JASKN

A few points:
1. I think Ayn Rand's work is fairly influential in American politics, and she is part of the reason why the US is a pretty nice place to live in.

2. Politics is not the only area in which Objectivism can be helpful in improving the world around you. After all, Ayn Rand's philosophy is about a lot more than just politics. I think the most important "fight for Objectivism" takes place in our personal lives, not on the political stage or in the media. You can "fight for Objectivism" by surrounding yourself with rational people. I don't mean Objectivists, I just mean people who are willing and able to be rational in their lives, and in their interactions with you. That might not be a huge win for Objectivism on a global scale, but it is an important win for it in YOUR world. Which is what matters.

3. When it comes to politics, even if the current strategy for trying to create a better world for ourselves really is doomed to failure, that's not a reason to give up trying to create a better world. That's a reason for changing the strategy.

What would be the alternative you're suggesting? Just do nothing? Never talk about politics, take no interest in it, just ignore what's going on in that realm? Why? How would that make your life better?

Nice find. Great exhortation near the end.
5:20 "Let's celebrate what we know is good, and ignore what we know is not."

A relative of mine works for an auto transmission parts supply and manufacturing company, for which I have done a couple odd jobs. The company was started by a man who retained a strong accent from India, but who attended college in the U.S. -- so I'm going to guess first or second generation immigrant. The company was a continuation of a business school Masters project of his, started from scratch. Much later, they eventually bought their largest competitor. From my relative's stories (I'd met him only once, I think), he seemed like a quiet, thoughtful, shrewd man who also expected respect or reverence. The company margins were 35% before taxes, and recent yearly earnings were $80 million.

He sold the company to a private equity firm, who later sold it again for an estimated $700 million, and he has had nothing to do with it since. He's the only multi-millionaire I've met in person.

Just to get this out of the way, being dishonest is always immoral. Your example with the disabled person, and with selling GNU software, is an example of dishonesty (in fact taken separately, they would be two examples of dishonesty).
 
But, this original question, of what is an appropriate price for a product, I'd love to address in depth:
 I work as a freelance web designer and programmer. Sometimes, I charge an hourly rate or a fixed price for a given service, and let the client decide if my prices work for him or not. Simply because that's what a lot of clients learned to expect, and they're not willing to do things any other way.
 
But, whenever I can and I believe it is worth my time to do so, I prefer to instead have an in depth conversation with the customer about what he needs, and how much value he will get out of my services. And then, instead of calculating how many hours of my time the project will take, I charge a fraction of that estimated value.
 
The reason why this works better is because it prevents bad deals, on both sides. Most importantly, it prevents me from either under-selling or over-selling my services. If instead I just charged a fixed price, my only direct feedback on whether the price is correct would be either having too many clients, or not having enough of them. Either way, I'd be losing money because my pricing sucks. And second, it prevents the client from buying something that isn't worth it for him. It's not out of the ordinary for a client to realize, midway through the conversation, that he doesn't need all the shiny toys and fancy features he thought he did. And then he's happy that I didn't just sell them to him and sent him the bill, the way someone who works with fixed prices would (because why would such a person care whether the client needs or doesn't need his services? he gets paid either way).
 
And yes, this does mean that client A and client B, who both want a similar kind of product, could end up paying significantly different prices, simply because client A has a greater use for the product than client B. However, things do even out, in the long run. When client A and client B end up both needing me again, and I only have time for one of them, guess which one of them gets my limited time, and which one of them gets to go out browsing the wild prairie known as the online freelanced industry, and hope to find another competent programmer to help him out.
 
That's not the same product. One is streaming video, the other an mp3 available for download. Yes, you can rip youtube vids to mp3, but that is technically a violation of copyright law. Not that it would make a difference, even if that mp3 was available for free download on Notre Dame's site.
 
ARI has a separate website, that provides a bandwidth they pay for, which allows these downloads. If they wish to charge a fee for all downloads, even ones that are available for free elsewhere, to pay for the site maintenance and bandwidth, that is fair. It's a very similar example to how bottled spring water in your local convenience store is not the same product as water out of a spring in the woods, half way around the world.

