Doug Morris

OK, so Trump actually just said that there were "very fine people" on both sides of the Charlottesville incident. But since Unite the Right was a white supremacist movement, who exactly were the "very fine people" on that side that he was referring to? There is a lot more to criticize Trump about than just his "very fine people" sloppiness. This includes his stolen election lie, with all the damage it has done and can do. It also includes his prioritizing his pseudo-self-esteem over knowing or caring what he should do as President.

No, I don't believe Biden lied, and I don't believe he wants anyone to commit violence against Trump. He just wants people to vote against Trump, and rightfully so. What are your grounds for your accusations?

What I find worthy of amusement is your silly comments.

Crooks's being there looks very much like a coincidence. Why shouldn't Blackrock delete a molehill that some are making a mountain out of? Why shouldn't Blackrock try to minimize the publicity an assassin gets?

Is that when everyone can see they cheated again, or when all of Trump's suckers believe his lie that they heated again?

I was specifically thinking of something I heard a long time ago. I was talking with a representative of one of several companies who offered a certain service, and he mentioned one company that offered a different service with the same objective. He said the service offered by the one company was inferior. I asked why the other companies didn't tell people the truth. He said if they did, then because there were more than one of them and only one of the other, the one company could sue them under the antitrust laws and get rich thereby.

I understand that under current law a business's ability to present the facts to the public may be restricted.

Here is one of the things Ayn Rand has in common with her character John Galt. John Galt wanted to invent a motor. He accomplished a revolution in physics to do it. He didn't publish the physics. He just went on inventing his motor. However, he later taught a course in physics. Ayn Rand wanted to write a novel (Atlas Shrugged). She accomplished a revolution in philosophy to do it. She didn't publish the philosophy. She just went on writing her novel. However, she later published some nonfiction about her philosophy.

This is true. Please read Ayn Rand's monograph "The Objectivist Ethics", reprinted as Chapter 1 of her The Virtue of Selfishness, for an explanation. This seems bizarre. Do you have anything to back it up with?

Objectivism is for life.

I looked up neomercantilism. It very quickly became clear that it is very different from laissez-faire capitalism. Objectivism is not a syncretism. It has its own foundation and builds from there. I have not yet read Leonard Peikoff's The Objectivist Philosophy of Ayn Rand, but I gather it does a good job of explaining what Objectivism is. If you want me to recommend books I have read, start with Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness.

Couldn't a similar argument be made against the term "laissez-faire capitalism"?

Ayn Rand is neither "Conservative" nor "Liberal", although the vagueness of those terms may cause confusion. Ayn Rand wanted to dismantle welfare of all kinds for everyone, including herself. There is a crucial distinction between accepting welfare when offered and supporting or condoning it. If you study the material linked by others on this thread, you will have an opportunity to understand this better.

Some people who hear "laissez-faire capitalism" may mistakenly assume it means leaving capitalists free to do such things as polluting their neighborhoods, defrauding their customers, and making deals with government officials for special privileges. One possible strategy is to say "force-excluding capitalism". The worst reaction we are likely to get is "What the [obscenity] is that?" This wording indicates a key concept in what we are talking about and gives us a chance to explain what we mean without dealing with the baggage some people attach to "laissez-faire". Thoughts?

I looked up law of scarcity. The first definition I found is If what we desire “appears” to be in limited supply, the perception of its value increases significantly. This doesn't seem to be what you are talking about. The second definition I found is economic resources — land, labor, capital, and talent — are limited, not infinite. This may be what you are talking about. Why is this "not good news or happy news."? How does it doom us all if it cannot be overcome? What would it mean to overcome it? There was another definition that equated it with the law of supply and demand.

Can you state the Law of Scarcity?

Whst does this mean?

Please explain the scales.

