"If people "vote with their feet" and leave, then no there's not"
Yes there is. The sooner places like this become completely failed states, without sufficient revenue to pay for the promises made to those who still remain, the sooner they will topple over and be able to be renewed. The sooner the remaining residents rebel because the entitlements that were promised are not being given, the sooner those making the promises will be thrown out of office. The only question that will remain is if there are sufficient entrapraneurs left to rebuild an economy. Look at Detroit as a smaller scale example. When businesses leave, what's left is nothing. It's just a matter of watching more and more rats fight for a smaller and smaller piece of cheese. Eventually it's all gone and the rats die off.
My decision was to help speed the process by removing the revenue stream that my firm represented from being used by the state, or it's residents. About 10% of the population drives 90% of the economy. If and when those 10% go elsewhere, taking their businesses with them, the balance of the population will either follow or starve. When they starve, they will rebel. It can't happen soon enough for me, who as I said previously will be reading about it from 1000 miles away.
Of course it's always easier to stay, and to rationalize that it's the right thing. People live complex lives and it's often easier to compromise than to take a stand. If that works for you, that's fine. Work, family, etc., all play a part in decisions we each make.
What I did was to change the calculus for my employees. They could come with me, or not. I left. They followed. I took my cheese with me when I left. Not even a scrap remains for the rats who stayed behind.
Willie
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It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
Government “help” to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals … it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government … it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.
Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers.
The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time. The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights…
Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.
When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.
We are now moving towards complete collectivism or socialism, a system under which everybody is enslaved to everybody.
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.
Collected quotes of Ayn Rand
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