SpookyKitty

There is no point to virtues that do not correspond to material success in reality, since said success is the whole point of those virtues in the first place.

Don't diss the bees. They're better Objectivists than you can ever hope to be. EDIT: “I swear, BUZZ! by my life and my BUZZ! love of it, that I will never live for the BUZZ! sake of another creature, nor ask BUZZ! another creature to live for mine BUZZ!”

Well since man's nature is to consume other organisms, and men are organisms. Man's nature is to consume other men. Maybe not always literally.

Are humans not organisms?

I'm pretty sure that the cause of money and wealth is not grit but reason. But yeah, this is a joke, haha. But I've yet to see an argument that explains why my Devil's advocate position is at variance with Objectivism.

No, as I said before, "paraiste" means any organism that takes what another organism has produced. This is not a synonym for "living being" because there are living beings that don't do this. For example, plants, autotrphic microorganisms, and bees, to name a few. You've basically just stated that my position is the opposite of what it actually is. Calling man a parasite is not meant to induce guilt since that is simply a recognition of his nature and he has no choice with regard to that. If this makes you feel guilty, that's your problem. I certainly feel no guilt when I eat things. You are conflating mysticism with predatory behavior. Mysticism has never been and cannot possibly be useful in reality. It is reason that tells man to kill his fellow for his stuff. Chimps hunt, and few would call them rational. Of course not, reason is awesome. But you seem to have ignored my point about the equivocation of two different meanings of "essential".

Such people are subhuman and aren't really people. They should be left out in the open until they die of exposure so that productive people don't waste their resources on them. One should only ever give charity (if at all) to those who never needed it in the first place. That's why I recommend that we protest against charities to help the disadvantaged and handicapped, and advocate that people donate their money only to the richest, most rational, and most productive members of society. Of course, it's not a choice to be born to poor circumstances. I never said that, just that no man is limited by them at all. Hence, a bright 18 year old could pay for college by first getting a job or starting his own small business and saving his money. It is not at all counterproductive to take out a loan that you can pay back. It is, however, less effective than simply making all your own money, which one would be able to do if they were more rational. Let's be clear here. Poor people are poor only because they are lazy, irrational, and probably evil.

Nonsense, Eiuol. No man is limited by the circumstances of his birth in qny way shape or form.

It's a choice for everyone. Being poor is irrational because money is good and you are choosing to have less of something good. Sacrificing one's values for less is irrational.

Someone who can't afford to pay for college, at least in this context. They should get a job. That's impossible. Anybody who is actually talented would already be rich. I'm just saying what everybody else is thinking. Like I said before, anyone actually rational enough for a top school wouldn't need a loan to get in. They'd just figure out how to come up with the money on their own.

Because being poor is a choice. No rational person would choose to be poor. Hence they are irrational. Since they are irrational anything else you teach them would be an exercise in futility.

Changed my post, sorry.

How? The only way to educate poor people is to just tell them to stop being poor. But they refuse to listen.

Well if they can't afford it then, they shouldn't be allowed to get it.

Because they can't afford it.

"Uhhh... no", as in I'm wrong, or "uhhh...no", you're not gonna think?

Of course I'm serious. Anybody who would just stop and think things through for five minutes will see that I'm right.

That's not irrational at all. Anybody stupid enough to fund their education with a public or private loan should be disbarred immediately in order to maintain standards. After all, being poor is a choice. If they were rational and smart they would stop being poor first and then attend school. Of course! The whole point of my school is that it is too expensive for the poor (and therefore irrational) to attend. Hence, students have the guarantee of being surrounded by faculty, staff, and classmates who are at least as rational as they are. What rational person would want to go to a bargain bin school full of less rational people? If we admitted all poor people who have funding, our education standards would be decimated. If said poor person can't even read and write, they should be allowed to attend my school just because they can afford it? Don't be ridiculous. No tyranny here, just voluntary association.

I don't want poor people going to the same school as me though. They make me uncomfortable, and besides, they stink. Don't I have the right to freely choose who I do and do not peacefully associate with? Can't I just voluntarily go to a school that doesn't accept poor people? (I never said state intervention would be necessary to do this. All you have to do is make the cost of education high enough. Or you know, just have a sign at the entrance that says "your stack of cash must be at least this tall to go on this ride.")

No, when Ayn Rand says parasite, she is only usually referring to people who survive by violating other people's rights. The whole reason that this is supposed to be bad is because it supposedly does not require the use of reason. Assuming that it does, the conclusion also depends on the notion that reason is man's primary means of survival. But the concepts of parasitism and production are prior to any specific means of parasitism or production. Hence, there is a pre-moral (i.e. conceptually precedes rights and such) concept of parasitism. A parasite, is simply any organism that survives by taking what other organisms have produced. Man clearly does this, and is therefore a parasite. Ayn Rand tries to get around this by saying that reason is man's primary means of survival. (In Aristotelian terms, reason is the essential characteristic of humanity). That parasitism is effortless and thus cannot involve the use of reason, hence it is not proper to man, and is therefore immoral. (to condense the whole argument very briefly). But first of all, what is essential (in the sense of essence or identity) is not necessarily essential in terms of being a necessary condition for survival. The necessary conditions for the survival of a human being are very minimal, requiring no more use of reason than that of a chimpanzee. However, while looting the corpses of other organisms for their flesh may not be an essential characteristic of man, and while it is shared by many other organisms, it is nonetheless a necessary condition for his survival (unlike reason). If one is aiming for a philosophy for living on Earth, than one must recognize that, to live on Earth, we have to parasitze other organisms. If we have no choice but to do this (and we don't), then pretending it is immoral is just another Original Sin doctrine.

You had parents didn't you? You're a parasite. Do you do photosynthesis? No? You're a parasite.

Topic split from The Damage of Government Student Loans I agree. Some people are simply too poor to be allowed to get an education. New location: Poor Children's Education

You're right Dustin. Rand was simply contradicting herself here, and it's kind of funny to watch Objectivists contort themselves around this contradiction. The truth of the matter is that there or no people who are only producers or only parasites. Everyone, by painful necessity of the logic and reality of survival, needs to do both. Anyone who does just one or the other is pretty dumb (putting all your eggs in one basket and all that). We humans are macrophagus heterotrophs. That is, we are organisms that loot the flesh of other organisms (mainly plants) for our sustennance. In the animal kingdom, we are truly perfect in our parasitism. We are the most prudent of predators, even going so far as to domesticate, genetically engineer, and otherwise guarantee the survival of our prey populations. Reason is not our means of survival. Reason is an entirely optional means of improving our actual means of survival (i.e. predation). Thus, by acting as predator, man is not necessarily destroying himself, and in fact, is almost necessarily surviving. Hence why we're all still here despite our predatory nature.

Who cares? You are dodging the question.

So if the minimum wage was $1 trillion an hour, nobody would be hirable, right? So everyone would just sit on their hands and do nothing while they starve? Somehow I doubt that. Probably as you did, but then I still wouldn't have a ready answer for the questions that I just asked you.