A resonance frequency approach to stopping the motor of the world

Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 11 months ago to Going Galt
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In a prior thread, we considered the possibility of committing sabotage to stop the motor of the world. To stimulate the discussion, I took the role of "devil's advocate" and suggested that Galt might have engaged in sabotage. There was almost universal agreement that Galt would have lost his moral authority to lead the Gulch if he had committed sabotage, rather than only convincing titans to go Galt.

A recent thread entitled "Obama is John Galt" started by jimjamesjames was largely shot down as well, and for good reason.

http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/30...

However, that thread made me reconsider strategy for stopping the motor of the world.

The looters and moochers in real life have taken Cloward and Piven's strategy of overwhelming "the system" with more and more moochers. This is an act of sabotage. This is a moral line that we have decided not to cross. This puts us at a strategic disadvantage.

Add to that disadvantage the fact that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are convincing others (like Larry Ellison of Cisco Systems) to give to charity. I urge you to look at how many billionaires have taken The Giving Pledge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_...

Someone here in the Gulch recently suggested that this giving pledge might actually be their way of going Galt. I forget which Gulcher suggested this (Zenphamy? sjatkins?) and apologize to that person.

We all know what Ayn Rand thinks about altruism. I have said previously that the charitable contributions of these billionaires may lengthen the time for the collapse of the looter/moocher era sufficiently that there may not be a time when producers like us would be able to go back into the world. Their charitable contributions delay the inevitable pain for the moochers.

Now switch gears and start thinking about physics and differential equations.

Think back to when you took physics and learned about constructive and destructive interference. If there is a disturbance that causes an object to oscillate at its resonance frequency (or an integer multiplier of it), then the object will break MUCH faster.

For an introductory treatment of resonance frequencies, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance

For an example, see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXS...

If we are to stop the motor of the world, an alternate solution would be to do something that reinforces the interference that the looters or those encouraging people to take the Giving Pledge are applying.

Does it make sense to convince MANY producers to go Galt, or will we be more effective by harnessing the momentum of The Giving Pledge to accomplish the goal of depriving the looter/moocher world of producers?

If one takes producers out of the system, how does this change the 2nd order differential equation(s) that would describe the producer-looter-moocher problem?

Please comment on
a) how one would implement such a strategy; and b) whether this would count as sabotage.


All Comments


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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Put together a list of some of the kinds of things you might like in exchange for your Benjamin, and then we can negotiate. Materials synthesis and characterization is definitely something that can be exchanged.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I am not going to tell anyone what to do with their money, but we do need to factor in altruism into our calculations regarding whether or not a society is worth coming back to.
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  • Posted by philosophercat 9 years, 11 months ago
    Galt went to the great producers and showed them how their effort supported the looters. Galt knew these men could restart the world when it collapsed. The problem today is the world is collapsing of its own because there are not men of independent productive ability. We need to show men how to start the motor of the world not stop it. It is possible to achieve greatness in this world and do it while affirming values. The looters cannot learn, they must be replaced, not at once but by generations of young objectivists. Don't try and stop the motor of the mind, instead try to start one.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You are cosmically correct in both respects, jbrenner. However, according to our own ethics, what a person does with his money is his business. So 'whatever else we do' that is not a point of attack.

    I do not like freeloaders any more than you do, personally. But people who give their own money to these parasites merit no condemnation for me. They should not have to NOT give money to charity in order to respect my world view. To say that they have to refrain from this activity puts us in the same class as those people who try to control how we spend our own income.

    Jan
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    My point is not with regard to the altruists, but to the moochers. We should feel the effects of all of our good and bad choices. If one feels no pain when one makes a bad decision, as most moochers do routinely, then one will keep on making bad decisions. In psychological terms, moochers are dependents, and charitable givers are codependents.

    Secondarily, if we are to go on strike and others are making life too comfortable for moochers, then there may never be a world to come back to.
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Good points. The problem is that by its nature, capitalism cant really be imposed. The whole idea of a free market system is that its freely accepted. A benevolent dictator who believed in free markets and owned a 'country' could set the capitalist rules and the people who moved there would have to agree with them. That might work.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is moot. There is no pain that someone 'should feel'. If a person who has earned money chooses to give it away, it's their money and their choice. They can give that money to sterling individuals or to total loosers and they can give it for whatever reason they wish.

    There is no positive ethical advantage to our ruling on whether someone has the right to do as he wishes with his money. Whether it increases the dissonance or delays the crash does not matter: his bucks, his right.

