Evangelical Capitalist

Agreed... mostly. The information I have came from a local newspaper article. I didn't claim knowledge of anything that wasn't stated in the article, and I explicitly identified my assumptions. I very much doubt that any company has yet had the temerity to refuse to pay the fine or to lower their price (note that this is another assumption,) and so the consequences of such refusal may not be well defined. Those consequnces weren't mentioned in the article (this is not an assumption,) and so in considering the alternatives available to the drug companies, I must necessarily assume something. Since the power of the Canadian government over the drug companies rests ultimately in the government's protection or non-protection of property rights, my assumption, in fact the only reasonable assumption, was that ultimately, the cost of non-compliance would be the loss of such protection. I think I'm entitled to assume that much. Others are free to take my assumptions as just that and judge for themselves whether the assumption is warranted or not. I do agree entirely that once you buy those drugs, they're yours to do with as you see fit. I don't like the argument against reimportation on safety grounds for the same reasons I don't like the FDA in the first place. It's the embodiment of the "nanny state." The problem is not reimportation; the problem is price controls.

This is just trivial, isn't it? Additionally, are you trying to suggest that because you can construct an expression of indefinite length, or as arbitrarily long as you'd like, which evaluates to 0, that zero and infinity are necessarily the same thing? How about 1+1/2+1/4+1/8+...=2? Are infinity and two the same thing? No. There has to be something at absolute zero in order for that concept to have any meaning. If there was nothing at absolute zero, what would be at absolute zero? See the problem? And even if the matter within a certain space actually reached absolute zero, which we have no means of achieving or detecting to my knowledge, it would immediately be warmed by its surroundings, the laws of thermodynamics being what they are.

They don't "negotiate". Canada has a drug-pricing board (I don't remember the exact name of the board.) What they do is determine whether the prices being charged by drug-companies are "fair". If the prices are found to be too high, the company must pay a "refund" of the total amount by which they have overcharged. The "refund" is paid to the government, of course. (The article I read did not specify what happens when the price is found to be too low. ) If the company refuses to lower their price or pay the "refund" I can only assume that their patent protection is rescinded. This is price-control, not negotiation or leverage. (My wife works for a major drug company, so I follow these things pretty closely.) As an aside, when a group of employees from my wife's company confronted a local congressman over his support for drug-reimportation at a "town hall" meeting on the topic, his response was, "I'll get re-elected anyway." Ah, democracy at work. Q.E.D. One more aside (this just keeps getting better and better.) One of the people who originally set up this board and served on it for a number of years now makes money advising drug-companies on how to price their product and make their case for "fairness". I taught them to twist your arm, now I'll teach you not to mind the pain. Their rights don't exist unless the government grants them protection? Since when is government the source of any rights, intellectual or otherwise. Why isn't the property right the same in the idea as in the product? Isn't the purpose of law the protection of rights, not their creation?

A: Something may exist without identity. B: What thing? A: Well, something that acts acausally, for instance. B: What acts? A: Something without identity. B: A non-thing? A: No, something. B: What? A: I can't identify it; it has no identity. But I could give it a name. I'll call it a widget. B: What does that mean? What does "widget" refer to? A: Nothing. B: So widgets don't exist? A: No. B: I rest my case.

Basically every denial of the axioms (or of anything for that matter) is of the form: "It's not true," or the skeptic's version, "You can't prove it." In either case, they are identifying something which is not true or which can't be proven. To identify something, it must possess identity. One down, two to go. The concepts of "truth" and "proof" each imply an objective reality to which a true or a proven statement must conform. Two down. Finally, either statement can be prefaced with the qualifier "I know..." without changing its meaning. In each case, the denier is claiming knowledge. Knowledge pertains only to consciousness. Three up, three down, end of inning. Every coherent thought or statement one can make implies all three axioms: existence, identity and consciousness. It worth noting that each axiom may be implied in mulitple forms in the same statement. ("Proof" for example also implies a consciousness capable of distinguishing the proven from the unproven.) Dr. Peikoff's explanation goes into greater detail, but the above is the basic idea. I do like the slap-them-upside-the-head-until-they-admit-that-you-are-in-fact-slapping-them-upside-the-head idea. Though it might not work so well if your opponent is bigger than you.

