In Part 1 we went through the early years of Dagny and Francisco. The childhood races, the teenage years at the lodge, the first time everything became more than friendship. Now we pick up where things start going wrong. And by “wrong” I mean spectacularly, confusingly, heartbreakingly wrong.
Chapter 6 is called “The Candidates” and despite what the title might suggest, it’s not about buyers yet. It’s about something even more fundamental. Who should sell your product? And should you be willing to burn 40% of your revenue to build something real?
I grew up in the former Soviet Union. I remember what a map looked like before the 1990s. One big red blob stretching across half the world. Then, almost overnight, that blob split into fifteen new countries. Slobodian opens Chapter 5 with that exact memory. The map at his school changed while he was still in it. Yugoslavia broke apart. Czechoslovakia split in two. New flags everywhere.
Imagine showing up to a meeting where the big players have already made all the decisions. Nobody asked for your input. Nobody even told you the meeting was happening. That was life for small countries at the United Nations in the early 1990s. One Singapore diplomat decided to change that.
This chapter opens with a bomb going off. Not a literal one. A financial one.
Eddie Willers walks into Dagny’s office with a newspaper and a look on his face like the world just tilted sideways. The San Sebastian Mines, the ones Francisco d’Anconia spent five years and millions of dollars developing, are completely worthless. The Mexican government nationalized them, expecting to seize a fortune, and found… nothing. Empty holes in the ground. Not even enough copper to justify the effort of scraping it out.
Every plan looks good on paper until reality shows up and punches you in the face. That’s basically what Chapter 5 is about. Alex has been doing everything right so far. He picked his niche, built a process, created a manual. And now the universe decides to test if he actually means it.
This chapter hit different for me. I grew up in the post-Soviet world, so I know what it looks like when a government creates fake borders and moves people around. But what happened in apartheid South Africa takes it to another level.
This chapter might be the most honest thing anyone has ever written about the United Nations.
This is part of my retelling of “50 Years of Singapore and the United Nations” (Tommy Koh, Li Lin Chang, Joanna Koh, 2015, ISBN: 978-9814713030).
Chapter 4 opens with Dagny standing outside the Taggart Building, thinking about motive power. About how this massive skyscraper only stays standing because of the engines rolling across the continent beneath it. And honestly, that’s a pretty solid metaphor for what’s about to happen in this chapter: the engines are starting to stall.
You can handle angry clients. You can deal with late payments. You can even survive losing a big account. But when your own team starts fighting you? That hits different.