CrowEpistemologist

Well, it gets down to what you mean by "taxation" and "forced". Please see: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/taxation.html . The justification for Capitalism is morality and the nature of man, not "no new taxes", which may, or may not be a byproduct.

@sNerd -- Obviously literacy doesn't correlate to anything within the literate world (you missed an even better example in the Wiemar Republic :-)), but the question is, rather, is it a requirement for liberty to exist? Is it, "table stakes" as it were? That's the question I'm trying to answer here. So yes, there are a lot of other things that might prevent people from knowing enough to participate in our Republic, but I would take those one at a time. Your point about requiring a "basic understanding of rights" does NOT presuppose basic literacy? That doesn't seem realistic. Maybe there's an example somewhere of even a basic democracy being sustainable without widespread literacy? @Reidy -- That's a great point about food and water and shelter, but these are things that mankind had figured out long before the DOI was signed. The new-fangled government that the Founders had created involved a high degree self-governance and reliance on the individual citizens--more than ever before. Certainly they thought it required training that went above and beyond what most of the ruffians naturally obtained. And just to level-set here, I'd realistically be talking about a K-4 education here at the MOST, as the requirement would only be basic literacy and basic civics. To continue with this, a practical way to accomplish this would be a semi-voluntary system wherein you choose (your parents choose for you) to attend a school which gives you the education necessary to secure the right to vote, and in return you are saddled with a debt that you have some reasonably long time to pay for (but which is compelled from you later in life since that is what you chose). That might work--but I would submit that a large part of our population needs to buy into this for our Republic to have a chance at survival (and to be sure, the US has never existed in the context of a largely illiterate populace AFAIK). Anyhow, just thinking out loud here...

As taxation in general was left by Ayn Rand as an "implementation detail" (and we know that a "zero tax society" is not something Ayn Rand envisioned as being possible), to me this supports the following construct: that it's proper that we have a government whose job is to secure our Rights and this can cost money--possibly requiring a certain amount of "involuntary" (in the direct sense) taxation--but insofar as it's proper that our Rights are secured, and somebody needs to secure those rights (i.e. the police and the courts and the army), then it would follow that taxation within said context of protection (a fee, really) is proper as well. Now, in a society which was truly governed by the correct political principles, this would not present a problem, and moreover one would rationally be fine with a "tax" insofar as you could directly attribute such a tax to the task of securing your rights as a citizen and so forth (and hence this cuts out huge parts of our current government--but not all). Now with the idea that "implementation details" are, within the proper rational context, perfectly able to be "taxes", I wondered if this could extend to public schools. What if we found out that, in order to successfully pull off a democracy (especially a more abstract one based Individual Rights) we need an educated populace to a certain extent. No, it's not anybody's duty to educate somebody without paying for it, but what if education where a requirement to create a government that secured individual rights--and that nobody had yet invented one that did not? Now, this may seem rather hypothetical, but I'd submit that we in fact have not yet invented a political system that could successfully operate with, say, an illiterate population. I do not think it's sustainable that a small part of the population effectively "rule" over a larger one (which would be the argument for allowing only educated citizens to participate in the democracy, for instance). If that's the case, then, isn't it the case that public schools (narrowly defined here) take on a similar status in securing our individual rights as, say, the army? Mind you, I'm not talking about "higher-level" goals such as economic competitiveness, etc. (as some do these days) but rather the minimum required education necessary to understand the basic tenants of our republic such that you can participate as a citizen. So is there a case to be made for public schools (again, probably much more narrowly defined than they are today)? (I vaguely recall the Founding Fathers saying something along these lines--maybe somebody with more readily available brain cells on that can enlighten me). Thanks.

I really have no idea what that means. Can you elaborate?

I'll stop you right there. You see, Objectivists probably agree that "not being able to conduct monetary policy" is actually a good thing. I think we all look forward to a world in which currency is not within the realm of any particular government--that its all handled privately. Now, I do agree that we're rapidly approaching such a world in practicality because of technology. At many online stores you can purchase items in a number of international currencies--the exchange rate for which is (essentially) attached, real time, to a world market for said currencies. They all float around relative to each other. If you stretch your mind a bit, you can imagine where this will end up. You can get to the point where the "money" (value) in your bank account (portfolio) is just a random set of instruments decided upon by yourself of some paid expert. You might use a particularly stable currency as a (temporary) benchmark to see how you are doing, but philosophically it won't matter. The old-world mindset around thinking of "money" as a pile of paper bills in your mattress has been obsolete for a number of decades...

