Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

Maybe Crow isn't reading my posts or something, but I pointed out to him earlier that NO barter is not illegal. But barter is not the same thing as having a monetary system -- with designated denominations of some value apportioned on Notes or even a metal based coin system. It has be tried in various times and even if it is not illegal at the time, the Feds have always come in and shut it down. It would be far too embarrassing and would blow the cover if a private bank had silver or gold money (Note or coins) and one could see in a short period of time that their value would increase over time with regard to the conversion to gold or silver not bound up in coins or Notes. The Feds know the game and know it very well, and no, they are not going to let you have a competing currency any more than they will let you have a large private schooling system where you set the standards. It's a game of force, and they hold all the laws and jails on their side. So, without changing a lot of laws and dismantling the Federal Reserve system, you are not going to get anywhere with making your protest money.

Crow, I think you are wrong about your assertion that a business can accept / demand payment in any form not related to the US Dollar. For one thing, according to US Tender Laws, anything presented with a price in terms of dollars must accept Federal Reserve Notes as payment in full. However, I do know that at times, a business can make an offer in dollars, and then say other payments will be accepted -- i.e. some Objectivist newsletters during the rising price of silver back when had a price in dollars or alternatively one could send in silver coins as payments. But I think to demand anything else (non-US Dollars) would be considered barter, and all bartering must be done in terms of US Dollar worth for the purpose of collecting taxes from those sales / trades. And if someone offered the US Dollar for those sales /trades, the business would be obligated to accept them.That is, if you have a car and want to trade it for some paintings, the individual prices must be stated in terms of dollars so that the seller can pay the taxes on it; and if someone offered the equivalent of dollars rather than paintings, then I think the seller would be obligated to accept those dollars. Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I worked in retail for about 30 years and these types of issues came up. In short, so long as the business is operating in the USA, he must accept the legal tender (Federal Reserve Notes) of that denomination specified in the price. In part, it is the US Legal Tender Laws that must be repealed if we are to move onto sound money that is backed by real assets. Otherwise, an equivalent offer in US Dollars must be accepted (by my understanding). Also, as Legal Tender, one can only go by the face value. So for trades or sales, it doesn't matter if one is talking about a pre-1933 one dollar bill (backed by silver) or a modern one dollar bill (not backed by anything); since both say "One Dollar" they are exchangeable and cannot be accepted at the silver value, but only at the "one dollar" value.

Actually, the absurdity is the continual use of fiat money not backed by anything. The only reason it still works is that it is illegal to use anything else as money. Otherwise, yes, the Federal Reserve Note not backed by anything would be rejected for sound money. And one must remember that this fraud was perpetrated onto the America people at a time when bills were more in circulation that gold coins, so few people noticed. Like today, only a handful of people really understand the proper nature of money (commodity backed money) that there is not a wholesale run from the Federal Reserve garbage. Otherwise, your attempt at reductio ad absurdum would be correct -- the value of the FRN in your pocket would be totally worthless and the value of gold compared to trash would be infinite.

Note: After further review, I have decided to delete my recent essay "Fractional Reserve Banking revisited." I think I was confusing a couple of things, like bank lending versus money coining. I see no problem with a customer depositing cash (gold) into a bank, the bank loaning it out, reducing the access to that customer's money by the customer, making it a fractional reserve bank. So long as the customer knows that he may not have ready access to his cash (because it is being loaned out), and other terms are mutually acceptable by the bank and the customer; what's the problem? In essence, my essay made the situation more complicated than it actually is. However, I do stand by my statements about proper money and the necessity to have it back by an appropriate commodity that is stated clearly on the face of it. And I see that Crow is finally seeing the light about why gold has gone up so much relative to the dollar due to the de-coupling of the dollar from gold.

