Rand’s idea of a strike against totalitarianism by society’s business and engineering elite only works if you believe that only completely moral and rational people excel in business and engineering and that isn’t true. Both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were full of engineering geniuses who happily worked for them, and in Nazi Germany corporations thrived.  Totalitarian states can eventually collapse for a lot of reasons, but a lack of smart people willing to lend their minds to the Omnipotent State isn’t one of them.  Werner Von Braun happily worked for both Adolph Hitler and John F. Kennedy.

Rand simply had no curiosity, and it severely limited her imagination.  She was a romantic in the worse sense, the ivory tower sense, not the enraptured by life sense.  And you really see that, in the Galt’s Gulch chapters of Atlas Shrugged.  Question: in the utopia of the mind that is Galt’s Gulch…where are the laborers…?

When he put her plate before her, she asked. "Where did you get that food?  Do they have a grocery store here?"

"The best one in the world.  It’s run by Lawrence Hammond."

"What?"

"Lawrence Hammond, of Hammond Cars.  The bacon is from the farm of Dwight Sanders – of Sander’s Aircraft.  The eggs and the butter from Judge Narragansett – of the Superior Court of the State of Illinois."

The Country Club set puts down their golf clubs and takes up farming.  Except these aren’t hobby farms…they’re trying to be self sustaining here.  So the automobile executive, the aircraft company CEO and the Superior Court Judge also happen to be able to run production farms too because…well…because they’re The Men Of The Mind and farming really isn’t all that hard after all.  You just get a few pigs and chickens and cows and the whole operation pretty much just runs itself…right?  I mean…how hard could running a farm be anyway…all those country bumpkins manage to do it after all.  And we are Men Of The Mind.  This is, seriously, Rand’s thinking here. 

And it gets worse.  A couple pages later the two heroes of the novel, Galt and Dagny Taggart, encounter the former CEO of Sander’s Aircraft, who says he can fix her small airplane…the one she crashed and nearly totaled.  On his pig farm.  In between slopping the hogs I guess…

He pointed across the road.  Glancing through the tops of the pine trees, she saw the concrete rectangle of an airfield on the bottom of the valley.

"We have a few planes here and it’s my job to take care of them," he said.  "I’m the hog farmer and the airfield attendant.  I’m doing quite well at producing ham and bacon, without the men from whom I used to buy it.  But those men cannot produce airplanes without me – and without me, they cannot even produce their ham and bacon."

Okay…first of all…who poured the concrete for that airfield?  And…where did the concrete come from?  The town brain surgeon? 

Hey…it’s just concrete.  Anyone can pour concrete…right?  I mean…look at the low class dimwits who do it for a living.  And we’re The Men Of The Mind.  We can do that…piece of cake.  We can pour whole runways and taxiways and parking pads of concrete level enough for aircraft to safely use that won’t crack apart here in the Rocky Mountain winters because we’re The Men Of The Mind.  Hell…just mix and pour and it’s done.  Er…who makes the cement mixers around here?  And those…things…concrete workers use…trowels I think they’re called.  Who makes that stuff.  I know…the town philosopher!   No…wait…he runs the diner…

Hey…same thing with raising pigs.  Anyone can raise pigs.  No…wait…even pig farmers can’t raise pigs without help from The Men Of The Mind…

But wait…there’s more.  Are you wondering where the tractors come from for all these farms The Men Of The Mind are running?  Well wonder no more…

"…Since the time I saw you last, I have designed and manufactured just one new tractor.  I mean one – I tooled it by hand – no mass production was necessary.  But that tractor has cut an eight hour workday down to four hours on" – the straight line of his arm, extended to point across the valley, moved like a royal scepter; her eyes followed it and she saw the terraced green of hanging gardens on a distant mountainside – "the chicken and dairy farm of Judge Narragansett" – his arm moved slowly to a long, flat stretch of greenish gold at the foot of the canyon, then to a band of violent green – "in the wheat fields and tobacco patch of Midas Mulligan" – his arm rose to a granite flank striped by glistening tiers of leaves – "in the orchards of Richard Halley."

Behold Moses showing the promise land to the faithful.  No wait…that’s a Royal Scepter there.  Never mind where he got the tools to work the steel to make tractor motor, let alone a tractor.  Hey…this guy’s not only an aircraft maker and a hog farmer.  He’s a lathe maker and foundry operator…And a tool and die maker.  And a tire maker.  He can build motors and transmissions and differentials.  From just the simple everyday raw materials you find just laying around in the middle of the Rocky Mountains for the taking, Dwight Sanders can make gaskets and seals and sealing compound and springs and rubber.  He can manufacture gauges and radiators and hoses and belts.  Or someone else there can.  Possibly the town dentist.  But look at it closer.  Rand here seems to think that running a farm or an orchard, consists of running a tractor back and forth all day long and if you build a better tractor you can cut the farmer’s workday down by half. 

