Who Is John Galt?

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What if all the creative minds -- the "Intellectuals" -- of the world went on strike?

Consider this possible scenario:

All the intellectuals of the world -- society's most productive members (designers, innovators, inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists, and so forth) -- realize the futility of their attempts to survive in a society that hates or resents them for their initiative, integrity, and their ability to create and achieve, go on strike against those who use the force of law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments, and refuse to allow their ideas to be appropriated by governments, "Big Business," or the military.

No new designs, direction, innovations, inventions, ideas, leadership, or research occurring anywhere in the world.

Medical science would be at a standstill. Only those cures, preventive measures, and medical treatments currently in use today remain. That is, if there was anyone left that still knew how to properly use them.

No new fashions, game software, or entertainment anywhere. The same old characters, jokes, and scripts, with only already-copyrighted material to fuel Hollywood's insatiable appetite. (Wait ... that's how it is now! Looks like all the creative geniuses have already left Hollywood.)

Only fossil fuels to run our cars, homes, and industries.

You get the picture...

Imagine no invention
Old tech everywhere
No new ideas for us
No one even cares

Imagine all the masses
Stuck in Status Quo

You might think it perfection
But how perfect would it be
To know that nothing's getting better
Nothing new for us to see?

(Apologies to the fans, friends, and family of John Lennon.)

I’d be fine with it. They’re are with more then any other human just cause they smarter or thought of something. They are lords, dukes, Kings etc

I AM John Galt.

this is somehow assuming that people who aren't inventive now can't become inventive, if the creatives went on strike...

apart from that: yeah, that's what conservatism is about, if you take the word to mean what it pretends to mean.

but here's a different question: what would the creative elite live on, once their on strike? - assuming they are working class (as in: need to work for a living)?
Imagine artists on strike.

Eventually: I think the remaining world would do just fine. So far, we still have to deal with disease and death - what good is it to know that a disease will be curable someday, when you're dying of it now? - the mortality rate of mankind has been at a steady 100% for all of its history. And people had a way to deal with it. Religion. Stories of an afterlife. etc.
No new technology? well, that would mean we have time to learn to deal with what we have now - and could actually adapt production to demand, rather than create demand for useless novelty.
It would mean the end of this mindless consumer society. the end of capitalism.
we could become a utopia with technocrats merely managing the status quo, unchallenged.

the more I think of it, the better it sounds. only the creatives will start to get really bored and antsy.

If they go on strike, how are they supposed to make a living?
Also, I've noticed that most Randian libertarians tend to be anti-intellectual, anarcho-capitalist types, hardly representative of artists and inventors.

Who is John Galt? An Antichrist of some sort.

They just wouldn't. Creative people love being creative and love seeing other creative people creating things. They would be cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Elon Musk?

This goes on a lot.

Successful / wealthy people flee to lower tax jurisdictions.

Supposedly, Texas is booming because of the "John Galt" phenomena.

Given that most of the industrialist types Rand worshipped are now literal parasites, I think we'd be a whole lot better off.

The scientists and those who pass for 'intellectuals' aren't a whole lot better, either.

I too was suckered in by Rand's crude libertarianism some time ago. I still have a certain amount of respect for her, but I think that in practice her ideas would lead to the exact opposite of the prosperity and liberty she assured us they would yield.

Most (if not all) of the industrialists that Ayn Rand worshipped are now dead.

Yet their empires live on.

Rand couldn't right worth sh*t.