Everyone makes their own decisions, based on their own circumstances. The point of AS is that Dagny is NOT preserving freedom. She remains optimistic and overcomes increasing obstacles as she saves the looters from their own decisions. Give the addict more of what they're addicted to.
We have lost incredible freedoms. the rule of law is dead. the Constitution is trashed. these things proceed an economic crash. There will always be those who can profit during this slide. Nothing wrong with that. But in order to continue that way, requires huge moral compromises for most on that path. Ayn Rand did not suggest people compromise nor did she suggest sacrifice. Many of us have already decided that this government has become so corrupt that we have to withdraw our support. This is one of the most effective ways of getting politicians and voters' attention. In no way is it giving up. Einstein, Thomas Paine, Descartes, Locke, , Ayn Rand...all withdrew support from their birth nation in protest and to pursue better lives. This is a positive thing and in the case of these great thinkers has been of great importance to the world. There are steps each of us can take , as you mentioned above cg, to try and wake up others to what is happening. Sometimes that means I'm likely in some producers' faces, but I respectfully submit that instead of not enjoying the thought some in here think of you as a "pollyanna" rather you are more likely experiencing the dissonance between your world view and reality. Atlas Shrugged is a novel, not a play book for action. I looked to History to choose my path. I hope you reconsider your decision and I have enjoyed engaging with you in here very much. btw, this better have made it into the script.
“We never had to take any of it seriously, did we.” “No, we never had to.”

Hello CircuitGuy,
Of course, it is your decision, but I have enjoyed your optimism and it reminds me of days gone by, when I first started my business. It has on occasion even given me pause regarding my level of pessimism... inspired me to some degree and perhaps influenced my outlook, even if only temporarily. Nowadays that is a pleasant feeling... Unfortunately for many of us the experience of our past, our lost liberty, opportunity, and recognition of history repeating, weigh heavy on our outlook. Who doesn't hope for and want an improved outlook? I for one, await the day when my best effort is rewarded to the level it once was. Nothing would please me more than to get my operation back to maximum capacity and see the fruits of my labor build what I conceive, rather than have an increasing portion taken and squandered.

In my lifetime I have witnessed a loss felt keenly and if history is any indicator it does not leave a positive outlook or a likely return of such opportunity to our posterity without an upheaval. Is this pessimism or just recognition? Perhaps it it is just more burden than some can bear: that the contrast of what was and what is, is too great. Time can be both friend and foe.

Some of us believe the way to a brighter future is to sound the alarm, spread the word and warning. To pull away the curtain and expose the charlatans, oppressors, cronies, looters and moochers. We must point to the past and compare the parallels... enlighten the people so things do not get worse, or if they do, to help prepare.

Just like in the book, people come to the breaking point at different times and suffer differing levels of imposition. What would the book ,or for that matter the Gulch be without the Dagnys or Hanks that held out till the end?

The problem is not that the Gulchers are not using their acumen to influence their representatives; it is that our representatives will not hear us. I have received countless dismissive form letters. It is as if we speak different languages. There are too few of our voices. This is changing and hopefully through spreading the word, sounding the alarm and offering a predictably dire perspective based on present day facts and history we will awaken and outrage enough people so that we will elect or persuade in sufficient numbers representatives to make liberty, freedom, opportunity once again paramount. Hopefully before it is too late. Someone must say "hey don't step in front of that bus; walk on the sidewalk!"

Additionally we must offer another viable option. This is the strength of Objectivism, in its message of the benefits of capitalism, free markets and equal opportunity over outcome. Is it radical to propose a return closer to founding principles of government, of economics, to point out the folly and disastrous effects of the social engineers?

Some may believe they can continue to shoulder the increasing burden like Boxer (Animal Farm), some will die trying and some will survive. Others have had enough. In the worst of times some still profit while many around them suffer. I do not have enough time to wait and hope, or the energy left to keep pushing that mountain of a boulder uphill like Sisyphus. I will do as I must; as we all do; as we all see fit.

No one knows what the future will bring, but past abuses of government in my lifetime were met with more widespread outrage and occasionally people would be fired or impeached, but today there is insufficient appetite for holding government officials accountable.The buck is passed. It doesn't stop anywhere. I hope we change this paradigm together, each of us in our own way.

Perhaps you will invent the motor that changes the world and all the old patterns may be obsolete. I am a strong proponent of technology for solving problems, but technology cannot change the desire of some of us to dominate others. This is a human failing that we are destined to repeatedly suffer

You expressed an affinity for Jefferson. He believed liberty could not be maintained without the unfortunate spilling of blood from time to time. In our Declaration of Independence he enumerates many of the same abuses felt today. The following quotes are replete with warnings. http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/TJ.html I hope a peaceful revolution is at hand and bloodshed can be avoided. This may come about through a financial collapse and/or an awakening of the people to the injustices and folly of Marxist leaning governance. I do not relish this, but the chance to stop the madness and begin anew is appealing.When the public consensus is that this social experiment has failed as all other similar attempts before it, then for a few generations we may again be blessed with the freedom to pursue happiness on our own terms.

