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I suspect that our differences would diminish if we discussed this more. For now, I will limit myself to the following. I believe that coercion by government should be severely limited. On the other hand, (1) I don't believe it can realistically be eliminated, and (2) coercion comes in degrees. There are guns, incarceration, regulatory prohibitions which have economic effects, court summons, quarantines, etc. Consider settling disputes, familial or business lawsuits or bankruptcy. The parties to such disputes often don't happily and voluntarily submit to remediation. But in order to protect the rights of the wronged in such cases, government must use some degree of coercion -- such as a court summons -- if the dispute is going to be settled rather than do nothing. The latter could possibly make matters worse.

My second try: The suspicion, harbored by many physicists and mathematicians over the decades but rarely actively pursued, is that a description of the properties exhibited by the peculiar panoply of forces and particles of reality may be so accurately depicted by eight-dimensional numbers called “octonions.”

Trump’s Health Insurance Changes

I agree. I think the sentence you partly quoted would be better if it were: The suspicion, harbored by many physicists and mathematicians over the decades but rarely actively pursued, is that the properties of the peculiar panoply of forces and particles that comprise reality spring logically from the properties of eight-dimensional numbers called “octonions.” (my bold).

The Peculiar Math That Could Underlie the Laws of Nature https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-octonion-math-that-could-underpin-physics-20180720/

Spheres of Justice #8 Spheres of Justice #9

Ayn Rand's Legacy of Unifying Social Cruelty https://truthout.org/articles/ayn-rands-legacy-of-unifying-social-cruelty/ I suggest also clicking on the link within "she advocated a cartoon fantasy of economic "freedom"” about half-way through the article. The book is Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed. I haven't read the book, but it's likely a screed like the article.

Are you familiar with this? http://www.johnmccaskey.com/induction-and-concepts-in-bacon-and-whewell/

Good point. It also made me think of all people receiving ordinary Social Security benefits. Yang's answer to how do we pay for UBI said nothing about them. There are almost 50 million of them. If they were not eligible for UBI, that reduces the number eligible to about 200 million. 200 million X $12,000 = $2.4 trillion (rather than the $3 trillion I said earlier).

There are many more details about Yang's proposed UBI here: https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/ Click on 'How would we pay for Universal Basic Income?' for his answer. It's the usual hodgepodge, junk math, and hand-waving that politicians do. The following are some firmer numbers. 250 million people > age 18 times X $12,000 = $3 trillion. That's 2/3rds estimated federal government spending in FY 2019 of $4.5 trillion (link).

Nuanced Censorship Nuanced Censorship #2 The latter is about an article in the ARI digital publication New Ideal.

You can read James Valliant's opinions about Ayn Rand's side of the story in The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics.

Jury rules Oberlin College guilty of libel and owes $$$$$ Oberlin College and its social justice warrior students tried to destroy a business. The business sued Oberlin College and won in court. $$$$$. Spheres of Justice #7

I suggest that anybody interested in what Walzer says about political power use the 'Look inside' feature on Amazon. Chapter 12 is titled "Political Power." You can read pages 281-84 in print book mode. Enter "sovereignty" in the Search text box to navigate to there.

I point to the following in Spheres of Justice #6. The marketplace, when free, awards all in accordance with the contributions we make to our own and others’ well-being (108). The man or woman who builds a better mousetrap, or opens a restaurant, or teaches on the side, is looking to earn money. Why not? Who wants to serve or satisfy others only for gratitude? It seems only right that an entrepreneur, able to provide goods and services, should reap the rewards he had in mind when he went to work. “This is, indeed, a kind of “rightness” that the community may see fit to enclose and restrain. The morality of the bazaar belongs in the bazaar. The market is a zone of the city, not the whole of the city. But it is a great mistake, I think, when people worried about the market seek its entire abolition. It is one thing to clear the Temple of traders, quite another to clear the streets.” “The merchant panders to our desires. But so long as he isn’t selling people or votes or political influence, so long as he hasn’t cornered the market in wheat at time of drought, so long as his cars aren’t death traps, his shirts inflammable, this is harmless pandering. He will try, of course, to sell us things we don’t want; he will show us the best side of his goods and conceal their dark side. We will have to be protected against fraud (as he will against theft). But the exchange is in principle a relation of mutual benefit; and neither the money that the merchant makes by this or that consumer, poses any threat to complex equality – not if the spheres of money and commodities is properly bounded.” [End] Does this portray a free market very unlike how Ayn Rand or you portray it? A complete separation is impossible. Ayn Rand approved of certain functions performed by police, the military, and courts. They cannot be completely separated from the economy or free market. Let’s consider them. - The police must buy or lease buildings, cars, weapons, ammunition, office equipment, clothing, etc. Where will they get them if not the private sector? The police department makes them? To do, they would impinge on the market for labor, just as they do with their own personnel. - It’s very similar for the military, except it also uses ships and planes. - Are courts only needed when there is force or fraud? Are courts never needed for business disputes, business bankruptcies, or divorces, custody, or estates? Such business cases may involve fraud, but many do not. - All of them employ support personnel, e.g. technology, procurement, accounting, etc. Thus, government must compete in the market for labor. Government employees get paid for their work. Money matters. That’s economics. I agree, but let’s not get mired in terminology. The free market as Walzer describes it fits pretty well with the free market Ayn Rand described. A “radically laissez-faire economy” as he describes it is something quite different that he imagines (and does not want). A “pure laissez-faire economy” as Rand idealizes it is also something different, and she imagined it. “A system of pure, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism has never yet existed anywhere” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 45) While Walzer and Rand would not see eye-to-eye on what all is proper for a government to do, Walzer holds that the government is an institution of coercion like Rand did. Rand held that government should not interfere in the free market. Walzer says it should not interfere in other “spheres” of social life – the market, family and friends, education. I paraphrased Walzer in Sense of Justice #2 as follows. “Politics is always the most direct path to dominance, and political power is probably the most important, and certainly the most dangerous, good in human history. Hence the need to constrain the agents of constraint, to establish constitutional checks and balances.”

