New Buddha

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.

Cat gut, a wooden box and the human mind.  LSJBach

Her philosophy was very much influenced by her exposure to Marxism, both in the Soviet Union and the U.S.  It can be seen as primarily a refutation of it.  Both are materialist in the sense that there is no appeal to the "supernatural", but a primary difference between the two has to do with epistemology (see Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology).
Marx held an individual's ideas to be formed via a dialectic process between and individual and his class and it's relationship to the material means of production in any given age.  Marx also saw history as unfolding to a finished state (Pure Communism).  Rand's epistemology, on the other hand,  does not posit any type of dialectic process in an individual's formation of knowledge.  It is based sensations, percepts, concepts, the formation of abstractions-from-concretes and abstractions-from-abstractions, etc.  Too much to explain here in detail.  ITOE would be a good place to start if you are interested.
The altruism that Rand opposes should not be confused with the "helping your neighbor raise a barn variety."  In it's current, modern form, it is the virulent yet historical German idea that one's spirit may be free, but one's body belongs to the State.  This can be traced back to at least Martin Luther and the German Prince's using the Protestant Reformation as a rallying cry to oppose not only the Church but also the Holy Roman Emporer.  You might say that Hegel led to Hitler, and Marx - who switched the "state" to the "collective" - led to Stalin.
I've been following the Global Warming debates for close to 9 years, and I see no evidence that any changes in temperature cannot be explained by natural variations within the limits of precision of measurement and a general warming trend that has been going on for a long while.  But this Post would not be a place to debate it.  If you want to, let's do it!  
The role of government is often debated among Objectivist.  I think that since Objectivism does not believe that clashes are inevitable among reasonable Men (or "classes") nor is economics a zero-sum game, it is possible to create a fair and equitable government, and that one will always exist.  A good government should be seen as a wonderful achievement of rational men.  Rand had a great deal of respect for the U.S. Government and the Founding Fathers.
I first read Rand around the age of 14 or 15, and in my youth, I was much more anarcho-capitalist than I am now.  As I grew older, and began to participate in society and not just observe it, I grew to appreciate the important role that government plays in society.  And per No. 4, I think it can be a net positive and not all negative.  Others will have different opinions.

The flaw in your argument is that you have assigned the arbitration of morality to a third party.  And a disembodied third-party at that.
Who is this "you" that you are referring to?  Society?  Me?  Your next door neighbor?  God?
I decide what is moral and immoral.  The buck stops here, with me.  I don't put the morality of my actions up to a vote.
To quote the Holy Trinity:  "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

I think the following two paragraphs from the link are insightful:
Perhaps the best example of Trump’s provoke and win strategy was his approach to immigration. Any proposal for restricting immigration, no matter how modest, will invariably meet charges of nativism and racism. So why fight it? Trump opted to meet the challenge by initially proposing something truly appalling: the deportation of tens of millions of people. When the predictable outrage machine kicked into high gear, he didn’t go into damage control as expected. Rather, he dismissed the accusations and let it ride.
After Trump brushed off his hyperventilating critics who were frantically calling him a racist, fascist, and everything in between, their rage gradually abated because it didn’t have the desired effect. Now, all of Trump’s clarifications on the issue are on the table for consideration, seem reasonable by comparison, and any subsequent PC outburst against them will ring hollow. Like so, Trump tamed and harnessed the outrage machine over and over again: the Muslim ban, killing terrorists’ families, insulting John McCain for being a POW, all until it won him the Republican nomination.
 
Reagan was the Teflon President - nothing ever stuck to him.  Trump is like my well seasoned cast iron skillet that I never wash - so much stuff has stuck to it in the past, that there's no room left for anything new to stick.
We live in interesting times.

That's what the entirety of ITOE is for - to explain how we begin with the evidence of the senses and arrive at objective concepts, definitions, and complex propositions.
 
Lol.  I am "typing challenged".

"When we call altruism "evil" what makes that assertion conceivable,...."
 
"....can anyone actually live amorally?"
 
