donnywithana

I think that the answer that will satisfy both you AND your friend is this: True freedom is Anarchy. Anarchy is when no one has the "legal" ability to tell you what to do, and the only way someone can make you do something is if they force you. Objectivism holds that Anarchy is undesirable. The evidence brought forth is simple. When people work together, they can achieve more. However, there is no natural mechanism for "making" people work together. For example, it might be in my best interest to kill Bob. Other animals around me kill things all the time. There's no natural law against it. However, it's certainly not good for men if the status quo gives me the right to kill Bob. Therefore we, as a group or society, might agree that killing is "illegal," or against the "rules." In order to enforce this, we grant someone the power to enforce this agreement. In the same way, we as individuals agree to respect the private property of others. This is important, because "property" is a social construct which essentially means "that which one will defend, for their own use, from others." In other words, in the "free" Anarchy, anyone would be free to claim whatever they wanted, and as long as they could defend it, it would continue to be theirs. However, as a group, we might agree that this is not the way we want things to be run. We therefore would all agree that there are certain things that individuals can call "theirs." This is the viewpoint of many groups, empirically, though not all, as illustrated by your Socialist friend. Your friend believes that there is no right to possess something that someone else may not use. However, as Rand points out, the only incentive to produce a value is the benefit one will derive from having produced that value. Saying that the value that they individually produced does not belong to them seems wrong, and Rand asserts that it is. Your Socialist friend will probably disagree, most likely citing "social spirit" or "satisfaction of a job well done" as the incentive to produce. Does these forces exist? For many, yes. Is it enough to make the average person give up 8 hours a day? Maybe not. Overtime? I think you understand. Private property does mean that you're defending something against use by others. Socialism would, by nature, hold this to be a bad thing, because the entire system is based on everyone using everything. Objectivism recognizes that people need incentives in order to act meaningfully, and the Socialist answer doesn't provide this. Providing someone with personal reward for their labors is the way that this problem is solved. Society, however, must recognize an individual's right to maintain the possession of these rewards. Otherwise, no system exists. I hope that makes sense.

Rand addresses this topic, and I don't remember on exactly what pages, but in The Virtue of Selfishness. I think there might be a chapter called something like 'Rational People in an Irrational World,' or something like that. Basically what it says is that no one should be expected to change the world, but the important thing is to always pronounce moral judgement. If someone is doing something in a way that contradicts your views, it is your responsibility to be honest about your opinion. Now this doesn't mean you should go around pronouncing your moral authority on everyone you see, Rand continues, but even simply giving an honest answer when asked for your opinion is sufficient. If the person asks why you disagree with them, and you think they're rational enough to understand your viewpoint, then you can explain it to them. If not, a simple "I don't agree" will work in many situations. Her basic point is that you can't let them think that what they're doing is alright, because that's the only reason that these things get started in the first place. By letting someone get away with something they shouldn't, you're implicitly giving your approval by withholding your disapproval.

I think this is where we run into a problem. Why "must" it be confined to that? Only certain paradigms will result in this conclusion. I could disprove it this way. Safe sex promotes good health through release of positive hormones and neurotransmitters, elevation of heart rate, and pleasant stimulus. Sex is a great form of exersize, and helps individuals feel more comfortable with proxemics (personal space). This is an equally legitimate paradigm. It's what someone values more (the preservation of sex as a symbolic act, or the positive consequences of sex) that help determine one's view on the subject. Just because Rand doesn't feel that sex should be "cheapened" doesn't mean that we "must" use it the way she wants us to.

Point taken, I appologize. My intention was to say that while doing those things is fun, context is an important consideration. The detail was unnecessary, and was not intended to do anything but illustrate that I knew where he was coming from. I didn't have to be that specific, and I appologize to anyone I offended. It's alright, you don't know what I look like, so I can't be offended

I will no longer be able to carry out this argument on this forum, because Objectivism does not recognize determinism as a possibility. [Edited out more argument that can be conducted in the Debate Forum, or by PM as donnywithana suggests. - RC] If any of you would like to continue this discussion with me using private messages on this forum, I would be more than happy to argue my own viewpoint. I can not continue to use this space for the spreading of ideas contrary to Objectivism, however, because it is not the will of the owner and moderators.

