Who is John Galt? In Ayn Rand’s classic novel "Atlas Shrugged," she described a future world in which proliferating regulations and restrictions progressively rob the world’s most productive people of the fruits of their labor.
One such person (John Galt), offended that he was denied the rewards of his work, swore that he would “stop the engine of the world.” And he did – by disappearing and taking the world’s best producers with him. Without society’s most productive members, world systems began to fail. Utilities, transportation, and manufacturing became unreliable. “Who is John Galt?” became the common expression of despair.
“Who is John Galt?” is a question becoming relevant for us. Our systems are slowly failing before our very eyes.
Our supply chain has been failing for months – and we’re only now becoming aware of it. I fear our leadership is still unaware of this failure’s seriousness. Fully loaded cargo ships languish off our coast for weeks, waiting to be unloaded – while store shelves sit empty for lack of the products on those ships.
Energy costs are skyrocketing. The price at the pump is forcing families to make hard decisions. Natural gas has increased in price so much that the government is predicting a cold, expensive winter for many Americans. Yet we live in the most energy rich country in the world. With such and abundance, why is it so hard to make fuel affordably available?
Crime is rampant. Police face retribution (and even prosecution) for enforcing the law – if it’s caught on the wrong cell phone camera. Their response has been predictable. They’ve stopped doing anything proactive. They’re happy to investigate crimes that have already been committed. But they’re not going to do anything to stop criminal acts in progress – It’s too personally risky.
We have an extreme shortage of healthcare workers. People are being turned away from hospitals for lack of beds and staff. An yet millions of doctors, nurses, and technicians are prepared to leave their jobs rather than comply with a requirement to take an experimental vaccine. A vaccine which appears to be only marginally effective, and for which the long-term side effects are unknown.
We’ve also just been given a preview of what will happen to domestic travel when those vaccine mandates become the law of the land. A relatively few pilots brought an entire airline (Southwest) to its knees by failing to show up at work. They made it clear that should they be forced to take the vaccine, their absence will be permanent.
California can no longer keep the lights on reliably. They’ve ignored the advice of experts and committed to renewable energy sources. As a result, the richest state in the union suffers periodic “brown outs” and occasionally has to shut down the grid the prevent wild fires. Alarmingly, Californians seem to have accepted that this is the “new normal.”
Confidence in government is collapsing. With personal freedoms cancelled in the name of COVID, unequal application of criminal law, and questionable election integrity, citizens are no longer confident that the government is upholding its part in our constitutional pact. Without a mutual commitment to that pact, we can expect an explosion of corruption and civil disobedience.
Which begs the question: Why is all of this happening? Partly because the government is picking winners and losers – both industrially and politically. In some cases, it’s even doing so in violation of the Constitution. The best producers can no longer be confident that they will be rewarded for their efforts.
The government is also providing incentives to not work. Why should one work when they can make more staying at home watching reruns on TV?
Government deficit spending is contributing to massive inflation. The value of our money is shrinking before our very eyes. What we toil to earn today, will become less valuable tomorrow – through no fault of our own. In addition, taxpayers are now supporting more government debt than they are debt for themselves (such as a mortgage). How does any of this incentivize people to work hard – and subsequently pay more taxes?
Commerce is the engine that makes America run. It’s more complex than any single person can comprehend. But it’s kept running by an army of unseen workers – each committed to keeping their portion of the machine running. Its machinery has always been more delicate than politicians and bureaucrats have presumed. There’s a reason that third world countries have always had trouble keeping the engine of commerce running. It is easily broken and without a commitment to capitalism it is unreliable at best, and nonfunctional at worst.
As we have drifted away from our founding principles and towards socialism, we have been starving the commerce engine. We’ve choked it with:
- Over regulation
- Over taxation
- Demonization of those that service it (the top producers)
- Social engineering (Insisting that the engine be serviced by those unqualified to do so)
Has our response to COVID finally stopped the engine? Is what we are experiencing a sign that it has it lost power and is just coasting down now? Forced shutdowns and vaccine mandates are robbing the commerce engine of its most essential element – a workforce with the expertise and dedication to keep it running.
Let’s go back to our original question. Who is John Galt? John Galt is:
- The pilots that provide transcontinental travel at speeds unimaginable only a few decades ago
- The police that maintain order on our streets
- The doctors and nurses that care for us when we’re ill
- The longshoremen and truckers that deliver goods to our communities
- The farmers who put food on our tables
- Anyone involved in the production of the countless millions of products which we rely on
We need these people. But for a variety of reasons, they’re quitting. 4.3 million workers have dropped out of the workforce in the past several months.
Our founders never intended for government to interfere in the conduct of our daily lives -- for to do so is to tamper with the engine it does not understand. We’re fond of calling bureaucrats and politicians “public servants.” They're nothing of the sort. They are a necessary evil at best. The real public servants are the John Galts that keep the engine of commerce running. Without them, the engine stops – and we die.
If we want to fix our broken system, we must stop relying on "good" politicians to right this sinking ship. That's exactly what we can do with a Convention of States.
An Article V Convention of States is called and controlled by the states and has the power to propose constitutional amendments. These amendments can get the government out of our daily lives and re-start the engine of the American economy.