Please feel free to participate as you please. I will miss the reduction in perspectives and your optimism.
I wish you the greatest success at whatever you put your mind to.

Respectfully,
O.A.

"...we need all producers making defending liberty a primary avocation."
Hmmm, I thought that's what we were doing?
None of us are actually IN the gulch ('cept kh), so I don't know why we're being addressed as if we've "given up"... as far as I know we're all where we've always been...and producing...and trying to wake up others.
Ya lost me CG.

Those who read Atlas Shrugged should avoid taking it as a literal formula. It is a work of fiction, with the theme of "The role of the mind in man's existence." Rand said that she did not intend it to be prophetic (although we may joke, "Now, in NON-fiction!") but instead to be preventive.

There is no requirement that one join a "gulch," only that one understand his own individual rights that exist as a consequence of his mind.

The situations presented in the book are necessarily less complex than those we continually face, but the underlying principles of morality are the same: Am I to sacrifice my mind and the products of my mind for others? The question is not simple, because it relates to every single action and thought that anyone has.

Foolish attempts (the failed Minerva project, for example) have been made to establish physical gulches. There was a boat that sank, too. Sank on launch, in the Hudson.

The Gulch is, if anywhere, in your own mind.

Create your own Gulch, Circuit. Find and build your own sanctuary for your family to rest and recuperate after every day. Like you, I am not leaving my home. Perhaps it's my age and energy speaking, but I am optimistic my husband and I can continue running our business successfully, and shape our sphere to what we want it to be. We are young and have much to do; building our own Gulch is something we work on every day.

I'm saddened to see you go, but I respect your decision. There are many ways to defend liberty, and any road has its own merits. I will stay here to continue learning from the discourse this place offers. In the few months I've been here, I've been inspired to read more philosophy and political economy books I ever have before, all because I wanted to better understand someone's position. While I don't agree with everything said, l believe I'm becoming a better rounded and knowledgeable person by interacting with the people here. It's also exciting and interesting to see what some Producers are doing in their work to defend liberty. There are important people here. There is simply too much value to leave.

I wish you and your wife the best.

CircuitGuy wrote: "It doesn't seem believable to me how quickly some of the producers seem to give up in the face of gov't meddling. You'd think they'd use the same acumen with which they deal with investors, customers, employees, and vendors, to explain to the politicians and the people they supposedly represent that their policies were tantamount to looting."

First, the producers did not give up because of government meddling. They quit because John Galt explained it to them. Galt had the reasons, the arguments, the facts, the logic, to convince them. They gave him the time to do that. He had three hours with Ken Danagger. We can assume that he had similar opportunities. He was obviously a mythic communicator.

As for the present, it is complicated. We live in a world affected by Atlas Shrugged. In her time, those words had never been spoken. For the 50th Anniversary Celebration, Ed Snider of the Philadelphia Flyers Comcast Sportsnet and other enterprises told about how he learned of Ayn Rand's ideas. It was at a meeting of hockey team owners. He turned to Patrick O'Malley (son of Walter of the Dodgers), and asked "How can these men go along with something so obviously contrary to their own interests?" O'Malley wrote "Atlas Shrugged" on a piece of paper and said, "Read this."

But you do not find O'Malley or Mark Cuban or a thousand others telling the government where to get off the train. Some do. Perhaps the most visible is T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor who frequently writes for the Wall Street Journal and others.

This week, Ed Hudgins of the Atlas Society had a blog on Reuters about selling the post office. The message has been getting clearer, especially since the Bush-Obama Bailouts. The Economist has written about the correlation of government regulations and sales of Atlas Shrugged.

But, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, George Soros, ... they, too, have minds of their own, and lives of their own. To expect everyone to agree with every word of your favorite book is to wish for a featureless village. Capitalism thrives on diversity. As I noted, a good merchant does not argue religion with his customer. The question is who holds the commanding heights of the culture. In the past, it was the collectivists, right and left, the groupists, the aggregators, the conformists, the amalgamators. But that red sun has set. A new golden dawn is on the horizon.

I don't disagree with you, I think you're probably more on target than others might give you credit for. Like you, although I'm not running my own business, I still identify strongly with those who are still trying to put things back together. I can't help thinking about George Washington's army and what would have happened if they had surrendered the idea of a free republic. I'm not yet ready to leave, got a lot more fight left. I'll miss reading your posts.

