be a leech.
"De gustibus non est disputandum"
#3
in the real world, the only people with enough money to buy a company of any size are not likely to have a clue how to work in the trenches. did mitt romney have any idea how to run a toy store? does carl icahn know how to pilot jumbo jets?
i'm surprised to see you finally admit that practically all owners are just leeches. welcome to the fight, komrade!
It falls right in line with the character of James Taggart who knows squat about running a railroad but is leeching the hell out of Taggart Transcontinental. At least Dagny Taggart knows what the hell she's doing, researched Rearden Metal and is capable of driving a train (and probably laying the track) if push comes to shove.
Though James taggart inherited his position and ownership in the company, he's aperfect example of today's owners who buy companies based on profitability rather than interest.
Even Gordon Gecko admits he's a fraud:
You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it.
I'll be the first to acknowledge that these owners are part of the problem and not part of the solution. They put the bottom line above the assembly line.
"De gustibus non est disputandum"
#3
james taggart as an example of anything? nah...you're slipping back into the "atlas shrugged has real world parallels" trap again. i doubt anybody as spineless and indecisive as jim taggart reaches any level of real authority in the real world.
the real world example that comes to mind is apple computer. nobody argued that gil amelio didn't know computers, but he sure didn't know how to run the company. trench knowledge is not sufficient to success at higher levels.
James Taggart is a PRIME example of an idiot son who inherits his father's business without knowing a damned thing about the industry. I've worked for plenty of those.
But yeah, Gil Amelio is a great real-world example as well. Then you have the flipside of people who are great at production but don't have ANY abilities in management or business, yet get promoted to those positions because of seniority or.. whatever.
"De gustibus non est disputandum"
#3
And... finally you reveal your true affinity... Komrade. Communism = Envy.
shareyes, my true affinity: i like facts. real facts. not made up "facts".
envy has nothing to do with it. if you think communism is merely about envy, then you don't really know what communism is about.
(and no, while it might have been a step forward for most people in the mid-nineteenth century, i don't think true communism works today)
Playing golf isn't the same as being down on the assembly line. No wonder employees don't exist in this book: it would promptly shatter the entire illusion.
shareHe provides the ideas, the capital, and takes the risk, typically ALL OF IT. If the company fails, the employees lose their jobs, but the owners lose their shirts. If he is like most entrepreneurs he also works 100 hour work weeks. The real moochers want to play it safe but still accrue the same rewards from the company's success as those that staked everything on it.
Understand, what we are talking about here are entrepreneurs, NOT CEO's. Many commenters here are confusing the two. Once the bean counters take control true innovation is probably a thing of the past. Apple and Jobs/Sculley is a prime example of the principle.
just like if you have a plumbing problem at home that you can't (or don't want to) do yourself, you hire someone to do it. We're all employers in a sense anyway. But many times it's indirectly due to a desire for efficiency (which is why we barter with money as opposed to goods and services). it's just easier to trade our work for cash and then trade that cash for a Big Mac, rather than trying to trade and barter our work & goods to eventually parlay that into a Big Mac.
Galt's Gulch is not short of people to do good work. And that work is traded for goods and services- just like it is out here in our real world. The major difference is the lack of people in the Gulch who try to latch onto what you earn or create and take it for themselves (often in the name of taking it for others- as if that makes all the difference in the world.)
My "#3" key is broken so I'm putting one here so i can cut & paste with it.
when galt needs precision equipment built, he hires top notch composers and historians to do the work. i believe the building construction was done by authors (fiction and non-fiction). because if you're good at one thing, you're brilliant at everything.
shareJust because your a brilliant architect doesn't me you can hammer a nail. Because you can invent a complicated computer chip doesn't mean you know squat about wiring a house or indoor plumbing.
Maybe there where other worker class people allowed on the island to do the stuff their more elite , specially talanted people couldn't do.
Just because you can cook the best meal in the world, would'nt me I would trust you to fix the damn stove or unblock the toilet.
