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Found 5 results

  1. Private Property-Who Does It Belong To Anyway? If you recognize that a person has the right to live their own life then you must out of necessity recognize the right of a person to hold, give away, remove, regulate or sell private property as an owner sees fit. These two principles (the right to life and property) are inseparable. They have been the preeminent trait of American ideals since the founders of the nation signed the document of independence which separated us from the innumerable morose philosophies of the rest of the world. To deny these two principles of rights renders such persons as a meer stewards of the state. You may have bought you home, car, furniture etc. with your own money but the state may dispose of these possessions whenever or wherever it desires (without warning or permission) as is the case of millions of people living under rights denying totalitarian regimes. Let me provide a small example from a fictitious little town located somewhere USA. This town has a project going to replace worn, corroded and leaky sewer pipes within city limits. In order to lay new pipes the town must dig 6~10 to the right a main road intruding on private property. However most of the public would agree that the town has the right of egress to repair, prevent and eliminate public hazards with these limits. What the public would not agree is while performing this project, the city destroys homeowners driveways, expensive fixtures, garden beds and other private outways without a promise to repair any damage performed by the project.The damage stands for months with the public involved asking for but not getting any relief. The most they receive are vague promises that the town administration will deal with the damage caused at a later date...so on and so forth. Here is the problem: does the town own the right to your private property to ignore your requests for relief? If so does the town consider you just a steward in the way of “their” property without said rights? Are your taxes you pay on your property just a way to invade your wallet without care or responsibility? If so then the charter of rights Americans are said to have is just a sham, a trick and a “slight of hand” you.” This is what is called “creeping statism”, the kind when you wake up some time in the near future wondering what happened to you your family your property and your country! If private property turns out to, as it seems today, be but an annex to the state then the whole institution of Americanism falls by the wayside! Somehow we have lost our way and now serve a new principle that we, the people are servants of the government and not the other way around. Is this the kind of America that we and our children have to look forward too! I sincerely hope not, for me, for you, for our small fictitious town and for America!
  2. Here in Brazil a philosopher said in facebook :'' My wishes in 2014: that Rachel hug tight, after being raped, an anteater'' '' My Wish in 2014: that rachel shererazade be raped.'' rachel is a journalist. He deleted the comment and the journalist wants to sue him He should be prosecuted or not? What says the objectivism for that particular case? sorry for my bad english ;p
  3. I'm curious as to this upcoming protest, which seems to at least have a somewhat coherent message: Truck Drivers For the Constitution, and their website but I'm even more interested in how it relates to the law, and the actions of two companies, Facebook and Twitter. *Their Facebook about page(which was recently shutdown by Facebook, and then had to be reopened) reads: "The American people are sick and tired of the corruption that is destroying America! We therefore declare a GENERAL STRIKE on the weekend of October 11-13, 2013! Truck drivers will not haul freight! Americans can strike in solidarity with truck drivers!" My question is about the legality of this planned protest in relation to how the Right to free speech is limited when it infringes on others, if it is illegal to obstruct and block traffic then also,too, it's as I understand, illegal to plan to stage an obstruction of traffic? Would it have been/is illegal for Facebook to keep this page up? Morality and legality are often in opposition with our unprincipled government, so, does an illegal activity such as this intentional slowly of traffic deserve sanction today? A wrong(limitless Gov control) does not justify another wrong(obstruction of traffic on Gov highway). As I understand, censorship is and only is when the Government restricts ones speech. Now, both companies, Twitter and Facebook have acted to stop this planned protest, which is just fine if they think sanctioning this group is "cutting their own throat". Twitter has suspended "Truckers Ride for the Constitution" and Facebook had closed their initial Page, which is now reopened, for now at least. As for drawing a parallel, how is this act different than Dr.King's lead of peaceful, sit down protests?
  4. Gamers should protest a law such as this. All this will achieve is that people will go from legal servers to illegal ones. As if we didn't have enough of those already. This is insane. Seriously can't believe this.
  5. Having <a href="http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=22911">introduced myself</a> already, I am now making my first substantive post. This is the first of an intended series of interrelated posts. While it might change based on the flow of discussion, I expect to advance the following argument: because property rights are subjective by nature and must be defined by government, democracy must therefore be a more fundamental principle than property rights. I question whether there are any fundamental property rights or whether all property rights flow from the social contract, i.e., are necessarily defined, and therefore created, by government. The most difficult case, to which I plan to devote my next post, is the question of ownership of natural resources, including land. This post explores what seems to be a far simpler case, a case closer to being fundamental: ownership of inventions of the mind. To put it in terms of Atlas Shrugged, I will save the case of d’Anconia copper for my next post and take on Rearden metal here. The principle that one should own the product of one’s own invention seems, at a minimum, to be reasonable: among other things, it encourages progress and productivity. But I wonder whether it is truly a fundamental and inviolable principle. The case becomes more difficult when we think of the most common type of invention in this era: inventions for hire. If one man (or corporation) hires another (or an entire workforce) to develop an invention, should the invention belong to the one who puts up the money or the one(s) whose mind and work actually creates the invention? But, let’s leave that aside and take the easier case: Rearden metal, which was created almost entirely by Henry Rearden’s tireless individual efforts of sweat and mind over many years. Unless Rearden keeps the metal entirely to himself, property rights in even this most personal of inventions must be defined by government. Under current U.S. law (and that of most other nations), Rearden has essentially two options for maintaining his property rights: trade secret protection and patent filing protection. If he chooses the first option, trade secret protection, Rearden’s rights are perpetual … at least until somebody else duplicates his invention, either by independent research or by reverse engineering. As long as Rearden puts contracts and other confidentiality procedures in place, the law protects him from others wrongfully appropriating his trade secrets, principally by giving him the right to monetary compensation (i.e., transferring the thief’s profits to Rearden). Rearden’s other option is to file for a patent on his invention, which requires him to publicly disclose all of the invention details, but provides him with a monopoly on it over a fixed number of years, even against those who might independently develop the same invention. Patent law is clearly a creation of government, designed to balance the rights of the individual inventor against the collective benefit to the public of disclosure of the details of the invention. It would be difficult to argue that the exact contours of this legal regime can be objectively determined. At a minimum, the government must make a subjective decision as to the number of years that the patent monopoly is afforded. Until reading The Virtue of Selfishness, I thought that this fact was an indictment of Objectivism itself. However, I now see that Ayn Rand recognized the need for government to set out the details and that there could be well-intentioned disputes among the law makers: Objectivism, it seems, only requires that government set out its standards in an objective way (“the rule of law”) rather than through arbitrary and subjective guidelines that must be interpreted by an outside arbiter (“the rule of man”). The question I have for this forum is whether there is a central kernel to property rights in inventions that objective reason requires. That is to say, is there some fundamental property right that no legitimate government can modify or impinge?
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