Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

aequalsa

Regulars
  • Posts

    2171
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    24

Posts posted by aequalsa

  1. I agree that the government shouldn't offer incentives for particular kinds of contracts/arrangements, but it should offer increased legal support for them when it is justified. (justified because the legal system is made more efficient by such a pre-made framework, be it marriage, a corporation, etc., whenever there is enough use for them).

    By encourage, I meant Tax Breaks, and the other concrete benefits meant to encourage families or whatever. Absent the perks, its really not much more than a contract that has a larger than usual amount of legal precedent so I doubt there would be much reason to fuss.

  2. If they did that, what would there be left for you to troll about?

    If they did that, what would there be left for you to troll about?

    I mean this seriously, not in a trolling sense at all, and to be clear, support gay marriage, but I have been struggling with why legalizing gay marriage would not also imply that polygamy, polyandry, group marriages, etc ought to be legal. Obviously a strong line can be drawn at consent so as to preclude marriage to animals, children, and inanimate objects, but I haven't seen or come up with any reason to forbid marriage for groups and have been somewhat surprised to find that many supporters of gay marriage are opposed to it. Is there some argument that I am unaware of or does it stand to reason that group marriages ought to be allowed as well?

    Obviously the right answer is that government doesn't really need to be in the business of encouraging particular kinds of contracts, but since they are and many Objectivists seem to support it I would be interested to hear why there isn't a small slippery slope involved.

  3. What good reasons are there for a well-adjusted adult to mutilate his genitals?

    There has been a bit of research coming out that seems to indicate there is something fundamentally different in the brains of transgendered people. One notable difference is this,

    in each transsexual person's brain the structure of the white matter in the four regions was halfway between that of the males and females (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007). "Their brains are not completely masculinised and not completely feminised, but they still feel female," says Guillamon.

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan.html

    Other differences have been found but that one is significant since there is such a huge difference in gray/white matter ratios between sexes. That said, the (admittedly) few transgendered people that I have ever been acquainted with all had pretty severely abusive backgrounds so I don't know whether it is clear that it is genetic rather than environmentally caused. Either way though, if their are fundamental biological differences that lead them to feel attraction and/or masculinity/femininity differently than the norm, I can't say that I see it as being significantly different from homosexuality in terms of moral judgement. Not sure that that's a "good reason to mutilate ones genitals," but it makes it less blame worthy, I think.

  4. I guess my arguments -- in defense of casual sex, for instance -- are my way of fighting for the rationality, and the resultant higher-quality world, that I would like to see. To make the implausible good slightly less "im."

    I understand that, and holding it in my mind, I think that may be why we seem to be talking past one another to a certain extent. I'm trying to apply your ideas to how things are, at least within the context of my own knowledge and experiences and they aren't working very well for me.

    I think we might be at the point where we(or I) have little left to add that wouldn't just be a rewording of previous arguments but I also recognize that there is quite a bit that I haven't responded to in previous posts, due to time constraints and not lack interest in the conversation or evasion. So if there are any questions or ideas which you feel that I ignored or left unanswered, which you think were especially salient to your understanding of my position or yours, then I would be happy to respond.

    Otherwise I wanted to thank you for the conversation. I have enjoyed hearing your perspective on a pretty complex issue...one which I admittedly still struggle with. Despite what you may think about me, I do see value in and reason to enjoy casual sex and sex for its own sake and have even engaged in it myself. I have also, though, seen quite a good deal of harm attached to it with people I have known as well as in my own life and integrating the two is not something I have so far been able to be successful with. If what you have is and has worked for you, then don't let me talk you out of it....except the stripper part. :) I've known quite a few and am even related to one and I can nearly promise you that your impression of that is incorrect. Strippers Lie! ;)

  5. I think I was open and upfront in inviting critique as to whether or not my example was impossible for some reason -- whether Misty could or could not exist as a real human being. And though bluecherry would rather not deal in such examples at present, you're still welcome to demonstrate Misty's fundamental impossibility.

    I didn't mean to imply that you weren't. And there's nothing impossible about Misty's character or the friendly neighborhood prostitute, for that matter.I just find them implausible. whether they would be more common in a more objectivist world is not something I could hazard a guess about. I think of it like smoking. Usually, 3 cigarettes won't hurt you. Occasionally, 3 packs a day for 90 years won't hurt you either. Most of the time, moderate regular smoking over the course of a life time causes painful medical conditions and early death. So I don't advocate smoking. Same with choosing romantic partners based on trivial characteristics. It can turn out well, usually doesn't. We don't get a play book so I don't in anyway mean this to imply that one should wait for the perfect person to skip along, but generally more selective behavior with regard to sex partners works out better than less selective behavior, so I aim in that direction, and recommend the same for others.

