I looked through the books of his that I have and I think it was cowards, though I could not find the reference in a quick (like 5 minute) search.

They are really looney, until at some point they are proven correct. That is what is scary.

You do have to have an environment that allows for invention to occur as well. In the case of India, I would argue that they have become ripe with inventions. Just look at the computer game industry and the number of titles that are coming from India. The US is still better overall but give Obama time and the Indians will surpass us.

Property rights for everyone are eroding in the US. How many states do you lease your land from the government now?

What percentage of business is really ran by the owner of the business and what percentage is ran by the government? I would contend that there is not a business in America that the government does not behave like they own a significant share of it.

Your ideas are not yours after all they belong to everyone. You do not build a business that takes a community and you do not raise a child that also takes a community. The community should after all own it all since they do it all. (note the dripping sarcasm).

actually, I thought this comment was on another post...I still stand by it, but you're talking in a different context. My apologies ;)

Glad you do, too :-)

Might as well give more details, then, since you said you liked that idea. It works like this:

The hero of this story is one of the last of the private teaching doctors--somebody well-enough-off to afford his own sailboat, say a 34-foot sloop. Something one man could handle himself, but large enough to go out into the ocean without getting swamped.

He has seen all the bad things happen to medicine. He knew when Thomas Hendrix, the famous neurosurgeon, abruptly vanished from The Johns Hopkins. (News like that would travel fast in the academic medical community.)

Early--very early--in Ragnar's career, Ragnar would start taking the first prizes. Now this doctor would read the accounts--for in those days the news organs would report everything; Ragnar Danneskjöld was the kind of Big Story that translates easily into newsstand bucks. So our doctor, who takes his sailing seriously, starts thinking that maybe--just maybe--he can anticipate Ragnar's next strike.

But now he's in a quandary. He's torn, the way Hank Rearden would be torn years later. Was he ever "a dirty rat"? Did he want to start being "a dirty rat" now? Especially for a government that took, and took and took, and maybe caused the deaths of a few patients from their mishandling of the new government hospitals?

Then one year the IRS makes the decision for him. He gets one of those nastygrams the IRS loves to send. You see, his number is up for a Taxpayer Compliance Measurement Program audit. Where they look at e-v-e-r-y s-i-n-g-l-e t-h-i-n-g on your return. Only it never occurred to John Galt to sniff him out to see whether he was "ready," if you know what I mean. But he does not want to subject himself to a TCMP audit. Because he knows he has skated on a few deductions now and again. He would long since have wound up on the Poor Farm if he hadn't. (Didn't Floyd Ferris say when the government hasn't enough criminals to ride hard, it invents them?)

So he sets out on his boat, to the next projected position of Ragnar Danneskjöld. Only he has no idea what he wants to do. If he could catch up with Danneskjöld and rat him out to the Navy, maybe they could make his IRS troubles go away. But aside from whether he can trust the government, what did Ragnar Danneskjöld ever do to him? Has he the right to rat someone out just because the government wants him?

He's still wondering what he wants to do when Ragnar spots him first, then sends out a launch with a boarding party to intercept him, board him, and bring him in to the flagship of the rag-tag fleet he has at the time. (He wouldn't hijack an aircraft carrier until later.) Now Ragnar and the good doctor are in a quandary, and they both know it. Ragnar does the only thing he can do: presses his newfound prisoner into service in Sick Bay.

Not long after that, they hijack the aircraft carrier that will be Ragnar's flagship from then on. That's when Ragnar takes the one wound of his career. The doctor, of course, patches him up--the Hippocratic Oath, as he interprets it, requires that.

In the process, Ragnar shares his back story, and also the story of John Galt--right up to the Twentieth Century affair, that is. Eventually the doctor comes to sympathize fully with Ragnar. He will serve him for the rest of the great strike, as his chief medical officer.