They can go on strike. Now, Rand in all her work used types which were oversimplified, and in his mountain hideaway Galt would have had not just the best of the best, but hordes of quite ordinary business owners, whose principle virtue was having had the courage to risk their energy and money, and been successful. The numbers of those who carry the world are much larger than she supposed.
But they too can go on strike. It occurred to me that small business owners can just shut their doors in protest. They don’t have to go to some secret mountain hide-out, and they don’t need some mystery man. Provided they have enough funds otherwise, they can sell off, say, the capital goods in a chain of Wendy’s Restaurants, and buy a villa somewhere in the Caribbean, and simply wait and see if the American people wake up in four years.
This would be particularly appropriate in those districts of Philadelphia and apparently Ohio where HUGE numbers of votes netted NO Romney votes. Now, fraud may well have been in play–and conceivably decided the election. This is for responsible people–if they CHOOSE to do their jobs, which is always a decision that can go two ways–to determine. What is not in question is that the election was very close, which means that most people are complacent, and do not understand how business works.
I suspect much of our darkness might be countered by genuine misery, which most people in this country have never, ever encountered economically. Even our poor assume HVAC, cell phones, and grocery stores with stocked shelves. Yet, none of these things are inevitable.
What would happen if in the next month 2,000 business owners said FUCK YOU Obama, closed their doors, and put signs in them saying “Closed in protest of the election of Obama”?
It would be interesting.