ObjectivistMathematician

I would think it would be okay, so long as you give retribution to everyone involved in the contract.

Why is that? There are times when committing petty theft probably wouldn't make a difference, if contained to that single instance. But that's not relevant. The reason an individual needs the virtue of rationality is because their survival is not given to them automatically. Likewise, the best course of action is not known automatically by a person. That is why an individual has to act by virtue and principle, since he cannot automatically know whether or not a certain action will be the best for sustaining his life and happiness. Once you accept the principle that it is okay to steal when it seems to be in your self-interest, you're basically accepting the principle of every thief. I doubt any thief believes that he should always steal in every situation he finds himself in. I'm pretty sure a thief will only commit theft when he thinks it is in his best interest. Now, inductively speaking, have you found that this is a practical principle to live by? If a person automatically knew what course of action would be the most beneficial, principles, virtue, and rationality would be just about useless. Just as how reason would be useless if knowledge was given to us automatically.

More people ought to read this: Oh, and this:

Yes, sorry, that's what I meant; I don't see why the homeowners would have the right to these items, if they'd have no way of ever retrieving them (since by the time he leaves the house will be locked up). I actually just learned that he works at a private business started by his father, who (as I understand) has no problem with this.

I would assume people could, so the guy I know would probably only get to take things they decided to leave in the house. But anything the homeowners don't take with them before the initial security, they'll never see again.

I know of someone who works with a bank (his exact job there, I do not know), and one of the things he does is ''initial secure.'' Basically, what he does is go to a house that the bank is foreclosing on, while the house is empty, and put new locks on the doors. This requires him to get into a house through a window, because the doors would usually be locked. Anyway, he's in the house, completely empty. Above changing locks, he also ''loots'' the house of any valuables he finds to keep for himself. Usually, all these items are dubbed as ''debris'' by the bank, and put in a landfill. At the point when he loots the items, it is technically still owned by the citizens who owned the house. Even if he did not steal these items, the homeowners would never see them again, and they'd just be put in a landfill instead. Is looting these items unethical? I can't think of any way someone is harmed by this.

''Right-wing'', as of now, is quite undefined and ambiguous. It could really mean anywhere from individualist/capitalist, to fascist/authoritarian. I'm not familiar with what exactly it might mean in regards to Norwegian politics, but do you have any further context that might specify?

I know what you mean. With all of the math, philosophy, and fiction I'd like to read, I just don't have time to be bored!

Welcome to the forums! The reason there needs to be government, as you probably have already heard, is to protect people's rights. As to whether or not people should be able to use reason to decide which organizations to support: well, taxation should be voluntary, so if the government was so detrimental to your values, there'd be no point in funding it. Besides, there would be nothing not to value about a properly limited government. Similarly to LovesLife, I can't tell if you're advocating competing governments, or something like that. In which case, it's quite important that the government has a legal monopoly on the regulation of the use of force. As to why, I'll just quote the third entry of the Lexicon article for Anarchy: ''Suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.'' The logical heirarchy for why there should be a government is pretty simple: men have rights, and in order to live in a civilized society, they must be recognized; in order for there to be objective law protecting individual rights, there has to be an organization with a legal monopoly on the use of force to define and enforce objective laws, while limiting itself to only those actions through police, courts, and military. I'm not even going to pretend to know what the heirarchy is that justifies anarcho-capitalism.

You can be sure beyond reasonable doubt whether or not someone has committed a crime, but I don't see how you can be sure beyond reasonable doubt that a person will never commit a crime ever again. Surely ''punishment'' is not an end in itself, is it? I could see punishment being important for minor violations. I think the most important effect of the police using retaliatory force for more major crimes is to keep non-criminals safe from these crimes.

How could you possibly be 100% sure of such a thing? The only purpose of retaliatory force is to protect yourself from harm. The only exception to this I can think of (i.e. the only reason I'd detain someone even though I am somehow 100% they will not be a threat to anyone again) is as deterrent, so that people will not think they can use force and get away with it. I admit I misrepresented myself there; perhaps instead of "rational, moral people" I should have just said "non-criminals" or "people who don't initiate force".