Or build the road, or make fences , or wire the electrical board..etc
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.
hey now, we're talking about atlas-shrugged-world, not reality. in atlas-shrugged-world if somebody can cook a delicious meal they can without doubt be trusted to write epic poetry with one hand while designing skyscrapers with the other. it's just the way it is.
shareBut galt's Gulch wasn't just populated with CEOs, architects and bankers. Yes, you would want a bakery operator to be able to run an efficient and wonderful bakery. but you would also want a great baker in there doing the baking. No different than in the rest of the world. John Galt didn't just recruit suits.
but it's also the point that a baker without a bakery is just a man with an unrealized talent. he can stand on a corner with a sign saying "will bake for food" or will that baker put his talents to use? How?
Ultimately, the baker who answers that question is the baker John Galt recruits because that is a baker who applies his talents ratehr than rests on them wishing to glom onto another's accomplisments of creating a bakery for them to bake in.
All this is pretty loose-swinging on the philosophy. But it's not like Galt's Gulch is Gilligan's Island full of Thurston Howells and no Mary Anns.
My "#3" key is broken so I'm putting one here so i can cut & paste with it.
so the baker for the gulch was actually a baker? no...a famous actress. the farmers were really good farmers? no...college professors.
you may wish to believe galt recruited menials, but the only people mentioned are all intellectuals.
I think many of you are missing the difference in Galt's world and ours.
In the book all of the "Captains" were not only the best and brightest but they got their hands dirty. Francisco started at the lowest position possible in his family company and worked his way up. Dagny did the same. They knew their craft better than anyone who worked underneath them. They weren't "managers" who just looked for results. They made their results.
These were the men and women who were the best at what they did. They took their profession very seriously. They excelled at it and only offered their work on their terms at their price. If neither were met they wouldn't share their talents or products.
Ahhh... Simpler times
The problem isn't that there is no one qualified to do the dirty work, the problem is that the dirty work takes up all their precious time.
No capitalist in a post-apocalyptic society can really do any of the real gruntwork that makes society function. The farmers and garbage crews and janitors and sewage cleaners and miners and lumberjacks and oil workers and all the dirty, disgusting jobs that are too difficult and too hazardous for any "captain of industry" to want to spend 90% of their waking energy (and most don't have the physical constitution to do them anyway).
Even if you want to grant the ones who ran their industrial companies the inherent knowledge and experience of every single one of the hundreds of specialist occupations that their companies employed, like they were all Tony Stark on steroids, that still doesn't solve the problem of maximizing their time. If you have a genius composer, do you really want him wasting his time tilling the fields 14 hours a day instead of writing symphonies? Even if he is the best farmhand in the world?
See, the truth is the builders and geniuses of the world need a disposable underclass to do the work that is too demanding and too dangerous, otherwise they wouldn't have the time to do their genius things.
This is an important point that Objectivists continuously fail to understand, so let me say this: In order for any apex civilization to pursue higher qualities like art and science, it must first employ an underclass to take care of it, freeing up time to engage in these high pursuits. In order to obtain such an underclass, it must invade its neighbors. In order to invade its neighbors, it must have a really good army.
No high civilization is ever benign - every one celebrates its noble accomplishments on the backs of cheap labor exploited by tyrannies of chauvinistic patriarchies, and an Objectivist society that doesn't do this will not have the time or the power to accomplish anything at all. The fruits of man's genius will be devoured by manual labor.
And that is why Galt's Gulch is an unmitigated failure.
What you fail to realize and it's apparent you a pocess a large amount of vitriole towards the material it has made you unable to be objective.
Galt's Gulch would be a success. However, Galt's Gulch was on a small Scale. The best and brightest in the end lived in a sulf sustained community. It was not world wide. They lived off of each others talents and traded value for value. This would be a success in any culture. They were all equal. The composer was no better than the baker, composer, actor. They all had a vital role to play and their traded their product for another product or service that they needed by way of currency. In the case of the Gulch it was not a Fiat currency. It was physical gold.
Yes, it would be a success -- if that culture reverted to neolithic living and simplified the labor pool.
If, on the other hand, it wanted to continue with all the modern trappings of a sophisticated, technologically byzantine post-industrial society with a highly specialized and hierarchical labor pool, then no, Galt's Gulch is not sustainable. Small-scale societies don't have the infrastructure for high-scale things anyway.
And something tells me Rand did not intend for her superheroes -- who like to tinker with alloys and motors so futuristic that they don't even exist yet in the real world -- to reduce themselves to the status of pre-industrial agrarian serfs to make some sort of socio-political point.
