PrincipiaLibertas

There is no such thing as child slavery beyond on any other kind of human slavery. There is, however, child abuse. If a parent puts a child into a dangerous working environment, they should be punished.

So let us say it happens, as it so often does, that a local government intervenes in a property dispute between corporation X and land owner Y. The local government offers to pay Y above-market value prices for his land, so that X may move in (They never do offer above-market prices, but let's pretend they do to be nice). The land owner refuses to sell his land. So the local government initiates eminent domain at the behest of Walmart, condemns the land of Y and gives it over to X. Question: What right does X have over their newly found property? Must we assume they have some right that prevents Y from reclaiming it as her own? Or let us say Y washes her hands of it. Does business X then have legitimate ownership of the land? Why is anyone obligated to treat this business as anything but a business that obtained land by theft, if we asssume eminent domain to be unjust and tantamount to robbery(which it is). My theory, and the theory of other libertarian and classical liberal thinkers, is that the theft of some property P by some agent X against victim Y does not entitle X to property P, and that Y is capable of retrieving it back through the use of what would be retaliatory force. More radically, anyone is welcome to treat the property as a sort of commons, since there has been no just acquisition of land. Rand, to my knowledge, never dealt wit such questions. My assumption is that she would be fine with this. Am I correct? Your opinions?

Though politics is not a primary, I've found that arguing with socialists on the following level works. Point out that any point that they can point to a truly unjust, unfair practice being perpetrated by a business without reaction from the market, you can find the hand of government involved. And alos, many progressive laws were supported by businesses, because they knew it would lead to less market competition. Take antitrust laws. Many large businesses lobbied and still do lobby for antitrust laws and support antitrust suits against competitors. This part takes some knowledge of economic history. Your socialist friend is angry about low wages paid to laborers? Point out that businesses can take advantage of artificially low wages because of an artificially smaller market. Businesses could not afford to get away with the low wages they do now in a free society. The blights of a free market are usually nothing more than the fault of government intervention. Sometimes the consequences are intended and sometimes they are not, but they always lead to the unfair treatment of some individuals.

Good points, 2046. I think terms such as selfishness and free market have value in and of themselves, as they spell out the meaning in their names. Is a man typically viewed as selfish (short-sighted, antisocial, unsympathetic) a truly acting selfishly? In the case of a free market, could we mislabel our current system as a free market? Not if we take the words literally. We have a constrained market, not a free one. Free market also has a less ugly history than capitalism.

The best way to defend against an opponent to your school of thought in any manner calling you a member of a cult is to disregard it as ad hominem and one of the most common and spurious forms. It's much too easy just to claim that someone is dogmatic and fundamentalist. Make them prove it to you.

There is discussion in the libertarian community, especially as of late, as to whether the term capitalism is a term we should be using to describe or denote our preferred socio-economic system. Roderick Long explains in the following video: Basically the argument is a historical one, that capitalism has been used more often to refer to state subsidized and supported markets than to the laissez-faire ideal we hold as the proper definition. Sheldon Richman provided some historical context for us in this talk: So, what is the use of the term if it originally referred to state favoritism towards business and capitalists? Instead, most argue, we should scrap the term capitalism and instead say we support free (or freed) markets only. I've been wondering if Objectivists will agree with this argument or hold that supporting capitalism still makes sense, so long as we clarify that we mean capitalism without state support.