Strange, I know a lot of people that have this sort of skill set but none of them are Objectivists and are not even close. In practice I have never seen a correlation between somebody's understanding of Objectivism and their problem solving ability that couldn't be explained by general intelligence--leading one to factor away Objectivism as a driving factor. My mechanic is a Mormon for Chist's sake--and he's brilliant.

Yes, but what I also read above was in essence, "if you just know the principles, you don't need to know the details" which is plainly rationalism. The implication is that you can trust "an Objectivist" more than you can trust a doctor in matters of health because "being an Objectivist" trumps years of medical experience, etc.

Everything is easy when your entire world is a floating abstractions... All you have to do is read the linked YB article and compare it to the paragraph above and see that it's a completely retarded condensation on something that was already a extreme condensation of the subject. YB doesn't go over the entire situation (it's a long, long story) but at least what he does cover is perfectly accurate (and he makes it clear the F&F were only one part of the problem).

Okay, I did a little bit of background research on the poster (I'm not sure why... bored for a few minutes I guess), and found this (a blog from Mr. Miovas above): "What caused the bubble and the speculation was the government forcing banks to deal with uncreditworthy people, who bought homes when they couldn’t afford them or signed deals with a variable interest rate thinking interest rates would remain low. Both thoughts were supposedly backed by the government via Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, semi-government institutions that bought up mortgages to keep people buying houses they couldn’t afford. In other words, what fueled the speculation on the bundling of mortgages into securities was the government forcing there to be a bigger market than would otherwise exist in a free economy" Actually, F&F only backed a small part of the "toilet paper" loans which characterized the massive losses and the resulting crisis. The actual reasons behind the crisis were far more complicated--yes, government intervention, but not like this. The ratings agencies, for instance, had a lot more to do with it, along with a "heads I win tails you lose" regulation system that that ensured that losers would never lose. It's a long story--but that's sorta the point here. This sort of "armchair xxxxx scientist" is what will make Objectivists look like crackpots... It's actually quite parallel to the LP intellectual myopia that we're discussing here...

No, I'm not asserting any positive--I'm saying that he hasn't the faintest clue as to what he's talking about. This is based on my understanding that there is an incredibly complex set of physiological factors weighing in on gender and LP simply glosses over them and makes himself look like an ignorant idiot by saying, "PENIS=MAN, VAGINA=WOMAN" ignoring a rather gigantic context of modern medicine. I charge again, however: does LP himself even know this conversation is going on? Why can't he defend himself?

It's up to you to prove the positive. I am not a doctor nor an expert on the physiology of gender, but I will assert that neither are you and neither is LP. That is what this is all about: somebody talking about something they know jack about. It's just absurd that LP is wading into a subject like this. Now, given my overriding charge of idolatry, I will also wonder aloud whether LP himself would even argue this point to the extent that others are arguing it for him. I don't know the entire context, but speaking for myself I know I've been accused of talking out of my ass occasionally and my own reaction is an honest one: mea culpa. Sometimes things are more complicated than the initially seem and you find yourself completely wrong. That's totally fine. It's part of learning. If LP has completely lost it, then so be it (I won't buy anymore of his books I guess but I otherwise won't really care), but I actually won't make that judgement until I have clear evidence and "projected indigence" is specious evidence at best.

Leonard Peikoff has received significant "respect" from me: I've probably given him ~$200 over the course of my lifetime in terms of taped lectures, books, etc. In addition, I spend my valuable time keeping track of his potential new works (passively of course, but still). That too is "respect". But to me, LP is a "product" in the marketplace, nothing more, nothing less. He's a couple of pages on a Amazon.com. This discussion reminds me vaguely of Apple and Steve Jobs. They've always had a base of "fans" that "worshiped" their products and Steve in particular. I found this to be retarded, and oddly it actually pushed me away from their products for a long time (now between iPads and iPhones and iPods and laptops we have [holy cow I just counted] 13 of Apple's devices in my home). I bought them [i'm still reeling from that number] because of a simple value proposition. I didn't think, "Steve Jobs was a great American and I owe him my patronage". I saw a product, it had the value I wanted, so I bought it. To look at LP any differently is weird and strange and/or carries with it some hidden agenda. To be clear here, I'm not debating whether the criticisms were true or not true or whatever--I'm saying that this is a waste of time worrying about whether LP is or is not "insulted". I don't care, and nobody should particularly care--except for LP himself, who is I would think able to handle things like this (or ignore things this, more likely) himself.

