Going Galt, Shutting Down, Getting Personal

I’ve noticed in my referrer links that some people who think poorly of my plan to go Galt are getting personal.  As in, linking to public info that might make it easier to track me down.  The reason that information is public to begin with is I’ve never made an effort to be anonymous.  My position since Day 1 was that I am responsible for anything I wrote here; as my comment policy advices others, “If you’re not comfortable with your boss or your grandmother reading it out loud in public, maybe you’d better reconsider what you’re writing.” I also wrote, “If everyone acts like grownups, these things should be no problem.”  Alas, that was probably too much to hope for.  You might consider my clients my bosses, but their opinion of me is irrelevant because I really am shutting down my small business – and it’s quite small, believe me.  It shrunk dramatically after Katrina and I never made much effort to build it back up after that, being preoccupied with more personal matters.  Now I’m just trying to shut it down in an orderly fashion; hopefully by the end of the month.

But hey, personal attacks are way more fun than disagreeing with me on the merits, so I guess it’s all to be expected.

Some reasonable arguments against going Galt that I’ve seen around the blogosphere include these:

1. It will have the effect of cutting back on the military
2. It will  have the effect of cutting back on poverty programs
3. It won’t work. (Interesting how that contradicts the first two.)
4. You’re not Galt, he was a genius and you’re just a worker bee.
5. This whole scheme is unpatriotic.

1. Is there any reasonable expectation that Obama isn’t going to cut the military anyway?  And with borders even wider open than Bush left them – and that was pretty darn wide – and political correctness bordering on dhimmitude as policy, I think cutting back on the military just isn’t a big worry.  As in, I’m not worried because it’s going to happen regardless of the amount of money available.

2. Yes, it will.  Especially those big screen TV poverty programs.  And I’m not a big fan of the government trying to solve the problem of poverty anyway; I’ve said for a long time that those efforts should be sharply limited. But the fact that Obama is wiping out the phenomenally successful Clinton administration welfare reforms leads me to believe that it is a more socialist state, not alleviation of poverty, that is his goal.

3.  If it won’t work, what’s it matter to you that my family is disengaging as much as we can from the economy? The fact is that if enough of the 40% disengage, it will work.  And there’s a reasonable case to be made that even without our efforts, Obama’s trying to crash the economy anyway, so from one perspective I’m working on his behalf.  The question is what lesson will people learn from all this – that it’s immoral and foolish to expect the bulk of the country to be subsidized by a minority of taxpayers, or that we need to throw our freedoms to the wind and run into the arms of the nanny state?

4.  Oh, I’m definitely not Galt, nor will the loss of my business have any great impact on the economy.  My clients aren’t going to stop having websites; they’re just going to spend the money elsewhere.  But I personally will benefit by paying less taxes at every level.  Not just less income tax.  Less sales tax on business-related goods and services, less gas tax because I won’t be going to meetings, and more satisfaction that I’m not feeding the government beast.  Why should I work to fund policies I find harmful and detestable?  And where was the opprobrium for these people?  I’m not even breaking the law, as they did – I’m just scaling back my lifestyle in order to be able to earn less and still meet my obligations; a goal that the left ought to find laudable under any circumstances, with their fixation on carbon footprints.  Regardless, if enough of the 40% go on a strike of the sort that the fictional John Galt organized, then there will be an impact.

5. I believe changing the very structure of our country and what we were founded to be is unpatriotic.  If I wanted to live in France, or more likely, given the direction we’re heading, Venezuela, I would move there.  I’m perfectly within my rights and the intentions of the founders of this country to protest against policies with which I disagree.

It’s not a matter of me rooting for the President or the country to fail – although if I were, I would not have been the first to do so.  The left explicitly wished for President Bush and the military to fail.  Failure is not my desire but because of Obama’s policies, I believe that failure is inevitable.  I just want to get it over with so we can begin to recover from it.  Question my thesis all day, but my motives and goals are crystal clear – except to the willfully obtuse.  I’m not exactly “rooting” for the GOP to win, for example.  In their current condition, they’re just barely better than the Democrats.

America has enjoyed more wealth and more freedom than any other country in history.  While we’re not perfect, I believe there are none better.  I love Milton Friedman’s eloquent defense of what people snidely refer to as “greed.”

We have done so much good in the world – for example, President Bush’s tremendous and largely uncredited work in Africa – and I believe Obama’s policies are going to make such things impossible.  People all over the world will suffer from those policies, including the deliberate increase of the cost of energy in this country.  He may not tax the 95% but he’s going to make it a lot more expensive for us to live.   Remember his comment about the $4/gallon gasoline – he didn’t have a problem with the price, it was the speed at which we reached it!

Finally, although all this does mean something to me – a good deal more than, say, hoping my political “team” would win – I also have far bigger concerns and hopes.  Since I am choosing to enjoy more time than money, by going on “strike” I’m going to dedicate that time to volunteer work and increased bible study because in the really long term, here’s what I have to look forward to.

They did not receive the things God had promised, but from a long way off they saw them and welcomed them, and admitted openly that they were foreigners and refugees on earth. Those who say such things make it clear that they are looking for a country of their own. They did not keep thinking about the country they had left; if they had, they would have had the chance to return. Instead, it was a better country they longed for, the heavenly country. And so God is not ashamed for them to call him their God, because he has prepared a city for them.
(Hebrews 11:13-16)