Amazing What You Can Get Done When You Work
Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 10 months ago to Philosophy
In the second AS movie, there is a part where Jim Taggart is surprised at how fast Dagny has found a solution to a problem. Jim had been working all his connections trying to find a political solution. Dagny says something like, "Yeah, it's amazing how fast things get done when you sit down and work on them."
My wife, who has not read the books, clapped at that line. I can't remember that part happening in the book.
It summarizes well what I took away from AS and Fountainhead.
<Politics>
President Obama supported a plan to trash working old cars by running them with sodium silicate in their oil to trash them. (As an engineer I feel like vomiting at the thought of trashing something that's working!) But those people got a credit to buy an efficient car, and I like efficiency. He pushed his healthcare law, which improved labor mobility and dealt with the growing inefficiency of treating health problems as a random peril, but it also tries to let the gov't hold the middle class' hand when buying services; and the gov't sucks at that. He supported borrowing an ungodly amt of money, but may be it was worth it (I doubt it) if it gets rid of enough unused productive capacity.
</Politics>
What a bunch of baloney! None of that matters. During the same time my wife and I separately had huge ups and down with things we tried, things we thought would help people. Some things worked and some didn't. One project I lost was b/c Governor Walker refused federal monies for a high-speed train. We were working on some of the electronics. Maybe Gov Walker saw our signs when we demonstrated against him (not really, No one really noticed our family holding signs.). There are plenty more problems to be solved.
It's amazing what you can get done if you cut the politics and get to work finding people with problems and solving them.
A year ago I was on a business trip with a client. He said he took all his money out of the market b/c of Obama. I told him I would stay invested in US stocks. He said, "That's because you have confidence in this president. You think President Obama and your Mad City will sing Kumbaya, and things will be fine!" I tried to tell him, without losing the project, that it's people like him who will make things fine, not any politician. I hope he took my investment suggestion!!
It's absolutely amazing when a dedicated group of people get together an go to work on solving someone's problem. I will say the same thing Sarah Palin is elected president. It scares the bejesus out of me to think of her having the powers President Obama and President Bush have claimed, but she will not have an impact on whether my colleagues and I create a system that expedites the testing of different chemicals as potential medicines. We might fall on our faces. I certainly fell on my face this past summer with that wireless light dimmer circuit nightmare. I wish I could blame that on some politician. But I won't. I can't stand blaming success or failure on politics.
I remember twelves years ago some a-hole proudly holding up an engineering change order (ECO) with my signature that resulted in a problem. "Are you here to solve the problem!?" I demanded, "Or tell me who's to blame for it!?" He backed up as if a 5'6" geek might turn into the Hulk, which would not happen. The people who wanted to fix the problem came together and fixed it. Forget those who can tell you whom to blame for it!
That's the first thing I thought when I heard people condemning BP for the oil spill. Some engineer's PE stamp was someone else's ticket to be sanctimonious. I feel the same way about blaming President Bush or President Obama for how your business is doing.
Maybe I'm wrong to be on a political message board saying politics don't matter. They matter for the future of freedom. They don't matter for selling circuits, legal services, mowing grass, or whatever you do for people. I hope I could have sold (but hopefully would have not done it) technology for V-2 / Sputnik to Nazi Germany / USSR. I could not have expressed my political ideas there though.
We need to protect personal liberty and stop attributing personal success/failure to politicians.
My wife, who has not read the books, clapped at that line. I can't remember that part happening in the book.
It summarizes well what I took away from AS and Fountainhead.
<Politics>
President Obama supported a plan to trash working old cars by running them with sodium silicate in their oil to trash them. (As an engineer I feel like vomiting at the thought of trashing something that's working!) But those people got a credit to buy an efficient car, and I like efficiency. He pushed his healthcare law, which improved labor mobility and dealt with the growing inefficiency of treating health problems as a random peril, but it also tries to let the gov't hold the middle class' hand when buying services; and the gov't sucks at that. He supported borrowing an ungodly amt of money, but may be it was worth it (I doubt it) if it gets rid of enough unused productive capacity.