I can't tell if you mean that gay marriage/relationships are still un-normal, and if so in what sense.
 
I only meant that automatically ostracizing gays will soon be a thing of the past. Then, gay-specific behaviors will become familiar. At that point, gays will seem "normal," both to the population at large and to his own self. A gay won't feel the need to rebel against the ostracizing, and so he'll do what he would have liked to do to begin with. He won't need rainbow flags, he'll probably just do a white wedding like all the other "normal" people do. Gay culture will become less independent, or regular culture will become more gay, or both.

I can't tell if you mean that gay marriage/relationships are still un-normal, and if so in what sense.
 
I only meant that automatically ostracizing gays will soon be a thing of the past. Then, gay-specific behaviors will become familiar. At that point, gays will seem "normal," both to the population at large and to his own self. A gay won't feel the need to rebel against the ostracizing, and so he'll do what he would have liked to do to begin with. He won't need rainbow flags, he'll probably just do a white wedding like all the other "normal" people do. Gay culture will become less independent, or regular culture will become more gay, or both.

The original question mixes two quite different issues.  If your potential customer is incompetent - psychiatrically impaired (your example), underage, brain-damaged - then taking his money in a deal he isn't qualified to make is reprehensible whether or not you're matching the best available price.  Such a deal is unlikely to stand up legally, and this customer's parent or custodian should have been paying attention.
 
Without this special circumstance, your customer was free to shop around.  Instead he outsourced the job to you.  Economics calls this practice (charging different prices in different circumstances) with the concept of elasticity of demand.  The shopper who spends hours a day searching newspapers, junk mail and the web looking for bargains will probably spend less money than the shopper who decides he has better things to do with his time.  A flight from one airport to another is the "same" product if you buy it a month in advance to fly in February as if you buy it two days in advance to fly in the week before Christmas, but you pay much more for the latter.  A restaurant may sell a given meal at any hour, but it's more expensive at night than at lunchtime.  And so on.  Value is a relational term.  It's value to a particular buyer in a particular set of circumstances, not an intrinsic property of the good or service.

When an event like this killing (or an airplane disappearance) take place, the reporting often follows this pattern: first there's reporting about the facts of the event and some related, relevant facts. So, we might be told about the shooting, about white-power/hate groups, about the particular black church. There's sometimes a degree of speculation, particularly if there aren't enough facts to fill the news-hour: like Don Lemon speculating if a black hole caused the disappearance of an aircraft. 
 
Soon, everyone knows the facts, so reporters look wider. They report on less-related issues: like this flag. This "works" particularly well (i.e. generates viewers, and social-media buzz) if the issue divides people. Soon, someone from the less politically-correct side is bound to make some remark that can be construed as offensive. This becomes news: reporting someones remark, about something slightly related to the actual news. [The book "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America" - by Daniel J. Boorstin explores the ways in which the news is full of such reporting. It's a mixed book, but highly recommended on this subject.]
 
Since almost everyone is against murder, the murder itself is not going to stir controversy. The flag is different. The majority of Southerners are not racist, yet a sizable portion do not see their forefathers as evil people. However faulty the reasoning here, the point is that the flag is something that is far more controversial than the murder. This is something people can rally for or against. "Friends" might ban "friends" on Facebook for thinking that the flag is also a symbol of unquestioning patriotism, rather than racism. Walmart says they won't sell merchandise with the flag; Apple goes completely batty and pulls a game that has the flag.
 
Humans need purpose, meaning and a sense of their own goodness. A controversy like this gives the participants meaning. Supporting a good cause give us meaning, but -- using the same mechanism -- righteous indignation gives us meaning too! Of course there's nothing wrong with righteous indignation, but consider this: does the concept of "inflation" apply here (at least in analogy)? [A book, pondering this issue is: "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" - by Chris Hedges]
 
The underlying issue that the descendants of civil-war confederates need to resolve is not the flag, but: how to view those ancestors. Vietnam soldiers got a poor reception because they lost and because the war seemed meaningless; but, at least they were trying to fight communism, not supporting slavery. The civil war is closer to Germany or Japan, fighting WW-II. Subsequent generations have to make peace with this truth: that even if their ancestors fought primarily because of patriotic feelings about their state, or because they feared the consequences of a northern invasion, in the end they fought in support of an evil cause. It's unfortunate that so many (including many libertarians) spin the civil war as not being about slavery. These folk need to acknowledge the truth; and, with this truth, even the Confederate flag can find an appropriate place, instead of being banished altogether.

