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Joynewyeary

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Everything posted by Joynewyeary

  1. I assume that you are setting up some kind of contrast between "total strangers" and "their own employees." Maybe the person who makes the decision to dismiss B is a manager who is more than one level above B in the company management and does not personally interact with B. Maybe the person who makes the decision to dismiss B is an owner and not a manager and is not even acquainted with B. The employer employs B in order to make money. Suppose there is an opportunity to replace B with a machine. There may be a high initial cost to get the machine, but suppose it is expected that, over a six year period, the machine will cost only what it would have cost to employ B for three years. If the employer decided to replace B with such a machine, would the company lack integrity? Now, suppose that A offers to pay a lump sum equal to three years of B's wages or salary. The employer doesn't have to worry about any technical problems that might arise from using a machine. The employer can replace B with a person. Yet, the employer will get cost savings as though B had been replaced with the machine. You were not told that the employer knows why A wants B to be dismissed. What persuades you that the employer has very little integrity? The employer enters into a legal contract with A. The employer does not want to be sued for breach of contract.
  2. B doesn't know that B is suffering from persecution. How would anyone else know it? Why are you considering what is "equally possible"? I described a scenario. Are you saying that it is actually impossible or are you saying that you want to ignore it and think about something more pleasant instead? It's a question, not an argument. So it cannot be the best argument. You need an argument to justify a particular answer to the question. Maybe there is a conflict between the answer given by Objectivism and the answer given by your own concept of justice. If there is a conflict, then you can evade the issue or you can attempt to resolve the conflict. If the law said to me, "You are not permitted to behave like A" then that would not motivate me to think that I am suffering from a lack of freedom. How about you?
  3. "A" inherited lots of money and is wealthy for that reason. "A" anonymously publishes his or her own crackpot theories in some subject area such as physics or psychology. "A" is married. "B" publishes (under his or her own name) a proof that the theories are fundamentally unsound. "B" is not a member of a union. "B" is very happily married with three children (one four-year-old, one seven-year-old, one eight-year-old). A hates B because of the debunking. A decides to get secret vengeance. A's spouse meets B's spouse several times. A's spouse doesn't know it, but A deliberately arranged the meetings. The spouses become friends. A uses the relationship between A's spouse and B's spouse to find out where B works. A offers the employer money (as much as necessary) to dismiss B from employment and to sign a nondisclosure agreement that forbids the employer from telling B the reason for the dismissal. Every time B gets a new job, A arranges for B to be dismissed. Consequences: B and B's spouse are forced to cut their expenses and move to a bad neighborhood. They decide that the most responsible thing to do is to put their three children up for adoption because the neighborhood is unsafe for their children and they can no longer afford to keep their children in good schools. A condition of the adoption is that B and B's spouse are forbidden from communicating with their children. B and B's spouse will never again communicate with their children unless their children, upon reaching adulthood, choose to (and find a way to) initiate contact with B or B's spouse. B's spouse remains in contact with A's spouse even after the move. After five years of B's failure to keep a job for any reasonable length of time, B's spouse decides that B must have some character flaw that B's spouse can't detect but that B's employers can detect. B's spouse divorces B. Within a few years, B's spouse gets married to someone else. After B's ex-spouse gets remarried, there is no further communication between B and B's ex-spouse. B is finally able to get and keep a job because A no longer has a way of finding out where B works. Eventually, A's spouse finds out what happened and tells B the whole story. Question: in a legal system based on Objectivist principles, would B have any basis for a claim against A?
  4. Are you comparing something that causes a loss of privacy to something that causes direct harm? If you are doing that, then aren't you presupposing that there is something special about privacy? Suppose I give a kind of gift that normally contains nothing made from animals. So the recipient doesn't see a need to tell me that he or she is a vegan. However, that particular gift is made from animals and I know that it is, but I don't know that the recipient is a vegan. Have I violated the recipient's rights?
  5. I'm not sure that your point is on topic, but it is interesting. If I understand you correctly, your point is that we have to consider not just quality, but also price. Suppose we assume that good people will be motivated to provide a quality product or service regardless of whether or not they have competitors. We still have the problem that, if there are no competitors, then the product or service may be extremely expensive.
