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* Rearden Metal is stronger than steal, lighter than steel and he is selling it for a price below that of normal steel. So why is nobody willing to use it except for Dagny Taggart?
** Because Rearden has patented it, meaning if the majority of steel users switch to it, competitors such as Orren Boyle's Associated Steel would be left without a market. So they're using their [[Screw the Rules, I Have Connections|connections]] to smear it, hoping to kill/suborn it before that can happen. Someone from the government actually goes right up to Rearden and offers him an obscene amount of money to nationalize it. If Rearden hadn't invented it himself(meaning killing/disappearing him would martyr him, particularly to the businesses in Colorado), [[Deus Ex: Human Revolution
** 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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** The book does admit that the existence of the engine would invalidate some accepted laws of physics. What is believed by science are not rules written in stone that can never be changed, but the best explanation of how reality works that we have come up with so far. Also, [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]].
* Why. Oh why did those people in the train tunnel have to die? Or, rather, why did the [[Writer
** It may have been less of a 'deserved to die' as a different motif -- the ''very'' worst of the villains all notably escape immediate death, and those who were only 'guilty' of being told or taught the Moocher ideology were in the train. The one person who pushed the lever for the train tunnel disaster, for example, jumped out of the train before entering the tunnel. [[Gattsuru|This troper]] came away with the impression that the point was that all the beliefs and platitudes and good purposes were little or no shield against what other people, not held responsible for their actions, could do, just [[Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot|written horribly]].
** It's been a while since I read the book, but from what I remember, they were all small-time contributors to, or supporters of, the social conditions which put them on the suicide train. They died because they, and others like them, had spent centuries supporting the development of the conditions which sent the train into the tunnel (regardless of what they thought they were doing). Of course, practically speaking, it wouldn't have made a lick of difference if the passengers had all been staunch Objectivists, they'd have still died; but dramatically speaking, it's another depiction of Looter society as self-destructive.
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**** The issue in the book is not merely that a few hundred people are disappearing, but that a few hundred of those most dedicated to keeping vital infrastructure running disappeared, while many, many more vanished of their own free will, and the remaining society has had it drilled into them that. Even with that, it is primarily the destruction of the main infrastructure for transport that really signals the downfall of civilization, not the. The society only gets a little less efficient and a little less capable with every major person that it loses, but we're talking a society that was holding on by its fingernails as the book starts. By midway, we're talking where a little difference in efficiency is the difference in whether or not common copper cable is available. Take a look at real-world programming. A company I worked for had a handful of people who really grokked their code. If one of them left, we could train someone new up to it in a little under a month. If two left, we ''probably'' could train someone up to it in a little bit longer. If half of them left, though, the remaining folk would barely (or might not) be able to keep up with maintaining the code, never mind have enough time to train someone else up. We'd be struck trying to have someone figure it out with whatever scraps of time were around, and that's ''much'' more time-consuming. If all of them quit at the same time, we'd probably end up simply rebuilding the entire thing from first principles, and that might takes years of inefficiency, countless lost dollars, and even significant costs to the people we work for. Things like cities in particular are very dependent on criteria like this; the central network backbone for a place like New York City might only have a couple hundred thousand people ''worldwide'' certified for administration, only a couple hundred with the experience to work it with minimal training, and even fewer who are capable and willing. Every second that backbone went down could be millions of dollars of economic value lost, and even some lives. Change that to a transportation network and the issues are even more dramatic.
***** Ah, okay. It does sound like the scenario described in the book is kind of a stretch though, if it's supposed to be a viable philosophical model. How are the moochers described? And I mean, economics and society can't work on the principle that everybody is super important and vital to the survival of everything. What about restaurant owners or any hardworking commuters and factory workers and &c. I mean even if all the people in the world were software engineers, there still a limit to how many are actually needed and the same applies to any jobs. So basically, for the people controlling the transportation network to just collectively scooch off, they're not dooming just the moochers, they're dooming everybody else who is a part of the economy, regardless of their moochiness.
