Who was John Galt? A particularly interesting idea is that Ayn Rand’s fictional character from Atlas Shrugged was at least partially patterned after Nikola Tesla. After all, Galt had studied physics and became an engineer, then designed a “revolutionary new motor powered by ambient static electricity.” Galt became frustrated when the company he worked at embraced collectivism and he walked out, leaving his new motor behind.
This story plays well with Nikola Tesla’s actual history, at least when it is infused with some speculation that perhaps extends well beyond actual fact. Tesla obviously studied physics and became an electrical engineer. He designed a revolutionary new motor powered by alternating current and experimented with electrostatic electricity. And like Galt, Tesla became frustrated with the corporatism of working for Edison.
Rand even alludes to Tesla coils—“It was the coil that I noticed first…Those men, long ago, tried to invent a motor that would draw static electricity from the atmosphere, convert it and create its own power as it went along.” While there are clear departures from Tesla in the Galt character, these changes are certainly within the normal realm of creative writing. Atlas Shrugged is, after all, a novel.
The key to the thread is that John Galt, like Nikola Tesla, was interested in the production of what effectively would be “free energy.” Virtually all costs associated with electrical power generation, transmission, and use would be eliminated. Tesla had discovered what he called “terrestrial stationary waves” in his laboratory in Colorado Springs. The Earth could transmit power—acting as a conductor that would be as responsive, and controllable, as a tuning fork. With this knowledge Tesla was able to light two hundred lamps without the use of wires. Returning to New York, Tesla planned to develop not only wireless communication in his new facility at Wardenclyffe, but wireless power freely distributed to all through the Earth’s surface.
With this as a base, the John Galt connection—creating free energy from static electricity—is sometimes extended to include Wilhelm Reich. Reich claimed to have discovered what he called “orgone,” which was a physical energy contained in all living matter as well as in the atmosphere. He believed that this orgone could generate “free, useable energy.” Galt, Reich, and Tesla all discovered “free energy.” So where is it? Why do we have to pay the electrical utility for our power and wait for them to get power back on after a storm? Well, according to the conspiracy theorist, it is because the few people with political and corporate power do not want the rest of us to take away their profits by having access to energy that is “free.”
What do you think?
[Adapted from Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity]
David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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I think the conspiracy theorists are correct .
Perhaps…
not same what they tought about electricy and their private life. Tesla is abnormaly inocent, nonmaterialistic and had something what west world rarely know, it is ortodox beleved. They call him mad scientist because not understand our viewpoint of trans human communication. That is from parent-his dady was ortodox prist and dozen of them. Probebly there is similarity, but not total…..
It does seem that Galt and Tesla differ considerably in motive and moral philosophy.
Well, I read Atlas Shrugged a very long time ago, but as I remember it, John Galt was a metallurgist and his main invention was a more resistant alliage for railways.
Also, their motivations are at the exact opposite : in the book John Galt aimed for personal wealth, whereas in reality Nikola Tesla aimed for service to humanity.
Galt came up with the static electricity motor (in the book) and later worked in railroads. As a character he was fairly two-dimensional.
I agree that Tesla was the polar opposite of Galt in terms of personal philosophy. Galt was self-serving whereas, as you note, Tesla was more interested in inventing things that helped mankind. Largely he did that without much concern for financial reward, which is one of the reasons he lived out his final years in poverty.
Thanks for the great comment.
Serge is thinking of “Henry Rearden”.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. That makes sense.
Thank you!
The metallurgist is Henry Rearden, the other main love interest. He’s sort of a “realistic ideal man” next to Galt as Rand’s ubermensch. They ultimately both choose to leave the wider world behind, abandoning the vast profits they could make there, for a life where they control their own labor and don’t have to deal with corporate hierarchy and government red tape. I disagree with a lot of Rand’s ideas, but it’s reductive to say her characters aren’t motivated to improve the world and the human condition — she just thinks selfish reasoning is the way to do those things.
Rand even makes a big point throughout the book about prioritizing value creation over profit generation. But she does this weird thing where instead of inventing her own terms she insists on redefining words like “money” and “profit” and even “love”, so it’s understandable that so many come away from her work thinking she’s just all about greed and profits.
Thanks for your insights. I suppose the issue isn’t so much what Rand meant in her novel then, but that so many have bastardized it to serve their own selfish desires today.
Words are needed to think. If they are defined as oxymorons, they do the opposite. If one doesn’t know his starting point is an oxymoron and that corrupts his conclusion, all his inferences, then he may focus on being logical, succeed, and still reach a false conclusion. “..thinking she’s just all about greed and profits.” when she isn’t is a good example. Ayn doesn’t invent subjective terms, she redefines oxymorons objectively, e.g., non contradictorily, so thinking/understanding is possible. To call this a “weird thing” is true, but to be more accurate, call it “an uncommon concern with reality based, objective concepts”. Hence, calling her philosophy “Objectivism”.
