Re-reading John Galt's speech.

"...When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing.



The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the mystics' Middle Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort. How many tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for Hank Rearden? Would you dare to claim that the size of your pay cheek was created solely by your physical labor and that those rails were the product of your muscles? The standard of living of that blacksmith is all that your muscles are worth; the rest is a gift from Hank Rearden...."

For those unfamiliar with Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", Henry 'Hank' Rearden is one of the novel's protagonists- a maverick steel producer who declines the opportunity to have his work nationalized by 'moochers' who support the idea of the innovative being forced to share their wealth, whether ideas or hard assets, with the rest of the world. Yes, that is socialism.

We stand idly by, these days, watching nations such as China, lifting themselves from the pallor of third world status to a vibrant and healthy standard of living which draws admiration from many around this world. All the while we keep taking one step backward each day to allow yet another governmental regulatory body staffed by moochers exercise yet another facet of control over our own industries.

Ask yourself this: could we make enough steel armament to defend ourselves from an armed invasion of our shores? Well, could we?

More Solutions Spew

Had to chuckle when I came across the article on CNN's website about China banning certain US meat imports for having unacceptably higher levels of contaminants than allowable. I wasn't laughing at the obvious retaliation for the US having denied certain Chinese seafoods entry into our marketplace until such time those foods pass our rigorous testing.

No, what made me laugh was the name of one of the American companies which had made it onto the Chinese ban lists: Cargill Meat Solutions.

Meat Solutions! If this were Larry Ellison's Oracle software company touting yet another 'Solution' to cure all that ails American business, so be it. We are used to that. But, Meat Solutions? When will this solutions madness stop? I can just imagine a conference room in Minnesota filled with junior level IE's, all wanting desperately to have jobs which are glamorous and draped with a backdrop of 7 series BMW's. We don't just sell meat, we deliver solutions! We solve problems, ergo, we are....solutions providers.

Face it: the software industry is notorious for rarely providing solutions which deliver on their promises due mostly to the irrational exuberance of sales types to meet quotas and earn a bonus coupled with the corporate level myopia which sees all industry as having a problem requiring a software application to solve. Pure fallacy.

So, why a capable and innovative American corporation would align itself with such a gang of losers as software solutions providers is not exactly clear to me. But, I'll bet there is an app somewhere, or a solution that could help me figure it out. For three hundred dollars an hour.

Cargill. Get over yourself. Junior IE's: get back to work.

If you have a 'solutions spew' example, please share it with me, Hank Rearden.