Ayn Rand started with the idea of writing a novel to illustrate in fiction her idea of the ideal man. She spent years developing the principles of what that means, the role of the mind in man's life, and the philosophy required to support it. She got the idea of a plot showing the role of the mind in society when it occurred to her to ask, what would happen if the mind were withdrawn.

Showing that in fiction required artificially accelerating the process, and she had to illustrate how the best individuals interact with each other in better circumstances, which required the fictional device of the valley. The novel, as all her novels, was written in the form of romantic literature focusing on an illustrating abstract essentials.

She understood that the dominant ideas of a nation determine its direction, and that changing the direction requires changing the ideas. At the end of the novel the heroes were about to return as leaders, but the novel did not continue on to illustrate how to change the ideas. She had made her intended point.

She did not advocate withdrawing from society to reform it or escaping to a utopia, which are not possible. She knew that new ideas must by discovered, learned, and understood, and that this occurs through education, not from watching a collapse. It took centuries after Aristotle before the proper principles for a philosophy of reason were formulated by Ayn Rand, with a base provided by Aristotle and the rise of the industrial revolution and modern science. They did not appear out of nowhere in response to disaster.

She wrote and spoke extensively about what is required to live in this society and what is required to defend and sustain the American sense of life, which she saw deteriorating before the onslaught of the explicit contrary ideas of the intellectuals. She advocated the necessity of spreading the proper philosophic principles of reason and individualism, living with integrity so as to not support collectivism existentially or intellectually in a society with a mixture of freedom and controls. She never advocated dropping out as a rational response, and denounced the occasional schemes for creating a utopian escape or a new political party without the required philosophic base.

To advocate copying the fictional plot in Atlas Shrugged as if it were a political blueprint misses the point of the novel, what is required to live a non-fictional life here in reality, and what is required to change the direction of the country to fulfill the promise of man's potential in accordance with her philosophy.

Now that I agree with. Thank you.

I over generalized. Not every banker becomes a swamp creature. But the whole banking system in the USA is Based on collectivism. Look how far dagny got in James taggarts world

So why then did AR present John Galt as her “ideal” man? His goal In the book AS WAS to stop the motor of the collectivist world by withdrawing the support of the productive people. And it did accelerate the collapse and gave him the platform to encourage the rebirth of the society

It was a novel and in today’s world I think that the timelines would be extended substantially and make such actions less effective. The decline in the USA will proceed more slowly than portrayed in AS partly because our society is richer to start with and because not all of the people here are 100% philosophically bankrupt.

I don’t withdraw my productive efforts currently exactly for the reason you mention/- I want to enjoy my life while I am here

That said, I agree with the premise in AS that supporting collectivism only prolongs it The first thing to do is withdraw to a freer place (Atlantis) and support it’s growth and defend it. One could argue that galt was really acting in his own interest by offering the productive people a better alternative to the collectivist world- not simply encouraging the demise of the collectivist states.

If you think Donald Trump represents Ayn Rand's heroes you didn't understand the novels.

This sounds like the accolades to Mr. Thompson before Galt's speech shattered it.

Somewhat a semantic difference. I am not suggesting conspiracies- just an aligning of political support to further individual and often different agendas. Often called “ the swamp”

The collectivism is a tribal premise, and there is increasing balkanization, but the country is a long way from literal primitive tribalism the way it was when the early settlers found it.

Is this satire?

He is a typical Pragmatist. Calling for "greatness" and riding in limousines are not principles.

His vague promises to be lowering taxes conflict with the reality of the plan he is endorsing. It shifts around rates and wipes out significant deductions, all of which is raising taxes for a lot of individuals. Only taxes on business are going down. He doesn't even say that taxes should be lower so everyone can keep more of his own money. Those whose taxes are going up are being sacrificed in the name of the collective economy.

John Allison, who rose to the top of his BBT bank, did not become drunk on government power. He continued to oppose it.

A lot of European dictators have also promised to be "great". Evaluate political leaders for their ideas and how they apply them, not their emotional campaign rhetoric or what school they went to.

There many with better understanding and more of the right principles than Trump, and most of them probably could not be elected. That Trump is on this side of the Clinton-Lenin mafia does mean that he is great. Don't treat him as the Pied Piper, blindly followed. A "man on a white horse" can also be dangerous.

Good characters in a novel can be an inspiration from how they are portrayed. But they can't be copied by rote, let alone copied in their fictional actions as a strategy for life as if a fictional plot were a set of instructions.

Ayn Rand wrote her characters to illustrate her philosophy. It is the philosophy that made that possible which must be understood and applied in reality.

If you haven't yet read Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto you would enjoy her explanations in her philosophy of fiction and other art.

Yes, every tax distorts the market in some way.

The mortgage interest deduction is taken directly by the property owner with the mortgage. That more people can afford mortgages so that lenders benefit from a growth in the economy does mean that the deduction directly supports banks. The mortgage market is good, helping both buyers and sellers.

That does not justify the conspiracy theories. That there is open corruption and politicking does not mean that every speculation is fact.

The claim that increasing home values increases the property taxes is false. The property taxes are assessed to pay for the spending. Whether they manipulate home valuations for tax purposes or mil rates, they rig it to come up with what they need, not the other way around. Various kinds of limits in different states (and the role of state subsidies to cities and towns), such as Texas, distort their process, but rising market values of homes does not cause the taxes. The desire to spend more is the cause of the local taxes, the rest is mathematical gimmicks to allocate the taxes for as much as they can get away with spending.

Limits on property taxes almost always fail to control the spending because they find ways to manipulate the formulas within the law and/or get the money from other sources like the state (which is what happened at the beginning of the property tax revolt in CA with "proposition 13").

We are being told here that the political purpose of the Federal income tax deduction for mortgage interest is to raise the market value of homes for the purpose of increasing property taxes. Aside from that being an unfounded conspiracy theory blaming "cities", it fundamentally misunderstands the relation between property and property taxes and the cause of the taxes.

Donald Trump is an unpredictable Pragmatist. He properly fights some of the worst policies and ideologues but is no defender of individualism himself. He does not hate the country, as the left does, but he represents a backlash that doesn't know where it is going. In some realms he may temporarily help, but he is not leading the country in the direction of the rights of the individual,which seems alien to him. He is manipulating statism to do whatever he thinks will 'work' in specific instances.

Whether or not the country eventually collapses from the dead hand of government it makes no sense to bitterly sacrifice the life you can still have. When something becomes too burdensome then don't do it and do something else, but neither that nor stopping everything will stop the statist trend and is not what Ayn Rand advocated in her novels or elsewhere. She was not a nihilist and neither was John Galt. Dropping all context to follow a fictional plot is not rational.

ewv, we will just have to disagree on this point. I have seen enough empirical evidence to have a reasonable reason to believe that the masters do not give a damn about the peasants and will do everything they want, and, oops, sorry, screw us, and care not. The sheer incompetence of both political parties, their arrogance and their abuse of money and power, leave me no other choice.

I am not overlooking invisible conspiracies for which there is no evidence. There is enough corruption in politics without inventing conspiracy theories with no evidence or proof.

No there are not ulterior motives driving everything. Speculating that "cities" are the real motive of a tax deduction that people want makes no sense.

Thank you, Dob, that was it, I knew it was one of the islands, but it shows just how you cannot trust government or banks to either tell the truth or do what they say they will. I am waiting for something similar here....there may be a reason everyone pushes direct deposit