*sigh* I don't recognize that it is a fact. I recognize that an act of integrating a new piece of information with old information can result in a new conclusion, which might be reached analytically and within the bounds of previous informational inputs, but this is not volition, this is analysis and integration, which can be accomplished by a machine. Volition implies that somewhere along the line a choice is reached independently. I am holding to the laws of reality that say that things don't happen spontaneously; all effects have causes. If you reach a conclusion based on some incredibly complex cause/effect processes within your brain, no volitional act has taken place. Only if somewhere along the line and effect simply appears, without any cause besides that effect's "choice" to exist, does something volitional occur. We may have the ability to choose between two concepts, but so can a dog. No one says that dogs are volitional. They do exactly what their instincts tell them to. A dog doesn't possess the faculty of contrasting new information with old to create inductions. If it's instinctual for man to perceive, to remember, and to contrast new perceptions with memories, then man can induce concepts, and make much more educated decisions. This is, in fact, the case. This is not volition. This is chemical cause and effect processing. Conceptualization, knowledge, memory, opinion, bias, etc are all consequences of instinctual bodily processes in humans. They are caused by their genetic programming, not by a "choice." This is to say that thought can not occur randomly. If a neuron fires due to an error along the way somewhere, and you think differently than you would expect to, it's not random. If you are confronted by a choice, you may be predisposed towards one position because of past information you have stored. You may decide to violate that predisposition either because of a predisposition to violate predispositions once you identify them, or based on some piece of information that you were predisposed to accept in place of a previously stored piece. For example, when you read Rand, you probably changed a lot. This is because the information you previously had stored in your brain as guidelines for your thought were probably less acceptable to your other guidelines than the new information, which identified the previous guidelines in ways you probably hadn't thought of them as. This is not volitional. This is complex cause and effect.

Ok, at the risk of being yelled at further for contradicting Ms. Rand without a PhD and nobel prize... I don't agree that the fact of volition is any more self evident than Intelligent Design. You may not be able to monitor every one of the ridiculously complex interactions between molecules in your brain and body, but that doesn't mean that they aren't following the laws of physics. For example. Your heart beats once. An extraordinarily complex action took place in your body to make that happen. Only recently in human history were we able to create a device that could replicate the result of that action, in the form of an electic impulse generator, or a Pacemaker. Making your heart beat is one of the more simple actions undertaken by the brain. Thought is decidedly more complex, and much more easily affected. If I present you with a choice, and present you with the same choice later, I'm not actually able to derive anything from the experiment. This is because as time has passed in between trials, your brain has changed. If I was presented with two identical (and I mean exactly identical) copies of your brain, and I presented them with the exact same choice, there's no physically possible way that they could come up with different decisions. The processes that go on in the brain are not magical, no matter how primitive our understanding of them may be.

I meant in space. Let's say I'm an iron miner, and I discover a meteor coming towards our area of the solar system that's full of iron. Let's say I have some sort of mechanism for catching it and bringing it down. What can I do to make sure no one else catches it? Do I have to get there first? Can I call "dibs?"

If there is a value, a resource, or something, that is not owned by anyone, how would Objectivism propose claiming it? Does one simply have to claim it? Is one responsible for notifying certain authorities? Does one actually have to be able to access something in order to claim it as theirs? If I discovered a meteor, could I claim it as mine? Would I have to actually go land on it to claim it? Would I be liable if it crashed into someone else's property?

Being a college sophomore male myself, though now in a relationship, I can definitely understand where you're coming from. Last year I was single, and engaged in quite a few "casual encounters." You know how a back rub was different coming from your girlfriend than from a stranger? Well that's kinda how it turns out with sex and hooking up and all that. I had quite a few "pimp" nights (successfully convincing a girl I needed "sexual healing," hooking up with two girls at once on the couch of a fraternity I don't know anyone in, etc) but to be honest, the only thing I really got out of it was a entertaining occupation of my time and a story to tell. When you cheapen relationships like that, it can be dangerous if you don't recognize exactly what meaning you're giving it. When I got with some arbitrary girl, I knew that I was doing it just for kicks. A lot of my friends (predominantly female ) have trouble with that. If you attach some artificially constructed significance to an event, it can be psychologically troubling when that person doesn't feel the same way. It's also important the the other person involved feels the same way you do. Last year, this Filipino girl who I'd been scoping out in my building came to a party that my friends were throwing. I somehow ended up naked on a futon with her a week later, and she said something like, "You're so much different than other guys, I've never had a nice boyfriend before" (possibly because, though unfairly beautiful, she was the dumbest person. Ever.). This was bad, because I figured that being naked on a futon a week after you met someone dispatched the idea of seriousness, but that was a bad assumption. RUN!!! Now she gives me a fake smile if I pass her on the street. I don't particularly mind, but it's not good to give people reasons not to like you. Be careful. And don't get the clap. I haven't had it, but I hear it's not very fun.

