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World Death Rate Holding Steady At 100 Percent

They woefully underestimate the threat. Fact is, we're all gonna die.

Grand jury decision is in. No indictment, obviously. As the overwhelming evidence confirming the cop's innocence was being released (including testimony from the people who originally talked to the media, squarely contradicting statements the media has accepted unquestioningly and presented as facts), the new round of riots looted and burned down the same businesses that were rebuilt and restocked after being destroyed three months ago. This time, everyone knew exactly what was coming, authorities on all levels had weeks to prepare, and actually had the luxury to choose the time the riots would start. And yet, they still chose not to respond with the level of force necessary to protect private property. Once again, they allowed it to happen, and only arrested a small portion of the many hundreds of people involved in the looting and violence. And that makes sense, of course, in a democracy. As long as the voices demanding restraint in the fact of lawlessness are louder than the voices demanding the use of proportional force, unchecked lawlessness is what you're going to get.

This is false. The qua man standard, which is to say, reason, is precisely what guarantees that conflict will not exist between individuals. Conflict is the result of the initiation of force, which is irrational (see above regarding the impossibility of prudent predation); with reason, force is not initiated, so no conflict can exist. Rationality and initiating force are mutually exclusive.

In this example, you have the cleverness of one mind - yours - on your side, while your enemies have the minds of an entire civilization on theirs to stop you. You're not the only one who's prudent; suppose they put in place measures to detect you of which you were unaware. Waging a war of one against all is not prudent. And it is a war. By choosing a path of destruction, you have taken a risk you did not need to take - particularly considering that your cleverness could have applied productively, i.e. in a manner that does not result in conflict among men. Prudent predation is an oxymoron. This does not answer the question at all. The question was how do you know what your lifetime indirect losses are from the loss of productive activity that the corporation cannot now undertake because you stole its $1 million? Not only can't you answer that question (i.e. your destruction was indiscriminant, the long-range effects of which are unpredictable), but your answer shows that you do not understand the way in which a free society benefits all men. Productivity and trade is not a zero sum proposition. There is no such thing as a benign confiscation of wealth, because it separates the wealth from the mind capable of making use of it in the most productive way, the results of which spread incalcuable benefits throughout the whole society. The loss for you is incalcuable, your risk unquantified, and your decision to steal irrational. The comparison with productive companies engaged in competition is improper, because productive competition entails the creation of wealth, not its destruction. More competition in the form of increased productivity can never be dangerous to anyone. The same is not true of looting. His decision is irrational because he was unable to calculate its long-term costs. He will have a million dollars, but he might not have access to the medical treatment that wasn't invented because the $1 million for its development was stolen by him, or a longer chain of causes and effects from his decision resulted in the same. Nor do the effects end there; the nature of human knowledge means that no one else will receive the lifesaving treatment, which costs the lives of other creative men that would have made discoveries and contributed to his life in other ways, and so on. If two people exist by trade, they each benefit from the value of each others' productive work. If only one produces and the other loots, neither will obtain the benefits of the looter's productive potential. This is why Gary has to argue that some are simply better at looting while others are better at producing. But this defies the facts of man's rational mind. There is no evidence that a mind capable of the complex calculus necessary to justify looting as a rational decision is any better at looting than at production, and certainly not sufficiently so to justify the incalculable losses the looter suffers.

For the love of Peikoff, not this argument again. Existence/non-existence is indeed the fundamental alternative, but to what does it pertain? Existence qua man means more than just physical existence (morgue avoidance) because there is more to man than just a body. It also includes, for man, the existence of his rational mind. You cannot destroy that mind AND achieve greater longevity, because longevity necessarily entails the existence of the mind. That fact is glossed over in insisting that existence of the body is sufficient to say that one exists. If the mind goes out of existence as a consequence of your scheme to continue to exist, you have NOT succeeded. You might as well be cremated and say that because your ashes exist, you still exist. The point being that you cannot analyze the question without focusing on what all is necessary for man to exist. When you notice that his needs include more than just physical needs, it should be apparent that your idea of man's survival is flawed. Survival of what? Of the ashes? No. Of the body? No. Of the body and the mind. Ah, there's the answer and the reason why the fundamental alternative leads directly to flourishing and not mere physical survival. Of course, man must choose to live as man by choice. That choice is a primary. You may, if you choose, dismiss your mind and attempt to exist as an animal only - or as ashes, for that matter. There are no Kantian categorical imperatives here, nothing proving that you must choose to live as man. But then, you would have no need of ethics. Your inquiry would then be pointless, so it's kind of assumed, perhaps mistakenly, that in asking the question you see that you have already chosen survival qua man as your standard. I think that point should be clarified before proceeding further. If you hold survival qua man as your standard, then your inquiry is substantive, but there's your answer; if not, the inquiry is pointless anyway, so why press the matter?