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*** If we're going to talk about "genuine altruism," it's worth looking at the history of the word. Auguste Comte, the philosopher who initially advocated it (and may have coined the word) did not mean generosity, or mercy, or compassion. He defined it as concern with the welfare of others to the exclusion of any thought of your own welfare. In one of his books, for example, he criticized Jesus for saying "Love your neighbor as yourself," because Jesus was accepting love of self and in fact making it the standard by which love could be measured. In Comte's view, a moral person would have no trace of self-love at all. This was so harsh a position that it was already being softened in Comte's own lifetime—by Comte's correspondent J.S. Mill, among others—but Rand went back to the original source. On the other hand, she took "benevolence" as a good thing, and her heroes show good will toward a lot of people—for example, to Jeff Allen, Cherryl Taggart, and "the Wet Nurse." Rand just didn't call that sort of thing "altruism."
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*** If something like this had been done by the Bad Guys, you '''know''' this would have caused a wreck.
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*** If something like this had been done by In point of fact, when a looter later demands that ''his'' train be got moving again, for the Bad Guys, you '''know''' this would have caused exact same reason (because he doesn't want to be late), the consequences are a wreck.hideous disaster. See ProtagonistCenteredMorality on the literature page for a full exploration.
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** Besides the above - no-one wants to be the first to use it. Sticking your neck out in that way is an absolute no-no in the looters' world. Regardless of what Rearden's reports and tests say, he's an interested party and therefore implicitly untrustworthy. The State Science Institute *could* give them the cover they need with a positive report, but the Institute have their own competing, publicly-funded metallurgy program to protect and aren't willing to admit that Rearden Metal is better than anything they've come up with, so they choose to instead spread FUD based on the metal's newness, essentially saying "we don't know how the metal would act in conditions we haven't analysed it under", but phrased much more scarily. Eventually, Dagny does use it, it doesn't kill anyone or explode, and since they now have Dagny's success to point to, everyone starts ordering it.
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** Besides the above - no-one wants to be the first to use it. Sticking your neck out in that way is an absolute no-no in the looters' world.world[[note]]...and also, at least to some extent, in the real world; it is hugely costly to redesign and re-tool a production line to work with new materials, so there's really no reason to do it if your existing product is selling well enough to keep the company running. If the company is failing, it's going to be hard to convince banks to loan you the money to try something untested in the hopes it will be profitable. And if you're making an absolute killing selling your product, your shareholders and directors are going to question why you want to spend profits on experimenting with the new stuff when everything's already going so well[[/note]]. Regardless of what Rearden's reports and tests say, he's an interested party and therefore implicitly untrustworthy. The State Science Institute *could* give them the cover they need with a positive report, but the Institute have their own competing, publicly-funded metallurgy program to protect and aren't willing to admit that Rearden Metal is better than anything they've come up with, so they choose to instead spread FUD based on the metal's newness, essentially saying "we don't know how the metal would act in conditions we haven't analysed it under", but phrased much more scarily. Eventually, Dagny does use it, it doesn't kill anyone or explode, and since they now have Dagny's success to point to, everyone starts ordering it.
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* This is kind of a trivial point, but in the film of Part III, we see John Galt driving Dagny Taggart around Galt's Gulch—in a car with Colorado license plates. Why does the car even have license plates? On one hand, license plates show that you've paid a personal property tax on your vehicle, and the strikers aren't paying taxes. On the other, to get your tags, you have to give an address; is Galt going to send in his form with "Galt's Gulch" in the address block? This seems like the director, rather than the characters, didn't think this through (not an example of that trope!).
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* This is kind of a trivial point, but in the film of Part III, we see John Galt driving Dagny Taggart around Galt's Gulch—in a car with Colorado license plates. Why does the car even have license plates? On one hand, license plates show that you've paid a personal property tax on your vehicle, and the strikers aren't paying taxes. On the other, to get your tags, you have to give an address; is Galt going to send in his form with "Galt's Gulch" in the address block? This seems like the director, rather than the characters, didn't think this through (not an example of that trope!).trope!).
