He did not destroy the interlockers. Galt didn't need to destroy. He only had to withdraw the men/women capable of fixing the problem (or inventing something better) and wait for the system to start to fail on its own. Things break down. People can be lazy. People frequently lack training and skill. Bureaucrats who have never been in the field start dictating. Politicians have agendas that line their own pockets for further their own way of thinking (read Pendulum of Justice and Trails of Injustice. The real written as fiction). Things just fail for a myriad of reasons.

But John Galt was not passive. The one thing--the only thing--he absolutely needed to do, was to remove men of the mind from society. He did not have to commit sabotage.

I just reviewed the "Their Brothers' Keepers" section. There was no sabotage on any of those copper wire breaks. The description of the first one made it plain: a soft rain weighted the cable down, and it snapped.

Ragnar's privateering activities served a specific purpose: to recover loot. Francisco blew up his mines because he knew the looters could keep going forever with them. But John Galt knew an enterprise like Taggart Transcontinental would grind to a halt within a week as soon as Dagny left it. Ditto Rearden Steel, and we know how that worked out. (Francisco knew that, too; he it was who recruited Hank Rearden directly.)

Direct sabotage was not needed.

Simple entropy and average people will destroy any system.

Galt didn't need to sabotage specific railway technology. There is no ambiguity in the writing, as Rand described over and over again how technological systems simply break down when competent people were removed from the equation. Respectfully, to infer sabotage is to miss the full meaning of the basic theme of the story, which is mind on strike, and the resulting breakdown of civilisation as an inevitable result. Galt didn't need to sabotage any particular piece of technology, just as he didn't even bother to destroy his motor model. He just walked out of the 20th Century Motor Company, leaving it on a bench. Without him, it just sat there, rusting away, until Dagny and Rearden found it.

I have only read AS twice, but I think - no, Galt did not sabotage other than by convincing key people to 'shrug'.
I agree with other comments here that it would be hard to justify respect for property rights while engaging in physical damage to property.

The example of copper wire is interesting. When times are bad, criminals go after copper wire as it marketable.
(Lead is another, re theft of old church roofing).
They do not take care during removal not to damage the connected hardware.
In AS this would certainly have been the case not just because of D'Anconia's copper mines being taken out.

So, sabotage -yes. By Galt- no.

I do have to wonder, however, if in our day and age there are enough people who aren't the brilliant, but the "good enough" to enable things to keep going for quite a long time. No, I don't believe it was the removal of the brilliant to Galt's Gulch which resulted in the failures, but the overwhelming burden of government regulations that was the true downfall of civilization. It was the mechanizations of one great machine rather than the aggregate failures of many which ground the progress and productivity of society to a halt. Galt's actions merely sped up the decline.

Galt didn't destroy the interlocker. Doing so would have been initiating force in manner that was not self-defense and in a context that could potentially have innocent victims. It would have been a huge contradiction in the story for Galt to commit indiscriminate acts of sabotage. The other heroes of AS were very careful who was impacted by their acts of destruction.

Thanks, jbrenner, for linking to my scene commentary, and for raising a really interesting question. Two thoughts in that regard.

First, when Dagny meets Galt in Part III, she asks him about the Starnesville story:
DAGNY: You told them that you would stop the motor of the world.
GALT: I have.
DAGNY: What have you done?
GALT: I've done nothing, Miss Taggart. And that's the whole of my secret.
I’ve always thought that Galt’s statement implies that he is letting the world collapse on its own once the best producers are removed.