”’and still it is altruism vs capitalism….good for self vs good for society … and will not change in this country until the collapse of the system or a revolution
It’s likely not so bifurcated; there is much overlap in practice. But it does show a major contrast in philosophy.
Anything worth doing is worth doing for money. Do you think Jobs and Gates did what they did to help humanity? No, they did it to make a buck…now what those two accomplished had a great and beneficial outcome on the world. Why would motive be factored into this..should they be despised because their motives were not “pure” in your eyes? Look at the end result. Granted Jobs is dead, Gates has become a globalist and now despises everything that allowed him to accumulate what he has. Don’t even get me started on the Zuckerberg and his evil counter part Dorsey. Elon seems to have figured it out and is leaving the People’s State of the Left Coast and is moving operations to Texas. Today it seems we have all the big players on the board as society is getting ready to collapse…could Mouch be Dr. Fauci? Trump is Mulligan, Elon-Galt/readen/Franscisco?
I’m not sure I understand your opening line. People do things all the time for the enjoyment of doing them, to give back to the community, to be nice, out of obligation (e.g., to your family, your church, your kid’s little league baseball team).
As for Jobs and Gates, my guess is they started doing what they did because they were inquisitive kids who liked to tinker and thought they could invent something really cool. Only after they had something marketable would they have seen the monetary value, which of course they did exploit to their greatest benefit. But even though they made money, they were likely driven more by the creativity (and perhaps arrogance) of inventing. Most inventors are internally driven, not so much by money, although they certainly can make a lot of it if what they invent goes viral.
I suppose there are people who despise Jobs and Gates (and Musk and Zuckerberg), but that has less to do with them making tons of money as it does with the ethics of how they made it. Zuckerberg, for example, manipulates the information we see to intentionally put us in silos that can be exploited. That gives those who intentionally lie, and threaten democracy, a vehicle by which to do it as long as they pay the bills. Sticking with the analogy, it’s like renting a car to someone you know will intentionally drive it into a crowd of people, then arguing you only rented the vehicle so shouldn’t be held accountable.
The other reasons for “despising” the ultrarich is because they don’t pay their fair share of taxes. The rules are dramatically different for people who can afford to buy influence (and write the tax laws) then they are for people working just as hard (and probably harder) in their warehouses.
Musk is a unique character. He’s fantastically creative and has no fear of failure. He’s also an arrogant a** who is particularly unlikeable as a person. Jobs was apparently pretty much a jerk before he died as well.
Not that all ultrarich are horrible people. Someone like Gates, for example, made so much money he stopped working and still lives the life of a billionaire on the interest despite giving billions away and working to end disease. Gates certainly is a “globalist” in the sense he realized how interconnected the world now is, which is kind of obvious. But I doubt he “despises everything that allowed him to accumulate what he has.” He’s simply giving back a little to the community. He’s using his money to do what he thinks should be done. Being rich shouldn’t be conflated with being a hateful person, which is what your comment seems to suggest.
Of course, Gates’s company was also sued repeatedly by vendors, competitors, and governments around the world for anti-trust/monopoly exploitation. I have no idea if he or Bezos or Musk or whomever is guilty of illegal practices, but they don’t really have to be since the tax code pretty much gives them the ability to avoid taxes as much as they want.
From “Peoples State of the Left Coast,” I assume you mean California. The state has some issues, for sure, but to suggest it is anti-business is the opposite of true. If it were a country it would be the 5th largest economy in the world (GDP, 2019). Musk is moving to Texas in part because Texas promised that he wouldn’t have to pay taxes again ever, and in part because of politics (and because he’s an arrogant a**). I doubt California would miss him much since he doesn’t really pay taxes there either. By the way, Musk basically became a billionaire by socialism, taking huge tax incentives from the federal and state governments for Tesla and even huger government contracts for SpaceX. Nothing wrong with that, most big companies get tons of free money from the government while complaining of socialism, but it does kind of show how dishonest billionaires and corporations are.
I have no idea what you meant in your final paragraph. Society isn’t about to collapse, unless you mean the anti-democracy movement that has been trying to screw the common man and redistribute wealth to the ultrarich since the beginning of our history. Which gets to the Trump is Mulligan. You might be right about that, although perhaps not in the way you meant.
The first line was from the movie ‘wall street’ Gordon Gecko. For the last how long do you think the working people will put up with the redistribution of their wealth before they just up and quit their jobs…collectivism sucks I saw this while getting my MBA in the 90s we were all put into groups and the person who didn’t contribute got the same grade as those who did
Ah, never saw that movie, although I heard Michael Douglas was quite good in it.
Regarding the redistribution idea, you seem to misunderstand the data. Wealth is always redistributed upward from the middle class to the rich. That’s the way it has been throughout our history. A recent meme tells the story well: Three men sit around a table. The caricatured “fat cat rich man” has a pile of cookies in front of him. He tells the middle class looking guy with one cookie that the poor starving guy with no cookies is trying to steal the middle class guy’s one cookie. By pitting the middle class against the lower economic class, the rich guy successfully distracts from what is really happening. Quite a good comic, actually.
