Atlas Shrugged - Where are we right now? Pretty near end
Family members (particularly descendants) of producers turn into looters and moochers (i.e. the Reardens & Francisco d'Anconia during his shrug) - check, long ago
The rising up of Wesley Mouches and Orren Boyles - check, long ago
The Non-Commercial (government, particularly the State Science Institute, and non-profits good; for-profit companies bad) - check, long ago
Academia (except me) going toward anti-Objectivist philosophy and toward looting and mooching from government - check, long ago
"Great" philosophers (with rare exceptions like Hugh Akston) become anti-thought - check, long ago
Collapse of energy production after Wyatts and Danaggers leave - for coal producers, check during Obama era; for natural gas producers, check earlier this year when price of oil actually went negative for a few days!
The Aristocracy of Pull - my entire lifetime
White Blackmail - for a while, but never more than right now
The Sanction of the Victim - for quite a long time, but never more than now
Account Overdrawn - for quite a long time, but in 2008 and 2020, this became obscene!
Miracle Metal - The modern parallel to this is the posting of every technology, but most particularly 3D printing, that should be capitalized upon on the Internet.
The Moratorium on Brains - definitely are seeing that right now
Anti-Smoking (from The Sign of the Dollar chapter) - That happened over a decade ago.
The Utopia of Greed - Entitlement to my money defines today's party of looters and moochers. That has been persistent, but the Green New Deal really takes the cake in this respect.
Anti-Greed - Rioters OK, people who want to go back to work bad. Check.
Anti-Life - You must stay locked up in your house due to the pandemic. Check.
Your Brothers' Keeper - "We are all in this together." - the mantra for this year. Check.
I think we are getting close to the end, but the reason that Atlas Shrugged is over 1100 pages is because, just when it seems like things couldn't get any worse, ... they do.
The rising up of Wesley Mouches and Orren Boyles - check, long ago
The Non-Commercial (government, particularly the State Science Institute, and non-profits good; for-profit companies bad) - check, long ago
Academia (except me) going toward anti-Objectivist philosophy and toward looting and mooching from government - check, long ago
"Great" philosophers (with rare exceptions like Hugh Akston) become anti-thought - check, long ago
Collapse of energy production after Wyatts and Danaggers leave - for coal producers, check during Obama era; for natural gas producers, check earlier this year when price of oil actually went negative for a few days!
The Aristocracy of Pull - my entire lifetime
White Blackmail - for a while, but never more than right now
The Sanction of the Victim - for quite a long time, but never more than now
Account Overdrawn - for quite a long time, but in 2008 and 2020, this became obscene!
Miracle Metal - The modern parallel to this is the posting of every technology, but most particularly 3D printing, that should be capitalized upon on the Internet.
The Moratorium on Brains - definitely are seeing that right now
Anti-Smoking (from The Sign of the Dollar chapter) - That happened over a decade ago.
The Utopia of Greed - Entitlement to my money defines today's party of looters and moochers. That has been persistent, but the Green New Deal really takes the cake in this respect.
Anti-Greed - Rioters OK, people who want to go back to work bad. Check.
Anti-Life - You must stay locked up in your house due to the pandemic. Check.
Your Brothers' Keeper - "We are all in this together." - the mantra for this year. Check.
I think we are getting close to the end, but the reason that Atlas Shrugged is over 1100 pages is because, just when it seems like things couldn't get any worse, ... they do.
The issue now for us is what sort of horror shows will happen specifically in the future and what can we do (if anything) to insulate ourselves from the bad effects. This is THE issue of the day, IMHO.
What we see today is that an increasing number of people, individually not as important as the ones in AS, are just pulling back and not trying as hard as they might have, or switching to more menial and unimportant jobs.
I can tell you that I used to design and manufacture medical devices, but I made a specific decision in the early 90's to sell off what I had done to the big companies and get out of medical devices for good (once the FDA got their hooks into it). Thats one small instance of "striking". I started a small company in off road LED lighting which was unregulated. I havent seen a government inspector since that time, but there are NO new medical device ideas that come from me, probably forever.
Multiply that by probably hundreds of people who have made similar decisions and its easier to see a current "strike" .
