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Start by abolishing all income taxes and fire your government employees

Iqbal Latif - 2/23/2009

Atlas Shrugged* was Ayn Rand's greatest achievement and last work of fiction. "Atlas" bleakly predicted that we will treat the inept that destroy their companies as victims, while those ingenious business owners who deliver earnings are depicted as recipients of illicit boon. (According to a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, readers rate "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible. )

Stephen Moore in a recent article in WSJ under 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years wrote that, “If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration, I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster. In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Ayn Rand’s heroes are those who “Throughout the centuries were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.”

"Atlas Shrugged" is a remembrance and tribute to the individuals who were true entrepreneurs, the risk takers. Ayn shrugs the concept of mounting wealth through paper and derivates, the best past time of current set of ‘geniuses’ on Wall Street is admonished and human intellect and skills appreciated. According to her ‘Incentive and vision combined have produced miracles: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.’

Atlas Shrugged is a journey of déjà vu. After the economy had totally collapsed with the best of ‘efforts and intentions’ of the greatest of the economic minds, the most memorable part of the book is the dialogue of the politicians with the hero of the book, John Galt. This may sound like a rerun of today’s economic discourses in the capitol city. This is an unforgettable instance in the book:

Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"
Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"
"And you'll obey any order I give?"
"Implicitly!"
"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."
"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"
"Fire your government employees."
"Oh, no!"

Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, was published in 1936. With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943, she achieved spectacular and enduring success. Through her novels and nonfiction writings, which express her unique philosophy, Objectivism, Rand maintains a lasting influence on popular thought.

WSJ article explains the moral of the story interlaced by the book is simply this: ‘Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.’ Rand came to America from Soviet Russia with remarkable understanding of the destructiveness of Marxism. According to a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, readers rate "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible. In ‘Atlas Shrugged’ she dramatizes her unique philosophy through an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. It is set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists.

She writes that “In the name of the best within you do not sacrifice this world to those who are at its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach.’’

According to WSJ Moore’s* article ‘the current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. The $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act:" This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost.’ In the book is an innovator who discovers a new wonder metal, stronger than steel but far lighter. Incentive is thrown out of the window and under the name of "the public good" Washington demands that entrepreneur comes to the capitol and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything. According to WSJ this is ‘eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in "the public interest.’

This novel presents an amazing landscape of human life - from the creative genius who becomes an insignificant playboy to the big steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction...to the philosopher who becomes a pirate...to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad...to the lowest track worker in her train tunnels. Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller.

In a hearing Oct 23 2008 before the US Congress House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve (1987-2006), who was also a former member of Rand's "Collectives" club, and contributor to her newsletter, broke with his longstanding commitment to pure Objectivist laissez-faire economic theory, in connection with the economic collapse of 2008.

His statement read: "The whole intellectual edifice of modern risk management collapsed....Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief." During the testimony, he stated: "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders, and their equity in the firms....I found a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak....I was shocked, because I've been going for forty years or more, with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html

This is a book that everyone should read and appreciate what great minds and innovators can bring on the table, motivation and reward allied with hard work are the real cause of growth and progress. Securitisation of assets needs to be put on hold as new intellectual assets are created by giving people a chance to work harder and be compensated. Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin and Marx could not achieve ‘fairness’ through egalitarian and classless forced parity, hundred of millions of lives were lost in these futile live experiences. The only way forward is reinstatement of novelty and growth through creativity, originality and imagination.