    Funny you should mention that. I happen to know of a fictional character who pulls off a very similar trick!

    So let me tell you of a couple of my intimate experiences at the risk of thoroughly embarrassing myself. The first time I went to a strip club. .... But for all I can tell, she was sincere.

    I've known quite a few and they mostly lie to support the coke habits they need to feel comfortable with what they're doing. Whether or not they should feel comfortable or not, that's the case. I've only been to strip clubs 3 times, dragged by friends. All I could think about was the fact that my friends had paid $25 to have this girl pretend to like me for the 3 minute duration of the song. There's nothing real about it. I love naked women, but more the kind that I can interact with. Like anyone in the service industry(waitresses, hookers, etc) that makes their living by convincing people hat they're liked, I don't put a lot of weight in that as being representative of authentic human interaction.

    A few years later, I was in a long-term romantic relationship that was coming to an end -- my lover was moving across the country. Before she left, she said to me that of all the things about our relationship she loved, the sex was what she would miss the most. She said that, apart from me, she had never found anyone who treated sex nearly so much as a celebration, of life, of pleasure, of love... and she expected never to find that again. And that gratified me deeply, because indeed, that's how I view it and how I treat it, and I was happy that such moved her as well.

    This gratified you, but, assuming that it turned out to be true, it means that all of her future sexual interaction will seem sub par. Is her life really better because she had that one chance to enjoy really great sex? Spending the rest of her life wishing it was you fucking her instead of the guy she loves? For my part, there's no level of enjoyment of physical enjoyment that could justify that.

    I don't believe I've said otherwise. Not long ago, I quoted "In My Life" to demonstrate my attitude towards my past lovers; I've invested in every such relationship I've had -- I am enriched by those experiences, and judge those investments to have paid off.

    I don't know quite what to say to this. If this is your general experience, I'm sad to hear it.

    Maybe I've spent too much time around single women in their 30's, but that is predominantly the case as I have encountered it. Earlier promiscuity and failed relationships are mostly regretted. I would guess it's somewhat different for most men, but for them it often seems that many of those choices are held as wastes of time at best and existants that limit their options going forward, decreasing their capacity and willingness to trust, increasing their skepticism, and frankly wishing that they had donated their "pretty years" to someone more deserving and/or permanent.

    It's not that I've never had a bad break-up; I have, for sure. But do I think they left me "more jaded"? No. I'm the least jaded I think I've ever been, and that's in full view of all of the good and bad I've gone through. And anyways, I don't know that holding sex to these higher standards (or highest) necessarily protects one from a broken heart. In fact, I am certain that it does not

    No, but people acclimate to pain pretty well by devaluing the source. People take forever to get over their first loves, months to get over their second, and weeks to get over their 3rd. Not necessarily how it has to be, I agree, and maybe not at all what it has been for you, but that's been more or less the case for most people I've known.

    I don't know. This sounds like excellent rationale to avoid intimacy altogether...
    Not at all. I'm suggesting that intimacy is enhanced by the selectivity of the intimator (Yeah, I just made that up) Careless choices, lack of selectivity, and all that lead to less capacity for intimacy. That girl who's world you rocked; she can't share that experience and her requisite lack of satisfaction with her new lover. Knowing that something way better is out there isn't going to bring her closer to the poor guy she chooses to spend her life with. As much as I'd like to think that I've done a bunch of girls favors with my dick, I can't really believe it, but that's because I relegate physical pleasure to a much lower status than other pleasures in life. I completely agree that mileage may vary and with a different evaluation of sensation as opposed to conceptualization, one might reach a very different conclusion.
  6. I kept asking folks to demonstrate the harm Misty (from my maltreated example <sniff>) did to herself through the sex she had. No one did. I think it's because I was asking the impossible: she did nothing wrong, and casual sex is not necessarily immoral.

