Greebo

As Galt would never initiate force, but those who believed such directives were necessary will, such an attempt would never succeed.

Your article states the RISKS of regulation. I agree fully with it. There is always the RISK that a regulation will yield more regulation. That is not why regulations are immoral. Regulations are immoral because they nullify the judgment of the individual. You are committing the fallacy of over-generalization and now you cannot defend it, so you're resorting to ad-hominem.

You are free to assume that if you wish.

So provide them. I don't agree that the *outcome* of all regulation is always bad. For instance - lead paint regulations *require* landlords by law to take steps to mitigate the risk of exposure to lead paint in buildings built prior to 1955, in particular to protect children from eating paint chips that flake free. These regulations are reasonable, rational, and result in good things - safer apartments and rental houses. They also dead end - if you remove all lead paint from a building completely, you're in the clear - and so are your tenants. There's nowhere for these regulations to go to make them bad. Unless you can back up the claim that all regulation, good or bad, leads to bad regulation, you are begging the question. Understand - *I* agree that regulation is immoral - that forcing people to act in their own best interest is not in anyone's best interest. I simply won't accept making falacious arguments to support a valid one.

Ever watch "Holmes on Homes"? It's not so much that code is "unsafe" - but rather that code is just the "bare minimum".

You seem to be assuming that the regulated chooses to forfeit the power of his own judgment. This is not a universal truth. As a landlord, I never let my own judgment be overruled by whatever the regulations say. I will *comply* with them, but as often as not compliance is only the minimum I'll do. For example - there is no requirement for me to make my units completely lead free - I only have to abate the risk of exposure - but I choose to make them lead free anyway because *I* want my units to be that safe.

All that proves is that regulation MAY lead to more regulation. Regulation can also lead to less regulation (its rare but it happens). It's arguing may be's and might have been's. Upon reflection, it's also begging the question - it presumes that regulation is bad, more regulation is worse - and the question is "Why is the regulation bad?" - so presuming the answer isn't valid.

This is very helpful - thank you. Likewise.

While we agree on the eventual outcome here, the sliding slope argument is not really a good argument technique. It's speculative.

This has me a bit stuck. In a nutshell the question is "Is it immoral under objectivism to insist that buildings be constructed with adequate fire doors?" The argument has its misrepresentations, which I've corrected, but the core argument has some merit. There should be no conflict of interests between rational men - but I cannot see how to resolve this conflict cleanly. Presented unfiltered, more to follow: Now on this point: "The objectivist take, I believe, is that preemptive force is never viable. That any potential difficulty in a victim being made whole following an imposition of force is irrelevant to the discussion. That punishment/retribution after the fact is all that is available. " - I clarified that the initiation of force is never MORAL. Pre-emptive is different and can be moral (you have no obligation to let your enemy actually attack you first) and of course, force CAN be viable - force is very effective - its simply never moral. But as to the fire door example - I'm torn. I'm inclined to determine that the building owner has no right to deliberately create a dangerous environment and expose others to it unwittingly. Why? Fires are a real hazard. We know what happens when fire doors open the wrong way. We know what happens when there aren't enough exits. You have no right to drink and drive creating risk to others - can you have a right to put others at risk when you "hold forth" your building as safe? On the other hand - does a person entering a building have a moral responsibility to judge the building's safety for themselves? I'm inclined to say no - that the primary burden is on the building owner. Of course, there are other problems - WHO decides how many exits and of what nature are safe? So - I'm stuck. I need a little help figuring this one out. Would anyone care to invest some time in this?

A new species comes about when an animal can no longer create offspring which are capable of reproducing through mating with others of the species one descended from, but can still reproduce with those animals having compatible DNA. No reproductive ability means if they're a species at all, they're limited to 1 generation - and I don't think that qualifies - so no, getting a sex change doesn't make them a new species.

Pleasure is one half of the the internal compass that tells us when we are on or off of the proper course of action for living. The person guilty of monstrous injustices against others is guilty of an even greater one against himself - his own self destruction. That he faces the consequences for that self destruction is just - but should one ever feel joy at the destruction of life? Even if that life is guilty of destroying countless others?

Refresh my memory here - how was it that Rand defined Humanity Qua Humanity?

Hmm. You seem to be making a leap of assumption here. What is the nature of man? Are you asserting that Man is defined not by his mind, but by his body?

And what if the course to mental health is a sex change operation? I have a good friend who was born male but could not be happy in themselves after YEARS of therapy until they went through the extremely painful and difficult series of procedures to convert her body into what her mind told her she was - a woman. What would you say to my friend? That the therapists conclusions were wrong? That her new found joy is a lie?

Does mental wellness count in human health and well-being?

Why don't you offer to do the third chance for free for two weeks, no strings attached, and at the end of those two weeks if he thinks you've earned it, great, and if not, you won't bother him again?

After years and years of praising Rand, this move simply places him in the arena of the rest of his competitors - the arena of men with no credibility. Way to level the playing field, Ryan.

I had a similar thought. Deciding what button to push is much more like a random number generation experiment than a real decision making process. When faced with two arbitrary choices, where selection between the two is meaningless, why not a die roll of the brain? A similar experiment in which they were able to influence the choice being made similarly seems more like loading a die than disproving free will. I'd be much more interested in seeing them do testing on a much more complex decision making process.

That wasn't my question. my question was, OF WHAT VALUE IS A TRANSISTOR TO A PRIMITIVE TRIBE MEMBER? How is that inherent quality assessed?

That's amazing. How do you reach that conclusion? How do you know that he hasn't measured and evaluated every tenet of O'ism and decided on his own that he agrees with it? Because this forum is private property and has rules. And I think I'm right to kill you if you come into my place of business, or my home for that matter, and try to force your way of living upon me.

Someone from a Capitalist nation, introducing it to a tribe in the Amazon. What imbalance? So a value is a value TO someone, FOR something?

A sentiment I share. I find it interesting that you think it is up to you to judge whether he is a victim when he asserts that he is not. Are you saying that his free will in the matter is irrelevant? I find it amusing that you accuse me of mocking Objecitivism when it becomes increasingly apparent that you are anything but an Objectivist, not at all interested in actually undertanding Objectivism, and are only participating here in order to assert your own premises, as opposed to what the actual intent of this forum is, which is to ask questions about the philosophy, not challenge it. You've already stated that you think it's appropraite to use force to assert YOUR view. I see no need to consider it further. Quite simply, if someone like you tried to assert your will upon me in such a manner in my own place of business, at the least I would simply evict you. If that didn't work, I might have to kill you (meeting your force with force), since you seem to be pretty content with being a threat to my own freedom.

Of what value is a transistor to a cave man? Reality disagrees with your basic assumption. One can quite easily produce a virtually boundless list of people who have houses who are dead broke and not getting any wealthier. All one needs to do is examine their debt to asset levels and expense to income ratios. So to your way of thinking, a value exists whether or not someone can make use of it? Then in that case the space widget has the same value as the earth bound widget. Why? If the seller chooses freely and the buyer chooses freely, what makes it immoral?

For the record.