Shrugging...

[piz 0]

I agree that we should never let ourselves be defeated. Your words are most courageous and I salute you for undertaking what is looking like a much more tough fight every day, Bill.

However, would it be defeat if we 'shrugged'?

...

Isn't it time to leave now, hide now, retreat now, just like John Galt and his fellow strikers did and let the world bear the consequences of its own choices?

What exactly would constitute "shrugging?" Quitting one's job and taking one as a day laborer? Abandoning one's business and going...where?

What would a person do, how would one live, after shrugging?

There's no Galt's Gulch out there, or, if there is, nobody's invited me.* I don't have the means to establish one on my own, or to leave the U.S. for...where?...and live a striker's life there. Maybe you and/or others here do, but I do not, nor is there any prospect of me acquiring said means, except maybe winning the lottery. If the American ship goes down, I'll have no choice but to go down with her.

In some senses I am shurgging. Financially, on my substitute teacher's pay, I'm not generating any real wealth for our looter government to tax and due to my divorce and the failure of my business I have no investments or assets left to be seized. I do not participate in or sanction activities that violate my rights or threaten my values. I keep most of my values in a (largely metaphorical) "closet laboratory" like in Galt's apartment in Atlas.

But I'm not yet willing to stop trying to better my life under existing conditions. Not because I want to support the looters, but because I want to support ME, and I don't see any actual or even potential Gulch-like opportunities out there.

How is shrugging a viable option?

_____

* If anyone who is part of or is planning a Gulch is reading this, and you need an I.T. guy, or even a janitor, I'm your man.

[PaperDetective 0]

How is shrugging a viable option?

_____

* If anyone who is part of or is planning a Gulch is reading this, and you need an I.T. guy, or even a janitor, I'm your man.

There is no true Gulch indeed, although Betsy's site feels like a virtual one. :-)

Like you sort of implied, each will shrug in his own way, according to his abilities. Obviously one needs to be able to continue to support oneself.

I am currently researching our own options. If there is anything that could be generally useful for those 'ready' to shrug, I'll certainly communicate it.

[PhilO 0]

What exactly would constitute "shrugging?" Quitting one's job and taking one as a day laborer? Abandoning one's business and going...where?

This is certainly right. Shrugging *without* a Valley or a reasonable facsimile is simply self-defeating. There is still time in America's current condition to pursue values, even with the hordes of vampires parasitizing one's life, but if one has enough time left, at least some thought should be given to alternatives to America if* it collapses into outright dictatorship.

*More likely "when" but I'll give the benefit of the doubt here

[PaperDetective 0]

Shrugging *without* a Valley or a reasonable facsimile is simply self-defeating.

Why self-defeating? What is the defeat in retiring to a remote place beyond the reach of the irrational?

[Betsy Speicher 0]

Why self-defeating? What is the defeat in retiring to a remote place beyond the reach of the irrational?

You lose all the benefits of society, especially the division of labor and social interaction. Self-sufficiency isn't all that great.

[ewv 0]

Why self-defeating? What is the defeat in retiring to a remote place beyond the reach of the irrational?

You lose all the benefits of society, especially the division of labor and social interaction. Self-sufficiency isn't all that great.

"Division of labor" includes the enormous scope of essential expertise and knowledge that no one person can have, including medical science in all its aspects. You can build a cabin in the woods and do your own plumbing (at leat until the National Park Service finds you); you can't substitute herbs for modern medicine in modern facilities or build a modern PC with access to the Forum.

[styg50 0]

Why self-defeating? What is the defeat in retiring to a remote place beyond the reach of the irrational?

You lose all the benefits of society, especially the division of labor and social interaction. Self-sufficiency isn't all that great.

In my experience, the division of labor is the more likely to be missed of the two missing benefits listed here. I have remote property in Alaska where I am not even in a taxable borough (county). I generate my own power from a hydropower setup, and have a sawmill, a metal shop and a hydroponic greenhouse.

But for all the benefits of self-sufficiency, my life consists of daily hard work with bursts of what I call "crunch time", which is a month or so of nearly around the clock work. I go through crunch time twice a year generally, once at the beginning of winter, and once at the beginning of summer. The daily work is fine, but every year I lose about 15 lbs during the crunchtime period, but it is part of the cost of self-sufficiency, especially in ultra remote areas, where you can't even break down and pay extra to have someone come out. There simply isn't anyone else out here.