When Rand uses the terms "altruism" and "amorality" (taken from other philosophies, not hers), you need to understand that, in her mind, they are "floating abstractions" which cannot be practiced.  They are not "options" .  She is demonstrating the logical fallacy of the concepts.

Trump should have responded to the frantic reporter who asked if he was putting the alt-left and the alt-right (the tiny racist minority therein) on equal moral footing, he should have said "ABSOLUTELY!"...
How many more commie idiots are at all these stupid protests waving red flags? How many times have these Marxist clowns been busted faking hate crimes, impersonating Nazi's? How many white supremacist idiots have tenure in american universities? How many Marxist's??? 
This chimera of "white supremacy" is a farce.  

It is a conspiracy without leader or direction, and the random little thugs of the moment; a conspiracy of all those who seek, not to live, but to get away with living, those who seek to cut just one small corner of reality and are drawn, by feeling, to all the others who are busy cutting other corners. (composite quote from Atlas Shrugged)
The DIM Hypothesis doesn't articulate it as well, but it does indicate the pattern observed in the history of philosophy oscillating back and forth between subjectivism and skepticism.
As to the corners being cut, and the emotional draw acting as a magnet of evasiveness, another warning flag is waved in Atlas Shrugged's Aristocracy of Pull where "the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket . . . ."
Or consider also Ellsworth Toohey; while funded by multiple sources, he served as a catalyst to multiple organizations that he had spearheaded (funded/organized).
The "sewer of the centuries" isn't always as clearly demarcated by 9 feet of raw sewage found in a repair zone developed as a result of a failure of a government project coming to fruition years after the fact. (latest update on a local situation.)

Communism is a much more dangerous ideology than anything "Unite the Right" has to say. Partly because they have been far more destructive throughout history, but mainly because, unlike the far right, they are well represented, and tolerated, among cultural, academic and political elites.
So they, along with the entire far left they work side by side with, should absolutely be the main concern.

