ARI PR Should Businessmen Go on Strike?

[galtgulch]

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

Should Businessmen Go on Strike?

October 12, 2007

Irvine, CA--In a week characterized by important labor stoppages, Chrysler workers went out on strike in Michigan, British postal workers returned to work while threatening further walkouts, and registered nurses started a 48-hour strike in Northern California.

"Job actions by employees are commonplace, yet we never see similar protests by the individuals who create jobs in the first place," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "In her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, published 50 years ago this week, Rand's fictional hero, John Galt, gave voice to the undeserved suffering of businessmen when he said:

"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable--except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race."

"John Galt was defending the businessmen who create and operate the companies that generate steel, oil, medicine, computers, and all the other goods and services on which our lives and happiness depend,"

Bowden said. "The entrepreneurs, the executives, the investors and bankers, the top-level managers--these are truly indispensable men and women on whose creativity all other workers depend for their jobs."

"Why," Bowden asked, "do so many of these capitalist heroes continue to toil away, creating jobs for a society that morally condemns their desire for personal profit as selfish and materialistic, and subjects them to government control as if they were beasts of burden? What keeps those individuals from going on strike? In Atlas Shrugged, Rand answers these questions, showing why nothing less than a moral revolution is needed to set businessmen free from the shackles of unearned guilt."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

[BaalChatzaf]

Theoretically industry plant owners can lock out the work force. That is a "reverse strike".

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

Should Businessmen Go on Strike?

October 12, 2007

Irvine, CA--In a week characterized by important labor stoppages, Chrysler workers went out on strike in Michigan, British postal workers returned to work while threatening further walkouts, and registered nurses started a 48-hour strike in Northern California.

"Job actions by employees are commonplace, yet we never see similar protests by the individuals who create jobs in the first place," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "In her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, published 50 years ago this week, Rand's fictional hero, John Galt, gave voice to the undeserved suffering of businessmen when he said:

"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable--except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race."

"John Galt was defending the businessmen who create and operate the companies that generate steel, oil, medicine, computers, and all the other goods and services on which our lives and happiness depend,"

Bowden said. "The entrepreneurs, the executives, the investors and bankers, the top-level managers--these are truly indispensable men and women on whose creativity all other workers depend for their jobs."

"Why," Bowden asked, "do so many of these capitalist heroes continue to toil away, creating jobs for a society that morally condemns their desire for personal profit as selfish and materialistic, and subjects them to government control as if they were beasts of burden? What keeps those individuals from going on strike? In Atlas Shrugged, Rand answers these questions, showing why nothing less than a moral revolution is needed to set businessmen free from the shackles of unearned guilt."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

A strike can work and should absolutely be considered. Aristotle stated that if you have the will and the power, the deed is done. We do not have the will yet, but it would just take a few probable events, in tandem to convince many that it is certainly time.

[BaalChatzaf]

A strike can work and should absolutely be considered. Aristotle stated that if you have the will and the power, the deed is done. We do not have the will yet, but it would just take a few probable events, in tandem to convince many that it is certainly time.

The U.S. is surrounded by external enemies who would love to wreck us. Is this a good time to wreck the economy internally?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

A strike can work and should absolutely be considered. Aristotle stated that if you have the will and the power, the deed is done. We do not have the will yet, but it would just take a few probable events, in tandem to convince many that it is certainly time.

The U.S. is surrounded by external enemies who would love to wreck us. Is this a good time to wreck the economy internally?

Ba'al Chatzaf

No, wreck it next year!

--Brant

[Selene]

A strike can work and should absolutely be considered. Aristotle stated that if you have the will and the power, the deed is done. We do not have the will yet, but it would just take a few probable events, in tandem to convince many that it is certainly time.

The U.S. is surrounded by external enemies who would love to wreck us. Is this a good time to wreck the economy internally?

Ba'al Chatzaf

A difficult choice to make, unlike in the fictional world of Atlas, wherein there is zero external threat. However, we are in a serious balancing period in a rapidly centralizing government. As I stated, there are some highly probable events when in tandem could rapidly lead to a seriously repressive left wing centralized government populated by provisional employees with agendas. You are from N.J. correct.

