Atlas Shrugged: With America on The Brink, Should You “Go Galt” and Strike?

amd

Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2020
Messages
864
The point is how the oligarchy and politicians are using your inculcated moral concepts against you (vs reason and experience).

If you don't see the repeating patterns in history, if we keep making the same mistakes, then our thought process is at fault.

If we are unable to see reality, but let our preconceived ideas take over, there's no way out of these cycles.

If we can't identify the root of the problems, then there's no solution.


Atlas Shrugged: With America on The Brink, Should You “Go Galt” and Strike? (2011)
https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/regulations/atlas-shrugged-with-america-on-the-brink-should-you-go-galt-and-strike/

Time to “Go Galt”?

And in the face of this onslaught, what can you do? Should you, like Rand’s heroes, “go Galt,” stop working, retreat to a secluded valley, and try to rebuild only when the country has collapsed?

Rand was asked these very questions in her own lifetime. Her answers might surprise you. In the 1970s, America was in a deep financial crisis (a new word, stagflation, had to be coined), urban violence was rampant, and power-seeking politicians like President Nixon instituted wage and price controls that led to, among other things, gas stations with no gas. How, people wondered, could Rand have foreseen all this? Was she a prophet? No, she answered. She had simply identified the basic cause of why the country was veering from crisis to new crisis.

Was the solution to “go Galt” and quit society? No, Rand again answered. The solution was simultaneously much easier and much harder. “So long as we have not yet reached the state of censorship of ideas,” [difference between the Soviet Union and China] she once said, “one does not have to leave a society in the way the characters did in Atlas Shrugged…. But you know what one does have to do? One has to break relationships with the culture…. [D]iscard all the ideas – the entire cultural philosophy which is dominant today.”

Now, if you’ve only seen the movie, the fact that Atlas Shrugged is not a political novel might surprise you. But the book’s point is that our plight is caused not by corrupt politicians (who are only a symptom) or some alleged flaw in human nature. It’s caused by the philosophic ideas and moral ideals most of us embrace.

“You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded,” novel hero John Galt declares to a country in crisis. “Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster.”

He elaborates: “You have sacrificed justice to mercy.” (For example, calls to make homeownership “accessible” to those who could not afford it and then bailouts and foreclosure freezes to spare them when they couldn’t pay.)

“You have sacrificed reason to faith.” (For example, attempts to prevent stem cell research on Biblical grounds or blind faith that Mr. Obama’s deliberately empty rhetoric about hope and change will magically produce prosperity.)

“You have sacrificed wealth to need.” (For example, Bush’s prescription drug benefit and Obamacare, both enacted because people needed “free” health care.)

“You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial.” (For example, attacks on Bill Gates for making a fortune; applause when he gives that fortune away.)

“You have sacrificed happiness to duty.” (For example, every president’s Kennedyesque exhortations to “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”)

The result?Why … do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality….”

Must question our ideals

This is what Atlas Shrugged is asking us to question: our ideals. Rethink our convictions and philosophy of life from the ground up. Without doing so, it argues, we won’t escape further crises.
 
Last edited:

EustaceBagge

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2021
Messages
331
Location
Amsterdam
Instilling these virtues into men is practically impossible. It is much easier to raise a generation (20 years) that gets educated on the true principles of virtue. And I mean virtue which is not relative to others, but absolute virtue based on sound reason like the Greek philosophers tried to expand in various ways.

I agree with your position, but I don't think the issue is with the wrong virtues, it is rather a lack of them. Moral relativity will be our demise.
 
OP
A

amd

Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2020
Messages
864
Preconceived ideas are the problem, not the solution. Call them whatever you want.

It is not knowledge per se, but the thought process that matters.

Preconceived ideas are an hindrance to reason, which doesn't respect any particular idea.

Why? Because the current rulers set the belief system that most people learn since they are children.

Otherwise, why would anyone chose one particular god over another (even if they say it is the same god), if it is not inculcated into most of the population as part of their culture.

In the same way, there are concepts and ideas that are impressed in people's minds via propaganda in the media.

Don't we want to reach our own conclusions in life? Or do we accept other people's conclusions (e.g., Greek philosophers)?

Also, don't group everything together. There's the original source material (the book and interviews), then there's the article's author presentation, and then there's the post above.

Each person derives a different meaning from the same text (hint).
 
Last edited:

EustaceBagge

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2021
Messages
331
Location
Amsterdam
You tell me the thought process matters most, but the thought process leads to actions that may be unintended. When someone gets judged, he gets judged based on his actions, not on his intentions.

