Harrison Danneskjold

Absolutely. Not only is it improper for the government to be mandating that anyone have to pay for anyone else's pet projects, but it certainly does result in inferior performance. The moral is the practical. Yes! That would be great and absolutely would result in superior performance. The moral is the practical. Manned spaceflight is not obsolete. Yes, the universe is a dark and nasty place full of radiation and very little air. Yes, it is dangerous for people to go into space, and any conceivable return on that investment would likely be generations in the future. But it is the nature of man that we adapt our environment to ourselves; not vice-versa, and we alone among all living things are capable of bringing life and meaning and value to all of that vast nothingness. It's also true that civilization thrives best when (so the saying goes) men plant trees whose shade they'll never personally enjoy; when we leave something more for the future than we've inherited from the past. Perhaps this is something uniquely salient to parents; I don't know, but I know that it's true. Now, it is also true that nobody should be forced to pay for such trees and receive nothing in return - and Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth (who is more American than most native Americans) does not need anybody else's money for that endeavor. By all means: let's dismantle NASA (alongside the department of Education, the DNR, the ATF and about a dozen others) and let him plant this tree as a completely private venture. The fruit that future generations will gain from it will only be the sweeter. Finally, civilization (like life, itself, and like the moral character of a person) is a process. It does not stand still; it is either growing and improving or it is decaying and dying. The choice between spending our time reaching out into the cosmos and bending it to our will versus bitching about pronoun usage on TikTok (though it is the choice of a great many other people, each one to make for themselves) is neutral neither morally nor in terms of its long-term consequences. The moral is the practical. As the first-born (and perhaps only) sapient species in the universe it is our birthright to do all of the things which can only be done through manned spaceflight. To declare that "obsolete" almost as soon as we've discovered the methods by which to do it (I cannot think of a gentler way to frame this that still retains what I mean) if the forces of entropy and destruction, itself, had a voice, that is what they would say.

You've mentioned SpaceX in a prior post, which is an excellent example of why the free-market side of any such argument is unambiguously correct. Without exception. Until recent years NASA was the most advanced space agency on the planet. Which is not to say that NASA was any great shakes - they had essentially given up on manned missions to anything whatsoever, they'd built the God-awful space shuttle and they'd allowed all of the technology and infrastructure that was involved in the Apollo missions to deteriorate into oblivion. That's simply to say that they were the best of the singularly shabby crew of government projects that were doing anything at all in space. The space shuttle, for example, was an attempt to save money on space flights. It was a reusable piece of a rocket, and by virtue of being reusable it was intended to cut costs in the long run. It was also by far the very cheapest piece of any rocket which they'd chosen to make reusable. In a very real sense the space shuttle was designed upside-down, with the cheap bits being reusable and the expensive bits being disposable. It did almost nothing to the cost of sending any unit of mass into space and when Barack Obama put it into a museum, towards the end of his presidency, it was a mercy-killing. SpaceX, as a private company, has accomplished this goal that NASA never could. Furthermore, all of the stuff from the Apollo missions that allowed us to put an American flag on the moon has been abandoned since then. Not only were the Saturn rockets no longer being produced but many of their components (in some cases including absolutely anything that could be substituted for those components) were no longer being produced, and some of the key engineering details had been lost to time and negligence. When SpaceX was founded it was no longer possible to send a man to the moon again. If you listen to moon-landing deniers this always comes up as a large part of their arguments. If we had actually put a man on the moon many decades ago, they'd say, how could we lose that capability after-the-fact? Well, as Dagny Taggart learned in Starnesville, technology does not always progress in one direction. The moon today is not an unclaimed wilderness; it is a celestial Starnesville which NASA has lost the capacity to exploit. Now, the Socialists will certainly point to SpaceX's government contracts as evidence that they are not, in fact, a private company. By this standard not only are there no private companies, but there are no private citizens either - after all, is there anyone who has not been given government money before? Rand's argument about the propriety of engaging in the welfare system applies perfectly in this case. One side of that argument is wrong.

