griffjam
12th March 2009, 01:22
The neo-conservative 'movement' in the last few decades has essentially been a monstrous circle jerk between Christianist theocrats, crypto-Fascists, and political-economic Libertopains; three distinct, and one might think in a lot of ways incompatible, varieties of counter factual lunacy somehow merged into a monstrous ass-beast of scum-sucking political vileness. It really is entertaining and more than a little validating to watch this creature sink into the toxic morass of its own creation, desperately throwing out line after line in an attempt to heave itself back onto the shores of relevance. The latest notion cooked up by the leading lights in their eternal quest to regain some sort of moral high ground is the notion that of 'Going Galt (http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=56457938958&h=d0627ddf2093e7a08b21cfd2a18aa0c6&url=http%3A%2F%2Fredtory.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F03 %2F09%2F%25E2%2580%259Cgoing-galt%25E2%2580%259D%2F).'
For those of you who managed to avoid a brief, unfulfilling college fling with Ayn Rand, let me introduce you to John Galt, main character of her capitalist slash fanfic Atlas Shrugged (http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=56457938958&h=f5d05dbd71c06ec2b7fc8840dfe8dab1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.ca%2FAtlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand%2Fdp%2F0451191145). (Spoiler alert!) He's such an amazing super-genius that he was able to invent an engine that makes electricity out of air. But when the gosh darn gubmint took it into their sleazy communist hearts to force him to use his invention for the good of others, he just took it and up and left. He went out to found a city where everyone could live free from the evil of socioeconomic redistribution, and convinced all the great capitalists, artists, scientists, and other worthwhile people to join him as the world fell into decay under the hands of petty bureaucratic tyrants.
I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed Atlas Shrugged. I liked it in the same way I like slasher flicks and super-hero comics; it's a philosophical cartoon, intellectual pabulum for people who aren't ready to deal with the complexities and compromises of serious political and moral thought. But I never imagined it was a plausible representation of reality. To this day, when I meet someone who never managed to get over their juvenile Rand infatuation and thinks of themselves as a genuine dyed-in-the-wool Objectivist, I think about the same thing as I do when I meet serious bible-believing Christians: "You seriously believe that crap?" And the idea of people trying to 'go Galt' in real life strikes me about the same as people putting on a cape and thinking they can take down the mafia, or running around in a hockey mask taking a machete to stupid teenagers.
There are three classes of people in Atlas Shrugged. There are the super-smart and super-heroic super-capitalists whose brilliant entrepreneurship shills keep the economy turning over; there are villainous parasites whose only means of not starving to death in the street is to leech off the productivity of the super-capitalists, be it by robbing them at knife point, by getting their shrewish mothers to guilt their hard-working brothers into giving them a cushy job, or by infiltrating the government and passing laws that raise taxes and commandeer hard won capital. Then there are, implicit but almost never even mentioned, all the 'little people' who actually do all the work. You know, the farmers, the factory workers, the shop keepers, and suchlike. Rand's world is a vast fictional explication of the concept of 'social darwinism'; through absolute selfish competition, those who are fittest rise to the top and collect the bulk of the wealth, and everyone else gets whatever level of power and wealth they are competent to handle. This is not only a social reality but a moral imperative; anyone who tries to interfere with the function of the free market is a sinful parasite, and anyone preaching the virtues of altruism and the 'duty' of people to help the less fortunate is just trying to get theirs by subterfuge instead of honest hard work.
Or, you know, by skimming the cream off the hard work of others, because that's what capitalism is in reality. No mention is made of how Galt's Gulch feeds itself, of how a bunch of investor/inventors engaged in a kind of extreme tax evasion managed to convince people to come work in their factories (or even build them). Presumably Galt and his cronies did it all themselves. The idea is more or less the same as an anarcho-syndicalist commune, except that everyone's working for wages and gets to buy each others products, and magically nobody falls to the bottom of the economic heap because they're all magic super-capitalists (or if they do, they're happy about it because they're fulfilling their maximum potential in life while getting the moral satisfaction of sticking it to those parasites outside); and if there's a fire or they get sick they'll most certainly have insurance, and if the commies come along to rob them of their capital they'll all just pick up their guns and fight back. In fact, the concept of 'going Galt' is lifted from Anarchism hook line and sinker; but where Anarchism is about people working together to free themselves from tyranny, going Galt is about declaring yourself to be intrinsically better than the masses of poor and the working class by virtue of your ability to stack up worthless pieces of paper via usury.
