welcome!

Folks, I'm writing this post because the movie is generating a lot of traffic.  (Saturday, April 16: Today is shaping up to be this site's biggest day ever.) 

The blog hasn't been active in quite some time, but there are plenty of informative posts featured in the left margin.  If you like what you see, please post a comment, or send a link to a friend.

 

She was looking up at the face of a man who knelt by her side, and she knew that in all the years behind her, this was what she would have given her life to see: a face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt.

                                       --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Who is John Galt? The answer is here.

If you want a taste of what John Galt believes, try this.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?..."

Want more?  Go here.

Comments

[Wisdom]

It's good you see you posting again! Your insight is missed and its absence has not gone unnoticed!

[Tony Paskitti]

It is the LOVE of money is the root of all evil, not money itself.

[John Galt]

Tony, is someone's love of the value of what they produce through hard work really the root of all evil?

[Noah]

@John, So what did you think of the movie? (Love the blog by the way).

@Tony, if you really believe that (in the whole judeo-christian sense), then you should really read the book and challenge your truisms, or at least understand what exactly you're challenging then just throwing a blanket statement sentence in response.

[Tony Paskitti]

I take no issue with earning from hard work. I support Capitalism and think this type of economic structure is the best compared to all others.

My statement holds true. When the love of that same earning becomes lustful and obsessive, it turns to greed and, in my opinion, results in evil. You see this especially in those who trample on the less fortunate. When the down trodden are abundant in a society, those same folks expect the government to take care of the mess they created.

I think that when someone is fortunate enough to earn an abundance, it would benefit society if they help others less fortunate achieve for themselves. Kind of like teaching to fish instead of feeding them fish.

[John Galt]

Tony, if a person can earn a million dollars a day, he must be doing something pretty valuable, wouldn't you agree? And I'd go further to say that the wealth he creates in exchange for that money is valuable to innumerable people, when you consider all the jobs his income must create as well.

Now, if you feel that's "lustful" or "greedy" you can set up a tax rate that becomes punitive above, say, $10 million. In that case, what happens to everyone else -- everyone who directly or indirectly benefits from this high achiever's earnings and productivity, when he decides it's only worth his while to work for ten days per year, sandbagging his subsequent earnings for next year's allocation of wealth?

The truth is that we benefit immensely from such a person's contribution, and in a sense he makes that contribution for mere paper. We'd be fools to lessen his incentives to work because of economic fallacies or ignorant envies.

We are not all equally capable. America's unique wealth comes from the fact that our most capable, productive and valuable producers see fit to work as much as they can. And an effort to limit how much money they can take is a message from the rest of us that they shouldn't work as hard.

[noon]

"if a person can earn a million dollars a day, he must be doing something pretty valuable."

i disagree. its possible, i believe, to generate wealth without doing anything of value. unless, of course, you are equating value with money or the generation of wealth. which i think you are. and thats the problem. youre using 'money' synonymously with 'value'.

i think equating money with value is a mistake, but as a result, you are essentially saying it is false that "the love of [value] is the root of all evil." but almost everybody would agree with that. on the other hand, many people do seem to think that the love of money is the root of all evil. it would seem, then, that people arent thinking of money and value as the same thing, the way you are.

in fact, i think youre being a bit inconsistent about it as well. so when you say "if a person can [make value], he must be doing something pretty valuable," you are really not saying anything at all.

but setting all of this equivocation of 'money' and 'value' aside, you seem to be under the impression that one earns money only by hard work, and that those who earn the most money are deserving of it. but in fact, i think there are many people who dont work hard for the money they earn/have. and money itself tends to be very advantageous to the acquisition of more wealth. but if thats true, then it might be that all those "have-nots" you accuse of being jealous or misguided perceive the inequity that the "haves" are in a better position to earn money. hence the desire to tax them. not saying this is the best economic strategy, just that you seem to be unaware of why people want to tax the rich.

[John Galt]

Read the site. I never equate money with wealth. Furthermore, I said "earn."