To judge man on his intentions is something a god does, not man.

Being virtuous requires not only a moral code, but something that upholds that moral code. We see that in materialistic countries, like communist countries where religion is seen as weakness, morality has to be enforced by the state (social credit system in China).

Right now you tell me preconceived ideas are the problem, so you think with moral relativity we can still fix society, or do I misunderstand you?

"One has to break relationships with the culture…. [D]iscard all the ideas", what do you think this implies? In your case, the state indoctrinates kids, well why do the parents not indoctrinate their kids to the right way instead?

We need something that is absolute, based on reason. Only a new generation of kids can be made this way. Otherwise we will just repeat the problems we face today, like saying Black live matters is good, but saying all lives matter is bad. It is this relativity that is 100% against reason, but it makes people feel good because society and social media rewards them. This is called virtue signalling, and shows how weak our moral code has become.

But, it is not entirely against reason, because that individual, in all selfishness, chooses to support that which makes him/her look good to society. You see how reason can still work with moral relativity? If I steal from you without getting caught, how is that bad for me? I just gained something right? This is the basis on which people say: "Tax the rich". Instead, we have to say "Tax everyone equally", so that we pay equal taxes to the rich, instead of rising their taxes which is impossible, we have to reduce ours to be on their level because this one is 100% possible.

Trust me I will get a lot of backlash from this, but with moral relativity nothing will work, we need something absolute and only a new generation can change that, because fixing broken men is harder than raising kids for 20 years.
 
OP
A

amd

Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2020
Messages
864
Forget about me (is not personal) and maybe you'd see through your preconceived ideas.

The post is here to make some people think. Others won't benefit from it, if they have their minds set on something else.

What would a curious mind do?

If and when you have an open mind, there's food for thought in what was posted, which is easily overlooked or brushed off when that's not the case, but there's no need to believe anything here.
 
Last edited:
OP
A

amd

Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2020
Messages
864
The Mike Wallace Interview with Ayn Rand




Wallace: One of the principal achievements of this country in the past 20 years, particularly, I think most people agree is the gradual growth of social protective legislation based on the principle that we are our brothers keepers how do you feel about the political trends of the United States?

Rand: The way everybody feels, except more consciously. I feel that it is terrible that you see destruction all around you and that you are moving toward disaster until and unless all those welfare state conceptions have been reversed and rejected.

It is precisely these trends which are bringing the world to disaster because we are now moving towards complete collectivism or socialism. A system under which everybody is enslaved to everybody. And we are moving that way only because of our altruist moral.

Wallace: Yes, but you say everybody is enslaved to everybody, yet this came about democratically. Free people in a free country voted for this kind of government, wanted this kind of legislation. Do you object to the democratic process?

Rand: I object to the idea that people have the right to vote on everything. The traditional American system was a system based on the idea that majority will prevail only in public or political affairs, and that it was limited by inalienable individual rights.

Therefore, I do not believe that the majority can vote a man's life, or property, or freedom away from him. And therefore, I do not believe that if a majority votes on any issue that this makes the issue right, it doesn't.

Wallace: How do we arrive at action? How should we arrive at action?

Rand: By voluntary consent, voluntary cooperation of freemen, unforced.

People elect officials, but the powers of those officials, the power of government that's strictly limited. They will have no right to initiate force or compulsion against any citizen, except a criminal. Those who have initiated force will be punished by force and that is the only proper function of government.

What we would not permit is the government to initiate force against people who have hurt no one, who have not forced anyone. We would not give the government, or the majority, or any minority the right to take the life or the property of others. That was the original American system.

Wallace: How do we arrive at our leadership, who elects, who appoints?

Rand: The whole people elects, there is nothing wrong with the democratic process in politics. We arrive at it the way we arrived by the American Constitution as it used to be. By the constitutional process as we had it.

Wallace: When you say take the property of others I imagine that you're talking now about taxes?

Rand: Same

Wallace: And you believe that there should be no right by the government to tax you believe that there should be no such thing as welfare legislation, unemployment compensation, regulation during times of stress, certain kinds of rent controls and things like that?

Rand: That's right. I'm opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy. Let me put it briefly, I'm for the separation of state and economics. Just as we had separation of state and church, which led to peaceful coexistence among different religions after a period of religious wars so the same applies to economics.

If you separate the government from economics, if you do not regulate production and trade, you will have peaceful cooperation and harmony, and justice among men.

