Feb 27, 2009

Who's John Galt?

You know how I keep mentioning that you don't have to read "Atlas Shrugged" since you're living it?

Well, the sales, via Instapundit, of Ayn Rand’s books are reportedly rising. Bonus: in this economy 1200 pages is a real bang for one's dollar. Double bonus: you can use it as toilet paper when you're done and re-purpose those dead tree pulps.

Have you seen a few “Who is John Galt?” bumper stickers cropping up too?

And, here's a sign at the anti-porkulus protest in Denver last week...

There was a story in the Wall Street Journal about it.

Of course, one could say that the antagonists of Atlas Shrugged were the government stooges who nationalized profitable industries to distribute wealth to the worker and the corrupt government officials, which defeated the individual and stifled independent creative thought and work - once those creative industrial individuals could take no more, they stopped working. In a sense, the creative class went on strike.

...Versus the current US situation which issues stimulus packages and bailouts which creates a pseudo-default-nationalization of industry to try to force said industry and capital markets to perform at their previous level of graft, corruption and waste.

Totally different.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

if your sales go from 2 to 4, thats a pretty big increase!

WaffleMan said...

Rock on, Waffles

Anonymous said...

Americans love the idea of small government. They just don’t seem to actually care about shrinking the government outside of rhetoric.

Americans love their entitlements. They like having an FDA and a host of other regluatory bodies. They don't want to reduce the military budget significantly. They want, and have come to expect, an awful lot of things from government.

The fact that they say they want small government means no more than the fact that they say they want a balanced budget. It’s theater, and it’s rhetoric. It’s not founded on anything politically actionable.

I’m sorry, but people who say that they want small government yet refuse entitlement reform and a shrinking military budget are not to be taken seriously. They are not dedicated to the idea to the degree that they are actually willing to sacrifice to make it a reality.