How Many Bricklayers Did Galt Invite to the Gulch?
Galt went around inviting famous artists, noted business leaders to the Guch, but once there, who built their houses? Who paved their streets, dug their sewer lines?
This isn't a class warfare argument; the building of a house, for example, not only takes a skilled architect, but also skilled craftsmen and industrious laborers.
If the criterion for admission is a belief in "trading value for value", surely Galt should and would have invited "ordinary" workers to the Gulch as well as luminaries like Wyatt and Danagger?
Such people exist lower down on the ladder; people who believe in trading value for value, but lack the creative ability to invent a new motor or miraculous metal. People who didn't inherit an already successful railroad or copper mines, but would be able to get a day's worth of coal or copper dug in a day's worth of hours for a day's worth of pay. Maybe they lack the ambition to go through the headache of running a company when they get more satisfaction from digging coal out of the ground. Maybe they lack the self discipline necessary to see their visions to reality, but are still able and still believe in trading value for value.
What Utopians always underestimate in their rhetoric (no disparagement of Ms Rand intended) is the example America set before them. People's abilities and worth are not necessarily evidenced by their position in life. All the creative brilliance in the world will not get a brick wall built. A brick wall built without knowledge and skill won't stand, but the most creative and brilliantly designed wall will never exist without someone to lay it up brick by brick. Someone whose creative skill may be shrouded by prejudice toward his position in life.
There may not be a place in the Gulch for someone like me. But that would be Galt's loss.
This isn't a class warfare argument; the building of a house, for example, not only takes a skilled architect, but also skilled craftsmen and industrious laborers.
If the criterion for admission is a belief in "trading value for value", surely Galt should and would have invited "ordinary" workers to the Gulch as well as luminaries like Wyatt and Danagger?
Such people exist lower down on the ladder; people who believe in trading value for value, but lack the creative ability to invent a new motor or miraculous metal. People who didn't inherit an already successful railroad or copper mines, but would be able to get a day's worth of coal or copper dug in a day's worth of hours for a day's worth of pay. Maybe they lack the ambition to go through the headache of running a company when they get more satisfaction from digging coal out of the ground. Maybe they lack the self discipline necessary to see their visions to reality, but are still able and still believe in trading value for value.
What Utopians always underestimate in their rhetoric (no disparagement of Ms Rand intended) is the example America set before them. People's abilities and worth are not necessarily evidenced by their position in life. All the creative brilliance in the world will not get a brick wall built. A brick wall built without knowledge and skill won't stand, but the most creative and brilliantly designed wall will never exist without someone to lay it up brick by brick. Someone whose creative skill may be shrouded by prejudice toward his position in life.
There may not be a place in the Gulch for someone like me. But that would be Galt's loss.
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I am fine with being called a middle manager, but I am not even that.....yet.
You miss the point. don't watch it on TV. That is a stage. Stupid, lazy and incompetent business owners become x-business owners every time.
And FYI, I have little respect for people who don't learn a number of skills so they can do things for themselves. I am not a master of any with the exception of maybe helicopter pilot. But plenty of time and plenty of learning to do.
Yesterday I listened to the story of the 20th century motor company (again) and heard something that made me realize that Ayn Rand wasn't being elitist, even though all her protagonists do seem to be ubermenchen.
"...but you don't all stand working at an acetylene torch 10 hours a day, together"
"...there was one young boy who started out, full of fire for the noble idea, a bright kid without any schooling, but with a wonderful head on his shoulders". She seems to understand that "bricklayer" isn't a genetic type, and neither is "businessman". Some here don't seem to have grasped that yet.
yeah, I guess my entire family for 5 generations has been just a pack of incompetent boobs, since it took YEARS to learn to become a master mason (based upon what a master mason called me, not on what a government department licensed).
"Jack of all trades, master of none" means exactly that.
Gee, I've written software in 3 different languages and even sold some of it. Does that make me a "master" programmer? Hardly.
What you are is a professional middle-manager.
I have no respect for anyone who does a number of professions and claims to be master level at them all.
Business owners are often just as stupid, lazy, foolish and incompetent as common laborers. Television programs such as "Bar Rescue" and "Restaurant Impossible" are tributes to that truth.
And Ayn Rand herself pointed this out... James Taggart was a businessman, as was Orrin Boyle.
