Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

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because John Galt had carefully sabotaged the bridges and railroads

John Galt destroyed nothing except a room full of his own inventions. The railroads were destroyed due to the poor management of Dagny's brother (forget his name) and interference from Washington.

Also, from that link:

John Galt, outraged that anybody would even suggest that he or the company he worked for owed anything to the nation that provided his education, protected him from infectious disease outbreaks, protected him from Communist invasion, built the roads that got him to work each day, provided the police that kept him safe, and provided the court system that protected his property rights at all, sabotaged the Galt Engine, so nobody could have it.

As I recall, one of the heroic characters (Ragnar?) specifically states that these are all legitimate functions of the government and that they should be financed by taxes. In fact, one of the strikers actually worked for the government (Judge Narragansett).

It's always helpful to read a book before criticizing it.

Yeah. It ticks me off that Rand is associated with anarcho-capitalism (I think that's the phrase to describe people that want to replace government with corporations, no?). She isn't. She's all for government, but she has it restricted to three primary functions: depending people physically (with police), depending people morally (with law), and defending the nation (with a military). However, she says that these functions should be kept as minimal as possible, so as to give people maximum freedom.

It bugs me, because the Anthem argument ignores so much to make a snarky point (and Anthem is a terribly-written book, both Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are better-writ). It goes by this vision of Rand as a near-Nazi who wants conformity to her Galtian standard. She doesn't, and she says this repeatedly. Rather, she wants Galt to be the bringer of the message that you ought to do things using your own abilities, primarily for yourself.

She's fine with charity, as long as you give what you want to and not what you feel compelled to. She's fine with tax, as long as you're only being taxed for the services that directly apply to you. She's entirely fine with people disagreeing with her, provided they disagree based on their own moral convictions rather than on the convictions they read of others. (I thought that made the OP a bit ironic.) This all gets ignored for the blind Rand-hate that exists solely to counteract all the blind Rand-love. It's frustrating.

Agree...Also, from that link: ‘built the roads that got him to work each day’ and they built those roads without your consent like the stimulus package now, you will get it from your tax money regardless if you want it or not. How many cameras did those roads include so your government can watch you? How many $2,000 hammers? How many pay-offs to the political class were made for it to happen, behind closed doors? The argument you ‘owe society’ is false, what you owe is freedom within that society that let it happen and that is all. The greater the personal liberties are held foremost in society the greater the benefits that can be developed for your fellow man. How much good for society happened under Mao, Hitler and Stalin? The infrastructure that the Weimar Republic built centered on promising its citizens too much. This led to huge budget deficits that created inflation on a level the world had never seen before. I’d rather take my chances without everything the link says government gave me:-)

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