How Many Bricklayers Did Galt Invite to the Gulch?
Galt went around inviting famous artists, noted business leaders to the Guch, but once there, who built their houses? Who paved their streets, dug their sewer lines?
This isn't a class warfare argument; the building of a house, for example, not only takes a skilled architect, but also skilled craftsmen and industrious laborers.
If the criterion for admission is a belief in "trading value for value", surely Galt should and would have invited "ordinary" workers to the Gulch as well as luminaries like Wyatt and Danagger?
Such people exist lower down on the ladder; people who believe in trading value for value, but lack the creative ability to invent a new motor or miraculous metal. People who didn't inherit an already successful railroad or copper mines, but would be able to get a day's worth of coal or copper dug in a day's worth of hours for a day's worth of pay. Maybe they lack the ambition to go through the headache of running a company when they get more satisfaction from digging coal out of the ground. Maybe they lack the self discipline necessary to see their visions to reality, but are still able and still believe in trading value for value.
What Utopians always underestimate in their rhetoric (no disparagement of Ms Rand intended) is the example America set before them. People's abilities and worth are not necessarily evidenced by their position in life. All the creative brilliance in the world will not get a brick wall built. A brick wall built without knowledge and skill won't stand, but the most creative and brilliantly designed wall will never exist without someone to lay it up brick by brick. Someone whose creative skill may be shrouded by prejudice toward his position in life.
There may not be a place in the Gulch for someone like me. But that would be Galt's loss.
This isn't a class warfare argument; the building of a house, for example, not only takes a skilled architect, but also skilled craftsmen and industrious laborers.
If the criterion for admission is a belief in "trading value for value", surely Galt should and would have invited "ordinary" workers to the Gulch as well as luminaries like Wyatt and Danagger?
Such people exist lower down on the ladder; people who believe in trading value for value, but lack the creative ability to invent a new motor or miraculous metal. People who didn't inherit an already successful railroad or copper mines, but would be able to get a day's worth of coal or copper dug in a day's worth of hours for a day's worth of pay. Maybe they lack the ambition to go through the headache of running a company when they get more satisfaction from digging coal out of the ground. Maybe they lack the self discipline necessary to see their visions to reality, but are still able and still believe in trading value for value.
What Utopians always underestimate in their rhetoric (no disparagement of Ms Rand intended) is the example America set before them. People's abilities and worth are not necessarily evidenced by their position in life. All the creative brilliance in the world will not get a brick wall built. A brick wall built without knowledge and skill won't stand, but the most creative and brilliantly designed wall will never exist without someone to lay it up brick by brick. Someone whose creative skill may be shrouded by prejudice toward his position in life.
There may not be a place in the Gulch for someone like me. But that would be Galt's loss.
Previous comments...
I disagree on the initial question. smart people focus on lots of stuff, sometimes in very specific areas. You make good points
I don't give a good damn how brilliant you are or how many disciplines you've mastered. There are only so many hours in a day and only so much work the human body can do in that period of time.
And I don't care who the amateur is, no matter how brilliant he is, an amateur is never going to master any discipline as well as someone who spent years learning it. And therefore CAN'T do it as well. Anyone who claims differently is delusional.
I've helped make that point in here several times.
A great idea has been put forth to transport large 3D printers to the moon with a resin and build their structures from moon dust. If Galt could design and build a motor that runs from the charge in the air, I'm sure he thought of this for the Gulch. Problem solved.
Since a 3D printer runs off of 115/120 volt AC...I want the contract for the extension cord!
But back to a novel and artistic license.
You're comment implied, that ONLY a specialist could do the job, or that it's a waste of time for anyone but a specialist to do it. Sure a Specialist is more efficient, assuming you have one available, and can afford the price. If you need the House, and you can't afford to pay the specialists, then you're pretty much stuck doing it yourself - or doing with out.
One problem with specialization as it stands today, is a tendency to believe that because you didn't learn how from someone else, then you just can't do something.
If you believe you can, you're probably right.
If you believe you can't, you are right.
And since this argument always devolves to the ridiculous, No I've never done open heart surgery. But if that's what was needed to save someone's life, and there were no specialists, including doctors, or nurses. Yes I'd try - yes I would probably fail. But if they're going to die anyway, you might as well give it your best shot. Will I ever be a surgeon? No. No one in their right mind would go to an amateur surgeon if they have a choice - but what if you don't?
(Semantics - the skill of an amateur, or One who pursues an activity out of love and passion - can and sometimes does exceed the skill of a pro.)
Reminds me of an old Koan about the man that spent his entire life struggling up the 'ladder' only to reach the top and see that he'd climbed the wrong ladder.