The things you name: child labor, poor working conditions, etc. were not so much products of capitalism as they were inherited by capitalism. By the time child labor was outlawed, it was already on the decline; a decline made possible by the increased productivity that capitalism brought. When child labor was prevalent, the alternative for those children may well have been starvation. The alternative to poor working conditions was abject poverty, again, a condition created by the pre-capitalist era. It is true that slavery has many forms. That doesn't mean that anything you assert to be slavery is slavery. It does not mean that all power is enslavement. It does not mean that eating your cake and not having it too is slavery. Slavery is a condition under which man's life and the product of his effort do not belong to him. This condition necessarily requires the use of coercive force to keep man in such a state. In a free economy, such force is banned. A worker is free at any time to leave his job and seek any alternatives that may be open to him. Slavery is precisely what can not exist under a free economy. To sugggest otherwise is to fail to distiguish between the power of trade and the power of force or coercion. Economic power is the ability to offer value in exchange for value. No one can force anyone else to engage in such a trade. It must be voluntary for both parties. Again, such is the nature of a free economy. The root of economic power, of offering value for value, is production, the ability to create value to offer. Your "sadistic ethicless commercial leader" isn't going to produce very much, nor for very long, nor will others be willing engage in trade with him.

Emotions are an automatic reaction to a fact of reality, or something perceived as such, based on one's value judgements. I believe AR called them "a lightning calculator giving us the sum of our gain or loss." (That's approximate, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, nor do I remember exactly where it came from.) My favorite demonstration of this is a technique Dr. Peikoff used in teaching the subject to a class, and which is relayed in OPAR. He walks in to class one day and begins handing out exam booklets. Much consternation and gnashing of teeth on the part of the students ensues. Why? Because they identified the booklets (the object) as being part of a process of examination for which they weren't prepared and thus their grade in the course (a value) would be harmed. Ergo: fear and trepidation. It was noted also that students auditing the course, i.e. not taking it for a grade, had no such reaction. The situation held no implication for their values. There are four steps, or components, of an emotional experience: the object of the emotion (this need not be a physical object,) the identification of that object, its evaluation according to our value judgements, and the emotion itself. The first and last of those are beyond our immediate control. However, the rational identification of reality is a volitional process and our values are chosen by the same process. Our emotions, therefore, will be rational to the extent that our consciousness functions rationally, to the extent that the value swe choose are rational. To answer your question directly: no, our emotions are not a form of instinct as such. They are not causeless, irreducible primaries. They are not an alternative measn to knowledge about reality. (They may tell us something about our subconscious values if we take the time to examine them rationally by stepping backwards through the 4 steps listed above.) They are automatic indicators of the success or failure of our values, much like the physical sensations of pleasure or pain. They are a good thing, warning us of danger, motivating us to achieve, rewarding us when we do so, but only if we have selected the proper values. If our values are set against our livlihood, then our emotions will destroy us. If by "controlling our emotions" you mean that we'll all become stoic Vulcans, then no, we won't. We have no choice about experiencing emotions, but we can indirectly control their content by the values we choose.

I also noted a couple of false-alternatives. For instance: "Are you more likely to trust: a) your conceptions or your experiences?" Of course this only makes sense if you assume that conepts are neceesarily divorced from experience. Otherwise, it's nonsensical. I took the Myers-Briggs in college. I think I was also INTJ, though it may have been ISTJ. (Whether N or S, I was pretty close to center on that factor anyway.) I really don't remember. I do remember that the professor told me they'd never seen anyone so far over on the Thinking scale.

Or how about this: This is fun.

A little journalistic license.

On a related topic... Am I the only one who notices that political discourse in this country is entirely concrete-bound? I saw a poll where most people (and it was not a slim majority) thought that we had too much government, yet all you hear is people crying for the government to do this or get more involved in that or be more stringent on the other. I suppose it's because everybody has their own little pet issues, but what does it take to make people see the light? (When we answer that question, our problems will be over, I know.) I'd like to see one politician, just one, talking rationally about principles instead of constantly droning on about what he's going to do about this or that issue, with no grounding whatsoever.

