What is John Galt?

I can tell you this much, when looking at current leadership candidates for the Liberal Party of Canada, I think that asking "who isn't John Galt" is far easier.

Belidiot is most certainly not John Galt. Perhaps ironically, she is more like James Taggart than she is like Dagny. Let me clearly state that it is not my intention to pick on her specifically. Public life is really hard, and some of the tribulations that Ms. Stronach faces are because she is an attractive blonde woman, not despite it. Her value to feminism in Canada is a subject for another day.

Her visage, her wealth, and her uncanny ability to be visible make her one of the easier targets for Canada's media to include in conversations about who is the next aspirant Prime Minister. The role of the media in anointing leaders is also a subject for another day.

But to answer the title question, John Galt is the ideal of what a leader is supposed to be. Sure, Rand framed Galt as the perfect individual, in the objectivist sense, but let's be honest- we can't all be John Galt. Asking what John Galt is, rather than who he is, should guide us to pick a better leader, or at least identify what we should be looking for in a leader.

John Galt is someone who inspires me to follow him/her. John Galt is someone whose original ideas are overshadowed slightly by the way that he/she approaches subjects that they know nothing about. John Galt is someone who is willing to do right by society despite the personal sacrifices that they are forced to make. Ok, that last one made Ayn roll over in her grave, but you get the idea.

I tell you what- invent an engine that runs on static electricity, and I will vote for you. Imagine how much that would piss off Alberta.

I don't think John Galt wants to be the leader, rather s/he is thrust into a leadership role because of the example that s/he sets for others. George Bush is not John Galt, but maybe Dick Cheney is. Bill Clinton is John Galt...now. He wasn't in 1992 or 1996. A constitutional prohibition to the best possible leadership: only in America.

22 rumored Liberal leadership contenders, and very few inspire anything more than an unsettling urge to vote for Jack Layton. It is getting to the point where "opponent in leadership race" is an important demographic as it represents such a large percentage of the party.

I would be lying if I said that there was one that stuck out to me above the rest. Despite his brilliance, Bob Rae has previously demonstrated a total inability to lead. For every award winning book Iggy-natief writes, he has the personality of an oyster and views on Israel that will get him shot, possibly by Bob Rae. The survivor of the "Italian civil war" (Fontana, Volpe, Bevilaqua et al) will be in a great position to anoint the next leader, but to actually win requires interesting new ideas and not the 'pick me' mentality that all three have demonstrated. To be fair, Beeker (John Manley), Tobin and McKenna didn't do it for me either.

Louise Arbour is so smart she doesn't want to endure the race to the bottom required to be successful. It is shameful that the logistics of leadership politics will keep out any brilliant candidates. And there is the rub. Why is it that winning a leadership contest (in any jurisdiction, not just Canada) requires a skill-set and a team that is so decidedly different, bordering on antithetical, to the one required for governing the country? Honestly, if you let the Girl Guide who sells the most cookies be in charge of the troop, what you get is a leader with a really fat dad or a pyramid scheme that wastes a lot of food.

All of this is to say that there are serious impediments to public life for people who are not already well connected or do not have a hook to catch the media's attention. Obviously there are exceptions (Bill Clinton comes to mind) who rise above the obstacles they have to success, but they are rare indeed. I bet you a dollar that if Justin Trudeau even sneezed at a television camera this week, his name would be vaulted to the top of polls as an aspirant leader of the Liberals because he is genetically pre-disposed to be a great leader. I mean, it worked out well in America, didn't it?

So where is our John Galt? S/he is probably still a generation away.

Dagny Taggart's labour problems

One day I will get off an airplane, walk to the luggage carousel and my bag(s) will be the first one to come down the conveyor belt.

I have begun to survey my co-travelers and ask them if their bags have ever been the first bags off the carousel. I have yet to meet a single person whose bag has ever come off the plane first, and I am almost convinced that the airline industry has “extra” bags that they put into play to make us think our bags are coming as they desperately try to locate and or reassemble them.

I can’t remember the last time I took a plane anywhere and there wasn’t some form of hiccup- whether my bag was sent to a more interesting place then I or that my luggage caused a delay because it was ticking. I place part of the blame on the Peter Keatings of the world. I just need one architect to say “…checking your bag in another building is a bad idea, and I don’t think people really care if there is a Starbucks between check-in and the departure gate.” Of course, that isn’t poor Peter’s fault- he is just building that which was described to him by his greedy clients who survive on multiple sales.

Poor design is only part of the problem. Pardon the pun, but I think that the people who work in the airline industry are not very well grounded. I will exclude pilots, for as best as I can tell, I have yet to be delivered to the wrong place. The bottom line is that the people who work in the airline industry don’t have a lot in common with Rhodes scholarship aspirants. Its not that the union members are dumb and lazy, it is that they are dumb or lazy. Put these same workers in the labyrinth of modern day airports, and I am surprised any bags get onto planes at all. Of course, the call number for Ottawa is YOW. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Seriously, there are lots of people in the industry who work really hard, and I am sure it is often grueling work. These are highly sought after jobs for non-professionals because of the excellent job security, high wages, and benefits would make most civil servants think about giving up their lottery-like windfall. These features exist as a direct result of the unions? Or do the unions exist to protect these features? I think that is probably where the problems start. I am of the honest belief that a collective bargaining unit that has any say on the admission of its new members goes out of its way to exclude excellence, out of fear that the mediocrity of the vast majority of its members will be exposed when standing next to it. Only the best worked on the Galt line.

