'Going Galt' Is New Code Word For 'Laid Off'

Have you heard about the hot new craze sweeping the ranks of marginally employed basement-dwelling Pajamas Media devotees? It's called "Going Galt," and it refers to when the owner of a small haberdashery in East Tennessee has to lay off employees because nobody wants hats anymore, but the owner says they are voluntarily withdrawing their productive labor from society because Barack Obama is a "looter" and a socialist.

Once upon a time, this gal who Alan Greenspan knew wrote a book about rich industrialists retiring to a secret valley in Colorado where they could all fuck each other in peace and not have to pay Social Security taxes. A bunch of Libertarian Objectivist types have now taken up her proud banner and decided to recreate this paradise in real life, even though there are basically no rich industrialists anymore, just bankers selling worthless derivatives to each other, and of course haberdashers.

Anyway, the head of the Ayn Rand Institute is urging the handful of nuts on the Internet who have solemnly vowed to withdraw their valuable contributions to the free market (doing customer service calls for Dell) to resist the temptation to "go Galt." The world needs them to fight!

In a press release sent out this morning, Yaron Brook says that "It’s not time to go on strike, to leave and go to Galt’s Gulch. It’s time to fight. What I would call for is a moral revolution. Let’s get rid of the morality that says ‘your moral responsibility is toward your neighbor,’ that ‘you are your brother’s keeper.’ Ayn Rand presents us with a new morality, a morality of rational self-interest. There is a lot of fight left in us, and I think it’s too early to give up on this world.”

In other words, do not use Ayn Rand as an excuse for losing your part-time job at the meat counter.