Although Francisco inherited his family's mining business, remember that while he was in school, he went out, anonymously, to work at other mines. Starting from the bottom up, relying only on his skills, he became the owner of his own mine, which I believe he said was the mine he was most proud of.
When Dagny retreated to her cabin, she could not sit around idly moping. In the weeks she spent there, she restored it to pristine condition.
When one of Rearden's furnaces broke out, sending his workers scattering, he dove in with precision and the manual skill necessary to plug the breach. Of course, while being helped by Francisco.
But all this is beside the point. Even in such a massive tome as AS, Rand didn't take the time to fully describe the Gulch community. Of course you would need residents performing all levels of work, from trash collection to engineering. The point that you seem to have missed is that every one of the people in the gulch would perform their chosen functions from a common philosophy. I will provide a service or goods to you so long as you provide me with something I value just as much. Value for value. That really is the point of the book, isn't it ?
One of thing I've learned is that the story is completely populated with straw men.
Life is good in the gulch.
I locked the door on a profitable business, a labor I loved, a building that my wife, children and I rebuilt and expanded with our own hands, sweat and blood. Then I sold the building for $1 less than I had invested, sold equipment for less than I'd paid for it and dropped inventory I'd created by my hands into garbage cans. All so that the government that believes it has first rights to every dollar I can create, can leave my door with no dollar of mine to "spread around".
Now I practice the skills that will allow me to survive as the roof falls in on the foolish moochers heads. I earn no money that is taxable. When I find a person of like mind that has a skill I can benefit from and he is of like mind, we trade value for value, skill for skill. Outsiders need not apply. :D
I'm not talking about the wealthy vs the poor. I'm talking about bringing into the Gulch people who aren't brilliant and virtuous and physically superior like Rand's supermen. I'm talking about bringing in people who are hod carriers because they didn't pay attention in high school, not because they believe in the nobility of physical labor (which is pure unadulterated horse manure).
If you're going to build a city, you're going to need them. Egypt and Rome needed their slaves, the U.S. needed its immigrants and slaves. Someone to do the unrewarding physical labor because they're paid to do so, not because they believe in trading value for value.
This whole argument is impossible because Rand's heroes DO NOT EXIST. She can give them whatever BS qualities she wants. But a normal, sane human being isn't going to spend a year building a log cabin, living outdoors, when he can hire it built in a month or two by "common" laborers. Yes, there are people who get off on doing that kind of thing. The technical term for such people is "nuts".
And the common laborers brought in to do such work will have no interest whatsoever in politics or social engineering. To them, because they've never wasted their time studying such things, raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00 based on need can, and will, be made to sound reasonable.
Again, unless they can keep the Gulch segregated, exclusive to objectivists, it will soon resemble the real world. And if they're going to build the city in a reasonable amount of time while destroying the world, they're going to need the labor I described above. So they won't be able to keep the Gulch segregated.
You may not like me saying "destroy the world".
How does the world end up at the end of the book, before the strikers come back? Pretty much destroyed, yes?
Due to the intentional efforts of Galt and company.
The Utopians were products the British leisure class that mentally masturbated about a world the way they would like it verses the way it actually is. The end result was the massive suffering inflicted on the world by communism. That about sums it up.
Kindest
Jack
"mentally masturbated about a world the way they would like it verses the way it actually is."
pretty much nails it.
Rand appreciated skill at any level, for example the short-order cook at a roadside diner (who turned out to be Hugh Akston).
One of the Galt's Gulch residents whom Dagny met was a truck driver -- but, he said, he didn't intend to remain one. "Position in life" is rarely predetermined.
Contrary to your claim, a professional engineer can often build an usable house, but a construction worker rarely can adequately perform engineering functions.
How about "I'm just a child and haven't developed any skills yet. Would I be invited to Atlantis?"
I cannot believe this post got anywhere. Do babies get to go to heaven if they haven't accepted Jesus as their personal savior?
My take on the thread is that iit's a whole bunch of different people coming into it, not believing the awful reality of it, and trying to explain, thinking that the OP had asked, and continues to ask, real questions about which he/she desires real, true answers. Give it the respect it deserves. [is there an emoticon for tonque-in-cheek?]
When one understands the general principle that Galt's Gulch represents, it does not matter much who Galt "explicitly" invites to the Gulch in the text. A proper understanding of the principle Galt’s Gulch represents reveals the qualifying characteristic for residency is not one’s class or social status but rather one's commitment to exchange value for value and a refusal to require other men to live for one's own sake.
