Joynewyeary

What is the relevance of that statement? Is the contentment of significant numbers of customers more important than the rights of the individual customer? You should really be asking your siblings, not me. Go back and re-read my question and re-read what I was responding to when I asked the question.

How do you do that? I've got some questions: 1. Why did so much of the training involve typing on a computer? 2. Are we supposed to think that it is morally acceptable to cheat in order to pass tests (use of a phony heartbeat recording)? 3. In addition to a moral problem, isn't there an actual safety hazard? Why should we believe that the physical tests have nothing to do with the actual demands of the work that the main character was training to do? 4. What was the purpose of all those rocket launches? Why didn't we ever see what happens from the point of view of those who are on the launches? 5. Why does the character who makes a final security check allow the main character to pass through? 6. Are people really going to wear business suits to fly into space?

I used the word "method", not "model". Competition is a motivator in many sporting events, for example. You are arguing my point for me. To gain a value is the goal. A competitive situation may be created in an attempt to motivate participants to gain the value. For example, to motivate people to learn to make good chess moves, one might get them to play against each other. Now, suppose a player deliberately uses a move that is powerful if the opponent doesn't know how to respond to it, but that is weak if the opponent does know how to respond to it. A player may choose to exploit knowledge of an opponent's ignorance in preference to making an objectively better move. That doesn't seem dishonorable to me. It just demonstrates that giving someone a desire to win is an imperfect method for getting someone to make good moves. Of course, there are dishonorable methods for winning. For example, someone who has a good command of the rules might regularly make illegal moves, withdrawing them when the illegality is pointed out, but never initiating a withdrawal of an illegal move. That might merely be a matter of negligence and never a deliberate effort to make an illegal move, but it would still be dishonorable.

Reading my question in context, it should be clear that I was using the term "associated with" in a specific sense. In that sense, the competition of the vendors does not constitute a competitive situation associated with your goal. If you want to discuss the competition between vendors, then the relevant goal is the goal of a vendor, not your goal. The mere fact that more than one vendor serves a given population of potential customers means that there is a theoretical economic competition. However, an individual vendor's goal of selling coffee doesn't necessarily have anything to do with any competitive aspiration. A vendor doesn't have to know or care that other vendors exist. An individual vendor whose goal is to earn money by providing good service is an individual vendor who is already motivated even if that vendor has no theoretical economic competitors.

Consider the following words of Dr. Stadler in Atlas Shrugged: This passage seems to raise some fundamental issues of ethics and psychology. One problem with competitive situations is that they motivate some people to use dishonorable methods of competing, but that isn't the issue that is raised in the above passage. Maybe the connection between competition and free enterprise tricks some people into thinking that there is something necessarily good about competition. Can anyone think of any worthwhile goal and associated competitive situation for which the competition is anything but an imperfect method for motivating people to strive for the goal?

What guarantee is there that a typical customer's desire for privacy will have a controlling influence on business policy? Also, what about private property that is not operated as a business? For example, suppose that a child's parents allow photographers to stalk the child on the parents' property. Would that be okay? More fundamentally, what can you say about the actual issue of privacy? In a country where 99% of the people consider it important to stop and pray at specific times every day, one would expect businesses to cater to that custom. Do you think that the concept of privacy is nothing more than the remnant of an ancient superstition? Do you really believe that the mere fact that you could think of some examples ("police officers, soldiers, and politicians") that are consistent with your claim is evidence in favor of your claim? Don't you think that it might be a good idea to put some effort into looking for examples that conflict with your claim?

Isn't leaving one's curtains open a kind of negligence? Are you merely trying to demonstrate that it is okay for a negligent individual to suffer the consequences of the negligence or are you actually trying to demonstrate that there is no right to privacy? "Whom you kissed last night" doesn't sound like information that would be particularly damaging. How about these possibilities: (1) Suppose I am rich and I hate a particular person, but that person doesn't know that. I invite the person to my home for a discussion about The Satanic Verses. Hidden cameras record the person praising the book. I find television programs that have large Muslim audiences. I pay for the recording to be broadcast again and again and again during those programs. (2) Suppose I develop window coverings that are opaque for visible light, but completely transparent for a whole range of frequences invisible to the human eye. I keep this fact a secret. I get a contract to install them in a hotel or apartment building that has lots of windows. I rent a location across the street and for several years, using a camera that records frequencies not visible to the human eye, I film people having sex. I sell the films as pornography. (3) I build miniature remote-controlled blimps that contain remote-controlled telescopic cameras that transmit visual information to me. The blimps are designed to look like floating advertisements for soda pop. I fly the blimps near restaurants that have windows with no window coverings. I record names and credit card numbers and I sell the information to criminal organizations.

Why can't there at least be variety? Switching England from its current system of driving on the left hand side of the road to driving on the right hand side of the road probably wouldn't be worth the cost or danger. So, even in an ideal future, England will probably still remain a place where people drive on the left hand side of the road. So, in the future, someone who was born in the USA and who had some strange but powerful desire to drive on the left hand side of the road would be able to move to England and live happily ever after. However, would someone who had the desire to live in a country with no gladiator sports not be able to satisfy that desire by moving from the USA to England? In your ideal future world, would both England and the USA have to allow gladiator sports?

Are you suggesting that an armed robber who tries to steal from an establishment that has armed guards is necessarily an insane armed robber who should be treated as such by the criminal justice system?

Presumably there are specific laws that forbid the kind of fight described in this thread. Wouldn't a platform that fully discloses party policies specify that those laws will be abolished?