This pandemic where certain industries were deemed "essential" (politically preferred), and the rest "non essential" shows the aristocracy of pull in action.
My small company was deemed "essential" for some reason, so I got to stay open. If it had been deemed to be "non essential", we would have closed down and eliminated all employees forever in order to preserve whatever assets were there.
The governor of Nevada, a true uneducated democratic idiot, just makes proclamations that we are supposed to just accept and follow. The latest is that nearly all of us need to wear masks while outside our houses or inside public or private businesses. He actually said the requirement was being delayed ONE day so businesses could get ready for it. How nice that HE says what business should adapt to and how fast they should adapt.
This is getting close to a situation where more people will just make permanent changes in their lives, which in the aggregate could be considered a "strike".
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Today is the fifth anniversary of my mother's death due to a C. difficile infection. To kill C. diff, you need a shorter wavelength than the 254 nm used in home HVAC systems.
We have built a modified Roomba to use UV LED's to clean floors, are building a sterilizer box that provides visual and/or spectroscopic validation of whatever is put inside it (originally meant to clean the Roombas), and have put together CAD drawings and wiring diagrams for a UV dry cleaning for hospital and lab coats, and with minimal modification, for grocery carts. For the "UV dry cleaning", we will need additional funding, hopefully from customers via crowdsourcing, but perhaps from additional investors who see the value in what I create (and definitely not from The State Science Institute or other looting governmental entities).
I know that you just hinted that you are on strike, but if you would like to either a) be on my university program's advisory board or b) be an affiliate or investor in my company, contact me via private messaging. My university, Florida Tech, isn't quite the Patrick Henry University, but it is about as close as you are likely to find.
In some respects, I am a bit like Dagny in that I have a hard time giving up on humanity, but I prefer to think that what I am doing is preparing for the return of the productive to society. I know that, in the past, I have wondered in this forum why would anyone return to society after the Atlas Shrugged complete collapse. Here, I admit my biggest contradiction, but probably not my only one. I enjoy producing and teaching others to produce so much that I have a remarkably hard time completely shrugging. If I were to not produce and teach others to produce, my mind and body would quickly atrophy to the point that life would no longer be worth living. Every time that I take a break of over a couple of days, I get sick!!
I left medical devices about 10 years ago for two reasons 1) the need for FDA approvals before you can sell a medical device. That can take a long time and is subject to the whims of the state science institute- making it mostly impractical from a money making standpoint, and 2) the fact that the company is always under the gun and can be shut down for simply not producing the item in accordance with FDA good manufacturing practices- you work years building it up, only to have it shut down because the FDA inspector doesnt like you.
I am willing to help you out in terms of experience and advice at any time, or course.
Obviously the dollar will depreciate due to federal reserve actions. The question is what will they do and how can we best insulate ourselves from the effects, and which of those things will be forbidden. For example, buying gold might be a good thing, but FDR forced citizens to sell their gold to the government at a low price under penalty of being a criminal if you kept it.
You are in Wisconsin. There is a bastion of production left there. Today's American Motor Company pre-shrug is Generac. I can tell you why in a more private forum, but I might be traveling up to Milwaukee, because of what they have accomplished.
However, Trump's willingness to spend like a Democrat is a major problem.
You get what you need."
Is that Objectivism? Of course not, but can you imagine what would happen if an Objectivist were elected president?
I recently compared rioting and looting to metastatic cancer and a healthy transformation rate associated with tissue engineering of bone as requiring some, but not ridiculous rates of, resorption
Perhaps a better analogy would be to look at ecosystem recovery after a devastation. Certain species, including a lot of weeds, take over right after the devastation before more productive and stable species can evolve.
And because Trump, for not being a doctor and listening to so-called medical experts, reacted to a perceived emergency (unlike how Sweden did), I would cite deregulation as being a Trump asset.
Yet I can also see where your opinion is coming from. So in my opinion I don't think you deserve that zero I'm staring at. +1.
The system has been corrupt and beyond repair for years, he is squeezing it dry.
