I Am John Galt by Donald Luskin, Andrew Greta Page B

world, are the highest form of reality. Meanwhile a considerably younger-looking and robust Aristotle holds his right hand out facing down as if palming an invisible basketball, silently referencing his philosophy of empiricism, or truth through the study of objective reality.
    â€œWe talk about it all the time,” Rodgers says of the painting and underlying message. “We just deal with the laws of physics, and there is no interpretation; there are no politics; no crap. We have our own Aristotle built in, and he tells us if we’ve been competent or not and he always tells the truth; he’s perfect. One of our core values in the company is that silicon always tells the truth; we are Aristotle, real simple.”
    Ayn Rand would be proud. She credited Aristotle, who laid out the rules of logic and reason, as the only philosopher from whom she ever learned anything. She considered Plato to be patient zero in a centuries-long epidemic of mysticism and collectivism.
    What frustrates Rodgers is that when he takes even a tiny step back from the clean room of science, he starts to see the crazy illogic running unchecked through our social discourse today. “You hear that somehow by taxing ourselves with a carbon tax, we’re going to create green jobs . . . that global warming causes snowstorms . . . and how government spending creates wealth. It’s just absolute bullshit.”
    It seems as though Rodgers vents his feelings so frequently to keep from blowing a boiler. His wife has become well practiced at talking him down after a particularly idiotic encounter outside of his corporate safe room. According to Rodgers, “She’ll say, ‘Remember, T.J., you don’t live in the real world. You live in a very special place. It’s very different from the real world.’ And I really do,” he concludes happily. “I really love my job.”
    Money Is Not Evil
    Rodgers supports philanthropy—as long as it’s by choice, not by force. “When good works cease to be voluntary and become compulsory, charity becomes confiscation and freedom becomes servitude,” he wrote in a New York Times response to Bill Clinton’s 1997 President’s Summit in Philadelphia (a gathering he termed the “wrecking crew”), concluding with what he says is his favorite quote: “Philanthropy is a byproduct of wealth, and wealth is best created in free markets whose workings embody a fundamental and true moral principle long forgotten in Washington. Let’s not let the crowd in Philadelphia con us into giving it more than the 40 percent of the economy it already controls.” 17
    In early 2010, Cypress and its sister company, SunPower, donated $1.1 million to the Second Harvest Food Bank to install a 322-kilowatt solar power system that is expected to save the nonprofit organization nearly $3 million in electricity costs. Because he’s still free to evaluate charities on their own merits, Rodgers gives based on free-market principles of who does the most good with the hard-earned money he donates. “Second Harvest Food Bank is one of the most efficient nonprofit organizations in the country, giving $0.95 out of every dollar it receives back to the community,” he said about his choice to fund the group. “Cypress is pleased to help reduce the organization’s operating expenses so that it can focus on what it does best—feeding the community.”
    T.J. also goes on the speaking circuit, when invited, to help the younger generation of aspiring businesspeople. One of his favorite openers is to make the statement “Money can’t buy happiness” and then ask the students to react to it as true or false. “Who thinks that is true?” he asks, and 90 percent of the hands go up. Then he says, “Let me speak for a few minutes on variants of the question I just asked you. . . . Money can’t buy happiness. Money can never buy happiness