Look at your state, one of the top three or four most corrupt states in the history of this country. One of the top two or three highest taxed states in the union. Inner city urban centers that have significant sections that are like some Baghdad neighborhoods without the I.E.D.'s. An educational system that is dysfunctional. Add a chemical plant or container center as part of a terrorist attack, combined with the seizure of two or three schools a la Beslan[sp ???] and a bridge or tunnel and you have marshal law with mass hysteria.

What do you think the centralized state of NJ would do? By the way the Giants won 31-10, covered the points.

NY Teams are my "religion". Lol

[galtgulch]

I posted this ARI PR on a Yahoo stock message board and this is the response from one of those who responded:

<<<"Without workers the businessmen ideas would never leave the idea stage. What good would the idea or drawings of a car be if you didn't have workers who could build the car .

All you business-men are nothing more then a bunch blood suckers sucking the life blood out of workers so them big shots can make millions I would give all your big shots the Gaschamber.">>>

Some will never understand. Rand didn't mention in her novel just what was the reaction of the working man after the Strike caused the country to suffer an economic collapse without the "men of the mind." I expect many still blamed them for abandoning the country and not living up to their "obligations to society."

We have yet to experience the consequence of the spread of Objectivism throughout our society which is happening at a rate which is too slow. If we want to see it happen then to be loyal to that value each of us should do our share and use our own ingenuity to help the torch to be passed. I did recommend Atlas today to a young person.

When I do that I feel that I am part of the movement and can only hope that I am not alone in this endeavor.

galt

[tjohnson]

Bowden said. "The entrepreneurs, the executives, the investors and bankers, the top-level managers--these are truly indispensable men and women on whose creativity all other workers depend for their jobs."

Ummm.. wouldn't it be fair to say we need all sorts of people in the world? We all depend on each other to do our jobs, we don't exist in vacuums.

[Dragonfly]

The notion of such a strike is completely unrealistic. It was already unrealistic in the time that AS was written to suppose that a few dozen people going on strike could wreck the whole economy, and today it is even more absurd. ARI doesn't know the difference between the fantasy of a novel and the facts of the real world.

[Reidy]

Side question: where does Aristotle say that "if you have the will and the power, the deed is done?"

[Selene]

I posted this ARI PR on a Yahoo stock message board and this is the response from one of those who responded:

<<<"Without workers the businessmen ideas would never leave the idea stage. What good would the idea or drawings of a car be if you didn't have workers who could build the car .

All you business-men are nothing more then a bunch blood suckers sucking the life blood out of workers so them big shots can make millions I would give all your big shots the Gaschamber.">>>

Some will never understand. Rand didn't mention in her novel just what was the reaction of the working man after the Strike caused the country to suffer an economic collapse without the "men of the mind." I expect many still blamed them for abandoning the country and not living up to their "obligations to society."

We have yet to experience the consequence of the spread of Objectivism throughout our society which is happening at a rate which is too slow. If we want to see it happen then to be loyal to that value each of us should do our share and use our own ingenuity to help the torch to be passed. I did recommend Atlas today to a young person.

When I do that I feel that I am part of the movement and can only hope that I am not alone in this endeavor.

galt

Excellent and you are not alone. I just returned from our local library chess club I had joined about 4 weeks ago. Averages 14 young people and 8 adults. Well, I walked into tonight's club with my shiny issue of The New Individualist, Atlas Shrugged at Fifty. I had been talking generally about Rand and the 50th anniversary for three weeks. The magazine was a great hit and 3 parents and 5 young adults were swung over and open to listen for about 45 minutes after the club. The librarian said I better slow down because they just had to order four more copies of other Rand books that I recommended, including Breaking Free - once again thanks Nathaniel. One 14 year old had been pushing his mother to read Anthem for two weeks. She thanked me and walked out with it tonight.

We discussed the movie V which was in another thread here. Libertarianism. It was an excellent night and I am still undeated - <<<<tooting his own chess horn.

This is one important method to spread a philosophy. I have been doing it for 49 years and it works. As she wrote in The Fountainhead, every time Dominique saw a building she loved, a gas station, it was Roark's. We are like an underground stream which will fill vaccuums and burst from the ground in unexpected places.

Geez, I sound like an "evangelical" Objectivist, but that would be an oxymoron.

[studiodekadent]

Geez, I sound like an "evangelical" Objectivist, but that would be an oxymoron.

Not really. I have been called that too for photocopying a paper from "Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand" and giving the copy to a philosophy professor who studies feminist ethics. So in a way I've been "evangelizing" lol.