Why did Atlas Really Shrug?

I tend to smile when I hear people who have discovered Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism for the first time. Through her novels, to include her longest and arguably most important novel, Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, Ayn Rand shared predictions of pending social and economic collapse as a result of moving away from laissez-faire capitalism to statism or collectivism. Rand believed the natural evolution of highly regulated markets, with increasing government intervention, would eventually lead to the nationalization of industries to benefit the common good without regard for those who created them. Yaron Brook, the current president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, who published an article in The Wall Street Journal in 2009 asked, “Is Rand Relevant”, referring to Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, where, “Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?” Brook asked.

The predictions of Ayn Rand are eerily familiar when juxtaposed against our current economic condition. For many, Rand’s 1957 novel is an allegory which not so succinctly illustrates where today’s liberal ideology will takes us in the end.

A very quick summary of Ayn Rand's, Atlas Shrugged

The “looters”,” parasites”, and “moochers”, led by the state, demand the benefits derived from society’s most productive members while cursing them for their wealth at the same time. When these leading innovators begin to disappear and are no longer driving the economic engine on which so many rely, economic conditions begin to crumble. When they inquire as to where those who had been maligned as the root cause of all society’s ills had gone, they are left only with an ambiguous question, who is John Galt?
With the drivers of innovation gone and the state run businesses in ruin, John Galt is finally revealed as the leader of an organized "strike" against those who used the laws of the state and "moral guilt" to confiscate the wealth generated by the great industrialists for the benefit of the common good. Rand then used a lengthy 56 page address by Galt to reveal her philosophy of objectivism.

I have recently heard many followers of the tea party, libertarians, and conservatives finding refuge in Rand’s fictional novel that is so eloquently written. It is interesting however, that Rand, a self professed atheist, states in an interview with Mike Wallace in 1959, “man’s highest moral purpose is his own happiness”. She follows by saying, “man has no moral duty to serve others”; in fact she considers the precept of man’s need to serve others to justify his existence and the moral duty to serve others above his own interests, is immoral if not impossible. She goes on to say it is our current altruistic moral precepts that will enslave everybody to everybody and we will move toward disaster until, and unless the concept of a welfare state has been rejected. “The majority of the people have never been given a choice, both [political] parties are for socialism in effect, for controls, and there is no party, there are no voices, to offer an actual pro capitalist, laissez-faire, economic freedom and individualism”.

These are but a few excerpts from a three part interview by Mike Wallace with Ayn Rand provided by You Tube for public re-broadcast. For those interested I highly recommend you watch all three parts.

I mention this because I hope that before we use concepts to profess, or support, our ideologies, we don’t simply use sound bites that support our ideologies. These are incredibly complicated concepts and they deserve the time and attention to understand the whole of the concept before we neatly tuck them in to our world view. Our mainstream news media, today, provides us with “yellow Journalism” not to inform but to provide sound bites which target specific demographics to provide stories that support specific ideologies. The use of exaggerated news stories, fear mongering, and stories taken out of context are designed to simply sell advertising by increasing viewership. It takes work and time to become informed. One of Ronald Reagan’s signature phrases was to “trust but verify”, and I encourage and support this approach when attempting to adopt a view that appears to resonate truth.

So why did Atlas really Shrug? Was it because those for whom the economic weight is carried despise those who carry it? Or was it by virtue of the great industrialists, and most productive members of society who decided to withdraw their goodness from society because it no longer served their rational self interest to provide it? Or perhaps because of Rand's not so apparent intention to introduce objectivism as a replacement theology; where the great minds of men are consider to be the only place where truth and virtue reside, and when society no longer appreciates this truth and virtue, it will be withdrawn; the masses left with nothing but immorality. Does this sound familiar?

Why do I tend to smile? I smile simply because these great men of industry used the concept of the providing enterprise for public good to acheive immense wealth and power. The railroads, steel, oil, all industries helped and supported by the the hand of government and after enough wealth and power was extorted, they used their wealth and access to power to wrestle the good of the public away from the public to perpetuate their own interests. If Ayn Rand would have been more historically accurate about how the "captains of industry" acheived so much, then I would give objectivism more weight. But then again, that's the problem with ideology, the ideal is often more attractive than the reality. If you follow Ayn Rand down this rabbit hole, you will be on your own in every conceivable way. I wish you the best. Maybe Atlas shrugged simply because he too was asked the question, “Who is John Galt"?

Thirty Years and Change

I had written in an earlier post, I believe we commonly develop our ideology by way of life learning that hopefully will allow us to hear the resonance of truth. We develop our world view, so to speak, even when our world is relatively small. This story speaks to my corner of the world and how my life’s learning has affected my view.