Wallace: You are certainly enough of a political scientist to know that certain movements spring up in reaction to other movements. The labor movement, for instance, certain social welfare and legislation, these did not spring full-blown from somebody's head, I mean out of a vacuum. This was a reaction to certain abuses that were going on. Isn't that true, Ayn?

Rand: Not always. It actually spring up from the same source as the abuses, if by abuses you mean the legislation which originally had been established to help industries, which was already a breach of complete free enterprise.

It's then in reaction, labor leaders get together to initiate legislation to help labor that is only acting on the same principle, namely all parties agreeing that it is proper for the state to legislate in favor of one economic group or another. But what I'm saying is that nobody should have the right, these are employers, nor employees to use state compulsion and force ..

Wallace: But when you advocate completely unregulated economic life in which every man works for his own profit, you are asking in a sense for a "devil take the hindmost", "dog-eat-dog" society. And one of the main reasons for the growth of government controls was to fight the robber barons, to fight laissez-faire in which the very people whom you admire the most, Ayn, the hard-headed industrialist, the successful men of perverted use of their power. Is that not true?

Rand: No, it isn't. This country was made not by robber barons but by independent men, by industrious who succeeded on sheer ability. I mean without political force, help, or compulsion. But at the same time there were men industrialists who did use government power as a club to help them against competitors they were the original collectivists. Today, the Liberals believe that that same compulsion should be used against the industrialist for the sake of workers, but the basic principle is there: should there be any compulsion?

And the regulations are creating robber barons. They are creating capitalists with government help, which is the worst of all economic phenomenon.

Wallace: And I think that you will agree with me, when I say that you do not have a good deal of respect for the society in which you and I currently live. You think that we're going downhill fairly fast. Now, I would like you to think about this question ..
Do you predict dictatorship and economic disaster for the United States if we continue on our present course? Do you?
.. since you described it as happening in your novel Atlas Shrugged, do you actually predict dictatorship and economic disaster for the United States?

Rand: If the present collectivist trend continues, if the present anti-reason philosophy continues, yes. That is the way the country is going, but I do not believe in historical determinism and I do not believe that people have to go that way. Men have the free will to choose and to think. If they change their
thinking, we do not have to go into dictatorship.

Wallace: Yes, but how can you expect to reverse this trend when as we've said the country is run by majority rule through ballot and that majority seems to prefer to vote for this modified welfare state?

Rand: Oh, I don't believe that, you know as well as I do that the majority today has no choice.

Wallace: What do you mean?

Rand: The majority has never been offered a choice between controls and freedom.

Wallace: How do you account for the fact that an almost overwhelming majority of the people who are regarded as our leading intellectuals and our leading industrialists, the men whom you seem to admire the most, the men with the muscle and the money favored the modified capitalism that we have today?

Rand: Because it is an intellectual issue. Since they all believe in collectivism, they do favor it, but the majority of the people has never been given a choice.

You know that both parties today are for socialism, in effect, for controls. And there is no party, there are no voices to offer an actual pro-capitalist laissez-faire economic freedom and individualism. That is what this country needs today.

Wallace: Isn't it possible that they all, we all believe in it because we are all basically lonely people and we all understand that we are basically our brother's keepers?

Rand: You couldn't say that you really understand it because there is no way in which you could justify it. Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother's keepers. And you've had every example, and you see the examples around you, of men perishing by the attempt to be their brother's keepers.

Wallace: You have no faith in anything.

Rand: Faith? No.

Wallace: Only in your mind?

Rand: That is not faith, that is a conviction. Yes, I have no faith at all. I only hold convictions.
 
Last edited:

EustaceBagge

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2021
Messages
331
Location
Amsterdam
Forget about me (is not personal) and maybe you'd see through your preconceived ideas.

The post is here to make some people think. Others won't benefit from it, if they have their minds set on something else.

What would a curious mind do?

If and when you have an open mind, there's food for thought in what was posted, which is easily overlooked or brushed off when that's not the case, but there's no need to believe anything here.
Your right about me having preconceived ideas, but your also having them. Your not necessarily being neutral here, as you are seeing everything relative to each other. Whether someone has their mind set on something or not, if something that is logical comes in front of him and he refuses that, that is not reason. This is the moral relativity that is so dangerous my friend, because intellectuals get caught in this web of "tolerance" which is nothing more than nihilism, while other people use this against them with illogical fallacies spread through propaganda.

The food for thought is that people are having a wrong concept of what virtue is, but in my opinion (this is your food for thought from me) we can't fix morality while it remains relative. It has to be based on something absolute, and what is more absolute than logic? Postmodernism was a mistake after all.

