You can get the same effect by having Intellectual Property rights last so long (and as veto rights, not just rights to be paid) that new inventions which would improve on the old can't get out the door. This is what's happening in software especially -- you can't be in that business without a whole pile of "defensive" (troll) patents, half of which should have expired decades ago and the other half ought never have been issued because the work they protect wasn't original.

People won't need to "shrug" to destroy this system if only cartel members are allowed to invent, and only union members are allowed to hold jobs at pay rates an employer is willing to offer.

I've personally known some who shrug, but of course on the larger scale it had no effect, which is part of what triggered this question. The government is certainly disincentivizing innovation and at an increasing rate. But I don't think that would be enough.

We've already hit a tipping point of sorts with productivity. We can get so much done with so little people that there is a real chance you could remove all productivity innovation and muddle on for decades before it became apparently problematic. This has in turn decreased the control in the sense of there being no Hank Rearden equivalent in any industry which could have a dramatic effect (in either direction).

But there is an interesting development going on that isn't talked about much directly. Research on the "differences" in "millennials" versus previous generations have shown that if you compare them now to the previous generation at their respective ages, there isn't a lot of actual differences. They have just as much drive to do stuff as previous, for example. But what is different?

1) less interest in penalizing those of different sexual orientation
2) more acceptance of pot
3) more distrust of government.

It is that last one which is the silver lining and unexplored factor. In the end, the fall in AS was an expression of not trusting the government anymore. This is where understanding that plays a key role in applying it to the real world. We don't need to produce a collapse of the current american systems, but a collapse in confidence in the government. In As it happened because the government, through ever more fascist ways, claimed to be the ultimate arbiter and master of an uncontrollable system and in the end proved they could not do it - at which point the collapse of trust occurred. This is the genius of the producer strike verse labor strikes.

If labor strikes, the reality is that (absent proscriptive laws) you can usually replace them as resume operations fairly quickly. But remove the brains behind the whole operation, which is rarely seen, and make it clearly visible they are on strike, and you plant the needed seed for the trust to go back to them when the trust collapse occurs. This is, IMO, the underlying principles behind the strike/shrug.

With the "millennials" showing more distrust of government than any generation since we started tracking it, it raises the question of how to preserve or even nourish that mentality. Galt was not out to destroy, but to end the destruction already in progress by exposing it. The millennial generation is apparently the first one in a long time to be primed for such. The challenge, I suspect, is that absent the clear and obvious shrug/strike of major key producers (which I suspect don't exist), how can we nourish this situation?

The absence of key leaders is that you need them to step in when the distrust reached the needed level. So it is two parts: "who would have to shrug?" is also "who would have to be prepared to step in when the public is looking for non-looters who are trustworthy?".

I think Musk would be good in the second half of that, but lacks the first part. But maybe that is how it has to start.

Indeed! The inspiration part is not so hard. The perspiration part is not either. It is setting up, maintaining, manning, managing and inspiring an efficient, constantly innovative process that is REALLY hard!

The key people ARE INDEED the hands-on managers. See the Kindle books by William L. Livingston. He calls the elect among these "productivity gatekeepers".

I think you're describing the final stage of the strike. After John Galt made his speech, everyone whom Galt had not recruited, founded his own version of the Gulch, or joined one who did.

In some ways SV is starting to shrug, though it is in the form of moving to other enclaves which provide similar advantages without the State of California, and increasingly the locals, getting all up in their grill. I've seen some pretty strong entitlement whines (colloquially called "open letters") aimed at the tech industry there, and it is starting to have an effect. An effect I'm sure they will not enjoy, and blame the tech companies when it happens.

It isn't merely a matter of advocating or intentionally causing a strike, it is also one reflective of a natural progression. We have seen it happen in recent years and there was no organized strike. We call that place "Detroit". The names are different, but Detroit has been and is living the final chapters of AS today. It hasn't fully collapsed, but if you really dig into what happened in Detroit it really is a case of "Atlas Shrugged, now Non-Fiction". The culture shift to a letter based economy? Check. The producers/rich checking to? Check. The utter lack of understanding economics, people, and what happened? Check. The plunge of economy into shambles? Check.