    Now hold it right there, partner! No one did because you made it impossible by the very example. You could as easily write a story about Fisty, the Italian mobster hit man who kills dozens of people, never gets caught, suffers no negative emotional consequences, rapes Misty, who loves him for it and lets him have some strange on the side while living happily ever after, as a roller in the Bahamas....From which we can deduce that, murdering is peachy keen. You can make that story up and it could even be true on occasion, but usually, in real life, like the prostitute with a heart of gold, that's just not how it works. My experiences have led me to see my initial example as the more common playout of those sorts of actions. I respect that you may have seen otherwise, but yours is not a view that I have seen confirmed by any first or second hand experience.

    People invest in their romantic relationships emotionally. Even when they're short, the breakups are one sided, and leave one party, at the least a little more jaded than they were before. It's possible as an individual, to skate through quite a few relationships by always shooting first, but I don't imagine anyone can seriously think they have done so and not left some wreckage in their wake. So that's one harm. Prostitutes don't have hearts of gold because they come from sad, abusive backgrounds, and live in a truly heinous world the likes of which I don't care to describe. They're usually hurt and broken people with even less left of themselves by the end of their "careers." Incidentally, for the record, I've never used one. Likewise, I just haven't seen anything like this world where people get together for a day, a month, or a year and then politely part company with a high five and a "better luck next time," Relationships are sticky messes and sex causes increased intimacy and emotional investment that can be disproportionate to the levels of commitment and interest. When they tear asunder, bits ad pieces get left behind and go missing and damage is done. Certainly they are exceptions, but that's what they are so they don't make for terribly good advice.

    Anyways, I'm drunk, so I apologize in advance for any grammar errors or inordinate hyperbole that will embarrass me tomorrow. Night, night.

  7. Suppose that Christy decided that, due to her experience

    I'll respond to more later, but I think that your rework of my example has explained(to my satisfaction, at least) the fundamental difference between myself and people who view romantic "experience" as a generally positive trait.

    In short, I've found little value in experience going forward in relationships. Sexually, what is really pleasing to one woman is not to the next and the systems of interaction and behavior that make one relationship flow cohesively along is ineffectual in the next or maybe even damaging.

    I've certainly changed and grown and learned during the time that I have been in those relationships but that causation in that change I would not say has been primarily the romantic relationships, but rather all my experiences over that time. I would guess that for you(because basically you've said so) your experiences in relationships have had a strong impact on how you are in relationships. My hunch is that which side of this fence you fall on depends a lot on how early you had an idea of what you wanted from a relationship. This difference would be akin to the difference between people who realize from the age of 6 that they wanted to be a doctor(or whatever) and people who flitter around a bit until they're 27 before they decide on their career.

    Does that sound like your experience of it?

  8. He defeats his own argument with that quote, as he acknowledges that they are in fact in competition with other entities in the marketplace. Why is this a problem?

    I would say that electric wires run to your house is just one method of delivering energy, there are many alternatives that would be in competition with that method of delivering energy, alternatives technologies like solar power and wind. Even natural gas combined with fuel cell technology could compete.

    I've always found this track to be particularly effective since it gels with those sorts' views on gas prices and fuel efficient cars. If they charge as much as possible below the second best thing available then that "overly" high profit margin becomes the incentive that drives research and mass production efforts with alternatives in the same way that $4 gas makes shale oil attractive and $9 gas makes a Prius into a wise decision.

  9. It's not to extend life for its own sake, but because life is enjoyable. Feeling the sunshine on your skin is nice, is good.

    I may disagree with this depending on what you mean by enjoyable. I assume the broadest of meaning but would clarify that I don't view a lack of enjoyment in the physical sense or even serious discomfort as an inhibition to the achievement of happiness in a more long term sense and that more often than not, discomfort is a part of the package for serious achievement and the more meaningful kinds of satisfaction.

    Just to note, I agree that this is some of the good of the experience of sex, but not necessarily all of the good.

    Sure, but the amount of the other good that exists has to be related to your perception of your partners quality, right?

    Here I want to slow down. When you say that "[t]he feeling gets associated," it gets associated by whom? If the contention is that a person who experiences this good feeling of sex is unable to properly evaluate/assess his partner thereafter, I cannot agree.

