William O

"AnarchObjectivism" is a contradiction. "Objectivism" refers to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and Miss Rand explicitly rejected anarchy in her philosophical writings:

(From "The Nature of Government" in The Virtue of Selfishness. Link.)
You are, of course, free to disagree with Ayn Rand in the field of politics, but you are not free to use her name (in the form of "Objectivism," which means "the philosophy of Ayn Rand") to promote a philosophy with which she explicitly disagreed. You also should not ascribe to her characters motives that they do not display in her novels (because it would be the same as ascribing to her ideas that were not hers). As can be seen in the conclusion of Atlas Shrugged, when Judge Narragansett (I think, it's been a while) adds his own modification to the US Constitution. This action on his part (which is supported by the other strikers) is explicit endorsement of the idea that a government must exist as an objective monopolist on retaliatory force, enforcer of contracts, and arbiter of disagreements.

On the topic of anarchy, I agree completely with Miss Rand (as you can probably tell). Anarchy is the same as rule by mob, because permissible force is not placed under the sole authority of an objective and restricted body but is permitted to any men who may choose to use it. In an anarchy, anyone could use force to enforce any laws they choose, because it is quite simply rule by brute force (You can say that initiation of force would be inadmissible, but without a government, who would prevent it from occurring? Blank-out). It is far more moral and practical to place force under the control of an objective government than to eliminate the concept of laws altogether and leave men with no objective body to protect them from brutes. I would rather live in a society with the modern American mixed system than in a society with no government, because at least some of America's current laws are objective while the concept of objective law would not even exist in a system of anarchy.

There's really only one way to assess this: you look at rich people, and you figure out if land got them there. You could try doing a rigorous study, but that's not the place to start.

The place to start is to look at the world around you. You probably know a few people who are fairly rich, even if not super-rich; and, you probably know of a few more. Ask yourself how they got their wealth: to the best of your knowledge.

The next place is to look further afield. Look at something like the Forbes list of richest folk. Did Gates, Walton, Ellison, Carlos Slim, Buffett or Bloomberg build their billions primarily because of an inherited land-holding?
 
if this cursory survey indicates that wealth is not key, and no other evidence is offered to show that it is, then there is zero reason to believe it is. A seemingly logical argument about why land ought to be key is not worth the paper it is written on, if the evidence shows the opposite.
 
Now, doing this type of survey, you will probably find that there are some countries --  still at a "developing country" stage -- where inherited land explains the wealth of a certain segment of the population. However, what you will find -- even in these countries -- is that these people are not the richest, as a group. Rather, the group with the most wealth is the one who had guns and gangs and simply took over other people's land and mineral resources.
 
So, the ball is in your court to offer at least some cursory evidence -- not "pure" argument, but cursory evidence -- that inherited land explains a significant share of current wealth, particularly in a modern country.

I wouldn't say Kant got anything right, so in that sense he didn't contribute anything of value. However, Kant's work has had a profound influence on every area of philosophy for centuries, so it is harder to understand the history of philosophy if you haven't studied Kant.
 
For example, Marx was heavily influenced by Hegel, who took the inspiration for a lot of his philosophy from Kant. None of these are good guys, to be sure, but they are part of the history of philosophy, and their ideas continue to influence our culture.

I wouldn't say Kant got anything right, so in that sense he didn't contribute anything of value. However, Kant's work has had a profound influence on every area of philosophy for centuries, so it is harder to understand the history of philosophy if you haven't studied Kant.
 
For example, Marx was heavily influenced by Hegel, who took the inspiration for a lot of his philosophy from Kant. None of these are good guys, to be sure, but they are part of the history of philosophy, and their ideas continue to influence our culture.

I'm a computer science major, so I've had to do a ton of proofs in modern symbolic logic. Modern logic has legitimate applications in computer science for understanding how computer programs and circuits work, because we've built programming languages and computer hardware to operate according to this specific set of rules that we came up with. However, outside of computer science, I don't think it is useful for anything. What you're doing here is like trying to figure out how to prove the rules of chess - there is no proof and it doesn't even make sense to ask for proof, it's just what we've decided to work with.

I'm sure that it was perfectly obvious to you and everyone else posting in this thread what Rand meant, of course, but you never know when some newbie is going to come along and get confused.

One thing we retain from studying a philosopher carefully is a general sense of what the philosopher said, as well as a general sense of what our reaction to it was. The details leave our memory after a certain period of time in most cases, but the most important points become hard coded into our consciousness in at least a general way. (For example, the details of Plato's Line analogy, which I just studied, will probably leave me in a few months or a year, but a sense of the distinctions he drew within the perceptual and conceptual levels will probably stay with me.)
 
This makes the principle that we should base our beliefs on evidence and good reasoning even more vivid and urgent than it was already. If you aren't careful enough in your evaluation of Kant and don't arrive at a firm conclusion about him that integrates all the evidence, you may find yourself, in five years when you have forgotten all about Kant, unable to spot the error in some Kantian argument or policy. It's not that you won't have the explicit knowledge about Kant, because you would have forgotten a lot of that at some point either way, but you won't have your psycho-epistemology set up and attuned in such a way that spotting the error comes to you naturally.
 
Moreover, your psycho-epistemology has a strong influence over what you will find interesting. For example, if you study logical positivism (without arriving at a strong evaluation of it), then you will find yourself more inclined toward ideas that are actively anti-integration. Studying something doesn't just give you more knowledge about that thing, it changes what makes sense to you, and that may lead you in a downward or upward spiral.
 
I think the main practical application of these observations is that we should try not to leave an evil idea in our memory uncontested. If you read something dangerous, you should make sure you know a good refutation for it before letting yourself forget about it, or you might end up acting on it or uttering it in an unguarded moment.

I've arrived at a conclusion that I wanted to share and discuss with the Objectivists here.
 
I am often in the following situation, as I think many other people here are as well. I come to know some person very well, and this person turns out to hold beliefs or values diametrically opposed to Objectivism - usually, this involves their having some sort of religious belief. However, I enjoy and benefit from interacting with the person, and they are a productive member of society, pleasant to talk to, and exhibit a number of virtues of character.
 
I think most Objectivists find themselves in this situation eventually. The question is: How should an Objectivist evaluate a person like this morally?
 
In my view, the way a person actually acts should be the primary deciding factor. They can be a devout Christian, but if they do their job well, try to improve themselves as a person, and provide valuable companionship, then the overall evaluation should rationally be positive. The fact that someone acts virtuously should outweigh the irrational beliefs they hold provided that those beliefs do not have too much control over them.
 
I think there are other factors to take into consideration as well. For example, if a person is Christian, defends Christianity publicly, and displays evasiveness when confronted with arguments against Christianity, then my overall evaluation of him will be significantly more negative, even if he is a productive and valuable member of society in other ways. The damage he does by promoting Christianity weighs against his overall evaluation in my mind.
 
Are there any thoughts anyone would like to add?