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Atlas Shrugged/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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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 (Video Game)|someone might have sent mercs to shoot up his factory]].
** 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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*** 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 As We Know It]] and '''''[[Happily Ever After|everything's going to be just fine.]]'''''
**** 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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