    This is probably the fundamental difference separating our respective opinions. (And to be fair, I should note that it is where I seem to part company with many Objectivists...so you are in good company, not me) I believe in free will but it's a pretty delimited version compared to what I have seen in the Objectivist community. So..."gets associated" by the person having the experience. And to be sure, they could consider it and look for causation and affect on their psyche, but it's not usually enough and only consistently applied for issues that are more directly harmful. Even in those circumstances I don't see rational consideration of psychological issues as adequate in any sense for the resolution of those issues. As an example, I have a friend who grew up with an emotionally abrasive, demanding father and an enabling kind mother who subsequently gets walked over. This example caused her to learn that being emotionally abrasive and demanding in relationships is a far better strategy to get what she wants. Even with the conscious realization of the incorrectness of her approach through therapy, she still cannot will herself into correct behavior. The experiences are far too internalized to allow for an about face. I see it the same with any enduring habit. Smoking, meaningless sex, nail biting, or whatever. Ultimately in your control? Sure. With enough effort and appropriate strategies one can change quite a bit. But stop the effects of the habit from forming through will alone or by conscious consideration? Not in my experience. I think that your experiences affect and change you whether you want them to or not and to change them in another way requires a good deal of work.

    Well... not to say too much in the defense of "trashy whores" (couldn't we be talking about the "hooker with a heart of gold" instead? ;) ),

    Sure, if you have actually met any. ;)

    but insofar as you form that "positive association," which here means regarding this trashy whore (or several) as being capable of providing the physical experience you've enjoyed, isn't that simply a recognition of reality? Isn't that "positive association" something like an application of justice?

    I suppose, if it was limited to that. I just don't believe that it can be without a mind/body dichotomy.

    But again, if you're saying that the experience of sex makes one incapable of recognizing a trashy whore for what she is, or making proper judgements thereupon, I disagree.

    I've just seen it that way. Otherwise rational guys with a Quixotic tendency. "I slept with her so she's definitely not a whore, she's a princess. "

    But all of these scenarios rely upon some extraneous "poison" element added to make the sex seem "improper."

    ...

    But if we want to say that casual sex is bad, of itself, then this scenario of casual sex -- with no hidden extras -- ought to be enough to demonstrate the damage. So that's my challenge: If I "form a positive association" with such apparently attractive women and seemingly positive encounters, how precisely do I imperil myself? By what actual means does this particular scenario of causal sex hurt my life?

    This is mostly covered in what I wrote above, but at the risk of verbosity, it depends on where you are at. For some, casual sex might be a step up. I know a gal who after several relationships with dishonest men see's short term sex buddies as far preferable. For her, it probably is. Not the best of all possible worlds, and probably not even the best she could do with a better philosophy, but probably the best she can hope for with where she's at.

    So take two identical twins, Christy and Misty. At 15 Chisty, the more social of the two gets invited to a party. She get's a little too drunk and wakes up to find she lost her virginity to Blake. She never would have chosen him but you know how those things are. Feeling the blow to her self esteem, she finally agrees to start going out with Nathan, a dopey pothead that's been hitting on her for the better part of the year. After a couple months of mediocre sex and lounging about in his parents basement, they break up and she moves on to a string of other so so relationships ending in an accidental pregnancy with Eddie who has a good deal of trouble holding down a job for more than a few months. Misty meanwhile has an enduring friendship with Wesley, her slightly geeky but fairly brilliant lab partner. By their senior year they move into a relationship and consciously choose to be each others first. It lasts through their second year of college but ultimately fails from the long distance between them and minor differences. She eventually moves on with a secure sense of what she's looking for, finding Peter, who has a lot in common with Wesley but is a good deal more masculine and mature and close. They get married and live happily ever after.

    So who has the better concept of sex? Who has better sex? After Christy's previous experiences, how much would you bet on her changing her expectations and desires? Is she more or less likely to find her "Peter?" For me, the answers are obvious. Like the "prostitute with a heart of gold," the girl who changes her ways and finds true love is more a part of Hollywood than real life. In real life, a heart of gold doesn't land you in the sex trade world and when it does, you don't keep your heart of gold. They are both in between versions but spread out enough to draw a reasonable conclusion about which side one ought to aim for.

    .

    but I'll start here: I think that "attraction" by-and-large precedes "sex." So I don't know that we should avoid sex, so as to not cause ourselves to be attracted to certain people, but rather we should have sex on the basis of our (rational) attractions.

    I see it as reciprocal.

    But this isn't at all the matter! :)

    Every! single! time! It's always either "highest values" or "indiscriminate"!

