happiness

Any currency could be an alternative for an individual holder of US$. The fact that an asset is falling doesn't mean nobody will buy it; speculators will buy anything to bet on short-term price movements. It will just take more US$ to buy the currencies it falls against. People will also trade dollars for tangible assets (gold, RE, oil pumped in Canada, John Deere tractors, etc.). In the dollar collapse scenario, a lot of the dollars held by foreigners would wash up back here while tangible goods would leave.

What an irrational society makes impossible is acting on ones virtue.

A currency crisis would start with the realization by investors that the Fed is going to continue printing a lot of money for the forseeable future, which I imagine might result from another episode like the 2009 recession where the economy were in imminent danger of experiencing another recession, big drop in the stock market, or wave of bank failures. This would make the USD an unattractive store of value, causing Investors who hold dollars and countries who hold dollar reserves to seek alternatives and the dollar to fall against other currencies. In particular, Schiff and Rogers predict that China will eventually decide to float is currency against the USD. Due to the loss of purchasing power, U.S. debt holders would likely want to sell their bonds, and interest rates on the debt would rise. Now the U.S. Government would have a real problem, and how things would play out from tere would depend on whether the government were to admit bankruptcy and default or the Fed just were to ramp up the printing presses to pay the interest on the debt. The idea that Americans would start transacting in something other than US dollars would only happen in the worst case scenario of hyperinflation if we took the latter route.

I've been blocking out the economic news for the last few years to my detriment, but the events of the last few weeks have really captured my attention. After six years of 0% interest rates, the markets are in turmoil and signs point to a recession on the horizon. It is clear that the Fed will not raise interest rates or keep them high for long if the economic data is negative. So what are they going to do now? Print print print print print print money is my assumption. Peter Schiff seems to think the dollar collapse he's been predicting for years is nigh. My other favorite analyst, Jim Rogers, points out that the world still thinks the U.S. Dollar is a safe haven even though it's not one, so it might stay strong a little longer, but says that soon the world will lose confidence in the Fed and the dollar. What do you think? Is likely that the U.S economy will suffer some real pain in the next few years, either a big stock market drop + recession, or if the Fed refuses to raise rates, a very high rate of inflation?

How do we justify the claim that capitalism is the separation of economy and state? Is that the meaning intended by the person who coined the term, or is it just that that is the only meaningful definition possible? The meaning many on the left seem to ascribe to the term is something along the lines of "the action of rich people." What makes me right, and them wrong?

Without starting another thread, if a floating abstraction is the product of rationalism, what kind of statement or mental product proceeds from empiricism?

I should have said "method."

What is the relationship between floating abstractions and rationalism? Is the former the product and the latter the habit or theory that leads to it?

By cronyism, I mean the phenomenon of businessmen using the government as a club against their competitors. In my debates with leftists, I find that they are often deluded by the idea that they can purge the government of lobbying and cronyism while maintaining the controls by electing truly selfless politicians who only care about something along the lines of "the public good" and are therefore incorruptible. I know this idea never works anywhere...my question is how to explain why. The best answer I can come up with is that there are no so such things as unselfish human beings and "the public good." Regulations, being violations of individual rights, are inherently unfair and arbitrary, and unavoidably harm some businessmen more than others. Thus regulations create a lawless environment in which the incentive is not to innovate an excel, but to manipulate the regulators to your advantage, because if you don't, someone else will. Any corrections to or expansions on this would be welcome.

Got a nice answer to this question from the Peikoff podcast today: Dear happiness, There is no philosophical or logical connection between atheism and Leftism, if by Leftism you mean socialism or bigger government. The only political implication you can logically deduce from atheism is a negative one, in that it negates any God based politics, e.g. a theocracy. Atheism is simply the negation of a belief in God, so it doesn't imply any particular politics. There is however an (erroneous) historical connection between atheism and Leftism due to Karl Marx being an atheist and many of his opponents being Christians who (erroneously) opposed him on religious rather than philosophical grounds. So atheism became (erroneously) coupled with Marxism and consequently with Leftism, and its opponents became (erroneously) coupled with religion. This coupling was disastrous because it allowed communists and Leftists to portray themselves as scientific "progressives" when they were no such thing; and to portray supporters of capitalism as being stuck in the religious past, when capitalism was in fact the most radical advance beyond that past. It was left to an atheist advocate of capitalism, Ayn Rand, to point out what a perverse distortion this historical coupling was. Best Regards John Dawson

I know little about the issue, but from what I've read so far this morning, it seems he US is going to both lift sanctions against Iran and allow them to continue synthesizing nuclear material at a slower rate as long as they promis to use it only for peaceful purposes. That, to me, sounds very bad.

I don't agree. I see that this country is in economic decline and possibly teetering on the edge of collapse. I didn't say there's anything wrong with ARI, just that I don't think that any amount of money I can give them is going to effect the slightest difference politically in my lifetime, and that bring the case, I might as well just save it for myself or spend it on junk food or whatever.