Hehe thanks for the warm reception, folks. I get the "Donny with Ana" thing a lot, figured I should put a stop to it As for Sublime, I love the way they bring all sorts of styles of music together, and their CDs (except the posthumous Bradley Nowell ones) are laid out incredibly, so it's not just a song here and there, but an entire album. Bands don't do that enough anymore. I have to stand up for my Floyd; they have some iffy lyrics, but they also have some incredible ones: From "Where Were You" - "While you were hanging yourself on someone else's words, dying to believe in what you heard, I was staring straight into the shining sun" From "Wish You Were Here" - "Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts, hot ashes for trees, hot air for a cool breeze, cold comfort for change? Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage?" From "Sheep" - "What do you get for pretending the danger's not real? Meek and obedient, you follow the leader down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel. What a surprise! A look of terminal shock in your eyes, now things are really what they seem. No, this is not a bad dream." (the lyrics to that song are incredible in their entirety; check them out.) I love the Kevin Smith stuff I've seen. Mallrats, Clerks, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back are all hilarious, though often for different reasons. I haven't seen Chasing Amy, but I've heard that it's not that great. JMeganSnow, I'm sorry to hear you've felt that way. What can I say but that I'm a Big Ten frat boy with an interest in thinking about stuff once in a while!

By the way, I'd like to appologize to everyone on this forum for our discussion of pollution; I was operating under the flawed premise that we have the "right" to air, and that it couldn't be owned. I was wrong about that, and the rest of the logic flowed forth from that idea. I'm sorry about that, but I would appreciate if people would try not to attack each other quite so quickly. We're all here to learn, and my problem was that I never questioned that one couldn't own their own air. "Why not?" was all I needed to be asked. Clearly this is a more difficult system than what we have now, but it's almost definitely the correct conclusion. Oh, and desirable is definitely spelled wrong in the topic...oops!

From my interpretation of Rand's work and the opinions on this forum, I have induced that the nature of man is an incredibly advanced consumer that has the ability to create value from raw inputs at an exhaustive rate. Because capitalism is the best way for man to operate (any other system is ridiculous), the only property that can exist is private property. This means that things like water and air must be owned and sold as commodities (in capitalist equilibrium), because this way the quality of these products can be ensured. All property must be strictly defined, or one runs the risk of not being able to defend it in court. Man will continue to populate so long as the cost of doing so does not outweigh the benefit, until having more children than one's ability can sustain becomes inpractical, thus effectively regulating population control. Those who make educated and informed decisions will flourish, while those with improperly premised philosophies will be left to figure things out for themselves. Those who literally can not support themselves (young children, disabled, ill) must hope that they mean something to someone(s) who would rather allocate their resources to keeping them alive than let them die, as it is unethical to force someone to care for them. The role of government is to protect the rights of the citizens, and therefore the government must not be corrupt. The government will provide services to all of its citizens, and must be voluntarily funded. Unfortunately, because the government has the ability to provide its services to someone without their consent (arresting a criminal), it must be funded through some other revenue collection method, such as contract enforcement fees. Any man who allows another man to trick him into a sacrifice deserves it, because every man has the responsibility of making their own decisions based on knowledge, instead of faith. Individuals are responsible for constantly monitoring their property and person to make sure that no one is initiating any force upon them, because to fail to recognize something immediately might result in permenant damage that might not be replaceable. If someone does initiate a force, it is conceivable that an individual could sue them for the damage done (including emotional in some circumstances) and for all costs involved in bringing them to trial, including the labor that they put into the trial (it would be up to the judge to decide what the plaintiff's labor was worth). Society might also impose a penalty on the guilty in the form of a prison sentence, which would invariably mean some sort of fee or forced labor to fund its own existence. Because violation of the rights of others means losing the ability to claim those rights for oneself, these forced actions are ethical. The end state of society will be one where man can survive exactly to the extent that his ingenuity will allow. If air continues to be a "public property" despite the nonexistence of such things, the concepts of freeloading and sacrifice will ensure that if it does not become commoditized, it will be polluted to unacceptable levels. Men will eventually, unfortunately, have to deal with this fact, and implement airtight communities with a fee or toll for passing through them. If man can not continue to support his own existence using the resources available on his property, he must either buy someone else's property, or claim some unowned property. Because unowned property most likely will not exist, a destitute individual (including children and handicapped, of course) will be forced to either live with someone who will support him (a parent in the case of children, or a misguided altruist) until he can support himself, or enter into serfdom (sell himself to an employer in exchange for the means for survival, similar to the way Dagny worked for Galt, except Galt didn't have to pay her so well if he didn't want to), or die. All this makes sense, because no one's rights are being violated, and thus might be considered the "best" possible outcome. Is this something we want? Does it say something bad about the "nature of man?" If anyone wants to expand on this or dispute something I've said, I'd love to discuss it (I'm done "debating" on public forums)

