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Nicky

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Everything posted by Nicky

  1. Are you agreeing with him that there is no legal compulsion for every business to use dollars at some point in their business cycle? If so, how would they pay taxes? What about this statement, by an American lawyer, explaining the Treasury quote CE is harping on: http://legallad.quickanddirtytips.com/legal-tender.aspx This isn't an isolated lawyer's opinion. I would be hard pressed to find one advising the opposite.
  2. One more time: that's not the same as refusing to accept or in any way use dollars. That would be impossible to do while operating in the US, because of the piece of legislation I already provided you with.
  3. I don't know about the OP, but I would define it as the civilization which facilitated the greatest leap towards individualism and human achievement.
  4. So you do know that the notion that money is the root of evil has been addressed in some detail, right? Do you agree or disagree with the Money Speech, and why?
  5. No, Social Darwinism says that the weak should die. But maybe you mean something else by the term. You should explain what. Either way, the notion that Capitalism facilitates the death of people who "can't keep up" is false. No, it doesn't. Privatising prisons goes against one of the most basic tenets of Objectivist Politics: placing the power to use retaliatory force in the hands of an objective government. I hate to keep harping on this, but none of what you think is Objectivism is actual Objectivism. Objectivism is not against the existence of government, government prisons, government control over nuclear weapons, etc. None of these things you are describing would be "and experiment in Objectivist Economics". You are building a straw man.
  6. Are you sure you read Atlas Shrugged?
  7. There is no mention of even a single business that refuses to use US dollars, in your link. So it definitely doesn't make your point that they are free to do so. All it proves is that they may also use other currencies, as long as they take dollars, and exchange the non-dollar part of their income back into dollars.
  8. You're equivocating between cash and dollars. Yes, businesses are free to refuse cash, and accept only credit cards. What's your point? That site is for individuals looking to barter on the down low. Your statement, which I called false, was referring to Apple selling Iphones. If Apple used that site to sell Iphones for diamonds, they would be charged with tax evasion.
  9. In conclusion, Hellboy, if what you are really claiming is that Objectivism is a philosophy that condones Social Darwinism (the ideology), then you're clearly wrong. Social Darwinism is altruism and collectivism at its worst. Its goal is to engineer a better society, by sacrificing individuals for the sake of society. Objectivist Ethics and Politics is the exact opposite: its purpose is the liberation of the individual from collectivist notions of subservience to the group.
  10. As opposed to what: die? So "Social Darwinism" is the theory according to which in Capitalism those who don't inherit wealth would die before being able to breed? P.S. I am aware of an ideology called "Social Darwinism" which holds it moral to exterminate (or allow the dying of) various categories of people considered "inferior", by extrapolating from the Theory of Evolution. But that's an ideology, not a state of society. That concept most definitely has nothing to do with Capitalism. Capitalism is the only system in which that ideology would in fact be impossible to put into practice, because of two reasons: 1. The main one, that killing or depriving people of their property is illegal, so the vast majority of people Social Darwinism would target are safe off the bat. 2. Even the very few who truly couldn't survive on their own would be safe from being "left to die", because anyone is free to help them. Even if 99% of the population of a country is social darwinists who think the retarded and the disabled should be left to die, all it would take is the other 1% stepping in and helping them. In a statist society, on the other hand, all it would take for the weak to be either exterminated or left to die is for 51% of the population to be social darwinists.
  11. The creator of the wealth that's being inherited.
  12. Have you read Atlas Shrugged? (your criticism sounds second handed, because this is addressed quite a lot in Atlas Shrugged: an inheritance can be earned or unearned, and depending on that it is kept and grown, or lost very quickly - there are quite a few examples of both, in the novel).
  13. Rhiiiiight. You never mentioned justice anywhere. Except in the exact sentence I was responding to. If you don't have anything intelligent to say, please stop posting. We're trying to have a conversation. This site has to have the worst mods in the history of the Internet. You guys manage to ruin pretty much every thread, with rudeness and arrogance, idiocy, or both.
  14. I guess you don't have access to wikipedia? It's 31 U.S.C. ยง 5103.
  15. I have limited knowledge of bankruptcy proceedings, but wouldn't a Bankruptcy Court order the PE company to pay back the money to the creditors, if they did that? Otherwise, starting businesses just to load them up with debt would be all everyone did. It would be the easiest way to make money.