Second, the point that it couldn’t have happened that fast, or with relatively few people removed, Rand said something relevant in notes she made while writing Atlas:
"Theme: What happens to the world when the prime movers go on strike.
"This means: a picture of the world with its motor cut off. Show: what, how, why. The specific steps and incidents—in terms of persons, their spirits, motives, psychology, and actions—and, secondarily, proceeding from persons, in terms of history, society and the world.
"… For the purpose of this story, I do not start by showing how the second-handers live on the prime movers in actual, everyday reality—nor do I start by showing a normal world…. I start with the fantastic premise of the prime movers going on strike. This is the heart and center of the novel…. I set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers, and how viciously it treats them. And I show it on a hypothetical case—what happens to the world without them."
[Journals of Ayn Rand, 390-93]

Note Rand’s description of Galt’s strike as a “fantastic premise.” I think she used the word in the literal sense: “of or pertaining to a fantasy.” There are many fantastic aspects in the story. E.g.:
* The small number of producers who are at the top of the pyramid of ability and without whom the economy cannot function;
* The speed with which it happens: Galt’s strike begins 12 years before Dagny hears about Starnesville and has already had severe consequences; the story ends the next year and society has completely fallen apart. This is the literary equivalent of time-lapse photography.
* Galt’s persuasiveness: A track-worker can walk into a corporate CEO’s office, without an appointment, and by sheer force of argument and personality convince him to abandon his company, his career, and even the world.

The striking thing is that Rand tells the story in such a seamless, plausible way that all of this seems perfectly natural and realistic.

I totally agree with rockymountionpriate

It would never be moral to sabotage other's property. That is what the looters and moochers do. They steal or destroy the methods of allowing people to prosper. When Reardon created a miracle metal, first they tried to sabotage it's acceptance. Then they tried to Co-opt it to make everyone equal. Then they tried to cut off his supplies of the needed components. And finally blackmailed him with his guilt to lay claim to it. If Galt used any of the methods employed by the moochers or looters, would make him no better than them and prove his morality false.

By committing sabotage, Galt, or us, would be losing the moral high ground. We can destroy what belongs to us, we can withhold from the looters that which is ours (ideas and knowledge, mostly), if possible, even take back that which was stolen (ex: Rourke), but if we destroy that which is not ours, how are we better? Besides, there is no need for that – the world does not run by itself; it needs people that are knowledgeable and capable of running it. Convincing those people that they should not gift their knowledge toward their own destruction – that is a different matter altogether.

I have always thought that "the motor of the world"
meant the people who move the world. . this seemed
sufficient for me, since AS used to be fiction. -- j

p.s. sabotage -- by direct action -- would only be
moral if it took out the looters' strangulation systems,
like finances and communications, I would say. . with
the innocent people unharmed, hopefully.
.

Well if you want to know how he would stop the motor of the world you could ask yourself what the motor of the world runs on?

I believe the answer is clear - the human mind. Especially those great minds dedicated to productivity, creativity, and reason. So he set out to remove those minds from the world.

I have to confess to not really understanding the question. It is kind of the theme of the entire book.

While John was largely passive the other two of the three that made it happen were aggressive and destructive. One used his reputation and their confidence in him to destroy billions and perhaps trillions of dollars from stock. The other a pirate. Today both would be called terrorists, On using finance and market manipulation as his weapon of choice and the other open terrorist acts.

It is also true that the sons of liberty, at least for the first several years would be called terrorists in today's world as well. Let severe than either of these, many a British tax collector found themselves stripped, tarred and feathers for performing their role in British taxation. It is quite surprising that Thomas Paine was never arrested for sedition for printing many of the pamphlets he printed.

In AS stopping the mortar of the world took three people. One who argued the logical and rational case to those that would hear it, and two that pushed the economy and social structure to the point where people became willing to listen in the first place.

The same was true of the US revolutionary war. Without the press of Ben Franklin, the writing of Thomas Payne, and the retaliation of Samuel Adams and others who organized the sons of liberty it would not have occurred.

To stop the current motor what we need is a planned approach, with specific mile markers along the way. I would prefer that it all be peaceful, but I am not sure it will ever succeed without some unrest occurring. I think there is plenty of that now and their will be more. Our side needs to learn to never let a crisis go to waste as the other side has.

