Recently, I decided to skim through Galt's speech again at the end of Atlas Shrugged and found this passage near the end of the speech to be quite interesting-
"When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom your spend your time denouncing.
“The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the mystics’ Middle Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort. How many tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for Hank Rearden? Would you dare to claim that the size of your pay cheek was created solely by your physical labor and that those rails were the product of your muscles? The standard of living of that blacksmith is all that your muscles are worth; the rest is a gift from Hank Rearden."
Clearly, Rand is letting the working slob know that they should be grateful for all the smart people who built all the shit that allows the slob to earn a living in a comfy factory rather than having to perform mindless, brute physical work. In all honesty, I don't disagree with this point. As a nurse in 2015, I enjoy an enormous benefit of making a very good wage, and because of technology and access to education, I enjoy a far better standard of living and respect from doctors than nurses did even 20 years ago. I fully understand and even agree with Rand's point. Still, I find it interesting that this concept should apply to the working slob only and not to the businessman. Trillions of dollars have been made by the private sector on concepts that were started under government programs. And though a business in any time period requires risk, the evolution of society, the developed infrastructure, access to capital markets and so on gives the man with an idea an incredible canvas to work with. Joe Biden said of many of the rich spoiled brats of today that these kids were born on third base and grew up thinking they hit a triple. And so it is, I believe for many who are successful today.
I've worked very hard to get ahead and when I'm done with school, I expect to earn at least at 50% pay increase from where I am now. Still, I don't pretend that I haven't been enormously lucky to have such opportunity to take advantage of. I don't know what exactly I will do to try and keep giving something back, but for the moment, I will at least be grateful and continue to nurture the idea that I do owe something to the future.
What he meant? Can you please tell me who ‘someone’ is in his speech? Given that the examples he used are teachers, roads/bridges and an iteration of packet switching which was adopted to form the backbone of the internet, I would suggest that he was talking first and last about the government.
ReplyDeleteIn the vast majority of cases, governments possess only what they first seize from private citizens. In any endeavour that I have undertaken be it my career, home, food, and services, I paid what someone else considered was a fair price for the privilege. I give praise if I desire, but I owe them nothing other than the remit agreed upon. I learned my craft from a hundred workers who were paid to share their knowledge as was I as I gained experience and status.
Their of course is one caveat to what I have said above and that is the millions of hours of voluntary interactions people have given through charity and neighbourhood works… the key of course is ‘voluntary’.
How can citizens owe government when practically everything the government has it first took from them? Everything developed by the government is owned by the people. Not one person can patient the packet switching developed by the government and every single citizen can use it. But the Internet is a combination of ideas some patented and some given for free… it is not packet switching.
The fact that people are forced to pay for certain goods and services indirectly, by taxation, cannot create an ineradicable debt to the people who seized their paychecks. People who are government dependents have a debt not so much to the government itself, but to their fellow citizens who earn the money the government seizes and then renders to them.
The government routinely effectively confiscates parents’ money to pay for schools and then fails to educate their kids, yet faces no liability for its de facto breach of implied contract. Public high schools graduate an estimated 700,000 functionally illiterate teenagers each year. No plaintiff to date has been able to convince a court that a school owes him or her any more than “a chair in a classroom.”.. Let’s leave aside the fact that England had achieved practically universal education well before the introduction of “free” schools.
Roads are a good example of the contempt that government shows for citizens in the services it forces them to finance. As road expert and author Gabriel Roth observed, “U.S. roads suffer from the typical command economy characteristics: poor maintenance, congestion, and insensitivity to consumer needs.” Roughly three-fifths of all interstate highways are in poor or mediocre condition, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Drivers pay more than $140 billion in gas taxes each year, but only about half of that money is actually spent on maintaining and building roads; the rest is spent on other political wish lists.
The one area in which it is most plausible that government could provide a unique service is national defence. However, if a government busies itself making enemies, and then praises itself for pledging to protect citizens from the enemies it makes, there is less than a transcendent benefit. This of course says nothing about its in ability or lack of desire to defend our southern border against drug king pins and people who wish to do us harm
If I wished to be scornful I would have to say that insofar as the government takes from the citizen more than it renders to the citizen, the citizen owes the state the same contempt that he would have for any other con artist.
As far as loyalty goes… I owe it to the constitutional foundation of this country and not the people who raise their right hand as swear… or affirm their duty to protect and defend it… even as they plot to subvert it….
Without packet switching the internet would be still Darpanet, a government sponsored network used by scientists and engineers who had government research grants, and closed to the general public. No bloggers, no email, no games.
ReplyDeleteWithout the government there would be no Interstate Highway System, or Interstate and Defense Highway System as it was originally called, thanks to President Eisenhower. So we would still be driving on indirect two lane roads which may or may not get us there.
