chuff

I'll chime in with my two cents.
Rand was an explicit proponent of retributive justice. In one of the Q&A periods during the 1976 course that Leonard Peikoff gave on Objectivism, she strongly answered in the affirmative when asked if Objectivism believes in retributive justice, and here I mean that the term "retributive justice" was literally used in the formulation of the question so as to leave no doubt whatsoever about her views on it. 
In a different Q&A session, she stated that very little (if anything) is known about the rehabilitation of criminals, and that the rest of society doesn't owe the criminal a rehabilitation. One can draw the conclusion that these are two reasons as to why she wasn't in favor of rehabilitative justice. Whether or not you accept those arguments as being valid 40+ years later is up to you. But, on a more fundamental level, I believe that a belief in retributive justice logically follows if you hold that man possesses free will. You chose to violate the rights of another individual, and therefore deserve a proportional punishment that fits your crime. You're not a deterministic being who simply "couldn't help it". The criminal being separated from the civilized men and women makes them safer as a consequence. The notion of justifying retributive justice on the basis of making society safer is something that Rand herself expressed, so it's not as if I'm just inadvertently smuggling it in here. But, above all (as has already been stated), it's primarily a question of giving the criminal what they deserve. You deal in force, we answer you by force. 
If it's of any interest to you, Peikoff stated during his 1995 lecture titled "What to Do About Crime" that it would be beneficial if criminals learn to adopt positive behaviors during they stay in prison, so that they can become productive citizens when they have been released. I also believe he's in favor of prisoners being allowed to work in exchange for a small earning, but don't hold me to that. You can interpret that as a more favorable view towards rehabilitative justice if you'd like. 
 

Welcome to Objectivism Online, Pidge.
Which did you read first, The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged?
In the three times you read Atlas, can you recall any of how it was a different experience for you in the different readings? 
What were the years in which you first read these two novels? 
Here is a picture of me in college in the late 1960's, which was the era I first read Rand, together with photo of Rand in the early 1950's:

This isn't unusual for you or anyone else who has a set of ideas they value. No one likes being told that everything they believe is wrong, and everyone's ideas are ridiculed by someone. 
 
  Ridicule is an act, a piece of drama, used to manipulate those with these kind of insecurities. No one wants to be stupid, gullible, or evil. So the person who engages in the ridicule will convince themselves of having knowledge, and then proceed to act as though your ideas contradict what they know to be true in such an obvious way that it would produce amusement.
 
  These people are really motivated by the fact that they themselves know very little about the either the ideas they are ridiculing or the ideas they are defending. The only fact is that Ayn Rand threatens their system and ethical beliefs and they can't have that. So, not matter if it is true, they must convince others that Ayn Rand was a drug addicted, serial killer loving, cheating, cult leader who hates poor people but loves social security checks and whose main followers are insecure and pretentious teenagers. 
 
 In reality this is the exacts same kind of hate and ignorance that conservatives have for conservatives have developed for Karl Marx or Mohammed. They don't know anything about the ideas but they are so threatened by them that they must find the easiest way to dismiss them. No matter how hysterical, hyperbolic, unfair, hypocritical, irrelevant, or just untrue the attacks are. 
 
  In the end, it isn't your responsibility to defend a set of beliefs that you haven't verified independently. That tendency is what creates the dreaded "Randroids". Ayn Rand has some really good ideas, but reading her books isn't enough, you need to understand them through your own personal efforts. In the end you may not agree with the whole of the philosophy, but I would rather have people who disagreed who knew what they were talking about rather than people who did agree and did not know what they talked about. 

Surely it matters whether one has a reasonable way of identifying the owner of the lost property. Items like wallets or cell phones usually have ownership trails that can be traced -- driver's licenses, phone numbers and the like. A large sum of money might have had its loss reported to local authorities -- if somebody tells the lost and found that they dropped five hundred bucks, and you found five hundred bucks, the odds are that it's theirs. But how are you going to track down the legitimate owner of the quarter you found on the ground? Ought implies can, and in this case you can't.

Note that the logic changes, even with coins, in cases where you can identify the owner. Nobody would consider it OK to pick up and keep a quarter that was just dropped by the guy standing in front of you in the checkout line at the store. You know it's his, and he's right there in front of you.

How come you're talking in terms of the law? The question is framed to ask about ethics.