Properly understood it becomes self-evident that a brick layer of the proper mindset would be as welcome in Galt's Gulch as an industrialist of the same mindset.
To focus on who Galt invites explicitly in the text is to completely miss or ignore all that is implicit in the principles Rand establishes throughout the rest of the book. Indeed, based upon those principles Galt’s Gulch would almost certainly have had sign out front stating: “Skilled Laborers Welcome”
that's actually why I like Samantha Mathis' portrayal of Dagny better. She seemed overwhelmed by what she faced; outmatched, yet she kept fighting on. Of course, I'm a bigot; I hate Superman. The only clip from the new movie I've seen is Superman getting knocked through a building and laying there (it's my plan to eventually give that clip a closing caption of "Should have used Rearden Metal").
My heroes are inadequate. If you're impervious to bullets, doesn't take a lot of courage to stand your ground; they have to invent supervillans to challenge you.
But, Audie Murphy standing on the back of that burning tank-killer, holding off a company of the enemy. Just a scrawny kid none of the services wanted. Or the AVG, "Flying Tigers", who with only 15 planes operational had the Japs believing they had 300. Rocky, only wanting to just go the distance, to prove he ain't no bum...
So I *loved* Samantha Mathis' Dagny. She's why I watch part 2 every day; why I put it on my phone to listen to while I work. It's why I prefer the First, skinny little Eddie who comes into the room to do battle when he hears Ellis Wyatt ranting at Dagny, over the hulking brute they have playing Eddie in part 2.
If Rand didn't want us to think that objectivism was just for ubermenschen, she should have shown her protagonists fail a lot more.
How many times did Howard Roark fail to win commissions in The Fountainhead? He failed in his business, had to close his office and take a job drilling in a quarry.
In Atlas Shrugged, Rand describes Rearden's struggle to invent his metal as taking 10 years with countless failures along the way, and his own staff holding unsaid the statement "it can't be done".
But her artistic credo was not to glorify failure by describing it in detail, and passing it off as the normal state of mankind. Who wants to read a story about someone who gave up trying to invent a superior metal alloy? If nothing has been accomplished, why write about it?
I understand what you're saying about showing her protagonists fail a lot more, but that kind of thing is in her work, too. It is in the background, so maybe we're just arguing about style instead of attitude.
I specifically remember the descriptions of Francisco's cabin being rather simple and modest in appearance save for his grand family crest hanging over the door. There were some high tech advantages over the outside world such as the holographic ray shield and Galt's new engines, but the gulch is overall is described in the book as fairly primitive living. The only important difference between the gulch with the outside world is that those on the inside are free to think and do as they please. No dictatorial government interference, no burdensome regulations, and no one to tell you how much profit you MAY make or how much money you MUST pay your employees. "McDonalds" cough cough.
One rule of being in the gulch early on was that you couldn't really pursue your expertise and had to stick with other jobs that could not be used to benefit the outside world. In the gulch, Hammond ran the grocery store, Narraganesett/Muligan = farming, Rand portrayed herself as the fishmonger, etc. I don't think anyone including Midas Mulligan lived in high tech “super mansions”.
The vast majority of people in the US just shrugged on their own. They had enough of the increasing socialism and being trapped in a dead end job. They all just got up and walked away into the empty darkness. Not everyone could be saved and not all wealthy industrialists were invited to the gulch either. Just as today, there were many billionaires like Oren Boyle or James Taggart. Scumbag wealthy people that are more than happy to use their money and power to influence politicians and keep competitors down while the money flows back into their own pockets. “cough” GE “cough”
Yes, since Rand made him the inventor of a doubletalk drive, he can do anything, unfettered by the laws of spacetime.
He also dug, fitted, and laid granite.
He also worked girders in construction.
Francisco D'anconia, Hank Reardon, Ken Dannager, Ellis Wyatt, and Dagney Taggart worked their careers from the ground up.
Self-made men tend to have a wealth of knowledge, such as brick laying, which they would be happy to trade value for value.
Real world example: I have worked in IT for 25 years, yet I make scratch sourdough bread which my family fights over.
Were there a real gulch, and were I to be there, I would gladly bake the best bread I knew how in order to trade value for value.
On the contrary. IMO, her works were directed as much to reinforcing and encouraging the "non-elite" to believe in and respect the value of their labors and to make the most of them to create value as it was to appeal to the intellectual elite and entrepreneur class.
I saw nothing to suggest that a bricklayer or plumber—any craftsman who took pride in his work and who wanted to do the very best he could in performing it—was to be admired and had every right to demand and receive fair compensation for the value of what he or she produced.
What has she said that makes you feel differently?
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