I would debate whether or not rights are "part of our nature." I might understand why you would say this; is it because in order to live, we must produce, and no one has the right to what I produce besides me? I mean, I agree with this, but there is no actual mechanism for making someone not simply take something from you besides one constructed by a society. Rights are not simply a fact of existence, they must be agreed on. If someone does not choose to use reason, they can do a bunch of really counterproductive things. For example, "I don't need to produce something that I can simply steal from someone else." We, as Objectivists, say, "No, you shouldn't be able to do that." Thus, a law is established. Another thing they might do is say, "That person's existence makes mine more difficult. If I killed him, this would no longer be a problem." Objectivists find the wrong in this, too. However, what happens when someone says, "Why should I limit the toxic chemicals that I dump? As long as the effects of my pollution don't begin causing problems until after I'm dead, there's no reason for me not to dump them." Apparently Objectivists on this forum don't see that as wrong. I'm trying to figure out why.

What aspect of reason sets it up as the granter of rights? Does a tiger recognize our reason as a reason not to eat us? Is there anything that would actually make a cannibal now want to eat you? Or is it just that we can agree that eating each other is bad, because we're all of the same type of being, and we use reason to realize that "rights" are beneficial to have?

Ok. I'm going to try and settle this down. Feel free to jump down my throat after this. In terms of things that Rand doesn't explain...I have read what I bloody well should have. I agree with it almost completely. However, I'm pointing out that certain premises that Rand uses as bases for her arguments are based on values. Here's what I mean. The mosquito is an animal that can not survive on its own. It requires the input of other animals to survive. According to logic, the mosquito's way of life is immoral. The mosquito may utilize a tiger's blood in order to reproduce, and that tiger might be alive through immoral practices too. The tiger can't actually produce its own life force, it must feed on animals in order to live. This is immoral, according to logic. The tiger might feed off of a rabbit in order to live (I don't know if tigers actually eat rabbits...whatever). The rabbit also can not produce what it needs to survive, and must feed off of grass. This, according to logic, is immoral. The plant must use light energy which it didn't produce, minerals from the soil that it didn't put there, etc. In fact, nothing that lives can survive without the consumption of something else. Rand asserts that this type of consumption is not immoral, because it's a fact of life. That's fair, but it's still agreeing that we must violate certain rights in order to achieve other rights. In other words, the life of the rabbit is worth the sacrifice of the plant, and the life of the tiger is worth the sacrifice of the rabbit. We as humans assert that our lives are worth the sacrifices made by our environments. This is not an objective truth, but because we exist, we must accept this as true in order to continue to exist. It is, as Rand recognizes, a necessary concession, but it is a values statement. We value our lives above the rights of the organisms and bodies that produce the energy that keeps us alive. We can define what "we" are, but that doesn't give us any objective right to the life of something not "human." The point I'm making in this forum is this. I understand that we as Objectivists hold human life as the highest value, but this is not an objective truth, it is a value statement. Thus, we are falsifying reality in a way that is necessary to continue our own existence. What I mean is, if we don't say "we as humans have the right to the lives of things that aren't human," we will die. Because we don't want to die, this makes sense. We overlook the "monsterous injustice" perpetrated upon the innocent plants, animals, photons, etc because we don't feel that they have rights in the first place. This isn't an objective fact, it's just something we hold to be true in order to survive. Not to mention that we're the only ones around who actually worry about the rightness or wrongness of the whole arrangement. If we do falsify this part of reality, however, in order to grant ourselves rights that do not exist independently of our recognition of them, we are faced with the consequences of having to shift the rest of our views in order to incorporate this falsification. Why is anarchy bad? If I do whatever I want for my own benefit, why isn't that good? Obviously, because then others will do the same, and the result will inevitably be catastrophic. So we AGREE to not have anarchy, and instead put a government in place to make sure that we are all civil. Governments don't just exist, they are not a necessity of life, but they streamline the process so the empirical result is better. In the same vein, we have a police force to make sure that we don't violate these rights that we've set up for ourselves. Police forces are not facts of life, they are constructions that are linked back to the idea that people "have" certain rights, and these rights must be protected. Something that violates our conception of what someone deserves to be protected against is "outlawed." For example, murder, theft, assault, etc are banned from practice because we see that someone only benefits at the cost of someone else, and nothing positive is produced. What about the feeling of happiness from kicking someone's ass? We know this to be an irrational benefit, and therefore don't recognize it as a productive end. But this is a forum for discussion of pollution, and so I'll get to that point. If someone pollutes, is there any objective truth stating that they shouldn't? Of course not. If you do something that produces a marginal profit for you (your benefit from polluting is more than the harm it does to you), then there's nothing that actually will stop you. Just like there's nothing that will actually stop you from killing someone or stealing their stuff. However, we agree that killing and stealing is wrong, and so we create a mechanism that says, "If you kill, this will be your punishment." This punishment is not existent by itself, it requires social support to exist. I'm saying, if someone does something that will harm others, they should be stopped. If you kill someone, they're not responsible for suing you. They're too busy being dead. A representative of society says, "Hey, we made a rule against that," and you are punished by society. Why is there no rule against contributing directly towards someone's demise? If everyone pollutes, and I lose a year of life because of it, who compensates me for it? I've surrendered a year of life, and what have I gained? Apparently very little, except maybe lower prices, because producers won't be responsible for paying for cleaning things up.