</Politics>
What a bunch of baloney! None of that matters. During the same time my wife and I separately had huge ups and down with things we tried, things we thought would help people. Some things worked and some didn't. One project I lost was b/c Governor Walker refused federal monies for a high-speed train. We were working on some of the electronics. Maybe Gov Walker saw our signs when we demonstrated against him (not really, No one really noticed our family holding signs.). There are plenty more problems to be solved.
It's amazing what you can get done if you cut the politics and get to work finding people with problems and solving them.
A year ago I was on a business trip with a client. He said he took all his money out of the market b/c of Obama. I told him I would stay invested in US stocks. He said, "That's because you have confidence in this president. You think President Obama and your Mad City will sing Kumbaya, and things will be fine!" I tried to tell him, without losing the project, that it's people like him who will make things fine, not any politician. I hope he took my investment suggestion!!
It's absolutely amazing when a dedicated group of people get together an go to work on solving someone's problem. I will say the same thing Sarah Palin is elected president. It scares the bejesus out of me to think of her having the powers President Obama and President Bush have claimed, but she will not have an impact on whether my colleagues and I create a system that expedites the testing of different chemicals as potential medicines. We might fall on our faces. I certainly fell on my face this past summer with that wireless light dimmer circuit nightmare. I wish I could blame that on some politician. But I won't. I can't stand blaming success or failure on politics.
I remember twelves years ago some a-hole proudly holding up an engineering change order (ECO) with my signature that resulted in a problem. "Are you here to solve the problem!?" I demanded, "Or tell me who's to blame for it!?" He backed up as if a 5'6" geek might turn into the Hulk, which would not happen. The people who wanted to fix the problem came together and fixed it. Forget those who can tell you whom to blame for it!
That's the first thing I thought when I heard people condemning BP for the oil spill. Some engineer's PE stamp was someone else's ticket to be sanctimonious. I feel the same way about blaming President Bush or President Obama for how your business is doing.
Maybe I'm wrong to be on a political message board saying politics don't matter. They matter for the future of freedom. They don't matter for selling circuits, legal services, mowing grass, or whatever you do for people. I hope I could have sold (but hopefully would have not done it) technology for V-2 / Sputnik to Nazi Germany / USSR. I could not have expressed my political ideas there though.
We need to protect personal liberty and stop attributing personal success/failure to politicians.
unfortunately its due to politics. I think most in here are focused on problem solving and creating.
Talking politics seems to bug you. But for many in here it 's important for societal change. But yes the world turns. About the high speed rail project -why should there be federal dollars going to that? Its for WI not the rest of us. Im sorry it impacted your project - but lots of other projects are impacted paying the fed taxes in the first place.
I didn't come out clearly, but I was trying to say the train was no big deal. Customers always change their minds. It's easy to blame business problems on a politician. My points that ups and downs related to my efforts and mistakes predominate over what politicians do.
With a little encouragement and patience a potential moocher and looter was converted into a Creator. The gentleman became one of the best analysts on the team and encouraged others to work and learn.
I cannot claim the credit for this, it was in him all along, I just woke him up to the fact that he had it in him.
an example of what happens when you work. Hot as good as some other that could be brought by the Gulch denizens, but a real world example..
A few years back, the banking industry was in danger of collapsing. Bankers and politicians said the vast majority of production depends entirely on them. I would love to see an alternate history where the banking system collapsed. Clearly it would have affected production, but by how much? How much production is controlled by sound monetary and fiscal policy and how much is controlled by people gentling showing a curmudgeon that he can be do more than he thought he could? My gut feeling is that if the entire currency and banking system collapsed, it would be bad, but within a year people have found a new medium of exchange and new networks to allocate capital, i.e. places to put their wealth that grow by creating new businesses. It's not the dark magic of the economy. It's people getting together and finding ways to solve others' problems.