I apologize for this blatant violation of a basic rule of honest discourse. I took a position on a particular issue, presented an argument in favor of my position, and then declared that the issue is off topic and that no one may address it. Obviously, if it is off topic, then my claim and my argument are just as much off topic. I should have simply pointed out that one can consider the question of whether or not such fights would actually occur and that anyone who wishes to discuss that question should create a new thread for it.

I hope you don't mind if I ignore those questions because the issue that I want to get at is along the lines of full disclosure in political-philosophical marketing. If you are not saying that perhaps such fights should be legal, but you are saying that they must be legal, then an issue arises. Do you tell this only to people who specifically think of the question and ask it? Or would you publish it as part of a full party platform so that people who have not yet decided how to vote can take this into consideration?

Suppose two people agree to fight until one of them is dead. Others pay to watch them fight (maybe some in a stadium and others at home watching pay-per-view television.) Assume that the two people are legally sane, consenting adults and that they both received independent legal advice before entering into the contract. In reality, some people actually decide to simultaneously take major physical risks, violate moral principles, and violate criminal laws. So it is possible that one could recruit two people to take part in a legal fight to the death, assuming that such a fight were legal and the winner would receive lots of money. However, please don't bother to argue that such a fight would never take place, because that is not the issue here. My question is: should such a fight be legal? Just answer the question and explain your reasoning.

Lee Hunsacker suggests Hun + sacker. The Huns sacked Rome. The Huns were a serious threat only after the Empire was near collapse because of its own internal problems. Rome might correspond to Christianity or the Church of Rome, which has some things in common with the philosophy put forward by the Starnes heirs. Lee Hunsacker bought the factory and ran it into the ground after it was already in a very bad state, just as the Huns sacked Rome after Rome was already in a bad state. Of course, that doesn't mean that it was not possible for new management to improve things. It's just that Lee Hunsacker didn't manage the factory any better than Huns, in sacking Rome, managed Rome. In other words, maybe what destroyed the Roman Empire was Christian philosophy.

Suppose Galt had been born at the right time to become the very first Renaissance man. Would he have thought that it was too soon for there to be a Renaissance? What is the advantage of a collapse? Aren't chaotic conditions more likely to help charismatic aspiring dictators than to help people who aspire to be rational statesmen? Observe that Atlas Shrugged does not describe the implementation of any political improvements. It describes laws that get worse and conditions that get worse. Apparently the good news that Galt is rescued is supposed to be enough to satisfy us to accept a few symbolic gestures in the final two pages of the novel as an indication that all of the previous trends will be reversed.

Perhaps I could raise another issue in the same general category as the questions at the beginning of this thread. In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart asked "How thoroughly have you been watching me and for how long?" Galt answered, "For years." Why did Galt, for years, gather information about Dagny before she had even met Galt? Why didn't that make Dagny worried that Galt might have some kind of obsessive personality disorder? What made Galt think that there would be any chemistry between Dagny and Galt? What made Galt think that Dagny would make herself available by dumping Rearden?

By actively trying to persuade successful industrialists to stop doing the work they ordinarily did, was John Galt merely letting a corrupt, dominant philosophy take its course? By writing his radio speech (that identified who he was) and using powerful, secret technology to interfere with the regularly scheduled broadcast and replace that broadcast with his speech, was John Galt merely letting a corrupt, dominant philosophy take its course? If Galt had been born in Europe just as the Renaissance was beginning, might he have opposed the Renaissance on the grounds that the corrupt philosophy dominating Europe had not yet finished taking its course?

The Twentieth Century Motor Company was inherited and the heirs introduced a kind of socialism. Galt, an employee, didn't accept the plan. He said, "I will put an end to this, once and for all." He didn't mean that he was going to keep the Motor Company the way it was before the socialistic plan. He meant that he was going to affect the whole country or perhaps even the world political situation. It seems that he was motivated by what was happening at the Motor Company. Shouldn't he have been motivated by his knowledge of the actual situation regarding politics and legislation in his country? It seems that the worst political policies described in Atlas Shrugged weren't enacted until after Galt was already pursuing his plan to "put an end to this, once and for all." For example, it seems that Directive 10-289 was introduced after Galt was already attempting to "put an end to this." Did the oldest human tribes already have an ideal political system? If they didn't, then how did human beings ever create good political systems? Did they do it by causing society to collapse and expecting the collapse to lead to good results? What makes Galt think that a collapse will be beneficial this time?

What kind of explanation are you looking for? In matters that are affected by chance events, rational men do not desire to receive the benefits of good fortune? It's hard to believe that you believe that. I could understand if you said, "Good people do not intentionally or negligently violate the rights of others. Therefore, good people do not, in the pursuit of any benefit, violate the rights of others." However, it seems that you have replaced "good" with "rational". This is the issue that I was trying to raise. Isn't there a difference between a capacity to function competently and an intention to avoid doing evil?

Is there supposed to be some law of reality that gives capabilities to those who are virtuous and that prevents those who are not virtuous from having capabilities? For example, consider Ragnar Dannekjöld. In Atlas Shrugged, he is not just an ordinary pirate. He is a very effective pirate and he is widely feared. His justification is that he is fighting against other pirates and that those other pirates use the law to disarm their victims. Now, suppose that he existed in a world with no such governmental pirates. So his justification would disappear. Yet, suppose that he nevertheless tried to live as a pirate. Why would his lack of justification necessarily impair his competence as a pirate? You might say, "His conscience would get in the way." Let's imagine a pirate who has no conscience. Would lack of conscience automatically take away his competence as a pirate?