If you signed a contract, with a stipulated return trip price, then it would be a breach of contract if they were to change the price arbitrarily.  I think that's fairly obvious.
Wrt to the smearing feces, this fall under having nothing to do with the job for which you were contracted to perform.  That they are asking you to perform activities that you don't want to do and have nothing to do with the job which you were hired to perform - AND - they control your means of leaving, then that would be considered "force".  Not physical force - such as punching someone - but force none the less.
And an important point to be made is that you don't have to have a "signed" contract that stipulates what you will and won't do in a job.  There are numerous laws on the books that have to do with industry standards, implied warranties, etc. and they are implied in any job that you take.  I've worked for 4 architectural firms and 1 general contracting company and I've never signed a contract.  That's doesn't mean that there were no laws governing my relationship with my employer.  Even contracts that don't have some form of fair and mutual compensation can be void by the courts.  It's understood by law that both parties, for a binding agreement to exist, should each receive just compensation as defined by current standards.

Changing the conditions of your work in a way that is different from your contract could be construed as an initiation of force/fraud (and a contract is definitely needed in situations like these).

And there would be legal issues associated with holding you ransom. You might say that the corporation didn't force you to stay there. But the issue of force is determined by the nature of reality. If somebody locked you in a room only they can open, you would essentially be held as a prisoner. By the nature of reality (i.e., by the constraints placed by the fact that you are physically unable to leave), the situation is very similar and legal issues can be involved.

Also another thing: if this is the mentality, I doubt they would be the first to do anything in space. So situation is very unlikely as well.

Spare me your sanctimonious bullshit. If you think there are more pressing problems to solve, you can kindly fuck off and go solve them.
You are the only one degrading the level of discussion here. In case you haven't noticed, this is a philosophy forum. We can talk about whatever we want.
If you aren't interested in participating, then don't.

Yeah ok, but that doesn't answer the question.

https://newideal.aynrand.org/abortion-should-be-legal-until-birth/
With Rand's formulation of "life", MrJ, one should certainly not assume that a fetus/infant has to be independent of its  mother's body before it qualifies as 'life'. The "action" taken by the fetus, is its consciousness, senses functioning before birth by some weeks. Its total dependency on its mother or another person (or an incubator) for nutrition, etc. continues long after, obviously. Mr Bayer above makes a very weak argument, imo - for individuation - not viability -being the "bright line" for its rights. Which I maintain is pretty primitive: i.e. only once separated at birth, having become a visible and touchable, 'independent' entity, has it arrived at "individuation"? With all the mother feels and senses from her quite mobile fetus and she and her doctors can view on ultrasound, and measure heatbeat, etc.? I don't think so.
Rand would only go so far as "the first trimester" and left the rest open to debate. I think it probable that full-term abortion would not get her nod, apart from emergency extraction to save the mother.

Welcome to the forum, Mr. Jenko.  
Fundamentally, this is a question of what kind of being individual rights pertain to. Rand held that rights, as a concept, apply exclusively to actual (as opposed to potential) human beings with the possession of a rational faculty. 
I have encountered Objectivists whose views on abortion differ, and there have been countless threads on the subject. Some hold the view that a woman should have the right to get an abortion until the point of birth (I believe this was Rand's own view) while others believe the cut-off point is when the baby is biologically viable, i.e., when it could survive independently of its host. 
For reading, you can begin by searching for "Abortion" and "Individual Rights" in the Ayn Rand Lexicon, and you'll get a number of passages from Rand's own writings as well as her lectures. It's a good resource in general if you're looking for quick answers. 

Over at Manhattan Contrarian is an analysis of an alleged expose of racism on the part of law enforcement in New York City.

What is astounding is not that, in this day and age, the police are arbitrarily and routinely arresting individuals on the basis of their race. (To the degree this still happens it remains an outrage, but I don't think it is right to imply that it is routine.) Quite to the contrary, it's just how patronizing the expose is, and how destructive the implied remedy would be for blacks.

The whole thing is worth a read, but two successive paragraphs give us the gist. An editorialist, apparently wearing the blinders of his moral high horse, all but admits that he thinks that blacks cannot live up to social norms like anyone else. Note that the supposedly outrageous arrests are for a couple of shoplifting incidents, at least one of which is not disputed:This attitude crops up often enough to have a name: the bigotry of low expectations.

Not only do I agree that this attitude is ridiculous, I agree with the next paragraph and think it shows that the professed concern for victims of racism often ends exactly there -- at the profession:Nor do many of the numerous government programs that are supposed to remedy the effects of racism -- from racial quotas to welfare -- but it is a little bit harder to make such cases than it is to show -- as the author does so succinctly here -- that blacks benefit from law and order -- just like anyone else does.

-- CAV Link to Original

Another possible description is "sacrificing others".  This gets at a key confusion in popular concepts of "selfishness".

To confuse risk of physical force with  initiation of physical force is to confuse a potential with an actual. The whole mandatory vaccination position depends on a Parmenidean worldview in which all that exists is fully actual, combined with disregarding the need to obtain sufficient information to blame any one person for anything. It is the same fallacy employed by advocates of anti-immigration, gun control, and environmentalism. Thank you for helping to make that connection.
 