I'll be damned. Kudos to the Democrats.

That's interesting. Firstly, it's interesting that those are your priorities. Nobody gives a shit about mankind's achievements except for the achievement of wealth for the masses. Secondly, as far as wealth for the masses goes... Well, if that were your sincere interest then you'd be a champion of Capitalism. Murica Numba 1 but every other country that embraces it (including South Korea, Taiwan and Japan) not too shabby, by what you claim to be your own priorities. I doubt the veracity of that claim. Do you remember how this conversation began? I was saying that everything good in the modern world came from enlightenment ideals. It has devolved from there through discussing those countries which have embraced those ideals more fully than others and Murica Numba 1 is a bit of a tangent. But it does illustrate my point better than any other Western nation. The question I initially assumed you'd want to address is why Murica Numba 1. That's what I was heading off here: Murica is Numba 1, by the way. It's weird that you'd even dispute that. You know who's Numba 2, 3, 4 through 28? Other Western countries. Furthermore, if the West got rich through extractive institutions (essentially we are rich because we stole it from the rest of the world) then that's actually an argument for renewed extraction. Who knows? Maybe if we reinstituted slavery an American colony on Venus would suddenly appear. Second. The first was the little quip about the flag on the moon. Seriously; go back and look. This entire time I've been talking about Western countries or Enlightenment countries, right up until just now. You're the one who's been specifically talking about India, which is why so much of this has revolved around the British Raj. You're flatly refusing to abstract. America was born from opposition to a Western, Enlightenment country, therefore America isn't Western either. Would that make any sense to you? It's not fair to group us in with the British; we've fought two wars against the British and they burned down the white house! They have never apologized for burning down the white house, either! There are only two ways to consider America a "Western" country and India a "nonWestern" country, despite the fact that neither one came from any love of the British Empire (again - we fought two wars against them): ideas and race. One of these you have openly repudiated. Bullshit. You're blinded by your racism. So - the conception of "property rights" that came from the Enlightenment is different from the concept of owning property? It's even different from the conception of "property rights" in modern India? Again, if you genuinely wanted the Indian masses to enjoy Western living standards then you might consider adopting the former, yourself. Your alleged priorities here are not your actual ones. There's actually an interesting divergence between race and ideas, here. Marx was white and thoroughly anti-enlightenment. He is not a Western thinker, despite being white. In any case, I'm really not sure how much Enlightenment there is in modern India. I do believe that there is some, certainly, and I would credit that with some of the advances in India, but I really don't care enough to continue arguing the point. I Googled a list of Indian inventions before jumping back into this conversation. The only two worth mentioning (fiber optics and the USB port) were both invented by immigrants to America, while they were living in and citizens of America. The question of whether these are actual Indian inventions or American ones (whether their inventors are Indian or American) is a question of values versus race: they were born into your group but chose to live in mine. It's mine they were part of when they moved humanity forwards. For the third and final time, Murica Numba 1.