I will be sorry to see you go CG. You are a great addition to the Gulch. Its refreshing to have different opinions in here. Glad to hear your wifes business is doing well. I don't see complaining as much as I see many people coming together to discuss how bad things have gotten and kick around ideas on what to do next. Best of luck to you. Let me know when you come back so we can disagree about something.:)

I think if you don't have a problem with the type of government the US is becoming then you should do what you feel is right for you. Sometimes I wish we could just split the country down the middle and people like me could pick the most freedom loving self sufficient side. As for myself I wake up happy every day until I hear the news and hear what the rascals in Washington are up to and a darkness settles on my soul. I also am married to a PhD in Economics and know that our monetary system cannot survive. As a family we have decided there is no place here for us. That's ok. The principals our country was founded on don't belong to a country they are a philosophy for living. My husband and I worked for every dime we have and to the people who want what we earned they can go to hell. America doesn't have enough people who believe as I do so I will simply go to a country that fits more closely to my philosophy. Maybe I will not settle in one place. We no longer have enough people who believe as I do to win elections. The handwriting is on the wall and I am voting with my feet. Elections give us choices between the least bad candidate. No one cares about the Constitution and every government institution seems messed up. We have spent over a year looking at other countries. We are 3 generations leaving. One adult and one child have left already. I am next to go. Will it be hard and uncertain? Oh yes, but somehow I am very excited about life again. Sometimes I look at my old house and barn I have spent so many years remodeling and my 40 acres of land and feel a tug. Then I think about knowing how this will end and I refuse to be a fool. Everything is temporary and I want to wake up excited about life. Good luck.

I work not just two jobs - but two careers (requiring uppper education, licensure, etc) simply because I think there's hope. (Clarification: I do it because I still believe that hard, intelligent work has positive results. But, I could be wrong - I admit.) Do I think government largess and force are the biggest problem facing society today? You bet I do. I see it every day. I can't give up because I have a family to take care of. If I didn't, however, you can rest assured I'd already be living in a hut on the beach in Mexico with a surfboard, a cooler of cold beer and not much else.

This is an area, probably from her own lack of experience, that Ayn Rand didn't directly address in Atlas Shrugged. Family was a burden in the story, a real source of evil, vs. something worth fighting for. However, her message in the chapter "White Blackmail" really rings true to the Objectivist family man like me. Once you have a family, the system has got you by the pelotas. And the system knows it.

I'm ready.

"Immanentize the eschaton" is attempting to bring about the End of Times. Social alienation is a part of that. In "The True Believer" Eric Hoffer underscored the common Eden Myths of social theories such as communism (and Objectivism). "Once upon a time there was a paradise (the communal village; the Early Republic of Near-Laissez Faire) but the Evil One (capitalists; socialists) seduced us into sin (profits; government regulations), but if we all pull together (revolution; shrugging), we can win a glorious new future not for ourselves but for posterity."

For me, though, the salient point of Atlas Shrugged was entirely PERSONAL and not at all social. In other words, I have always looked to see who my ultimate customer or client is. Whom do I serve by my production. I do not work for my destroyers.

That said, life in a complex, commercial, urban environment is impossible without diversities of culture within that milieu. A good merchant does not argue religion with his customer.

That being as it may, the bottom line is that until our lifetime, the Code of the Producer was not articulated. The time has come for it to be announced.

You are obviously aware that this is a website and not a gulch.

How many here have actually gone to anything that REMOTELY resembles a real life gulch?

Even I did not move to a gulch.

I simply moved to another country where I could live in greater freedom (at a much lower cost) than in the USA.

CircuitGuy, if you're still checking in -
You show a misunderstanding about at least one Gulch producer. You wrote "The Gulch website members are like the Gulch members in the book. At one point they were focused on making things happen in the world.....They're tired of fighting"
I am not tired of fighting. I am fighting in a different way than you imagine, and it is a harder fight than you CAN imagine.Go back to AS, and read, really READ the scene in which Frisco and Rearden meet in Dagny's apartment. Frisco is seen to be dedicating whatever he is feeling and thinking to another presence in the room - Galt, of course.
Read that scene and then accuse me of just being "tired of fighting". <spits at your feet and WALKS.>

I will miss your contributions CG. I am one who has benefited from the debate within this diverse group. I have expanded my reading to include more philosophy based on suggestions. I am better at discussing my own opinions and constructing logical arguments. I thought the Gulch was a perfect place for you.

Hope you stop in occasionally.

I don't so much see Gulchers in AS or in our present reality, as having given up on anything other than their own mis-perceptions of the reality they face, and thence accepting and celebrating their transformation to their true Objectivist natures. Those that don't accept the real need and utility of a physical or psychological Gulch remind me of having to give up on a favorite pair of Levi's because each time I put them on, another seam gives up or a rip occurs in an embarrassing location. The comfort of what was, is a siren's song that seems to only obfuscate the mind's ability to see and analyze the current reality. And much like Brer Rabbit's fight, against all logic, with the Tar Baby, wanting to believe that continuing to produce for the benefit and insatiable appetite of the takers, while also trying to prove to them that their viewpoint is wrong just gets you more stuck.

