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Atlas Shrugged: Why is this so bad?
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I forget, didn't they torture him to get him to tell them how to make it work? And in the process he told them how to torture him more effectively? The implication is that all moochers, by the basis of being moochers, aren't smart enough to do anything original for themselves. They are functionally no better than the people in the future in Idiocracy. They can use the shit, but they don't know how it works or how to fix it when it breaks.
You're muckin' with a G!
Except that not all of my arguments were even responded to, such as:
Or more likely in an Ayn Rand dystopia, relying on their not-so-unusual stupidity (in the case that we're assuming that it's a stupid thing to do, although the company would still have profited from Galt working there).
On the non-compete clause issue: Does anyone have any evidence of their claims that these are forced onto all employees in Galt's line of work, anywhere in the industry? I have anecdotal evidence in the form of a friend who is an engineer and never signed anything but a non-disclosure agreement about technical information that pre-dated his employment.
Another thing to note is that the motor/documentation left at the company was just a small prototype (I think the Dagny character even looked up patents for it, and couldn't find anything). The motor that Galt later built was immensely larger, likely using different parts, and it isn't much of a stretch to assume that after a decade or two of work, very different and more efficient. (If the Sham-Wow and the Super Shammy can both exist in today's industry, then Galt's new motor is clearly fine)
With its capital and with its purcahsed time. After all, if the company is not leasing Galt's time, what are they paying him for?
In the absence of a contract, the engine belongs to the company; if Galt wanted to keep the engine he should have done it in his own time. This is the default; anything different would be unusual.
What we are talking about are standard terms of employment. Anything you do while it at work is the property of the company you work for. A fairly standard contract for any job anywhere.
It doesn't matter if the engine Galt built 10 years later is bigger or better. The basis for it is the prototype that Galt designed while working for the company. Its still their property.
However, we're on this tangent because we're supposed to imagine that Galt is so smart that he wouldn't sign away his invention. Or something. The argument is that we have to believe something not explicitly shown in order to resolve certain...inadequacies in the test. Basically, that Galt was too smart to be fooled by the moochers and therefore must have been able to negotiate a highly favourable contract at the start.
Basically, you have to assume facts that aren't in evidence. Which doesn't exactly help the case that what Galt did anyway was the right thing to do.
You're muckin' with a G!
I still say that Rand simply overlooked the entire point.
Even Heinlein got that mostly right.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
Then he is still a looter because he took their money and materials for his own ends without giving them anything in return. Classic looter behavior.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
It all makes sense if you look at it objectivistly.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
Yeah I think that's the most likely explanation. I mean, Objectivism itself overlooks quite a few things.
Just starting out? This is a novel with a person that starts a copper mine by himself by ripping it out of the ground by clenching his butt on the rocks. Captains of Industry don't need employment!
The former owner was dead. Leading up to death, I highly doubt he was micromanaging the company. Galt's coworker barely seemed to know who Galt was, so it's safe to assume he worked in a different part of the company. Considering the factory closed down in only 4 years after the new ownership (because everyone basically stopped working, since they were being paid "according to their need"), it's not a stretch at all to think that something could be lost in the process.
They don't own the idea of motors in general.
And Huey Lewis doesn't own the idea of music in general. That still doesn't mean he wasn't plagerised. Galt can make a motor on his own, but he can't make a version of that motor without proving that he has the right to do so.
Is the Wankel engine a universal motor design?
You're muckin' with a G!
the captains of industry do have people doing the schmuck work for them, but see, they're all hyper-competent, logical, soulful philosopher types, too
the low-class moochers are dumb, crying sheep, and the high-class moochers are barely able to tie their shoes without breaking down in tears and socializing everything
all of the non-moochers are pretty much glittering gods regardless of class or profession
dagny at one point encounters a hobo on a train who used to work alongside galt, and they spend a few lovely hours quietly discussing philosophy together
Another point that I'd like to debate is the idea that he had to personally inform someone about the prototype he was working on. Where would he get the time to invent something like that in secret? Plus he left documentation. It's not like he purposely hid anything that he was doing. What contract would not be fulfilled by that?
Another point is that the people in Galt's Gulch were not potential customers of the company (which didn't even exist by that point anyway). So it's not like he's taking any market value of the motor away from them.
I'd agree. He didn't do anything wrong by not properly assisting them in capitalizing on the motor. He did, however, by proceeding to use the motor for his own profit.
