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The John Galt plan to save the economy
Caroline Baum writes via Bloomberg:
“Any day, I expect some government official to unveil the John Galt plan to save the economy.
Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ stops the world by going on strike. He and the ‘men of the mind’ literally withdraw from the world after watching their wealth confiscated by the looters (the government).
Toward the end of Rand’s 1,000-plus page novel (or polemic), the economy is in shambles. Desperate, the looters kidnap Galt and prod him to ‘tell us what to do.’
Galt refuses, or rather tells them ‘to get out of the way.”
You probably can sense where I’m going. Today’s economic and financial crisis would resolve itself more quickly and efficiently if the government got out of the way. Yes, there would be pain. Some banks would fail. Others would clamp down on credit to atone for the years of lax lending standards. Homeowners-in-name-only would become renters. Housing prices would fall until speculators found value.
That’s not going to happen. The bigger the mess, the more urgent the calls for a government solution, the more willing government is to oblige.
We want laissez-faire capitalism in good times and a government backstop against losses in bad times. It’s a tough way to run an economy.”
The thing I disagree with is Baum’s idea that “some government official” will unveil the “John Galt” plan to save the economy. The bureaucrats are too prideful to seek a solution outside of government. The media has proped these guys up as all knowing and the general public has bought the line: if government can’t fix it then who can? Furthermore, there are no John Galts, no Hank Reardens, no Dagney Taggarts, no Francisco d’Anconia, and no Ragnar Danneskjölds left in the world. Our so called ‘men of the mind’ have also bought into the idea that government can fix it and that they are powerless to do nothing except get in line and pay taxes.
The whole thing makes me sick.
Amen
Left by Rand on 03/11/2008