FreeObjectivistBooks allows donors and recipients to exchange messages without exchanging emails. Some people will send a thank you message when they get the book. Rarely, they will send a message when they're done. Today, I got one to say how "Virtue of Selfishness" was a useful perspective while taking a Political science class in college. 
 
I replied, to say that the forum was one place to get follow-up answers.

Right and wrong, in this sense, are derived from the context of what an individual knows. Is a locomotive engineer working for Amtrak immoral because he has a job that provides him with income, or perhaps because he doesn't use his mind to view the world from a perspective of Objectivism?

The claim under examination is either trivial or false.  To say that the universe is itself is to take the first alternative.  If you could show that there are two, then the two of them together would be the universe, and what you were looking at first is not the universe.
 
To say that the universe is a particular entity simply because "the universe", "existence", "being" and the like function gramatically like the names of entities, is false and gets you into philosophical trouble: where in space does it end? when in time did it begin? (most notoriously) what cause brought it about?   Such quandaries vanish when you give this supposition up.

I think this discussion has missed what I see to be the money quote from that Swift interview, and it's not the one where he says that parents should think about how they're disadvantaging others by reading to their kids.  He's describing the fundamental task of the philosophical work under discussion, and he describes it like this:
 
 
He assumes that the moral default is perfect equality, and that any deviation from this outcome has to be justified on some independent moral grounds.  He does indeed think that many parenting activities (such as bedtime reading) can be justified on independent grounds such as 'familial relationship goods,' but it's not the specifics of what he wants to allow or forbid that I find most troublesome.  It's his overall approach, in which the default choice is to forbid any activities that produce inequality of outcomes, unless we have some independent reason for keeping them.  In effect, he accepts Plato's framework of total state power over the family, but argues that it should refrain in some cases from using it (it always decides what to 'allow' or not, but it should allow certain independently justifiable activities).
 
It reminds me a lot of Rawl's approach to distributional justice, where the default seems to be perfect equality of resources, and deviations from that standard have to be justified on the basis of making the poorest better off.  If I recall correctly, Rawls was trying to defend some elements of liberalism from the assault by egalitarianism (much like Swift seems to want to defend certain familial goods against total equality of opportunity), but his basic approach was to assume egalitarianism as the moral default and carve out exceptions to it.  Needless to say, I find this approach to be immensely flawed.
 
Whether or not Swift would personally advocate for banning private school or not seems to me to be beside the point.  Under his framework, all family activity is guilty until proven innocent.  That is what is wrong with his approach, far more than the specifics of what activities he thinks are innocent or guilty.

Back at you. From the ABC article:

"Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided.
[...]
I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally."

Back at you. From the ABC article:

"Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided.
[...]
I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally."

Both columnist leave it hanging, quietly implying that there needs to be an egalitarian measure to "fix" it.
 
Again, if Swift was more explicit in recommending a solution elsewhere, neither columnist teased it out. Where does this leave the less savvy reader? How does this differ from Jim Taggert "balancing himself between word and intonation to hit the right degree of semi-clarity" allowing the recipient to import a sense of guilt proportional to the degree that he holds an altruistic premise?
 

Their concept of the proper role of government is so messed up that they feel the need to justify parents' bed-time stories by saying that the parent does more than just read, they build a relationship with the child. Meanwhile, if a parent wants to do something for a kid that does not strengthen such a bond, they consider that beyond the justifiable rights of the parent. According to them, a parent who wants to send his kid to private school is not really strengthening the familial bond by doing so. So, by the terms of their evil philosophy, they find no way to justify this. 
 