    Jan
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Galt's oath prevents me from asking for or receiving donations for my nanotechnology minor program, but I have gotten pretty creative at figuring out ways to provide a value for value exchange to that end.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I do not think that it is possible - or necessary - to get a pure capitalist system, blackswan. What is necessary is to get a system that _allows_ capitalism. "Allows" in this case means "does not punish or encumber", but realize that any system so constructed would also allow other systems to be nested within it; some of these systems will be socialist.

    This is OK. If someone wants to voluntarily give up the rights to their production to a commune in return for security, then that is their business - and lots of people will be in this group. The point of restructuring society will be to Include capitalism, not to Exclude other social formats.

    Jan
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    DrZarkov99 was not endorsing sacrifice. I think you and he are actually in agreement.
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  • Posted by blackswan 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You failed to mention the emigration of French wealthy to places like Russia, over the 75% tax issue.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Chile has made some great strides since the Pinochet era of the 1970s, and Panama has done likewise since the fall of Noriega. Colombia is improving as well.

    Brazil is somewhat paradoxical. Although socialist, I think that Brazil will improve a lot in a generation. They have a new scientific mobility program with lots of highly motivated, largely entrepeneurial students. When this group of 20 year olds gets into their 40s, Brazil may become as entrepeneurial as America was in the late 1800s.

    Other than those countries, your evaluation of South America's socialism is largely correct.
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  • Posted by Ibecame 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    My apologies, I thought you were missing that point. Knowing how this works, I don't understand how donating to charity would "hasten" the downfall. I should add, not that I would want to. If it doesn't happen in my lifetime my children will have to deal with it, but at least they are capable.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 11 months ago
    I just love your references to stuff which I haven't
    worked with for years!

    Yes, we should encourage the wealthy to enlist in
    the Giving Pledge, and we should organize a charity
    to receive their dollars::: the John Galt Line, a
    distributor of free books and videos and pamphlets
    celebrating capitallism, free markets, Ayn Rand's
    principles and the peace-through-strength maxim.

    this would not count as sabotage -- it would be
    progressive in the real sense. . a hundred languages,
    a hundred countries, kids everywhere, the future
    of the world.

    I'll start with a hundred bucks if it'll go. . crowdfund. -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    This sounds like a corollary to part of Francisco's money speech. "Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality–the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind."
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  • Posted by blackswan 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Charity should be aimed at the DESERVING poor, not just thrown about willy nilly. Take the approach that the robber barons made, viz., libraries, schools, etc., where the poor, if they have any gumption, will use the assistance to improve themselves, and eventually contribute to the pot. Forget those who refuse to make any effort.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I think Ms. Rand laid a blueprint for that, and it is why I suggested a couple of weeks ago that the ending of AS might not have been the correct one. The only way to get a purely capitalistic system is to have a microsociety that takes Galt's oath.
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  • Posted by blackswan 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    SACRIFICE?!? Ayn Rand said that sacrifice is the acceptance of something of lesser value by giving up something of greater value. NOTHING should be a sacrifice. If helping the deserving poor isn't superior to not helping them, then there is no justification for charity; if you can't see a gain of some sort, then don't do it.
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  • Posted by blackswan 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I was in a discussion with a thinking liberal (someone like Ms. Powers) friend of mine a while back, and he asked me where can I find a single capitalist society anywhere in the world, either now or in the past. I realized that I could only point to a few societies that APPROACHED capitalism, but never actually hit it, which suggested to me that we have never been free of the moochers, and may never be. Just as there had to be compromises to get the Constitution approved, so there may never be a pure capitalist system, which leaves the opening for more and more statism to be imposed. This suggests that we're looking at a sinusoidal system, fluctuating between more or less freedom as we move through the process. So, the question should be, how do we create a PURE capitalist system? What would it look like, and how can it be imposed?
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I would think it depends on some aspect of the emotional makeup of humans. just when you feel you have got it made with the freebies, they disappear. then just when you are pissed off enough to actually work, the goodies come back. Eventually, the person gets emotionally whipsawed and goes wild in the streets demanding the goodies never stop. I would say its at least a 12 month cycle- maybe you are right 24 months.
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  • Posted by blackswan 9 years, 11 months ago
    Not to get off topic, but giving people what they want, even though it will destroy them, isn't sabotage, but justice.
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Interesting. I would have thought south america was full of socialists like in venezuela
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