Ok, let me try to make a parallel to what I'm advocating here. If you have a child and don't want to take care of it, do you have to? Is it your responsibility? Objectivists point out that people could donate towards helping these children voluntarily, but Rand says that we should only help people if an emergency situation puts them in immediate harm. Now, if you follow Objectivism to its end, you would find that because no one actually has any "responsibility" towards anyone else, the "best" possible solution would be simply letting these children starve, because what right do they have to something they did not produce? To help them would be altruistic. Do you agree with this paradigm? Or would it be possible that since children don't operate under the same rules that adults do, we might consider changing the rules for them? Critics of Objectivism say that we dream of a world of belching smoke stacks. I'm trying to find out if this is an accurate assessment. When I say people should be taxed for pollution, I'm saying that they should be fined based on how much they actually pollute. This isn't saying they should be fined for something they did not do. It's just saying that we shouldn't wait until someone gets hurt to penalize them for it. Do you believe that someone needs to be hurt before negligence can be pointed out? Is attempted murder alright if no one actually gets hurt? Pollution doesn't operate under the same rules that assault or murder do. The same rules that apply to those things don't work with pollution. Because pollution is different, it should be subject to different rules. Can someone argue with that assertion without bringing in the fact that I'm advocating oppression? I'm not! I'm saying that if someone DOES something wrong, they should be penalized accordingly. Someone shouldn't have to sue them personally.

Also, to be fair, Rand herself said that people who violate the rights of others can't claim possession of rights of their own.