But that is indeed what they did.
I take this as you actually haven't taken the time or effort to actually read the book in it's entirety.
While in the Gulch they were quite content with their life and hated when they had to leave.
Galt cleaned his own dishes. Cooked his own food invented his own devices and built them with his bare hands.
Rand wrote these books as an Idea of what the ideal man and woman would be.
The would not involved with a political system, not concerned with political correctness. Unable to make excuses for their own failures. Frankly these were people were unable to fail. They were unwilling to fail and surrender, unable to just give up. They would lay down their life and everything they had to pursue their goals.
Unfortunately it's been a few hundred years since men and women like that Walked the earth.
Atlas Shrugged is not a book written to say "here is the blueprint for a perfect society." It's a book with remarkable characters and hopefully puts an Idea in your head that if you are smarter and work harder than anyone else then you might change the world.
Should be given to every child in high school. The few that will actually read it I might help them create the desire to achieve and not just go with the status quo.
I did read the book. I read it in its entirety while sitting on the can. It took me 2.5 years to use all the pages.
Great, Galt did his own dishes. He also grew his own food, tilled his own fields, harvested his own seeds and secured his own crop for the coming season. But he never built any of his devices because doing all that requires 99% of his waking energy.
Moreso, without the civil and technological infrastructure, he's not able to build anything more complicated than a hammer anyway. He just doesn't have the time -- look around you. Every device you see in your room is the result of hundreds of thousands of man hours. Galt's Gulch simply doesn't have the labor pool or the resources.
Just look at what Galt has to go through to build one of his devices:
First, he would have to go into the hills and mine his own ore. But just ore by itself isn't very useful. He needs to smelt it to separate the iron, copper and tin, and to do that he needs to construct a special firing kiln because regular fire is not hot enough. To get a super hot furnace, he needs coke (no not the drug or the soft drink). It's super carbonated ash and the best coke is actually man-made highly refined petroleum coke, but since Galt doesn't have access to a petroleum refinery, he's going to have to find some natural sources of bituminous coal, which isn't as high quality but it'll do. Failing that, he can always make charcoal by cutting down some trees and burning them but it's even worse quality.
Fortunately, coal can be found all over the place but he has to know how to find it, how to mine it, how to purify it, and how to transport it. All these things require access to technology and distribution channels that he doesn't have access to.
But let's say he does. So Galt has the ore for smelting and he has the coke for burning. Oh, and he also needs some limestone flux as a fuel agent, but let's say there's all sorts of it lying around Galt's Gulch anyway.
Now, Galt has to construct an airless blast furnace to get temperatures hot enough (up to 2000 degress) to smelt the ore. I won't go into the details of the different types of furnaces he's going to need to extract different metals like tin, lead and iron, so let's just focus on one for now. He also needs to construct a smokestack (preferably out of refractory brick) for ventilation, bleeder valves to protect the top of the furnace from sudden gas pressure surges, a dust catcher to protect coarse particles from escaping and killing everyone in the enclave, and a few rail cars for delivery, waste, and disposal of elements (because the thing is damn hot and you can't get near it), a casthouse at the bottom of the furnace, a bustle pipe, copper tuyeres (at least four) and the equipment for casting the liquid iron and slag. And also tapholes (preferably more than one), skimmers, and a cooling system (water-based of course).
This is not a one-man job. He's going to need the entire population of Galt's Gulch x5 to construct it. I don't know what he could possibly construct it out of, but let's pretend his hands can punch granite into concrete. And that no one minds manning the thing in perpetuity afterward.
All of this, just to turn his iron ore into pig iron. It's not even steel yet. Or anything useful.
There are still hundreds of more steps to go. Once he's got the steel, then he needs to make the casts. Then he pours the steel into the casts to create tools. He uses the tools to create machine tools (I'm glossing over this part, but the construction of machine tools is more complicated than smelting the ore. In fact, machine tools is probably the most important facet of industrialization. Without machine tools, you have no industrial society -- it's one of the reasons why the Greeks did not have an industrial revolution). He uses the machine tools to design, shape, and fabricate metal parts for his devices (ie: nails, screws, nuts, bolts, rivets, etc... all ISO compliant, of course).
