and then….Atlas Shrugged!!

Dear Ayn didi,

I want to clear this right at the beginning, I love what you write. Nevertheless, here goes…

Imagine a person who joined Rearden Steel or D’Anconia copper as a low level employee. He is a regular, sincere employee, the kind of which  are commonplace in corporations. He knows he isnt great, he knows he cant alter the course of history and neither does he want to. He is just a guy who does not want to be late for work. He wants to put in his best efforts and see his company succeed. He wants to be proud to be an employee of Rearden Metal/ D’Anconia copper. He wants to get back to his wife and kids at the end of the day. He doesn’t mind putting extra hours of work when the job demands it. He is concerned about his performance appraisal, his next promotion and his festival bonus. One day, he wakes up in the morning. He gets ready, has his breakfast, kisses his wife good-bye and leaves for work. When he reaches the factory, he finds that it has been blasted!! Not only the one which he worked in, but the others which belonged to his company. He is now jobless. A few months down the line, he does odd jobs, his family are in a state they did not deserve and then, there is an announcement on radio by a guy called John Galt who tells him “People, your mines and factories had been blasted to nothingness by your owners. They did that so they could satisfy their egos. They did not want to create money for the ‘Collectivists’ and so, they are not sorry for what they have done’

Imagine now, what would go through his mind.

Another story goes somewhat like this.  This guy had been working for 20-25 years as a low level clerk in some PSU bank. He earned about $50k a year. He and his wife were saving to buy a house. One day, he reads about this project called ‘Portland Homes’ which advertises itself as a low cost housing project. He doesn’t know or care which school of art the building followed. He is not interested if the building used baroque or roman style pillars in the foyer. He only knows now that he can buy a house for his family. He books a flat in this project and is promised delivery 6 months later. Just before the inauguration, he learns that the project has been destroyed. He attends the trial in the court and comes to know that a guy who claims to have made the original designs of the project destroyed them because the houses did not look the way he wanted them.

What would he think?

Dear didi, these guys are people like us. We may not be inventors/ scientists/ architects but we are sincere. We do what we are told and we try do it as best as possible. We may not have conceived Rearden metal or generated ideas to make the company as big as it is today. But we know, we contribute to every dollar the company earns. We could have been nothing without D’Anconia’s ideas, but his ideas would not have been implemented if not for us. We may not know much about the railroad business, but we can build roads and rail tracks to the best of our ability. Surely, Ms Taggart could not have laid all the tracks her trains run on or build the coaches by herself. Surely Mr. Roark could not have made all the drawings of the projects himself. He would need people who were draughtsmen and who would make his secondary views. Surely, Mr. D’Anconia could not have mined all that copper by himself. He would need people to run the blast furnaces, keep stock of the copper and ship it.

But, what if our only source of living was snatched away from us because our owners did not want to live in this ‘collectivist’ world. What if, in spite of our best efforts, we are rendered jobless….just because Atlas Shrugged.