I do happen to believe they are the same, morally speaking. 
I had some experience with some Antifa groups, both online and at some protests. I naively thought they could be open to libertarian and individualist ideas, much in the way that objectivists hoped to influence the tea party groups in this way. After my interactions with them, I find them very similar to neo-Nazi types.
Let me first explain a bit of history. Antifa, at least in so far as they claim, has its history in the KDP, the communist party of Germany during the Weimar years. Most of you are probably familiar with the stories of red shirts fighting brown shirts in the streets, which originated as the Sparticist Leage, and is basically a Bolshevik group that wants a communist dictatorship. The party is banned in Germany to this day. This is the intellectual heritage they claim and logos they use. It was resurrected in the 1980s by punk rock types and leftist agitators to fight against anything right wing using violence. It is not a singular organized group with a single goal or philosophy, much like the occupy movement, but are a disparate group of loosely networking individuals that get together for protests.
I was drawn to them for the protest aspect. Many objectivists, I find, either put too much stock in voting and democratic politics, or are just too intellectual to be involved in practical action. I am interested in agorism and building alternative institutions, so naturally a group claiming to be about anti fascist action sounded promising. Objectivists, I still do believe, should be the real Antifa. They are also anti racism, anti sexism, anti bigotry, what are we if not all of those things? So I thought they were about using private, voluntary, and non-state means to fight these things through protests, boycotts, social pressure, doxing, etc, which sounded great. I thought, like many left-liberals dissatisfied with the Democratic Party establishment, they would be young, intellectual, and interested in fighting oppression and injustice, and I could influence them towards liberty and individualism. I knew many of them were left-libertarians or left-anarchists, but I had success in the past interacting with them.
What I found was a group of extreme, violent anti-liberal racial collectivists who are basically social misfits and losers.
Many of them are, in fact, extremely racists, much like the BLM folks I interacted with. Events such as "white people stay home day" on campus were endorsed. Yaron mentions this in his podcast, and I can confirm, yes violent leftist agitators were roaming around looking for white people to club. During a protest in California, there was a targeting of anyone who was white in a certain area because it was assumed they were pro-Trump. Many of them believe in some sort of reparation scheme, whereby all whites, regardless of their position in society, must be expropriated to repay for historical oppression. And, this is anecdotal, but I was interacting with an Antifa member who felt comfortable confiding in me, lamentably, that they couldn't openly support extermination of whites. When pushed on this, he circled and said he meant through promoting interracial marriage (except not marriage cause that's oppressive), which is a common thing you hear, that all whites would be technically gone and that would be a good thing. 
They are also virulently anti-Israel, and to such a point that they want to see it destroyed, and it's not hard to see how that turns into a general hatred of Jews.
I think there's also a psychological aspect here and the analysis isn't complete without that. As many have pointed out, the type of person drawn to violent political extremism tends to be someone who is an outcast, is socially awkward or ignored in some way, people who just enjoy being edgy and contrarian, thumb their noses at established norms, and people who have psychopathic personality types. We can probably understand how easy it is, for some young people to be disasstisfied with mainstream conservatism, for example, and join the alt right or patriot type movements, only to be disgusted with them, then read Richard Spencer or something and become a full blown Nazi. Without a principled philosophy, this person is just drifting toward a cult or gang like group until they are embraced by the worst.
The same thing happens on the left. Many were disgusted at the betrayal of the Bernie Sanders movement and looked for a better home that would embrace their psychopathic and nihilistic personalities. And the types I found numerous times. I saw a young girl pepper spray an elderly woman who she supposed was a Trump supporter. I saw kids, disabled people, women, moms and dads, random bystanders, etc. attacked with batons or sticks, or hit with projectiles. When I asked her if this was morally okay to her, I got the usual anti-conceptual "revolution isn't pretty" type response and was told this many times. "Break some eggs, if you want to make an omelette" slogan was repeated to me. I saw the group full of these punk rocker types and various social misfits that had no problem hitting women or elderly people. 
To the extent that I found anyone receptive to ethical egoism, I only found support of the egoism of Max Stirner, who believed that morality and law were artificial and limiting constructs, and supported a subjectivist and emotionalist type of egoism. But in generally, I found them to be anti-intellectual and not interested in ideas.
Evaluation of whether something is threatening to me isn't a numerical comparison of sins, such that I would go "Antifa: socialists, Nazis: socialists + racists" that's two sins versus one, so Nazis are more immoral.
Based on the foregoing, I do put Antifa in the same category as the Klan or Nazi type groups. Both involve bringing in people with nutjob views, dysfunctional personality types, social awkwardness, etc into the cultlike embrace of the group, and derive enjoyment from transgressing established norms of society. Both are racialist and both want socialist dictatorships. Both are perfectly fine with using violence to achieve that goal. Both are, in my view, one step removed from being domestic terrorist groups. Both are a danger to themselves and to me and to society as a whole.
Im not sure how much political power they have, but Hilary Clinton was opposed by the Sanders movement, incredibly popular with young people. Many of those people moved on to Antifa and BLM groups. They have a way of infiltrating any leftist gathering and scouting for new recruits. I believe they are Soros funded and their actions whitewashed by the media. That's how we see things like mainstream liberal types who just think we need more peace and love protesting right next to a hardened left agitator with a hammer and sickle flag and nobody questions it. But everyone immediately knows Nazis are bad. 
One thing is certain, don't let your kids or friends join these groups, and don't go to these protests. Just stay away.
 

