That agreement made no sense from the beginning. Why trust them at all and why give up a country to a communist dictatorship in 50 years or any other time even if they could be trusted to wait? It made no more sense than Carter and Reagan relinquishing control of the Panama canal, which China now also controls.

If and perhaps when that happens, it would be time to fully shrug.

I think it’s unwise to play around with this stuff Once it gets out terrible things can happen!!

The Atlas Shrugged plot is romantic fiction. The theme is nonfiction because the principles are true, and that resulted in Ayn Rand's ability to predict in the plot so many essentials of the current trends. But the novel is romantic fiction, not literary naturalism. You should read or reread the essays in her The Romantic Manifesto describing her idea of romantic art and its function.

The 2021 law just passed by the Democrats under President Biden now protects viruses and germs from racist globulwarming disinfectants.

Ok

It was the non fiction result of specific philosophical principles. The world is adopting those principles so it gets the results she said.

I don’t consider it fiction at all

While it is technically fiction, the best fiction often is very close to non-fiction. +1 for Ayn Rand.

I am quite familiar with 510(k) clearance. This is a disinfection product.

She presented it as a novel- a story. Its NOT a story really, its a prediction of what will happen, and is happening, when reason is ignored. I suppose reason isnt held in so little regard that people in general just dont think its of much importance.

I completely agree. According to the Nobel Prize winner who discovered HIV, researchers from India tried the same HIV gene insertion ... and failed.

I am not so sure about your product not requiring what is called a 510(k) clearance. The law is of course vague, but almost anything that has any benefit to a person medically is covered by their FDA 1976 law. I hope it isnt covered, but it would be bad if you went through all the work, didnt get the approval, and they snatched it off the market.

Well, if they were trying to "help", they sure failed. Hundreds of thousands of people died so far as a result of their "help"

That truly is the paradox of Atlas Shrugged. Just when you think it can't get any worse, ... it does. The message of Atlas Shrugged should be patently obvious, but it is so foreign to looters and moochers that we would be better off on a different planet.

But my medical products don't require FDA approval. Getting it would only be a bonus, and probably not worth the effort.

My point in our earlier discussions was exactly this that you mentioned- "But she was not optimistic about that succeeding in the foreseeable future before a lot more destruction (if not outright collapse). That is in contrast to her earlier optimism when Atlas Shrugged was published, when she thought it would have an immediate major impact as people would see the obvious"

yes

Thats why I got out of making medical products when the FDA took over. I watched what they did to other companies and made my decision

I don't know if they "manufactured" this virus, but definitely they inserted a segment of the HIV virus into the SARS-CoV-1 (i.e. SARS) in an attempt to develop a vaccine for SARS. This is actually not that unusual an approach in vaccine development.

So, in response to your "and people say ..." comment, I add,

And people wonder why some other people are hesitant to take vaccines. You know that being vaccinated against COVID-19 will soon be a requirement. YIKES!

and people say how far fetched it is to think the chinese manufactured this coronavirus and unleashed it on purpose to destroy the economy of the US?

Today Hong Kong is "celebrating" its newfound lack of freedom on the 23rd anniversary of when the Brits gave Hong Kong to Beijing. It was supposed to be 50 years before they "took over", but what are a few years here or there?

I have enough to retire financially and am in a really nice place, but that is not enough.

From Galt's speech: A farmer will not invest the effort of one summer if he’s unable to calculate his chances of a harvest. But you expect industrial giants - who plan in terms of decades, invest in terms of generations and undertake ninety-nine-year contracts - to continue to function and produce, not knowing what random caprice in the skull of what random official will descend upon them at what moment to demolish the whole of their effort. Drifters and physical laborers live and plan by the range of a day. The better the mind, the longer the range. A man whose vision extends to a shanty, might continue to build on your quicksands, to grab a fast profit and run. A man who envisions skyscrapers, will not. Nor will he give ten years of unswerving devotion to the task of inventing a new product, when he knows the gangs of entrenched mediocrity are juggling the laws against him, to tie him, restrict him and force him to fail, but should he fight them and struggle and succeed, they will seize his rewards and his invention.

You need more than finding such people to work with. You need the rest of them to stay out of the way and not destroy what you are doing, along with the rest of your life. But that doesn't make hiding out in a utopian society feasible. About the best you could do, if it comes to that, is to 'retire' in a relatively safe place (maybe flipping superior hamburgers) and live off your assets the best that is allowed.

You are, of course, right as usual. What I realize more and more each year is just how big the challenge is to totally shrug. I might eventually do so, but I would certainly be one of the last precisely because I always to seem to find people with whom I can work honestly and productively.

Ayn Rand's not giving up on the human potential was not optimism, that potential is a fact. She believed that as long as there is freedom to speak, and people have free will to make choices, it is still possible to reverse the course of the nation and that the battle is worth fighting because so much is at stake (see "Don't Let It Go"). But she was not optimistic about that succeeding in the foreseeable future before a lot more destruction (if not outright collapse). That is in contrast to her earlier optimism when Atlas Shrugged was published, when she thought it would have an immediate major impact as people would see the obvious.

It is always worth being a rational individualist, and it is always worth honestly and productively dealing with others who are like that, for as long as it is still possible to live as a human being, but the social conditions making that possible are not infinitely elastic.

Many of the personal internal conflicts in Atlas Shrugged were over false premises sanctioning the irrationality, especially for example, Hank Rearden, who eventually made it, rejecting the irrational family life he had condoned and much more. Others, like the "wet nurse" and Cheryl Taggart, were too far gone in their entrenched confusion and didn't make it. It is a book about ideas, not politics, and the internal struggles of the characters were over ideas they had accepted. The rest is a consequence of that.