I grew up in what is still considered to be a relatively small city, Boise, Idaho. Living outdoors was the rule for most when I was young; backpacking, fishing, rafting, and skiing were some of the activities most Idahoans commonly enjoyed. Suffice it to say there was a kinship that many of us developed with the forests, rivers, and mountains; a kinship i never lost. Standing at the foot of the Sawtooths, White Clouds or Boulder Mountains, when I was young and on foot, gave me the feeling the wilderness was not only magical, it was limitless as well.

I have worked for the same company for nearly thirty years. Literally learning the business from the ground up, I was ultimately given the opportunity to manage a couple of our businesses within one of our divisions. In my time with the company, we have been both public and private, had four CEO’s, a number of Senior VP’s and officers alike, countless mid level and location level managers, and thousands of employees. I have been fortunate to know many of them professionally and personally.

Boise had a number Corporate Headquarters for a small city and I ended up working for one that managed one of Idaho’s major resources, timber. We manufactured and distributed forest products as well as expanded into a number of non-forestry related businesses. My interest and focus had always been with the forest products side of our company. As you might expect, in thirty years, I witnessed significant changes in the public’s awareness and concern for environmental issues. In the late seventies, my view of the forest was that it was not there solely to provide us with recreational opportunities; it was an economic resource as well; a crop so to speak. We planted, cut, manufactured products, and replanted. This seemed fairly straight forward to me, although I quickly became aware of the challenges we faced given the effects forestry had on biodiversity. I also became aware that a publicly traded company's first responsibility was to garner the greatest return to their shareholders. As a result, there was a great deal of skepticism from the public at large about our industry's concern or desire to responsibly manage our public timber resources. The public was becoming increasingly aware of the potential risks of unchecked industrial practices which paved the way for environmental concerns to move from the fringes to the mainstream. A clear conflict between industry and ideology arose in the Pacific Northwest when an environmental movement used the endangered species act, enacted in 1973, to further an environmental agenda; do away with logging altogether by whatever means necessary and do it quickly. The mantra “save the spotted owl” rang through our industry and in less than a decade, the forestry industry in Idaho was decimated; leaving behind many small communities with no way to survive. We saved the owl, but at a tremendous cost; individuals and families lost everything that, in many cases, took generations to build.

I often wonder what happened to those whose property, and way of life, was lost due to what was largely an urban call to save the rural lands; the unintended, or intended, consequence of heeding the public outcry with policies such as the endangered species act was swift. There was no just recourse for these individuals and families; they were gone with no more noise than the whisper of the wind that blew through the forests where they lived.

I vividly remember this was when I first became acutely aware of the effect changes in public policy had on individuals and families on behalf of the "common good". I never had given the environmental movement much consideration prior to the 1980's. I was an advocate for environmental responsibility to be sure, given I had spent most of my youth exploring the very areas that many said were being destroyed. I applauded science being used to improve ways to approach proper watershed management, clear cutting, and burn management. I assumed anyone connected to our public lands were as well. To suggest otherwise defied reason.

A host of sound environmental practices need to be continuously improved in industry in general. Dam systems on the Columbia River, for example, largely contributed to virtually wiping out much of the migratory fish populations in Idaho, yet effective application of good science, within the last thirty years, has significantly contributed to the return of these migratory populations. Good science at time lags industry, given there is often little profit motive for biodiversity study and, in many cases, it frequently conflicts with industry; yet many industries need access to public resources and they need public support to gain it. Our public resources should only be available to industry when we, as citizens, can clearly benefit by that access and this benefit can only be assured when the best science is used to manage it. To assume the best way for our citizens to enjoy our public lands is to lock them up however, makes no more sense than to let industry gain unbridled access. Clean air, water, and natural open spaces need to be preserved for future generations without question. To simply hope that industry pressure, urban expansion, and even individual desires can co-exist with an unguarded environment is unrealistic and unachievable. Hope, it’s been said, is not a strategy. So we want our federal, state, and municipal governments to represent our interest by providing effective stewardship of our natural resources. But we also need to understand that this can have an enormous impact on our citizens so we need to be careful we don't trade ones self-serving agenda for another. At times, our system serves us well, but of course, this largely depends on if your interests are being served when policies shift. Anytime you hear someone say the choice to take from one to give to another for the common good is a simple matter, they are either naïve or dishonest. In any case, there is nothing simple about finding a balance.

