Atlas Shrugged – Part 5 of ?
by Tom on November 27, 2009
in Atlas Shrugged
Sorry for such a long delay in getting back to this. Been a bit busy with real life.
Any way, this post takes us to when Dagny Taggart is riding on the Taggart Comet, the “premier” train in the country. She falls asleep while the train is moving and wakes up when it’s stopped.
Why did it stop? Because a signal was broken. The signal routed them on to a “side” track and they just sat there. The engineer knew the signal was broken but it wasn’t his job to override the signal and proceed. So they just sat there, and sat there, and sat there.
Dagny came out and overruled the engineer’s unwillingness to do what he knew was right because it “wasn’t his job.” That got the train moving again.
Now ask yourself:
- How many of the problems we are currently facing would be minimized or eliminated if more people had stepped up and said, “Do the right thing!”
- How many bad loans would not have been written if more loan officers had either refused the customer’s request or asked them to reconsider because it didn’t seem a good thing for the customer? But instead, too often the only concern was, “Can we sell the loan?”
- How many people wouldn’t have bought as much of a house as they did if their real estate sales agent hadn’t “talked” them into more of a house? I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve had people tell me, “I’ve told the Realtor I wanted to spend less than $150,000 (or whatever) and they keep showing me information at $200,000 or more.”
- How many of the problems in the investment world (aka the Madoff scandal) would have been avoided if people, especially financial advisors, had asked questions that might not normally seem to be their job? Many people on Wall Street knew something was broken but they didn’t think it was their job to do the right thing…..
Stay tuned, there’s a lot more coming!