***** The Galt's Gulch people included everything from the head of an oil company to a truck driver that aspired for more to a janitor doing research in his off hours (the second-to-last recruit). Countless more had separately decided to leave the whole mess, including every trustworthy worker in both Rearden's metal company and a couple of the other metal refineries and oil shops -- it's implied that the caravan at the end that rescues the people of the last train is one such group. It wasn't just the vital top level experts and leaders that had run off -- those were just the ones that were most likely to need to be abducted by Galt, albeit not the only ones (see the janitor and truck driver examples above, as well as a teenage sculptor and a good-but-one-hit-wonder musician). Part of d'Anconia's efforts were specifically done to push productive people out from the more dangerous cities and into areas that would be safer. That said, it's made clear that there's a lot of people who aren't going to be saved by this no matter how well the whole thing is pulled off. One of the most sympathetic and faithful characters in the setting, Edwin Willers, is left to die in the desert to make this very explicit. It takes hours, days, for each person that Galt abducts to deal with this, and it's described as a horrible feeling that earns sympathy from some rather less-than-empathetic individuals. And his argument is that the setting that they're in is already doomed -- the mere fact that he ''can'' find a big enough percentage of these people, combined with the slide of civilization we see in the first few chapters of the book, mean that these deaths and destruction are not avoidable anymore. In this setting, the choice is between whether the workers -- included the restaurant owners and factory workers and hardworking commuters -- are going to be eaten alive by the moochers before they all die off, or the workers escape. As for the philosophical model, it's just philosophical : the scenario was meant to be far from what was happening and is happening, but imaginable, similar to ''1984'' or ''[[Brave New World (
****** 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)
******* The janitor in question aspired to be a scientist before he became a janitor. It's not that someone who only wants to be a janitor is a moocher : Galt and company specifically work as janitors and cooks and railway workers whenever they're in the world. The above-mentioned truck driver doesn't have any major plans; he just wants to be a damned good truck driver as far as we can see. Other residents include someone who just wants to make great sculptures, or meaningful music. A character that is strongly implied to make it through the book better than most (and possibly even make it to the Gulch, although this is only implied) is a hobo with no further interests than menial factory work. The distinction isn't between key people and moochers or looters, but between ''everyone else'' and moocher or looters. It's just that Galt only has to actively abduct people to Galt's Gulch when they've got dreams of something greater -- someone who only wants to be a damned good janitor won't be repairing generators, while someone who aspires to invent generators may. That's not to say that janitors are moochers or are intended to be killed by Galt's ideology. It's just that people who were interested in just being janitors have already been driven out of the market in this setting; they can't be hired unless they grovel at the feet of politicians, can't stay in their jobs for long as their bosses only stay in business if they've groveled at the feet of politicians, get shoveled down with more and more work, can't even be rewarded for ''being janitors well''. Those that do work well are singled out by their coworkers or replaced with those who have more egalitarian or politically connected goals. Moochers and looters aren't much interested in janitors, other than for political capital. The emphasis is on the 'key people' only because it's they that the moochers want to give a crown today and hunt tomorrow; the moochers have already cast out or converted the low-level actual workers for Galt.
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*** I understand that's what the purpose is, but it's still the Fettered breaking his very biggest rule, and it bugs me as a result.
**** Being quite the [[Mary Sue|Marty Stu]] Galt instinctively knows how every person in the room will react with 100% certainty. As such he knows that they will not be helped by his display of knowledge, and is free to use it to further his goals.
**** Talk about [[Completely Missing the Point]]! The electric torture scene is the culmination of the "Sanction of the Victim" - that the evil men of the world had always been dependent on good men to keep them alive. They've strapped Galt down, zapped him over and over again, demanding he obey, zap zap zap, and then the damned thing breaks and none of them know how to fix it. He calmly points out how to fix it, and at the same time pointed out that ''that's all they ever really asked for''. They never wanted technology to sustain the world, they just wanted weapons to threaten other people into sustaining the world for them - and he won't give them any. "All political power comes out of the barrel of a gun" and the politicians had always simply stolen guns because they '''never learned how to build a fucking gun'''. This is the end result of [[Screw the Rules, I Make Them]]; they're using the last bullets on Earth to force last gunsmith on Earth to make bullets for them - and their gun just jammed. He told them how to unjam it, but not how to make more bullets. They can kill him if they want, and he'll even help them kill him, but he will not help them hurt anyone else. Once the last bullets are gone, they'll never find any more. No one will ever build a bullet for them ever again. It's [[The End of the World
**** The reason that this scene is so effective is the torturers realize that they only can torture him because he let's them. Even strapped down and electrocuted, they can only do what they want to because he allows it.
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* I suppose criticizing the lack of basic scientific knowledge presented in the book is comparable to criticizing the FTL communication device in ''The Dispossessed'', but seriously, perpetual motions machines? It just feels very weak.
** Weak or not, it's an easy way out of doing actual work to get energy. I'm not an expert but that doesn't seem very objectivist...
*** Considering that the [
* John Galt's speech was 60-80 pages long. It must have lasted for the better part of an hour, or more. Yet, the entire time, he was transmitting from a ''pirated radio station.'' This is a man whom the ''entire'' [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|Evil Government]] is desperately intent on silencing. I find it very hard to belive that no one managed to shut down the transmitter Galt was using in that whole time.
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[[Category:Atlas Shrugged]]
[[Category:Headscratchers]]
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