What I'm saying is, if there's no way to prove whodunnit exactly, a system of "accuse and thou shalt be avenged" doesn't work. Therefore it might be necessary to violate certain rights to prevent the violation of other rights. For example, if someone wrongs me, why shouldn't it be in my hands to avenge the wrong? I am to turn the case over to the police because "it works out a lot better, empirically, that way." The same thing comes into play in this discussion. Ideally, no one would pollute because it represents a tort. However, if people do pollute (and I'm talking about the negative kind), they should have to recompense those damaged by it. Because, empirically, it's impractical to set the system up where people have to individually "sue" the polluter, it's better, empirically, to say, "if you pollute, you must contribute towards the cleaning of your mess." Even this isn't a perfect solution, but because we're dealing with a necessary imperfection (the destruction certain elements of the big picture environment as a consequence of human existence, or any existence) we have to set up a "common law" type of thing to make sure that this problem is addressed. People's rights are going to be violated when pollution is necessary. When you say, "we shouldn't make the polluter pay, because they don't choose to," you are okaying the violation of the affected's rights. If rights are going to be violated, therefore, it's up to the government to create a mechanism that will limit the damage. I would propose a mechanism of penalizing polluters proportionally to their contribution to the problem, and applying this penalty money towards the fixing of the problem. Please stop implying my blasphemy. By raising questions, I'm following in the spirit of what created this philosophy. By saying that my questions are stupid without explaining your points in any way but a regurgitation of something I've already read, you're not proving anything. I've read it. I understand what Ayn Rand said about the general principals. Rand, however, does not provide logical backing for certain social constructs. For example, as I refered to earlier, she provides a somewhat empirically based argument for a police force (in The Virtue of Selfishness), but doesn't drag out a long logical explanation. This might be because the idea of a police force is a social construct. An example of why this is NOT logical, as alluded to (possibly unintentionally) by NYRourk, is the fact that a society places a trust in the government that would imply that it is not corrupt. What if it is? There's no possible way to completely prevent corruption from bringing down a government. We accept this as a necessary risk because "empirically, it just works better that way." I apply this train of thought to the problem of pollution that has earned our philosophy ridicule outside of its own circle. I hear the arguments, and I don't see adequate reasoning supporting our side. Call it devil's advocate, but until I can figure it out myself, or one of you can, I can't just posit that "we are right because we tend to be right about other things."

Kathleen, don't worry about feeling stupid here. Just by being here you're proving that you're smarter than most people. People here tend to be very direct. This is a good thing, if you think about, because making assertions instead of "in my opinion..." statements displays courage and self esteem. You'll have to get used to people flat out disagreeing with you here, it's the best way to actually carry out a debate that actually gets somewhere. However, everyone here thinks I'm a commie (I'm not), so I may not be the best person to look to for advice .

Let me get something straight. If ten people dump cyanide into a river, and I die from it, do I have the right to sue all of them? Who's to know whose cyanide did me in? Is it the person who happened to add the cyanide that pushed it above a lethal level? If a nuclear power plant radiates a stream, and I eat a radiated fish and give birth to a deformed child, how do I know who to sue? I could have been radiated at any point in my life. How would I know that the fish caused it? How could I prove it? If I developed lung cancer from carcenogenic chemicals in the air released from thirty factories in my city, can I sue all of them? I mean, whose carcenogens actually incited the mutation? How do I prove that it was actually the chemicals that caused the cancer and not just some coincidence? To paraphrase an argument Rand uses against socialism, how many corpses must pile up before we can conduct the proper correlational studies? The car industry conducts recalls in a manner similar to that which you are suggesting. If there's a defective part, they calculate how much it would cost to perform the recall, and then they calculate how much they would probably have to pay in settlements to people who sued. Only if it's less damaging to do the recall does the company actually do it. Now, no one's forcing you to buy cars, so you don't have to be impacted by this practice if you object. However, if someone's polluting the air, I still have to breathe. Because of biological ties that reality thrusts upon us, the rules should not be the same for something which I have no choice but to consume. I don't understand why everyone's acting like I'm saying Marx is right here, I'm just saying that you guys have interpreted certain things in a way that I don't agree with.

Look, I want to be civil about this, but I think this comes down to whether or not you are willing to question your interpretation of Objectivism as not necessarily being the correct one. Rand's philosophy claims to be based around the individual's life, but it could be looked at from an economic standpoint. I'm an economics major, this is how I do things. Rand explicitly, and correctly, condemns the idea of sacrifice. It is from this idea that her philosophy goes forth. She points out that any system rooted in the idea of sacrifice (she loves the term self immolation...I'll avoid it) is doomed to fail. She points out that certain actions violate the rights of individuals, and must be condemned. She claims that no one has the right to violate the rights of another, but the problem is that while this can be logically shown, this concept is not an automatic condition of life. That's why we have to have laws, to take away someone's ability to violate someone else's rights without consequence. Now, this idea could be rephrased to say that no one has the right to force someone to make a sacrifice. To pollute one's own property doesn't require anyone else to make a sacrifice. When one's pollution impacts someone else, which it does in almost every case, you are requiring someone to sacrifice the quality of their life for nothing. This is wrong. It's not a matter of whether or not you can be prosecuted. You don't have the right to do it in the first place. Because it's relatively easy to monitor someone polluting, the enforcer of "you can't do that" has every right to punish you for it. If you taxed a producer based on the pollution he produced, he could raise prices to compensate for it. In fact, the consumer would be the one paying for the manufacturing process, like it is anyway, and one of the costs of producing something is pollution. This idea of externalities is well documented in economics. The idea that externalities are the burden of someone other than the creator of those externalities is perposterous. You honestly think that everyone impacted by pollution would sue? I don't know about you, but I don't have time for that. Why is it my problem? They're the one in the wrong.

