CriticalThinker2000

Going back to your earlier post, I think you're missing a very important distinction between "physical security" and education. By 'physical security' we're referring to the retaliatory use of physical coercion. Force is not just another product to be transacted in. In the most fundamental sense, force is different from education in that force is not about the creation of values. By the fact that values are the product of a process of rational thought, force simply can't create value at all. It can only destroy, and used in the best possible capacity, it merely destroys a destroyer. Force can protect an existing value but it cannot bring value into existence. At the end of page one you said: This is an equivocation between two fundamentally different 'services'. The objectivist argument for a government police force tasked with the protection of individual rights is that force is special in this fundamental sense. The argument can't be extended to education.

I realize that what I've said is not really answerable. The post was meant to explain why I think there is such a wide range of opinions on the incident amongst people who supposedly hold the same basic premises. I thought it was actually quite prescient given your posts comparing law enforcement to the mafia and Brown to "a highly independent individual who denies the moral legitimacy of the mafia to monopolize the turf", as well as the claim in your analogy that the police officer assaults Brown, as well as the implication that it's perfectly fine to walk down the street blocking traffic (what about the rights of the drivers?), as well as the equivocation between police officers and random citizens. When two businessmen disagree about what exactly a contract means, and the disagreement is arbitrated by the state, does the business man who believes he's been wronged get to 'defend' his property by force against the ruling of the court system?

OK, your overall point makes sense to me. Perhaps there should be different training administered. I thought you were arguing that Wilson was morally culpable for Brown's death.

What happens when two people disagree about the terms of a contract? What you've claimed that Objectivism implies is contrary to the rule of law. Anarchists and libertarians often call ARI 'right wing'. I've been thinking about what is causing some people here to ignore facts about the situation (constant references to them as cigarette thieves, evading the assault of a police officer), focus on minor errors Wilson made in hindsight with no focus on Michael Brown's actions, etc. There is more and more evidence that it's the old libertarian hatred of everything government. I suspected so earlier but I think it's becoming clearer to me now. Just as environmentalists interpret facts differently because they hold the environment as their standard of value, so libertarians/objectivists will interpret this incident differently depending upon whether they hold the non-initiation of force principle as a context-less absolute. Edit: I don't mean that certain views on the situation are necessarily directly derived from the NIF principle. I mean that holding it as a context-less absolute creates a deep seated hatred for police officers and any other agent of the state, which creates a certain mindset that affects how you interpret events, what facts you deem important, etc.

I guess I'm confused as to what you're arguing. My previous question wasn't rhetorical. Does Wilson or Brown deserve the lion's share of the blame for escalating the situation to the point where a gun needed to be pulled? Wilson parked his vehicle in a precarious position (noted after the fact, of course). Brown punched a cop in the face repeatedly.

Brown wasn't under arrest. I don't see much wrong with blocking his path in order to get him to stop disrupting traffic and off of the street. In terms of escalation, how does blocking Brown's path compare with Brown punching Wilson in the face?

It's clearly Brown that's unnecessarily causing the escalation.

You really think Wilson pursued him with the intent to kill him?

That's OK. It's just a pattern that I've noticed (not necessarily from you) reminiscent of environmentalists who only see the problems with fossil fuels. Like the constant references to Brown as a cigarette thief. Yes, he was a cigarette thief, but by the time he was charging Wilson he had also punched a cop in the face and tried to turn a police officers gun on an officer. He should be called a cop-assaulting, gun wrestling, cigarette thief. We know why environmentalists lose the big picture, they hold a non-human standard of value. But why are details ignored and distorted in this instance? I really can't figure it out. No, Brown did not have a deadly weapon on him. The reason killing him was required was that he was charging Wilson. His intent likely wasn't to give Wilson a kiss on the cheek (the same one that he had just punched). What other way should Wilson have stopped him? There was no other reasonable course of action but to open fire. One could get upset that officers aren't required to carry tasers, which I think is a valid concern. But that doesn't explain the vitriol toward Wilson, or the idea that he somehow abused his authority. As far as I can tell, he did what was necessary to preserve himself.

Wilson was being charged by a man who had just tried to wrestle his gun from him, firing several shots in the process. The logical expectation is that Brown would attempt to take his life, should he have been allowed to reach Wilson. Even if it turns out that Brown would have only beaten the hell out of Wilson, there is still no reason for Wilson to take the risk. Why should he have? Sacrifice himself to protect the man trying to harm him? Insanity. Everything I have seen contradicts this statement. He was not shot in the head six times. Why are the facts being twisted to make Wilson appear worse? There must be something driving the distortions, because from where I stand, no reasonable person who believes that self preservation is the first moral principle could conclude that Wilson did something wrong by protecting himself from a charging criminal. I do expect this sort of thing from places like Reason Magazine, which has the anarcho-libertarian disgust for cops, but not from Objectivists.

