Overcoming Obstacles In John Galt's Atlas Shrugged

In Atlas Shrugged, many individuals of ability faced obstacles that threatened to destroy everything they stood for. John Galt gave them a way to live their lives without those obstacles. Ragnar Danneskjöld was one of John Galt’s close friends making him one of the first to hear John’s plan to take the world back from the looters. Danneskjöld said to Hank Rearden that he loved that which had rarely been loved, namely, human ability. When he said this, he meant that many individuals in the book take human ability for granted, shown by the fact that several business plans follow the idea of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” (623). This idea took what men were able to complete and gave them money for their need. …show more content…
Jim Taggart supported this plan on account of the fact that Atlantic Southern was using their Taggart Bridge over the Mississippi free of charge. The reason this was necessary was that Taggart Transcontinental accidentally blew up part of their transcontinental track. So, while Atlantic Southern was not receiving compensation for it. The earnings of each company was put into the hands of a Board and it was distributed by how much track the company owed, regardless of whether that track was being used or not. Cuffy Meigs told Dagny she had nothing to worry about since Taggart Transcontinental “own(ed) the largest track mileage of any railroad in the country” (781). Most of their transcontinental track’s maintenance, however, fell to their competitors on account of the fact that, under the Unification Plan, all railroads used each other’s tracks free of charge. This is what Ragnar Danneskjöld meant when he said that human ability is rarely loved, seeing that in this instance, the Railroad Unification Plan takes for granted that the other railroad companies will allow their competitors to exploit their ability and receive the profit from it