The Trump Administration effectively backed China into a corner over North Korea - and this was months in the planning.  If fighting had broken out against NK - and China stood by and did nothing to prevent it - then leveling retaliatory sanctions against China would have been seen as both palatable and just.  It would have exposed them for what they still are - a power-hungry dictatorship willing use puppet regimes like North Korea to advance their economic agenda.  Now, to be fair, President Xi Jinping is probably a fairly good person interesting in reforms, but he doesn't necessarily have complete control over the Chinese military or foreign policy.  There are still many of the "old guard" in China who are reluctant to cede power -- which is why, after all these years, it is still a brutally repressive regime.  For all we know, XI may have planned this with Trump, knowing what the Administration was doing all along.
We have tremendous economic power that we can bring to bear against China to achieve peace and stability in SE Asia - if we are willing to use it.
Trump's "buy American and hire American" policy terrifies China.  So too do the NAFTA renegotiations, since China dump products in Mexico in violation of NAFTA trade agreements (it has to do with the certification of point-of-origin wrt products used in assembly plants in Mexico).  China needs us far more than we need them.  But Trump's slogan it is largely a bargaining chip.  He has no interest in isolationism or protectionist trade policies.  As with all thing Trump,  you have to read between the lines.  Everything is a negotiation tool with him.  If you are chasing the shiny object, then you are doing exactly what he wants you to do.

I posted this last Saturday.  It was an announced on Friday that a review of trade violations against China would (and did) start on (this last) Monday.  
 
Here is a link to the Friday news story about the trade investigations.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/11/trumps-china-trade-crackdown-coming-monday-241558
On Monday, North Korea announced that maybe they won't be launching missiles at Guam after all .  Remember, citizens born on Guam are US citizens -  launching missiles at Guam is no different than launching missiles at Hawaii or Los Angeles (or Portland, OR).  It was not just a coincidence that NOKO's announcement just happened to occur three days after the trade sanction investigations against China were announced.
It also has to be remembered that, last April, when Trump launched the 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian airbase (after Syria used chemical weapons) the Chinese President Xi Jinping learned about the attack over dinner at Mara Lago, where he was dining with Trump.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/10/syria-strikes-were-aimed-at-china-control-risks.html
For those of you on this forum too young to remember Reagan (I was 13 when he was inaugurated), the Left was pissing themselves over the belief that "Mad Ronnie" was going to start a war with the Soviet Union.  The Soviets also believed it.  He stood up to them and eventually the Soviet Union collapsed.
After 8 years of Obama's "strategic patience" which allowed NOKO to develop nuclear weapons and will  soon result in Iran having them as well, it's good to see that we finally have a President who understands how to use "strategic impatience."
 

Am I supposed to be impressed by your wit?  You have stated a position that you are completely unable to back up.  I'd be embarrassed to do so.

It is disgusting and baseless lie that Trump had anything to do with what happened.  What in fact did happen was an orchestated news event in which the Governor of Virginia deliberately had the protestors driven into the counterprotestors to create headline grabbing violence which would then be blamed on "Trump supporters" by the overwhelmingly Democratic party voting mass media.  I and my entire family are Trump supporters and have nothing to do with neo-Nazis or the KKK.  Its all propaganda and lies.   
I am a straight white male of a certain age and unsympathetic to socialism or identity politics.  For this I am hated, as are my instruments and representives in Congress and the Presidency.   Neither Trump nor I have a single act or act of omission to be ashamed of.  Anyone who claims otherwise can fuck right off.  

There is an interesting quote from Peikoff, 1991:
Ayn Rand regarded her theory of concepts as proved, but not as completed. There are, she thought, important similarities between concepts and mathematics still to be identified; and there is much to be learned about man’s mind by a proper study of man’s brain and nervous system. In her last years, Miss Rand was interested in following up on these ideas—in relating the field of conceptualization to two others: higher mathematics and neurology. Her ultimate goal was to integrate in one theory the branch of philosophy that studies man’s cognitive faculty with the science that reveals its essential method and the science that studies its physical organs. 
This is pretty much the current program of today's field, Cognitive Science.  It's also important to realize that Rand developed her ideas at a time when linguistic analysis in philosophy and behaviorism in psychology were dominate.  But the science behind the operation of sense organs, childhood development, etc. played a large role in helping her to develop the ideas in ITOE.
Rand also says of Aesthetics:
The esthetic principles which apply to all art, regardless of an individual artist’s philosophy, and which must guide an objective evaluation . . . are defined by the science of esthetics—a task at which modern philosophy has failed dismally.
A "science of aesthetics" would be every bit as comprehensive as the "science of epistemology " as developed in  the ITOE.  She considers epistemology to be a science (and she's not just using the term "science" metaphorically):
Epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge. 
There would also be a significant overlap and interdependency between the sciences of epistemology and aesthetics - they are not mutually exclusive.
 