Additionally, barring rents protected by government, anything one does to accumulate money absent force or fraud is value to someone -- even if the rest of us cannot perceive the value. All that matters is that the value is perceived by whoever's paying for it.

Finally, "perceived" inequity is not actual inequity, and inequity that results from free and informed trade is not "unjust." Meaning that even legal attempts to "correct" the inequity are still quite often an injustice.

We are all best advised to keep our eyes on our own wealth. If our own money is not being stolen, then it's really not our business as individuals how much someone else has, except perhaps to the extent that he is an example for the rest of us.

Nice try, but you will not turn inequality of wealth into a de facto excuse to redistribute it.

[noon]

sorry, i havent read the site; only this particular post and its comments.

but i am pretty sure i didnt accuse you of equating money with wealth. the accusation is that you equate money and value. which you seem to do:

rand (or you) gets the quote about the root of all evil wrong. tony corrects it. you rephrase tonys correction replacing "money" with "value..."

my first point was that this is equivocation. whos against the love of money? a lot of people apparently. whos against the love of the value of hard work? not so many. perhaps they arent the same thing.

it seems to me you couldve admitted that you or rand had some of the words from the biblical quote wrong, but instead you started changing some more words around.

as for my second point: how is it that inequities are merely perceived and not actual? is it because you claim it so? because trade is "free and informed"? but how does this have anything to do with the inequity i described:

1. nearly everyone wants money.
2. there is a limited amount of money to be had.
3. not everyone has equal opportunities to make money; in particular, those with more money have advantages in acquiring it.
4. because some people start off with more money, this seems inequitable.

of course, life isnt fair. ive not claimed that we should redistribute wealth equally. ive not proposed socialism or any economic strategy. ive merely pointed out that inequities exist, and they are motivating factors for "tax the rich" proposals. maybe thats a terrible idea economically. maybe not. in any case, i have not, as you seem to think, tried to give an excuse for redistribution of wealth. and you have not given a fair description of why people fall into the "tax the rich" camp. at least not in this particular post.

[John Galt]

1. People don't want "money." They want the things money can buy, or the security of knowing they have the reserves to buy those things, or the power the money commands over others -- typically over others who work. Money itself is typically worthless paper, but even if it were gold it would have very limited utility on its own. It's only worth something if people are willing to exchange it for other things.

2. You are wrong on this. Money has variable value. There is in fact no limit to how much money can be had, but keeping money scarce is one important factor to its value. Wealth is not measured in terms of how much money you have, but rather by what fraction of the total money supply you hold. We measure wealth in monetary units like dollars only because we have a common sense of the scarcity of those units.

3. Even when two people have, say, a million dollars each, one of them likely has some advantages over the other in acquiring more. Giving everyone an equal starting point will not eliminate this advantage. Most people who have a million once had much less. And when they had only a thousand, their money did not give them any particular advantage over others who had only a thousand -- yet only some will go on to acquire the million. Life itself is unfair.

4. We are all born with zero. Whatever we have after that is given to us. If a parent gives his child a fortune at birth that is not some "inequity" involving the child; it is a perfectly just and hard-earned right belonging to the parent.

I don't particularly care whether people work hard for their money. Some people are just so pretty to look at that others simply give them money for the privilege. That's between them.

But I do know that I work for mine, and as such I see no evil in loving my money as a form of pride over the value of what my effort is worth in either the work of others or -- if I so choose -- the time of pretty people who sell me nothing but the privilege of looking at them.

Money's value originates in the fact that people will work for it -- it was designed for people to use to exchange their labor. That one does not necessarily need to work or produce in order to acquire money from others is of no consequence -- those who do produce have earned the right to give it on whatever terms they choose.

What is of consequence is that the exchange of value -- your work for my good looks, or your work for my off-the-cuff thoughts, or your shirking at the office exchanged for my back-breaking labor digging ditches -- what's of consequence is that these exchanges be voluntary and consensual. Not coerced.