Then he can get down to actually inventing his devices and building them with his bare hands. But he first needs to create -- from scratch -- about a dozen highly complex industries first, and he needs a chain of workers to keep them functioning all the time. Galt's Gulch is simply not built for that level of industrialization. It doesn't have the resources, it doesn't have the manpower, and it certainly doesn't have the industrious infrastructure.
Onto your other points, I find it interesting that whenever I get into an argument with an admirer of Ayn Rand, the most common retort is always: "You've obviously never read any of her works". Or words to that effect. As if I'm not capable of thinking for myself and that if I don't agree with her works, that means I either didn't understand it or didn't read it.
I have read the book. I have read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness and I don't need to read any more to know that Objectivism is a broken, diseased ideology that appeals to only two types of people:
1) Self-righteous *beep*
2) Rich (who may or may not already be self-righteous *beep*
Teenagers are already *beep* enough as it is, they don't need to read a manual on how to become a bigger one.
What Ayn Rand did was simplify a complex network of economic theories, ideas, practices and human motives and constructed a mono-dimensional faux-reality as a vehicle to push her pulp. Then she filled it full of cardboard cutout characters and mary sue ubermensches who don't talk but lecture for tedious pages about why the rich and powerful have divine right to being rich and powerful. And of course things play out exactly the way her philosophy says because she's the author and she controls the outcome. In clear violation of every standard of ethics, politics, economics, reality, life, human nature, philosophy, and national train corporation management. It's dishonest, and it's wrong.
As an example of how wildly skewed her understanding of reality really was, just looked at how she twisted the Robin Hood fable. She called him the most evil fairytale hero in history because he stole from the producers to give to the moochers. On the contrary, Robin actually stole the people's taxes from the oppressive government and gave them back to their rightful owners. He should be a Tea Party icon. I don't understand why she didn't look this up thoroughly enough. It was a bad allegory because it's heavily dependent on point of view.
And that's primarily the problem with "Objectivism": Its stark, black-white absolutism, devoid of nuance or subtlety. It is all shallow, superficial moralizing with no depth or ambiguity.
The authoress herself knew little about reason and even less about philosophy. She admitted she barely read anyone, which is why Objectivism sounds a bit like the idealism of Nietzsche, with maybe a bit of Kant and Bernard Shaw. She once claimed that the only book on philosophy she read was by Aristotle, which explains her appeal to his logical absolutes, particularly the first one: the Law of Identity (ie: A is A).
She was damaged goods. Those mean ole Bolsheviks took her daddy's business and robbed her of the privilege and position she most undoubtedly deserved in Russian society and she spent the rest of her life whining about it. She was an absolutely despicable person according to EVERYONE who ever had the misfortune of working with or even meeting her, indomitably defiant, obscenely difficult, and was known to completely suck the life out of a room. She never smiled or laughed, she abhorred small talk, and she would often approach strangers with random questions like "Tell me about your premises." She just didn't get people -- she was a pure autistic in every sense of the meaning. And her problem with her philosophy was, like all philosophers, she assumed that everyone else ought to think like her.
She was wrong. Horribly, depressingly, ridiculously wrong.
The point is that they can learn because they are intelligent and hard working. People can learn without going to school and people can figure things out for themselves.
Let's assume they don't have a great plumber in the gulch. Well, as time goes on, someone who may have known a little bit about plumbing will learn how to do the rest. The book was supposedly set in the 20's(at least that is when the original screenplay was set). So they did not have powerful computer microchips like we have in our computers, etc.
They really have a pretty simple life. They do have unlimited power from Galt's engine and a few other things to make their life possible there but that's it.
I work as a financial systems support person, but I also know wood working and a lot of manual labor from DIY projects around my house. In fact I have never found anything that I cannot understand how to do. I could never be a doctor, because I do not have as strong a stomach as may be needed (but that would come after watching a few surgeries) and I do not have the steady hand either.
The people in Galt's Gulch are all very smart and very hardworking. They pay each other in their own currency and make almost no American money.
I do wonder if Midas was still paying taxes on the land he owned. Otherwise, he could get in trouble eventually, but they would have to find the Gulch first.
The only time Democrats won't use children as a prop is at a Pro-Choice Rally. -Greg Gutfield
It wasn't just brilliant people, it was those willing to do honest work.