Betsy: Thanks for helping me check my premises. The "trusteeship" idea makes the most sense and is nearest to what I had in mind. The only difficulty I had was validating the child's right to life. Once established, the rest follows from that. I'm going to have to go back and try to find where I read the part about the rational faculty not being fully (note the key word "fully") developed until after puberty. The "sleeping man" analogy did occur to me as I was writing my original post. I didn't mention it, because I couldn't specifically define its relationship to the question at hand, since it was my understanding that rights could not be based on a potential, whether the potential for "being" or the potential for rationality.

This is a question I've thought about, and have never seen satisfactorily addressed from an Objectivist perspective. (I was getting near to starting a similar thread myself.) The difficulty I have, which has been approached but not explicitly stated on this thread, is that the Objectivist validation of the right to life breaks down when applied to children. Children, and I'm talking about infants/newborns here, don't possess a developed rational faculty in any practical sense. (Research has shown that the rational faculty is not fully developed until sometime after puberty.) The idea that each man is an end unto himself depends on the possession of a rational faculty, and thus it seems children cannot possess a right to life. In order maintain the right to life with respect to children, it would have to be dependent not on a functioning rational consciousness, but on the potential for the development of such a consciousness. This explicitly contradicts the Objectivist justification for abortion, which issue I view as closely related to this one. (Metaphysically, the only difference between a newborn and a fetus is that the newborn is no longer dependent on any particular person for its survival, though it is obviously still dependent on some person or persons.) Unless I'm misunderstanding either a) the validation of the right to life, which I doubt, or the nature of a newborn's consciousness, which may be more likely, the right to life cannot be validated with respect to a newborn. All the explanations given above, C-Wolf’s "invalid" analogy and the idea of the parent as guardian of the child’s rights, presuppose the existence of the natural rights of the child. The notion of the child being the parents' responsibility due to their choice to bear the child seems most likely to hold up, but this would be nearer to contract rights than natural rights, and this explanation holds its own problems. The "contract" would be entered by the unilateral choice of the parents, rather than by consent of both parties, which is obviously impossible with respect to the child. Additionally, the right to enter into a contract, like all other rights, derives from the right to life. What this explanation has in its favor is that both parties should gain some value from the relationship: the child has its needs taken care of, and the parents, if they had the child for morally acceptable reasons, i.e. for selfish reasons, gain some value from the experience of raising the child. Ultimately, the question comes down to whether the child is an end in itself or a means to the ends of others. Clearly, the child is born of the parents' choice, as a means to their ends. That the child has its own interests which may be harmed by the parents' actions, by abuse, neglect, etc., is undeniable. A parent who is actively hostile toward their child's welfare is simultaneously hostile toward whatever end for which they chose to have the child in the first place, assuming they chose those ends, and the child as means, rationally. But on what basis are the welfare and interests of the child elevated to the status of rights? On what basis are abuse and neglect to be prosecuted? To be clear, I believe they should be; I’m not trying to play devil's advocate here. I just can't seem to validate that belief. (Go ahead. Call me a raving emotionalist.)

If I remember correctly, VoS doesn't have a title essay. I think what you're referring to is "The Objectivist Ethics" which is the first essay (a lecture actually) in the book.

Yes! I hated Fight Club and Identity for precisely that reason. At least when Hitchcock made Psycho, the idea was original. Oh, yeah. I really liked PoC too. But I've never seen a bad swashbuckler.

Close, but incomplete. The good is defined as that which aids in one's life, as man, i.e. as a rational being. Life, for man, is more than mere survival. Survival as a leech or as a parasite is not life as man.

1. Aristotle (100%) 2. Ayn Rand (82%) 3. Aquinas (82%) 4. Plato (68%) 5. John Stuart Mill (65%) 6. Nietzsche (63%) 7. David Hume (62%) 8. Epicureans (60%) 9. Thomas Hobbes (60%) 10. Spinoza (59%) 11. Stoics (58%) 12. St. Augustine (55%) 13. Jeremy Bentham (53%) 14. Jean-Paul Sartre (49%) 15. Cynics (47%) 16. Kant (45%) 17. Ockham (39%) 18. Prescriptivism (21%) 19. Nel Noddings (20%) Answers: 1. a - high 2. b - medium 3. f - high 4. f - medium 5. b - medium 6. a - high 7. e - low 8. d - low 9. a - high 10. c - high 11. c - high 12. b - high In briefly examing where my answers differed from those who posted their answers, it was mostly on questions I felt were poorly phrased or where I didn't like any the options provided.

