Ayn Rand first mentioned "the motor of the world" designed by anon-John Gault in her manuscript Atlas Shrugged in the 1940s.

How about a place where the smartest people in the world would flock to?

Sounds familiar? 

Take a seat, grab a glass and let me connect the dots for you.

When Rand was looking for a publisher to her magnum opus, she was looking for the most intellectual publisher who understood that Atlas Shrugged was to provide a moral defense of capitalism and free markets to challenge 3,000 years of Judeo-Christian tradition.  Jews who converted to Christianity were initially referred to as "Judaeo Christians" in the 19th century. Friedrich Nietzsche coined the phrase "Judenchristlich" (Latin for "Jewish-Christian") to refer to the unity of the Jewish and Christian worldviews.

During the Cold War, the phrase was frequently used in the US to denote a cohesive American identity opposed to communism. She demonstrates in Atlas Shrugged how our society will devolve into a primordial savagery without individual thought. A passionate defense of the autonomy of the human mind can be found in Atlas Shrugged. In contrast to the Christian ethos, which states that ("What is mine, is yours,") this is true for both capitalism ("I don't have to share what is mine") and communism ("What is yours, is mine"), objectivism that she presents is based on merit, What’s mine is mine and what's yours is yours and no one has a moral obligation to share with the other.

Capitalism is in agreement with this in respecting ownership rights of the individual where theft is wrong, whether by the state or by a single person, but Rand presents objectivism where  everyone lives on their merit and they do not owe to support or share with anyone if they choose not to do so.

In the 20th century, some of the most repressive dictatorships in human history were born. Individual freedom was badly endangered by the fascists in Italy, the national socialists (Nazis) in Germany, and the communists, initially in Russia and then in China and other countries.

Ayn Rand saw this horrible time in history firsthand. In fact, the West had just defeated the Nazis when she began writing Atlas Shrugged in 1946. Millions of innocent individuals had been killed by national socialism over a period of years, endangering world freedom as a result. It took a great deal of human life for the free nations of the West to defeat Nazism. It did not, however, lessen the threat posed by communism.

The Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist takeover of Russia, and the subsequent political tyranny were all events that Ayn Rand personally observed as a child growing up in Russia in 1905. She stayed in touch with her family members who were still in the Soviet Union even after she fled and arrived safely in the United States. But she lost touch of her family when Joseph Stalin's ruthless methods engulfed the Soviet Union. Rand had personal experience with the horrific repression of Communist rule.

Communism ruled a sizable chunk of the globe in the years immediately following World War II and throughout its final days. Russian "satellite" nations were originally established in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and other nations by Soviet soldiers as they advanced through Eastern Europe. Then, after gaining control of China and North Korea, the communists invaded South Korea. Soon after, communism took over in Cuba, right next to the United States. Communism was an advancing military force that threatened to swallow the free world in the 1940s and 1950s.

The ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union peaked during this time period. By using terror to dominate its empire in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union brutally put down a revolt by Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956. The free nations of the West were in danger as the Russians built up massive forces in Eastern Europe and produced the atomic weapon.

Communists promoted a collectivist political system, in which every citizen is morally obligated to give their lives in the service of the state, much like the Nazis did in the 1930s. Individual liberties and intellectual freedom, which are highly valued in the United States and other Western nations, were in grave risk.

Unfortunately, Among American academics and politicians, collectivism was becoming more and more common. Both national socialism and communism enjoyed support from American intellectuals, businesspeople, politicians, and labor leaders in the 1930s. During World War II, the entire horror of Nazism was made clear, and as a result, support for national socialism declined in the United States. However, in the United States, communism in the shape of the Marxist political ideology survived World War II. As members of the left democratic party, many American professors, authors, journalists, and politicians still support Marxist views today.

Many Americans at the time Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged firmly thought that the government should have the authority to forcefully redistribute income and to regulate private industry. Socialists and welfare economists never stopped criticizing the capitalist system of economic and political freedom. The collectivist notion that people must work and live in service to other people has significantly overtaken the idea that each individual has the right to live his or her own life. Individual liberties and political freedom were at danger in American culture, politics, and education.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand makes the case that American society's freedom is what has allowed for its greatest accomplishments. For instance, in the nineteenth century, entrepreneurs and innovators produced a flood of innovations that revolutionized society's way of life and lifted the quality of living to previously unheard-of heights. Rand was fully aware of the advancements made during this era of economic independence since she had thoroughly studied the history of capitalism. Just before he passed away, John Roebling created his masterwork, the Brooklyn Bridge, which he claimed to have perfected the suspension bridge. Henry Ford transformed the transportation sector by mass-producing cars. Samuel Morse created the telegraph, which Thomas Edison later developed and used to create the phonograph, the electric light, and the movie projector. Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant who arrived in America destitute, developed a sizable steel manufacturing business, while John D. Rockefeller did the same for the oil sector. James J. Hill and Cornelius Vanderbilt, two railroad builders, created affordable forms of transportation and stimulated economic growth in the Pacific Northwest.