I mean…because farmers work an eight hour day just like everyone else don’t they?  When they’re not running the local airport.  Ask a tobacco farmer how long their day is.

But it’s gets better.  A page or two on and they meet the man who produces the oil for Galt’s Gulch.  And presumably, the gasoline, the kerosene, the motor oil, all the lubricants, and the petroleum-based plastic grocery bags for the grocery store Lawrence Hammond runs…between building the automobiles the folks in Galt’s Gulch drive…

There were two other men working with him: a big muscular roughneck, at a pump halfway up the wall, and a young boy, by the tank on the ground.  The young boy had blond hair and a face with an unusual purity of form.  She felt certain that she knew his face, but she could not recall where she had seen it.  The boy caught her puzzled glance. grinned, and as if to help her, whistled softly, almost inaudibly the first notes of Halley’s Fifth Concerto.  It was the young brakeman of the Comet.

She laughed.  "It was the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley, wasn’t it?"

"Sure," he answered.  "But do you think I’d tell that to a scab?"

"A what?"

"What am I paying you for?" asked Ellis Wyatt, approaching; the boy chuckled, darting back to seize the lever he had abandoned for a moment.  "It’s Miss Taggart who couldn’t fire you, if you loafed on the job.  I can."

"That’s one of the reasons why I quit the railroad, Miss Taggart," said the boy.

There is so much there to unpack, not the least of which is the delicately beautiful, artistic youth in a book by the notoriously homophobic Rand.  Who…ah…quits his job on the railroad so he can work where common laborers have absolutely no legal rights.  I hope you like working for 1/10th of a living wage in Galt’s Gulch kid.  Maybe Lawrence Hammond gives him a place in the alley behind his grocery store to spend the night after he sweeps the floors. Or maybe he has a night job cleaning the hog pens at Dwight Sanders’ farm. 

But wait…there’s more…

The roughneck was watching them from above, listening with curiosity.  She glanced up at him, he looked like a truck driver, so she asked, "What were you outside?  A professor of comparative philology, I suppose?"

"No, ma’am," he answered. "I was a truck driver."

Oh look…a touch of humor in an Ayn Rand novel.  But wait for it…

He added, "But that’s not what I wanted to remain."

Because…you know…only a looter would want to earn a living as a truck driver.   So…who transports the goods in this Utopia Of The Mind?  I know, I know…!  Dwight Sanders runs goods around from all the farms to Lawrence Hammond’s grocery store on his new super tractor.  In half the time.  When it’s not saving Judge Narragansett time on his chicken farm, and Midas Mulligan time on his tobacco patch and Richard Halley time in his orchard.   Between working on his hog farm and running the town airport.

So.  Who is growing the cotton here, in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, for the textile mill that somebody is running, to produce the cloth that somebody who is making everyone’s clothes there needs?  Who made the textile mill?  Who made the tools to make the textile mill?  Who made the lumber but build the textile mill?  Who made the saws for the lumber mill to make the lumber for the textile mill?  Who transported the lumber?  Wait…Sanders again…  Who makes the soap that the blond-haired delicate of face artistic but not gay really he isn’t gay no way is he gay kid uses to clean himself off after working in Ellis Wyatt’s oil field?  Assuming he can afford the luxury of soap on the slave labor wages Wyatt is perfectly free to pay him?  Or maybe soap isn’t needed in Galt’s Gulch, because the Men Of The Mind just will their bodies not to get dirty.

The right wingers yap, yap, yapping now about starting their own Galt’s Gulches are the same hypocrites who are fond of saying "There is no free lunch."  Meanwhile, Atlas Shrugged is about a man who invents a motor that’s powered by atmospheric static electricity.  Hey everyone…free energy!   Its pivotal moment is when the heroine discovers Galt’s Gulch, and sees for herself that the work of producing the basic necessities of life that modern civilization depends on is so easy even the CEO of an aircraft company can do it…in his spare time.  And machine an entirely new tractor out of raw materials with the rest of his spare time.  Who needs actual farmers?  Or truck drivers?   Some day, the heartlanders, the blue collar workers, the Joe The Pumbers, should really take a look at the depth of the contempt the brains of the republican party view them with.  Nobody really needs you worthless morons…er…now give us your votes praise Jesus or the homos will sodomise your children…

Rand claimed to idolize New York City.  Pity she never actually took a stroll through its streets to watch what makes it all work.

So…I’m with  Paul Constant on SLOG.  Let them try it.  By all means.  Every little upper middle class rebel child needs their go live in a commune period.  Who knows…when they come straggling back ragged and hungry from their adventure, maybe they’ll consent to give the people who pick their cotton, keep their grocery store shelves stocked, make their clothes and keep their floors clean a livable wage then.  Yes, as a matter of fact, there is no free lunch.  So pay your server enough to make them want to keep feeding you.