Who is John Galt?
This is my strategy. I’m going to stop being productive. I’m going to restrict my work to my family and myself. This isn’t an original idea - it’s the premise of “Atlas Shrugged.” If the looters want to confiscate my money and property, I guess they have the ability to do so, but if they want to me be productive to help their efforts, they’ll have a heck of time forcing me to work harder.
If you’re a business owner, cut back to the minimum. If you’re a worker, don’t work hard. Just buy what you need to survive. If this is successful, the state will starve to death.
Call this the Cloward-Piven strategy in reverse. The system currently depends on the hard work and efforts of the productive to maintain itself. If the state wants to confiscate that wealth, then I can see no reason to be productive. The system - that is, the leftist welfare state - will collapse from its own internal contradictions. The left depends on the productive, from whom they steal wealth. Stop giving it to them.
I don’t propose that the productive hide in a Colorado gulch. I propose that the productive hide in plain sight. Just do what you can to cut back, reduce spending, and being unproductive. This requires no organization, no leadership, no hierarchy, no planning, no meetings - and, therefore, it can’t be stopped or defeated. Just stop being productive.
In the meantime, if the state wants to treat me like a slave, I’ll respond like a slave - sullen obedience, half-assed work, timewasting, subtle undermining.
When the looters collapse upon themselves, then I’ll start being productive again - and it’ll probably be the job of a generation or two to repair the damage, so there will be plenty of work for those willing to do it.
Who is John Galt?
The working title of Atlas Shrugged before it was published was “The Strike”.
I suggest the strategy does not work. It is their goal to get you to give up. Poverty in plenty.