JOANNA A. wrote:
> Yes and no. I have yet to read a critique of Rand that happens to mention the fact that at the end of "Shrugged" the way by which this elite manages to survive is by having discovered some infinite, magical source of energy so that they no longer need.....wait for it....workers.
>
> It is actually very funny: for the first time in literature....the deus ex machina is replaced by the prole ex machina.
>
>
> Joanna
^^^^^^^^ CB: Perpetual motion machines; overthrow of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
However, robots don't buy cars ,or take out mortgages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion
Perpetual motion
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Perpetual motion (disambiguation).
Robert Fludd's 1618 "water screw" perpetual motion machine from a 1660 wood engraving. This device is widely credited as the first recorded attempt to describe such a device in order to produce useful work, that of driving millstones.[1] Although the machine would not work, the idea was that water from the top tank turns a water wheel (bottom-left), which drives a complicated series of gears and shafts that ultimately rotate the Archimedes' screw (bottom-center to top-right) to pump water to refill the tank. The rotary motion of the water wheel also drives two grinding wheels (bottom-right) and is shown as providing sufficient excess water to lubricate them. Perpetual motion describes motion that continues indefinitely without any external source of energy.[2] This is impossible in practice because of friction and other sources of energy loss.[3][4][5] Furthermore, the term is often used to in a stronger sense to describe a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, a "hypothetical machine which, once activated, would continue to function and produce work"[6] indefinitely with no input of energy. There is a scientific consensus that perpetual motion is impossible, as it would violate the first or second law of thermodynamics.[4][5] Nikola Tesla noted that we are immersed in a variety of energetic fields, so that cases of apparent perpetual motion can exist in nature, but such motions either are not truly perpetual or cannot be used to do work without changing the nature of the motion (as occurs in energy harvesting).[7] For example, the motion or rotation of celestial bodies such as planets may appear perpetual, but are actually subjected to many forces such as solar winds, interstellar medium resistance, gravitation thermal radiation and electro-magnetic radiation.[8][9] The flow of electric current in a superconducting loop may be perpetual and could be used as an energy storage medium, but following the principle of energy conservation the source of energy output would in fact originate from the energy input with which it was previously charged. Machines which extract energy from seemingly perpetual sources—such as ocean currents—are capable of moving "perpetually" (for as long as that energy source itself endures), but they are not considered to be perpetual motion machines because they are consuming energy from an external source and are not isolated systems. Similarly, machines which comply with both laws of thermodynamics but access energy from obscure sources are sometimes referred to as perpetual motion machines, although they also do not meet the criteria for the name. Despite the fact that successful perpetual motion devices are physically impossible in terms of the current understanding of the laws of physics, the pursuit of perpetual motion remains popular.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> Bruce Bartlett fb:
> Remarkably insightful review of Atlas Shrugged by Whittaker Chambers.
> Atlas is probably the best-selling POS in literary history.
>
> http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback
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