  6. What if someone gives you a gift that contains a concealed camera and that transmits video?
  7. What about the possibility that there are some laws that function as Objectivists would like and as all civilized people would like even though those laws are actually inconsistent with Objectivism? Does the Objectivist theory of rights actually provide a complete basis for a just legal system or is it just a tool that Objectivists use to complain about particular laws that they happen to dislike?
  8. Demented individuals exist. As an Objectivist, are you able to say that the government should have the power to enforce a prohibition against malicious, purposeless animal torture?
  9. The question that you don't quite understand was asked in response to this: The question for you is: what rights do people have?
  10. If there is no such thing as a contractual right--i.e. a right held by virtue of a contractual agreement--then why should courts take any interest in a breach of contract? If breach of contract is not a violation of rights, then why do courts treat it differently from, for example, breach of etiquette? You begin by saying, if I understand you correctly, that when a party breaches a contract, the injured party doesn't necessarily seek, as a remedy for the breach, the fulfillment of the contract. Okay. Now, how are you going to derive the conclusion that a breach of contract is not a violation of rights?
  11. So take out the word "Catholic". Also, we can make it a question about the nature of Objectivism rather than the nature of Objectivists. Can someone who agrees that people have rights and that no one may violate them -- but who thinks that no one has the right to manufacture, sell, buy, or use contraceptives -- be an Objectivist? Opposition to contraception is conventionally "explained" by saying that the person who opposes it is Catholic. Nut: "I eat two walnuts every Sunday." Normal Person: "Why?" Nut: "Because not only do I eat two walnuts every Sunday, but I also eat two filberts every Monday, two cashews every Tuesday, two almonds every Wednesday, two peanuts every Thursday, two pistachios every Friday, and two pecans every Saturday." Normal Person: "Well, you not only failed to answer my question, but you also told me about other practices that require an explanation." Nut: "I am a two-nutologist." Normal Person:
  12. Your statement is true, but what is the significance of your statement? Is there some reason that an individual voter should be treated as though he or she were making the decision that will come out of the voting process? Consider a system that allows you to select only one candidate. Does such a system declare that all the candidates you didn't vote for are interchangeable? Currently, many people do not vote for the candidate who is, in their judgment, the best. At the ballot box, they can express approval of only one candidate and they are afraid that a particular candidate whom they disapprove of will be elected. So instead of voting for the best, they vote for the least evil among those who seem most likely to win.
  13. Okay, before the one who does not use the black market medicine dies, he or she appealed to the benevolence of others. Nevertheless, the one who does not use the black market medicine does die from the disease. The one who does not use the black market medicine was motivated by a dedication to justice. Questions: 1. Is the one who dies heroic or not? 2. If life is the standard of value, then can you consistently claim that the one who dies is doing the right thing?
  14. In other words, there is a standard of justice. The standard of value is life lived in accordance with the standard of justice. Typically, we don't need to tell someone to value his or her own life. So the crux of the matter is the standard of justice. No?
  15. Are there Catholic Objectivists who agree that people have rights and that no one may violate them, but who think that no one has the right to manufacture, sell, buy, or use contraceptives?
  16. I would have thought the opposite. If someone doesn't have a capacity, then no motivation will be sufficient to evoke good performance any time soon. If I am trying to motivate someone to perform skillfully and I offer some incentive, then I probably already have reason to believe that the person has the capacity.
  17. How did you get that out of my statement? I thought it was pretty clear. First I acknowledged that a gold medal does have some intrinsic value, but then I asserted that the prestige value is much greater than the intrinsic value. Okay, apparent I asked the wrong question. At the very beginning of this thread, I asked: I now ask: Can anyone think of any worthwhile goal and deliberately constructed competitive situation associated with that goal for which the competition is anything but an imperfect method for motivating people to strive for the goal?
  18. To demand would be to merely communicate, but I didn't say anything about demanding. I referred to "a right to have others comply with their contractual obligations." You can ask what remedy there is if someone violates that right. Suppose you have a new car. Suppose I steal it and damage it so severely that it would be more expensive to repair it than to replace it. Suppose a judge decides that I am not required to pay for your damaged car to be repaired. Suppose the judge orders me to buy you a brand new car of the same make and model. Would you argue, before I steal your car, that you do not have a right to that particular car, but that you simply have a right to own a new car of the same make and model? The topic of this discussion is supposed to be the Objectivist philosophy of law. The topic is not a currently implemented legal system, unless you are posting your message from Galt's Gulch.