In the movie it was, for me, a very significant scene when Mouch goes around the table to his core group; the actors played their parts, perfectly, as Mouch lectured them that their businesses were suffering, without saying why. Why does business need government as a caretaker? Because those running the business are incompetent.
I'll tell you another truth I realized recently; as companies get big enough, they begin developing all the failings of government. Bureaucracy, CYA, the Peter Principle, etc.
Welcome to the Gulch!
I can and have done the following trades at the professional level (master is what is required to hold a license). All residential and commercial electrical, residential plumbing, carpentry, concrete work, kitchen and bath remodeling. I’ve designed and built a roof truss with my own hands. With the exception of electrical, I learned all by reading books and I made a good bit of money when I was laid off in construction management in 2008 by doing this all myself instead of un-employment. I can also fly helicopters and airplanes, make beer and wine from scratch.
I’ve spent a lot of my career around trades. Most do great work, but very few are willing to do the research and self teaching required for a free society to pay them more. Few will teach themselves to own a business or write a contract. A free society will reward those that do achieve what few will with more value. Without that reward, even fewer will reach for high achievement.
I don’t say this to be cocky, but to prove that business owners and innovators can easily teach themselves to do manual work and do it wall.
Philosophically you assume a Triumvir identity and deserve the mediocrity that your Socialism begets. Nothing you post deviates from this fundamental flaw in conceptual ideology and the "mental disorder"* of Liberalism.
*Dr. Michael Savage
Accusing Galt of torture, coercion or even possession of another goes against the entire concept of such men presented within the book. Coercion, torture, theft of property, is left to those that are destroying the world. Without productivity and the rewards associated with those efforts, the world will collapse and then what will the thieves/moochers do except force people to work under threat of death.
Like water, productivity, jobs, and prosperity for those that work, comes from a point of least resistance.
You just echoed the looters' assertion that it's the laborors who built the modern world. When the inventors and innovators go on strike, the laborors are not able to take over and run those businesses. Will the laborers be able to run Apple, ExxonMobil, railroads, steel-making, railroads, etc. The answer is no. The world needs both the inventors and the laborers to be successful.
Your theory is quite a stretch. Did you actually read the book? Let's give it one more try. Read the book, or read it again, and tell us who really destroys the world.
And you're wrong to say that Galt did it out of lust for her. His "lust" as you call it, for her is a manifestation of his love for life, Dagny being one of the kind of people who make that life worth living. It was that same love for life that led him to take it out of the hands of those who sought to destroy it. You've confused cause and effect.
You're comment implied, that ONLY a specialist could do the job, or that it's a waste of time for anyone but a specialist to do it. Sure a Specialist is more efficient, assuming you have one available, and can afford the price. If you need the House, and you can't afford to pay the specialists, then you're pretty much stuck doing it yourself - or doing with out.
One problem with specialization as it stands today, is a tendency to believe that because you didn't learn how from someone else, then you just can't do something.
If you believe you can, you're probably right.
If you believe you can't, you are right.
And since this argument always devolves to the ridiculous, No I've never done open heart surgery. But if that's what was needed to save someone's life, and there were no specialists, including doctors, or nurses. Yes I'd try - yes I would probably fail. But if they're going to die anyway, you might as well give it your best shot. Will I ever be a surgeon? No. No one in their right mind would go to an amateur surgeon if they have a choice - but what if you don't?
(Semantics - the skill of an amateur, or One who pursues an activity out of love and passion - can and sometimes does exceed the skill of a pro.)
I was raised calling it science fiction, the authors I know who write it call it science fiction, and don't like changing the names of things to make them more "accurate" which actually makes them less clear.
<old codger voice out>
We need to move this to a Heinlein thread in books, not here. If it's not already done, I'll do that now.
Moon is a Harsh Mistress is my favorite. Followed by Friday. The young adult stuff was fantastic and was primarily responsible for me becoming an bibliophile. My favorites of the Young Adults which I still read now and again, The Menace From Earth, Have Space Suit - Will Travel, and Space Cadet.
The term SciFi seems to have a slightly derogatory connotation for some folks. Probably due the the BEM (bug eyed monster) movies.
The current favored term is I believe more accurate and does a better job of describing the genre - Speculative Fiction, fiction based on What If?
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