Atlas Shrugged – Day 066 – pp. 721-730
I just had a thought. All these men of industry are creating a veritable capitalist paradise in Mulligan’s mysterious valley. Cashing in on the power of their minds. Exchanging value for value.
But. . .
How do they plan to re-enter society? I mean, I’m guessing here, they eventually plan on returning to the world once it’s crushed itself. Rebuilding out of the ashes. Francisco has pretty much said that outright.
The G will fall and the currency will be debased to nothing. . . but how do you erase an ingrained sense of entitlement? How do you wash that out of the public’s psyche?
Sure there will be those who are still of an industrious bent, like our little tramp friend on the train. But like the woman on the train (who I forgot to mention — who felt entitled to transportation — who called Taggart Trans a “common carrier”), how do you purge that out of society? Won’t she still be hanging around somewhere?
I really can’t see them coming back in the face of that. Just wondering. I’m sure we’ll find out. . .
Anyway, on with the show.
Dagny sees two men working with Wyatt. One happens to be the young brakeman all the way back from Part I Chapter 2 who was whistling Halley’s Fifth. Now he’s Halley’s best music pupil.
And then Rand tosses out some uncharacteristicly practical wisdom:
She smiled. “I know , this is a place where one employs nothing but aristocrats for the lousiest kinds of jobs.”
“They’re all aristocrats, that’s true,” said Wyatt, “because the know that there’s no such thing as a lousy job — only lousy men who don’t care to do it.”
Wyatt is perfecting his method for extracting oil from shale. And from here she goes into a bit of a diatribe on wealth. Now I think most critics of Rand would say her message overly materialistic. All about the money. Charity be damned. If you don’t earn it you don’t deserve it.
I think the next bit sheds a little light on that.
Ellis Wyatt is only producing 200 barrels of oil a day. He was planning on filling 5 tank trains a day in the other world. What a shame. He’d be earning so much more in the old world.
“Dagny, . . . one gallon of it is worth more than a train full back there in hell – because this is mine, all of it, ever single drop of it, to be spent on nothing but myself.”
Critics, all together now. . . SEE!!! WE TOLD YOU!!!
Why would he want to produce more? To feed the looters? — No, ostensibly, to earn the money you deserve.
“But I’m richer now that I was in the world. What’s wealth but the means of expanding one’s life? There two ways one can do it; either by producing more or by producing it faster. And that’s what I’m doing: I’m manufacturing time.”
“Where’s your market?”
“Only those who add to my life, not those who devour it, are my market. Only those who produce, not those who consume, can ever be anybody’s market. I deal with the life-givers, not with the cannibals. . . . We’re free of one another, yet we all grow together. Wealth, Dagny? What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing?”
There is a deeper meaning to Rand. The greatest virtue in life isn’t money . . . it’s to create value. To add to the world. Compensation is just a result. A side-effect. And you can only consume as much as you can produce. I think the critics get these two ideas confused.
Anyway. . . what else?
Ted Nielsen’s the local lumberjack. Roger Marsh is the cabbage king. And Andrew Stockton is running a foundry.
When Stockton first arrived, someone else was running the local foundry. Stockton had to drive them out of business. Bad? Not at all. He now employs his former competitors who are making more money spending less time (because Stockton’s methods are superior) and everyone is happier. (Besides the old foundry owner was a sculptor.)
What about Stockton? Doesn’t he worry someone could put him out of business. Only one man could do that. — Hank Rearden.
“She felt simultaneously, that Hank Rearden’s presence in the valley was impossible — and that this was his place . . . “
Still not getting what keeps Hank at the wheel back home. Fighting the “bad fight.”
Stockton’s other employee is Ken Danagger. He’s working for Stockton while setting up an iron ore mining concern. Dagny sees a conflict.
“Aren’t you training a man who could become your most dangerous competitor?”
“That’s the only sort of men I like to hire. . . Any man who’s afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who’s in a business where he doesn’t belong.”
True. But judging from the aristocrat comment above, that pool might be dangerously low.
Throughout her tour so far, Dagny is starting to relearn the principles she grew up with. That excellence should attract excellence and beget excellence. Ideas that she’s since lost living in the looters’ world.
Back on the road, and down through town. They come to the Mulligan Bank. And just past it is the Mulligan Mint. Yep. He’s stamping his own gold currency. I’m not sure how many laws that kind of action is violating, but clearly there’s a collective middle finger flying directly at the powers that be.
They move on through the residential district. All the houses are individually built — “. . .no two houses were alike, and the only quality they had in common was the stamp of a mind grasping a problem and solving it.”
They finally come to a home at the end of the valley.
“It was the humblest home in the valley, a log cabin beaten in dark streaks by the tears of many rains, only it great widows withstanding the storms with the smooth, shining, untouched serenity of glass.”
Francisco’s house. The first man he took away from her.
As they continue, they come upon “. . .a simple cube of granite, the size of a toolshed, it had no windows, no apertures of any kind, only a door of polished steel and a complex set of wire antennae branching out from the roof.”
It’s the power station — Galt’s motor.
Oooooooh…..