Not necessarily so Mick. Packet switching was being worked on independently by the US, the UK and France. All three developed a pack protocol and all three could have evolved into the internet that we know today. The French system called Minitel commercially was actually in service as a text based service used throughout France in 1982 and garnered a user base of some 25million subscribers. It finally closed down in 2012 because of the pervasiveness of the Internet. X.25 was used commercially for a long time in phone switching but it could have just as easily developed the same legs as IP. Of course I am quite sure that the US pushed its version just a little bit harder than the other countries could… NSA thanks the American taxpayer for its remit and its indulgence.
DeleteWhile much the national build was new road many of the sections, particularly in the northeast corridor, were existing state divided highways and toll roads. Previous to the Interstate system was the US highway numbering system that used existing interconnected state highways, both single and double lane to create numbered routes. One of the more famous was route 66. Remember the famous jingle, ‘See the USA in your Cheverolet’? It was used throughout the early 1950’s. So America was already quite mobile and was the world’s largest economy prior to the interstate system.
In 1955 my father was an instructor of aircraft wiring and avionics in the Air Force. At that time he was given an assignment to travel to various installations to teach. In order for us to remain together and insure adequate housing, he bought a Spartan housetrailer. We moved from El Paso Texas, to Illinois, to New Jersey, to Ohio, to Florida, back to Illinois, to Maine, to Pennsylvania and finally to New York towing that trailer and believe it or not, the road system was good enough that it didn’t fall apart and we always got where we needed to go… and on time. Bad roads are not an excuse to be AWOL.
There is no doubt that mobility was enhanced by the interstate system but the US would have remained number 1 had it not been built because states would have modernized and cooperated has they had done previous which allowed for the US highway numbering system and as I said, the interstate system and its maintenance has cost the taxpayer far more than was actually spent and would have been managed better by state government in the long run. Putting forth good ideas and being a medium of coordination between states (‘PROMOTE’ the general welfare) is the proper role of the US government… it does not have the definitive lock on ideas nor does it truly understand the needs of the populations of the various states.
When you say that without government we would be living in the stone age… you are right. Civilized society functions because it has some form of governance. See Venezuela for one type of government. The type of governance is most important. Our federal system placed limited priority at the national level. Only through perverted legalese do we have an all-powerful national government that kills innovation and destroyed the very premise of the republic as designed. Keep in mind that the US economy was #1 long before FDR and his ilk got a foothold and only with the persistence of nanny state policies has the US gone from #1 in most things to teetering on the #2 economy and considerably worse in almost all other categories. The US, as a country, is doing exactly what a normal successful company does. Small and nimble it works and innovates around its stodgier, rule bound competitors to achieve success. As it grows, it develops a top down structure where knowledge of the real business is far from those who make the decisions. New directions can’t be taken because they are too dangerous or risky or the rule process to time consuming… and eventually someone more hungry and energetic takes your business. Local and State government is not, no government and as business has proven time and time again, top down management drags everyone down.
And Mick that is exactly what is meant and Max gets it. We all have our country, our GOVERNMENT to thank for the nation which we nave built and live in. If it were only for the individuals on their owe, the businessmen, the entrepreneurs then we would have something akin to modern day Russia where those who had the right connections became ogliarchs etc. Everyone else well pssst.... Our GOVERNMENT built the world's best system of laws , regulations and protections that without, none of this, NONE OF THIS would have happened. Yes we adults get it when will the rest of you. Totally free and unfettered markets are not the answer to comfortable living by the masses. It only creates a modern feudal system in which the few prosper and the masses suffer. Our government is the government that has found the balance between the unfettered markets and the wealth creation system we have today.
ReplyDeleteWhat came first, the chicken or the egg?
DeleteWhat came first, the founder or the government?
And the founder wrote the constitution: the framework to develop what we have developed today, yes a living document, ambiguous in many ways, open to different uses and interpretations. A truly magnificent document that has never and probably will never be duplicated with it's myriad freedoms and checks on the people and government of this great nation. A document that could be developed and has been that has allowed us to build and maintain a great nation, freedom for all, strong government and opportunity. And by the way John Adams and T Jefferson discussed the need and responsibility of the Government to provide education for it's citizens on several occasions. Read some of their stuff you will find it. They felt that universal education would only strengthen the nation within the world. Yep. They did.
Delete"What came first, the chicken or the egg?
DeleteWhat came first, the founder or the government?"
This is immaterial. The reality that DOES exist today is one wherein a businessperson with an idea has access to legal capital markets, a patent office, buildings to lease, roads to transport their goods on and so on. Granted, the working class does not provide the capital, or the ideas, but they defend the infrastructure that does allow for those things. A is A, let's not wander into questions that have no pertinence to today.