So what? I mean, you're not just disputing the separation of state and economy here. Objectivism holds that production is what creates wealth; you're proposing that wealth is created by government spending. If the government is creating the wealth then it stands to reason that the government should keep it. Or, if you prefer, if the government is only creating most of the wealth then the government should simply keep most of it. I'm not really interested in explaining why money is made by making, instead of by spending. I'm not going to ask why Greece didn't simply spend its way into prosperity or why all of Argentina's spending hasn't boosted their economy or why interest rates (which are centrally planned by the government; not determined in the way you suggested) should be any barrier to spending infinite money and thereby creating infinite wealth. You didn't really address the issue of force versus freedom that I was bringing up but, hey ho, I'm not addressing your points either. My only real question at this point is whether you recognize the financial egalitarianism (which is the back-door to nihilism) you're advocating for. That, and what you hope to accomplish by peddling neo-Keynesian pseudoscience that was debunked in the 60's on my website? Well, since real Capitalism has never existed perfectly then I guess there are no distinctions to make. There is no reason for the industrial and technological superiority of the United States, unless it might be government spending - that's the one reason we're going to consider. Principles? We all know that morality has nothing to do with the practical concerns of an individual or a nation; there is no reason why some succeed and others fail. Oh, some people might claim that man's rational faculty is his moral faculty; that the highest and noblest act a human being can take is a process of thought, and some might even go so far as to indicate that on a mass scale this has something to do with the rise and fall of civilizations. We're all sophisticated enough to know better than that, though, aren't we? It is interesting to note that many of the scientists who worked on both Apollo and the Manhattan project were refugees from Nazism. The Nazis considered their ideological or racial purity more important than their brains, while America did not (and the Manhattan project was a purely proper military endeavor for the government to spend money on) but since brains have nothing to do with anything I'm not sure why I brought it up. Nor am I sure why I mentioned rationality in relation to technological innovation or Capitalism. None of these things have anything to do with the others. Jesus Horatio Christ on a pogo stick. What are any of us learned men even doing in a backwards place like Objectivism Online, where people still think that goods must be created before they can be looted? It's obviously not like this Ayn Rand person had anything useful to teach us.

Although we've been vociferously disagreeing on basically every point here, I'd like to point out that I have not once questioned your intellectual honesty nor started speculating about the psychological motivations which support your beliefs in place of facts. As a nationalist in the greatest (richest, most powerful, most scientifically advanced - you name it and America is #1 in it)* country in history, the accusation of "insecurity" rings a bit hollow. After all, there is a reason that the flag on the moon is American. *Except for total population, which I believe is India's primary claim to fame Furthermore, some national sense of "insecurity" would actually be a better explanation for the side of the conversation that refuses to distinguish between ideologies and ethnicities. I have offered at least three (but I actually believe it was four) times to use the term "enlightenment countries" instead of "western countries" to help you make the distinction between skin color and beliefs. You don't seem to want to make that distinction. In fact, the distinction seems to annoy you. By Shiva, all I know is that the flag on the moon is American.

Yes, and the only reason why the flag on the moon is an American one and not Indian is because America stole it from them. I bet they didn't even change the design, did they; just pointed at it and said "this means America now".

*gasps of horror* You haven't read it?! You didn't get the reference?! You poor thing, it's only $20 on Amazon. Please remedy this unspeakable condition you seem to be in. https://www.amazon.com/Battlefield-Earth-Arrival-Invasion-Post-Apocalyptic/dp/1619865092?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&gQT=2 This is why "man-animal" would be the objectively correct terminology.

Well, since you already speak the correct language, try reading some Ayn Rand at some point and maybe I'll make you an honorary Aryan.

