by Richard Eskow |
Dear Self-Described "Producer":
I received your hate mail this morning. Thank you for emerging from
your self-creating illusion long enough to write it. I particularly
enjoyed your unstated rhetorical debt to the John Galt character in Ayn
Rand's
Atlas Shrugged, who isn't acknowledged enough nowadays for
his historical importance as the most long-winded and incoherent
crybaby in literary history.
It's reassuring to know that his tradition lives on.
I still have faith that there can be a productive exchange of ideas
between rational libertarians and people on the left, who share a common
perspective on certain issues. But a substrain of libertarian and
conservative thought is characterized by a large and undeserved measure
of self-regard, combined with an excess of self-pity and a lack of clear
ideas.
For today's purposes let us stipulate that your email is Exhibit A.
Letter from a Galtian
"I am really curios (sic) to know what motivates the mind of a
socialist," you write. "Why do you think its (sic) fair to penalize
those of us who produce while rewarding those who do not?"
(Apparently the email software used by producers doesn't have a
spell-check function. Fitting, I guess, for people whose fictional hero
described scientists and other educated members of society as
"parasites of subsidized classrooms.")
Later you ask, "What happens when the government has exhausted the
money acquired from the producers? I have a feeling producers will stop
producing if the government is just going to take it."
I don't know you personally, and you didn't sign your name. (Until
the novel's end, everybody knows Galt's name but he refuses to speak.
His legions of anonymous Internet followers like it the other way
around.) I have no way of knowing if you've read the book or just
imbibed Rand's ideas second-hand.
Either way you're a follower of John Galt, who, in Rand's famous (and
entirely implausible) climax, leads a "strike" of job-producing
visionaries rebelling against taxes and regulation.
Quitting Time
Atlas Shrugged is so revered in right-wing circles that, as
one ex think tanker admitted, people who hadn't read it were described
as "virgins." (Without the readership of virgins it would have
languished in obscurity.) Rand's acolytes are always threatening to "go
Galt" and deprive us of their beautiful minds, but they never really
get around to it. Like the old Dan Hicks song says, "How can we miss
you if you won't go away?"
Most parasites of the subsidized classroom know that, in Greek
mythology, Atlas holds up the world. One Rand character asks another,
"What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
Warning to would-be Galts: Shrugging while holding a heavy globe on
your neck and shoulders is orthopedically unsound and could lead to
severe cervical spine injury. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of
physics knows that the easiest way to unload a heavy planet by simply
standing up straight.
When was the last time
you stood up straight? You, like John
Galt, have been benefiting from government services all your life. The
upstanding thing to do is to acknowledge that fact, and then man up and
pay your fair share. (I assume you're a man by your prose style, your
chosen pen name - and by the fact that most of Rand's followers are.)
Instead, you guys are always threatening to "go Galt." Which raises the question: Who's stopping you?
Who is John Galt?
Ayn Rand tries desperately to stack the deck in favor of her
petulant, whiny, and selfish character by having him leave the public
education system at age twelve. Later he attends the "Patrick Henry
University." ("Give me liberty or give me death"? Subtlety was never
Rand's strong suit.) Even so, somebody taught him to read and write -
and somebody taught
them.
After school's out our massively brilliant philosopher/engineer hero
(For some reason another character's catchphrase comes to mind: "Wile
E. Coyote, super genius") joins a car company and designs the
revolutionary motor of the future. And when they collectivize the car
company - because, hey, that happens all the time, right? - he stops
work on his motor and goes into hiding.
(To anticipate the obvious Galtian riposte: Yes, the government
temporarily ran the car companies, saving lots of jobs after your guys
broke the economy. These car companies are doing great. The government
rescued banks and
didn't run them. Those companies are doing badly and
costing us jobs.)
So let's recap: John Galt learned to read and write at the
government's expense. He survived childhood without dying from some
mass epidemic, thanks to government public health efforts. He avoided
being poisoned to death by improperly prepared foods - beef, poultry,
milk - or killed by defective machinery - in a car, bus, elevator, or
train, for starters - because of government regulations.
Then he got a great job with people who, like his friends and allies,
enjoyed the same benefits. And when something happened he doesn't like,
he cut and ran.
Some hero.
Galt's climactic speech is a rhapsody of self-entitled victimhood,
even after Rand goes to great lengths to make him a comic-book
superhero.
Producer or Parasite?
Many of today's "producers" are parasites, even more so than when
Rand wrote her book. Mitt Romney's form of "Bain Capitalism," which is
shared by Wall Street's big banks, is based almost entirely on betting
with other people's money, living large when they win and getting
rescued by hardworking, taxpaying Americans - the
real producers - when they lose.
And when they lose they still live large. They don't produce jobs, they take them away.
Savor these words, however, as another logorrheic Rand proxy lacerates society's parasites. He calls them ...
