Irving:
“But please, go ahead, pick up your marbles and go home. Feel free to pout. It demonstrates some point very capably.”
We’ve been told that “we are our brother’s keeper”, and learned “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” (paraphrased) in an exchange between Senator Obama and a plumber.
I think that Rand’s point was “why would any rational person produce anything beyond subsistence if that surplus production could and would be diverted to another without consent in the name of the public good”. Also central to Rand’s theme was “who gets to define the public good”. In Atlas Shrugged it was the traders of “pull in Washington”, and the public good was used to justify any grab for power or wealth.
Any rational person can choose not to participate in enabling their own immolation, as evidenced by some of the comments here. They’ve scale back their income to service themselves, not benefit others through higher marginal tax rates. I’m pretty sure that as more and more people do this, a natural contraction the economy would occur that would continually seek a lower level of uniform misery.
There is no need of a real John Galt to consciously lead a strike when any producer can occasionally opt out of generating economic wealth for the service of others.