No, and South Korea is not a European country, either. And yet, South Korea is a Westernized country. When I talk about "the West" I'm talking about ideas; not ethnicity. You're conflating the two - usually understandable, in most conversations, but I'm specifically using that term the way Ayn Rand did. As I mentioned here: Also, having not read Why Nations Fail I really could've used a bit of an explanation about all these technical terms. I think Why Nations Fail is where you're getting a lot of these terms from and I'm going to hope its Wikipedia summary is accurate and objective, because that's what I'm using to decode what an "extractive institution" versus an "inclusive institution" is. Really? The Renaissance doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you were able to communicate that across a distance of continents with the push of a button? Prior to European colonization (which spread Enlightenment ideas everywhere they went) most people on Earth were making little to no technological progress at all. Europe itself hadn't really progressed much, either, up until the Renaissance; they were basically in the same position as everyone else. If the Renaissance had not happened you would probably not know how to read. Neither would I! You might be growing rice and I might be growing wheat, but both of us would have spent our very short lives working from sunrise to sunset on some farm, somewhere. You might live your life in terror of a variety of gods (unless you were Muslim) while I was only terrified of one, but both of us would be in basically the same position. So what? You're not going to get less inequality from more freedom; more freedom can only give you greater inequalities. Which do you want more? YES! EUREKA! Take absolutely everything you listed about the British rule of India and please apply one simple question: Was this thing in line with Renaissance ideas or against them? If you think there's an example of Enlightenment values that prompted a bad thing then please let me know. But we are talking about the ideas behind these actions; not the skin color of the people who were acting. They're some of the Enlightenment values that India got from being colonized. Really? Japanese people aren't descended from Europeans, sure. Their constitution today was written by an American general when he didn't like the one they tried to write for themselves. Their institutions today were created by America. In what sense are any of these institutions not Western? And yes - Argentina is in the red, despite being largely the descendants of Europeans! Why is that? Could it be that nationalizing (stealing) private property and cracking down on peoples' freedom can not lead to prosperity, even for Europeans; that even European countries could cease to be part of "the West" if they abandon the ideas which define her? Yes, South Korea and Japan are Western nations (not European nations) and Argentina is not. You're so close to getting it. Well, it had been one big slave plantation until the slaves rose up, killed all their masters and instituted serfdom upon themselves. Also, I think these "inclusive" and "extractive institutions" are anticoncepts. They're very close to something true (that what dictates the success or failure of nations is all about ideas) - close enough, in fact, that one can sort of use them in an approximate way to mean the underlying ideas. But you're grouping together freedom and coercion on both sides (inclusive and extractive) of the coin. "Extractive" institutions will usually be the coercive ones, unless one or two members of an organization are actually producing the most value (in which case the material benefits will seem to only be serving a few) and "inclusive" institutions will usually be the free ones, except when the majority of some country decides to rob some minority. It's a very clumsy way of breaking things down. No precision at all.

Stop. Go back. Read. This is the third time I've reiterated the very same point over again and I will not do it again. Being part of "Western Civilization" does not mean that your country is actually in the West, that your people descend from that area or even that you're necessarily on very good terms with all of those countries. It means that you have Enlightenment concepts like "private property" (concepts which do come from Europe, although absolutely anyone can learn about them) and that you use them.

I don't understand why you're treating that example as so important and I'm not willing to spend more than a couple of minutes trying to prove that it's true. I think it's true. If it's not, though, that's completely irrelevant to my argument. You can name anything else that happens roughly 1/6000 times and we can use your example from here out.

At that point, so many of our ideas about humanity and human nature would only apply to the untrashed people that we'd probably have to come up with a new concept for "mindless homo sapiens", with the understanding that "man" (the rational animal) is a different kind of entity. Basically 100% correct, except that you chose the term "zombie". That's objectively untrue. They'd be "man-animals". And we could train them to use rudimentary mining equipment, but never higher mathematics or the secrets of teleportation. I'm sorry, but you are neither of those. You may not believe in the Christian God, certainly, but as a Wokeist your beliefs are based on feelings and social pressure; not facts. For instance: is abortion a women's issue? Now, as a Wokeist you have to parrot that slogan. That's what all your friends are doing and you must go along. And yet, the fashionable confusion you've adopted with regards for what a "woman" even is would lead you into some serious trouble if you stopped to integrate that claim into anything else. What about trans men? Are men with uteruses not fully as male as anyone else? If they are then what does it even mean to claim that "abortion is a women's issue"? Your guiding principle is to accept whatever makes you seem to care the most. Not actually caring about marginalized people, mind you; if you actually cared then you might actually educate yourself on what's making them so marginalized, and then you'd cease to be woke. Empathy is not reason. An anti-rational Objectivist is a contradiction in terms.

Not sure how to prove that it's not doctored; I'm not a video doctor. It seems unlikely (it's just a kid with a webcam in his room) and I like that we get to see him flip it half a dozen times before he manages to get the edge case. It's clear that he's been sitting there for some time specifically looking for this result.