** Given how the quality of each movie progressively got worse, by III it seems likely this was simply a matter of either not caring about such a detail in the name of just having a completed film, or they didn't have a person to look over things like that; having a car at all was more important than worrying about internal consistency.
** Given how the quality of each movie progressively got worse, by III it seems likely this was simply a matter of either not caring about such a detail in the name of just having a completed film, or they didn't have a person to look over things like that; having a car at all was more important than worrying about internal consistency.
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** They aren't thinking of what he could accomplish in practical (engineering or financial) terms. They're politicians, or people whose success depends on political influence. They think of Galt as the leader of a political faction, the businessmen who've walked away—in fact, as an analog of Fred Kinnan, a rival labor racketeer—which, in a sense, he is, though they've misjudged his motives. And they also are losing public trust and think that allying with Galt will improve their public image with people who've reacted favorably to his speech.
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Changed line(s) 231 (click to see context) from:
* This is kind of a trivial point, but in the film of Part III, we see John Galt driving Dagny Taggart around Galt's Gulch—in a car with Colorado license plates. Why does the car even have license plates? On one hand, license plates show that you've paid a personal property tax on your vehicle, and the strikers aren't paying taxes. On the other, to get your tags, you have to give an address; is Galt going to send in his form with "Galt's Gulch" in the address block? This seems like the director, rather than the characters, DidntThinkThisThrough.
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* This is kind of a trivial point, but in the film of Part III, we see John Galt driving Dagny Taggart around Galt's Gulch—in a car with Colorado license plates. Why does the car even have license plates? On one hand, license plates show that you've paid a personal property tax on your vehicle, and the strikers aren't paying taxes. On the other, to get your tags, you have to give an address; is Galt going to send in his form with "Galt's Gulch" in the address block? This seems like the director, rather than the characters, DidntThinkThisThrough.didn't think this through (not an example of that trope!).
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Changed line(s) 231 (click to see context) from:
* This is kind of a trivial point, but in the film of Part III, we see John Galt driving Dagny Taggart around Galt's Gulch—in a car with Colorado license plates. Why does the car even have license plates? On one hand, license plates show that you've paid a personal property tax on your vehicle, and the strikers aren't paying taxes. On the other, to get your tags, you have to give an address; is Galt going to send in his form with "Galt's Gulch" in the address block? This seems like the director, rather than the characters, ''Didn't Think This Through''.
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* This is kind of a trivial point, but in the film of Part III, we see John Galt driving Dagny Taggart around Galt's Gulch—in a car with Colorado license plates. Why does the car even have license plates? On one hand, license plates show that you've paid a personal property tax on your vehicle, and the strikers aren't paying taxes. On the other, to get your tags, you have to give an address; is Galt going to send in his form with "Galt's Gulch" in the address block? This seems like the director, rather than the characters, ''Didn't Think This Through''.DidntThinkThisThrough.
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** As far as I remember he only invites them to the Valley after they vow not to squeal. So if they said no, he simply wouldn't have brought them to the Valley in the first place. The book's premise is that the real world is so monstrously bad that the people he approached would have went anywhere with him merely because he suggests an alternative. Galt is also so amazingly awesome that he has unfailing knowledge of when to ask people, that is to say he knows when exactly to wait until their fate in their business fails (they were allowed to take their families with them, presumably because everyone was married either to a suitably Galtish individual or a Lillian with no in between), that's why he never actually approached Dagney throughout the book. The Valley also started as merely a summer retreat for the like minded rich that only met once a year. It's only in the recent time frame of the book do people start living there permanently. Presumably anyone that already knew about the valley and subsequently didn't agree to live their permanently for one reason or another took their chances in the real world just as Galt himself does in the final act.