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I cheer a little inside each time I see 'too' used correctly instead of 'to.'
It wasn't an island. It was a vacation retreat owned by Midas Mulligan. If you have ever seen some of the vacation spots that are privately owned, they are like resorts. In Rand's view, the world has already crumbled and the last remaining industrial giants quit and with government interferance, it's impossible for anyone to take their place. It was also understood that it was going to be a temporary situation due to the total collapse of the economic and government system. Industries are leaving so-called blue states and heading to red states so the system is starting to crumble. It won't be long before city centers collapse from their own rules and regulations. Too bad, idiots from California can't seem to leave their destruction behind and corrupt other states like Washington, Oregon and Colorado.
share
Yeah, but if you send the best artist, thinkers, and leaders to a place of Paradise.
The last thing they want to do is make their own beds. Clean out the toilets, create a sewer system. Wash their own clothes make their own foods.
Too menial.
So was their robots or something. Or did they take a page out of Bio Shock Infinite allowed the working class into their little man made heaven born of their brilliance and their ability to take care of the small stuff.
Cant imagine a brilliant artist finding out he has to help dig out trenches for the crap to do so with a happy face.
Details.
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.
Like my pappy always said, "only when a man gets cold will he get up to close the door".
A brilliant artist will wash his own socks and underwear rather than wearing them for the fifth day straight. A leader of industry will dig a hole to crap in and build an outhouse rather than crap his own pants. A great philosopher will build a shelter to protect his brilliant philosophical writings from the wind and the rain.
Just because we live in an environment of conveniences does not mean that man can't "reduce" himself to menial tasks. I know some great people who enjoy digging holes and building gardens. Physical labor isn't something to be afraid of. It isn't something to avoid. How many mansions have a weight room? For many, physical activity clears the mind and gives many the opportunity to tune out the frivolous and focus on what's important. Even former President Jimmy Carter has hung drywall.
Just because they presently have the conveniences of modern technology and cheap labor doesn't mean they can't or won't do it themselves when faced with the choice of it getting done or not getting done.
The key point is that when one has no choice but menial labor, then menial labor sucks. Hell, any job sucks when there's no choice. After all, isn't it a lot more fun to remodel your bathroom when you choose rather than when your septic tank backs up and your plumbing fixtures rust through during your morning shower?
I guess my point is that if a person were SO afraid of doing work, they would probably have opted NOT go to Galt's Gulch in the first place.
My "#3" key is broken so I'm putting one here so i can cut & paste with it.
Ah but thats the thing isnt it.
Just because the man can write a sonnet doesnt mean he can shoval a hole.
And if he cant shoval a hole he gets frustrated. If he gets told that he will have to do the manual work to live in this utopia when he was promised a land of freedom will he see it as slavery?
Also its a matter of expertise. Despite all these captains of industry I really think you going to need the inbetween to build and maintain.
I mean where talking about thousands at least.
The buther the baker the candlestick maker.
Tell a philsopher he has to get on his knees to clean his own room and toilets. Tell a man who can make power generators he has to make and bend the steel , fill in the concrete etc
Does he get another group to give him a hand. Is that not counter to the techings. Or does it fall under mutual benefit.
So Logically there would be others besides the cream of the crop on the island.
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.
The philosopher can live in his own filth if he chooses. Plenty of brilliant people have done just that.
And obviously trade is more than welcome and available. Offer free or discounted electricity to the man who can bend steel for power generators, another discount for the man who can do the concrete and a deal is made. Maybe Midas Mulligan poured concrete before he became a money-grubbing banker and he's love to get some cheap electricity.
Dagny cleaned John Galt's house for room and board. Gladly. It's not like there was a railroad for her to run in the Gulch. But eventually, there wasn't really a railroad for her to run outside of the Gulch either.
Obviously the Gulch would consist of more than just top-floor office dwellers and limo passengers. Rand indicated that in the book. She just didn't present their recruitment as strongly as she did the "captains of industry".
By selling the human being short of his own capabilities and value you undermine and devalue ALL of man's accomplishments up to this point in time.
My "#3" key is broken so I'm putting one here so i can cut & paste with it.
So basically there where middle class workers after all.
Or basic worker with no special skills or talents like captains of industries etc
The common man.