Looks like Dr. Brook answered my question; http://13be01ddf3b1d677ded1-f884a1b570187d379829b71385ab845d.r57.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-6-7.380_C.mp3

1. I don't see it. I see Republicans damaging Objectivsm's reputation by professing admiration for Rand while practicing the opposite principles. 2. I'm talking specifically about trying to advance the cause of Objectivism with the ultimate goal of effecting poltical changes, not improving your own life by doing things like choosing your associates by rational standars. 3. I suppose the atlternative would be for me to stop debating others, engaging in activism of any sort, and doing things like donating to ARI and buying Objectivist books for college kids.

In fairness, what you look like has more to do with genetics than what exercise program you follow. Today, the people with the best physiques are typically the most ignorant about exericse. Your basic physical attributes are biologically fixed; exercise will only make you look like an improved version of yourself.

Exercise is the field I'm most passionate about. What I consider to be the correct philosophy of exercise was developed by Arthur Jones, a real-life Randian genius who was accomplished in several fields, but is best known as the inventor of Nautilus machines. The Jonesian philosohy boils down to these principles: the essential form of exercise is resistance training, i.e. weight lifting train hard—exercise should be intense enough to impose demands on the body that challenge its current capabilities train briefly—any session high enough in intensity to stimulate improvement must be proportionately short in duration train infrequently—recovering from high-intensity exercise requires several days of rest between sessions Over the decades, Jones' disciples have refined the methods used with this approach. They've found that an ideal program of structured exercise consists of about one or two workouts per week of hard weight training sessions lasting no more than about 15 minutes each, or a maximum of about 20-30 minutes of total exercise per week. While it's fine to do extraneous activity in addition to this (sports, hiking, cycling, etc.), it should be considered recreation, not exercise. Here's a two-part video exemplifying a typical workout (note that the use of sophisticated equipment is not required). The person in the video is Dr. Doug McGuff, MD, an Objectivist phyisican: The book "Body by Science" by McGuff is an excellent primer on how to exercise rationally: http://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength-Training/dp/0071597174

Does ISIS pose a threat to America, and if so, what do you think of the current U.S. policy of airstrikes only? The following is an excerpt from an an article written about the first Western journalist allowed inside access to ISIS: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/inside-isis-the-first-western-journalist-ever-given-access-to-the-islamic-state-has-just-returned--and-this-is-what-he-discovered-9938438.html It seems to me that if we have a reason to be involved at all, we ought to be more aggressive to prevent the organization from growing. At what point would it be time to consider using nuke bombs?

I posted this here because it would seeem to qualify as metaphysical/epistemological issue. Based on observation, I think the majority of athiests are political leftists, and also more apt than average to adopt extreme forms of leftism like communism and socialism. I've seen Objectivists discuss the idea that even though many leftists reject the idea of God, they still embrace fundamentally supernatualist metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, and essentially replace the idea of "God" with "society." I see that myself, but still don't grasp the relationship between atheism and leftism. Is the reason athiests choose leftism that despire managing to reject the fallacy of religion, they are sill intellectually dependent on others, i.e. operating on faith? I suppose that ties together with their treatment of "society" as if it were some almighty entity. But if that's the case, why do they choose atheism in the first place, since the rejection of God is an apparent choice to exercise reason? I would love to hear others elaborate on this. I really feel like I'm missing a lot here.

Krugman articles belong in the trash.

I don't mean to be negative; however, it seems to me that cultural and intellectual inertia is so stacked against Objectivism that we have no chance to prevail in our lifetimes. Therefore, what is the value of arguing and trying to spread our ideas? What positive impact would a donation to ARI likely have on my quality of life? Is the intellectual battle an end in itself?

I can think of two. One of my friends from my high school and college track days went on to become the marketing and communications director of a tech startup that is now worth $20 billion. I try to avoid doing so, but sometimes find myself speculating about how much he's worth now—$100 million wouldn't surprise me. As for the root of his wealth, he was an academic all-american in high school, so I guess he was always smart, athough he never really exhuded super high intellect to me. It was never like everything that came out of his mouth was gold or anything. I think he must have a gift of creativity that I didn't pick up on at the time or get to see given that I only really knew him within the world of running. He's clearly super passionate about the company and what he does for them. And he was one of the best mid-distance runners in the history of the world by time he quit running to join the company, so clearly very driven. The other is the investor/commentator Peter Schiff, whom I worked for. The man is a truly gifted communicator and inductive genius. No leftist can survive a debate with him without coming away looking thoroughly stupid. His success is the result of his raw aptitude and having the right philosophical orientation, which gives him superior insight into economic issues and their implicaitons for investing.

Most of us believe that the industrial revolution was the result of the high degree of economic freedom that existed during the second half of the 19th century. We do so, I assume, because the progress made during that period aligns with what we think should happen based on our pro-capitalist belief system. But can we say that we really know this for sure? I often slap leftists down for their use of the false cause logical fallacy when they do things like purport to show using statistics that the minimum wage doesn't increase unemployment rate. If I argue that the industrial revolution proves the superiority of capitalism, am I not doing the same, purporting to measure the direct impact of policy on economic growth?

I see. That isn't so great after all. I tried to find specific examples of what spending cuts he intends to enact and haven't had much success other than that seeing that he favors significant cuts to discretionary spending, which is good, but clearly inadequate.

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I think it depends on your exact audience. "AnCaps" are a complete waste of time, but I suspect that within the libertarian crowd there are a minority who would be receptive to Objectivism because it probably explains what they already think on some level.