Who Would Move to a Real Gulch?
Posted by LaissezFaire 9 years, 1 month ago to The Gulch: General
Just curious, if there really were a secretive place similar to Galt's Gulch, free from government intervention, who would really move there? In my case, because the rest of my loved ones don't seek such a setting, I probably would not, although it is very applealing.
Community members should be free to do the work that they are trained for.
Recall Galt's rundown of who was in the employ of Richard McNamara, the utility contractor for the Gulch. Example: "an economics professor who could no longer find employment at a university because he taught one can get out only what one has put in." Well, that professor couldn't find university employment in the Gulch because the Gulch wasn't big enough, as a community--at least, not yet--to support a university with a department of economics. So that professor had to work as a lineman until one day the universities would be back in saner hands.
Similarly, Dagny Taggart's brakeman, whom we first saw whistling a new tune that Richard Halley composed in the Gulch, worked as a grease monkey for Ellis Wyatt, to earn money for private lessons with Richard Halley in music.
One of the things our Constitution clearly protects is the safety of our citizens from foreign aggressors, as well as domestic. Since no money made in the Gulch can be spent outside the Gulch, how do we support the very government/military whose duty it is to protect us? Without a real Ragnar, I fail to see how the members of a true Galt's Gulch could protect themselves from any invasion.
I'm not trying to throw cold water on the idea, but there are some real world issues that would need to be dealt with, unlike the situation in Ayn Rand's fictional utopia. Any ideas?
'Tis our Switzerland, except that Gov doesn't provide our tools of self-defense!
As for sickness, this is more of an issue, although progress has been made on that front as well.
As for "staying off the radar", unless we have some people with net worths > $100 million, I honestly don't think that the government bureaucracy is efficient enough to even bother keeping track of us.
Love to suck the sav with you but i drove just 40 minutes out of town yesterday and 3 of the 4 rivers are 100'/. Dry. So thats no fish, for starters. Not meaning to piss in your beer, just saying its not all dinky di here.
Let me know when and where, and hopefully I'll still be around to enjoy. I don't need a job anymore, but I'd be willing to donate my time and expertise to anything I am capable of doing anymore.....
I just have trouble believing that such a place exists. You can be physically secure (ie from invasion) within the US, but you cannot stop the ACA, EPA, NSA, IRS and other acronyms from wrecking their will upon you. You can be high tech if wealthy and/or talented people are willing to invest in the infrastructure (for payment back with interest over time, but still the infrastructure has to be upfront for survival).
I would personally need to be able to interact with Schuyler House via VPN every day and travel to the office in CA regularly to help keep the company running. (If I could get a handful of key people in the company, who are already Objectivists, to come to the Gulch with me then that model changes...but at least one of them is not going to budge until the tsunami has washed cold water to his waist level.)
I do have concerns as to the practicality of many of the people on this list. Having co-founded a company from a rather anarchistic ideological starting point, I know how well that does not work, even with honest and intelligent people in your subset of the population. The only discussions that I recall on jails and criminal law in this virtual Gulch have not impressed me as practical. Who would do this essential job?
So, bottom line: theoretically yes; practically no.
Jan
mentioned on their website. . congrats on the 20th!
Jan, it's people like you who keep this nation going! -- j
p.s. and security in the Gulch would start as a private
thing, with law evolving through consensus based on
leadership like Judge Napolitano . . . yes?
We make the finest LIS in the world.
Jan
fly in your sunroof on this beautiful day, Jan!!! -- j
I never responded to your comment on law enforcement in the Gulch. Back when this blog was first beginning, someone posed the question, "Who makes bricks in the Gulch?" My LE example was along those lines: We have a great philosophy, and we are quite certain that if we got a chance to put it into effect we could show the world what free people engaged in free enterprise could do. What I do not feel we have is a picture of a functioning society.
Let me put it this way: The original Employee Manual of my company had a single sentence: Do all the good stuff; don't do any of the bad stuff. The EM is now 50 or so pages long - because even intelligent and honest people do not follow that rule. I am trying to warn people that we need a clever plan that will allow us to run a town, not just an ideology that can conquer the world.
Jan
and with regulations . . . I bet. . as would our social
contract in the Gulch, I bet.
we start with -- maybe -- Jefferson's original declaration,
saying "life, liberty and property," granted by the
nature of reality. . then, in the constitution, we add
the bill of rights without requiring that they be
amendments . . . and we include legislative approval
of regulations, etc.
in short, we learn from the u.s. experience, and
build on it.
Napolitano, since we don't have Narragansett, might
be our man. -- yes? -- j
The complex stuff we have a pretty good handle on, I think. It is the simple things that are getting overlooked. I am a geeky person, not a legal or organizational savant, but my spidy sense says that if we get a location for the Gulch and then go there without having the pieces in place, we will do a grand bellywhopper. Maybe we can pick ourselves up and run again, but I would rather not have the experience. (Wm and I made every mistake possible in starting SH...and I think we may have invented a couple of new ones...but I can learn.)
Thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me, johnpe1.
Jan
*are* those here -- I've heard that our system is derived
from english common law with criminal and civil and
crimes and torts;;; I even took business law before
graduation, once. . did OK. . but the best law, it
seems to me, ratifies what mom and dad told me
was right, when I was growing up.
but I was lucky;; I had a mom and dad who raised
me the best they could.
as an engineer, I would design the "law system"
to (1) keep honest people honest, and (2) put those
away who did not respond to (1). . the two degrees
of proof -- beyond reasonable doubt and preponderance,
or whatever they are -- seem to make sense, when
you contrast the "sentences" in each realm.
so, we need a good judge. . a freedom judge like
Napolitano, I'd say.
yes? -- j
p.s. have you read the poem I just posted? . first wife
and I used to call them "pomes" for a joke. . I typed them
on an old woodstock typewriter and tore up any which
had mistakes. . tedious, since I'm not a perfect typist.
woodstock::: https://images.search.yahoo.com/images/v...
As you might guess, even after this many years, I remain outraged by this event.
Today there is just a small area with headstones of some of the victims, and little else. Sad.
There are answers for about everything, but they really need to be spelled out!
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