Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand wrote a book titled, "Atlas Shrugged." It was a fictional story built around a philosophy and also a warning. The philosophy is that it is proper and right to express self interest, it is right to enjoy the fruits of your labor, it is proper to expect compensation or payment for your efforts, logic and rationality are of man's highest nobility. The warning is that there are those out there that see need as the measure of the award due a man. There are those that believe that a man or woman of business is an evil person. They believe that a person's success can only come at the expense of someone else. They believe that it must be government that must level the playing field to their concept of fair. The crowning irony is that those who are successful must be willing or complicit in their own enslavement and condemnation at the hands of those that would claim for their own the fruits of that person's efforts. In other words, a successful business person sees themselves as less than virtuous simply because of the opinions of those who are not successful. Yet, those very people who condemn the successful business person depend upon him or her either directly or indirectly for their sustenance. What if one day, all the successful business people threw up their hands and quit? What then?

Well, folks,

Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957. Ms. Rand might almost seem prophetic. The government bureaucracy, which is a spring that absorbs all momentum, is being expanded at a phenomenal rate. Many of our businesses are being vilified by those who have never produced. Many of the seemingly bad decisions made by business were in some way foisted upon those businesses by government programs, laws, and regulations that consider need as a measure of merit. Is it logical to extend a mortgage to one that cannot pay it back? Why would a business do that? On it's own, it would not. It does something like that due to an outside factor such as a government regulation promising some sort of punitive measure for not doing it.
Automotive CAFE standards, Safety Standards and the like - Can't consumers vote with their power of purchase? Why must government force something that the populace has not demanded?
What of Unions? Unions are good when they are formed to address real abuses of workers. What are some such abuses? Such abuses are forcing a worker into a dangerous situation where the worker has no ability to control the danger. IE: forcing a worker to use a ladder with broken rungs ,work from a platform with a bad floor. Another abuse is asking the employee to do something illegal. Unions are bad when they negotiate salaries and benefits beyond what the market would normally bear. Unions are bad when the resort to intimidation, threats, and violence to achieve their goals. If a situation is truly bad at an employer's facility, coercion will not be needed for the employees to unionize. Mere opportunity is all that needs to be provided. If the opportunity is provided but not taken, then the employer is not that bad.

When the efforts of government and unions are combined against an industry that is fine when left to respond to pure market forces, that is when double trouble starts.

I see private property rights in danger. I see eminent domain being twisted to where it is used to seize private property from one person and given to another based on the taxes that will be generated. I see that we are being robbed at the point of the figurative and literal government gun. The stolen 'loot' is then given liberally to those who have done nothing to earn it. All the while, the things that make a government necessary such as infrastructure and common defense are ignored by that government. I see more and more of this looting by our government to provide medical care. Do you really want the government in on your medical history? Do you really want it so that it is illegal for you to seek medical care outside that government system?
The costs of health care are awful. I am not clear on all the reasons, but I am sure that it has something to do with government and insurance companies. At one time in my childhood, a doctor's visit was $10. The doctor actually gave you a few minutes. The doctor had his own practice and was not affiliated with a large corporation. I have a theory. The doctors are not making much more in real money than they ever have.

I am meandering around. The point is that a book published over half a century ago is becoming more and more relevant every day. I recommend reading it. You may learn something.