By the way, Yaron Brook and ARI have done a video and a blog entry on this issue (top two entries via this search). Fractional Reserve Banking doesn't necessarily mean that the bank is printing out more Bank Notes, as I said, but rather how they handle deposits versus loans. But the central issue is the same: It is not fraudulent so long as each side of the party to the contract of a deposit /loan understand what he's getting into, and realizes that the depositor may not have immediate, ready access to his deposits in total -- without some wait time for the bank to catch up with the new withdrawal vs deposit ratio. I think in neither case is there inflation, as long as the Bank Notes is clear on what it is a demand of from the bank and so long as the overall amount of the commodity (gold) does not change much over time. And, as I pointed out earlier, when FRB was left up to private banks on their terms, there was less than a 1% inflation rate. Any bank that wants to stay in business is not going to overextend their demands / payments schedule; but if they do, they go out of business, so buyer beware.

It hasn't been mentioned in this thread, but due to the voodoo economics taught today, many people think that the value of money is what you can buy with it -- i.e. a loaf of bread, or a car, or a book. However, this is certainly not what the Founders meant when they said the government could set the value of money, and it is not what was meant pre-Greenback days (1933). The value of money is what one can get for it at face value from the issuer of the money. So, prior to 1933, all paper bill Bank Notes stated up front what the Note was worth in terms of some commodity (gold, silver, oil, etc.). So that when you went into a grocery store and offered your money to the cashier, he could look at it and decide if that is what he wanted in exchange for the groceries or not. Gold is accepted most anywhere for very good reasons, and so gold was used as money and the BNs where only handled like a pre-written check from the bank. These days, you take a dollar bill to the bank and ask them what you get for it, and they will look at you very strangely because they have all accepted the voodoo money BNs of the Federal Reserve (by force, I might add, since it is the only legal tender recognized by the Federal government).

So, you being "uncomfortable" means that I am wrong....sure..whatever. But here's the point. Yes, under capitalism Crow Epistemologist Bank (CEB) would be free to develop a currency based upon whatever assets it had, so long as that currency would state clearly on the face of it what that Bank Note is redeemable for upon demand on the bank. That is, the BN is just an easy to carry stand-in for the assets so the assets do not have to be carried around --i.e carrying around gold dust is inconvenient, as it would tend to get lost in the folds of one's pockets, so carrying around a paper receipt stating that the bearer of the Note is entitled to one thousandths of an ounce of gold upon demand when presented to the bank that issued it. But let's say CEB decides to monetize any or all of its assets (real estate, FB Stock, weeds growing in the back yard, whatever) and the CEB Note states, "The bearer of this CEB Note is entitled to one thousandths of the total assets of CEB holdings." When taken to a grocery store to use as cash for grocery shopping, why would the grocery accept such a Note as payment, when he wouldn't have a clue as to what he is going to get when he goes to CEB and demands the exchange of a paper receipt for those assets? Is he going to get a pencil? a sheet of printer paper? a flower from the back yard? or what? You see, it isn't clear versus him receiving a Note stating that, "The bearer of this Bank Note is entitled to one thousandths of an ounce of gold." Because so long as it is clear what he is getting for the Note from the Bank, then he can decide if he wants that or not. If it is not specified, it doesn't mean a damned thing and he will reject it, if free to do so.

Ever since gold has been completely de-coupled from the Dollar Bill (Federal Reserve Notes), yes, sometimes there can be future speculations between the Dollar vs Gold. That's basically what we have going on now. Many people are frightened that we are going to have a currency collapse, given that the Federal Reserve recently printed out something like *one trillion* dollar bills with nothing to back them up; so yes, gold is going to skyrocket relative to the dollar. But this does not indicate a future value of gold, but rather a future devaluation of the dollar -- i.e. there is a real potential that the dollar could go belly-up. However, there have been many studies that have shown that the price of goods in terms of gold has remained extremely stable throughout the decades and even longer. I remember one such study that showed that the equivalent of a hamburger for lunch in Ancient Rome is about as much as a fast-food hamburger in modern America, in terms of gold ounces. But it is the power of Congress to coin money and to regulate its value and the way modern economists screwed it all up that has made it so bad. If we could get rid of the Central Banks (legal tender by force) and return the coinage of money to private banks, we would see very stable prices and long-term benefits of having money backed by real commodities.

