Maarten

I agree, I don't listen to much rock music, but it is very good, so I ordered myself a CD

Well, but the US is still much more free than Iran is, for example. That is why it can legitimately act in this case. And Iran does violate the rights of its citizens, in much worse ways than the US does with its respective citizens.

Well, I don't think that remorse is what you should feel. It's a bit like feeling remorse over the fact that volcanos erupt. It doesn't make sense to me to feel something about the metaphysically given, and death is one of those things. I think only when you don't yet truly understand the necessity of death in our existence you feel remorse about it, and after that it will probably vanish.

It's not. A government derives its rights from the rights of its citizens. If they violate their citizen's rights, then they have no basis to claim any for themselves, and therefore other countries are free to attack them if they would choose to do so.

Would it be correct to say that interest in this case is similar to how a normal individual makes a profit? In both cases the person in question gets more back than he started with, but it would be very strange to argue that someone who is making a profit is causing problems for the economy. If that was true, then we couldn't be where we are today... Is it a valid assumption to treat interest as a form of profit?

That is, coincidentally, one thing that bothers me about most after-life doctrines. It just takes the whole point out of living right now, and it is very easy to become lethargic when you believe such things, because you still have X more lives to go, or you can spend eternity in paradise, or whatever.

I think it is only natural to want to live as long a life as possible, if Life is your ultimate value. If you can extend your lifespan by reasonable means, I think it is good to do so. However, death is one of the facts of reality that is inherent in our nature as mortal beings, so it is not really something unnatural that should be feared. I consider it merely as something that will one day happen to me, but I must say that I do not give it much attention

But you can't take man-made facts as some primary and treat them like the metaphysically given. It is important to evaluate them, and reject them if necessary for a better alternative. It may not be your intention, but you make it sound like we should just accept it because it

On philosophical grounds it seems similar to an alliance with libertarians. I don't think you can ignore the whole philosophical basis of your ally's philosophy in such a case, because it will cause conflicts eventually. Perhaps I am missing something though, I need to think about this a little more.

I think part of the answer is that you should not sanction something you don't agree with. If you enter a long-term alliance with another group then you are implicitly saying that you approve of them, and that would not be true in this case. The existence of God is a major issue, and it has consequences for ones' metaphysics and epistemology, which are in turn the basis of any philosophy. I can't imagine that the existence of God is the only point where Objectivists and Lockeans disagree.

This is a part from the discussions in ItOE:(page 249) This made the whole concept of reality much clearer to me. Well, along with the rest of the discussion, but I can't really quote the whole thing

This is from an earlier post, hunter

I don't think it is at all likely that someone can get a monopoly on gold if it is actively used as currency. As far as I know the manipulation of the gold price mostly occurred when the majority of countries had left the gold standard. If you pay with gold coins, so to speak, it is very difficult for one person to get them all, even if he owns the sole source of gold in the world. If one person holds all the means of exchange in the world, then it is not a very good means of exchange anymore, and people would simply use something else instead. I really don't see the problem you are sketching here. I mean, why would someone want to stockpile money if spending it would bring far greater returns to him? As long as people keep spending their profits to further improve future production, there is really no problem. The only thing that changes is the magnitute of the flow of money. Where in a primitive case you might only spend X amount of gold coins in a week, now you might spend them (and get them back) every hour. This increase in flowrate enables everyone to make much more profit on a yearly basis. Even those people that save money for a later time will eventually spend it; that is simply the way money works. It's pretty much useless if you keep sitting on it forever and ever. I am not sure how much today's savings are in contrast to how much money we have floating around in the economy, but I cannot imagine that it is a significant portion. The only thing such a system requires people to realize is that it is in their best interest to spend money even if it will be worth more in the future, exactly because it will be worth more. It's called thinking long-term, and that many people nowadays refuse to do so is not a valid argument against a gold-standard economy. *edit* I reread the Borrowed Gold example and I don't think it is a very realistic one. The way I consider it is that some people own gold mines, and they produce gold just as others produce their goods. The people who initially have gold use it to buy goods they need, and by those method it enters the economy. I think it is a very weird scenario to suppose that one person owns all the gold, and then proceeds to loan it to others, instead of simply spending it as he requires.

