Rubal Sher

Thanks a ton. There is so much material related to the questions I had and it is very helpful.

@2046 Thank you for your response. Your reply to #2 and #3 is lucid and well understood but let me try and pick up on a nuance and what I was trying to really get at. Imagine a piece of land not owned by anyone. First of all, I am assuming that is possible. I might have even said take a park for example not owned by anyone (if that is possible). Let us say people from all age groups and cultures visits this park. Is it ok for me to strip naked in such a park? Essentially the question is what if there is no owner who will have to pay a price for my actions in a given space. If the argument is that the park will always be owned by someone, then we can move back to a piece of land far outside of civilization and let us say I am littering or poisoning the land in some manner. Does the Objectivist viewpoint endorse running amok as long as an owner of the meta-ethical space prevents you from doing so? Do I get to run naked in a park visited by kids and nuns just because it has no owner. With regard to #1, who gets to choose whether smoke/perceived pollution is harmful or not. Take the case of cigarette smoking for example. A 100 years ago, we did not have the science to tell us that passive smoking was injurious but today we know it is. It is also possible there was a time in between when people advocated it to be harmful without having solid proof. And passive smoking is one of the easier ones to handle. Pollution the way I see it has more complex issues like climate change, global warming etc on which we are still sharply divided. So in the current scientific climate and in an Objectivist world, how does one decide on which side of the debate we are on with respect to climate change? How many factories we should run, how many vehicles we should have, how much energy we can use, etc with respect to let us say climate change.

I am new to Objectivism, so please go easy on me. I get the gist of the theory and agree with the concepts. My question is about how are public interactions handled under this theory. Let me give a few examples. 1) I set up a machine that vents potentially harmful air as a by-product, which let us say only affects a subset of my neighbors adversely. Some are immune to it and some maybe not. Do I have any responsibility whatsoever or not? If yes, who judges or regulates the issue and how does the line get drawn? 2) I go to a library totally naked or maybe covered in a burkha (Islamic clothing that covers the entire body including the face). Are both acceptable? If a distinction has to be drawn, again who adjudicates and on what basis? 3) I send my kids to a school that teaches some flavor of religion. If I was an atheist or disagreed with the particular flavor of religion, what recourse do I have? To reiterate, I am a newbie and maybe the questions I am asking are phrased incoherently or incorrectly, but I would like to essentially discuss what defines the rules of engagement in a public sphere, given that we cannot lock ourselves up on our personal property forever. The issues could be cultural, environmental, religious, etc where it is particularly not clear how wide my fist is and how far your nose is. Thanks for your time and I would appreciate your responses.