What bothered me is the assertion that these elite did not need anybody. Under the philsophy of self reliance. But we all need a group to exist.
And how would that work, I cant imagine thousands leaving their friends and families in the world to die just to work for the sods who helped it all to fall down by refusing to help what they viewed as a corrupt and flawed world.
Its illogical.
The Elite could not build it on their own, unless their wizards. And the vast ammount of people needed to maintain a workable society ( ie working class joes) would proberly not like this group too much for wrecking their world over their personal issues.
If the Thinker does not have working hands to make his thought a reality, then the thinker is only a dreamer that never wakes.
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.
It wasn't as though it was a big society with skyscrapers and Wal-Marts. It was a community more like Walnut Grove in "Little House on the Prairie" with slightly better technology.
And the point of it was that it didn't have the 'common man' but rather, the UNcommon man- those who were great in their field and valued their knowledge and energy as something to not be exploited and stolen but traded and utilized.
I'm imagining a bricklayer with a family much like Reardon's - a man who would welcome the opportunity to abandon their friends and family for a life and location more conducive to their core values.
Elite people work in many fields. Exceptional craftsmanship, precision and a sense of pride in what they do and how they do it - perhaps elements of their field that are legislated away by government or discouraged in the name of a larger profit.
This is a good rundown of the Gulch and how it started out, though it appears as though it is utilizing the film's timline rather than taken verbatim from the book:http://conservapedia.com/Galt's_Gulch
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ah, don't let gabby roll you - the gulch really did only cater to the assorted captains of industry (who evidently were talented plumbers and ditch diggers as well). the basic workers you refer to didn't make it to the gulch. the lower level achievers are instead told to work out in the world at menial jobs, not using their minds just their bodies.
your obvious question of how everything gets built in the first place is glossed over by rand - much the same way the current batch of objectivists gloss over all the things that they'd have to give up if the government (and all its evil taxation) went away tomorrow.
Well when you're homesteading in Walnut Grove how many "low level achievers" do you really need? Pa Ingalls planted his crops, did some mine-blasting, worked the mill... Did he really need Joe the Plumber to build his outhouse?
I suppose it's possible that Bill Gates would be so incompetent that he would be paralyzed on a tract of land, unable to dig a hole to piss in or build a house out of sticks.
My "#3" key is broken so I'm putting one here so i can cut & paste with it.
Where are the dentists and doctors and the entire industry of lab techs needed to provide a single anti-tetanus shot first time a poet-banker-captain of industry-plumber-aviator-miner-fisherman-ditch digger-architect bangs his thumb with a rusty hammer?
Who makes the aspirin? How about who plows and sows the fields?
Even with modern machinery not much brain surgery or industry captaining gets done on farms.
And for a simple reason - just getting everyone fed takes a LOT of time and effort.
Free energy machine or not - corn won't grow faster. And that's a relatively simple crop.
You want to eat more than just corn? Well now... someone's gonna have to be working sunrise to sunset to provide that.
Want some cheese on your cracker? Boy, you'll need an entire industry just for that.
Don't forget to send some of those captains of industry to veterinary school as well, in between their daily stints as milkmaids while they were busy becoming master cheesemakers. And plumber-builder-truck driving-dentist-painter-roofer-farmers-philosopher-helicopter pilot-hunter-cooks.
Among other things.
Oh... wait... public education is socialism.
Meh, I'm sure a private tutor would teach them all of that just as well. Particularly all those animal husbandry skills and knowledge.
Uber-elite utopia is just that - utopia. Impossibly perfect society. Note the "impossibly" bit.
Wanna see a real life attempt at Rand's "elite utopia", where every citizen is capable of doing everything with equal ability and mastery and thus achieving self-sufficiency for the entire community?
Look at Cambodia under Pol Pot.
Only, he was more realistic.
He rounded everyone down to a lowest common denominator. Everyone CAN dig ditches - or die doing it.
Rand imagines super-ability that simply isn't there, making everyone of the "elite" not a jack of all trades but a master AND a superior moral and physical being capable of taking on work and responsibilities of hundreds and doing it all at the same time.
A race of super or uber-men if you will.
Humans are fallible, limited creatures only occasionally doing a little better than the average.
