Bermuda's hard workers are battling against moochers

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was a dedicated individualist whose books, essays and speeches captivated a world held in the thrall of socialism.

The 1957 story dramatises one of the major conflicts gripping our world in 2011 — the battle between those who pay taxes and those who consume or eat them.

Put more bluntly, it is the battle between those who produce and create value and wealth by their own efforts and energy and those who are moochers and live off the hard work of others.

In this movie, businessmen are demonised and their property expropriated by government taxes — in effect stolen — until they decide enough is enough and they disappear. 

Sound vaguely familiar to those of us who live in Bermuda today?

Captivated

I first read the book about 30 years ago and was captivated. It has been a best seller since 1957 and it is estimated that more than eight million copies have been sold.

A 1991 survey indicated that this book changed more lives than any other except the Bible.

Atlas Shrugged tells an all too familiar story. Government do-gooders blame the problems they have created on the operations of the free market and use this as an opportunity to expand their power over ordinary people and make an unholy mess of it. Think of the proposed medical changes currently under consideration both here and in the US. Voters want the government to provide free medical care, subsidized pensions, cheap housing, free entertainment and a job they can never lose.

The movie and book show they lead to the disappearance of freedom and the creation of poverty.

Taxpayers are essential to our well-being. They exert effort to create the food, housing, clothes and energy that we need and demand. They make the effort and deliver the goods.

Many in the public assume that the makers are corporate moguls but they include everyone who contributes to the well-being of Bermuda — from janitors to corporate presidents, they work hard each day, earn their living and do not steal from others.

The opposite, moochers and looters, forcibly live off the efforts of other people. 

They jockey for positions of power in government and, if successful, they seize wealth and exercise power over everyone else.

Drugs

Some of the questions Bermudians should ask, include:

• Why does it take more than a year to count a population of 60,000?
• How do drugs get into a maximum security prison?
• Why do children go to school for 12 years and fail to learn to read, write and count?

Bermuda, until recently, was a place of accomplishment with a can-do people who rocketed to the top of the heap, lived in harmony with each other, had limited crime and created a huge middle class of producers.

Increasingly, more and more of us take no responsibility for our own lives, blame everyone else when things go wrong and line up for a handout. 

What has changed in Bermuda? If you do not have the time to read the book — it is about 800 pages — see the movie to find out.

The sharply-drawn characters — Dagny Taggart, the female CEO of a railroad line; Hank Rearden, a self-made steel executive; Orren Boyle, who curries favour with the government to get his mitts on taxpayers’ money; and the repulsive Wesley Mouch, head of the ‘Bureau of Economic Planning’ — tell a great story and provide a warning of what the future holds unless we change our way of thinking.