Yes! When someone says "we" should do something more about evildoers here and abroad, they really mean those demographics.

The idea of letting the current system collapse.. Or even using compliance to help it move along even faster is something that regularly crosses my mind. First, we need to keep in mind that when it comes down to it there is really no place to hide. Second and probably more important the collapse in the book was by design. They now only knew it was coming, but were ready for it. Ragnar was converting the looters loot into gold and giving it back to the rightful owners. As he said, the world will need to be rebuilt after the collapse, and this would help speed that process along. Midas was also sitting on a rather large pile of useful capitol and ready to start financing the rebuild after the collapse. We don't really have that as far as I know. It is probably something that needs to exist. The other choice would be a lot of time spent in a barter economy and the loss of a large number of more advanced products. You wont see a car manufacturer selling new cars in a barter economy, So, don't worry about the collapse as that is inevitable. Its what happens immediately after that matters. Here is where we again run into a problem. For things to actually get better the rest of the country/world will need to understand the reason thing happened. In the book, the world got to hear John Galts speech. There was even evidence in the book that people were getting it. They now knew what the problem really was and so acting to fix it was now within their grasp. We don't have that. Right now, if the economy were to collapse capitalism would again get the blame and looters and moochers everywhere would be allowed to keep trying to evade the truth. So, before a collapse we would need to take control of the message. We would need to be living in a world where instead of Rachel Maddow writing a piece proving that she never read the book, people who have actually read the book and were able to think their way through it were getting their stuff read far and wide. If these things can be put in place then I would welcome the collapse. In the meantime I need to live in a world that is on the short fat side of the medical equipment and prescription supply chain. So, it is in my best interest to fight like crazy. Even then though, I will eventually reach my breaking point. At which time you can expect to find me flipping burgers at a road side diner in North Dakota.

Are you a Hugh Akston, iroseland?

Dear Circuit Guy,
Of course taxes are based on net profit, but when the top 1% of wage earners pay 40% of the taxes and the top 10% of wage earners pay 70% of the taxes, as a producer, I pull the wagon for MANY more people. I have a golden target emblazoned on myself.

The looters are stealing value created. Net profit is value created. So I question a model based on gross profit. I'm not sure how to model all "looting". Taxes are on net profit, though, so I'd go with some percentage of net plus taxes.

You are correct in that the number of such people who succeed by politics, milking the system, mooching, looting, etc. are not that many, but they are nasty little parasites. You can't kill them like you would any other parasite, and the effect of the scant few of them that there are is profound. If I get 11 customers and make a 10% profit and then a looter or moocher affects my gross income by 10% (probably a reasonable estimate), that is the difference between whether I make money or they do.

The only thing I disagree about is your seem to think that we're rare exceptions of people earning a living by serving other people in exchange for money and that a huge group of people lives off rent seeking and politicking.

People who succeed by politics, milking the system, etc are actually rare compared to people who serve each other in trade. Politicians and bankers talk as if policy decisions predominate. They don't. It's little decisions people make on how to help one another in trade, like whether to hire someone to repair equipment or to sell it for salvage and buy new. Those moochers chasing stock tips are a minority.

I don't think Galt and the rest of the heroes were actively trying to destroy America. They merely stepped aside and allowed the looters to follow their evil ideas to their logical conclusions. Feelings cannot produce wealth; only Reason can.

Ragnar didn't think so. Just before I "went Galt" in 2008, my small business had a lot of people who would fit in well in the Gulch. We converted a variety of different fuels and wastes (mostly waste vegetable oil, but sometimes animal poop) into syngas (a mixture of CO and hydrogen) as an intermediate toward converting them into fuels, energy, or chemicals. In making chemicals, we made money off of the environmentalist looters' delusions regarding global warming. I viewed the irony as fitting.

Point well taken. Is looting the looters evil?

Ragnar certainly did his part to accelerate the destruction, but without the permission of the others (as if he needed it).

I had seen your narrative. I think I clicked the like button. Regarding the stage of the party, I think it is just about time for the time when Francisco intimated that he might be ready to sabotage his own mines and then watched the moochers run for their stockbrokers. This was perhaps my favorite moment in any of AR's books.

"willing to put up with some BS in order to get to our own larger goals."
Exactly!! That's exactly my position.

"Destruction of the current society is just not as practical for me as starting a microsociety amongst those of like mind in the way that America's founders did."
You may have seen my narrative about that: http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/59...
I will visit any seastead or viable micronation that starts on a vacation, but I'm never leaving Madison.

"I have lots of willing customers who are trading value for value at my university, so for the foreseeable future, I'm going to do what I do well,"
Yes. The world is run by those who show up.