Why are you convinced that the approach I've described isn't used "in matters of morality"? Suppose, just for a moment, that the approach I've described is compatible with scenarios such as theft (and that deciding whether or not to eat a donut is equally a "matter of morality"). Where would that leave us?
Let's leave "rights" out of it at present, which leads us towards politics; let's stick with ethics for the moment. In terms of ethics, in terms of morality, why should an Objectivist say that a person ought not be a thief? Why say that a person ought not eat a donut, or a dozen in a sitting, or say contrarily that a person can morally eat a donut from time to time? Beyond the specific answer we reach, what's the purpose of asking and answering such questions at all? What's the point?
Though there is disagreement among Objectivists about certain matters with regards to the core of the Objectivist Ethics (and you can find copious discussion of the same on this board), broadly speaking the purpose of morality -- and the reason why we should have an ethical code at all -- is so that we can enjoy our lives. So that we can "flourish." Accordingly, when we describe something as being "immoral," it is something like a shorthand for saying that it works against an individual's efforts to flourish.
This is important to understand, especially for discussions like the one we're engaged in, and it's sometimes tricky to apply because it runs contrary to what I would say is the world's pervasive understanding of morality. I find that even many Objectivists often have an askew understanding on this point.
Sitting and devoting all of one's time to eating donuts is immoral, not because it arbitrarily runs afoul of certain dogma, not because Ayn Rand wouldn't agree, not because some remote or personal deity has pronounced it so, but because there is a reality to the situation: the person who acts in this fashion will not flourish. He will not enjoy his life, but rather will suffer and die.
Now perhaps you could posit a person who believes (even sincerely) that devoting all of his time to eating donuts will be for the best. And that's fine. I've no reason to tell such a person not to do so, except for all of the reasons why I would not act likewise: the host of potential health complications, opportunity costs, etc., etc., etc. But ultimately the individual has to assess these matters for himself, weighing evidence, reasoning and so on, and at the end of such a process, if a person truly believes that eating donuts is his path to a flourishing life (or if he rejects a flourishing life as a thing of value, though that's a separate but interesting discussion in its own right), well, then, there's nothing left to say to stop him.
Of course, he may be mistaken. He may dive deep into his donut obsession only to find his health failing, his loved ones abandoning him, his bank account depleted, his face covered in maple glaze, and he might regret any number of his choices. But this is always the risk inherent in pursing our ends.
Thievery, qua morality, is not different. It is immoral (to the extent that we can agree that it is), not because it violates some strictures or social norms, but because it is destructive to the individual who pursues it. What wealth the thief pursues through his actions is minor, and fleeting, compared to the wealth of fundamental harms he does to himself, in reality.
And you might disagree with that: you might believe that a thief can steal and get away with it, not just in terms of avoiding criminal justice, but in a much more profound sense. Yet that's the case Rand made. Objectivists believe that those who survive by preying on others do inestimable harm to themselves, psychologically and otherwise, and that if you want to enjoy your life and flourish you should not steal values, but produce and trade them.
Objectivists therefore would not say that such thievery is "an irrational act of self-interest." Rather, we would say that in order to act in one's self-interest, one must first commit himself to reason -- for how else may he reliably determine that which is in his interest? And in reason, actions such as theft (very generally speaking) are not in one's self-interest, but are self-destructive. That's why we call them "immoral."

Since Ilya is here, I thought I would bump this and also thank Boydstun.  He has a wonderful paper on Kant, with the link above.  He greatly anticipated the direction I was taking this post.

From p. 191 of ITOE:
AR:  What is the distinction between the practical and the theoretical?  That's a distinction which I do not recognize.  "Practical" means acting in this world, in reality.  If what we do works, how is that possible if it does not correspond to reality?
Truth is the identification of a fact of reality.  How can something be true and not be a fact of reality?  How can something be a fact of reality and not be true?
 