According to Rand, these truly brilliant thinkers were emancipated by economic independence and were thus able to implement novel concepts and strategies. A limited amount of economic freedom still exists in America, according to Rand's book, but it is rapidly dwindling along with American prosperity. Successful individuals pay high taxes to help the poor, and American poor people pay similar taxes to support even poorer people in foreign People's States. The less efficient companies are penalized by government subsidies for inefficient ones. The rise of unscrupulous businessmen that seek profit by influencing dishonest politicians rather than working hard is a result of the state owning significant sectors of the economy. In essence, the imagined world of Atlas Shrugged depicts a future.

In the world of this narrative, 20th-century facts like high taxes, extensive social welfare programs, strict government supervision of business, and antitrust actions against profitable firms are exaggerated. American citizens' rights are revoked by the government, and freedom is constantly diminished. The United States of the book, which was once the final haven of freedom on earth, quickly transforms into a fascist/communist dictatorship. Are we really so far removed from Ayn Rand's fictional universe?

In contrast to the notion that a person should give up their life for the benefit of the state or society, Ran contends that everyone has the right to live their own life and pursue their own happiness. A person's sovereign rights are what the government should be defending, according to the individualistic ideology of objectivism. This theory contradicts the collectivist notion that a person must conform to social expectations because society as a whole is superior to him or her. The only theoretical framework for politics and economics that protects people's freedom of thought, individual liberty, and wealth is full laissez-faire capitalism, according to Objectivism. Laissez-faire capitalism is a system of free markets that legally prohibits the government from limiting people's productive activities.

“One should not live at the other’s expense,” I keenly hear my own grandfather’s  words  who, like Rand, lived through communism, the hungry years of 1917 and escaped to the US just like her holding the same beliefs and principles.  When I read Rand’s book, 10 years ago, I was hearing my grandfather who at the time was writing his memoirs where he expressly stated in every chapter that America is our last hope for truly free society and markets and if that fails, then we need to look for a new frontier to build.

Who is John Galt?

In 2008 a bitcoin white paper was published by an anonymous revolutionary and visionary- Satoshi Nakamoto. Fast forward to today, blockchains are the operating systems with their own  monetary policy, millions of users, and encoded sets of rules that embody law.  Millions have staked trillions of dollars in digital currency to support a blockchain that they believe in. Just like government bonds that are secured by taxes, staking digital currency on the blockchain embodies the same as it is backed by the fees generated by the network.

Let's dissect this. The government receives tax revenue. The US boasts the largest, healthiest economy on earth and the highest average income. A share of the US GDP is indirectly yours if you buy US Treasury bonds. Overall though, compared to other other assets, the investment risk associated with US Treasuries is still lower. Customers think of it as a risk-free investment as a result.

The US Treasury yield serves as the benchmark for all other bonds, stocks, and real estate valuations. However, things change when a public blockchain starts to dominate the real economy.

We are now playing in a sandbox. But soon enough, "real economy" transactions will start happening on chain- trade finance agreements, payments for raw inventories, purchases of real estate and automobiles, etc.

Not to mention that a public blockchain is international. In contrast to taxes levied by a nation state government, Ethereum fees are collected globally and without regard to location. Why did I claim that investments in US bonds are risk-free? because they are supported by dependable taxes. The gas cost is a worldwide tax for the whole Ethereum ecosystem, which means that when Ethereum matures, it will be able to compete with US treasuries on its own terms.

Anyone with a server and some free time can stake with ease. This gas charge will be transferred from the miners to the validators, also known as stakers, when Ethereum converts to the POS (Proof of Stake) model. Staking for ETH and other L1 tokens will turn into a fixed income asset.

Here are some few staking options:

Ethereum

Total Staked $40.5B

Total Validators 412,002

Current APR 4.2%

Avalanche

Total Staked $2.4B

Total Validators 1,229

Current APR 9.05%

Polygon

Total Staked $1.69B

Total Validators 100

Current APR 8.00%

Fantom

Total Staked $654M

Total Validators 39

Current APR 14.43%

APR decreases as the quantity of validators increases. Early in 2021, when ETH staking began, the APR was almost 10%.

You'll observe that many people, from Balaji to Vitalik, are discussing the establishment of new states. And some of the ventures, like City DAO, are already testing the waters. I had a conversation with a friend who is planning to erect an ETH tower in Miami and BUIDL an ETH community in South Florida near the Everglades that would be run on the Ethereum blockchain.

The primary driver of this new way of thinking is the erosion of public confidence in the functioning of the political system. People are fed up with the wealthy and powerful growing richer while the average person suffers from inflation and lives paycheck to paycheck behind the iron bars of the FINRA, CFTC, SEC, DOJ, FBI, and other agencies ostensibly set up to safeguard consumer interests. More and more individuals are removing their rose-colored glasses and waking up to the fact that government organizations behave like legalized cartels.

Whether you think the new frontier will succeed or fail, you can still make money in the interim. But I firmly believe that a new frontier will emerge in a sector populated by builders and trailblazers.