A satellite internet hookup, and sattelite television allow me to feel about half connected to the world, and a yearly excursion somewhere, for about a month just before winter gets to its worst is a cherished trip.

I have dreams of expanding the hydropower to encourage others to pursue industry in the area, for both the benefits you list above Betsy, but because it is being pursued from a self-sufficiency stance, it is a long process. There is no doubt that I could benefit from division of labor--I think about it everyday...

[TexasTeacherMom 0]

I can't even think about this. It's so scary. Is there any way this won't all end in a huge disaster? I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and all this just rings way to familiarly. I feel so helpless that I can't do something to prevent this. I know I sound like Chicken Little, but ....

[Betsy Speicher 0]

I can't even think about this. It's so scary. Is there any way this won't all end in a huge disaster? I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and all this just rings way to familiarly. I feel so helpless that I can't do something to prevent this. I know I sound like Chicken Little, but ....

Atlas is a disaster -- for the looters. But not for everyone. (If you're reading Atlas for the first time, I won't spoil it for you. Just keep reading.)

[Nicolaus Nemeth 0]

I can't even think about this. It's so scary. Is there any way this won't all end in a huge disaster? I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and all this just rings way to familiarly. I feel so helpless that I can't do something to prevent this. I know I sound like Chicken Little, but ....

Atlas is a disaster -- for the looters. But not for everyone. (If you're reading Atlas for the first time, I won't spoil it for you. Just keep reading.)

That's probably the most optimisitc thing I've heard in a long time. Now that I think about it, of course it's a disaster for the looters! Eventually, they'll run out of loot or of a way to loot. Either way, I as a producer don't have to worry too much about that point as I'll just keep producing. Perhaps this is why some people might want civilization to contract... like Political Economic chemotherapy it kills the cancer but leaves normal cells just alive enough to keep going after the cancer's gone.

[KurtColville 0]

I can't even think about this. It's so scary. Is there any way this won't all end in a huge disaster? I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and all this just rings way to familiarly. I feel so helpless that I can't do something to prevent this. I know I sound like Chicken Little, but ....

Atlas is a disaster -- for the looters. But not for everyone. (If you're reading Atlas for the first time, I won't spoil it for you. Just keep reading.)

That's probably the most optimisitc thing I've heard in a long time. Now that I think about it, of course it's a disaster for the looters! Eventually, they'll run out of loot or of a way to loot. Either way, I as a producer don't have to worry too much about that point as I'll just keep producing. Perhaps this is why some people might want civilization to contract... like Political Economic chemotherapy it kills the cancer but leaves normal cells just alive enough to keep going after the cancer's gone.

Consider the cost of a collapsing civilization to rational, productive men. They guns of varying lethality put to their head anywhere from occasionally to constantly. They have to spend at least some of their lives planning for how to avoid these guns. In an egalitarian culture, they have to prop up the incompetent. A considerable amount of what they dedicate their lives to producing goes to sustain people who live to leech their lives away. They have to pay just enough attention to the irrational to stay alive, because if they don't, it's their death.

And the looters aren't limited to bringing economic misery to the producers. The horrors of war are heaped upon the productive as well, a threat that is much harder to evade than a bad economy. Technologically advanced civilizations are a value to rational men. A life free of coercion is a value. A culture that is tied to reality, where men deal with each other by voluntary consent is a value. A world with a huge division of rational, productive labor is a value. When those values are under attack, life becomes much harder for the man who wants to live. That is not a problem that an individual can simply produce one's way out of.

The fact that Galt had to leave Twentieth-Century Motors and build an impenetrable vault for his motor in an invisible valley, and that Dagny had to scramble to keep Taggart Transcontinental alive, and that Rearden had to be dragged into court to answer bogus charges are not nuisances to be dismissed just because one is productive. Those are heavy prices which need not have been paid if force were not sanctioned among men.

There are certainly many men who are so rational and productive, that they don't feel diminished even with all the world's ills. And that's a good thing. But like or not, they are paying the greatest price for those ills, because they are not able to take advantage of the life-enhancing medicine, the inspriational art, the innovative consumer products, the revolutionary educational systems, the pioneering space exploration, and so much more, which are squelched out of existence in our devolving world today. How much longer can men who want to live dodge the men who don't? Maybe they will escape the cancer and be able to start the world, or their world, anew. Maybe.

