Q: Who is John Galt? A: Who cares?

As someone who kind of enjoys having my blood boiled by opinions I find in opposition to my own, I am delighted to learn that Obama's election is causing some to consider "dropping out" of society in protest. In response to the specter of raised taxes for the minute few who haul in a quarter of a million a year, some are considering pulling a John Galt and removing their skills and services from the American market place.

John Galt is a character from Ayn Rand's exceedingly repetitive and literarily bland Atlas Shrugged. The book is Rand's magnum opus, espousing in fictional form her supposed contribution to Western philosophy, which can essentially be summed as such: The competent, industrious, entrepreneurial and productive minority make the world go round; everyone else is dependent or worse. Rand's ideas have an intellectual sheen using terms like "individualism" and "objectivism," but really she developed and promoted a philosophy of hierarchy (yup, just like a caste system) which not only values some lives over others but absurdly premises the livelihood of the many on the productivity of the few. It has enjoyed wide influence and prestige, especially among those who see themselves as the real world examples of the novel's gritty unsung hyper-competent heroes, Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart. Rand's objectivists see the world "as it really is," see "the facts" others fail to see and work harder than your ordinary schmuck. For this reason they are a beacon of civilization and progress amidst the barbarous and inept societies in which they are forced to live.

The book is all passion and abstraction and unbearably bad to boot yet this hasn't stopped influencing many who are attracted to her idealization of selfishness. Earlier this year, reports spoke about private companies actually paying universities to make Atlas Shrugged compulsory reading in business courses. Former US Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan was a longtime associate and disciple of Rand and used to write for her Objectivist newsletter. Greenspan recently made headlines when he conceded, in a very opaque and round about way, that the let-the-John-Galts-do-as-they-please approach of his chairmanship had, ahem cough sputter, perhaps been "flawed." It will be interesting to see following hundreds of billions in government aid, whether the captains of the economy will continue to idealize the virtue of stuffing one's pockets, er, I mean smelting new alloys.

So what will happen if America's self-appointed "producers" ensconce themselves a la John Galt away from society in a Rocky Mountain commune? My bet is that they'll spend all their time creating a railroad directly linking them to Mexico's border so that they might gather cheap labor to carry out their advanced, under-appreciated wills. Chewing wet cigars while overlooking their industries, they will grimace in exhaustion and disgust, dictating their memoirs and longing for those wistful days when a man could rapaciously exploit in peace and quiet.