"All it would take to make a very dramatic change in American standard of living would be for the Chinese and others to say that the dollar would no longer be the world's reserve currency. I could see a 30-40% drop in standard of living on that alone, "
I think the 30% may be exaggerated, but I understand that a loss of ability to borrow would mean less consumption in the US. That's coming one way or the other; the stuff about China and having the reserve currency are incidental. Whenever someone lives beyond his means it eventually comes to an end. I would like to see the borrowing phased out when the economy is in expansion, which is RIGHT NOW. I accept the Keynesian idea of taking away the punch bowl just as the party's getting started. A party's getting started. We should eliminate the deficit. It could be phased it with no draconian drop in living standard.

Despite starting this thread and appearing to be ready to start actively crashing what is good about American culture, I'm not to that point. I can do a lot of good in my little world. In this respect, I and a lot of people are like Dagny -willing to put up with some BS in order to get to our own larger goals. And yet, many of us also have traits of quite a few of the other characters.

Destruction of the current society is just not as practical for me as starting a microsociety amongst those of like mind in the way that America's founders did. It is harder today, but I don't think it would be impossible on a private island in the Caribbean, for instance.

I have lots of willing customers who are trading value for value at my university, so for the foreseeable future, I'm going to do what I do well, just without starting up small businesses like I have done in the past.

As for not being anywhere near fleeing as the lights go out, we're not to that point yet and probably never will be, but all it would take to make a very dramatic change in American standard of living would be for the Chinese and others to say that the dollar would no longer be the world's reserve currency. I could see a 30-40% drop in standard of living on that alone, and that could happen anytime that they wanted to do it. Whether we crash the society ourselves or not, there are those who are running this country on both political sides that are actively succeeding in crashing American society brick by brick. After all the looters and moochers of the last 25 years, our system is unstable.

Atlas Shrugged was a fictional story with a powerful message; it was not a blueprint to be followed.
It is much easier to tear down a society then it is to build one.
Look at the infrastructure of what is good and build upon that foundation.
You seem to me from what you have shared to be in the right place to do good things. Why change that?

I certainly agree. I make scaffolding for tissue engineering, and I also do targeting of cancer with Au nanoparticles. Certainly the scaffolding for a properly functioning society is in place. What we have now is a cancerous growth. If targeted efficiently, the USA could be saved. However, we now have a bumbling set of government officials when we the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.

I believe the foundations are still there. We need to actively reduce the size of the Federal Government back to it's Constitutional restraints and free up the capital to spur on the new wave of exceptionalism. The restrictions to free enterprise and the cost of the government oversite stifle productive investment. There are many times several redundancies to a single regulation occuring because of interactions between interpretations at Federal, State, and local levels. I believe that most control should be at the state and local level because the interpretations of a regulation will be adapted to the needs of the local populace. Take the Feds out of almost everything and everything will perform at a higher level.

Despite how tumultous the Civil War was, the 1865-1900 era from which the giant industrialists arose was the greatest era for someone with Galtish values in history, because that was when we were the most free. I routinely hear that era of presidents belittled. It is no coincence that those presidents had little power and that the greatest era of American exceptionalism occurred during that era.

The problem is no one had a vision for the details of modern life. Our founders, the early industrialists, and even Ayn Rand didn’t blueprint solutions to problems like population, pollution and societal moves away from nationalism. Nationalism was barely out of infancy before it became a monster that the world had to address. Once we address those issues we moved on. We never quite got the hang of living in a world with clearly drawn borders before we were favoring open borders. Not that all of us agree that open borders are a good idea. Lol. I happen to like Nationalism when it is done right.

My talents are not being used by the system. I am getting fair value for services provided. Prior to reading AS, I was an eternal optimist. AS made me a realist. I remain very optimistic in my local environment - the part I can control, but know that the world is collapsing around my own little paradise. Unlike Galt's Gulch in the book, my local environment can't be isolated completely from the effects of the rest of the world. It is nearly so, certainly nearly enough for me ... for now ... but for how long?

You don’t seem to be saying that you feel like your talents are being used by the system, so no, you are not a Dagny. She seemed to think she could use her mind to solve her problems and prevent the looters from using her, failing to see the big picture: the more she used her mind, the more she was going to be used.

I have often told friends that this generation of looters is using AS as a blueprint. I just don't know whether America is worth saving anymore. It certainly could be. It was founded properly.

I am going to stay in my position of holding out for a return to American exceptionalism for a long time because I am in an ideal position. I am not ready to tear down the society yet, and I think that is why I posted this. Does this make a Dagny?