Finding a place in which I can participate in the sharing of the concepts and ideals of Objectivism as well as Libertarianism has provided me an anchor in sanity as well as a wealth of experiences and similar viewpoints from which to draw sustenance while being starved and leeched in my everyday life. While to some that may sound like escapism, in my mind it's a place and way that provides me a bracing for the storm we all face.

While defending liberty is something I applaud and support in any individual or group, continuing to pour my hope and energy into the gaping maw of today's takers, manipulators, social engineers, power mongers, and professional politicians is exactly analogous to several lost years of my life spent in the fruitless effort to support and attempt to provide positive, warm-fuzzies to an addict brother in order to demonstrate the benefits of change. It only wound up in costing me extremes of financial and psychic costs, while only delaying the rock bottom all addicts have to reach in order to search for their own paths out of their self imposed slow motion suicide.

It seems that many think of Gulchers as giving up on society or trying to teach a lesson to society, I see it as simply the recognition of any conscious, rational being's primary requirement of self and family preservation. I don't wish ill towards any human, when I see that he's heading down a path towards self destruction, I absolutely refuse to accompany him or provide him a flashlight so he doesn't trip before the final fall.

Heavy thoughts for a gloomy day.

Hello CG, I agree with most of what you said. However, like you I am still here, contributing to the addiction that our governmental masters have to the almighty dollar. They are truly elitists that try to regulate the masses by telling them what type of light bulb they can buy or how big of a soda they can buy or what type of toilet they can put in their house or (last one) what type of health insurance they are required to buy. However, I am also planning on setting up my own Gulch, not sure where or when, but I will know when I reach that point. It could be here in the US or somewhere else, it will probably be in a different time and place from where I am now. This group allows me to interact with like minded individuals, look at their ideas, share my ideas, discuss the differences or sameness of those ideas and progress to a new or enhanced viewpoint. You can take your ball and go home or you can stay and enhance our interactions and make us all better for your input. Either way, good luck to you.

Re: Circuit Guy,

Your piece certainly gives us food for thought. Please allow me to elaborate.

I believe that you may have a slight misunderstanding of parts of Ayn Rand's plot in Atlas Shrugged. It's not that the producers are giving up because of the obstructionist and thieving government, but that they have chosen to rebuild their own world. The didn't come to this conclusion as a result of a quick decision, but after having suffered the theft of their labors for many years.

From the description of the conditions of the country it is evident that these conditions have been around for some time.

The producers have decided that they are the ones that make the world function and have further decided to teach the government a lesson in economics. That lesson is, nothing will grow without the producers. In every society there are a small number of brilliant risk takers without whom we would still be living in the dark ages. These producers have just taken the final step in teaching that lesson.

Producers can live with a limited labor supply by scaling down their needs, but labor cannot live without the producers. However it is obvious that government will always have the power to destroy, but little power to build. Government produces nothing that is not paid for by the public and the public can't pay taxes without a functioning economy.
We are now living in a society that is governed by big spenders who haven;t a clue as to how an economy functions.

Take taxes and government spending for example. In the early 1900's the federal budget ranged in the low billions. The population in 1900 was slightly over 76 million. Now our population is slightly over 330 million. Theoretically the budget should be 4.5 times as much plus adjustment for inflation. Yet the spending for 2012 was over 3.5 Trillion, over 40 times that of the 1900's. Even if you adjust for inflation the spending by the federal government can only be described as insane.

As long as we have “big government” the politicians will continue to spend in order to buy votes. The only source for that money are the workers who wouldn't have money without the producers. A better description for theft doesn't exist. Do you really wonder why producers decided to leave the economy?

Fred Speckmann
commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com

As a former producer, (retired) I can tell you how it was with me. I felt as if I was giving the country a gift. A gift of product, a gift of employment. But it felt as if I was being vilified even though they were happy to take my gifts and use them. What happens when you give a gift to someone who loves the gift but hates the giver? Either find better recipients or quit.

I am probably more militant than most. I know: I hardly ever post here. So how is anyone supposed to know just how militant I am?

Here's a clue.

I am not merely looking for Galt's Gulch.

I am looking for Ragnar Danneskjöld's ship.

If that ship truly sailed the ocean blue, I would sign on in a heartbeat. Even if it meant serving as a deckhand. (Though I might actually qualify as a pharmacist's mate.)

CircuitGuy, you will understand, I'm sure, upon sober reflection, why the Fabians often stopped people from giving money to beggars, by shouting, "Don't delay the revolution." For nothing short of a revolution will serve.

lol