Flash forward twenty years and the views that have been carved into my life have been through my personal and professional relationships and experiences. Many of the associations I have made have led me to believe that people are generally concerned about the effect they have on those around them. They are concerned about the environment, health care, jobs, education and families. I wasn't in the board room thirty years ago, so I don't know if we responsibly managed our public lands. Since then however, it should be mentioned, I have met a number of our foresters and they are, without question, the most knowledgeable and environmentally conscience people I know. In addition, today, there are few I respect more than many of the leaders of our organization and it reflects in the quality of the employees in our organization. On many occasions, our company has put our employee's interest ahead of our short term economic interest with the intent to invest in long term, sustainable results; which, it should be observed, serves both.

Too often we wrongly make assumptions about the motivations of people within organizations and the organizations themselves. In many cases these are self serving assumptions with the intent to support whatever position we need. I’m certain this so seldom reflects what you hear, given I so seldom hear it myself. Perhaps it isn’t the norm that people are honest and care for others, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that it’s simply more convenient to acknowledge what we believe to be wrong than hope for what might be right. Tomorrow, make a decision with the intent to benefit those who are impacted by your decision. Search first for the common good by contributing to the common good. Produce something before asking for something. Help someone before asking for help. Does this answer the larger question of where government should begin and end? No, not at all, but it’s a good place to start. This is what I've learned in thirty years and change.

Health care

What are we trying to do with !&#%&#$ health care... are you serious!

Perhaps we can take some of the emotion out of the health care debate by focusing on what we are trying to achieve and why. In an interview on March of 2010, CNBC’s Becky Quick interviewed Warren Buffett on health care. Buffett warned that “what we have now is untenable over time”. He argued that our health care costs have gone from 5 percent of GDP to 17 percent of GDP and this high cost paid by U.S. companies for their employee health care puts them at a competitive disadvantage. He compared the roughly 17 percent of GDP, spent by the U.S. on health care, with the 9 percent of GDP spent by much of the rest of the world; saying, “That kind of a cost, compared with the rest of the world, is like a tapeworm eating at our economic body.” The Gross Domestic Product, GDP, of the United States is roughly $13.85 trillion dollars. If we could reduce our health care cost to 9 or 10 percent of GDP, roughly in line with the rest of the industrialize countries, it would put just under $1 trillion dollars back into our economic system. But, as Buffett succinctly points out, “every dollar spent in health care has a constituency and the big dollars are organized and they’re not going to want to change”.

Insurers, attorneys, AMA, Hospitals, Universities, pharmaceuticals, unions, a host of cottage industries, entitlement programs, bureaucracies, and our political leaders, all have had a seat at the health care table. They have delivered a system we have asked them to deliver; high relative costs, limited access, while delivering high quality, with the flexibility to manage our own care. So, on balance, most citizens are satisfied with the care they personally receive. According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, for both insured and uninsured, Americans are positive about their personal experience with health care. A large majority of all Americans expressed satisfaction with the quality of care they receive, satisfied with their ability to see the doctors and top-quality specialists they choose, and a majority feel that they can receive the latest and most effective treatments.

It is interesting however, in the same poll, that while a wide majority express satisfaction personally with their own care, 54 percent of all Americans are dissatisfied with the overall quality of care in our country. This reflects the recognition that while they may enjoy high quality care, they know there are many who do not. As a result, a surprising 62 percent would support a universal system over a employer based system; not so surprisingly, only 32 percent would support it if it limited their choice of their doctors and there were waiting lists for non-emergency treatments.

If we don't begin working on cost however, we may not have a choice. While the relative current cost is high, it's the cost curve that's alarming. Health Care's rapid rise in cost, if left unabated, will consume much of our economic resources. The centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows that Health Care costs in 2008 surpassed $2.3 trillion dollars, more than three times the $714 billion dollars spent in 1990. The American Journal of Medicine reported that in 2007, medical debt accounted for a shocking 62 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies and over three quarters of medically-related bankruptcies had health insurance. Millions of the uninsured, or under insured, citizens are statistically one accident or illness away from a similar fate.

When the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) compared the United States health care cost, as a percent of GDP and per capita expenditures, against Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden, and the UK, our costs were the highest in all cases, with our per capita expenditure nearly twice that of all of them except Norway. The U.S. spending a third more than Norway. 18 percent of our overall government's spending goes to health care, the highest percentage of all the above mentioned countries, yet we only cover 45 percent of the overall cost of care. The countries above cover 67 to 83 percent of their overall cost of care. This again, suggests we are comparatively inefficient delivering health care, or more accurately said, we are inefficient at delivering health care competitively to the majority of our citizens.