One thing that occurred to me insofar as we're talking about apparent excommunication of DH from the Church of Objectivism is that we just had a great discussion clarifying, exactly, "What Is and Is Not an Objectivist": http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=23201 In this thread LP is used as a reference wherein he advocates a contextual definition and in practically discourages using the label as it is rhetorically fraught with peril. *** I think the heart of the problem here is that we're conflating the personal and the philosophical. With that, a solution to this whole mess would be for LP to rename ARI and his other organizations, "Leonard Peikoff". Then removing a link from somebody who insulted him would be a personal tit-for-tat (and I would have no problem with that action per se). Then his statements would be, "so and so is no longer my friend and I'm de-linking him from my site", and not, "so and so is no longer an Objectivist and all past/present/future works from so and so are no longer valid" or whatever. *** I should also say, for the record, that I actually do think DH misspoke when she accused LP of "armchair philosophizing". First, that phrase is not particularly clear and is somewhat vacuous and thus smacks of name-calling. Second, it wasn't armchair philosophizing but rather armchair doctoring. Third, the real issue is that LP took on the topic at all in any depth rather than dismissing it as an issue outside of philosophy and thus outside of his own vocation. I most certainly do also sympathize with the emotion might have driven DH to write what she wrote which might have made it harder to stay on message. When a value--a smart, useful LP that writes interesting, useful things that are true--evaporates before your eyes and apparently travels down a path that so many modern-day annoying pundits do, that would tend to make you mad. Hence my first reaction to this situation and LP's words was chronicled here as, "has he gone nuts?"...

Wrong. Objectivism is a philosophy and by itself solves nothing. Objectivists--and those influenced by them--can save civilization if they so chose. This is a subtle point, but it seems to be the heart of many people's problem with this attitude, which, emotionally (for me at least) is chilling. But what do I know, I'm a high school drop-out (who probably made more money last year than your 2 PhDs will make you in a lifetime). As a side note, the completeness and ultimate simplicity of Objectivism is a problem for what is essentially a bloated staff of intellectual overhead. The core of Objectivism (works written before about 1980) provides 99.9% of its value to those who would actively create the Renaissance (businessmen, scientists, teachers, politicians, entertainers, politicians). To me, somebody with a PhD in Philosophy should either focus on teaching and concentrate on that as a profession unto itself, or on entertainment which is--at root--what somebody like DH does. I simply don't see the value in "making new philosophy" and it would seem that seemingly meaningless spats like the one we're discussing here would cease if we just stopped pretending that they meant to anything to anything useful or real. Which they don't.

You seemed to before. I'm glad I talked you out of it. :-) "the leading authority on Objectivists and objectivity". What does that even mean? That notwithstanding, the implication here is that they DH's "sin" is not that she treated somebody unfairly by, uh, not choosing the exact right words to describe her disagreement, but that the given person was, gasp, Leonard Peikoff. This smacks of idolatry--as if an attack on LP is an attack on truth. Respect is a personal thing and while I have personally met and chatted with LP once in my life (and I was respectful at that moment) I could care less about this person now nor should I. If LP went KoneyGuy tomorrow, I wouldn't care, and all of the ideas in my head that might have been derived from LP's works would not suddenly reverse themselves and shatter. By extension, I don't see why I should care about folks like DH not being "nice" to LP. If LP comes out and says he's personally insulted and DH won't be getting a LP xmas card, then fine but that has nothing to do with me. Hence I am rather suspicious of others saying that LP must be insulted and that we all should be personally appalled by DH and also ignore everything she says for now on because it just became false retroactively. Yep, smacks of idolatry...

Um, metaphor? I think, too, that I'm saying that I usually respect his works and that this is unusual. It's not like I'm saying, "he's nuts". When my wife says, "are you nuts? it's raining too much today for a bike ride!" I don't think she's "actually" questioning my mental stability, I think it's just a way to convey a point. I'll stop you there: no you certainly can't. That's the medical reality as far as I understand the medical science here--with the disclaimer that I'm not a doctor let alone a specialist in this area. Yes, philosophy says that--and stops there. No, no--you needed to stop there above. The proper treatment of a medical problem is a medical issue. You should make a decision about your health in accordance with your rational values and the available evidence. Sex is a value of high order, but your life is a bigger one. Seriously, "fix that problem"? How? What if you can't? What if the risk profile (i.e. of your whole life) is much higher for "fixing" your mind versus your body? What about the risk/reward of current drugs? What about promising treatments coming in the near future? Should you wait for them? What about their risks of side effects? What about other medical problems that might interact with this one? Etc. etc. etc. Philosophy cannot possibly have "opinions" about details like this. And yes, based on the body of works with which I am familiar, hearing that LP has waded into a subject like this really shocks me.