New Buddha, I sincerely apologize concerning ad hominem attacks. I try to delete them when I proofread my comments, but some do get through, based on emotions I feel at the moment. Notice also, although that doesn't excuse me one bit, that they are indirect attacks. I would never directly attack anyone on this forum!
Yes, there is also a contradiction on my part (based also on emotions, rather than proper reasoning). When you brought up LQG I was a bit surprised because I've never heard about it before, and since I disagreed with the Atomic article I decided to attack the theory too, not realizing that my disagreement was with its philosophy, not science, of this particular writer. (It's funny, though, that he also confuses philosophy with science, as in his book on Anaximander.) In any case, we should stick to philosophy here, as I am not a professional scientist, just an amateur like Peikoff is.
The 'deception' part is a rhetorical tactic I've used too often, so I will try to hold off on that. I respect Peikoff greatly (much more so than Rovelli), and when the contradiction was obvious I hated attacking him. I am also surprised that Lee Smolin "approved" of Harriman's book (that's indeed quite a shift in the scientific community if that is indeed so!), as I didn't grasp that from your previous comment. Could you reference exactly the "approval"?
Only a posteriori as an explanation, yes, as happens in M-theory (necessitating the presence of gravity by the structure of strings). In any case, as I quoted from Wikipedia, gravity is added after quantum evidence was coded into strings.
Yes, and here I once again refer to string theory. Notice that Einstein's and Hawking's original explanations (equations, descriptions) had nothing to do with actual quanta. The idea that information is not lost in black holes and that holographic principle is fruitful in understanding them comes from Leonard Susskind, one of co-founders of string theory (and the principle exponent, I would say). In the Diagram I've added him as an integrator of a completely new kind, undiscovered yet by Peikoff or any of Objectivists. But seeing that someone on this forum is actually approving of him is another great surprise (of today)!

The Atomism of Democritus was front-and-center among scientists in the 17th and 18th Centuries, but it was reintroduced through the writings of Lucretius (and Epicurus) specifically Lucretius' On the Nature of Things which was found in 1417 by Poggio.  I visited your website through the above link and see no reference to Lucretius.
Regarding Newton's corpuscular theory of light:
In this paper, by William Jensen (Dept Chem, University of Cincinnati) on Newton & Lucretius, he details the introduction of Epicurean atomism into renaissance intellectual life:
Though the manuscript of the epic poem, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, was first printed in book form in 1473 and in many subsequent editions, it was not until the 17th century that it began to impact significantly on scientific thought...Sir Isaac Newton was a second-generation participant in this revival of atomism and so could build upon the earlier atomism of such 17th Century writers as Pierre Gassendi, Walter Charleton and, especially, that of his older British contemporary, Robert Boyle.
Whether Newton was also directly exposed as a student to the famous poem of Lucretius is not known. However, by the 1680s, when he began seriously writing the Opticks, he had almost certainly read Lucretius in the original, since among the surviving books of his personal library is a 1686 Latin edition of De rerum natura, which one Newtonian scholar has described as “showing signs of concentrated study” (i.e. numbering of lines and dog-earing) [6][7]. Likewise, the Scottish mathematician, David Gregory, reported a conversation with Newton in May of 1694 in which Newton stated that he could demonstrate that [8]: "The philosophy of Epicurus and Lucretius is true and old, but was wrongly interpreted by the ancients as atheism."
Regarding the influence of Lucretius on Kant see this paper, page 143:
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was perturbed by Leibniz and heavily influenced by Newton. He openly acknowledged his debt to Lucretius in offering a nebular hypothesis concerning the formation of the planets and solar system.40
‘I will not deny’, he admitted, that the theory of Lucretius, or his predecessors, Epicurus, Leucippus, and Democritus has much resemblance with mine. I assume, like these philosophers, that the first state of nature consisted in a universal diffusion of the primitive matter of all the bodies in space, or of the atoms of matter, as these philosophers have called them. Epicurus asserted a gravity or weight which forced these elementary particles to sink or fall; and this does not seem to differ much from Newton’s attraction, which I accept. (Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven, 1755) 41
Despite his favourable attitude towards Lucretian cosmology, Kant rejected ‘the mechanical mode of explanation’ which, he said, ‘has, under the name atomism or the corpuscular philosophy, always retained its authority and influence on the principles of natural science, with few changes from Democritus’ (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 1786). Kant argued in the finale of his critical writings, the ‘critique of teleological judgement’ (Part 2 of The Critique of Judgement, 1790), that science required, conceptually, a teleological framework for the explanation of life, regardless of the basically unknowable nature of things. But atomistic and anti-teleological ideas were attracting a favourable reading in the rapidly developing life sciences. David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (first published 1779) contained a paraphrase of Lucretius’ selection principle,42 arguing that currently existing species of animals are those which, unlike their counterparts, had apt combinations of organs and were thus able to survive and reproduce, and this notion was common amongst the philosophes.
For additional info on Atomism, there is a good link to an article by the physicists Carlo Rovelli in the below post:
 