Generally, does our society really need unions anymore? I am not possibly smart enough to make that determination, because I am sure that they play a valuable role to their members that I haven’t grasped yet. Specific to this industry, however, I have to wonder if stewardesses, baggage handlers and ticket agents really need to be in a union. Assuming for a second that there aren’t laws and regulations that protect against every imaginable infraction and social injustice to the daily labourer, can’t a citizen, informed or otherwise, elect to disenfranchise themselves? I don’t believe that the legal environment that existed at the advent of the union mindset is still in place today, and if it is, it is in Alberta where unions don’t need to exist because everything else seems to be paved with gold.

Given the name of this blog, maybe a reconsideration of the ironically titled Rand formula could provide the answer. While acknowledging the value of group-speak for members and the benefits that can accrue from it, the formula specifically considered individual wishing to extricate themselves from the collective, to stand alone as an individual, or to stand with another collective bargaining unit that he/she feels better represents his/her interests. I would go so far as to suggest that the forced association is in violation of the spirit, if not the judicially interpreted letter, of the constitutional guarantee to free assembly. I need to find a very wealthy airline coffee-jockey to test the theory judicially, however.

Would this get my bag to Orlando any faster or in the same number of pieces? Theoretically, without a union lording over the workplace, some of the less desirable and problem members will be fired, retrained or inspired to be less ineffective rather than promoted out of harms way. A crappy worker makes a wicked shop steward. Ultimately, mistakes will still happen, but at least in the abstract world between the ticket agent and the baggage carousel, there is the chance that things will run more efficiently.

Unions are everywhere. To the point where I wonder if their social usefulness is imperiled by their dominance over all professions. I know that there are some places where unions are still useful, starting with Police Officers and Nurses whose rights are at the whims of provincial legislatures because of their (the workers and the legislature’s) desire to work in the public interest. But, do you really care when the staff at a golf course go on strike because they aren’t getting $14.00 to serve drinks?

I believe that an opt-in/out policy would actually foster competition. There are people who are willing to do a job for less money than you are, and if the laws protect them from egregious labour practices, why shouldn’t they be able to out bid you? Right now, unions already bid against each other for the same jobs, but they have completely arbitrary and self-imposed glass floors that prevent them from undercutting each other.

Of course, it could be that I am cheap. First class bags don’t get lost. Workers of the world unite to serve your capitalist masters.

Howard Roark Laughed

How many times have you started reading a blog that described itself as “not like any other blog?” If the answer to that question is > 1, and it upsets you, I probably have some bad news for you.

If you don’t read blogs for inspiration, insight, analysis and intellectual stimulation, I highly suggest you visit my blog once a week. My blog will be a delicate mixture of my daily observations on political philosophy, the general inefficiencies of society, and my casual observations about the interactions between people. I call it “infotainment,” and its mindless nature and flippancy will inevitably haunt me in my future.

I only ask two things: 1) If I make you laugh, tell me. While you live off food and air, I live off a subtle mélange of lol, roflmao, and other clever ways of saying “I have enjoyed your insight, or lack thereof.” 2) Don’t debate me in my forum. If you disagree with something I say, feel free to email me and tell me. The people who visit my blog, and for that matter the author, don’t care what you think. If they cared what you thought, they would go to your blog. If you would like, I will gladly direct them there.

That having been said, let me tell you a little bit about me. I don’t fit in. Politically, socially, philosophically, ecumenically, maniacally or mechanically- I am always wedged into a group that doesn’t quite describe me. I also make up words and/or misuse words on purpose, so don’t try to tell me my grammar is incorrect. I guess that means I only ask three things.

This forum will be an episodic adventure of what I believe, and you will find that I am not easily type cast into a political or ideological brand. My views often changes without warning. That is the beauty of what I like to call “the cube.” The cube is the new way of examining how a person fits into a political system. It adopts the mindless left-right spectrum along eight different lines. At this point in time, I don’t even know what each axis measures, but I do know that the centre of the cube, also known as the “sphere of influence,” is how leaders measure their positions.

The sphere has to draw as many as possible into it in order for the trust and efficacy levels of any given leader to resonate favourably within those she wishes to lead. That sphere floats inside the cube, sometimes quite unpredictably. The best way to explain it is to explain that the sphere was very large and unfocused on September the 10th, 2001. It narrowed considerably the next day.

With that, I invite you to visit here to pass the time. In my universe, your time is the ultimate compliment you can give me because it is the only thing you can't get any more of.

WST
March 27, 2006.