"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
I sat and read "Atlas Shrugged" a couple of summers ago for the first time. My friend Chan (of WeekendPundit – I always read his Thoughts on a Sunday) warned me to have some kind of anti-depressants around as I read through the first 100 pages or so. Thought that advice was a bit of an exaggeration.
I was wrong.
Since Obama’s inauguration, how the Congress has neglected the Constitution more and more and shucked off its law making responsibility, and Federal agencies seem to want to make law by executive fiat more and more in larger and larger contexts, I have become more and more distraught. Indeed, some are of such consequence, they should be the result of Congressional action, debated in the open, instead of by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. This is the Progressive technocrat state and not the governance model promulgated by our Founders. The parallels between what has been building up over the last few decades in our Government and the plot in Atlas Shrugged (even if overdrawn over too many pages) is scary.
This story, of Ronnie Bryant, has gone viral. David McElroy has this story of a coal mine operator that decided to "go Galt", the essence of the book. Which means, instead of operating his business and providing good paying jobs and providing the fuel that keep our electric lights on, he has had enough:
…Mine operators and state environmental officials say the mine can be operated without threatening the water supply. Environmentalists claim it will be a threat.
I’m not going to take sides on that environmental issue, because I don’t know enough to stake out an informed opinion. (With most of the people I listened to today, facts didn’t seem to matter as much as emotional implications.) But Ronnie Bryant wasn’t there to talk about that particular mine. As a mine operator in a nearby area, he was attending the meeting to listen to what residents and government officials were saying. He listened to close to two hours of people trashing companies of all types and blaming pollution for random cases of cancer in their families. Several speakers clearly believe that all of the cancer and other deaths they see in their families and communities must be caused by pollution. Why? Who knows? Maybe just because it makes for an emotional story to blame big bad business. It’s hard to say.
After Bryant listened to all of the business-bashing, he finally stood to speak. He sounded a little bit shellshocked, a little bit angry — and a lot frustrated.
My name’s Ronnie Bryant, and I’m a mine operator…. I’ve been issued a [state] permit in the recent past for [waste water] discharge, and after standing in this room today listening to the comments being made by the people…. [pause] Nearly every day without fail — I have a different perspective — men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just … you know … what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I don’t know. I mean, I see these guys — I see them with tears in their eyes — looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.
So, 125 families will go without a paycheck and continue dependency on Daddy Government. Fuel that we need to keep the lights on will not keep those lights on; no energy means no ability to do work. As David observed:
…We all want a decent environment in which to live, but when various people at a public meeting — including federal officials and community members — talk about “environmental justice” and make it clear that their intent is to make it harder for businesses to operate, well, I can see why a businessman would decide to quit. I consider myself an environmentalist — because I want to live in a safe, secure, clean world — but what I saw isn’t reasonable concern for the environment as much as it’s an ideological agenda.
What got me was not just this recounting, but reading through the comments. Time and time, those who owned small businesses told their tales of giving up as the ROI of their time and talent was not worth the aggravation of trying to satisfy every single rule, regulation, paperwork burden, and law that was thrown at them, not to mention Community Organizers looking to score points. My own opinion is that officials have decided that every little problem has has to have an official watching over it, pencil and paper at the ready. Here’s a few of them (of COURSE there were some troll turds in there – they got smacked badly and quickly):
- just want to mention that the perspicacious Ayn Rand half a century ago called environmentalism the “Anti-Industrial Revolution”
- I own a small business as well and look forward to the day that I don’t. If I can manage to get it sold or wound down without being involved in some foolish witch hunt, regulatory imbroglio or other prosecution by the government I shall breathe some little sigh of relief. I feel like I have a bulls eye on my back, front and sides. For these past many years we have worked very hard to do everything we know we need to do right and thus avoid conflict and trouble. More and more I don’t just feel but know I can’t keep up with all the regulation, there is too much to know and too many of THEM looking for someone to make an example of. Long ago the risk became not worth the reward. Many of us are just trying to beat the odds long enough to get out. Like one poster said, anyone, an employee, can end your business all they have to do is find a lawyer to sue or a regulator to pursue you. Those without seem to think those that have anything have too much and make them targets for legalized extortion.
- The truly perverse thing is that all this rage against coal, manufacturing and their supposed pollution doesn’t prevent coal mining, manufacturing and pollution, it just relocates it overseas where the pollution and working conditions is, much, much worse.