  19. I see that you answered my question with a question. I suppose it is possible that an athlete might melt down the gold and sell it as gold. However, the main value of the medal is prestige value and the meaning of it is that some particular competing athletes were defeated. If we were talking about silver and bronze Olympic medals, then there would be no question about it. Those metals aren't valuable enough for someone to value the medals for the metal.
  20. You asserted that competition "is not a motivating factor." I attempted to construct a counter-example to that assertion. If we are both looking for the truth in this discussion, then we should both be considering the question: "Is there a counter-example to that assertion?" You knocked down my attempted counter-example, yourself emphasizing--as objectionable--one part of that attempted counter-example. So you could have tried to construct your own counter-example by yourself eliminating what you emphasized as objectionable. Where did I assert or insinuate that doing something is equivalent to learning to do it? I strongly suspect that you wrote the above statement while yourself motivated by the desire to defeat me, your adversary, in this discussion. Earlier, you wrote this: Do you no longer have anything to gain from life? You still haven't responded to this:
  21. From the thread about privacy: I guess that "not given any assurances" means "there was no contract." However, how do we conclude from this that there was no rights violation? We might try to rely upon some premise such as the following. RIGHTS PREMISE: The only rights that anyone has are: A. a right to not have force initiated against one B. a right to not be defrauded C. a right to have others comply with their contractual obligations Now, two related questions arise. (1) What support is there for the claim that those are the only rights that anyone has? (2) What exactly is meant by a right to not have force initiated against one and a right to not be defrauded? The second question is very important because we have no reason to believe that some given support for the RIGHTS PREMISE is strong or valid support regardless of the meaning of the RIGHTS PREMISE. I can't think of a way of emphasizing the significance of this point without insulting a lot of people, so I will simply repeat the statement. The second question is very important because we have no reason to believe that some given support for the RIGHTS PREMISE is strong or valid support regardless of the meaning of the RIGHTS PREMISE. If you cannot understand what that means, then please indicate specifically what part of that statement is creating difficulties for you.
  22. Given that someone considers his or her privacy to have been violated, how does one determine whether or not the person was "injured"?
  23. Citizens for Approval Voting has an alternative to the existing system that is used in political elections. The idea is to take away the incentive for strategic voting and give you the risk free option of voting for your highest ideal. For a lot more info, look here: http://www.approvalvoting.org/ Any comments? Any better ideas?
  24. Look, you asked three questions: The first two seem to emphatically ask what it was that I meant to say. Your third question has the format "In what was is competition an [adjective] [noun]?" I took that to mean that you thought that I had asserted that competition is an [adjective] [noun]. Here you are replying to "Competition is a motivator in many sporting events, for example": I guess you're going to tell me that you used the word "rational" correctly here. This discussion is a little confusing. If I said that -5 is an integer, perhaps you would respond as follows: "No, it is not. Negative five is not a positive integer and I used the word 'positive' correctly here." Okay, let's assume that you're right about that and that I was wrong. How does this relate to the issue that we are discussing? Did you make an effort to figure out the point that I was trying to make? You emphasized the word "learn" as the outrageous part of my statement, so what happens if one eliminates that word? How would you respond to the following? Again, you seem to be arguing my point for me, but I'm not impressed by the style of the rest of your words there, so I will omit them. Do you really claim that actual sporting competitions are in fact rarely or never designed to motivate a given athlete to defeat the adversary? Let's consider competitive running events. Do all participants who complete a race within a specified time get a gold medal or does the gold medal only go to the runner who completes the race first--and in fact, go to that runner regardless of how long, in absolute terms, it takes the runner to complete the race?
  25. Let's suppose there is some circle of people who all know each other and who are all infected with a disease that is fatal unless it is treated. They cannot afford to treat it. They all know about a black market source of stolen medicine and all but one of them use that stolen, inexpensive medicine. The one who does not use the black market medicine is motivated by a dedication to justice. The one who does not use the black market medicine dies. The others live. Questions: 1. Is the one who dies heroic or not? 2. If life is the standard of value, then can you consistently claim that the one who dies is doing the right thing?
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