"Gulch in place". There's something to this. We often mention what our "shrug job" would be or is here on this forum. I'm not quite there yet. Mine would be school bus driver or maybe brewery worker...haha...

I assume you actually read the book. Your view of it, and the logic you assume makes up its premises around Galt's Gulch aren't anywhere near what I got out of it. Not even close. I'm not trying to be insulting but maybe you should consider reading it again.

"The "book" appears to communicate the idea that a utopia will ensue once the "moguls" (productive/wealth-seeking people?) move away from the leecher masses and into their own secret society.

The problem with the above idea is that it doesn't consider the reason why the "moguls" are so productive/wealthy." - The book failed to communicate that to me, certainly. The Gulch just served as a place where they could temporarily remove themselves from a society that was neglectful and hateful towards them. Didn't sound like a utopia to me.

Interesting how people can get such different things from a book, especially this one. In many critical reviews of the book it's clear the person didn't ever read it. But, I think you did!

Edit to add. If somebody is very well-read they have come to realize that the tradition of great Russian literature is one of fiction. Fiction was the tool writers would use to make a huge, important statement/criticism without being sent to the gulags. Ayn Rand was a Russian Jew, so.... There is some fiction in the book. Hell, I understand that Solzhenitsyn wrote Gulag Archipelago in secret, actually burying the book in the dirt during its creation.(somebody let me know if I've got that wrong)

maybe in today's world such a physical place is not possible or hard to create

that was no always the case, look at the Mormons and their trek

for myself, my Gulch is my choice to not provide solutions i see or even suggestions where i work
you want to violate my rights, lie to me, fine
my decision is to with hold my creativity until i can find another place to be

i will do not harm, but they cannot require me to be creative

if i chose to do so, it is for my purposes, not theirs

You're missing the point of the Gulch. Rand clearly was not intending it as a permanent, insular society - much less a "utopia" - but rather as a temporary refuge for those on strike against the collectivist State. It was created for the specific, limited purpose of removing the prime movers of productivity - therefore of industrial civilization - from the world, so that the force-wielding collectivist horde would learn the hard way what happens when they're left with their Glorious Socialist State shorn of a capitalist foundation to parasitize. Of course super-productivity requires a vast population - the bigger the better, contrary to the misanthropic rot coming from geniuses like the Ehrlichs and Browers and Gores and Thunbergs - but a normal, super-productive civilization not what Galt formed his Gulch to be.

Within that context of a temporary refuge, no heavy-duty mass production was necessary - note the fact that many of these brilliant productive minds were spending their time in the Gulch running low-key essential businesses - even mundane tasks like gardening and cooking - to keep that small community prospering despite its removal from the general economy.

Assuming that the Gulch - as a tiny, insular community - is a model for a broader, permanent socio-economic structure is a misreading of the function of Galt's Gulch within the novel.
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