Galt's Gulch
14

Atlas Shrugged: Now Non-Fiction - Railroad Strike?

Posted by $ jbrenner 1 year, 4 months ago to News
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...

Biden (er, President Thompson) has to avert a railroad workers' strike. I can see John Galt smirking in the background.

Let's post in this thread all of the ways that the current reality reads like AR's novel.

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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 1 year, 4 months ago
    Gas prices way up, diesel running low and more expensive than ever, food production crippled and more distant than ever (dependent on delivery). A just in time supply chain mentality that now hasn't product or time. I guess its now the phase to starve us into compliance or get rid of us entirely.
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 1 year, 4 months ago
      Do you remember how the trains didn't get to Minnesota in a timely fashion in Atlas Shrugged?

      A just in time supply chain can work, and did work, for a while (several decades). Real producers like those in AS don't want to have to rely on anyone else.
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      • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 1 year, 4 months ago
        Yes, but circumstances have changed. You can trust in a persons self interest to manufacture profit, until profit/market share/market dominance is not their motive anymore.

        What has been done, and sadly I've been projecting it since 2012, is a deconstruction of this nation and dismantling of our constitution. The goal, it appears, is to consolidate power/control while lessening the population. Everything that is happening points to it and there are far too many complicit in government, media, the judiciary, and business, all controlling or exerting influence over our supply chain to thwart its momentum.

        After this last election in AZ I see no light at the end of this tunnel. I also see a lot of cold and hungry people in this country that are not used to being cold and hungry, and I see them getting desperate and, eventually violently so. Violence leads to martial law where a savior will emerge and they'll take anything he's/she's selling even if it cost them their constitution and/or their soul.

        I'm more convinced that trump is just a friendly face on the same plan, one to keep us docile and waiting. In the end, he will ramrod home whatever the end objective is that sell's us into technological slavery, every aspect of life regulated to a very personal level.
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        • Posted by $ pixelate 1 year, 4 months ago
          Yes -- the effort is to create an environment that will welcome a strong man. Take our freedom as long as you can give us food and safety ... even if those are only vague Oprahesque bromides.
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        • Posted by Aeronca 1 year, 4 months ago
          I have a friend who deeply sees the political war as Good vs Evil, Republicans vs Democrats. He believes Satan walks the Earth, in human form. Perhaps it is George Soros. To play Devil's Advocate, I said, suppose it is Trump? Maybe Trump is a devil designed to help the Democrats win? In the 1990's Trump was interviewed on 20/20 with Stone Philips and he was in line with liberal talking points including National Healthcare. Hillary is a wonderful person, he said. I dunno.
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    • Posted by $ gharkness 1 year, 4 months ago
      Interestingly our gas was in the $2.49 range when the POS President took over. Yesterday at Costco, it was $2,59. Color me surprised! I am not sure what exactly how this is happening, but I'm pretty sure it won't last. (I'm in Texas, so our prices are lower, but they did get above $4/gallon for a while.) I wonder what's up with that?
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  • Posted by evlwhtguy 1 year, 4 months ago
    The difference between this and Atlas Shrugged....is that the Union is striking here,.....not the "men of the minds" This is more akin to what happened at Twentieth Century Motor Company. Except the workers are trying to inflict their rules on management.
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  • Posted by $ pixelate 1 year, 4 months ago
    It is my expectation that things get seriously worse so that there is some real change ... as in real food shortages -- not just running out of your favorite salad dressing. And instead of the occasional Wallgreens being overrun by silverbacks in LA and Chicago, the WalMart supercenters being rampaged as though the nuclear warheads were on the way. However, I also think that TPTB are very crafty engineers and they know just how much pressure to apply and where to apply it -- without sending the whole thing cartwheeling over the edge.
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    • Posted by Aeronca 1 year, 4 months ago
      Silverbacks Hahahahaha! My Brother uses this in frustration as he lives in Brooklyn and it's scary sometimes. The dope smokers have over-run Prospect Park.
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  • Posted by Aeronca 1 year, 4 months ago
    Biden is a Union president, and not a President of this Union. He is a corrupted leader who is in bed with industry criminals and foreign leaders.

    He will cave to the Railroad Strike. Of course they deserve sick days off. The rail industry can work out these things. But with BuyDem rushing to the rescue, the price of rail shipping will go up, and the efficent functioning will go down.

    It is criminal for these people to hold the nation hostage. They can get away with it because they have a symPATHETIC ear in BuyDem. I like when the ATCs had a strike, and Reagan called in the military controllers and broke the damn strike.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 1 year, 4 months ago
    I don't like unions (I've never been in one, though I was invited to join in a couple of plants), and I think the government has given them too much power. However, I don't see that the government has the right to interfere between unions and emplyees in this case. The railroad is private business, right? The union members joined of their own free will, right?
    --Now, just in case I guessed wrong on either of these points:the government did take over the railroads some decades ago, (was it in the 1970's?) and consolidated them into something called Amtrak, right? Are the railroads now owned by the government and maintained by the taxpayers?--I confess that I am not really clear on this point. I have ridden on a passenger train a few times between Staunton and Charlottesville, in Virginia.--I don't think that people living on money confiscated from the taxpayers necessarily have the right to force raises in pay in that situation. But I am not quite clear as to what the exact situation is here.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 1 year, 4 months ago
    IMHO, the railroads have a legitimate beef: train cars are being looted outside LA and government tells the railroad companies that they have to such up the costs of all that lost inventory - and the messes made by the bandits.

    That being said, can you imagine what is going to happen at the ports when they can't move containers onto trains? We're looking at a repeat of last year when producers couldn't get their goods to market. Everyone suffered.
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  • Posted by $ Markus_Katabri 1 year, 4 months ago
    Funny how the Democrats “Democracy” involves overturning the votes of the people who actually do the work and find the employment conditions unacceptable.
    Definitely “Our Democracy” at work.
    Any of our resident Democratic shills care to chime in and educate me in how I am wrong?
    And yes I know the Railroad Workers can always just leave. The argument against collective bargaining is not the point I’m trying to make.
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    • Posted by LibertyBelle 1 year, 4 months ago
      Yes, why can't they strike,if the employer doesn't choose to fire them (perhaps because of a worker shortage)? Why does the government have a say in it, one way or the other?
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 1 year, 4 months ago
    Here I am 4 days post right hip replacement surgery and doing what I have I have to do. then seeing the US going down a rat hole just like in Atlas Shrugged for real. These rail unions have really good ideas and totally outrageous ones for their workers. Now the Presidential Puppeteers have finally shown that they are unable to run the government. Then they give the problem to Congress to solve. Switching the blame if the railroad workers' strike occurs.
    I still believe Arizona is Red. All the people who moved here recently from Blue states have brought their politics with them they refuse to assimilate into the Old West Az culture.
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