…All the people trying to shutdown the local coal mine do not bicycle home to their one room shacks made with local found materials. No, they drove their cars to their sprawling multi-room coal electrified houses and consume every day, vast amounts of products created by ancient, filthy coal fired plants on the other side of the planet.
We need to start hammering these people for destructive hypocrites that they are. If they want to shutdown coal, fine, let them first stop consuming every product that relies on coal. Let them first provide replacement jobs for everyone in America who relies on coal directly or indirectly for their jobs.
Until then, they are just hypocritical scum.
- …I can outsource all of my engineering drafting and design over the internet to places like India, Pakistan, Indonesia, China and Japan in a heartbeat for about a tenth the cost of maintaining my engineering staff as full time employees. Being on the Mexican Border with Juarez, Mexico, I can just move my shop over there and save about 70% of my overhead and operating costs. My construction company leases all of our non-management employees and has done so for the last seven years. Just like Mr. Bryant, I can elect to “quit” at any time. If things don’t change for the positive in the next two years, I may just do so. America is in more danger, from within, than ever before. We can easily defeat any foreign threat to our country, but the danger lies within now.
- We closed the doors in ’09. Small trucking operation, paying almost 100 people $40-$80k a year. Needed new trucks, couldn’t find financing at reasonable rates.
First time in 40 years I have to weekly payroll to worry about. I want to start up again. I don’t see the reality of that happening. The govt has turned against smal business. I cannot afford lawyers for EPA, NLRB, OSHA, ObamaCare, DOT regulations and new state regulationss. -plus- the costs of new finance from risk adverse (frightened) bankers and lessors. New tractor and trailer will cost $140k plus insurance and licensing. Fuel costs are up and probably -not- coming down. Will shippers pay higher rates-? Will consumers-? Really-?
The govt. is cooking price increases into everything we eat, use, transport. Inflation-? Looks like we either have funny money driving down the value and rob the savings accounts . We will have higher prices and lower productivity meaning higher prices and fewer jobs. Plus more people dependent on govt hand-outs… Old, young, sick, unemployed…
Why are we warehousing American ingenuity and human energy-?
Are we really -that- rich that we can waste lives this way-?
- …The very people who provide all our food, clothing shelter, medical care and all the other necessities and luxuries of modern life are hated and despised. These people who create vast good and who take only what others will voluntarily give them are loathed while those who spend their lives in the single minded pursuit of political power so that they can use the violent power of the state to impose their will on others, are lionized.
- About 30 years ago I was sitting in my Accountant’s office dealing with 1099s etc, and as he added up the numbers, NYS, NYC, NJ, SS, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, commutation, and others, I became apparent to me that it was just too expensive to work. All those governments together took more than 50%.
- I notice that the ones sniping with non sequiters, ad hominems, false dichotomies and gratuitous insults do not attempt to answer the core question raised by this event.
We have created a working environment where a business owner/operator
- must ensure compliance with onerously excessive, redundant, and self-contradictory regulations that are mindlessly and overzealously enforced by Kafkaesque bureaucrats;
- is confronted with liability exposure, both civil and criminal, from byzantine, ambiguous, and conflicting local ordinances, state statutes, and federal laws that are arbitrarily and capriciously enforced by power-drunk officials;
- and faces vilification, harrassment, and even, in some cases, vandalism and assault from petulant “environmental activists”, “community activists”, “labor activists”, and other soi-disant “activists”.
The strain of these are measured in:
- direct costs in taxes, fees, licensing, permitting, and other compliance mandates;
- administrative overhead in the form of legal and accounting bills, insurancepremiums,costs secretarial and clerical expenses in supporting documentation, and other risk management costs;
- and intangibles, such as opportunity costs from lost time, energy, resources, and effort, and peace-of-mind consumed by fatigue from exces
sive hours, frustration from unending non-productive work, and stress from unearned contempt and hatred.
The one thing that Atlas Shrugged did not foresee was the TEA Party. The book only had Galt’s Gulch – it became impossible for Producers to fight off the Moochers by themselves. However, ordinary people have risen up and have said "no further". While some TEA Partiers are Producers themselves, many of us work for them. We want fairness – but we are reviled for wanting to keep what we have earned and demonized for failing to "pitch in" as Obama says. We are simply tired of being micro-managed for someone else’s idea of "social justice"; OUR freedoms are being taken away from us.
Yet, Obama and his merry band of Marxists think it best that we simply huddle around our solar panels (open fires no longer allowed – too much particulate emissions), thinking that everyone else in the world will clap and cheer.
They are clapping – and laughing at us for electing them.