[Cometmaker 0]

The fact that Galt had to leave Twentieth-Century Motors and build an impenetrable vault for his motor in an invisible valley,

I don't understand how, other than in a romantic context, Galt's Gulch can be considered a cost or a price paid by Galt.

and that Dagny had to scramble to keep Taggart Transcontinental alive, and that Rearden had to be dragged into court to answer bogus charges are not nuisances to be dismissed just because one is productive. Those are heavy prices which need not have been paid if force were not sanctioned among men.

I don't share this view of either the novel or its contextual application to the bailout survey because this bemoans that rational fitness happens not to be the primary basis of our species selection and that we happen to be alive in this time and place. A conceptual hierarchy can't be transmitted biologically, and the facts that we are alive and able to note the time and place are great. It is the actions one takes that determines how happy and successful one is in this time and place, not the fact that the threat or application of force applied against the best of us has and will continue at any time in history somewhere on Earth.

There are certainly many men who are so rational and productive, that they don't feel diminished even with all the world's ills. And that's a good thing. But like or not, they are paying the greatest price for those ills, because they are not able to take advantage of the life-enhancing medicine, the inspriational art, the innovative consumer products, the revolutionary educational systems, the pioneering space exploration, and so much more, which are squelched out of existence in our devolving world today.

Those extremely rational and productive men do not sigh abjectly when things are squelched out of existence. They improve or create what they do not find available because flexibility in bringing into reality what they want, not a specialized competence, is exactly what makes them productive extremists. A diminished availaibility or lack of technologies and food for the soul does not mean a productive extremist cannot do better even (under certain constraints) than whatever would be available had the world fit any sort of "if only..." scenario.

[Betsy Speicher 0]

I can't even think about this. It's so scary. Is there any way this won't all end in a huge disaster? I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and all this just rings way to familiarly. I feel so helpless that I can't do something to prevent this. I know I sound like Chicken Little, but ....

Atlas is a disaster -- for the looters. But not for everyone. (If you're reading Atlas for the first time, I won't spoil it for you. Just keep reading.)

That's probably the most optimisitc thing I've heard in a long time. Now that I think about it, of course it's a disaster for the looters! Eventually, they'll run out of loot or of a way to loot. Either way, I as a producer don't have to worry too much about that point as I'll just keep producing.

In Atlas, the producers learned that producing for the looters is a losing proposition. They learned to produce only for themselves and to trade with other producers. When we have the choice, we can choose to do likewise.

[ewv 0]

Some of us are going to have to act like people we've read about. And expect others to act like other people we've read about.

Isn't that always the case? What do you have in mind for the near future in particular?

What am I going to do? Buy a semi-automatic shotgun; get ready to sell our beautiful and otherwise perfect house into the wave of government money I think will overtake areas like this in the early Obama years; take the Dead Cat Bounce in the markets I expect to reorganize my retirement portfolio and BUG OUT.

So by "the people we've read about" you mean the strike? Where do you plan to bug out to? What kind of restructured retirement portfolio do you expect to have that will still be worth something there?

[KurtColville 0]

The fact that Galt had to leave Twentieth-Century Motors and build an impenetrable vault for his motor in an invisible valley,

I don't understand how, other than in a romantic context, Galt's Gulch can be considered a cost or a price paid by Galt.

The price that Galt paid, and the price any independent man pays today, is the time and effort that he has to put into protecting himself and his values from the moochers and looters rather than putting it into creating even greater values than he does with a gun to his head. The price is the cost of hiring people to keep those guns at bay, to hire armies of attorneys to navigate stultifying regulations so that his business can at least tread water, to have to reject a good idea because the government won't allow; in short, to have to apply his mind not to mastering the natural world around him but to surviving the force of his fellow men. This, not to mention the agony that such a state presents to the rational man's spirit.

and that Dagny had to scramble to keep Taggart Transcontinental alive, and that Rearden had to be dragged into court to answer bogus charges are not nuisances to be dismissed just because one is productive. Those are heavy prices which need not have been paid if force were not sanctioned among men.