Not at all!
The Watson quote goes to show the thinking that dominated much of the Left in the 20th Century and their assumptions about human nature that lies at the heart of social engineering, centralized planning, etc.

The question is not necessarily so hypothetical.  I think it's probable that in the next 100 to 150 years (or sooner) there may be colonies on the Moon, Mars or in the asteroid belt.
One way to address your post is, "In which country on Earth would the corporation be incorporated?"  This would establish the framework for the body of laws that govern the corporation.  If it's a US corporation, then US law would apply.  If it were a Gulf State or Chinese business, then their laws would apply.

.
Bravo to Tyler against the spoiling of 'begs the question'. Please say 'invites the question' or 'suggests the question'. Preserve the phrase 'begs the question' for our centuries-old informal logical fallacy of that name.
I still mount an American flag once a year, for Independence Day, by the road, in our front woods. The republic for which it stands is still a great protector of individual rights, notwithstanding all its downfalls on that score.
I recall once in college in the late '60's there was this black man, an older guy, who was a featured guest speaker sponsored by some left-socialist group (perhaps our SDS). He was speaking for socialism and telling of his recent international travels organizing and speaking in Africa. And then he mentioned that when he got back to America, he felt like kissing the ground, and he said there's nothing else this good. His hosts were extremely embarrassed, pretty sure. His vista was not entirely concordant with their own.
In those days, we had the military draft, and an Administration with a big war need for our bodies, our lives. Over the arc of my life, that state aggression against our young men has been on hold, and that was some credit of our country in this interval (unfortunately, the recognition the draft's status as an aggression is cloudy in the view of most Americans, pretty sure). Over that arc, in a strand affecting me distinctively, our country legalized consensual adult gay sex throughout the land, got gays and lesbians openly and fully accepted into the armed forces, and recognized a legal power of same-sex couples to marry. 
We also mounted our flag in our Chicago years upon the attack of 9/11/01. And we mounted it here in Lynchburg on the day we got Bin Laden.
I don't care what other people do to the American flag, and I certainly respect the diversity of feelings towards the flag and the republic, and the right to diverse expressions, including flag burning. But from me, respect and love of this flag and the now long line from Valley Forge to now of lives lain down for it and this country.
 
 

Such witty repartee!
Look Plasmatic, the only purpose of a philosophical forum is to engage those with whom one disagrees.  Forums don't just exist to mirror one's own unanalyzed ignorance, prejudices, and opinions.
Laika has clearly come here because he is questioning Marxism.  He is precisely the type of person that Objectivists should hope to come to this site.
A significant part of my professional career has been spent teaching interns.  I enjoy trying to communicate knowledge.  If someone doesn't agree with me I don't just castigate them as "people who hold evil beliefs."
If Objectivism is to have any influence in the wider reaches of society, then it will need to engage that society.
Not everyone has the temperament to do that.