Galt's Gulch
11

That "Oh, it's Atlas Shrugged" Feeling

Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 2 months ago to News
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Has it always been this way? I can't imagine it has. As I see stories of the water in Flint, the massive gas leak in SoCal, the water contamination in Sacramento, the Navy boat that breaks down and gets captured by the Iranians, etc...I find that I just say, "Oh yeah, right out of Atlas Shrugged." When I actually study the details of some of these follies (in my engineering work) I see a commonality. There's always just a long line of errors building up to the disaster. I look at it and think, "How can there have been nobody who said, 'Hey...wait a minute.'" Then, often it's that there is a total abandonment of engineering principles. That troubles me a lot. So many of these things are not complicated to prevent. Our society is going through a very strange phase where engineering is ignored, citizens put in harms way by bureaucrats who don't seem to really care. The head water guy here in Sacramento was asked on the news, basically, "Why did you let poison water flow out to the population for so long?" With a perfectly straight face he says, "To save money." But, it actually cost more to poison the water, vs. the previous method.

WTH is going on?

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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 2 months ago
    Two ways your description of events happen.
    1. We did what we thought was right, and we didn't mean for it to happen like this.
    2. We want to bring the country to its knees so we can take over.
    #1 is the road to Hell.
    #2 Hell is already here.
    It doesn't matter which you think it is. The end is the same. The dissolution of a free society.
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    • Posted by Bethesda-gal 8 years, 2 months ago
      In the book Dagney battles back against what does end up happening, but in real life, don't you believe there is any reasonable chance that you can add option #3 to your list - that enough people pull things back from the brink and the country gets back to sanity ?
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      • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 2 months ago
        I'd love to believe so. However, such a scenario doesn't look likely. Things have gotten so close to dissolution that it may be probable to get back from the brink, but not far enough to believe things will continue in that direction. I'd be happy to be wrong.
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  • Posted by Bethesda-gal 8 years, 2 months ago
    IMHO, I view the increasingly likely downfall of the U.S. as the fault of gerrymandering. Let me explain. I believe that with voting districts getting more and more concentrated in one-party rule we ( the citizen) do not have both political parties competing for our vote by displaying exemplary performance for the benefit of the public, nor do we have vompeting political parties being watchdogs of each other. Thus you get Flint ( my understanding is the sole Republican in the entire scenario is the gov. All others are Dems.) where the same Democrats will likely be re-elected, or at the most, other Democrats will replace them. With no improvement in oversight or competition. But BOTH political parties do it ( support gerrymandering) b/c it reduces the races they need to work hard to defend. IMO, only citizens organizing, With the good fortune of getting a good candidate, (like we thankfully got for Republican gov here in Maryland - one of the most liberal states in the country) can this be turned around. Its a longshot, but its all we've got.
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    • Posted by cjferraris 8 years, 2 months ago
      The problem is that there is very little difference between the Dems and the Repubs any longer. Both parties have turned into the ruling class and we're their subjects.
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      • Posted by Bethesda-gal 8 years, 2 months ago
        I disagree. I think there are vast differences. Rep strive for equal opportunity, Dems strive for equal outcomes.
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        • Posted by jabuttrick 8 years, 2 months ago
          I don't see the "vast differences" on a fundamental level. Clinton, Sanders, Trump and Cruz, for instance, all support the draft, the income tax, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, undeclared wars, government education, tariffs, etc. In short, they are all statists who support the welfare/warfare state. And their shared political philosophy is collectivism.
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          • Posted by Bethesda-gal 8 years, 2 months ago
            The vast difference is the degree to which any candidate advocates for socially supported programs. If you don't see the difference between Sanders and all of the GOP candidates you arent paying enough attention. The pithy saying applies in this instance: Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
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            • Posted by jabuttrick 8 years, 2 months ago
              I am paying attention. Your way of thinking has given us the slide into today's society with the help of both Republicans and Democrats. The "socially supported programs" to which you refer have often been expanded, enhanced and "saved" by the "GOP candidates" such as Bush and his ilk. Here's another pithy saying: A meal made up of half food and half poison is still poisonous.
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              • Posted by Bethesda-gal 8 years, 2 months ago
                And an unelectable conservative candidate is still unelectable. You have to play the hand you're dealt. This is why I urge citizens ( and I don't make distinction arbitrarily, because the Democrats in Maryland are trying to get a bill passed for illegals to be able to vote) should get as derply involved in politics as possible. And if someone's not involved, they have no right to complain about the outcome.
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                • Posted by jabuttrick 8 years, 2 months ago
                  Yeah, John Galt had no right to complain about Mr. Thompson, right?
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                  • Posted by Bethesda-gal 8 years, 2 months ago
                    One was a story in a book. The other is real life.
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                    • Posted by jabuttrick 8 years, 2 months ago
                      I think AS was intended to be more than just a "story." You may think differently, but the principle involved is the same. You have a right to "complain" without participating in the election. Refusing to join in the madness does not forfeit your right to point out the truth. One might as well argue that anyone who participates in the election has no right to complain of the result. That's a fallacious argument also.
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        • Posted by cjferraris 8 years, 2 months ago
          What I'm referring to is that the Repubs were voted in after years of having Dems shove things down the people's throat that they didn't want. Have they done anything to fix it? And blaming Obama's veto threats for not doing things is no longer an excuse. Is it going to be any better if (God forbid) another Dem wins the WH again? The Repubs we send to DC have to realize that they are sent there by the will of the people and had better start acting like it.
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          • Posted by Bethesda-gal 8 years, 2 months ago
            I assume specifically you're referring to the group of almost 40 freshmen congressmen, including my favorites - Dave Bratt from VA, Joni Ernst from IA and Mia Love from UT. What you forget is they are only 40 out of 435. And Obama does still have veto power and even the FULL Republican majority is NOT a veto-proof majority. So what do you suggest they do ????
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          • Posted by Pyawakit 8 years, 2 months ago
            If a dem wins this time I am withdrawing from Facebook, Twitter, and all sites that mark me as a libertarian/conservative and will just try to live as best as possible under the tyranny that will follow. Over half the people in this country deserve what they will experience and I will no longer step in to protect or help. I will truly be on strike. (I am mostly there already)
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            • Posted by KCLiberty 8 years, 2 months ago
              It won't matter who wins. Both parties are corporatist (fascist) banksters whores and slaves to the military industrial complex. Every President for the last 25 years has killed millions of brown people in the middle East, constricted freedom at home, grows government, and put us further in debt.