You didn't understand what I said about gold being a non-changing standard because the overall *amount* of gold does not change much over the years. And it has only gone up by 500% when compared to the paper dollar -- or another way of putting it, the paper dollar has lost its value relative to gold because they have printed out so many paper dollars with nothing backing it up. If gold were the currency (trading in terms of ounces of gold as the money), then, no, there would not be speculative binges regarding the value of gold.The value of gold would be in terms of what an ounce of gold could buy, and it is not going to fluctuate by 500% over the years (not unless a whole heck of a lot of gold "gets lost" or gets used for something other than money). You are thinking about the value of gold in terms of paper dollars, and the whole purpose of having gold as money is to wipe out that nomenclature. http://www.appliedphilosophyonline.com/fractional_reserve_banking_revisited.htm

I think some of you are forgetting something. While it is possible to monetize just about anything of physical value, the reason gold has stood the test of time is that the overall amount of gold does not fluctuate much across long periods of time and it is divisible in an of itself, and it is durable. Houses, stocks, loans,etc. are not like this. If you took your money based upon FaceBook stock down to your local grocers, he would have to be able to predict the future price / value of FB stock before he could accept your FB Money. Likewise with houses or some other commodity which can be created by man. As for the non-commodities (loans and other values that have to be paid back), the value would fluctuate across time as the number of loans outstanding and the rate of repayment would fluctuate. Gold is perfect for money for all the reasons I stated and these other things are not so good for the opposite reasons. I think one must keep in mind the purpose of a *standard* and the primary purpose of a standard is that it does not change over time -- i.e. even something as big as the Gold Rush days in early California did not significantly change the amount of gold available in the entire world. As far as using the other instruments as money, when necessary or prudent, I think this did not take hold for the reasons stated above, but also because we have not had freedom of banking for the entire history of the United States. In our Constitution, Congress is given the power to coin money and to regulate its value -- so other options simply were not granted to the banks. Under capitalism, of course, banks would have the freedom to create their own currencies and they could base it on whatever they chose to monetize -- I just foresee trouble with everything aside from a solid standard such as gold.

Right, I agree with that. If done correctly, I guess any value can be monetized. The point is, however, that one has to distinguish creating currency from creating wealth. Creating currency is taking wealth or future wealth and making Notes to divvy it up to use as cash; creating wealth means to take something that is not yet of value (i.e. gooey oil in the ground) and making it into something valuable (gasoline for cars). The problem, as I see it, is that non-commodity money is extremely risky. If the loans made by banks are not backed by collateral, then there isn't anything to back it up aside from a promissory note of future payments. At least with a collateral loan, if the payee defaults, the bank can get the commodity, so they still have something of value to back up their Notes. I think there is a certain sense in which the US government via the Federal Reserve is trying to monetize the debt owed to it by foreign banks and countries, which, as we can observe by the recent actions of Greece, are not worth the paper they are printed on, and will lead to a monetary crises.

While I agree that any asset or promissory Note can be monetized, I wouldn't call this the creation of money, unless you are going to be very careful with the usage of those terms. Making Notes available that has commodities backing it up does make a medium of exchange, but it doesn't create value out of thin air the way the Federal Reserve attempts to do. I don't think that is what you meant, but I wanted to clarify what could be misread by some observers.

Actually, Nicky, in the case of you writing a Note that you are willing to back up with some commodity, you have created a currency, in effect, or you have written a check against your holdings. If you did this and didn't pay it out, then you would be engaged in fraud, just as if you wrote a bad check. But I do think you have somewhat of a false premises in your posting. Under capitalism, there would not be a National Currency by which one could gauge the inflation / de-inflation scenario. Each bank would be free to issue its own coinage and / or its own Bank Notes (covered by some commodity); and what happens via one bank would not necessarily effect what happens at other banks (depending on their contractual arrangements regarding backing each other up). What would happen is that a particular bank would issue more Notes than they could cover (if mismanaged) and people would do a bank run to get out as much gold (or commodity) they could get from the bank before it collapsed. In those cases, it would be better to get, say, 90% of the face value rather than nothing, but then one could sue the bank for fraud; which would effectively erase all the capital investments of that bank (buildings, teller machines, computers, etc.). The only way real inflation could occur is if people accepted the BNs without eventually exchanging them at that bank for gold, and many more Notes might become into circulation than the bank had gold to back it up -- an increase in the currency (or the Notes used as currency). Effectively, that was how the Greenbacks were able to make headway without causing a violent revolution in America back in 1933. People, for the most part, were no longer carrying around much gold coins, but paper Notes back by gold, and the government convinced them that they could take over and do a better job (and where have we heard *that* one before!). This could not have happened pre-1933 because gold was in circulation as coins.

I think there may be too much arguing over definitions here, as with either communism or fascism, it is the government by force who is telling you what to do under the threat of imprisonment or fines; which is certainly not freedom.but I do find it amazing how many people go around claiming that the Soviet Union was not a communist country. Some say it because it was not imposed voluntarily (everyone didn't decide to pool their resources and let the government decide), but other say that it didn't achieve the Great Commonwealth and therefore fell short of the Communist Ideal. You know, it's like they have a fairy tale version of Karl Marx's ideal, and the reality just never sunk in -- that if one takes communism seriously as a moral ideal, then of course force is going to be used to make people comply. Similarly with fascism. And certainly America is heading for either one, though it is closer to fascism -- because then the politicians can continue to blame the businessman for every ill; like they have with the Financial Crises and will for the upcoming Currency Collapse (which will also be blamed on the banks). What to do about it? Continue to advocate capitalism in its pure, unadulterated form, and continue to promote a Constitutional Republic limiting the government to only having the role of protecting individual rights. It was made possible in the past due to the rational ideals of The Enlightenment, and can be brought about again, if we remain free enough and long enough to get the right ideas out there.

I think it may have been a big mistake to try to move from a friendship to a romance when you were drunk. I don't get drunk often and avoid trying to convert friends to lovers without first talking about it explicitly with her. The trouble is, once you move past the friend part to the lover part, there is no turning back. Just asking is OK, but actually making a move on her out of your love for her without her at least implicit approval does put her in a bad spot. However, since it was not more than a kiss, it is probably repairable. Many women just don't seem to take it as a compliment that you want to sleep with them if they are "just friends." Not sure why and not sure if this is irrational; though, of course, the let's be lovers part ought to be taken very seriously. I've manage to remain friends with women I've wanted to sleep with, but only because they made their position clear and that the love was not mutual, so I didn't advance further (OK, a few times I tried, even after her saying NO, but I got over it). Certainly dating someone else out of spite for a girl that rejected you is the wrong way to go, as there was no love there and you are just trying to hurt someone's feelings. But I do agree with the responder who advised you to stop getting drunk and stop going to stupid parties where you are trying to impress or de-impress a girl. On the other hand, I'm not sure one can do this in reverse -- i.e. move from a lover to "just a friend" if one has actually made romantic love to her. In one of Dr. Peikoff's podcasts, he says it's possible, but only after both have accepted it and have moved on. The problem is that love is different from friendship, they are not on the same continuum, so being rejected from love vs being rejected from friendship is of a different kind. In that regard, it's probably a good thing you only kissed the other girl instead of having slept with her.

I used to think that FRB would lead to inflation as well, but it won't, not if the banks manage their accounts correctly. For one thing, there wouldn't be a national currency in the first place. All issues of money and coinage and minting and Bank Notes would be done by private banks and the government would stay out of it, aside from actual fraud or force. So, the issue comes down to is the bank going to damage it's return on Notes to the extend that the Notes are worth less and less gold over time? Actually, this cannot happen, as a proper BN would state on the face of it that This Bank Note is Worth X Ounces of Gold. So, each Note would be worth a specified amount of gold in ounces and could not be changed after the fact (this would be fraud and would be illegal). If a private bank did declare that a One Ounce Gold Note would only be worth a fraction of an ounce of gold, people wouldn't use those Notes for cash transactions, and the bank would go out of business. Besides, historically, when banks were free to manage their own accounts and many did do FRB, there was less than a 1% inflation rate, and I think that was primarily due to some mismanagement and discoveries of new gold deposits (say the Gold Rush in California, which increased the gold supplies). So, I don't think inflation would be a problem. But I will have to say that the Founders made a grave mistake in giving Congress the power to coin money and to regulate its value. While the Founders could never have imagined the corruption of the Federal Reserve today, this amendment in the Constitution set the stage for the goldless dollar and the troubles we have today with deficit spending (printing out more dollars to cover government costs). But, they couldn't foresee everything and didn't fully realize that if they didn't spell everything out that Congress would run-amuck and destroy our currency. They also never imagined that a hundred and a few years later, all the gold in the country used as money would be confiscated to make way for the Greenback. They should have left it in the hands of private banks and mints.

[With a special thanks to Yaron Brook and some others who got me to change my mind on this topic] Fractional Reserve Banking By Thomas M. Miovas, Jr. 06/16/2012 I should point out that I am not an expert on financial issues, so this essay is based upon what I have learned over the years without taking any special courses on banking or banking practices. For the purpose of this essay, I am taking a gold as money standard as the correct system; though other commodities (silver, copper, oil, etc.) can be used as money. My original position, which I have to now change, was that fractional reserve banking was inherently fraudulent because it meant that a bank would print out more Bank Notes than they had gold in reserve. Let’s say they had 100 ounces of gold in reserve (in the vaults) and they print out Bank Notes (BN) as claims against 150 ounces of gold and loan them out or use them as transactions for cash exchanges. Surely, I argued, this means that someone is being defrauded because as those customers come to get their gold from the bank, the bank will come up short by 50 ounces of gold. It would be like writing a bad check and not having enough money in one’s account to cover the check, but writing them out anyhow and taking the products, leaving the producer with irredeemable and worthless paper. However, if I were to write such a bad check and then scramble to make cash deposits that would prevent a default in my bank account against the check, then everything would be OK, and I committed no crime and didn’t defraud anyone. Fractional reserve banking operates on a similar principle, though a good bank is more careful about writing “bad checks”. Basically, there is a future dynamic to banking that I wasn’t taking into account. A well-run bank will not only be taking in more deposits, it will also be getting returns on loans paid out. So, a sound bank takes its future earnings into account, projecting , everything else being equal, that they can expect, say, a 10% increase in either deposits or payments, and so they can print out an extra 10% in BNs and use it for cash transactions, provided that when the holder of that BN comes into the bank and demands the gold that is backing it up, the bank can hand over the gold from their reserves within a specified period of time to make sure the BN clears (or that they have gold in reserves or can get it to make the transaction sound). There is nothing fraudulent about this, just as you writing a check and making deposits into your account before the check clears is not fraudulent. It is a risky action to take, however, as no one can really predict their future business operations, nor that they will make a profit day over day or year by year. This is one reason why one would have to be wary of the business practices of one’s bank in a capitalist system, when there would be no banking regulations and no FDIC to back up deposits. If the bank isn’t operating efficiently enough (not getting enough new deposits or enough payments on loans), then it is possible that the holder of the gold BN would be left high and dry when he tries to cash in the BN for gold holdings. It also means that you, the depositor, might not have ready access to your gold cash you deposited until a specified period of clearance is met (say one week to fully close out one’s account). In other words, anyone using the BNs as cash for monetary transactions may be delayed in converting the BN to gold for a certain period of time while the bank scrambles to catch up with the demands on their deposits. For a well-run bank, all of this would be taken into consideration so that their issued BNs would clear for gold at a steady rate; otherwise, no one is going to be using those BNs for cash and would trade in gold only. So, the dynamic version of banking taken into account and the possibility that one would have a waiting period to get the gold backing the Bank Note issued by the bank means that no fraud or theft is involved, so long as the Notes do clear into gold within the specified delay time, which would be contractual on both the bank and its customers.

Here is a very short opinion piece on open immigration by Dr. Andrew Bernstein, who favors it.

Insofar as the Welfare State pays out to *anyone* reaching a certain level of neediness is most certainly altruistic, and certainly one of the arguments against open immigration on today's terms. However, it is the Welfare State that ought to be deemed illegal and not those wanting to immigrate here for better opportunities. I have had several scientist / engineer immigrant friends, and their country of origin played a big role as to whether or not they would be permitted to become American citizens. I do think SN is also correct that a big factor are professional organizations seeking to keep cheap labor out of their markets -- and that is also the role of failing so many engineering students during the first year by making courses unnecessarily difficult and confusing -- for the sake of keeping the skilled labor pool low to increase wages due to low supply of those professionals. My essay wasn't intended to be a complete overview of the immigration issue, but rather a focus on one aspect of immigration policy that I think is overlooked.

I couldn't find a particular article on the web that tied in what is known as "The Brain Drain" and current immigration policy. I do know that if you are highly educated and seek to immigrate to the United States that the effect on the country of origin is taken into account. Other countries have certainly pushed for not having their best and brightest move out of their impoverished countries, and have had some influence on US Immigration Policy. The bottom line is that the US does not make it easy for such immigrants to move here unimpeded, which is against our own self-interest. There was a really big stink about this in the early 60's to the 90's and Ayn Rand even wrote an article about it, since it is like Atlas Shrugged in real life; but my books are packed away. But the issue here, is what did they do about it? And what they did was to make immigration much more difficult to ease "foreign tensions" between the Have's and the Have Not's.

* By the term "criminal" here / above, regarding restrictions of immigration, I mean those who initiate force or fraud against others, with individual rights as the standard of the law.

http://www.appliedphilosophyonline.com/immigration_and_applied_egoism.htm Immigration and Applied Egoism By Thomas M. Miovas, Jr. 06/09/2012 I have known many immigrants to the United States over the years, and all of them have been very intelligent, personally motivated to achieve their values, and hamstrung by government regulations that will not let them immigrate freely; so long as they are not criminals, acting to overthrow the US government, nor carrying some deadly disease that is incurable. If one looks into the details of our current immigration policy, one will see that it is motivated by the moral principles of altruism. Altruism is the moral doctrine that one ought to be more concerned with the welfare of others rather than having a primary concern for oneself and one’s own well-being (egoism). It takes this form within immigration policy of making it nearly impossible for rational, self-sufficient immigrants to move to the US if the country of origin is suffering due to polices of that country that are against such individuals. In other words, there was a great push to limit immigration from the former Soviet Union because any intelligent observer understood that by letting the best and brightest Soviet citizen immigrate to the USA, the Soviet Union would become impoverished to the point of eventual collapse. But it was US policy not to let this happen, because the well-being of a foreign country took precedent over the well-being of the United States – i.e. applied altruism. It didn’t help matters that many policy officials in the USA considered Communism to be a moral / political ideal themselves, and therefore did not want to see a Communist State collapse due to its fight with the reality of the fact that Slaves of the State are unproductive. So, under an altruistic policy, immigration levels are set, country to country, in terms of what effect such immigration will have on the other nation, not on what such immigration will lead to in the United States. Clearly, if the best and the brightest are permitted to immigrate here due to our greater freedom and hence greater opportunities, then the other nation will indeed suffer and we will benefit. But what of it? Had the Soviet Union collapsed within a few decades, the whole Cold War would have ended and various real but proxy wars would never have happened. In effect, by having such an immigration policy, the US was acting against itself, but this is virtuous according to altruism. Objectivism takes a far different stance due to it’s assertion of rational egoism and the right of an individual to live his life to the fullest, earning as much wealth as he can by being a productive individual. It was the original immigration policy of the Founding Fathers, who understood that vast areas of the Colonies were unsettled wilderness and that by permitting such individual to immigrate freely that the economy would improve and civilization would flourish. An argument being made today is that we no longer have such wilderness areas that require development, and hence immigration ought to be restricted to cut down on city populations. But if highly populated cities were so detrimental to those living there, people would move out into less populated areas, and they are certainly free to do this. However, what we have observed over the centuries is that we can have huge productive cities, so long as men are free to act in their own self-interest. But, again, this requires understanding the morality of egoism, and not trying to make a pre-determination by government edicts of what is best for others living in the cities. And altruism implies force directed against others, since the other’s welfare is uppermost in the altruist’s mind, and the individual simply cannot be expected to live well on his own without someone, including the State, helping him out by making his life decisions for him. Hence, the State must decide for the other whether or not such individuals would be better off in the Soviet Union versus the United States. The idea that an individual ought to be free from the force or fraud of others comes about due to the idea that the individual is able to make rational decisions on his own. By rejecting this principle, altruism forms a type of collectivism, whereby a select group – often the State – claims to know more than the individual and can therefore impose edicts onto him for his own well-being. So, not only is altruism anti-individual on the moral level, it is anti-individual on the requirements of reason; since reason, in fact, is an attribute of the individual and can only operate if that individual chooses to use his own mind. An “open immigration policy” would recognize all these facts about the productive individual and would set each individual free from his former slave to semi-slave State; which would be virtuous, according to the principles of reason and egoism. In short, current US immigration policy is against the success of the United States and ought to be changed to better reflect the achievements that are possible by free, rational men, who go through the effort to start a new life for their own betterment in a free country.

Induction and Anarchism as an Ideal By Thomas M. Miovas, Jr. 06/02/2012 I’ve come to a realization recently after having discussions with several anarchists, and the realization is that some of them are not being rationalistic (thinking of principles divorced from the facts), but rather they are making an inductive generalization based upon their own experience of dealing with various governments who insist on getting in their way of leading their lives in a rational, independent, and productive manner. What generally happens is that they seek to do something – like opening up a business in a convenient location – and the government steps in and tells them they cannot do that without specific permission from the government (local, regional, or national). For example, I once had a boss who decided to move his picture framing gallery across the street to a smaller venue. No problem getting the lease and the business name and signage and all that stuff, but the trouble was that the venue did not have a rear entrance to be used in case of emergencies, so the local government would not let him move in until they had an investigation. Said investigation took over eight months to come up with a legal solution, so he lost revenue for all of that time. Fortunately for him, he had a second location that was doing OK, but can you imagine not getting paid for eight months due to a government technicality? I’ve heard of similar stories, and while not all of the victims turn to anarchism, some definitely do, stating that it would be better if we had no government at all, which they think would solve the problem. According to The Logical Leap by David Harriman, it does not take a lot of the same types of facts to be aware of to come to an inductive generalization. Turning on several light switches in a house can get even a young child to come up with the generalization, “Flipping the light switch will turn on the lights.” So, even a few times of dealing with a government can lead one to realize the generalization that, “The government is preventing me from living my life!” Is this a valid generalization? One based on the facts in terms of causation? And what should one do about it? An Objectivist would say to advocate for better government based upon upholding individual rights in such a way that the individual is free to live his life as he sees fit so long as he does not initiate force against others. To many people who turn towards anarchism (no government), this seems like a very far-fetched way of getting rid of entrenched governments who violate individual rights. However, a contextual research into the early decades of the United States (the first 150 years) will show that just such a government did indeed exist (sans slavery and taxes). That is, a government geared towards an extension of self-defense in an institutionalized manner did exist, and was lost over the years. But what made that loss possible; and, indeed, what made the United States possible in the first place? Basically, it was the ideas of The Enlightenment that made such a free country possible, as the individual became sovereign in all walks of life due to the rational influence of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, who advocated that each man’s individual mind was capable of knowing reality unaided by Divine Intervention or government edicts. Prior to that, with the possible exception of Ancient Athens, there was a top-down approach to government whereby the government would set the terms for the life of the individual in that society – of the individual being the servant of the State instead of the opposite idea that the government ought to be the servant / protector of the individual. It was the Founding Fathers of the United States and the political theories they understood and advocated that led to the individual protection type of government. Unfortunately, these ideas really required a more philosophical approach – basically a new rational philosophy and a rational morality – to ideally translate into a politics that would stand the test of time and not become eroded as reason and individualism wavered due to bad philosophies (primarily Kant and his collectivism). Without that fully rational basis, the Founders presented the case of rights as being self-evident – as it states in The Declaration of Independence – whereas the concept of individual rights does require a whole host of more fundamental ideas to be completely validated. Lacking such a base, the political ideals of the Founders became chipped away almost from the beginning, but especially after the ideas of Kant swamped the field of philosophy. And I think it is because the ideas of individual rights and proper government are not self-evident that collectivism on the one hand or anarchism on the other hand begin to take precedent in people’s mind. They tend to think that we need either more government (total socialism) or get rid of government altogether (anarchism) to solve the current problems. I have written elsewhere why I do not think that anarchism or competing governments will work, but I do think the anarchists just cannot conceive of a proper government or say that it has been tried and has always failed. Due to this, I think their initial inductive generalization is a false one, that the alternative is not Socialism versus Anarchism, but rather upholding individual rights in a fully institutionalized manner (Constitutional Republic) or dispensing with them in fully institutionalized manner (Communism). The idea of institutionalized protection for the individual is very difficult for the confirmed anarchist to accept, as individualist as some of them are, but anarchism is not the solution. A government dedicating to protecting the legitimate rights of the individual would leave one free to live one’s own life according to one’s own ideals while preventing others from interfering with said decisions with force (as this would be illegal and punishable by law). Anarchism, on the other hand, would not provide for such protection. Some anarchist claim to have thought it all through and have come up with solutions based on market principles, but I have yet to see a worked out solution that would not eventually lead to outright violence in the streets as one segment of individuals attempts to protect themselves from other individuals in an effort to protect their rights, which they claim were violated (real or imagined). With a Constitutional Republic and institutionalized systems of protecting the individual (police force, military, and courts for resolving disputes peacefully), I don’t see how one can protect oneself for large-scale enterprises, like a corporation that exists, say, in all states of the United States; nor for one’s own individual life as these competing agencies of force vie for protecting the individual without any sort of institutionalized system of resolving disputes (the court system). So, both myself and fellow Objectivists are for a clearly limited Constitutional Republic rather than anarchy.

Yeah, right...I am not supposed to defend a position that I agree with, and that makes me boorish and incomprehensible...while some of you guys can go around saying Dr. Peikoff is impolite and rude for coming straight out and saying what is on his mind. Is he supposed to say, "pretty please agree with me because I am right," or is he supposed to come out and tell it like it is? Some of you have no problem blasting his positions, and yet, when he blasts yours, all hell breaks loose. What the F...?

One other reason for us or our government from directly targeting the leadership of another country is that it is illegal. I had thought that we signed an international treaty to that effect, but according the a Slate article, it is illegal because Ford signed an Executive Order making it illegal.