It took me three months to read through Atlas Shrugged
-- so many pages, so much to think through. When I got to John Galt’s 60 page
monologue I almost gave up…but it was too close to the end. I couldn’t quit then!
I am glad that I persevered as I learned so much, and
continue to think about it often. Every week, I see something in the news that
reminds me of the world of Atlas Shrugged. We are on our way there, and the
election confirmed that.
I wanted to write a book report back in June when I finished
the book but couldn’t face the multitude of ideas and philosophies that I would
have to describe, and the multitude of words it would take. I just felt I would
need to tell it all, and how do you do that?
There is so much good in the book, but as time has passed,
the message of Atlas Shrugged has distilled down to two things for me.
1) Beware the philosophy of “fairness”.
In the world of Atlas Shrugged, fairness came to mean
that all would work to their ability, but would be rewarded according to their
need.
The first application of this belief was higher taxation of
the rich, to supply the needs of the government, who supplied the needs of the
poor. Then it moved to the government trying to redistribute the resources and
productions of larger corporations to smaller struggling ones, to make it “fair”.
Finally, it moved to businesses themselves where “work according to ability;
paid according to need” resulted in workers competing to be the least
productive. Why should any one work harder than the next guy? They would all be
paid the same –unless you were needy. The needy were expensive, and as
productivity declined, the fulfillment of needs reduced the amount of pay
available for those without needs. Babies were resented; sickly old women died
the night before expensive treatment. Workers could not take the despair of
this system and just disappeared.
On a larger scale, factories and businesses could not
produce enough goods to stay in business, and closed. In time, people had cars
but no fuel to run them. Trains ran fewer and fewer routes per day. The economy
was slowly dying and the staples of living became scarce, and difficult to
procure.
Of course, this anecdote is from a novel – but take a minute
to think about how much “fairness” is talked about in our society. “It’s not
fair that corporations make so much money. They should be forced to pay more
taxes.” “The rich don’t deserve what they have.” “We should all have our
medical expenses taken care of. It’s not fair that anyone should suffer from
unexpected needs.” “It’s only fair that a business pay its employees at least a
minimum wage.”
We are already a ways down the road of Atlas Shrugged;
and the election results seem to make it clear that many Americans want to go
there.
I think what the Tramp (in the novel) said to character
Dagny Taggart is exactly true: “There wasn’t a man voting for {The Plan to work
to ability, paid as to need} who didn’t think that under a set-up of this kind
he’d muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn’t a man
rich and smart enough but that they didn’t think that somebody was richer and
smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his betters wealth and brains.
But while he was thinking that he’d get unearned benefits from the men above,
he forgot about the men below who’d get unearned benefits too.”
The needy can point to the greed of the rich, but often,
their desire is based just as much on the greed they say they despise.
We need to be cautious about fairness, and examine more
deeply and thoroughly where a call for fairness will lead. True fairness is
rooted in my right to freely possess myself and my efforts. It should be based
on equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. If I work harder than the next guy,
is it not fair that I am rewarded more than he is?
The people of our nation are embracing, as character Danneskjold
says “...the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights; that we
don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but
the unearned does...” “…practicing charity with wealth that {we do not} own, by
giving away goods which {we} have not produced, by making others pay for the
luxury of {our} pity.”
Tomorrow: Part II
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