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daniel

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Everything posted by daniel

  1. Dosen't such as price-fixing not allow the market to function? Secondly what if manufacturers collude & agree to make poor quality products, which need to be repaired & replaced faster, and high-quality alternatives are extremely hard to find. Collusion prevents any large competitor from offering high-quality alternatives---the loser is the consumer. (This has become normal in America; it is most noticeable with clothes---"they don't make 'em like they used to"---but actually, almost no product of any kind lasts more than a few years.) On the employment side, employers could easily collude to deny labor any choices. If no one offers benefits, workplace protection, or even decent wages, then workers can't insist on them. And employers would soon see it's "in their interests" for hungry employees to accept $0.75 an hour because they have no choice. PS this is not my personal view, rather im playing devil's advocate
  2. How would a truly laissez-faire system prevent corporate collusion? Couldn't businessmen agree to scrap health and safety and pensions etc? Is corporate collusion acceptable?
  3. In what sense is murder 'divorced from' reality?
  4. Could somone explain how I should counter this: 'How is murder divorced from/anti-reality? What about a murderer who knows he will not caught and will gain great wealth? This murder was not in any way divorced from reality- it was a rationally selfish act based entirely in reality'. He also writes in response to my point that we can't separate morality and rationalism with this: 'No there is not a separation- the wrongness of the act is based on its irrationality. But you cannot explain its irrationality in terms of it being worng, because then you are arguing in a circle. It is because there is a relationship (morality being based on rationality) that rationality is neccesarily prior to morality'. What do you think?
  5. Schwartz points out that in the 1983 copy of 'Individual Liberty' Joffe wrote that NAMBLA members 'are amongst the most brutally state-oppressed individuals in this coutry'. Schwartz also writes in 'Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty' that Joffe and other libertarians sponsered a NAMBLA march in New York in 1983. Though this is all i can find i'm afraid.
  6. I was debating with someone and he said that leaders are very important to a regime. His argument was that Hitler, one man, did so much wrong, but imagine what he would do if he was not corrupt. He is using this argument to justify communism, he claims that if the communist leaders were not corrupt communist would have worked. Thus all we have to do is get the right leader and try it again he maintains. What do others think? Dosen't power corrupt as Acton argued?
  7. I got a response from the person who thinks objectivism legitmises murder. Here it is: Okay it destroys self-esteem because it is a violation of rationality. Is rationality therefore the ultimate criterion for chosing moral principles? If so, in what sense is murder irrational? You can't say its irrational because its bad, because then you are making a moral judgement thats prior to rationality. Equally, you can't say it's irrational becuase life is good, because again you are making a value-judgement that is prior to rationality. Your challenge, therefore, is to explain why murder is irrational without making any moral judgements about it. I don't even know where to begin with him!! He just dosent understand objectivism at all!! Reject morals!!
  8. I told him the von Mises and Hayeks arguments about how central planning and said this 'socialist governments are unable to know the opportunity costs of their actions because there are no prices once money is outlawed. Money provides for common "language" to speak in terms of. In socialist nations, you are literally comparing apples and oranges, with nothing meaningful in common to compare them to'. This was his response: 'Who said money is outlawed? There was money in the USSR. What are you talking about? The government can calculate anything that capitalists can calculate without much of a problem'. He mantains that money is still around so the government could still calculate costs. How would you counter this?
  9. I argued that that murder can never be in one's interests because it destroys self-esteem and is a rejection of reason. His response was this: 'the very concept of self-esteem is an evaluative one; you can't define what is moral in terms of self-esteem, becuase morality is prior to self-esteem. Something isn't bad because it destroys my self-esteem, I loose my slef-esteem because I know I've done something bad. In fact, if the ability to destroy self-esteem were an objective property of murder, and that was what made it wrong then every single person who commited a murder would have their self-esteem destroyed. But this simply is not true; indeed, there are some for whom it would be a boost to their self-esteem, say, gang memebers, for example. We do not percieve the loss of self esteem as something that is 'forced upon' us by a certain action. Instead, we make an evaluative judgement about an action we performed, and if we judge that it was wrong, we then hold ourselves in lower esteem. The loss in self-esteem comes after the moral judgement, not before.' What are the counter arguments for this?
  10. Hi, Someone i was cyber communicating with said that in an objectivist society murder would be permissible because objectivists reject remorse as it is a form of altruism. This is his argument: 'So if society wasn't concerned with altruism (i.e. if we were all objectivists), we wouldn't be remorseful when we murdered someone, so there'd be no remorse to stop us being ambitious and planning fortunes, so murder wouldn't stop us achieving our selfish ends, so murder wouldn't always be wrong. So when it comes down to it, in an objectivist society murder is okay, so long as you don't get caught'. What do others think? What are your counter arguments?
  11. Yes, ive pointed out lots of hisotrical examples but his response is always this: communism is not to blame, rather the leaders are. If communism had of had good leaders not corrupt one's it would have succeded is his claim.
  12. Hi, I've been discussing the disadvantages of capitalism and communism with someone and he thinks that the reason why in the end communism is more efficient than capitalism is because being a planned economy resources arnt used up too quickly. As he writes: 'free markets lead to using up too many valuable resources, while in planned markets, the government can organise a more effective use of the resources. At the moment this has not affected free markets. But that is because resources are still in large supplies. In the future however, certain valuable resources that the capitalist businesses were relying upon in order to satisfy the demand will completely run out. This is why I believe Communism will prove to be a more efficient system in the future'. What do others thinks? What arguments should i use to counter?
  13. Many thanks for your comments. The accusation of being too subjective is shown below. These are the kind of things i've been told. Judging cultures is rather subjective, and as a result, we can say which type of culture we prefer, but we cannot really say that one is broadly "better" than another, as it depends upon what aspects are most valued to the individual doing the assessment. Superiority seems to be anything you want it to be; "they killed more people so we are superior Whats the criteria for superiority? Would a western 'civilisation' that is somewhat dependant on immigration from Non-western 'civilisations', be 'superior'? America the biggest Western Power still has the death penalty and cloning, as does Germany. And we aren't the most advanced, South Korea is in front of us in terms of cloning. A competition to see which culture is superior is too subjective and does not foster a positive atmosphere.
  14. Hi, Im Daniel, a 19 year old student at the London School of Economics. Being there it's a bit of a miracle I found Ayn Rand's works! Don't know her works very well yet, but hope to learn more and with the help of this forum I'm sure I will Thanks Daniel
  15. What do people think? I read an article by Edwin Locke on the ARI website. When I told people they criticized it claiming it's too subjective, claiming the criteria of reason etc. is wrong. How should I counter this? What's the evidence that reason is better than mysticism that they have in the middle east for example. Also haven't we benefited from other civilizations? Isn't it wrong to group states together like this into collectives? (Spellings corrected. Please use "Spell Check" button before posting. Also, added link to article.- softwareNerd)
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