And how logic can be used to derive virtue is what Greek philosophers, it is what all philosophers do. They try to find meaning in logic instead of seeing everything relative to each other.

For example, righteousness on which laws should be based is not a very though concept. For example, stealing from others is not allowed because you wouldn't want anyone to steal from yourself. And as another example, murder should be met with murder. But then come the virtue signalling heroes telling us that it is better to have lifelong imprisonment leeching of our tax money. Can they support their views? Yes, but is it logical? No.

And then you have extreme cases, suppose someone kills 4 people and gets condemned to public execution. Is that fair? 4 for 1? This is why moral relativity doesn't work. In our current system that person would face prison, nothing more. As if killing 4 people wasn't enough he would also get free shelter from our tax money.

Isn't this objectivism? Reason above all.
 
Last edited:
OP
A

amd

Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2020
Messages
864
How the 18th Century Whiskey Rebellion Changed U.S. Attitudes Toward Revolt
https://www.winemag.com/2021/05/25/whiskey-rebellion-history/

In 1789, America was faced with a debt of $79 million, equivalent to about $2.4 billion today. The cause? The Revolutionary War (1775–1783).

Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) suggested that the federal government assume the debt and pay it off through various taxes, like the Excise Whiskey Tax, which passed in 1791.

The legislation taxed domestic and imported alcohol, and it was immediately unpopular in areas like western Pennsylvania. Due to its structure, small producers like grain farmers often had to pay as much as 9 cents ($2.73 today) per gallon, while larger, dedicated distilleries paid as little as 6 cents per gallon ($1.82 today).

Despite the tax, farmers produced whiskey for a number of reasons. Due to the war’s impact on alcohol importation, it was difficult to acquire foreign spirits like rum. Meanwhile, beer was hard to store and transport across the Allegheny Mountains. In contrast, whiskey made from local corn kept well and allowed farmers to do something with surplus corn that would otherwise rot.

Tax payments had to be made in cash, but the use of cash was a rarity the further west in Pennsylvania one traveled, where people often paid for goods and services partly or wholly in whiskey. Whiskey was the informal medium of exchange. Many families only saw a few actual dollars during the year and paying the tax in cash could’ve severely impacted their ability to make other cash purchases.

Producers in western Pennsylvania had to ship their whiskey up to 300 miles before they could sell it, which further reduced their revenue. Distilleries located closer to cities didn’t have that extra overhead.

The tax wasn’t just unpopular due to the financial burden it placed on producers, but the thought of paying a distant sovereign and being dragged 300 miles to stand trial if you refused bore resemblance to the way colonists were treated by England.

Initially, many refused to pay. Some argued that the structure was unfair to smaller producers and that paying in money was too burdensome.

This made tax collection difficult. Famously, on September 11, 1791, Robert Johnson, a tax collector, was tarred and feathered on his collection route in Washington County. Later, John Conner, a cattle driver, tried to collect on the resulting warrants for two men that Johnson recognized during the attack. He was also tarred and feathered before being tied to a tree for several hours.

It came to a head on the morning of July 16, 1794, when a mob surrounded Bower Hill, the home of tax collector John Neville near Pittsburgh. The day prior, Neville had attempted to serve a distiller a summons to appear in court for refusing to pay his tax but was chased off the property. However, one of the soldiers hired to protect his property informed the mob Neville had already fled.

Enraged, the mob called for the soldiers to surrender and when they refused, the group set fire to the property and opened fire on Neville’s home. It was during this skirmish that the mob’s leader, Revolutionary War veteran James McFarlane, was killed.

Further enraged by the death of McFarlane, thousands of men marched toward Pittsburgh to capture the city shortly after the incident at Neville’s home. And while the mob was unsuccessful and the situation was ultimately diffused, government officials in Philadelphia decided something needed to be done about this string of violent events.

President Washington sent state and federal commissioners to try and resolve the situation. But when they failed, Supreme Court Justice James Wilson ruled that Pennsylvania’s western counties were in open rebellion.

Washington summoned more than 12,000 militia members from the surrounding states to fight the rebels.

There was little violence when the two forces met. The majority of the rebels had already dispersed, and only 150 were arrested. Two were charged with treason and sentenced to hang, but they were pardoned eventually by President Washington.

The moment in U.S. history demonstrated that the federal government not only had the support of the state government, but was capable of suppressing armed rebellion.

Many producers still refused to pay the whiskey tax and it was later repealed in 1802 during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. Initially opposed to the tax, he used the collection difficulties to help justify its repeal.
 
Last edited:

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom