Did Dagney Err in not Cashing the Check?
Posted by bassboat 10 years, 4 months ago to The Gulch: General
When Dagney was in Galt's apartment before they came to arrest him, Galt instructed Dagney to betray him, throw him under the bus. She was to take the $500,000 check from the government for turning Galt in. After all of the melodrama that followed, Galt is captured and Dagney has returned to her office she sits down and opens an envelop from the government. It is the finder's fee from the government for turning him in. She simply throws it in the trashcan as if it has no more importance than a Kleenix. My opinion here is that this is an error on her part. She has obviously decided to go to the Gulch and live with Galt. Galt's aim along with Francisco and Ragnar was to destroy the looter and moocher system in place. Dagney should have cashed the check and turned it into whatever gold she could exchange it for. She could take gold to the Gulch and by depleting the state of cash and gold it would have hastened the demise of the state albeit it small.
An alternate action that would be a multi-pronged insult would be to give it to her brother.
Insults him - since he is unable to earn anything on his own
Insults the moochers - she doesn't want their money and shows them by giving it to another moocher
Insults the moochers - she will not be part of their corrupt system even now
On the other hand there is Dagny's ethos, she would take no money that she did not earn.
"The ends justify the means" Machiavelli (also Marx?).
The reply is, but the means determine the ends.
Bear this in mind--a thing Alan Greenspan might or might not have understood at the time: when the government cuts a check, they merely change an account registry to "credit" you with the amount. They do not deliver gold, or even physical cash or a true letter of credit, either to you or to your designated agent. Our deposits are meaningless. The only thing meaningful is physical gold--and by then, no one had any outside the Gulch.
The only purpose to serve by cashing that check would have been to preserve her "cover."
I do not recall the check in the book, but I do recall thinking the president's staff seemed so desperate that she could easily feign that she'll give them her grudging assistance and then escape at the first chance. It seems like the gov't officials were so scared and confused they would have not seen through the act.
Maybe she didn't do that, though, because she felt like she'd tried to work the gov't for years and found they were just better at manipulative games than she was. Maybe she figured if she tried to pretend to go alone, they would outsmart her using their expert abilities to manipulate and use people.
p.s. this would make a good trivia question, too!
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