" ... whining rotters who never rouse themselves to any
effort, who do not possess the ability of a filing clerk, but demand the
income of a company president, who drift from failure to failure and
expect you to pay their bills ... who demand that it be the aim of your
life to serve them, who demand that your strength be the voiceless,
rightless, unpaid, unrewarded slave of their impotence ... they are born
to rule by the grace of incompetence .. yours is only to give, theirs
only to take ... yours is to produce, but theirs to consume ... you are
not to be paid, neither in matter nor in spirit, neither by wealth nor
by recognition nor by respect nor by gratitude ..."
Wow! What a great description of Wall Street bankers! Oh, wait ...
Another one of Rand's over-talkative proxies is a physician who says
this, after enjoying all the same government-paid benefits that Galt
himself skimmed off the system::
"I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago.
Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? ... I would not
let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent
..."
I guess that means he doesn't take Medicare. Good luck with those HMOs, Doc!
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of ... I Forget the Third
Which gets us to the other point of your note, Mr. Self-Described Producer:
"If healthcare should be a right then where does it stop? Could one
not use the same argument that everyone has a right to free housing? A
free car? Perhaps free air travel? Who will pay for all this?"
Healthcare is a right because it is essential to "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." Those are the freedoms on which are country
is founded, and they're precisely the freedoms which so many Galtians
despise. In Rand's world the pursuit of happiness is restricted to the
most brutal, while life and liberty are yours to fight for if you can.
And if the profiteers have killed your parents and impoverished your
community and you're a six year old trying to survive -- well, tough
luck, you worthless rotter.
Randians want to destroy government and turn this country into a
brutal, savage, Mad Max landscape of roving economical (and possibly
physical) gangs. You know who would get hurt, besides those of us whose
work enriches others?
Producers.
When BP despoiled the Gulf of Mexico, a lot of producers were hurt.
Fishermen, including those who were hardworking enough to build up a
little fleet of boats and hire others, were badly hurt by the greed and
lax regulation that led to the disaster. So were hotel owners,
restaurant owners, and other
real producers.
One of the few real functions your Mr. Galt will permit government to
fulfill is "to protect you from criminals." But what if the criminals
call themselves "producers"? Crime on Wall Street is real crime, too.
And crimes like BP's hurt other producers.
Galt's two other permissible government functions were to protect his
intellectual property and save him from foreign invaders. But if he
admits that government is good for some things, he's already lost his
argument. It's like that nasty old joke about prostitution: Now we're
just dickering.
Healthcare: Galtism's Greatest Failure
As for healthcare, let's drop the emotionality and look at the facts:
Healthcare costs in this country are much higher than they are anywhere else in the developing world, because we've followed
your philosophy by leaving it in the hands of private enterprise.
As a result, tens of thousands of people die needlessly every year and many more are disabled.
Medicare, that "socialist" system, is immensely popular among Americans of all political orientations - because it works.
It works because we get our money's worth out of it. When we go to
your so-called "producers," however, we get private health insurance
whose costs rise at three times that of rational systems or the economy
as a whole. We get a grotesque, mismanaged system that serves no one
but its executives, offering less coverage at greater cost with every
passing year. That's why most people who go bankrupt because of
healthcare have health insurance.
Thanks to the Acme Insurers and HMOs of America, "health insurance" provides neither "health" nor "insurance."
Wile E. Coyote, super-genius ... The day that health insurance executives "go Galt" will be the day that most Americans are dancing in the streets.
Healthcare
is a right, unlike cars or airplane trips, because driving and flying are choices but inhabiting a body is not.
If we don't provide this right in a rational way our entire economy
will collapse under the expanding burden of our Galtian healthcare
system. Death and disease rates will skyrocket, public health will be
threatened, and the cost of medical care will leave people with no money
left to buy the things real producers create.
Producers of the World, Unite - and Regulate
Who knows? Maybe you
are a real producer. Maybe you're like I
was in the business world, creating and building services that employ
people. I never got wealthy at it, but it was certainly satisfying -
and I'd like to see others enjoy that same satisfaction. If they get
rich that way, even better. Everybody loves real producers, including
the left.
But real producers won't be able to create jobs - not if there are no
schools to educate their employees, no regulations to keep them safe,
no roads or bridges to carry their products, and no money left after
struggling Americans are done paying their health insurance premiums and
caring for their elderly grandparents.
Galt claimed that he and his fellow "super-geniuses" were "the motor
of the world," but today's "producers" aren't the "motor" of anything,
much less the world economy. They're its flat tires, its dead weight,
the hitchhiker in its passenger seat who grabs the wheel and crashes the
car whenever the driver isn't looking.
"This is the mind on strike," said John Galt. It must be. His
arguments lack intellectual coherence. Coherence requires critical
thinking and a command at the facts, two valuable social functions that
are often performed by "parasites of the subsidized classroom."
Brigitte Bardot once said that the most powerful erogenous zone of
all is the mind. That's one place where you guys are still virgins.
But it's never too late to change that. A lot of people would be happy
to provide you with a list of reading materials that can explain how low
taxes and under-regulation destroy people and societies. In fact, you
can start with today's newspaper.
PS: If you can read this, thank a parasite.
_______
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