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** As far as I remember he only invites them to the Valley after they vow not to squeal. So if they said no, he simply wouldn't have brought them to the Valley in the first place. The book's premise is that the real world is so monstrously bad that the people he approached would have went anywhere with him merely because he suggests an alternative. Galt is also so amazingly awesome that he has unfailing knowledge of when to ask people, that is to say he knows when exactly to wait until their fate in their business fails (they were allowed to take their families with them, presumably because everyone was married either to a suitably Galtish individual or a Lillian with no in between), that's why he never actually approached Dagney throughout the book. The Valley also started as merely a summer retreat for the like minded rich that only met once a year. It's only in the recent time frame of the book do people start living there permanently. Presumably anyone that already knew about the valley and subsequently didn't agree to live their permanently for one reason or another took their chances in the real world just as Galt himself does in the final act.act.
* This is kind of a trivial point, but in the film of Part III, we see John Galt driving Dagny Taggart around Galt's Gulch—in a car with Colorado license plates. Why does the car even have license plates? On one hand, license plates show that you've paid a personal property tax on your vehicle, and the strikers aren't paying taxes. On the other, to get your tags, you have to give an address; is Galt going to send in his form with "Galt's Gulch" in the address block? This seems like the director, rather than the characters, ''Didn't Think This Through''.
* This is kind of a trivial point, but in the film of Part III, we see John Galt driving Dagny Taggart around Galt's Gulch—in a car with Colorado license plates. Why does the car even have license plates? On one hand, license plates show that you've paid a personal property tax on your vehicle, and the strikers aren't paying taxes. On the other, to get your tags, you have to give an address; is Galt going to send in his form with "Galt's Gulch" in the address block? This seems like the director, rather than the characters, ''Didn't Think This Through''.
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Instead, the science in ''Atlas Shrugged'' is ordinary crankery, oblivious to actual science. The Einstein-based character glances at a design sheet for extracting thermal energy from the air and promptly calls it a whole new concept of energy. It's one thing to talk about advances in understanding the forces of nature. It's a completely different thing to overturn the statistics of extremely many microscopic particles -- ie. the laws of thermodynamics.
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Instead, the science in ''Atlas Shrugged'' is ordinary crankery, oblivious to actual science. The Einstein-based character Einstein expy glances at a design sheet for extracting thermal energy from the air and promptly calls it a whole new concept of energy. It's one thing to talk about advances in understanding the forces of nature. It's a completely different thing to overturn the statistics of extremely many microscopic particles -- ie. the laws of thermodynamics.
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Instead, the science in ''Atlas Shrugged'' is ordinary crankery. The Einstein-based character glances at a design sheet for extracting thermal energy from the air and promptly calls it a whole new concept of energy. It's one thing to talk about advances in understanding the forces of nature. It's a completely different thing to overturn the statistics of extremely many microscopic particles -- ie. the laws of thermodynamics.
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Instead, the science in ''Atlas Shrugged'' is ordinary crankery.crankery, oblivious to actual science. The Einstein-based character glances at a design sheet for extracting thermal energy from the air and promptly calls it a whole new concept of energy. It's one thing to talk about advances in understanding the forces of nature. It's a completely different thing to overturn the statistics of extremely many microscopic particles -- ie. the laws of thermodynamics.
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*** What? So janitors just can't do a good job cleaning they have to be mathematicians as well? If you think that sentence misrepresents what you were trying to say, it illustrates my point as well. Which is that in a mdern society it's next to impossible to discern between moochers and the key persons since our whole economic system is intertwined between different participants. As it comes to ''1984'' you can say that it predicted a society where individual freedom is crushed alltogether, and Rand tries to describe a society where the few talented are used by the mooching masses. There is a distincton here, that the other encourages us to guard are liberties and the other tells us that society depends on superior individuals. But still, I have't actually read the book in question, I'm must responding to people here. So I might be wrong. (I have read 1984 though)
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*** What? So janitors just can't do a good job cleaning they have to be mathematicians as well? If you think that sentence misrepresents what you were trying to say, it illustrates my point as well. Which is that in a mdern modern society it's next to impossible to discern between moochers and the key persons since our whole economic system is intertwined between different participants. As it comes to ''1984'' you can say that it predicted a society where individual freedom is crushed alltogether, altogether, and Rand tries to describe a society where the few talented are used by the mooching masses. There is a distincton distinction here, that the other encourages us to guard are liberties and the other tells us that society depends on superior individuals. But still, I have't haven't actually read the book in question, I'm must responding to people here. So I might be wrong. (I have read 1984 though)
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** If a thousand of the world's best and brightest were to remove themselves from society, nothing bad whatsoever would happen. The world would muddle along unchanged. In fact, the people removing themselves from society would never be the best and brightest, but rather persons with an exaggerated sense of self-importance -- maybe they're even incompetent. (One can, Doylistically speaking, see this exaggerated sense of self-importance throughout the novel.)