I think it's worth mentioning that criminals are not detained because they're irrational, immoral, or because they don't ''deserve life'' (i.e. not because they don't know how to fit the puzzle pieces together). Criminals are detained for only one reason: to protect rational, moral people from coercion.

As I understand, one's sexuality is metaphysically given, so I don't see how it could possibly be moral to go against it. In other words, if a person is homosexual, that's a fact which, to my knowledge, he/she cannot change; furthermore, going against one's own sexuality (whether your heterosexual, homosexual, etc.) would certainly not be a way to be happy. I might have something wrong here, though. As to the ''Christian Objectivists'': I've never heard of these people, but they certainly are not Objectivists, since Objectivism explicitly denies the belief in God. Finally, here is Peikoff's view about whether or not religion is worse than collectivism/socialism.

1. The US should not have had a draft during WWII, or and other war. Instating a military draft is a clear violation of the right to life. As to the second part of this question, I have no response. 2. No, it was not immoral for Ayn Rand to collect Medicare. It is completely okay to accept things like Medicare, so long as you do so as restitution (for being forced to pay for programs you do not approve of), and not as charity, or entitlement to other people's wealth. People living in the US have to pay taxes for programs they may or may not approve of, so it wouldn't be immoral to get some of the money back from the government, provided such money was taken immorally. 3. I don't know quite what you're asking here: is their existence immoral, or is using them immoral? To the first question: public libraries do not involve protecting the rights of citizens, so it is improper for the government to fund them, and they should be private. To the second question: once again, you do pay taxes that support these libraries, so it is okay to use them/benefit from them. 4. I have no good answer for this one, but I know someone else here will. 5. Objectivism is defined as the philosophy of Ayn Rand; therefore, in order for one to be an Objectivist, one must agree with the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Rand was right about philosophical issues. This does not mean, however, that Objectivists believe that Ayn Rand was right about everything or that she was infallible. I'm sure many Objectivists could find something about which they and Rand disagreed. So long as these disagreements are not in contradiction with beliefs that Objectivism explicitly advocates, there's no problem.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I wasn't talking about being competitive in class in general, I was just talking about Keating's case as an example.

A relevant example of this is in Chapter 2 of The Fountainhead: When Keating was going to Stanton, he had always been competitive with his schoolwork. One person he was competitive towards was Ted Shlinker, and Keating absolutely had to beat him, and be the top person in the class. Obviously, competition like this isn't really good, where one is only working to be better than others. I don't think that being better than other for the sake of being better than others is an ideal way to achieve one's goals. Of course, like TLD said, competition in another context, i.e. the free market, is good, not to mention necessary. In a free-market situation, one is working to achieve his interests, not just for the sake of being the best.

Absolutely not. Endangering someone's life by forcing someone to be in the military is a violation of their right to life.

Well, one thing that could happen with a number is it would start looping. For example, we know it'll never work for -5 because it would go -5, -14, -7, -20, -10, -5, -14. Obviously it could never tend to 1 for a negative integer (what happens when it gets to -1? it just goes to -2), but perhaps something like this could happen with certain natural numbers.

For anyone who doesn't know: the Collatz Conjecture is a conjecture stating that if you take any natural number, and if its even you divide it by two, and if it's odd you multiply it by three and add one, and if you keep doing this, you will get one, eventually. Example: 17, 52, 26, 13, 40, 20, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 Wiki The alleged proof is here in a pdf. If this proof is accurate, then this would be a pretty huge deal. The problem has been around for quite a while, about 80 years. I think this is pretty exciting.

Wow, this is a real shame. "America's most dangerous politician?" What a joke.

"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them." -Dr. Ferris

I think that sounds right.

Hm? I am interested in metaphysics, ethics, capitalism, etc., just not particularly aesthetics.

I'm afraid I'm not too interested in art/aesthetics/etc. What I am most interested about Objectivism is metaphysics, and I am also interested in the political/ethical parts.