Somebody probably still had the rights to TCMC, at which they'd still have the rights to the motor. And their failure to capitalize on the invention doesn't really diminish their rights to it.
Haha, this amuses me inordinately, if there's one thing we know about the rich, privileged upper classes it's that they really want to provide a social net for their social and economic inferiors.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
I don't know if this is necessarily true. In other areas of property law, intellectual or otherwise, there are principles such as squatter's rights. Lack of use = lack of rights in a lot of cases. In this situation, there was no patent. But in any case, I'm going to back up to the issue of the company owning the idea in the first place.
Putting aside that the book is fiction, can anyone show evidence that non-compete clauses have been so prevalent in the past 50 years as to make it impossible (or even excessively difficult) for Galt to find a company to work for that would entitle them to any of his inventions?
And no, just using their resources does not entitle them to exclusive rights to anything invented.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
I'm still wrapping my head around the implication that they're not intelligent. Are there like no people in this world who are just competent? People who are just sort of smart but not genius?
Is Atlas Shrugged situated in the same world as Idiocracy?
This isn't how companies work. Even if the owner of the company isn't micromanaging you, someone else is responsible for making sure that you're actually doing stuff, especially if you're the only engineer in your department, which is the only possible scenario where the free energy machine going unnoticed makes a lick of sense.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
There was the one guy loyal to Dagny that ended up dying abandoned in a desert. Yeaaaaaaaa.
yeah, he was one of the hyper-competent types and probably the only genuinely kind and likable character in the book, but he committed the mortal sin of not following galt and stayed behind to help as many people as he could
so he died cold and alone in the middle of the desert
a lesson is learned but the damage is irreversible
And people should stop trying to put Nietzsche's ideas with Rand, its an insult.
hard not to do that when rand pretty much steals from the man wholesale
i call it theft because the only philosopher she bothers mentioning in AS is aristotle and his A = A rule
In retrospect, I would classify Rand as one of the moochers that can take other people's ideas and spam the shit out of it in fantasy, but can't understand it at all.
Yea, I don't even know where I'd fall. I'm a computer programmer, so I work with my mind, which I guess makes me awesome? But I'm not in the top 1% of programmers or anything, and my programs don't change the world, so I guess I'd be left with the moochers.
Also, does she take experience into account at all? An awesome dude with one year into a field is probably not going to appear as competent as a mediocre dude with 40 years of experience.
So... Businesses already operate with Objectivism in mind?
You're muckin' with a G!
They didn't have a patent because Galt never told them about the engine. Saying he told the old boss does not count, because he died before doing anything about it. He still has a responability to tell the new bosses before about it. Even if he was quiting the company, one step in that process of quiting is telling people what he was doing, otherwise it comes out as negligence. This makes his squaters rights the result of willfull sabotage.
As for contracts in the past 50 years? Yes, its usual that the company keeps any inventions their employes make and to have contracts to that effect. Henry Ford used to demand such a contract of his employees. Edison was infamous for doing it. Its been standard proceduer for over a 100 years. By the 1950s it was boilerplate. Same with non-compete clause.
So true, so fucking true.
If you work in the games industry at any level and make any mention of potential ideas at work, it can become actionable. They can't do anything when you're on your own time, but god help you if anything you do yourself ever matches, even by accident, something your employer does.
Document everything.
You're muckin' with a G!
The trick with the game industry is that "your own time" is kept to an absolute minimum.
Also on PSN: twobadcats
Druk, I can't tell whether you're seriously defending Rand on this point or simply trying to see how long you can spin out this argument. As a starter, your second and third sentences are (in relation to IP law) incomprehensible.
When a company hires you to design widgets, if you as an engineer design a widget at your workplace, on the clock, that widget design is going to belong to your company absent some good reason it doesn't. Certainly if you go off and start Druk's Competing Widgets, Inc., your old employer's lawyers are going to have a field day with you. This is not a new concept in IP law at all. The reason is obvious: because otherwise, if I want to invent a new widget, rather than building a widget shop, designing my own widget, etc., I'll go get hired by Acme Widgets and mooch off their products, designs, expertise and tools on THEIR dime, AND get the suckers to pay for it!
And ironically, the extreme form of this - look what happened to the guy who designed the AK-47 - was a feature of the Soviet state that Rand claimed to hate so much.
I'm also going with the hypothesis that it simply didn't dawn on Rand to address this issue, because John "Mary Sue" Galt was just too perfect to ever do anything wrong, and if he did, he was doing it to parasites who deserved it anyway.
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