As for collectivism, that isn’t really a thing in the United States. This is really only about whether the Constitution applies to all Americans versus just the privileged ones (which historically has been white Christian males). Some folks believe that benefits should apply to only the dominant group (see “white Christian males”) while most believe it should apply to everyone. This is why the dominant group and/or oligarchy (they tend to blend together in the past) spends so much time trying to convince workers that the destitute guy is trying to steal their one cookie.
Not sure where you got your MBA, but no school I ever went to ever gave the same grade for different contributions and outcomes. I can recall one such “group project” done during my doctoral studies in which I was unable to contribute as much as my two partners because of an ill-timed conference I had to attend. The end project was great and the other two got an A while I only got a B, which rightly reflected my contribution while correctly acknowledging their contributions.
Yes always knew that the misrepresentation of for the poor or for the children was a crock…just a way to line their own pockets…Hillary and Haite comes to mind recently. If california left the union wonder how many of those companies would actually stay there?
Not really clear on what you intended to say there.
California isn’t planning to leave the United States. Texas has mentioned secession, which of course is unconstitutional and how the Civil War was started. If they somehow did, they would lose out on all the federal aid they get, which is massive (especially after hurricanes and frozen electrical grid because their cheapo gas pipes froze in order for a handful of rich Republican donors could make bigger profits with monopolies at the expense of 95% of Texans).
By the way, most of the worst states in the United States for government assistance (welfare, food stamps, etc), education, economic stability, health care, etc. are “red” states. Red states take more from the federal government than they contribute. “Blue” states, including New York and California, provide more to the federal government than they take. In other words, blue states subsidize red states. So in general, California is likely to do much better without the red states dragging it down, and red states are likely to be the first to go bankrupt.
Funny thing is, Texas is likely to become a “blue” state within a decade given demographic changes (including Californian boomer babies moving there).
In the beginning, Bill Gates wrote a letter to the hacker community to tell them software was not to be shared but sold (mostly by Microsoft). He then relentlessly bought or crushed any idea that came out in the world. He put an end to many dreams (including mine).
When you sell a car, you don’t have it any more. When you sell a software, you still have it. It could have been the start of a new economy based on collaboration instead of competition. It could have been an answer to « Atlas Shrugged ».
I think humanity will eventually get back on track, but because of Bill Gates and a few others like him, we will have lost a few generations. The promise computers had for the benefit of mankind will have been highjacked by a few greedy individuals.
The idea of intellectual property (and anti-trust issues) predated Gates by, well, most of our nation’s history. The “haves” like to keep what they have, and see competition as a bad thing to be stamped out as quickly as possible. The patent system was created expressly to protect an inventor’s rights to their idea for at least enough time for them to make a profit, and it can take time to recapture the R&D costs. Most innovative companies sell themselves to the giants, sometimes by choice, sometimes by force of market pressure (and arguably, underhandedness).
In this country, and even in most others for products, the incentive is there to innovate. Without incentive we have the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, where political failure was largely due to an unworkable economic system. China somehow meshed a communist political system with a quasi-capitalist economic system (itself an amalgam of state-owned major businesses/services and privately owned businesses). The USSR fell apart and got Putin with his own little blend of dictatorship/mafia organization with enough services to keep the populace complacent (or at least powerless). In any case, protection of intellectual property (e.g., software) is the incentive to create innovation. The problem is that a small number of ultrarich oligarchs have rewritten the tax and legal codes to benefit themselves, which is pretty much how you get from being a 50 billionaire to 200 billionaire in a few years. If Bezos and the Waltons, for example, were to pay livable wages to their employees, they might be worth only $150 billion instead of $200 billion. Frankly, I doubt they would notice a different in their lifestyles, but their employees wouldn’t have to be on public assistance despite working full-time jobs.
Getting back to Tesla, which this post is about, he wasn’t a very good commercializer of his inventions, preferring to license them to others (e.g., AC to Westinghouse) and move on to the next big thing that fundamentally changed society. It’s why he ran out of funding and died broke. Edison, in contrast, was a tinkerer who worked with others and always commercialized each improvement to provide himself with the funding to keep inventing. He died rich. I’m not sure Gates fits that continuum. He pretty much (with help) created the one big thing that fundamentally changed society, but is ridiculously rich. Jobs did a variation on that theme. I guess you could say Zuckerberg did too, although he built on, and outcompeted, Microsoft’s “My Space.” [Apparently Myspace still exists in a somewhat different form] Musk is into a lot of things these days, including cryptocurrency.
Folks know that Gates didn’t actually invent MS-DOS, right? Microsoft bought it and changed the name.
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=99
All tech, all tools, can be used for good or bad. People can collaborate and compete simultaneously, e.g., racing to find the best solution to reach a common goal, e.g., clean energy, for less pollution.