Stopping the motor of the world
The link above includes fellow Gulcher David Kelley's interpretation intermixed with AS2.
Over the last couple of days on a different thread, I was in disagreement over whether or not John Galt ever committed sabotage. The failure of the interlocker just prior to "switching via lanterns" is an example of one case that I think, but cannot prove, was an act of sabotage.
Today I started looking at my AS2 DVD and saw the following:
Jeff Allen, recounting John Galt's walkout:
'I will put an end to this, once and for all,' he said. His voice was clear and without feeling. That was all he said and started to walk out. He walked down the length of the place, in the white light, not hurrying and not noticing any of us. Nobody moved to stop him. Gerald Starnes cried suddenly after him, 'How?' He turned and answered, 'I will stop the motor of the world.' Then he walked out.
Now I ask myself, and all of you, how could someone stop the motor of the world by only passively waiting for failure after failure? Many of them, such as the Amtrak debacle or the Taggart Tunnel, were caused by the errors of men. Some were due to lack of maintenance. The cause of some failures is intentionally left vague by Rand, however. The failing of multiple Cu wires in multiple places is an example.
D'Anconia blew up his own mines.
Rearden said he would blow up his own mills (but didn't) near the end of AS2.
Danneskjold resorted to piracy.
Why do people have a hard time accepting the possibility that Galt could have been "the destroyer". After all, he said he would stop the motor of the world. That is not passive.
Jeff Allen: "Maybe that's him, doing what he said. Stopping the motor of the world."
I don't think that lessens Galt at all in my mind.
I look forward to your insights.
Over the last couple of days on a different thread, I was in disagreement over whether or not John Galt ever committed sabotage. The failure of the interlocker just prior to "switching via lanterns" is an example of one case that I think, but cannot prove, was an act of sabotage.
Today I started looking at my AS2 DVD and saw the following:
Jeff Allen, recounting John Galt's walkout:
'I will put an end to this, once and for all,' he said. His voice was clear and without feeling. That was all he said and started to walk out. He walked down the length of the place, in the white light, not hurrying and not noticing any of us. Nobody moved to stop him. Gerald Starnes cried suddenly after him, 'How?' He turned and answered, 'I will stop the motor of the world.' Then he walked out.
Now I ask myself, and all of you, how could someone stop the motor of the world by only passively waiting for failure after failure? Many of them, such as the Amtrak debacle or the Taggart Tunnel, were caused by the errors of men. Some were due to lack of maintenance. The cause of some failures is intentionally left vague by Rand, however. The failing of multiple Cu wires in multiple places is an example.
D'Anconia blew up his own mines.
Rearden said he would blow up his own mills (but didn't) near the end of AS2.
Danneskjold resorted to piracy.
Why do people have a hard time accepting the possibility that Galt could have been "the destroyer". After all, he said he would stop the motor of the world. That is not passive.
Jeff Allen: "Maybe that's him, doing what he said. Stopping the motor of the world."
I don't think that lessens Galt at all in my mind.
I look forward to your insights.
Neither is sabotage.
I am struggling to shed this union analogy from my mind...makes me shiver.
If the strike is to be considered successful, then the strikers must return to the world in a short enough time that they can still be productive and have the world accept their terms. The looters won't accept the terms ever. When has a looter ever admitted permanent defeat? Even if he/she did admit defeat, other looters would be crawling over the defeated looter's carcass to assume power.
The rate of disappearance of producers is pretty low.
There are going to be more Dagnys and Reardens than those who go Galt quickly like Midas Mulligan. As long as Atlas Shrugged was when AR wrote it, if written today, it would be much longer.
To collapse the economy today would take at least tens of thousands of producers going on strike, and probably hundreds of thousands. The economy is diverse over a global scale now. The Dagnys and Reardens would look for international suppliers.
We are pretty much there right now. More people on welfare, food stamps, extended unemployment, and every other freebie. By John removing the producers it just accelerated the demise.
What would happen if tomorrow, all of the producers in the fortune 500 disappeared? Collapse would be swift and assured!!!
Reinforced by inertia of the known.
Contrasting similarities to AS with differences like this is both entertaining and educational. Nothing like a good discussion to keep the mind alert.
That mitigates heavily against survival of the economy when the productive shrug.
It also means a precipitous collapse when collapse comes.
Absolute numbers of shruggers needed to undermine the system is much higher than in AS definitely.
Lets call the small numbers she used, dramatic license. The principle is still true.
edit to clarify - I'm using US numbers. Worldwide the ratio of appetite to production gets even worse
Saying that, I don't believe that John Galt would have personally committed any of the sabotages suggested.
However only a completely closed system can be designed and created robustly enough to maintain itself with minimal to no correction.
Neither a large company nor a country are closed systems. In open systems entropy and outside influences can destroy anything.
Taggart Transcontinental was a designed system, and despite its reach was being monitored, some control exerted, and corrective actions made. If Dagny wasn't working to correct problems and improve the "system" that company would have been as moribund as any other.
The robustness of Taggart Transcontinental was the legacy of her predecessors at the helm, both good and bad. Changes she makes would impact that either positively or negatively, In her case within AS her impact on Taggart Transcontinental was positive.
But even with all her positive actions the system was still decaying, slowly sliding out of control. Removing the influence of Dagny is a major negative to the system's survivability, but when you couple that with all the workers that no longer perform at the level needed to maintain the status quo collapse is inevitable.
The only question becomes how fast, and a major aspect of that is just how close to collapse the system is when the positive influence(s) are withdrawn. In AS, the answer to that was extremely close.
Intelligence of the "average public" has little to do with it. Ethics, especially their work ethic, is far more important.
People in a job that do the minimum they can get away with, that 'go along to get along' are a net negative, not a positive.
What all this means for the real world is that a strike, as in AS, can only succeed if it's done against the entire world. And that means both that all (or nearly all) the important producers will need to be persuaded, *and* that all of them will need to somehow escape to places where they can safely "go Galt" and take their work products with them.
Load more comments...