Who is John Galt?

During these difficult times, when someone asks a question that has no answer, the response is often a near-vulgar expression--"Who is John Galt?"

12 years ago a man walk out of a meeting. The owners of the factory had decided several years before to become a model of social responsibility by adapting the motto "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need." How they accomplished this was to give each worker a pittance throughout the year, and then come together for  a meeting once a year to decide what each person's needs were, and distribute the profits of the factory accordingly. You can only imagine what happened to the workers under this system; actually, you probably can't, because "animals" became a better description of them then "workers". During this particular meeting, a young engineer stood up and walked out announcing "I will put an end to this, once and for all...I will stop the motor of the world." His young man's name was John Galt.

Over the next few years, one by one, the innovators, the producers, the artists and musicians and actresses, started to disappear. No one saw them go, or knew where they went; they were just gone.

During this time, strangely enough, there were unexplainable shortages of various kinds throughout the country. You see, when the oil man from Colorado disappeared, he lit his oil fields on fire. In the oil shortage that followed, there was a huge demand for coal furnaces, until the only foundry left that made these coal furnaces suddenly shut its doors then its owner disappeared.

The officials in Washington, of course, had a solution to every problem, and they eventually decreed that no one could leave his job. No business was allowed to shut down. Every factory was required to produce no more and no less then they had produced the previous year. No new patents could be issued for fear of destabilizing the entire system.

Meanwhile, any person who was willing to take the pledge, "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." was allowed to move into a hidden valley in Colorado where each person could practice his trade without being told how to do it, and without taxation. Products were exchanged for their actual value, and the only acceptable currency was pure gold.

As the story ends, the country is collapsing into chaos, the last bridge across the Mississippi River has been destroyed, the lights of New York City have gone out, and the producers who have been on strike are preparing themselves to return to start rebuilding a new, free society.