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** The science crankery here is more serious than the usual science artistic license routinely seen in science-fiction stories, because the novel was intended to teach the reader about Objectivist philosophy and is intended to promote rationally-based living. The novel is oblivious to science research as conducted in RealLife. Is the State Science Institute supposed to represent Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, and other national labs? What about UC Berkeley? What about MIT and other private universities that do federally-funded research?\\
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Instead, the science in ''Atlas Shrugged'' is ordinary crankery. The Einstein-based character glances at a design sheet for extracting thermal energy from the air and promptly calls it a whole new concept of energy. It's one thing to talk about advances in understanding the forces of nature. It's a completely different thing to overturn the statistics of extremely many microscopic particles -- ie. the laws of thermodynamics.
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Instead, the science in ''Atlas Shrugged'' is ordinary crankery. The Einstein-based character glances at a design sheet for extracting thermal energy from the air and promptly calls it a whole new concept of energy. It's one thing to talk about advances in understanding the forces of nature. It's a completely different thing to overturn the statistics of extremely many microscopic particles -- ie. the laws of thermodynamics.
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*** If something like this had been done by the Bad Guys, you '''know''' this would have caused a wreck.
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** You can’t write what you don’t understand. Rand understood power-hungry sadists. She did not seem to understand genuine empathy.
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* Why didn’t Cherryl just get a friggin divorce, go back to her old life, or try to make a better one? She was happy before she met James. As much as her marriage sucked, her problems were survivable.
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** But you wouldn't say a fictional character died many centuries ago like that.
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** But, like I said, even as a tool of authoritarian control it would be pretty damn useless. It's basically just a big immovable turret. It doesn't provide any control advantage over conventional authoritarian stuff like armoured fans and machine guns. The only thing you could do is what the guys at the end tried to do, which is set up a sort of feudal state within the confines of its range and use it to defend against outsiders, but even for that it would be really terrible as it destroys everything between it and its target, meaning you'd destroy your own little kingdom just by using it. Naval defense or protecting some kind of Area 51 style base in the middle of a desert are basically the only things you could do with it.
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** When it was published in 1957, the story took place TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture. However, nowadays it ''feels'' like AlternateHistory because TechnologyMarchesOn (what with the huge plot significance of trains, steel mills, etc). As to all the "People's States", that was Rand projecting her fears of the American Progressive movement, combined with the communist/socialist movements of Europe of the time; but times change as well. A more accurate label for it nowadays might be DieselPunk. Meh, what's [[GenreBusting in a label]]? Do we need to [[TvTropesWillRuinYourLife classify everything?]] Who is [[RuleOfThree John Galt?]]
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** When it was published in 1957, the story took place TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture. However, nowadays it ''feels'' like AlternateHistory because TechnologyMarchesOn (what with the huge plot significance of trains, steel mills, etc). As to all the "People's States", that was Rand projecting her fears of the American Progressive movement, combined with the communist/socialist movements of Europe of the time; but times change as well. A more accurate label for it nowadays might be DieselPunk. Meh, what's [[GenreBusting in a label]]? Do we need to [[TvTropesWillRuinYourLife [[JustForFun/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife classify everything?]] Who is [[RuleOfThree John Galt?]]
