Agreed, in general. I do disagree that "you pay for what you get", as I certainly do not perceive I get much of anything from government for the amount I have to cheerfully "donate".

Ok, I followed all of that and agree, I did not catch the month thing, as each character disappeared, and Galt asking Dagny to join them, made it appear as if they had retreated after each major event (the oil field destruction, and the various takeovers). The point of removing yourself from they system is still, in my mind, a strike of sorts, in that the looters consistently used their work as a leverage to gain more, such as the Reardon takeover. While people today could also do such a strike, and remove themselves, (perhaps some have, or as some do, go Gault by getting a remote piece of property and making as self sufficient as possible), I would say the vast majority are dependent on some forms of support (power, water, food), making engagement with the economy necessary. I just completed a 45 minute "Census" survey for the American Communities Act, and they asked a hell of a lot of personal information, which is hard to fathom how that works for communities. The statist will not stop, unless they lose their money, or the people all up and stop supporting them. As long as they do their breaking into small groups with special interest hot button issues, no unified society will emerge. They depend on stratification and separation, by class, income, race, ethnicity and many, many other things down to individual hot button topic like abortion.

Absolutely. Venezuela is the poster child for the end game of socialism. The producers have left, one by one. The USA hasn’t gotten to that point yet but you can see the rise in so called terrorism and violence. Look at the rise of the NSA to enable government here to control the population. It’s our biggest enemy now really. Free speech is being attacked on college campuses now. It used to be colleges were bastions of free speech. No longer

Mayo Clinic is stopping accepting government insurance, and shortly there won’t be any private insurance permitted to compete with Medicare for everyone. Mayo was losing money on Medicare patients and can’t afford to do what they do because the government requires that they accept Medicare reimbursement be payment in full for services. I was heartbroken when after 10 years of getting mayo’s excellent care I was refused because I am over 65 and there is no alternative medical insurance available except Medicare Somehow the senators like McCain get special government insurance I suspect, and THEY get treated at mayo. Check it out to see where medical care is going in the USA

That is all true I think but the whole premise is that it takes the collapse to get people to question statism and accept free market capitalism. Look at the mess we are in today. The media is totally against capitalism as are half the people (Hillary supporters). They want their freebies provided by the producers and they take those goodies any way the producers allow. Only when producers stop giving up wealth can this stop. The problem is that the entitled will just take what they can find. That’s why the producers stopped producing in AS

It is when it’s an aligning of immoral interests. As with the starting of war in Iraq for example. A lot of people benefited without an overtly evil conspiracy,- so those people supported that war because of that personal benefit

The problem is that the government will grow faster than the economy and print money to do it. The government has learned that borrowing ( money printing) will cause economic activity to artificially increase until the debt has to be paid off

I could go for that. The tricky part is hiding a halts gulch long enough until it’s strong enough to survive. The best strategy I’ve heard is “hiding in plain sight” as in the book ‘alongside night’. Our biggest enemy would be the us nss

Fair means just, not "equal treatment". There is to be equality under the law in general, not in economics -- and while there is a tax, not necessarily equal rates or equal amounts paid, but certainly not rates set to extract more from those who have something more to take. You pay for what you get.

The politicians claim they are "fair" under their false collectivist and altruist moral premises. No one on our side should be promoting any kind of tax and the purpose of taxation today as inherently "fair".

In the fiction, the banker Midas Mulligan bought the remote valley as a private retreat, then later invited others to join him to vacation. Galt was one of the early visitors. When Galt started his strike strategy, the carefully selected participants stayed in the Valley for one month each year, but otherwise worked in the outer world at low level "minimal" jobs while strategically helping to encourage the strike. (Galt maintained a secret lab in the outer world where he continued his research.) Galt used his energy invention from the motor to project a shield to make the Valley invisible -- which Dagny accidentally crashed through.

Some of them lived in the Valley full time, and near the end they all did because the outer world on the verge of collapse had become too dangerous.

Whether in the Valley or privately and secretly in the outer world, all of them continued working to full productivity. None of them had a nihilistic 'dropout' mentality and none of them relished the collapse. They were all serious in their thoughts and purposeful actions; none of them ran around publicly spouting dramatic revolutionary slogans as emotional agitators.

Ayn Rand's purpose in putting the strike in the plot was to show how society depends on the minds of the best individuals by showing what happens when the mind is deliberately withdrawn, followed by the artificially accelerated collapse in the story.

