When we think of Galt's Gulch from the Atlas Shrugged series, our mind almost universally goes to the conclusion. The conclusion is that in which the protagonists rescue John Galt, flee back to the Gulch, and presumably live happily ever after. One thing we almost always forget, is the lead-up to this. John Galt, along with those who joined his mission, worked behind the scenes for years building this utopia, a place where productive people were free to exchange with one another and did not operate under the guise of coercion or force. It was a tremendous amount of work in order to get this gulch going, and ultimately relied upon many members of the society operating under a parallel economy of sorts until the time came for them to really break off onto their own. This can be seen with Midas Mulligan bringing goods that the Gulch did not yet have the ability to produce into the Gulch, or with Fransisco D' Anconia operating his copper mine until the time that he decided to permanently disable the operations.

So when we look at what a real life Galt's Gulch would look like, we must be pragmatic in our approach. A real version of Galt's Gulch would not be an overnight venture where a couple of friends decided to abandon the modern world in search of this libertarian utopia. Nor would it necessarily be a "place" as we commonly think of, as the age of the internet has allowed us to interact and trade with those on an international scale. It is my belief, that the ultimate goal of achieving "Galt's Gulch" starts with operating under a parallel economy, and building upon that, until the parallel economy reaches such a point that it is entirely feasible to start cutting out parts of the new world. With this, we must ask ourselves, what makes a strong foundation for such a parallel economy to exist? The move to a parallel economy in which we are able to trade with like minded individuals begins with us, and we have the ability to do it now. For face-face transactions, transact in hard money. I personally am partial to Goldback, but there are many different options out there. When we do this, we are efficiently and effectively cutting out the middle man (the government) and taking our personal as well as financial freedoms back. When we are transacting with those who may live in a different area as compared to us, we can use Bitcoin for these transactions. Once again, when we use a decentralized currency such as bitcoin, we are cutting the government out of the equation and putting privacy back into our own hands.

By choosing to transact with those who have a similar philosophical mindset to our own, we can start to grow our parallel economy and make our moves towards a real, functional, Galt's Gulch. The future is in our hands, and if we want our children's children to grow up with freedom, and to respect what freedom actually is, we all need to make a real effort into private transactions wherever possible, and letting the government fade away out of our lives by attrition.