Welcome back! Congratulations on JD!

This construction obviously doesn’t work, it’s self contradictory!!! And it is indicative of what’s wrong with this thread. You are conflating a philosophical principle with military strategy. Your first sentence is correct -- a legitimate government must take whatever steps necessary to defeat an aggressor nation. Period. End of philosophy lesson.

In the next sentence you switch gears to military strategy and contradict your philosophical statement. So I must ask the obvious question: If you were Commander in Chief and the military came to you and said “the only way to prevent further loss of American lives is to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima” -- would you have?

When we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing whatever percentage of so called “innocent” civilians you may wish to define, do you think we saved American lives? Wasn’t this a thoroughly moral act on the part of the American government?

Who is responsible for the deaths of every person in wartime: the aggressor or the aggrieved?



Are you suggesting though that it is the responsibility of a threatened nation to sacrifice its citizens to defeat an aggressor?



This is a difficult issue. Ayn Rand’s essay “Man’s Rights”, which can be found in both CUI and VoS, helped me figure it out:

Rights are moral sanctions to positive action and require nothing of anyone else except that they leave you alone. So your right to life not only gives you the moral sanction to do whatever you must to live, it requires that you take action in order to live.

By the same logic, the right of all men to liberty not only allows them the “freedom to act on [their] own judgment”, it requires that they take action in order to secure their liberty. (Of course implicit in this line of reasoning is that the only people you will have to act against in order to secure your liberty are those who wish to take it, and the only way it can be taken is by force.)

Thus we arrive at Ayn Rand's position that every government is the representative of its people. Anyone who does not flee or actively oppose an aggressor government gives their implied sanction to its actions. Whether they are truly “innocent” matters not. “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [the individual rights of its citizens, it is not only their right] to alter or to abolish it” it is their responsibility.

And while some may prefer to “suffer, while evils are sufferable” their abdication of their rights to an aggressive government confers no requirement on a free people to live in a similar state; taking no action against the aggressor for fear of killing people who are unwilling to right themselves.

This question of when to nuke is not a philosophical question, it is a military strategy question which should be left to the military sciences. 
 
The philosophical principle is that a nation defending itself must do whatever is necessary to defeat the enemy. "Whatever is necessary" means different things in different contexts. In the context of Grenada 1980 (?) it means you send in one squad of marines. In the context of Japan 1945 you nuke them until they relent.
 
There are several good threads discussing these questions in which I have participated in the past. This one entitled "Pre-emptive War: Should we nuke Tehran?" is quite long but good. The very last post is by me and addresses the question of whether we could just assassinate the leaders of an aggressive country.
 
This one is entitled "In Our Name"? and is very good and short, only two pages. It addresses the issue of the differing contexts of semi-free countries versus aggressive ones.

"In a nutshell the question is "Is it immoral under objectivism to insist that buildings be constructed with adequate fire doors?"

It would be immoral to buy such a building and to risk the lives of its dwellers. But it would be equally immoral to force the builders to install these doors by means of government regulations.

"Who decides what is safe or even safe enough? "-You are.

To hold contradictory ideas simply means that you hold two beliefs about how the world works, and if the world did simultaneously work according to both of those beliefs, a contradiction would exist. Reason is not automatic, so there is nothing preventing you from holding ideas about the world that contradict eachother - i.e., ideas about reality that would result in a contradiction if they were simultaneously true.

Any misunderstanding you have about this is simply due to equivocation - we use the same word ("contradiction") to refer to a) a state of reality (which cannot exist), and to ideas we hold about the state of reality (which can exist).

SOPA should be opposed because its mandated takedown of websites based on accusation is a denial of due process, because its interference with the internet's Domain Name System is damaging to the operation and security of the entire internet, and because it is a corrupt neo-fascist subsidy of a declining business sector whose most persuasive "argument" is the bribes it gives to congressmen's reelection committees.

I saw many Ron Paul fans in here, so I thought you might love the new creativity of this business owner. For every dragon you slay in this game, the dude donates $5 to Ron Paul for Iowa.

http://www.dungeoneers.com/ronpaul

lol that has got to be one of the best political ideas for a candidate who is popular on the internet.

I haven't read the book either, but I talked to God, and he said it's shit. How's that for a great argument?

The Giant Purple Space Goat just spoke to me and he wants me to express his displeasure at all this heretic talk about the Goddess Pippi. Thou shalt put no gods (or goats) before the GPSG. Lest he punish us all, you should know that the power of his flatulence is great and it's spread is mighty!

So please spare us this unpleasant consequence and yield to the intenstinal power of the GPSG!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onthology

The Internet: use it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onthology

The Internet: use it.