"Who is John Galt? A whining, entitled douchebag"
Posted by jmlesniewski 12 years, 11 months ago to Culture
Yes, looks like it's one of those days on the internet.
- Hot
- New
- Categories...
- Producer's Lounge
- Producer's Vault
- The Gulch: Live! (New)
- Ask the Gulch!
- Going Galt
- Books
- Business
- Classifieds
- Culture
- Economics
- Education
- Entertainment
- Government
- History
- Humor
- Legislation
- Movies
- News
- Philosophy
- Pics
- Politics
- Science
- Technology
- Video
- The Gulch: Best of
- The Gulch: Bugs
- The Gulch: Feature Requests
- The Gulch: Featured Producers
- The Gulch: General
- The Gulch: Introductions
- The Gulch: Local
- The Gulch: Promotions
- Marketplace
- Members
- Store
- More...
#1 Galt isn't ACTING "entitled" and whining...he freakin IS entitled to the profits of his work which is getting STOLEN from the industrialists.
#2 Yes there are new industrialists ready to step up and TRY to take Galt's place...but the books entire point is that Government and the "entitled" lazy asses of the world are RIPPING THEM OFF and creating laws making success in new businesses almost impossible...this is NOT a false theme, it is the result of socialism/communism as proved by EVERY socialist/communist state...so the proof is there.
This guy is an idiot arguing from a false premise.
"Basically when you combine the three you can argue that the Constitution states that any law the United States government makes that is "necessary ..."
This is all I could get from your post since, but from this I can respond to the gist of your argument. You can take anything from the Constitution and make any argument you want, the burden of proof still lies with the one asserting the argument. The problem does not lie in the language of these clauses. The problem lies with we the people and our failure to effectively challenge bogus arguments. Throughout this nations history there have been several suspicious challenges to federal legislation. Most recently the challenges against the Affordable Health Care Act were highly suspicious. This should have been blatantly obvious to any person of average intelligence and any person of average intelligence has the obligation to know the fundamental difference between an ex-ante argument and a ex-post argument.
Necessary and proper are two very precise words and when the federal government is able to let bogus legislation stand that is not necessary nor proper after it has been challenged in the courts, it is wise to look at who did the challenging and the arguments they made. There are no magic words that will prevent ambitious politicians from searching for loopholes and ways around Constitutional restraints. Constant vigilance by those who hold the inherent political power is necessary at all times, and it is proper.
They depend upon the premises and context a person is operating on and within.
While I agree with the premises of the book and really enjoy it, the character of John Galt is one that I just never liked all that well. He started the strike, and ends it but otherwise he just does not grab me at all.
That being said the article is well from someone who obviously does not understand real world and only the theoretical world. John Galt and the idea of a gultch is fantasy, I think we all realize it, but dam its good to have a fantasy to dream about.
The difference is my fantasy is a world where everyone trades value for value and is so honest in there dealings with other men that no government is needed. In this world a person who owns a steel mill would put pollution controls on it not because a government forced him to but because pouting the environment to the point of destroying it is bad for himself.
This persons fantasy is a world where the people are slaves to the government and do what they should because if they do not they get killed, go to jail, get beat up with the billy club of choice....
the bottom line is I believe in the individual, and their ability to recognize and act upon what is best for them. I believe that natural consequences for actions will catch up to and teach those that fail to recognize what action is best for them, if those natural consequences are not altered by society.
The guy who wrote this article does not believe that the average person can learn and grow and reach a point where they will make good choices for themselves. If he does his writing indicates otherwise.
Entitlement brings out the worst in people, working for and keeping what you earn brings out the best. Those who do not understand this want entitlements; those that do want compensation based on the value they produce.
Just thought you ought to know.
Not that the rule of law matters to those with greed on their mind.
That wasn't my doing, it was the doing of the self-obsessed at that site.
In fact, I was one of the people who tipped off the admins to your post where you made your outrageous claim.
Your posts were deleted when you were.
So our very competent readers will have to decide which of us is the more believable.
Of course, one of the admins could always chime in and confirm my claim, but they are probably sitting back, just like they did last time, giving you enough rope to hang yourself with.
And, as last time, I'm just sitting by the bank of the river, watching the water roll by, and laughing.
"“Who is John Galt?” The famous opening line of Ayn Rand’s masturbatory hymn to entitled capitalist “heroes.”
Of course, in Atlas Shrugged there are rich people who see themselves as entitled, capitalist or not, but Rand makes clear these people are either "looters" or "moochers". James Taggart is just such one. A man who has inherited a rail road company and pays himself well to run it into the ground. A looter. Starkly contrasting James is his sister Dagney who earns her way desperately trying to keep the company afloat. Atlas Shrugged is an ode to her and people like her, whether they be John Galt, Hank Reardon, or Eddie Willers or even the "expert" bus driver or train engineer Pat Logan. Rand clearly admires these people, rich, poor, or middle class, and admires them for their effort and confident expertise. This Pangburn ignores in order to create his straw man you now proudly mirror.