But I don't see why money has to be borrowed into existence. I thought you said that it was impossible to do that with gold money, so why are you now saying it is a problem? I disagree. In an economy that runs on barter you would not have this problem, and gold money is just another type of good you trade, as a sort of intermediary between the real goods that are changing hands. It may require a change of perspective in how most people view this issue for it to work, but that is only reasonable considering this type of economy is very different from what we have today. It is in everyone's best interest to spend most of their money regularly, to improve their productive capacity (besides buying the things they need to survive) and it is in this way that such a group of individuals reaches a continuous growth in productivity. In the end, it comes down to the fact that the basic unit upon which economics depends is wealth, and not money. It doesn't matter if I am not rich, if I have a much higher living standard. The amount of goods available to you is all that really matters in the end. Don't you agree that normal people have a much better life than even the richest monarchs in the middle ages, who arguably had almost infinitely more money in their possession? Money is not inherently valuable, it derives its value from the (unconsumed) goods backing it. You can't simply take money as a primary, and start arguing from that point onwards, without looking at what money actually entails.

But in theory it could work as an alternate form of paying interest. It really does not matter how much money you have in the end, what matters is how much it will buy.

Yeah, that is how I experience it over here. Most people do tip, but it's only a small amount. Speaking of which, the restaurant I work at is rather odd, because we have a centralised payment method. It's actually a rather socialist way of doing things, but oh well It is a rather small place, though, and indoors, so it may make more sense that way to have everyone doing everything, instead of having specific waiters for a group of tables.

Chat works, but I don't think it remembers our names yet. You have to manually set it in the chatroom.

And, of course, multiple parties could be acting irrationally. There is no reason why it is limited to one of them. Which one is the answer I do not know, though.

Hey, I only have problems with that on our trusty university computers, because IE is the only browser they have. At home I have no trouble whatsoever It just looks silly to see 5 zillion smilies in one post.

Yes, but you don't need to pay interest in new money, interest can be paid because money becomes worth more; i.e. the buying power of a dollar increases. Sure, it would require an overhaul of the current system, but I think it would remove most, if not all, of the problems you are pointing out. And how, exactly, can gold money be lent into existence? It's not like someone has a molecular nanofactory that is creating atoms of gold out of thin air. Gold has to be produced, and I fail to see how you can speak of lending money into existence in a gold-economy.

Isn't it nice that they are so concerned with their citizen's approval? There aren't that many votes going on here I think, except for choosing on the local level who gets into the city council. I don't think I've ever heard about voting for whether or not you pay an extra tax. I think that is what the city councils simply decide to do by themselves, but then I am not very interested in it so maybe I just miss those votes...

You people are just silly... And we definately need pest-control in here to get rid of all the smilies...

Felix, but you are no longer discussing just fiat money, you are arguing that it is also inherent in the economies we are describing. It's no longer just a case of one party talking about how it is, and one party how it should be, because you two say that even a gold economy has problems. The only thing I can think of regarding this issue is that it is very irrational for banks to ask a higher interest than the increase in buying power (that happens due to more production). If this is continued indefinately then you would have a problem at some point, but that doesn't mean that the gold economy is inherently flawed, it means that irrationality causes these problems. Would you agree that there is no problem here whatsoever if interest was at a rate much lower than the amount of money entering the economy?

Heh, at first I thought this was talking about women soccer players who weren't allowed to play anymore. Coincidentally, does anyone know if they can over there? I can't imagine them running around in those short pants soccer players wear; it would be the most popular sight to see in the country

Yeah, we want them to leave the theatre asking this: Who was John Galt? I think that Angelina is a little too voluptuous to play Dagny. I mean, she just doesn't look anything like the character. While I suppose there are more important things to consider about the movie, I would prefer that they remain as true as possible to how the characters really look like.