The Twentieth Century Motor Company - part 1

The stowaway and a story of voting for self-immolation

In writing Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand displayed keen insight into government, business, and the human psyche. Though authored as a dystopian warning, much of the narrative has proven rather prophetic. One particularly pertinent passage recounts the story of a manufacturing company that implements “a new plan to run the factory.” This plan was agreed upon democratically by the factory workers, and those who voted for the plan (pretty much all the employees), eventually live to regret it. Join me on a trip aboard a railroad to hear how this tale unfolds, and we will uncover together how Rand’s warnings turned out to be uncannily predictive.

Our journey begins with a nameless, “aging tramp” who has stowed away aboard the Taggart Transcontinental Comet, a train heading from the east coast to the west. When this hitcher is found and about to be cast off by the conductor, Dagny Taggart, Operating Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental, happens upon them and invites the tramp to dine with her. In the course of their conversation, she asks about his background, and he relates for her how the company for whom he once worked - The Twentieth Century Motor Company - met its demise:

“Well, there was something that happened at that plant where I worked for twenty years. It was when the old man died and his heirs took over. There were three of them, two sons and a daughter, and they brought a new plan to run the factory. They let us vote on it, too, and everybody—almost everybody—voted for it. We didn't know. We thought it was good. No, that's not true, either. We thought that we were supposed to think it was good. The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need...

"We voted for that plan at a big meeting, with all of us present, six thousand of us, everybody that worked in the factory. The Starnes heirs made long speeches about it, and it wasn't too clear, but nobody asked any questions. None of us knew just how the plan would work, but every one of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And if anybody had doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shut—because they made it sound like anyone who'd oppose the plan was a child killer at heart and less than a human being. They told us that this plan would achieve a noble ideal. Well, how were we to know otherwise? Hadn't we heard it all our lives—from our parents and our schoolteachers and our ministers, and in every newspaper we ever read and every movie and every public speech? Hadn't we always been told that this was righteous and just? 

While the tale of this company is fictional, what we find here expressed is also what we see now happening all around us. It is not a new phenomenon - this has been happening for some time. It has, however, become much more evident over the past few years. People are voting for the new plan. Remember “hope and change”? Without knowing the details or how it would work out, many thought “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” was a good plan, or at least one that they were supposed to think was good. Likewise, out of hatred for a man who was unduly derided from the day he was elected, and despite Joseph Biden’s long history of lying, despite a congressional career spanning over 40 years in which he accomplished virtually nothing, despite campaigning mostly from his basement and drawing only minimal crowds on those rare occasions when he emerged for campaign rallies, many voted for Biden because to do so was supporting the ideals of democracy, and doing otherwise meant supporting dictatorial tyranny. Even now those against open borders, who object to student loan “forgiveness,” or who oppose any number of other such policies are labeled with terms like heartless, racist, uncaring, and other derogatory appellations. Those who are vocal about their disagreement or who question the election are castigated. Others who doubt the beneficence of Democrat policies think it better to hold their tongues and vote in favor rather than to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous leftists.

In the case of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, the noble ideal in favor of which they voted was that “everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need…” Put simply, they voted for socialism. In twenty-first century America, people are voting for a similar outcome - socialism. This is what Bernie Sanders means when he speaks of “democratic socialism” - you get socialism by voting for it. Everyone votes to have the fruits of their labors consumed by those who did not labor. How easy it is to convince people who have been poorly educated through the public school system to accede to such a noble cause. Everyone will have all their needs met. How dare you object! You heartless monster! You want people to be homeless! This is how the atrocity is perpetrated. It is sold as a virtuous pursuit of the greater good. It is framed as providing for the general welfare. Anyone who disagrees is shamed, excoriated, cancelled.

This doesn’t just apply to politics; the same tactics of fear, guilt, and shame are used to manipulate for many reasons. Shame and fear are powerful motivators, and they can make even strong people kneel to a noxious narrative if that narrative is framed as being noble. This was seen with regularity when people spoke out about COVID-19 measures. Won’t wear a mask? You want to kill grandma! Won’t get the shot? It’s not just for you - it’s to protect those around you! Stop being selfish! Think it was all a waste that only served to destroy small business while enriching corporate giants? You’re a conspiracy theorist! Trust the science! The end goal is always framed as a righteous and noble aspiration. Guilt and peer-pressure, even among adults, are powerful motivators and can be used as encouragement for some to go along to get along, and can be used to coerce others to remain silent in the face of potential criticism. As a result, instead of herd immunity, we develop herd mentality - everyone stampedes the same direction, and anyone who cuts across the path risks getting trampled.

Continuing the narrative:

"Do you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where there's a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you pour it, and each bucket you bring breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six—for your neighbor's supper—for his wife's operation—for his child's measles—for his mother's wheel chair —for his uncle's shirt—for his nephew's schooling—for the baby next door—for the baby to be born—for anyone anywhere around you—it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures—and yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end. . . . From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. . . .

What a description - pouring water into a tank that is draining more quickly than it can be filled, and having the tank drain widen as a result of pouring the water. This is the reason I am quoting Rand directly; while I can expound upon what she says, I cannot paint a sharper, more beautifully accurate picture of reality. This is the same as our government social programs. The more we pour in, the more goes out, and the more government seeks to take. Most don’t think through these initiatives and simply vote in favor because “it’s the right thing to do,” though actually, it’s not - it is the government committing armed robbery against the people, and that is absolutely wrong. Don’t think so? What happens if you refuse to pay the tax that supports these handouts? Do not be deceived. Participation in these policies is not voluntary - it is compulsory. The government is holding a gun to our heads saying, “give, or else…” The more we cede, the more they take. What is yours is no longer yours. You are not, however, supposed to notice. Yet those who foot the bill are forced to work harder, longer, more to pay the ever increasing cost.