I don't share this view of either the novel or its contextual application to the bailout survey because this bemoans that rational fitness happens not to be the primary basis of our species selection and that we happen to be alive in this time and place. A conceptual hierarchy can't be transmitted biologically, and the facts that we are alive and able to note the time and place are great. It is the actions one takes that determines how happy and successful one is in this time and place, not the fact that the threat or application of force applied against the best of us has and will continue at any time in history somewhere on Earth.

The actions that one takes in pursuit of one's happiness, in a society, require freedom from the force of others. If the threat of force is great enough, it can restrict such actions enough as to make life impossible. Man's pursuit of happiness takes place in the context of freedom from force.

There are certainly many men who are so rational and productive, that they don't feel diminished even with all the world's ills. And that's a good thing. But like or not, they are paying the greatest price for those ills, because they are not able to take advantage of the life-enhancing medicine, the inspriational art, the innovative consumer products, the revolutionary educational systems, the pioneering space exploration, and so much more, which are squelched out of existence in our devolving world today.

Those extremely rational and productive men do not sigh abjectly when things are squelched out of existence. They improve or create what they do not find available because flexibility in bringing into reality what they want, not a specialized competence, is exactly what makes them productive extremists. A diminished availaibility or lack of technologies and food for the soul does not mean a productive extremist cannot do better even (under certain constraints) than whatever would be available had the world fit any sort of "if only..." scenario.

Indeed, the collapsing state of the world should not induce a state in which rational, productive men wallow in hopelessness. It should drive them to see that suffering through that collapse while working for its salvation is not preferable to abandoning that world and starting over in a new country built on freedom. The point is not that a productive man can't still create a fulfilling life in a world out to destroy the mind -- of course he can. But why should he wish to, when a better alternative of getting the hell away from the madness is possible?

[ewv 0]

The point is not that a productive man can't still create a fulfilling life in a world out to destroy the mind -- of course he can. But why should he wish to, when a better alternative of getting the hell away from the madness is possible?

Where?

[KurtColville 0]

The point is not that a productive man can't still create a fulfilling life in a world out to destroy the mind -- of course he can. But why should he wish to, when a better alternative of getting the hell away from the madness is possible?

Where?

On a piece of land, bought from a country willing to sell its claim to sovereignty, by individuals who pool their money and efforts to create a new, free country. It doesn't exist, but there's no reason that it couldn't.

[Carlos 0]

On a piece of land, bought from a country willing to sell its claim to sovereignty...

What government would ever willingly reduce the scope of their power? If a country was good enough to do this, then the country would probably be good enough to live in anyways.

The only way I could imagine this working would be to buy an island from some financially collapsing country that needs the money badly. Of course, the kind of country that would be in such a state would probably be the kind you wouldn't want to live next to!

I'm sorry but I think this whole prospect of actualizing Galt's Gulch is a hopeless pipedream. Given the advanced state of technology of the US government, it would be a complete impossibility to have a hidden autonomous nation within America, so the only option would be to (as you mentioned) buy or settle on some other piece of land in the world.

But think about this: when you establish your small utopia on some island somewhere, how will the rest of the world economic powers feel when you refuse to allow regulation of your banking system, or to be part of the UN? Who will come to help you when the Soviets decide to come take the rich oil-fields you've developed, or muslims start attacking your country? You will just be another Taiwan (or worse than that), and get sat-on by your communist 'superiors' while an unsympathetic world turns a blind eye.

There is nowhere left to hide on this planet if you wish to live in any kind of civilized state. If or when America falls, if there isn't a Canada or Australia to go to, it's game over, and I mean big time (note I'm assuming that Europe will become either EUSSR or the Islamic Republic of Europe). How long can the rest of the world be expected to last after the fall of a few key western nations? If not for America the rest of the world would have starved to death or murdered itself a thousand times over in the last hundred years.

[PhilO 0]

I'm sorry but I think this whole prospect of actualizing Galt's Gulch is a hopeless pipedream.

No country in the history of humanity - and there have been many including Israel only 60 years ago - was ever created or sustained by cowards, quitters, naysayers, and those lacking imagination, is the short answer. And not only evil is real and possible, is another of many other answers.

[Carlos 0]

I'm sorry but I think this whole prospect of actualizing Galt's Gulch is a hopeless pipedream.