Why is LP entering into what is essentially a medical discussion? Has he gone crazy? Philosophy must necessarily start with stipulations that cleanly separate it from the other sciences. LP himself gave a lecture about physics in this regard ("puffs of meta-energy"). His basic point was that regardless of what science comes up with, A will still be A and so forth. In this case, Philosophy says, "a woman should" and "a man should". The science which gets to decide "this body is a man/woman" is medicine. Insofar as the science of medicine offers incomplete theories in this subject area may be unfortunate--but that's medicine's problem. It has absolutely, positively nothing to do with philosophy.

The linked HB article above handles this topic comprehensively (I was finding myself reverse-engineering his article until I read it). Is it possible you can re-form your arguments as an answer to that article? As I agree 100% with that article and probably many here do as well, it would save us all a lot of time if we could use that as a starting point... So what, within Harry's argument, is mistaken?

Because of our heavily regulated society, personal judgement is often factored away from decision-making--especially very "big" decisions like that of a multi-billion dollar investment. This was rampant in the housing bubble and subsequent financial collapse: investors piled $billions into crackpot securities because... the ratings agencies said it was okay. Each and every actor in those scenarios was trained to act on the Law, not their own judgement. In virtually all cases, those actors made out like bandits--as they expected they would. So the short answer is, "because the ratings agencies said it was okay". To be sure, there's nothing inherently wrong with rating's agencies--they are a legitimate part of the financial ecosystem. As with other areas of our of current mixed economy, government intervention (viz. giving them undue status via banking regulations and guarantees) screws up their place in the economy and actually makes them part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

The Greece situation is a philosophical failure on many levels, but one of the most fascinating, to me, is that one of the drivers of their admission to the EU was the assumption that since they "would not default" (went the theory) they would obviously learn how to be more fiscally responsible since they'd be forced to (wherein they makers of this formulation did not understand that, as HB put it, "force is force"--force means guns and police etc. not words on a page saying you shouldn't do that). On a more practical level, disconnecting one's central bank from one's defacto governing body is retarded. Yes Germany probably wants Greece out of the EU, but if they thought about it, they actually want everybody out of the EU because any country can do this and probably eventually will. As for the political ramifications, this is indeed dangerous. One only need to look at Hungary to see what can happen.

Well, personally I write for the gallery, and use the person I'm overtly talking to as a way to accomplish this. Thinking about things this way makes things less personal but you may end up with less regard for your sparing partner since they are, in this context, superfluous. Polls, in this regard, are nice because you can see what your audience is thinking of the debate versus only the person you are debating. I also take a Nietzschean view of my audience: I prefer quality over quantity. I don't care about the "ballast" of centrist voters' opinions. If I get a three converts out of thirty, this very well might be enough for me to be convinced that my argument was on the right track. Surely it's less of a factor on this forum, but not everybody has strong opinions about all subjects.

Anger is what you feel when you perceive something contrary to your values. Many people here value truth and take it very seriously (as did AR as you can see). Hence anger, as an emotion, is often "present" in discussions. Personally, I don't take it personally most of the time. I recall a favorite quote of mine from TFH: "Don't bother to examine a folly -- ask yourself only what it accomplishes " (which is to say, move past the superfluous container of the message and just focus on the message itself). Sarcasm, in particular, is really not worth fussing over: its often the fastest way to convey an idea, so the key is to not take it personally. All that is to say that, per the natural and common behaviors that people bring up here, the key is to simply filter them away. If somebody is being an asshole on the Internet, I don't actually presume they are an asshole in real life--so I just ignore that trait and move on to the point being made.

(Continued from another thread). So just to clarify, what part of the OP did you use to conclude that the OPer was not an Objectivist?

It would appear that the name, "LeftistSpew" was meant to be ironic--I don't think a "real" Leftist would identify himself as one who "spews"...

Great lecture--and one that I had not heard before. Interesting that both Peikoff and Kelly essentially tell you to "not bother" with this label, generally, as it is not very practical (Peikoff) and ripe for abuse (Kelly). I have the answer to my original query, which is that generally we should not get caught up with labels and names as they redirect the conversation needlessly away from the subject at hand--and I can properly call myself "an Objectivist" and not worry that somebody is going to check my identifying documents or demand a secret handshake. I agree with the fundamental principles of Objectivism and I'm trying to apply these principles, and that's enough. Thanks, everybody.