What is primarily different can be boiled down to two things:
The destructive culture is still there
Nobody has stepped in to fix it (primarily because of the previous item)

BY knowing who/what would be required to trigger a situation you also learn how to avoid it, or how to correct. For example, consider the aforementioned Detroit problem. That is an existing situation. How to correct? Obviously with the primary producers of the area having already shrugged it is more difficult, but the exercise would still be useful because it has neither recovered nor completed self-destruction. Whether you want to help/let it finish the cycle or pull it out of the nosedive you have to know what the key components and players would be.

That sounds like exactly what happened in AS. It is a deviously clever strategy more colloquially known as "given them the rope to hang themselves". I think in today's world it wouldn't necessarily be enough (see Detroit) - we may also need 'the shining city on the (Martian?) hill" to show people a life w/o the looters in control.

I've noticed that trend as well and I think there are several factors which push in that direction. A common condition for the left turn is that they stop being producers. Whatever their internal drive to produce is, it became satiated and they switch away. But underlying that drive is a deeper drive that, lacking its primary implementation, looks for another way to fulfill itself. Maybe they tire of the effort staying on top requires, at which point intellectualism (where ideas aren't challenged in terms of validation by real world, but by other intellectuals) becomes more appealing.

Couple that with a history of society accepting/demanding that philanthropy "excuses" the massive production one created and the turn in that direction is all but assured. When you look at what the looters did when they came into power (think Standard Oil, Carnegie, at al) the biggest effect was to create this notion that the producers are the looters. So with the absence of validation that production provides, and the craving for significance still present, they turn toward "altruism" in the form of philanthropy and espousing the idea that others should follow their lead.

At that point they are stuck. It is easy to "become a philanthropist" - they'll let anyone with money to give in the club. But to stop doing so is the "height of selfishness". Few among the intelligentsia are as reviled as those who turn away fro bit having been in. So the uber-rich stay there. A parallel is seen in the religious industry. You can "become" a christian and then not be one. But you can't really escape islam except through death and death threats. Islam treats never-beens better than once-was.

You can also see it in other settings such as dietary. Vegans (generally) trash anyone who isn't vegan, but they save their most vitriolic hatred for those who once were and have since stopped - and the more high profile the escapee was, the worse they attack them. Can you imagine how the looter left would descend on Soros if he stopped given monetarily supported their cause and went into an actual production oriented business - especially if it wasn't in their list of approved causes? Just for a fun mental exercise, imagine Soros funding fracking. The left would shat themselves and throw it at him day and night.

This is part of why I think it a smart strategy to not have your "charitable contributions" public knowledge. It isn't so much a matter of not bragging about it, but insulating yourself against the public demand that you never stop or change it.

If George Soros ever read Atlas Shrugged, I doubt that he made it part of his personal philosophy.

I don't see much really changing if Musk or Gates disappeared tomorrow. Gates is out being altruistic rather than producing and Musk isn't a big enough player.

Make no mistake I think what musk is doing is fabulous and all, but it is still small potatoes. That and at least for his car he made available for free use the patents involved. He has already handed over the key "secrets" to the Tesla.

Cuban isn't really a key economic player either. Sure he owns some stuff and is a "shark" but lacks significant clout in the national scale.

I think you are on the right track with energy companies, but here we aren't talking about their actual control and influence but their market cap. Combine that with them already being in bed with the moochers and not being led by a single visionary and I don't see the potential for a shrug making any impact there.

In AS copper production was essentially owned by one man. Steel was effectively owned by one man. Oil production was essentially owned by one man. Rail transport was effectively owned by one woman. Gates doesn't own Microsoft. He doesn't even run it anymore. Musk owns SpaceX but the vast majority would never know if left - if they even knew it exists at all. If Tesla Motors died (which it nearly did) it would be chalked up to another failed car company startup.

In AS those who shrugged and dismantled what they left behind were dismantling their own property. You couldn't say the same for a CEO of a power company or software company today.

If anything I'd say AS was indeed taken to heart and showed the "weakness" of any takeover was, as it always has been, in the fundamental right to property and individual ownership.

Thus I wonder if the "shrug" is even possible from that aspect. It seems to me a more realistic possibility might be to simply start fresh somewhere else, leaving the new old world behind much as America left Europe behind.