Here is an exciting new book with a catchy name from my friend in Florida Stephen Goldstein. This is how he describes it:Here is the long-overdue obituary for the unbridled greed glorified by “Atlas Shrugged” and the prophet of profit. In her story, Rand let free-marketers John Galt, Dagney Taggart, and their accomplices return triumphant from their “strike” to remake the world in the image of Godless self-interest. Now, on the 67th anniversary of their revolution, try as he may, Atlas can no longer simply shrug and Galt’s successors and their dystopian creation of Free-For-All economics is about to come under attack from an enigmatic group known as the Prometheus Project.
Against the backdrop of the epic struggle between these two opposing forces, “Atlas Drugged” takes no modern-day prisoners, hurling lightning bolts of damnation at those who put profit before humanity and offering the 99% a vision for taking back the country from the 1% who currently dwell atop Mt. Olympus.
This is a work of fiction. But any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely intentional. The names have been changed but, hopefully, not enough to protect the guilty.
You can buy his book HERE.
you know what, i’m so glad he wrote this. i haven’t read a single word yet but i’m glad someone did this and this is out there.
tee hee, i just started reading the preview. “dan ryan.” Stephen’s clever little anagram? : )
I have to read that. Just got the Kindle edition.
And the joke of it is, Rand was on welfare and SS for a portion of her life. As usual the ones who hate ‘socialism’ and ‘give away programs’ are the same ones who suck on the government teat every possible chance they get. I heard even Paul Ryan accepted stimulus money from the Obama administration. Their hypocrisy is staggering.
That’s very interesting Gary, and you’re correct, Ryan did take government stimulus money and brag about the jobs it would create after vehemently claiming the stimulus wouldn’t create a single job.
Perhaps it is a good book, we shall see. You write, “those who put profit before humanity” as some horrible thing. However, “profit” is what all humans do, all humanity, and all our organizations — by whatever name. Indeed, it is the governments of this world who have sought to prevent profit, which is why humanity just loves smuggling and black markets, and the underground economy. Humanity is out for profit, clear and simple. Why, this write himself no doubt wishes to profit. You are aiding him in his “capitalist” “profit making” endeavor. And you feel that you “profit” it from it, by, oddly, being smug in your assumption that “profit” is bad, and worse for humanity. Profit need not be money, but even just a warm fuzzy feeling.
For profit is merely “more than what we put in.” It might be expressed as “I want to get paid more than the work I put into something costs me.”
For instance: Non-profits are “not-taxed,” not, “non-profit.” For they must bring in more than they put out, or they can’t deliver their fine services. That they “earn” their money from grants, taxes or donations it is still “income” and their “outgo” must be less, or they perish. The product that they sell is their services. That the consumer of their services is different than the payer, the non-profit betwixt the twain must profit from the transaction.
Socialist 5 year plans always pointed to the “People’s gain,” which is a nice euphemism for “profit.” And even government must “profit” by taking in more taxes than they have expenses — or it’s a deficit. Then they must either spend less, or work to “earn” (tax) more, to make sure they make a profit.
All things which don’t “profit” eventually atrophy and die. Even the individual human bodies of all humanity must “profit” from the food and drink it intakes (earns) and take in more than what it expends in work (spending) — and it is when humans stop profiting from eating they will die,, and then there will be precious little humanity left to argue such a simple thing.
When the tiny wealthy elite on top has rigged things so only THEY can “profit,” then that system of “profit” becomes an evil thing to be regulated and replaced.
It’s not as long, overly wordy and dull as Rand’s “opus,” is it? She kept saying the same thing over and over, driving her “points” home with a sledgehammer.
So DavetheWave who do you trust to create those regulations? What would you replace that system of profit with? How would you determine what each persons share is of whatever value they require? Ask yourself these questions before you go marching out to next “occupation”. Look around you and ask who you would trust to make the decisions about your share of food, water, shelter, work and your future. If you don’t find anybody.
Then shut up, get to work and make your living for yourself. Do what you want and don’t live on another man or woman’s work. Go out and make money, and we will do the same so everyone can live by there own work.
Signofthedollar:
The fact is that CEO’s are making significantly more today compared to what they used to make. Their profits are dwarfing that of their employees by record amounts. Obviously, something is wrong.
Can you honestly tell me that today’s CEO’s on Wall Street are so far superior to the CEO’s of only a few years ago that they can justify their ridiculous increases in salary at a time when income is falling or stagnant for the Middle Class?
No one is suggesting that we replace the system of profit. What we are saying is that free trade is fair trade and not rigged so only the top .5% of Americans succeed.
What we have a problem with is that hard work increasingly doesn’t mean you get ahead. America’s money supply has disproportionately transferred from the hands of hard working manufacturers into the pockets of the financial services industry.
So, go ahead and continue to pretend you are an uber capitalist — when you are really promoting perverse policies that are essentially committing capital punishment on our once booming economy.
Ah yes… the cacophony of 99 percenters, squealing about a nebulous group of “people at the top” for having the audacity to be more successful than their pitiful minds can imagine.
What in the world gives any of you the qualification to decide how much income is “too much?” There are people in South America who could look at an American /dishwasher/ & exclaim, “You make /how much/ per hour??? It takes me a month to make that! No, no, no, that’s too much money.” Instead, they pack their belongings & come here. They don’t get on their MacBooks & hang out on websites bitching about how unfair the market is. They don’t go to hippie “protests” to say the man is keeping them down, occupying (trashing) public areas as they do so. Why? They’re too busy /working/!!!
Quit waiting for Obama to “redistribute” money from the “rich” & give it to you! Get off your a*s, get a job, & get to work like the rest of us! Slackers…
1% hold 43% of the available wealth, Justice Louis D. Brandeis stated it precisely, we may have democracy or great wealth concentrated in the hands of few, not both.
Reasonable people can conclude that the indictment against great wealth, is not an indictment against success but the removal of vast amounts of wealth from circulation in the general economy of goods and services.
The health of the economy suffers as surely as we would if we allowed the oxygen content of the atmosphere to be diminished and sequestered.
Secti — all we want to do is return tax rates to the Clinton years when the economy was booming. The fact that you don’t want people in the future to have the same opportunities that you had does not make you a success — just a shitty citizen who doesn’t give a damn about anyone but yourself. Your philosophy is “I’ve got mine now screw you.”
Sorry, but those of us who actually care about this country want to ensure that those of the next generation actually have better lives than we did — not leave them the scraps left from greedy, loathsome, amoral, people like yourself who know only how to take and not give back.
Secti — we all have jobs and probably work significantly harder than you ever have. I’d love to know what amazing skills you have or what you have contributed to society to make it better. However, we want to ensure that our hard work isn’t a dead end and the American Dream is still alive.
It is your kind that wants to take the American Dream, place it in a gated community, and only give access to people who start out life with the key to enter.
Sorry, we won’t let you redistribute the American dream so only those born on third base get a chance to make it to home plate, while the rest of us bust our asses in the nosebleed section with no hope of getting into the sky boxes, and certainly nowhere near the field.
secti’s the kind of person who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.