While Rand here quotes Marx directly to describe what was happening at the Twentieth Century Motor Company, our contemporaries would never do so. Instead, the company line now is “diversity, equity, and inclusion” - everyone is entitled to a piece of the pie regardless of what they are able contribute. While the phraseology is different, there is no distinction.

So equity, as a concept, says: Recognize that everyone has the same capacity, but in order for them to have equal opportunity to reach that capacity, we must pay attention to this issue of equity if we are to expect and allow people to compete on equal footing. - Vice President Kamala Harris

According to our oh-so-eloquent Vice President, everyone has the same capacity. Really? Everyone has the intellect to architect a graphical processing unit (I’m wagering many don’t even have a clue what that is)? Anyone can learn to play professional sports at the same level as a Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky? You can take a random homeless person off the street and turn him into a business success story equal to that of a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk? Sure, it happened in the movie Trading Places, that Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) made some lucky guesses on trading futures in the stock market, but that’s hollywood. In life off the silver screen, such assertion is absolute absurdity.

The postulate that underlies this preposterous pontification is more pernicious. The pursuit of equal outcomes, rather than equal opportunity, is pestilential. It is nothing less than theft to force some to work for the benefit of others. In days past, we called this idea slavery, and as I seem to recall, people of late are calling the country to pay reparations to those who descended from the previously-enslaved. Isn’t that what we’re told? Slavery is BAD!!! People should never be forced to work for someone else, and especially not for a pittance in wages when the people at the top are getting rich!!! That, however, is precisely where the quest for equity leads. The dream of equity is little more than a desire for collectivism, and collectivism always has one end - an elite ruling class lording over a destitute proletariat.

As this former factory laborer continues:

We're all one big family, they told us, we're all in this together. But you don't all stand working an acetylene torch ten hours a day—together, and you don't all get a bellyache—together. What's whose ability and which of whose needs comes first? When it's all one pot, you can't let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim that he needs a yacht—and if his feelings is all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If it's not right for me to own a car until I've worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on earth—why can't he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability not to have collapsed? No? He can't? Then why can he demand that I go without cream for my coffee until he's replastered his living room? . . . Oh well . . . Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. We voted on it. Yes, ma'am, we voted on it in a public meeting twice a year. How else could it be done? Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars—rotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didn't belong to him, it belonged to 'the family,' and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his 'need'—so he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife's head colds, hoping that 'the family' would throw him the alms. He had to claim miseries, because it's miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realm—so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brother's. How else could it be done? Do you care to guess what happened, what sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with the jackpot?

“We’re all in this together.” Hmmm….where have we heard that before? Is it any wonder that government trotted out this tiny trope to condition the commoners to capitulate to their Covid commandments? It’s for the common good is the siren song of tyrants.

Look how aspiring to the common good affected the Twentieth Century Motor Company. They voted democratically for the plan, then they had also to vote democratically for the distribution of profits. Realize, this is a true democracy; this is not how the United States of America operates. America is a representative republic, a form of government wherein we the people vote for those who will represent us in a republican form of government. Those representatives govern and vote for (or against) legislation on our behalf. In a true democracy, everyone participates directly, as seen in this horrendous example.

Twice a year the employees of the Twentieth Century Motor Company would vote how funds would be distributed. Now, consider the tramp’s question: “Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting?” As Rand states, “it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers”. This is what our society also is becoming. The entitlement mentality engrained into the younger generation(s) is bringing to fruition Rand’s prophetic writing. More and more people are looking to government not to protect their rights, but to provide their needs. This was never the intent of our founding fathers. Government, in their eyes, was a necessary evil that serves a specific purpose:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Government, from the perspective of the men who fought for our independence, is to protect our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (not to provide that happiness - in addition, what is meant there by “pursuit of happiness” is a much longer conversation, suffice to say, it does not simply refer to an emotion). When people lose this perspective, and look to the government as provider rather than protector of rights, liberty is lost and people fall into servitude. Perhaps even more nefarious is overall how such a shift in mindset affects the populace. Those who want, beg. What about those who do not seek to live at the expense of others? Are they consigned simply to support those who do? What if those being taxed to subsidize the beggars do not wish to participate? How is it right for those who don’t have to vote to receive from those who have? This, of course, is illustrated in the example used by so many to describe true democracy - two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Believe it or not, when this country was yet inchoate, only property owners were permitted to vote. This was presumably so that those who voted had proverbial skin in the game. Now, the argument is that everyone pays taxes, so everyone has skin in the game. But does everyone have an equal stake? No. Thus, those with less vote for those with more to pay more. To what end? To redistribute to those with less. As stated before, this is looting, plain and simple. 

No one has a right to his own earnings. No one has a right define his own needs. It is all up to the collective. The results are evident. Many now in Congress believe that it is right to take from those who have and give to those who lack. This is a consequence of the quest for “equity.” Crusading for equity denies equality - it does not advance more across the playing field; instead, it holds everyone back.

Next: Part 2 - Plummeting profits and plunging production