That's why the Nobels are given out once a year, and for very specific achievements, instead of being handed out together with high-school diplomas.
The fact that we ARE limited in body, mind and time is what makes our achievements great and awesome.
Rand's characters on the other hand are childishly imagined Übermenschen, running on little more than manifest destiny.
Giants among midgets in every way, because there'd be no story otherwise.
And since even that is not enough to keep it running, there's a deus ex machina in every garage and thousand pages in every plot.
Pol Pot is exactly the name that came to my head when I began reading this thread. I wonder how many followers of Ayatollah Rand knew that she was basically advocating the same thing Pol Pot did?
shareFor a different version of Randian "utopia," that I just happened to come across today, see:
Tennessee: Ayn Rand’s vision of paradise
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/tennessee_ayn_rands_vision_of_paradise_partner/
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/tennessee_ayn_rands_vision_of_paradise _partner/
---
"Blood of Thrones" - proceeds to Action Cancer:
http://www.orb-store.com/blood.htm
would you want to live in a house that bill gates built single-handedly? i suppose he might be able to do a good job (i'll be especially impressed with the glass windows he blows himself), because he was never all that great at the computer business. he's got to have some skills, doesn't he?
shareWell when you're homesteading in Walnut Grove how many "low level achievers" do you really need? Pa Ingalls planted his crops, did some mine-blasting, worked the mill... Did he really need Joe the Plumber to build his outhouse?One of the great advantages of a market economy is that it allows for division of labor and specialization, which enables greater productivity. I think that a return to the little house on the prairie would generally be seen as a step backwards, economically speaking, resulting in a diminished standard of living. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually offered better quality of life. share
And really, it seems its main objective is to simply "wait it out" until the bulk of society crumbles down in the outside world. Then, as the book indicates, these great minds would then emerge and lead the world into a new dawn of objective reason and self-interest without looting off the efforts of another.
(feel free to draw a parallel between this and Charlie Manson's vision of Helter Skelter at your leisure)
Of course, a world in chaos is hardly receptive/conducive to order and reason, so in that I do agree that it's a bit fantastical. In such a situation, I'm inclined to believe the world would follow a religious nut before John Galt.
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and interestingly enough (at least to me - i'm easily interested) galt signals that it's time to "return to the world" by making the sign of the dollar in the air.
the dollar - a dead currency which would have no meaning in the strictly gold-based economy this new world would have.
Hell, I'm still trying to wrap my head around why gold would be the basis of an economy. Why not cobalt, platinum or sulfur? I realize ancient civilizations treasured it because it was pretty and shiny, easy to work with - kind of like how a ball of yarn is valuable to a cat.
But in a future society would gold really have a basis of value on which to build a world economy?
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no, of course it wouldn't. but this is rand-world, where a pocketful of gold bars is just as practical as a pocketful of benjamins.
shareOh give me a break with your exaggerations, Phantom. They'd use briefcases.
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at least you didn't say they'd use wheelbarrows.
of polished sea shells.
The three shells are for the bathroom.
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mellow greetings! i knew that!
i didn't know they had san angeles plumbing in the gulch, though.
I think they had Gulchians in the San Angeles plumbing.
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yeah, i can totally see john galt raiding taco bell delivery trucks to snag dinner. he's pretty brazen that way.
we should demand to have denis leary as galt in part 3!
I would love that! And as an added bonus, Galt's speech would take a lot less time.
But as a side note, I think it would be Ragnar Danneskjold who would pirate the Taco Bell shipments.
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Whenever I hear the phrase "going Galt," I can't help but remember that it was already tried -- in TELEVISION !
The early days of the medium saw a lot of experimentation. Things like "Marty" (the original version with Rod Steiger), "Requiem for a Heavyweight," "Patterns" (both remade as movies) or "East Side/West Side." Not that it was all great but I can't think of even ONE anthology series like the old "Playhouse 90" or "Kraft Theatre" on broadcast television. (Heck, there isn't even a "Twilight Zone" clone on now except possibly on cable.)
In the late 60's, a famous and award-winning TV writer, fed up with sponsors and studio execs watering down his scripts, decided to "go Galt" and encouraged his fellow writers to do the same. They believed that if they withdrew their talents, studios would come crawling to them.