A zero-sum game is one where whatever one person gains, another loses. The gains and losses, summed across all participants, net out to zero. You and your coworkers must be getting a net gain from your catering job or you wouldn't stay in the job. The guests, their organizers, and your bosses are also getting a net gain. Everyone gains, nobody loses. The situation is positive sum, and not only that, but positive for each participant. When you compare your net gain from the catering job to what you could have gained if you had taken your college years more seriously, the former may seem very small, and difficult to distinguish from zero. But it is positive, not zero. Everyone who does productive work from which other people benefit because of market exchange is a "server". Everyone who benefits from the productive work of others is "served". There is nothing wrong with this.

a/b is the unique number c such that b times c is a. This is not formalistic or arbitrary; it is what division is. The requirement that "a/b times b is a" is clearly what division is. The uniqueness requirement is necessary because using the notation a/b or the wording "the quotient of a divided by b" implies a unique value, and using it when the value is not unique leads to logical fallacies. If we take multiplication by 0 to be undefined, this forces division by 0 to be undefined. If we follow the usual practice of taking multiplication by 0 to be defined, 0 times anything must be 0. (Explanations below.) Thus if a is not 0, there is no number c such that 0 times c is a, so there can not be a quotient. If a is 0, then any number c times 0 is a, so pretending there is a unique quotient leads to fallacies. Explanations of 0 times anything must be 0: If we define multiplication by 0 based on applications, we have the same points I discussed before. If we have no containers, we have no eggs in containers. If our "containers" can't hold any eggs, we have no eggs in containers. Also, if the width or length of a rectangle is 0, the "rectangle" degenerates into a straight line segment with no area. If both are 0, it degenerates into a point with no area. If instead we take a more formal approach, we can prove anything times 0 is 0 as follows: The following holds for any number a. 0 is the additive identity element, i.e. a + 0 = 0 + a = a for any number a. The quantity a times 0 has an additive inverse, -(a times 0). This means -(a times 0) is the unique number such that a times 0 + -(a times 0) = -(a times 0) + a times 0 = 0. The same applies to any number, including a times (a times 0). a times 0 = a times (a times 0 + -(a times 0)) because 0 = a times 0 + -(a times 0). a times (a times 0 + -(a times 0)) = (a times (a times 0)) + (a times -(a times 0)) because multiplication is distributive over addition, i. e. a times (b + c) = (a times b) + (a times c) for any numbers a, b, and c. (a times (a times 0)) + (a times -(a times 0)) = (a times (a times 0)) + -(a times (a times 0)) because b times -c = -(b times c) for any numbers b and c. (a times (a times 0)) + -(a times (a times 0)) = 0 because -(a times (a times 0)) is the additive inverse of (a times (a times 0)). Applying three times the principle that things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, a times 0 = 0.

Suppose we state a general principle that if you have n similar containers each of which will hold m eggs, and the containers are all full, there are n times m eggs. A multiplier of 1 would correspond to a case in which there is only 1 container and/or each container holds only one egg. (A one-egg container might be useful if it protects the egg or makes it easier to carry and store eggs.) A multiplier of 0 would correspond to a case in which there are no containers or in which the only "containers" available will not actually hold any eggs. (The latter might be the case if someone is playing games with us or if we only have containers designed to hold pieces of candy.) The cases involving 1 and 0 may not be enough by themselves to justify having such a principle, but why not be thorough and include them? If we are only dealing with counts of discrete objects, there may not really be any need for a multiplier of 1.3. If a rectangle is 1.3 meters long and 0.7 meters wide, what is its area?

In what sense?

Multiplication is a widely known operation. If we want to prove that it is worthwhile to talk about multiplication and to prove what 192837465 times 1618152205 is, we may be taking on a very big task. But it is clear that 1 times 1 is 1, and that any operation with the property that 1 operated on by itself is 2 is not multiplication, but something else. If we define multiplication for some pairs of numbers but not others, we make the study of multiplication unnecessarily complicated.

There's a place - in ITOE, as I recall - where Ayn Rand explicitly compares fallacious arguments about reason to arguments no one would make - at least, not yet - about digestion.

What is HPO?