It is doubtful Pangburn read any page of Atlas Shrugged and is merely parroting what he's read in Cliff Notes and other articles creating the same or similar straw man arguments. Not only does Pangburn misrepresent Atlas Shrugged, he misrepresents the Prometheus myth once again ignoring that Prometheus is alternately seen as a hero by some and a villain by others who revile him for bringing the wrath of the gods down upon humanity. In that dichotomy we see the similarities that Rand speaks to in Atlas Shrugged, where those who admired Prometheus as a hero recognize the fallibility of gods and mysticism, but those who revile Prometheus are helplessly trapped in mysticism and forever the effect of the whims of gods. While Pangburn shows he can sling obscenities around with the best of them, he shows little else other than profound ignorance.
Take note how Pangburn places quotation marks around "discovered" positing that if this were to happen today Galtian admirers would patent fire as theirs. Yet fire was discovered. Until man first saw fire man remained ignorant of fire, and more importantly, until man discovered the benefits of fire, what they knew of fire was its harmful effects. It was the discovery of fires benefits that made it such an important discovery in the steady march upward for mankind.
Pangburn amusingly asks his readers to imagine what would happen if Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg had refused to share their genius with the world and what is so amusing in this is that his argument winds up making the very same point Rand made.
Finally, Pangburn expects his readers to accept his fantasy that the internet is "free" because one man according to Pangburn didn't become a millionaire, and with out even a wink and nod, he asks his reader to pretend we read his article for "free", but someone, somewhere is paying for the internet provider that allows reading that article and this is why Rand has so little regard for the moochers. They don't even bother to wonder how it is that which they're benefiting from was made possible. That ignorance makes it easier to dismiss the effort put behind what it is they benefit from and that dismissal of effort becomes effort expected as sacrifice instead of the praise and compensation that is earned. An even exchange between individuals is not evil. It is just. An uneven exchange between individuals is not just it stems from a sense of entitlement. John Galt never demanded uneven exchange.
I found this particularly well written.
Thanks You
For generations, we convinced ourselves of the righteousness of using slave labor to enrich ourselves. Some of us grew beyond that dark moment in our nation's history. The rest became Objectivists.
This economy is not going to get any better as long as the vast majority of the unemployed keep insisting that someone has to give them a job. Continual stimulation of an industrial base that is long past obsolete is not going to do a damn thing for your vaunted worker class. What your vaunted workers need is to support an imagination economy where at least some of those damned workers evolve into business owners so that your vaunted worker class can someday have a job.
If your vaunted worker class is as precious as you seem to think it is, they could always pool their resources and build their own business and compete with those "capitalists" you bemoan, and then and only then will your vaunted worker class come to know the true value of labor.
A highly regulated market place is not a free and open marketplace. An increasingly corporatized market is not a market filled with massive competition, and fiat currency is not a currency by which people can reasonably agree upon the value of that currency.
You can whine, sputter, and fluster and blame, blame, blame, and then "mirror" an article that hopelessly turns the tables and act as if they are nothing more than a five year old that constantly screams "I know you are but what am I?" all you want. As long as you identify with the worker class, you are one who expects someone else to provide you with a job. You will not go out into the wild and make your own way, you will insist that others have the obligation to make your way for you.
In stopping abuses of a self-serving corporate infrastructure, our government is doing exactly what the Constitution mandates it to do: Protect us from harm at the hands of powerful interest groups, foreign or domestic.
As long as you remain an advocate for American-style Capitalism, you will think that one man has the right to steal the value of another man's labors, and then declare it's all kosher, because the other guy agreed to his mistreatment. lol
"Dagny, it's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence. Don't feel sorry for me."
~John Galt to Dagny Taggart~
Of course, take note how you simply ignored the thrust of my post and continue to pretend that I am advocating "American style Capitalism" which is nothing more than a word to disguise the Marxist-Keynesian mess that is the economy today. Your insistence in living in a world of make believe is the primary source of all your despair.
i dont mean to put words into your mouth i'm just trying to come to an understanding without conflict.. that said, those actions caused by a company owner for example CAN indeed cause harm to workers like for example if the factory shuts down in a town and most of the town works there but it all comes down to whether to take away freedoms to stop things like this happening or not, i'm on the side of not (which is an entirely different topic)
Based off your earlier posts you would keep to little and your company would ultimately fail when hard times hit it because you would not have the capital to ride out the storms.
Do you share equally in all the pay? Does everyone get the same money for whatever job they do? If not you are behaving differently in your company than your posts would say you believe.