Ayn Rand's purpose in putting the Valley in the plot was to show how the best people relate to each other when they can do so in normal circumstances, i.e., not struggling against the looters.

The purpose was not to show people who didn't understand suddenly knowing what to do and creating an ideal society when the social system collapsed, and it was not to advocate striking as a way to reform a nation. In the story, the leaders were on the verge of returning to the world after the collapse to form a proper government and to produce unmolested; it was presumed that their enemies had all destroyed themselves or otherwise were no longer a threat.

No, but it does seem that any politicians definition of "fair" is never "fair". It pcks and chooses amongst their patrons. Fair would be equal treatment to all, and no need for an IRS, other to know you paid, as there would be no need for anything but a one page form.

Indeed, it is set to be that way as it stands.

There is no physical revolt capability today, even a tax revolt, as they say, the government pursues a policy of coercion to pay. Otherwise there would be no need for all the commercials for legal services to "fix your IRS problem".

There isn't one today, but, as I understood it, they had a place in the mountains with a shield that hid them, where they opted out of the corrupt society. Were they not waiting for the system that was unsupportable to collapse? I agree we have no such option in reality.

Ragnar was a fictional character, provided as one element in the fictional plot. Ayn Rand also emphasized that Ragnar was interested in philosophy, which he pursued at the end. None of the hyper dramatic slogans senselessly flailing here for a revolt have any resemblance to the ideas of Atlas Shrugged and what Ayn Rand advocated or how to accomplish it. If taken seriously they only give Ayn Rand an undeserved bad reputation.

"The Strike" was the original working title when Ayn Rand started writing the novel in the late 1940s. The strike was the major event in the plot; she never advocated that people strike as a way to reform the country.

We are not getting closer. Whatever taxes may be lower for some in the Republican shift-and-shaft to manipulate the economy, the statist, collectivist trend is not being effectively countered.

There is no such "new world" in physical reality. The purpose of the fictional Valley in the plot of Atlas Shrugged was to illustrate in the story how the best people relate to each other in normal, i.e., proper human, circumstances. Ayn Rand opposed dropping out and trying to start an impossible utopia or new country.

The common denominator is that it stands for whatever people think of as the good. Don't make a PR campaign based on calling some variety of statism "fair".

In today's mixed system we can do much more than to stop producing while consuming only the minimum to sustain life. But if it comes to that, the minimum sustenance will be much worse than what we have today and so will the nature of government.

It is available now for a price by buying a private policy supplementing Medicare. With further controls there will be no market left to buy whatever still exists. The statists demanding it for themselves don't need a price, but as they destroy it by enslaving doctors and research, there won't be much left for them either. Their coercion and pragmatism don't work.

Ayn Rand did not advocate a strike. The strike by the men of the mind in Atlas Shrugged was a fictional device to show the depending of society on the minds of the best individuals.

Ayn Rand advocated spreading the right philosophical ideas, since it is ideas that drives the course of a nation. She never supported a strike or any other means of encouraging or causing a collapse, which she recognized as futile and self-destructive.

If the populace doesn't understand the proper principles for what to do in a system that still has some momentum from its founding, it won't learn them in the chaos and desperation of a collapse, no way to educate them, and nothing left to hold back a full statist crackdown abandoning entirely what is still left of Constitutional limitations on government in order to "deal with the emergency". The majority who understand the least of political philosophy are the first to go along with it.

An "implicit aligning of interest" is not a conspiratorial gift.

Monetary inflation is not required for a growing economy. Getting rid of taxes and controls is -- so that people are free to plan and produce. In any event, the government doesn't and cannot grow anything other than itself; if there is economic growth it comes from productive people using their rationality to produce, more relatively free of controls and looting.

For a lot of people it's shift and shaft, raising taxes by eliminating deductions like the big ones they are after to impose double taxation on income lost to state and local taxes. The Trump scheme isn't even intended to lower taxes, the whole scheme is intended by the statist Trump -- who insists he won't "help" the "rich" by lowering their taxes -- to manipulate tax distortions of the economy, using taxation to impose his idea of the best statist policies, with additional punishment for those who don't do what he wants. He does not say he wants to lower taxes so people can keep more of their own money.

With the Republicans falling all over themselves to parrot Marxist rhetoric and abandon any principled arguments for lowering taxes as they progressively cave in to Susan Collins and the Democrats, it doesn't look now like there will soon be any major changes in taxation levels at all. If they get something passed it will be at the expense of more compromises with the progressives.