              Only when the true villains that committed 9/11 are exposed will there be any hope.
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              • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 2 months ago
                Assuming they are the same villains guilty of other atrocities against liberty. I do agree that will be a first step of many needed to regain individual liberty and free markets.
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              • Posted by Lucky 8 years, 2 months ago
                " Only when the true villains that committed 9/11 .."
                T'was I.

                It was me, I am a white (sometimes), male of a certain age.
                Everything bad is due to my cohort.
                I burn the coal, enslave women and LBGTs etc, and own shares in banking and beer companies.
                It is nothing to do with Islam.

                On top of all that I use the lowest form of wit (sarcasm).
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    • Posted by jabuttrick 8 years, 2 months ago
      You are correct to identify gerrymandering as an enormous problem. Together with winner take all elections and ballot access restrictions we are politically suffocating.
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  • Posted by Eyecu2 8 years, 2 months ago
    How can you expect "The People" to understand basic engineering principles, when "The People" do not understand basic MATH. Case in point, the entire $15.00 minimum wage debacle going on in the various places stupid enough to actually try to make it happen.

    Of course many other examples could be cited but that was the first that jumped to my mind.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 2 months ago
    groupthink. . group delusion. . there's never enough time
    or money to do it right, but there is always enough to
    do it over. . and over. . and over. . horribly wasteful. -- j
    .
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  • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 2 months ago
    All this stuff has been going on since before i was born (1941) and fortunately or maybe not Ayn Rand identified it.Would we have been better off with out her? I think not! So now we know what is going on and why.Will someone who we pay with our tax dollars ever step up and say to his superior you are wrong or will he sheepishly cower in a corner. A friend of mine told me of a guy he knows who works for the fbi or some such government police department who readily admitted he detests some of the things he has to do because he needs the money to support 3 children in college. I see in the textile business what trash the government labs authorize for use in garments for soldiers, and they at the labs know the stuff doesn't work. But here too no one will step to the plate and say something, If citizens civilian or military die its collateral damage.
    So abaco it has been going on since you were born.
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  • Posted by ssadesign 8 years, 2 months ago
    When government gets this big,out of control, and unaccountable, it becomes a trainwreck. Unfortunately, i think we are going to see a lot more of it.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 2 months ago
    Compartmentalization is the problem...that's how one looses their connection to the mind, become sheep, if only to be occultated from the big picture right down to what's going on in the next cubical. That's how they get over on conscious folks...it's become part of the paradigm.

    I can't help see the consequences of progressivism here.
    If anything it shows just how upside down, backwards and inside out the paradigm has become.
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  • Posted by Blanco 8 years, 2 months ago
    Yes, Republicans generally represent a viewpoint that is closer to Libertarianism than do Democrats. That's why I usually vote Republican. The sad truth is that if Republicans tried to run on a more Libertarian platform, they would very probably not be elected. Then we'd be in even more trouble.
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    • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 2 months ago
      The irony there is that they won't get elected, anyway. They are starting to realize that they need to slide continually to the left in order to get elected.

      It's over. You can quote me...
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  • Posted by teri-amborn 8 years, 2 months ago
    I have been observing the same patterns in humans and particularly government for a very long time.

    It seems to me that they follow the logical fallacy that money is a floating abstraction devoid of any relationship to people hence the decisions that government makes are in no way attached to helping citizens become "more" so that the tax base is increased.

    In addition, the ability to think "globally" is inhibited by such lack of conceptualization which leads to a "follow my rules" mentality and lack of personal accountability in every phase of planning and implementation.

    My husband works in engineering and butts heads with mangement quite often when dealing with such issues as "seeing things big-picture" and visualizing the end from the beginning.
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