No country in the history of humanity - and there have been many including Israel only 60 years ago - was ever created or sustained by cowards, quitters, naysayers, and those lacking imagination, is the short answer. And not only evil is real and possible, is another of many other answers.

I'm having trouble understanding this; are you saying I'm with the crowd of "cowards, quitters, naysayers, and those lacking imagination"?

[PhilO 0]

I'm having trouble understanding this; are you saying I'm with the crowd of "cowards, quitters, naysayers, and those lacking imagination"?

I made a general statement with clear logical implications, via simple deductive logic, for anybody making the assertion that the formation of a new country is impossible (of course, anybody is free to disagree with the general statement.) There were many at the time of the American Revolution who were aghast at the thought of booting out the British, there were those who considered and still consider the formation of Israel to be terrorism itself, and none of them - characterized by my first post - mattered. All that mattered were that there some men who understood the stakes and acted accordingly.

[Carlos 0]

I made a general statement with clear logical implications, via simple deductive logic...

It would be simpler to just say "yes, that is what I meant". If you mean something, just say it; there's no point in rephrasing a statement in a more complicated way when someone asks for clarification.

...for anybody making the assertion that the formation of a new country is impossible (of course, anybody is free to disagree with the general statement.) There were many at the time of the American Revolution who were aghast at the thought of booting out the British, there were those who considered and still consider the formation of Israel to be terrorism itself, and none of them - characterized by my first post - mattered. All that mattered were that there some men who understood the stakes and acted accordingly.

America certainly wasn't impossible. All we had to do was keep the British out, and that was certainly possible given the level of technology of their day and age.

If, on a very small budget, you think it is within the realm of possibility for an Objectivist in the coming years to design military technology capable of defending a small island population from a potentially unlimited number of nuclear missiles/bombs, jet fighters, attack subs, aircraft carriers, etc, (not to mention a human wave of millions of soldiers, like what China has done before), then I guess it makes sense. But the probability of such an event is so insanely small I can't consider it seriously at all; if that makes me some shortsighted fool without imagination in your eyes, then you're making a gross misjudgment and it's not my loss.

[bborg 0]

If, on a very small budget, you think it is within the realm of possibility for an Objectivist in the coming years to design military technology capable of defending a small island population from a potentially unlimited number of nuclear missiles/bombs, jet fighters, attack subs, aircraft carriers, etc, (not to mention a human wave of millions of soldiers, like what China has done before), then I guess it makes sense. But the probability of such an event is so insanely small I can't consider it seriously at all; if that makes me some shortsighted fool without imagination in your eyes, then you're making a gross misjudgment and it's not my loss.

I'm having trouble with this also. All that needs to happen is some dictator decides he's going to annex your new country, and the West fails to come to your defense. Game over.

[Carlos 0]

If, on a very small budget, you think it is within the realm of possibility for an Objectivist in the coming years to design military technology capable of defending a small island population from a potentially unlimited number of nuclear missiles/bombs, jet fighters, attack subs, aircraft carriers, etc, (not to mention a human wave of millions of soldiers, like what China has done before), then I guess it makes sense. But the probability of such an event is so insanely small I can't consider it seriously at all; if that makes me some shortsighted fool without imagination in your eyes, then you're making a gross misjudgment and it's not my loss.

I'm having trouble with this also. All that needs to happen is some dictator decides he's going to annex your new country, and the West fails to come to your defense. Game over.

...cowards, quitters, naysayers, and those lacking imagination...

Come join my new club

[PhilO 0]

I'm having trouble with this also. All that needs to happen is some dictator decides he's going to annex your new country, and the West fails to come to your defense. Game over.

The technical term describing anyone who undertook the endeavor without planning for their own self-defense is: "stupid".

I reject the premise that evil is omnipotent, and I reject the premise that rational men are powerless to defend themselves.

In WW2, there were six million Jews passively led to the slaughter on the premise that evil is omnipotent. Not many years after that, a far more pugnacious group decided to discard that premise and no national-scale attacks on their country have succeeded since. A country with a population smaller than any of America's largest cities now has an estimated 200 nuclear weapons and the only reason they have any potential threats left is due being infected by America's modern lack of will to fight and kowtowing to evil.