If you are paying everyone the same how do you keep good talent and still maintain a proffit to pay your investors/owners for their investment? Because differences in pay between the bairly get the job done employee and the do more than is required employee have to be great enough to keep the latter around or they find something that pays better and they are gone.
How do you solve these problems with Marxist ideals? I would love to know because I do not believe they can be solved with Marxist ideals.
That's why Marx loathed straight-ahead American-style Capitalism. It steals value right off the top, and leaves crumbs for the workers.
And this slavery rhetoric is so ridiculous it robs the concept of slavery of any meaning. In this country, you can work for someone else, you can work for yourself, or you can be poor and die on the streets, but it's always in your hands. There's no slavery. There's no "ownership" of the people who work for you. It's a trade, pure and simple. Anybody who claims that Objectivism supports slavery has clearly never read Rand and has never understood Objectivism at all.
That's not entirely true. In the early days of industry, especially the coal mines, workers got charged for their company houses and company tools up front, so that they started out in debt to the company, and were paid in company scrip that couldnt be used anywhere else. The one thing I thank unions for, although I think they've long outlived their usefulness.
And greed is good.
Rand trained you well, leading you to think that commerce in America is based on an uncoerced trade of value for value. Which is why wealth in our nation is flowing from the poor to the wealthy at the fastest rate in our nation's history, as the Randites complain that those who did the actual work to create the product are being "moochers" for asking that the "creators" fulfill the responsibilities to their society that they agree to meet when the went into business in America.
Why is it so difficult for you to accept that you've climbed in bed with financial terrorists?
Without the assistance of our government and our workers, your precious "creators" would be impotent.
I don't understand why you think "wealth is flowing from the poor to the wealthy", when wealth is CREATED, not stolen or looted like in other countries. And the notion that the people doing "actual work" are the people at the bottom is a fallacy; how does one create a job for others without doing his own work?
And there are no responsibilities to society, and nobody agreed to anything. There is no obligation to give money to those who haven't earned it, and there is no responsibility to pay someone more than what they've earned.
Gotta love how some people can look directly at a huge zit on their face, and swear up and down it's not there. what people have "earned?" I notice that you are the one making that determnination. The people whose labor you stole en route to your "earning" may have a slightly different perspective on what the relationship was all about.
At any rate, all of the so-called holes you're bringing up about Rand and her philosophy have all been addressed and answered satisfactorily in her own non-fiction writings, which you haven't read (like you say you did). Go do your homework and then come back to the masterclass.
Do you think that if I had a neighbor with two cars and one with no car and I stole one of my neighbors cars to give to the neighbor with no car I should not go to jail for theft?
Such an act would be the entity of me doing exactly what economic justice has the entity of the government doing. So why is OK for the entity of the government but not for the entity of me?
Until we live in a land where the same law applies equally to all entities rich or poor, black or white... regardless of differences there can be no justice of any kind. That applies to all entities within the land, Corporate entities, individuals and government entities. In a land that follows the rule of law, theft no matter who the thief is, is wrong.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/20...
Number one economic problem in the US is our corporate tax rates, they are the highest in the world at 35%, even china has reduced them from 33% to 25%. You want jobs here, it has to be cost effective to do business here. Even adjusted for tax breaks its still 28% and china gives breaks as well.
I wont be responding to you again. Its not worth my time as you are obviously unable to read and understand what you read.
You do your legitimacy as a man of principle a disservice when you start your arguments with a premise you know to be wholly false.
How convenient of you. Mitt Romney would be proud.
Very very dangerous thought process.
The natural order of things is when society works together to build a stronger America for the common good. Self-serving greed is about as anti-natural as it gets. No society has every survived when following those ideals.
By what religion, creed or ideaology do you define what "obligations" each person has? And what gives YOU the power to define them for anyone else?
You see, those exact questions are what makes you equivilent to the "fundamentalist", jihadist, crusader, etc. What you don't want to admit is you have your own belief of what I should do as a societal obligation, and believe that through the force of government you have the right to make me do it. It is what turns "humanist idealists" into murderous communists.
There is no force involved. When you went into business in America you agreed to pay taxes. Now that the bill has come due, you have become a moocher. Save me the hysteria about communism. There are no parallels, just greed which needs to find an enemy to blame.
Law is not some willy nilly whatever the majority makes of it proposition and ignorantia juris non excusat!
To claim that the Constitution is not a living breathing document, open to future legal interpretation, is to deny the entire and legislative and judiciary branches.
More importantly, it ignores that the founders wanted America to form our own nation in our own image, not in theirs. The Constitution is not a road map, it's a set of rules for the road. We choose our own path. That's the way the founders intended it, free will and all.
The Constitution is a document written on paper. Paper does not breathe and under our current definitions of life, is not living. It is one thing to speak metaphorically, it is another, and entirely absurd to entrench oneself in the insistence that paper and ink lives and breathes.