Pirate bookkeepers and out-of-town legislators

Atlas Shrugged – Day 052 – pp. 579-588

I’m going to try something a little different starting this evening. Rather than narrate the story like I’ve been doing, I’m going to try to recap a little less and think out loud a little more. A little more color, and a little less play-by-play. I’ll still include quotations from the book that I find particularly arresting, but not too much retyping. (I was starting to feel like I was just rewriting the damn thing!) So let’s see how it goes shall we?

Where were we? Oh yeah. Hank was confronting the Dread pirate Danneskjold (. . .Nah, “Dread Pirate Roberts” from the Princess Bride’s better too. Who names a pirate Ragnar?)

Anyway, Hank and Ragnar. Ragnar is explaining his accounting system to Hank. That he has a rather large account in his name. He has no way of knowing all of what’s been looted from Hank, with the exception of one account where meticulous records are kept.

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A Real life Directive 10-289

It’s always nice to see family.

My cousin had a lay-over in Ft. Lauderdale yesterday so she gave me a call and we went out for a bite to eat.

She’s a pilot for probably the only profitable airline in the country. We got on the subject of the merger between her employer and another carrier. (Actually her airline is buying the other one.)

She mentioned the McCaskill/Bond legislation. Continue reading “A Real life Directive 10-289”

Plotting the death of the free world

Atlas Shrugged – Day 055 – pp. 539-548

If I may paraphrase Directive 10-289. . .

Point One – you are officially chained to your job — quitting is a criminal offense

Point Two – if you own a business, you have to keep it in operation no matter what

Point Three – all patents, copyrights, intellectual property and the like must be turned over to the state as a “patriotic emergency gift”

Point Four – nothing new shall be invented, produced or sold

Point Five – industry shall be required to produce the exact same amount of goods as they did during the “basic year”

Point Six – everyone shall spend the same amount of money they did on the goods they bought in the “basic year”

Point Seven – all wages, prices, salaries, dividends (and about any other payout you can think of) shall be frozen

Point Eight – anything not covered (or if you break the rules) ends up in front of the Unification Board . . .

Continue reading “Plotting the death of the free world”