These people think they're going to make the economy grind to a halt by not 'working'? I'd love to see them try! Where exactly do they think their wealth is going to come from without thousands upon thousands of 'little people' providing the muscle behind their profits? Imagining a bunch of effete bankers, lawyers, bloggers, and corporate CEOs deliberately putting themselves into such dire poverty that they're reduced to the level of the people they exploit amuses me even more than watching some maniac cut people to pieces. Let them go out into the wilderness and try to build their little Libertopian society. I'll lay odds they're back within 6 months, begging for their old jobs back.
For those of you who managed to avoid a brief, unfulfilling college fling with Ayn Rand, let me introduce you to John Galt, main character of her capitalist slash fanfic Atlas Shrugged (http://www.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=56457938958&h=f5d05dbd71c06ec2b7fc8840dfe8dab1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.ca%2FAtlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand%2Fdp%2F0451191145). (Spoiler alert!) He's such an amazing super-genius that he was able to invent an engine that makes electricity out of air. But when the gosh darn gubmint took it into their sleazy communist hearts to force him to use his invention for the good of others, he just took it and up and left. He went out to found a city where everyone could live free from the evil of socioeconomic redistribution, and convinced all the great capitalists, artists, scientists, and other worthwhile people to join him as the world fell into decay under the hands of petty bureaucratic tyrants.
I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed Atlas Shrugged. I liked it in the same way I like slasher flicks and super-hero comics; it's a philosophical cartoon, intellectual pabulum for people who aren't ready to deal with the complexities and compromises of serious political and moral thought. But I never imagined it was a plausible representation of reality. To this day, when I meet someone who never managed to get over their juvenile Rand infatuation and thinks of themselves as a genuine dyed-in-the-wool Objectivist, I think about the same thing as I do when I meet serious bible-believing Christians: "You seriously believe that crap?" And the idea of people trying to 'go Galt' in real life strikes me about the same as people putting on a cape and thinking they can take down the mafia, or running around in a hockey mask taking a machete to stupid teenagers.
There are three classes of people in Atlas Shrugged. There are the super-smart and super-heroic super-capitalists whose brilliant entrepreneurship shills keep the economy turning over; there are villainous parasites whose only means of not starving to death in the street is to leech off the productivity of the super-capitalists, be it by robbing them at knife point, by getting their shrewish mothers to guilt their hard-working brothers into giving them a cushy job, or by infiltrating the government and passing laws that raise taxes and commandeer hard won capital. Then there are, implicit but almost never even mentioned, all the 'little people' who actually do all the work. You know, the farmers, the factory workers, the shop keepers, and suchlike. Rand's world is a vast fictional explication of the concept of 'social darwinism'; through absolute selfish competition, those who are fittest rise to the top and collect the bulk of the wealth, and everyone else gets whatever level of power and wealth they are competent to handle. This is not only a social reality but a moral imperative; anyone who tries to interfere with the function of the free market is a sinful parasite, and anyone preaching the virtues of altruism and the 'duty' of people to help the less fortunate is just trying to get theirs by subterfuge instead of honest hard work.
Or, you know, by skimming the cream off the hard work of others, because that's what capitalism is in reality. No mention is made of how Galt's Gulch feeds itself, of how a bunch of investor/inventors engaged in a kind of extreme tax evasion managed to convince people to come work in their factories (or even build them). Presumably Galt and his cronies did it all themselves. The idea is more or less the same as an anarcho-syndicalist commune, except that everyone's working for wages and gets to buy each others products, and magically nobody falls to the bottom of the economic heap because they're all magic super-capitalists (or if they do, they're happy about it because they're fulfilling their maximum potential in life while getting the moral satisfaction of sticking it to those parasites outside); and if there's a fire or they get sick they'll most certainly have insurance, and if the commies come along to rob them of their capital they'll all just pick up their guns and fight back. In fact, the concept of 'going Galt' is lifted from Anarchism hook line and sinker; but where Anarchism is about people working together to free themselves from tyranny, going Galt is about declaring yourself to be intrinsically better than the masses of poor and the working class by virtue of your ability to stack up worthless pieces of paper via usury.
These people think they're going to make the economy grind to a halt by not 'working'? I'd love to see them try! Where exactly do they think their wealth is going to come from without thousands upon thousands of 'little people' providing the muscle behind their profits? Imagining a bunch of effete bankers, lawyers, bloggers, and corporate CEOs deliberately putting themselves into such dire poverty that they're reduced to the level of the people they exploit amuses me even more than watching some maniac cut people to pieces. Let them go out into the wilderness and try to build their little Libertopian society. I'll lay odds they're back within 6 months, begging for their old jobs back.