Why has our free market system been unable to deliver health care with comparable costs to other Nations? Partly because our care is privately and publicly provided, and partly because it has never been our intent to competitively deliver Health Care to the majority of our citizens. We have asked our health care providers to deliver a highly responsive, high quality, and flexible system where cost and sell have virtually no relationship.

Health care is driven by need not economic demand, and health care insurance is the mechanism we use to pay for the services rendered; this creates an imperfect market. An imperfect market occurs when information, such as price, is not disclosed immediately to buyers and sellers so they can reach an agreement; this clouds value. In addition, markets driven by need, as opposed to economic demand, behave irrationally, meaning they do not follow typical or predictable market models such as price elasticity. This is where there is a predictable change in demand for a product or service when there is a change in price. So what does all this mean? Imagine the price you would be willing to pay for a cure for aids if you were HIV positive, a prosthetic leg if you lost yours in an accident, a liver for your dying son. The price of health care has some effect but it's difficult to predict when and how much.

Our alternative, in the United States, has been to deliver our Health Care through a quilt work hybrid system of the private and public sector working together, bound by federal and State regulation, with no consensus to improve access or reduce cost. Our government provides care through entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid, which is paid through taxes or future debt obligations. In addition, health care is provided through public and private employers who, in the past, picked up the majority of cost, but the cost has been significantly shifting back to the employee to share in the burden. We also provide health care to those who are uninsured, or under insured, if needed, through emergency rooms, subsidized clinics, or simply by patients failing to pay for services rendered; these costs are covered by the public and private sector raising the price to the insured. We have gone long past the point of providing care as a safety net for those with no economic means. We fundamentally already have a universal health care system albeit a dysfunctional one. Is health care a right or a privilege to be earned, I'm beginning to believe the question is moot.

If we can keep focus on what we are trying to achieve, or better said, agree on what we are trying to achieve, perhaps we can align our citizens to reach an agreeable solution. We are spending more on health care, per person, than any country in the world. If we are going to provide a universal option, which again is something we are already paying for, we need to recognize it as such. But our unwillingness to work together is preventing us from working on cost and access, which by the way, are the two issues that could ultimately kill our economy, if not the patient, literally.

Whether the public or private sector delivers care is less important than who can deliver it most efficiently. Regardless, we need to put forward very clear objectives that are measurable. The four that come to mind are cost, quality, access, and the flexibility to manage our own care. These objectives must, at minimum, meet the average performance of selected industrialized nations. We have the largest and most effective market economy in the world. If we have an aligned, objectively driven strategy to address each of these issues, perhaps we can achieve the most effective health care system in the world. But first, let's just shoot for average.

Our "Original Intent"

I am no scholar, theologian, or politician. I am, most likely, someone like you, a citizen of the United States who wonders with worry about our nation’s ability to survive the multiple problems we face. Like you, I am frustrated with the morass of events that have befallen our country, wars, recession for those employed, depression for those who are not, catastrophic environmental events, ever increasing national debt, ever decreasing value of homes, seemingly endless stories of political and business leaders with little regard for ethics, and a news media with an apparent intent to incite not inform. Conservative or liberal, we are all affected; too few of us believe we can have an effect.

We commonly develop our ideology by way of life learning that hopefully will allow us to hear the resonance of truth, but family, school, peers, media, work, religious and social organizations, and the sheer effort of navigating the endless array of dogma designed to sell us, can also deafen us. Many of us simply fall in line with those we trust and are subtly discouraged to question our place. After all, we are either left or right of center and the center holds no place for patriots; so we've been told.

Perhaps we can find sustainable solutions by heeding Gandhi’s cautions to avoid the Seven Deadly Sins, "Wealth without Work, Pleasure without Conscience, Science without Humanity, Knowledge without Character, Politics without Principle, Commerce without Morality, and Worship without Sacrifice", perhaps we can unify and not divide, and coalesce around some solutions that provides calm amidst the chaos.

Fundamentally, I do believe that when our efforts are directed toward the greater good, we will achieve far greater things for ourselves. This belief provides us with a lens to follow a path we cannot see which brings us lasting joy rather than focusing on a path simply to benefit ourselves.

It is a tendency of government to become tyrannical to those governed. This skepticism in government was the genesis for the ideology that our government should derive its authority from their citizens and provides that those who are affected by government should have a voice in government. This was stated in, what is arguably, the most memorable portion of The Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.