In simple terms they're saying: parents may be allowed to provide services if nobody else can provide those services and if we have no way to seize those values from that particular parent and redirect it to another kid. So, if a parent sends their kid to private school, that's a situation where they would seize is money and spend it on a $30K DC school-district "education" instead.

It is interesting too that stories like this would be shrugged off as not such a big deal. It speaks to how even people who disagree and who would argue for rights, have been bombarded with so much altruism that they shrug off something like this as a somewhat natural extension of the argument. 
 
I have read many a bed-time story and I have never ever thought about other kids while doing so. pretty sad to think these guys feel even a little twinge of guilt over something like that.
 

I think a letter is a perfect way to contact Dr. Athanasiou. Since you're soliciting him, it lets him decide whether to give you attention, if so how much, and on his own timeframe. If it's written sincerely and to the point, I don't think length matters much. He'll likely care to read because of your obvious interest in his work and the "nerd factor" of you actually understanding it. For those reasons, I edited out your written assumptions that he won't care. Also, I don't think it will serve any purpose to include a "sob story." It doesn't get your point across better, and probably won't interest Dr. Athanasiou, as it will never mean to him what it means to you. Finally, since your questions are already technical and to the point, I left those alone.
 

I chimed in yesterday that metaphysical rebellion as #3 explains it is characteristic of Rand's villains.  They are in full revolt against one fact about the human condition: the necessity to make a deliberate effort to think and to act on the results.
 
(I thought that Rand was the only one who used "metaphysical" this way, but apparently Camus does too.  Some authors use "existential" to mean the same.)
 
((How metaphysical rebellion applies to clothes in an intriguing speculation.  No head openings.  Three legs.  Two right shoes.  Wrong for the weather.  Bras for men and jockstraps for women.))

I will add to James' recommendation of Taubes' work about kinds of calories the book Fat Chance by Dr. Lustig.
He argues that what both the China study by Dr. Campbell and Atkins share in common, is that they both avoid fructose. Both are highly unconventional and you will have a lot of argumentation on both sides of the calorie continuum to wade through. Lustig has a video on YouTube called Sugar The Bitter Truth along with others.

Fair warning, Lustig does try to use this idea for paternalistic legislation....

As a long time personal trainer, the easiest thing I would tell you to do is to never consume sugar without fiber and cut out 80-90 percent of refined carbohydrates. Just doing that will effect most peoples body composition enough to get them motivated to continue their efforts.

I was chatting with someone recently and he confided something he had learnt about his mom: that she'd had a couple of abortions when she was young. (These were probably "backstreet abortions" in the 1950's.) Anyhow, he commented that -- as the second of two kids -- he would probably not have been born if his mom had decided to have her kids young. 
 
When I see the next sticker saying: "SMILE! Your mom chose life" I will now see it differently.
 
This guy is alive because his mom chose an abortion. And, in his own case, the question of choosing life never came up. The only time she really had to think about things and make a choice was when she was young, and she chose abortion, and so this guy exists.

After years of reading contradictory claim after claim, my own health strategy is to do something (related to food consumption and/or particular exercise regimens) and see its immediate effects on how I feel daily or weekly.

For why you should be wary of longstanding dietary assumptions, such as those made about red meat and heart health, fat/saturated fat, salt, etc., read a book called "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes, where he thoroughly researches the full data history behind these claims and shows them to mostly be the result of government public health agendas, ie. lies.

For what *general* diet and exercises you might consider following, look at the results of its practitioners and judge them for yourself. For example, *in general* I think vegans look like walking zombies, Cross Fit people look like doughy lumps, and runners/marathoners look like they're about to topple over in exhaustion and pain even at rest; whereas "paleo" lifestyle people tend to look happy, fit, and comfortable. But, human health seems to have endless caveats, and none of these diets seem to work for everyone universally (though I think there are some major trends). Take me, for example: I exercise hardly ever and eat basically whatever I want, but I need sleep or else I am completely dysfunctional. That's me "optimized," but I know people who eat corn food products and buckle over in pain. Your particulars will probably be different from anyone you know, and you'll find out by trying something and then paying attention to how you feel afterward. If you're interested, you might look at some "science," but even that won't apply to everyone, and you may discover that fish oil (or whatever) seems to be totally wasted on you personally and has no affect whatever.

