Tools Down Tools

It would surely not be too much work to construct a Virtual Galt’s Gulch, where you could only read right-wing blogs if you typed “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” into a password bar. This would presumably have an effect on advertising revenues, but then the inhabitants of the fictional Galt’s Gulch also had to accept a decline in their living standards (Ayn Rand tried to pretend that these millionaire industrialists were just as happy working as subsistence farmers and manual labourers, but really, does this sound at all likely?)

actually, googling around, this is incredibly easy to do. Why don’t they do it? why? why?

What, no solidarity? I say we *all* sleep in tomorrow. Chatterers of the world…

Is anybody really wondering at this point if the Pajamas TV experiment is going to work out?

the post title uses the word “tools” twice, once to refer to the implements of production (and more directly to a strike slogan), once to refer pejorstively to risible gits.

but which token is which?

is the title parsed like
“striking gits”, i.e. “tools-down!” tools, where the pejorative is the second token,
or like “gits go on strike”, i.e. tools put down their tools, where it’s the first token?

please record your unreflective first parsing with your comment.

I thought that recent events would finally send “libertarians” over the edge, and I was right. This, in particular, is extremely funny.

Then McArdle answers critics who say Europeans at least have more free time: “That’s true, but in fact they spend an enormous amount of their leisure doing stuff that Americans pay for. Like they paint their own houses and mow their own lawns and they do all of these things themselves.” Quel horreur! Fancy McArdle painting anything when she could be doing economics. “Well,” she continues, “if you have a heart surgeon it’s not really a good use of society’s resources to have him mowing a lawn. That’s not what he’s best at.” So, comrade enjoys puttering around the house, eh? The Central Committee has spoken — you and your wife get back to the work you do best; we’ll send a trained baby sitter to watch your kids.

Speak for yerself, Donald: I was gonna write half an article tomorrow morning.

But actually I realize, on reflection, that I have been going Galt for decades. Had it not been for crippling progressive taxation I would be an absolute captain of industry by now.

This subject fill me with unease because it forces me to recognize that I, an inventor and entrepreneur, “went Galt” nine years ago, at the height of extortionate Clinton taxation. Of course I thought of it as “selling out” or “retiring” at the time; some of our former employees consider us lazy, shiftless bums, though I think of it as returning to my hippie roots.

Thirty-some years ago I had enough saved to coast for a few months without working, and eventually managed to start collecting unemployment. But then my father needed me to help bail out his bankrupt business, and before I knew it eleven years had passed, there were five patents with my name on them, my father was dead, and none of my siblings owned houses. My brother and I started another company, and eleven years later I had another five patents, all my siblings had houses, and I could finally give myself over to the indolence for which I’ve always exhibited a pronounced aptitude.

It’s true that the world has gone to hell since I quit, but I’m fairly confident that it’s not my fault.

I didn’t bother to watch the video; the Insta-Wife is the most banal possible human.

Q: So, you have a blog, Mrs. Reynolds. What are your interests?

A: I like to talk about stuff on the internet!

As for Atlas Shrugged, I could write a lengthy comment about the genuinely important ideas expressed in that book. Ayn Rand was somehow able to condense all that into an 1100-page novel about animated stick figures, and I suppose she ought to be commended for getting to the end of it. As one who has made that trudge, I’d say it’s like running a marathon over high hurdles on ten-foot stilts, through a gauntlet of air horns blowing at random.

Seriously, though: there really are people out there who spend their workdays thoughtfully arranging for the production of real wealth. They don’t know or care about Reynolds or Rand or “going Galt”, and they don’t chatter or preen on the internet. They do privately complain about the uselessness of producing anything when they can neither reinvest capital nor take profit without various governments crunching down on them. Then they quietly lay off employees, trim sail on their little shops and factories, and take afternoons off.

No, Ajay, I have no evidence. My information is strictly personal and anecdotal, and you know what they say about the plural of anecdote.

Sleep well.