Our government was principally established to first, protect our citizen’s security, sovereignty, and liberty, which were considered beyond the authority of any government. Rights commonly refered to as unalienable or natural rights. Unalienable rights were defined as rights that Government has neither the authority to create nor deny. Second, we created avenues to establish laws that that would lay the foundation for us to engage in applications of civic virtue, or laws that would promote the general welfare of our nation. Thomas Jefferson said, "The happiness and prosperity of our citizens... is the only legitimate object of government and the first duty of governors". By establishing this, our founding fathers gave us a common purpose for government and provided the scope to define where government should begin and end. It also provided us with a hierarchy by which we could establish priorities for the role of the government.


There is a price to be paid for freedom; only a virtuous, moral, and an ethical citizenry can keep freedom sustainable. To perpetually blame our failures on our political leaders when our leaders are simply a reflection of our people is simply intellectually dishonest at best.

Benjamin Franklin warned "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters”. There are many such cautions from our founding fathers. John Adams wrote, “The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty

The Constitution is not the foundation of our government. It is our people that provide our foundation and our constitution was built on and for our people. We used the bricks and mortar of our constitution to frame our system of government that was designed to protect our natural rights while providing an infrastructure, on land and by law, to serve the common good. To deny our history is to deny the foundation; to apologize for it erodes its strength. If our foundation is our people, and we refuse to take individual responsibility, we will fail as a nation. I find it impossible to believe either ideology, conservative or liberal, want our nation to fail, but if we continually search for that which divides us, and not understand that which unites us, we will most likely put an end to the notion that a nation’s people can remain free. Abraham Lincoln warned, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. Our history may provide the only path that will allow us to realize our common purpose and not be distracted by those who would derail us for political power and economic gain.


We need to acknowledge that Federal, State and Municipal Governments do play a critical role in our lives. Often these roles place in motion solutions that are in direct opposition to goals established by individual and business enterprises. While it is incumbent for us to be mindful of this, it should not be an indictment on our process. Our government is a constitutionally limited servant of the people. To villainies it reflects ignorance and provides little in the way of meaningful solutions.

Thomas Jefferson said, "It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world." I believe the majority of our citizens recognize that our desire for economic prosperity has brought us to the brink of insolvency. Again, if we go back to the intent of our government, it is to first protect our unalienable rights and to create avenues to promote the general welfare of our nation, not provide for our individual economic prosperity. Our citizens are responsible for our economic condition not our government, and if we keep our focus on the intended role of government, I believe our citizens can find better and more sustainable solutions to our economic challenges. Does this mean our government should serve no role in business? On the contrary, it is clearly within the purview of our government to ensure the safety, health, and welfare of our citizens by providing the protection of our rights through regulatory and administrative agencies. Business or commerce does not have the right to infringe on the rights of others as has been dramatically brought to light on so many recent occasions. We cannot allow individuals or businesses to shift the cost of business from the private to the public sector and put our citizens or the natural resources of our nation at risk. Conservatives often rail about the need to let the free market reign while they lobby to create corporate subsidies and push for deregulation that put our financial institutions and natural resources at risk. Liberals fight for redistribution of wealth to offset the inherent inequities in our system and further the reliance on entitlements. Neither has been fighting to recognize, or communicate, the delicate balance that is required to sustain the original intent of our government.

Our country’s sovereignty is at considerable risk from the debt we have allowed to accumulate and the sprawling nature of government itself. This is an abuse of our government at the very core and has been allowed to occur on both sides of the isle. We need to accept the individual responsibility to suffer the consequences of inaction. Higher taxes and fewer services are probably inevitable but first our leaders must be held more accountable for the sustainability of our nation than to the special interests they serve.

If we can agree that our government’s first principle role is to protect our individual unalienable rights, it then stand to reason we need to look at how government’s position on social issues first impact individuals as opposed to looking at how government's position on social issues impact society. If we focus on how social issues affect us individually, perhaps we will find it easier to identify with, or understand, opposing views and allow us to discover unifying solutions to complex and polarizing issues. Despite how deeply rooted our feelings are on social issues, we need to acknowledge individual liberty implies freedom of choice. Until we are absolutely certain we are willing to carry the burden ourselves to sit in judgment, impose sentences, and restrict the rights of our own sons and daughters, we should be unwilling to place these burdens or hand over this responsibility to our society or government. This should never be done casually. This is the lens we must all use to identify where government should begin and end.

When we allow society to restrict individual rights, we, as society, put at risk all our rights and liberties. If we can stay focused on this common purpose for our government, we will know that while our beliefs and values may not always reflect society as whole, our government will protect our right to choose what we believe or value as an individual.