Could you point to some? On brief glance it seems mostly to be inhabited by Marxists and subjectivists.

I think what DPW is talking about (if I understand him correctly) is the supposed distinction between economic rights/liberties and civil rights/liberties. That distinction is a result of the mind-body dichotomy. It shouldn't be confused with the separation of economy and state under a laissez faire system.

Q: How many Objectivists does it take to change a light bulb? A: If you value your life qua man, you'll change your own d**n light bulb!

So the identity, i.e. the existence, of a concept lies not in its name, but in its definition. Also, the name is not essential to the formation of a concept. What is essential is the method of formation and the definition.

So if I spoke Russian, which I don't, I could form a single concept equivalent to "political prisoner" because Russian has a single word for it, whereas English doesn't? What if I'm bilingual? Can I only hold that concept in my head so long as I'm speaking or thinking in Russian? Do I lose that concept when I go back to English? Your statement that the concept depends on the language, not the person, is entirely backwards. The concept depends on the consciousness, not the language. Epistemology is not dependent on semantics.

Another thread about export subsidies reminded me of a problem I've thought about, but to which I have not found a solution. Specifically, the problem of foreign governments imposing price controls on goods produced by domestic companies. Normally, this would result in a shortage of the product in question. There seems to be at least one exception to this: pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals differ from a "normal" product in two respects: the market for a particular drug is limited to the incidence rate of the disease it is meant to treat, and the marginal cost of production is relatively small compared to the cost of research and development. Since the market is limited (as is the term of patent protection for a given drug) the manufacturer has to recoop a certain amount of their research and development investment on each pill, in addition to the cost of production, to maintain long-term profitability. However, the sale of a given pill is "profitable" so long as the manufacturer gets more than the cost of production from the sale, since the costs of research and development are "sunk costs" and are not recoverable by refusing to sell the product. This enables price controls to be set well below what the normal "market price" would be without jeopardizing the supply. Even with the price controls in place, the company makes a greater profit by selling than by not selling, so they continue to sell. Additionally, if the company refuses to sell to a particular country because of the price controls, it's patent protection would presumably be revoked by that country. Under such a scenario, the pharmaceutical company is forced to make up the difference by increasing its prices in countries where no price controls exist. Effectively, this amounts to the non-price-controlling coutries subsidizing the medical research that benefits the price-controlling countries. How would an Objectivist government protect the rights, not only of its own pharmaceutical companies, but also of its citizens, who would be subsidizing those other countries, since it would never have price controls of its own. Should it allow its citizens to purchase those drugs from foreign pharmacies, where they can benefit from the price controls? In my mind this would make them accessories to theft and/or extortion. Should it ban the reimportation of price-controlled goods? Should it concentrate on getting the foreign government to lift the price controls? By what means would it negotiate for such? Wouldn't any concession in such a negotiation constitute a complete surrender of principle?

The statements are mutually exclusive. A is A; a thing cannot be composed of something and nothing at the same time. However, they are not collectively exhaustive. There are existents to which the concept of composition does not apply, i.e. they are indivisible. These statements do not cover such existents, as has already been discussed.

A distinction needs to be made between price and cost. A price is the dollar amount affixed to a monetary transaction. (Note, this is not intedende to be a definition.) The cost of the transaction (and this is where the value judgment comes in) to each party is any of the alternatives they could have chosen. What could they have done instead? Since each party, by definition, values what they trade for more greatly than what they give up, the price will be somewhere between each party's value-judgment of the other good being exchanged. As far as a definition of price, I read what I thought was a really good one somewhere, but I can't remeber what it was, and I'm not sure where I read it. Not much use, huh? I think it may have been "Libertarianism: A Primer" by David Boaz, and he may have been citing von Mieses. But I'm a little iffy on that. The definition, as I recall, was something to do with the relative demand for resources, and the information prices convey allows resources to be channelled to where there is the greatest demand. Or more accurately, perhaps, away from where there is a realtive surplus and towards a relative shortage. High oil prices, for instance, will draw more resources into the exploration and extraction of oil, and vice versa.