What would you tell Atlas to do, with
the weight of the world on his shoulders?

"Shrug"

http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2008/10/going-john-galt.html

Get free food, medical care, free cash, etc.
Don't work as hard. Take those stored up
vacation days.

Go Galt.

It's pretty funny that Randians think Ayn Rand
invented slacking.

The underlying Randian theory is that if the elite slack
off, the masses will be impoverished - that countries
are rich and poor according to whether their elite is
productive, and the rest do not matter much.

The Soviet Union suffered a devastating economic
collapse after it tried to convert to capitalism.
Before that, it was grinding along, inferior to the
West in production-consumption, but hardly collapsing.

The problem here is that the masses' savings are going
to melt away. So maybe the real Atlas, the masses,
will shrug and go on strike.

On Sat, 02 May 2009 10:35:12 -0400, Anarcissie

anarcis... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
The Soviet Union suffered a devastating economic
collapse after it tried to convert to capitalism.
Before that, it was grinding along, inferior to the
West in production-consumption, but hardly collapsing.

Before communism, Russia was a major power economically.
Shortly after the communists took power, it suffered
total absolute and devastating economic collapse, which
it partially remedied by making failure to comply with
the plan a criminal offense, even if the failure was
higher up in the supply chain, thereby motivating able
people to go forth and fix up the oversights of the
planners:

        Go ye, get you straw where ye can find it: yet
        not ought of your work shall be diminished.

        So the people were scattered abroad throughout
        all the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead
        of straw.

        And the taskmasters hasted them, saying, Fulfill
        your works, your daily tasks, as when there was
        straw.

Of course, for this to work, required a fairly high
level of terror.  When the terror eased up, the lights
began to go out over Russia.

The problem here is that the masses' savings are going
to melt away.  So maybe the real Atlas, the masses,
will shrug and go on strike.

The failures of socialism cast doubt on the proposition
that the masses are the real atlas - though the real
atlas might be at a lower level than the tiny elite
envisaged by Rand.  The statistical evidence suggests
that the real Atlas is that portion of the population
with an IQ higher than 105
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22smart+fraction%22> -
a large minority, rather than the tiny minority
envisaged by Rand, but still a minority.

The Soviet Union suffered a devastating economic
collapse after it tried to convert to capitalism.
Before that, it was grinding along, inferior to
the West in production-consumption, but hardly
collapsing.

Before communism, Russia was a major power
economically. Shortly after the communists took
power, it suffered total absolute and devastating
economic collapse, which it partially remedied by
making failure to comply with the plan a criminal
offense, even if the failure was higher up in the
supply chain, thereby motivating able people to go
forth and fix up the oversights of the planners:

Go ye, get you straw where ye can find it:
yet not ought of your work shall be
diminished.

So the people were scattered abroad
throughout all the land of Egypt to gather
stubble instead of straw.

And the taskmasters hasted them, saying,
Fulfill your works, your daily tasks, as when
there was straw.

Of course, for this to work, required a fairly high
level of terror.  When the terror eased up, the
lights began to go out over Russia.

Revolutions and civil wars are not very good for
productivity!

The statistical evidence suggests that the real
Atlas is that portion of the population with an IQ
higher than 105
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22smart+fraction%22
- a large minority, rather than the tiny minority
envisaged by Rand, but still a minority.

But IQ, if it means anything at all (doubtful) has
little or nothing to do with productivity of any sort
in most fields.

"*Anarcissie*":
...
The story that the Soviet Union was working fine, and
the switch to capitalism a disaster, was never true.
Even when it worked, the process was chaotic, violent,
cruel, and did not work well.

The statistical evidence suggests that the real
Atlas is that portion of the population with an IQ
higher than 105
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22smart+fraction%22
- a large minority, rather than the tiny minority
envisaged by Rand, but still a minority.

"*Anarcissie*":

But IQ, if it means anything at all (doubtful) has
little or nothing to do with productivity of any sort
in most fields.

The national longitudinal survey of youth, a study run
by the US military, took people's IQ scores when they
were in school, and followed up to see how well they did
over time - to see what various indicators showed about
young people's potential.

IQ turned out to be a fairly good predictor of a wide
variety of outcomes, from staying out of jail to making
decent money.

Of the variables observed by the NSLY the ones that
mattered much were IQ and being raised in an intact
family. People with good IQ score raised in an intact
family did well on average regardless of race or
parental socioeconomic status - that is to say the
average for people with good IQ good family, and poor
parental socioeconomic status was very similar to the
average for people with good IQ, good family, and
good parental socioeconomic status

People with low IQ and broken home did badly on
average regardless of parental race and socioeconomic
status.

For smart people from broken homes, race and
socioeconomic status made a difference, but if you are
controlling for IQ and intact family status, the
differences caused by race and socioeconomic status are
modest, and you have to split the data suspiciously
finely to find them.

If parental socioeconomic status causes a difference in
outcomes, then it has to cause higher IQ scores.
However, when we randomly assign children to families,
we find that within the range of families eligible to
adopt in America, parental socioeconomic status causes
no difference in the success of children - that children
assigned to a high socioeconomic status family did no
better than children assigned to a low socioeconomic
status family.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22What+Happens+When+We+Randomly+Assig...

Thus the reason that the apparent inheritance of
socioeconomic status shown in the NLSY largely
disappears when we control for IQ score is that parental
socioeconomic status has little effect, that children
inherent from their parents the inner personal
characteristics that enabled their parents to succeed.