  16. Let me put it this way: all government, when it comes down to it, has, at its foundation, an army of men with guns. And those men are, for the most part, regular, well intentioned citizens of the country. A Constitution that is very clear on what the most egregious crimes those in power tend to commit, and how they ought to be punished, would give all these men with the guns a common understanding of right vs. wrong. Crossing that Constitution would mean, when it comes right down to it, crossing the men with the guns. That is the most powerful incentive to behave, that I can think of. And, on the off chance that a group of politicians decides not to behave, everyone in the government (from the Courts all the way down to the men with the guns), would know exactly what the right way to react is: punish the transgressors. That shared knowledge, coupled with the fact that, unlike the politicians, the regular citizens with the guns tend to be well intentioned, would guarantee the right outcome in any power struggle between the corrupt and those who wish to stop them.
  17. The "point" is the same as prosecuting any criminal. How do systemic and philosophical problems in the government make that point null and void? Besides, history is full of examples where the prosecution of a previous government set an example and affected political change. That prosecution is usually done as a result of the violent overthrow of the previous government (either by internal or external forces), but that is the result of the absence of a legal framework to help deal with the criminals. I think that a properly organized government, with a Constitution aimed at dealing with criminal elements within itself (including in the legislature), would in many cases be able to hold those criminal elements responsible, and thus avoid the bloodshed of a revolution or a foreign intervention (or worse, of a transition into full blown dictatorship).
  18. What difference does it make if they're permanent of just meet and pass laws on occasion?
  19. Well, you're missing the point: this has nothing to do with passing laws that get struck down, it's about passing laws that urge and result in the commission of specific crimes. And I am not assuming that the courts will always be right. I am not disputing that courts can be wrong. If a Court is wrong, the same thing will happen that happens now if a Court is wrong: an innocent person or innocent people will go to jail, pending their appeal to a higher court. No. If it were up to me (if I was writing a Constitution), I would ban state-level popular initiatives altogether. So there wouldn't need to be any penalties holding voters responsible for their legislative actions, because they wouldn't have the power to legislate. Handing everyone the power to legislate over their fellow men is a terrible idea, precisely because it is impossible to hold them accountable for misusing it.
  20. I disagree with that statement as well (because you are equating justice with "following the law", and that is flawed: it leads to conclusions such as "a law ordering murder is just, and punishing that murder is unjust"), but I'm not talking about "following the law", I am talking about the initiators of laws. Punishing the initiation of criminal laws, based on the supreme law of a country (the Constitution), clearly wouldn't be acting on ex post facto laws. The Constitution will have been the first thing written, it wouldn't be an ex post facto law in any circumstance. Now, if we were to talk about how the people carrying out such laws should be handled, that is open to debate. But a sweeping statement such as "punishing them, in any circumstance, would be unjust" is clearly not true. When justice and a country's law diverge, there are circumstances in which mid and low level agents of the government should be expected to challenge their orders, and circumstances where that expectation would be unfair. They should be judged on an individual basis, with the moral principles of justice (rather than the laws of the criminal state) in mind.
  21. No, I'm not suggesting a punishment for "passing unconstitutional laws", I am suggesting a punishment for passing a law which urges the government to commit crimes against citizens, and results in specific crimes. I am open to other suggestions on how to hold legislators responsible for those crimes, which they are clearly complicit to. Impeachment is not an appropriate punishment for serious crimes, like murder. Perhaps I should've been clearer: I am asking if such penalties should be in the Constitution of a LFC country, I'm not suggesting that the current US Constitution should be amended. I agree that any modifications to the current US Constitution, done by this generation of Americans, would be very bad.
  22. 1. The US dollar is the only legal tender in the United States. 2. Which part don't you understand? Do you want the concept of taxes explained to you, or the notion of "backing a currency"? 3. Because it's a fundamental difference that you don't seem to know about. 4. Ditto.
  23. Congress, in theory, has the power to pass a law that fines government officials who violate the First Amendment in this way. That law would solve the problem for of all government officials, except members of Congress. It wouldn't take care of members of Congress, because Congress, when passing a law which violates the First Amendment, could simultaneously abolish the law that would penalize them for it. The Courts would be able to strike down the offending law, but they wouldn't be able to also strike down the law abolishing the penalty (it isn't unconstitutional), so they would escape punishment for it. So yes, my suggestion is that the Constitution should contain at least some guidelines on penalties: just enough to force Congress to stick with them.
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