That's a premature conclusion in my view. Please read all of Spheres of Justice #6. If that changes your opinion (or not), then we can discuss it some more.

Support for this: "In a free economy, the government may step in only when a fraud has been perpetrated, or a demonstrable damage has been done to a consumer; in such cases the only protection required is that of criminal law" (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 129). Her use of liassez-faire is many pages before 129.

Spheres of Justice #5 Spheres of Justice #6 Walzer surely has a different idea about what laissez-faire means. For him it seems to mean that businesses can do whatever they want and business dominates the politics. Ayn Rand used liassez-faire to mean “no government intervention” in the economy. On the other hand, she was against the use of force and fraud. So it seems she meant “no intervention” to be no government control of what is produced, how, and by whom, but government interventions against force (e.g. slavery) and fraud are permitted.

You triggered my curiosity. What does "old, old" mean? Is it the same as "old-old"? I did find something on that. Here says old-old means 85 or older. Here says it's over age 75 and that I am "young-old." Here says its 85-94, and I am not even "old", but it doesn't mention "young-old". I like "young-old." ☺️

Oh, my. The last 48 hours on this thread have been an adventure. I delayed responding to the posts StrictlyLogical made on Friday because I was hesitant about how to respond. Due to Stephen Boydstun's posts supporting me and some of our history, and StrictlyLogical's apology, my hesitation vanished. I reply to StrictlyLogical's Friday posts as follows. My blog isn't a "general philosophy" blog. Part of the content is philosophy, but not about philosophy in general or a wide range of philosophers. Much of the content has been about economics, finance, and technology, e.g. Marconi. My purpose of giving links here is solely an invitation to anyone who might be interested in the content. It is not to spread or promote any philosophy as better than or against Objectivism. I will try to say a little more about the content along with the link. Thank you, Stephen and StrictlyLogical. Thank you, dream_weaver, for moving the thread to its new forum. When I made my first post about 10 months ago, it wasn't clear to me where it fit best and I gave my okay to the moderators to move it. It just took a while. 🙂 I likely didn't choose its new forum because my blog doesn't consist of "poems, short stories, art, music, web designs, business deals, or graduations." 🙂 P.S. I will be attending OCON 2019.

Most of the posts I make on this thread are only links to my blog, which clearly is not part of OL, and the thread is so titled. It's up to users to decide if they want to read them or not. If others make unwarranted assumptions about me or my blog, that's their problem, not mine. There are plenty of posts on OL with no obvious relation to Objectivism.

Spheres of Justice #3 Spheres of Justice #4

It's ironic that Vox wants YouTube to crack down on "hate speech" when Vox publishes: Hate speech is protected free speech, even on college campuses

Spheres of Justice #1 Spheres of Justice #2

To begin, the logical form of the Fallacy of Composition is: Premise 1: A is part of B Premise 2: A has property X Conclusion: Therefore, B has property X. What sort of fallacy Macdonald makes is arguable, since Tyson does not say what he meant by "universe" and Macdonald doesn't explicitly say 'The universe cares'. On the other hand, Dore saying "We are the universe" is an instance of the fallacy of composition. The issue is not my concept universe, but Tyson's (or Macdonald's or Dore's). I interpreted him charitably. He is an astrophysicist, so when he said "universe" I assume he meant galaxies, stars, planets, etc., but not humans (nor pets).