Rand's vivid descriptions of what happens in a collectivist society lifts the veil of false rhetoric from our eyes and shows us what's really happening and how very close we are to the world of John Galt.

I never thought John committed sabotage other than encouraging people to quit. Doing that would have destroyed property that didn't belong to him, and would have been against his moral code. Hank could threaten to blow up his mills, because they were his. Francisco could blow up his mines, because they were his. Yes, Ragnar stole, and ISTR that John disapproved of that (also because it put Ragnar at risk). But as someone who respected personal property rights above all, I can't imagine him sabotaging property that belonged to someone else.

I don't think that it matters whether Galt helped things along by some boyhood pranks (for his own amusement), in addition to his real job of removing the men of the minds. I am glad that Ayn Rand left this ambiguous and it would make him too mortal. At this point, I would cut all the wires I could if I thought it would help.

All Rand's heroes behave with consummate morality.
Francisco could destroy his mines because they were his to destroy.
Ragnar stole from thieves.

Galt could not have sabotaged Dagny's trains because they were not his nor were they ill-gotten.

I don't believe she was ambiguous at all.

I agree with most of the comments here that Galt would not need to physically sabotage anything in order to cause the equipment failures. Although it would speed up the process of destruction, the theme of the story is that all that is needed is the removal of the competent for the incompetent to self destruct.

What would happen to your classes if you were suddenly removed and there were no competent people to take your place?

I think it would depend on whether one was destroying something the government built through force. Taggart Transcontinental was so compromised in this regard with James Taggart at the helm that I would not be upset if John Galt did sabotage. It could be argued that Dagny was just partially helping the looters by keeping the railroad going. Actually, I feel bad whenever I make money trading with other people and then have to share it with the looters

Ellis Wyatt left it as he found it. Most of the others just walked away. Galt took the ones who built their characters as they built their empires; one rational act at a time. The philosopher Robert Kane calls these self forming actions. You build your character as you build a factory on principles and both require constant work. The men and women of reason show them selves not only by their works but by their character. Its their character that lets them stand out as individuals and made them targets for Galt. Without them organizations crumble and the copper erodes with the soul. Remove the character and the lines fail, the engine stops, and we begin to rebuild character.

I find it interesting that we can see this in the disintergration of government subsidized programs which includes Amtrak. Also, we see the needier get needier so we see those people take to the streets to destroy and steal because of their twisted ideas on authority. It is happening on a african/american presidents watch. He needs to blame someone so the rich gets' taxed and the christians get persecuted. I know it's verbal right now,actions will come soon thats what Hitler did.
In a way Galts Generator/Motor is partially to blame. The unit that he has running in the Gulch must have an antenna array hidden somewhere to draw atmosheric electrical charges, & electric power lines (magnetic fields generated by those lines will increase electrostatic charges in the air). Galts device was a technological advancement on Tesla's experiments. So, Galt inadvertently helped in the demise of the world.

I'm confused, too. It's a book of fiction, for goodness sakes. And it's 1,000+ pages as it is. Was Rand supposed to include thousands of producers or use 'real life' timing? (Although at this point, real time US is moving pretty fast toward destruction). Geez; she would have died before she finished writing it! Also, it is abundantly clear that John Galt simply removes the producers and leaves the looters to their own devices, which are pretty much non-existent. Sabotage?? That would be 100% against Galt's morality.

He simply took away the duct tape and the band aides that we all provide the looters everyday!!! It is sometimes necessary to make things worse and let them senselessly fail, than to provide the heroics to extend the inevitable. Who is John Galt?

Ayn Rand pointed out what was taking place in the world that would, if left unchecked would be the cause of economically stopping the world. She has succeeded in showing what would happen over a period of time when the country was led by the government as we have come to know it. One man can not do it on his own as many believe 0 is in the process of doing. HHe has a great deal of help from all of the members of the congress. Also, what was this guys point?