If you were the type to be getting with someone like Dominique, you might have a different perspective. Although she may seem like a heroine of sorts in this book, you have to ask yourself if that's really the way you would want things to be. I would probably think she was weird and not want to have to play this ridiculous game in order to have her. You'll see more about the game I'm talking about as you get farther into the book.

The thing is, you have to look at this from a marginal benefit standpoint. We can't take preventative action against murder because it would require everyone's thoughts be monitored. The cost would be higher than the benefit. However, the benefit of preventing pollution would outweigh the cost. And where it didn't, it wouldn't be done. You will say, benefit to who? And I will preemptively counter with a simple illustration of Nash equilibrium. According to Nash's theory, if it's easier to pollute than not, it's in everyone's best interest to pollute. If you want a better explanation, I can give it, but I'll assume you're familiar with the prisoner's dilemma. However, as we see in Nash's illustration, it's more beneficial to everyone to "agree" to not pollute. This agreement, however, hinges on no one "cheating." If there's no reason not to cheat, everyone will, and we will be driven towards the Nash equilibrium. This is why I would propose a real penalty for cheating. Everyone, including the regulated, benefits from no one cheating, but only if NO ONE cheats. Yes, this is a violation of rights, and the main tenet for Socialism, but pollution is something that works against our main value of life. Is it more beneficial to trade the right to do whatever you want, in terms of pollution, for the assurance that individuals everywhere will be doing the same? I would posit that it is. Now, I understand that this is not the place to be contradicting Objectivism, but one of Objectivism's main pillars is that its philosophy is not based on, "We say this," but on, "We say this because." Now, I'm claiming that pollution has a negative impact on life that outweighs the positive impact that the right to pollute may have on anyone. Although your polluting act will benefit you, the polluting acts of others will harm you more. Thus, if we all agree not to pollute, we all win. We have to enforce this agreement, however, and the best way to do this is with a penalty system. The only entity with the implicit right to impose a penalty is the government. Do you see where I'm going with this, or am I being ridiculous?

Well, now that I've been around here anonymously for a bit, I figure I should probably introduce myself "officially." My name is Danny Shahar. I'm 19, and a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. I'm from Westport, CT. I didn't like it very much out there. As Holden Caulfield would have said, they were a bunch of phonies, and so I got the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I'm majoring in economics, and hopefully getting a certificate (a minor) in business. I'm originally from Israel, so my name is pronounced "Donny." That's why my name on here, and everywhere else pretty much, is Donny with an A. Get it? 'Cause it's Donny spelled Danny. I'm interested in pretty much everything, which is why you will and have seen me trying to get involved in just about every discussion on this board (even, and especially, those which I know nothing about...sorry to those whose fields of study I've lambasted because of flawed knowledge, I'm trying to stop doing that). I play guitar, read, debate, relax, shower occasionally, play more guitar, attend class occasionally, abuse alcohol on occasion, watch Islanders hockey, yell at my friend Andy for being Christian, and play Sega Genesis. I'm a member of a fraternity (what? gross! I hate them too) that realized, "Hey, you mean if we're a 'fraternity' the school won't break up our ridiculous parties?" Essentially I pay to get to hang out in a place that's basically immune to the law. You can make fun of me, believe me I understand. I have a girlfriend named Sara. She's nice. My favorite books would be Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Fight Club by Chuck Pahluniak (I think that's how you spell it), The Fountainhead, The Virtue of Selfishness, and Atlas Shrugged by we all know who . If you haven't read any of those books, do it. 'It' being reading the books. Movies: Dogma, Fight Club, The Fifth Element, The Matrix (the first one), Kill Bill 1&2, Snatch, Dude, Where's My Car, Memento, Old School, The Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction, and Donnie Darko. Yea, that's right, I said Dude, Where's My Car. That movie is hilarious. Music: Sublime, Phish, Joe Satriani, Ben Folds, Pink Floyd, Dispatch, and Bob Marley and the Wailers. I don't smoke pot anymore, but it sure seems like it, huh? Well I guess that's it, and much more than I would have intended.