| | When I moved from South Carolina to Long Beach in early '76, I looked around for like-minded libertarians and objectivists of course. I didn't have to look very far at the time, as I was sleeping on Sam Konkin's couch in the heart of the "Anarcho-Village."
Very soon, through the local libertarian grapevine I began to hear rumors about some guy by the name of Galambos. The buzz was always in the direction of business, wealth, yuppydom carried to an extreme...
Everyone who was willing to say anything about Galambos beyond trivia or extremely basic common knowledge turned out to be bogus, which was interesting in itself. A source of this anomoly turned out to be that Galambos had everyone agree to non-disclosure. In fact, the heart of his philosophy turned out to be his concept of "Primary Property," which was essentially intellectual property. Those who knew didn't talk. Those who talked didn't know, misunderstood, or simply lied.
Imagine someone selling lectures on philosophy and economics to the general public, asking what would in today's dollars be about $2,000 per course, and FILLING, many times a week, a huge fully owned lecture hall, plush carpetted, twenty foot curtained glass walls, state-of-the-art electronics, with about a thousand devotees, all having poneyed up the big bucks.
In the late '70's, well before Galambos's Free Enterprise Institute folded as Alzheimers destroyed his mind, it was generally estimated that at least 15,000 people had graduated from FEI - meaning that they had progressed through his basic courses to the primary level of full understanding of what Galambos termed "Volitional Science."
I took the intro course, V-50, around '78. Included was material superficially very similar to what had appeared in the late '60's, when the Anarcho-Capitalist school got really rolling within the libertarian/objectivist community. Issues such as how justice worked in a free society, how private industry would run the courts, the roads, etc. were included, along with a lot of other stuff that never made it past the non-disclosure.
In fact, Galambos accused the libertarians of stealing his ideas. Specifically, the bible for many anarcho-capitalists, Morris and Linda Tannehill's "The Market for Liberty," which was written with a lot of input from Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw (authors of the best-seller "Life Extension") was stolen directly from him, according to Galambos. Durk and Sandy were at one point his closest confidantes. He was equally upset that they had, according to him, gotten a lot of things wrong, failing to properly address underlying logic and principles, while stealing the superficial low-hanging fruit of practical implementation.
So, impressed with the new material and insights in the intro course, Volitional Science 50, I signed up for V-200, the main course, so to speak, paying $550 for several months of lectures, once or twice a week, I think. In the first or second week of V-200, however, I suddenly heard Galambos - who taught that course personally, as it was the heart of his overall philosophy - talk about several ideas that I had developed independently.
Given his constant references to Primary Property, I had naturally assumed that he had some kind of registry within his own organization, to which I could submit some kind of claim to independent discovery.
Mrs. Galambos was always at the back of the huge audience, standing and studying people like a hawk, and it just so happened that I had the very notebooks and letters that documented my claims in my briefcase. So, I rushed back to her and handed her the material. She asked me, rather curtly, just what she was supposed to do with it.
So, I took the material back to my seat. However, as I was leaving for the night, I was approached by one of Galambos's staff, who said that Galambos wanted to see me NOW!
So I went, immediately, even leaving my motorcycle running, on the assumption that I would be right back.
However. Galambos and arrogance were near synonyms. He was not interested in hearing about my motorcycle overheating. If I didn't settle this issue between us (my claim), RIGHT NOW, then I would be barred from the course or any future courses, and my money would be refunded. "SIT DOWN, MR. OSBORN."
i sat.
After which he launched into a three hour (it was already about 10PM) monologue covering such issues as the U.S.'s introduction into WWII, his relationship with his father, and finally summarizing with the statement that since he had not seen any evidence to support my claims, then I could leave and get a refund or stay and thereby give them up. Note that I had not gotten in more than forty words in the three hours, my motorcycle's motor overheated and was seriously damaged, and he had never as much as opened the notebook I proferred containing my evidence.
All the above is prologue...
At some point, the subject of his relationship with Ayn Rand came up. He said that he had met and spoken at some length with both Ayn and Ludwig Von Mises, and that Rand had said of Von Mises that ~"he's got a lot of good ideas, but he's not right about everything." And, Von Mises had said ~"she's got a lot of good ideas, but she's not right about everything."
This leading up to his telling me that if I really did have such original ideas, then perhaps, with effort and diligence, I would someday be a Faraday to his Newton. Or, I could slink away in the night like a dog and be a nobody...
What about "COMPETING GOVERNMENTS," PHIL? Damn it.
OK, OK, OK... So, how did Galambos meet with Ayn, I was eager to know? At some point in the '60's, he said, he decided to produce "Atlas Shrugged," as a movie. He had the financing to do it, and he was a big Ayn Rand fan himself, although with some fundamental differences in basic philosophy.
So, he went to New York, and got an invite to Rand's apartment party that week or night.
At the party, Galambos said that after a few sentences, Rand pulled him to a private room or area and started a long discussion with him about his own philosophy, especially his idea - superficially very similar to the anarcho-capitalist school, which he referred to at the time as "competing governments." At the time, Galambos related, Ayn did not object to the basic ideas, but reserved judgment.
Then they started discussing the production of "Atlas Shrugged," and everything went like on rails. ;) They had no basic differences in how the movie should be made, and it was clear that they could do it.
At which point, Galambos being Galambos, (A=A, in case anyone needs a refresher) he stated that he had ONE little item that he considered essential to his commitment.
Which was: that they get a decent scriptwriter for "Atlas," so that it wouldn't be botched like "The Fountainhead."
...
End of conversation (of course). End of "Atlas Shrugged," the movie. End of Galambos's invite to the party. And, shortly thereafter, a little article in "the Ayn Rand Newsletter" about something called "competing governments."
And, I left V-200, never requesting my money back, so that Galambos would someday realize the error of his ways... Except that he was probably already suffering some loss in general sanity from the Alzheimers that killed him almost two decades later. And, in the meantime, having driven off virtually every person* of significant worth with accusations of personal dishonesty and stealing of his ideas, he was finally financially ruined by the one person who he did decide to trust with everything.
*Think Durk and Sandy, Harry Browne, and a host of other later lights of the libertarian movement.
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