The goal is to feel good (and maybe look good), and to live long -- not to fit into some diet guru's agenda. I'd question everything, and start with paleo stuff that is backed up by a lot of research or a LOT of anecdotal results from many different individuals. But even within the paleo crowd, be wary of their claims; "I never eat eggs and you shouldn't either," or whatever, needs to be tried and proven by you personally. Maybe eggs (or whatever) don't seem to affect you much either way. Likewise, maybe you really like to run and it doesn't seem to stress your joints too much at your present age. But some guy is telling you that running will kill you -- I'd ignore that guy and instead get outside doing something you like.

Also, Georgia isn't the richest state in the country. In fact, until recently, the South in general was not the richer part of the country: it was the the industrialized places that fared better in material terms. California too! Slavery... and the type of economy it supported was not a good thing for most people in the South. 
 
However, there's no getting away from the fact that slavery was an evil, and that reconstruction was botched and the law continued to discriminate against blacks. Add to this the immorality of private discrimination lasting well into this century. Even those who claim that there is no ongoing discrimination against black people will admit that their slave ancestors were deprived of the most basic rights, and that they would have been much happier as free men in the least poor of African villages of the time, than being slaves in America. Can their descendants make the same claim about themselves, personally?  Would they rather exchange places with the thousands of people in Africa who want to immigrate to the U.S. ?  All the talk about being worse off because of slavery relies on a comparison with people with whom they would never make such a comparison if not for slavery in the first place. If we're talking about black people as a group, not as individuals, how can we claim that those who are currently U.S. citizens are materially worse off than if their ancestors had never been enslaved?
 
I know a lot of immigrants who began life quite poor by U.S. standards (of the time). No car, no T.V., meat rarely served for meals, a few changes of clothing each year...washed by hand. Yet, they never perceived themselves as poor because they were relatively middle-class in their own countries. And, being middle-class, they were brought up to go to school, do their homework, get a job, and so on. Today, most of them earn well above the average white person. So, their lack of material wealth did not hold them back, and their philosophy moved them forward... basically, it takes one generation to turn things around.
 
That's the solution for any individual black person.

The problem, 2046, is not an unwillingness on the part of whites to accept responsibility for historical wrong. White guilt is too prominent. The problem is having racism literally spat in your face unjustly. I will have no more of this original sin. When I wiped that spit off of my face I was made clean and whole, baptized into blamelessness.

I don't know if the media has an agenda, but you obviously do. You just linked to a piece of propaganda titled "racial incident bingo", in a thread prompted by an incident/subsequent riots mostly involving people of the same race.
 
Baltimore is a city controlled by black politicians, the alleged murdering cops are black, the alleged victim is black, the rioters are black, most of the businesses they destroyed are owned by blacks... only thing racial about this is your desperate desire to make it racial. (and some of the media's too, probably...I'm sure you didn't just get the idea that this is a racial incident on your own).

I will say this once - Try that whining and card backhanded crap from the last several sentences once more to dodge the issue with smear tactics and I'll wash my hands of this. 
 
I am not some altruist intellectual missionary out to cure people's defective thinking.  Your on this private forum discussing ideas related to it's philosophy.  
 
And if you are going to call me a collectivist for refusing to judge people by group definitions you are not even trying.  At all.  
 
As for this case - I am reporting facts as described to the grand jury. It is valid for a grand jury to review this case in case the cop was wrong.  This jury, which is local civilians, reviewed this case and agreed with that fact.  It's not my opinion but documented fact. 
 
The office was charged by the civilian and the officer defended himself. 
 
If thugs don't want to get shot then I recommend they don't charge police officers.  If I charged a police officer I would expect to be shot, which is why I would not do that. Not rocket science.  
 
The only thing racist about all of this is those who actually pointed out the race and treat random facts of skin color or zip code of birth as being relevant to basic facts of reality.