I'm astounded by some of the reactions here. The whole 'shoot him in the legs' idea is completely insane. Life isn't a video game. There's no justification for Wilson to risk his own life trying to get a knee shot.

Well I don't want to misatribute anything to SN but that was my interpretation of this: As far as you (Nicky) knowing the intentions of many people, so what? There are many cases of speech where it's impossible to know the intent. However, the words that come out of the person's mouth are knowable and can be objectively interpreted within the proper context. Interesting point SN, I didn't consider the owner's right to yell 'fire'. If it's possible to show that yelling 'fire' places the owner's customers in danger, I guess I would consider that to be along the lines of a company knowingly selling a dangerous product to an unknowing customer. Wouldn't that still fall into the property rights category though? The customer bought a ticket on the assumption that they would sit down and enjoy a movie. Instead, the theater owner did not uphold the contract and actually purposely put them in danger. Similarly, it's illegal for a business to poison food that it sells. It just seems like this is distinct from the issue of free speech in a fundamental way. Free speech concerns an individual's ability to speak to others while on/using their own property. The theater example concerns a business transaction and customer expectations/understanding of how they'll be treated.

It sounds to me like you've got this exactly right. Whether there is intent or not is unknowable but when the words come out of the person's mouth it enters the objective realm. Words have real, objective meanings/interpretations. The reasonable man standard seems to be a good attempt at deciding what constitutes an objective threat. Yelling fire in a crowded theater (unjustifiably) is a property rights issue, not a free speech issue. It shouldn't be illegal because of consequences but rather because the theater owner prohibits it.

I never received a satisfactory answer from the determinists on that point. Suppose an entity can act in two different ways under the same circumstances (of course I'm thinking of man which can either focus or unfocus the mind). Why is that entity in violation of identity? Its possible actions are finite and limited. It still HAS to act one of the two ways- it still has an identity. It still is something.

Aren't Rand's virtues listed in that essay?

Yes, I am saying that any functioning adult that speaks English should understand what a double standard is. Maybe we have different concepts of "functioning" and "speak" and "understand". Do I need to define each of those too?

What do you mean 'in practical terms'? Of course there is really a phenomenon that occurs which we call a double standard. A concept is not equivalent to its definition. The same problem came up in the last thread that FredAnyman started because his problem is epistemological.

Mr. Ponzi had to deceive his victims. The government engages in its scheme openly because its theft is not supported by fraud but by run of the mill physical force. I'd much rather be a victim of Charles Ponzi. At least I'd have the chance of getting out before it collapsed.

Well of course any statement I make is going to be "just a statement"... My response does answer your question because it shows the link between retaliatory force and the ultimate ethical value, life. You have a new question (why is force anti-life?) but that doesn't mean your original question wasn't answered. Man's means of survival is his mind. Force is anti-mind and therefore anti-life. Ayn Rand spent quite a lot of time explaining this fact through her philosophic writings and also by concretizing the principle in her novels. If you have read a lot on the topic and have a specific question, I'd be happy to help answer it, but asking people for explanations on a forum for a question as fundamental and broad as this one seems like a terrible way for you to arrive at a correct answer. It's akin to posting "Why is Capitalism good?" in the economics forum. Because life is the standard of morality.

Life requires freedom from the initiation of force. The purpose of retaliatory force is to put an end to the initiation of force.

Net neutrality is an outgrowth of egalitarianism, which seems to be rearing its ugly head in several of the currently popular policy debates like income "distribution", minimum wage, and the female pay gap for example.

My understanding is that you cannot leave debt in excess of the asset value of the estate for your children to pay. To the extent that you can force unchosen obligations on to your children, that debt belongs in the same moral category as government debt.

No one coerces you into signing a mortgage. There is an essential distinction between voluntary obligations and involuntary obligations.

Lol. But that does introduce a good point. Wouldn't it actually be better for American citizens if the US government debt were owned by foreigners? That way the American government can do what Argentina is doing and basically steal the money by not bothering to pay it back. In the other case, it's American citizens that will be screwed by their own government. Either way I don't see how you can honestly believe that US government debt levels are OK because the money is "loaned to ourselves", if you think for a few minutes about what that phrase really means in practice.

So you're saying (and Krugman too) that if the US government defaults, whether through technical default or inflation, it's not so bad for American citizens because American citizens own the debt?