The result? At least one cynical television studio head was glad to be rid of demanding writers and filled his programming with "lowest common denominator" shows. Like "The Beverly Hillbillies," and "Gomer Pyle, USMC." And "Heehaw," "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Green Acres." This wasn't due to a boyhood love of country life. He grew up in wealth and privilege and was cynically exploiting a formula of "broads, bosoms and fun" for an American public "I fly over."
Seeing that television execs were NOT falling over themselves to hire them back, the TV writers either came back of their own accord or continued to write plays and films.
But at the end of the day, hiding out until the world recognizes your genius is about as useful as holding your breath until you turn blue.
But the point was made that the civilization of television pretty much crumbled. the only problem is that they don't want genius back. Idiocracies thrive on idiocy.
And apparently cinema is following suit.
"Oh that's nice, sweetie" = Grandma's version of "cool story, bro"
#3
oh? there's a lot more wisdom in your typical episodes of beverly hillbillies or andy griffith than most "serious" television - then and now.
shareyeah, but that's "cornpone wisdom" (or "Hee Haw philosophy") that consists of little one line truisms that even the most sophisticated and serious person understands and agrees with. Just because Andy Taylor can bark a few truisms on command doesn't make him the Sage of the South.
But I'll agree that often it's just nice to hear them in a simplified and down-home fashion.
"Oh that's nice, sweetie" = Grandma's version of "cool story, bro"
#3
You would still need skilled labourers.
Bill Gates may know how to program a comnputer doesn't mean he knows how to organise plumbing. How to dig a hole , where to dig.
So logically while the creme de creme planed and wrote and thought up. Another faction had to make sure that they had running facilities , water, kept the machines going . The crops coming in , the bread baked.
Its only logical.
Then again, I am trying to make sense out of a fantasy . Its a minor detail meaining nothing in the scheme of things . Like Rosebud, or if Han shot first.
Just that in Utopia there has to be cogs .
Otherwise the best would never have time to get anything done.
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.
What bothered me is the assertion that these elite did not need anybody.
What bothered me is the assertion that these elite did not need anybody.
Just because you wouldn't be willing to clean your own toilets doesn't mean the type of person John Galt recruited wouldn't. Anyway, he didn't just seek out the brilliant, but also anyone who believed in merit over cronyism.
shareI can't recall how specific Ayn Rand was in describing Galt's Gulch and all the workers who lived there. It could be assumed all the machinery, roads, etc. were built by workers who came to live there and worked for the gold currency they minted. The citizens of Atlantis were not just composers, artists, and CEOs. I do know they had heavy machinery, since Dagny and Francisco were building some kind of mining operation while they were there, so we could assume they had more people to work the mine than just those two.
Oh, and it's not actually an Island (though they refer to it as Atlantis). It's a valley known variously as Mulligan's Valley and Galt's Gulch based (allegedly) on Ouray, Colorado, where Rand lived for a time while writing the novel.
So..a symbiotic relationship between the common man of Workers and the dreamers of grand ideal.
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.
Rand would never dignify your question with an answer, reality is not her forte ... .
She would, however, easily throw you out of the collective or Galt's Gulch.
(When Branden was giving lectures at NBI in NY, (he was AR's boy toy), she was asked by several people in her special group not to attend. She was cold and abrasive toward the audience when speaking or anwering questions, and due to her behavior NBI was losing revenue!)
I'm going to try and fully flesh out what so many replies have failed to do.
"Atlantis" or "Galt's Gulch"as it became known by in the 3rd part of the book was a Valley and not an island.
All of the "Randian" men and Women that lived in the gulch are not executives in the sense that you think of in current day's standards.
All of these Men and Women either built the company up from the ground with their own blood and sweat or they worked up through the ranks. Because of this ability to work and desire to provide more value than anyone they are almost perfect characters.
In the Gulch, Galt and the other producers represented all of the principal industries that any civilization required. They each worked amongst themselves trading services and paying in gold. The only people in the gulch served a purpose and provided a value that was important to another person. Whether that be janitorial services, sculpting, art, music, or providing Power as was Galt's contribution.
So with that in mind... the Producers did what they did in their previous lives before they entered the Gulch to live fulltime. They created their wares or services and the community thrived.
Thanks,
Joe
Better yet, who BUYS it?
share