Memo to the Would-Be John Galts
Dear moguls, magnates, captains of industry and masters of the universe,
Lately, we’ve noticed some media chatter over the notion that you might “go Galt” in response to the recent leftward political drift and the increasingly populist demands of the disgruntled public. Going Galt entails following the example of John Galt, the romantic, individualist hero/businessman of Ayn Rand’s best-seller, Atlas Shrugged. In the novel, Galt decides to withdraw from the world in order to deny an ungrateful society the fruits of his creative genius. We think it’s a great idea.
The truth is, we never deserved you. Please go. We never deserved your visionary leadership in the manufacturing, transportation and energy sectors, your inventive ability to devise new, arcane financial instruments, your wonderful political lobbies and their committed advocacy for sound policies in the realms of health care, education and foreign policy. We never deserved any of it.
We tried, half-heartedly, to show our appreciation by rewarding you with massive tax cuts, subsidies for your industries, grants for your research departments, and multi-billion dollar no-bid government contracts. But apart from those meager contributions, it was really your entrepreneurial spirit that earned you your first, second and third yachts, your helicopter and your diamond toilet bowl.
So teach us our lesson and leave. Let our economy devolve into a primitive bartering system where ten chickens will be worth one goat and two goats will be worth one iPod . Meanwhile, you can eat, drink and make merry in your secret Xanadu.
Please, follow the John Galt model as faithfully as possible and vanish without a trace. Leave your properties, art collections and, especially, your liquor cabinets intact. We, the hoi polloi, will now be burdened with the responsibility of managing your holdings and disposing of your estates as best we can.
We only ask that you pack your bags and spirit yourselves to your top-secret pleasure dome before we take the trouble of raising the scaffold, unpacking the guillotine and sharpening the blade. It’s such a pain.
Sincerely,
The Rabble
P.S.: Please take any and all copies of Ayn Rand’s fabulous novels with you. We don’t deserve them either.