Anyone who actually ran for a government office with the intention of getting the government out of the way would never make it to getting the nomination of either party... Just another example of how our political and economic system is beyond repair in its current state.
Both parties hated Donald trump because they knew he was uncontrollable . The repub party was pretty much desd so they reluctantly fell in behind him because of his popular support. Once elected in 2016 he started pandering more and more to the “party” in an attempt to get support from the party members. Too bad actually as the deep state repubs still hate him
The Democratic Party is in shambles this tine. All they could come up with is a senile and malleable candidate (Weekend at bernie’s) who might be able to get a black woman To take over in a year or so.
Great end to a once great country. I will vote fir trump in an “ attempt” to slow down collectivism a little for a few years more In 2024 we will reach very close to the end of times as depicted in AS. Could be in a few months if trump is not re elected or if the dems win both houses
If elected, I will not serve.
If impeached, I will not resign.
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
For now, Melbourne, FL isn't Atlantis, but it is surprisingly well shielded from the negative parts of the outside world, perhaps due to the high concentration of people who understand how to do satellite communications around here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4kHi...
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
I think this kind of thing will blow up, big-time. You'll see pockets of citizens pulled from their homes and killed much like what we aren't seeing in our news about South Africa. But, many Americans will be armed and will stand their ground. Those Americans will be reported as racists, most likely, and their demise will be encouraged by the media. I don't know if I'd call that a "civil war", but it's close. This is what I see as a potential development. I hope it doesn't happen.
This is precisely why the MORALITY of Objectivism needs to be promulgated. We should not and cannot afford to apologize for standing up for own rights as individuals. Collectivism needs to be trashed as being the immoral non-thought that it is.
Evidence: Intravenous hydrogen peroxide, known by anyone familiar with biochemistry (cytochrome enzyme chain) to partially substitute for inhaled oxygen, remains illegal and would be of obvious benefit against COVID-19 (it afflicts lung function; H2O2 was noted in the Lancet a century ago as helpful against the flu) thanks to the FDA Fool and Dunce Administration. When I wrote to Trump and Senators about it earlier this year, the substance of my recommendation to use it was ignored.
Evidence: Inspired partially by a former girlfriend who had been badly damaged by being raped by her father as a two-year-old, I put together a short DVD based on conservative and libertarian principles intended for the use of motivated pedophiles: if they can be reformed, so much the better for them, also their reform would prevent children from being mishandled in the future. Meanwhile, if my approach is proved to be successful then the income of sex-offender-registry workers and perpetually needed counselors would be erased. The Maine medical board gave me a very hard time for my efforts; call (207) 287-3601 and ask about Complaint CR10-206 for details. I let my Maine medical license lapse and, thereafter out of its reach, put the DVD's content into a book. When I later had to go to jail in Maine (bad divorce), the jail staff didn't want the book although I offered it. It's at http://www.harshman.name/brightwriter....
Edit add: I understand about the deadly effect in too high a concentration because I've worked in some facilities where concentrated hydrogen peroxide was used as a cleaner/sterilant.
Not when you can read it in today's headlines.
Patterns emerge the same way, don't they ?
https://thespaceperspective.com/caree...
and
https://newatlas.com/space/space-pers...
I have several former students working at SpaceX. What they have done is truly remarkable. I appreciate the desire for independence from government funding more than just about anyone, but SpaceX's mission is so monumental in both engineering magnitude and cost that it is hard to envision how you could raise that much capital AND achieve that engineering mission in one's lifetime without some sort of government funding. This is the moral and philosphical challenge, and it is not an easy one.
Will it be a saving grace that the Looters and Moochers inevitably eat their own? They also have no ability to produce anything except utopic hallucinations and scapegoats. I still have hope that in an honest election, they will not win....hence, the effort to set up elections that can be manipulated. In California, these nitwits cheat even when they would win anyway.
How are things in Fremont? I enjoyed the portion on the History Channel's The Men Who Built America: Frontiersman series on John Fremont and Kit Carson.
But still there is some satisfaction on seeing the attack on The Guardian, the founder was a big slave trader, so the current ultra-woke Guardian paper should be closed, they say.
https://dailysoundandfury.com/wile-e-...
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...