    I tried to be more centrist in my example above. Casual sex implies not discriminating much, to me. I suppose you could descriminate a bit. On looks, or sense of humor, or that sort of thing. But directionally speaking, the extent to which you discriminate is the extent to which you're not leaving your choice to chance.

    As regards sex, do have sex for pleasure, and in response to virtue, but do not have sex in such a manner to cause yourself harm

    Right, but again, deciding that is based on discrimination. Not approaching it casually. You don't get to pick ahead of time whether to have an abusive boyfriend when your approach to choosing a guy is similar to a crap shoot.

    ... can be done without self-harm/destruction and in accordance with life as the standard of value; can be proper.

    Bare minimum, I would say there is an opportunity cost which is hard to measure and in worst cases, the abusive boyfriend who seemed nice at first before he sold you into the sex trade business.

  10. If you can establish that a certain instance or category of sex is destructive to one's long term life, then you have shown it to be improper per Objectivism. But not apart from that.

    This seems to be your main argument, that absent harm, there is no reason to not engage in an activity, especially a pleasurable one?

    Like sex. Sex feels good because it washes our bodies in neurotransmitters. That's the good. The great in fact. So great that it's one of the best sorts of tools we have to reward ourselves. This euphoria isn't just a feeling in a vacuum though. The feeling gets associated with many things going on right then, not the least of which is the partner you chose. So letting trashy whores make you feel really good will form a positive association with trashy whores. Letting uptight angry women that remind you of your mother make you feel good will form positive associations with uptight angry women. Letting guys who always cheat on you and treat you like a punching bag make you feel good will form a positive association with guys who cheat on you and use you as a punching bag.

    I would guess that less than 10% or less of the decisions we make on any given day are conscious choices. We habituate everything and grow fond of the things we habituate to. Because of that, as a general rule I jealously guard the things that I let affect me. I think it's easy to fall for the idea that we have this sort of ultimate freewill wherein we will make choices completely independent of our previous experiences. We can make choices in that way, but we(myself included) usually don't, so the only way I have ever succeeded in consistently controlling my wants is by stepping outside of that paradigm. If I want to eat fewer potato chips, I don't buy them because then I only have to say no once. If I don't want to be influenced in the direction of someone's character, I limit my interactions with them and avoid friendship altogether. If I don't want to cause myself to be attracted to a certain type of woman, I don't have sex with her.

    So there is no definite harm in being indiscriminate, but choosing with less discrimination means, necessarily, that you're trusting the fate of your life and the content of your character largely to chance. Sometimes it will work well, sometimes it won't and usually it will be somewhere in between. To me it's the difference between speculation and investment in the game of life. I rarely gamble and only then when I'm ready to give up what I'm betting.

  11. But I think there's more to it than that, an unacknowledged range of sexual choices from where you leave off ("indiscriminate"; "low standards"; "poor character judgement"; "evasion") up to sex "on the ground of the highest values one can find in a human being." I think that there are a number of possible such choices on lesser grounds (which is not to say indiscriminate, or "no grounds at all") that are still value-based, still proper, still moral.

    I don't have time to respond to everything you wrote, but I wanted to say that I agree that there is a range between those two and only use the extremes to show that on one end there is a clear positive and a clear negative on the other. The quote you mention, : "A sexual relationship is proper only on the ground of the highest values one can find in a human being." I think leaves open a fair amount of flexibility if you pay special attention to the "one can find." I don't take that to mean the best possible person one could find in any circumstance in all possibly universes. I see it as choosing the best possible option for an individual in their particular lives. If the individual is a marine on a carrier in the south Pacific for 14 years then maybe a Filipino prostitute is the highest value he can reasonably find. The Stalinesque woman mentioned above might be tolerable, alone on a desert island. ( I kinda picture her as a tall blonde dominatrix with high leather boots ;) )

    So that said, the real damage would come from choosing to pursue one of your previous, less ideal relationships over your wife. On the other hand, if your wife wasn't an option "settling" for your second best choice might not really be settling at all. It could very well be the best thing available to you at that time. And absolutely I believe that people often settle for less good choices than what is reasonably available to them for various reasons...low self-esteem, not being laid in awhile, poor capacity for delayed gratification, or whatever.

  12. It can difficult, perhaps, for people who grow up in a society overtly dominated by Judeo-Christian ethics -- those who are told from childhood some version of morality which entails sex being evil, or the pursuit of one's own pleasure and happiness more generally. I can see that answering one's experience of natural attraction in these cases -- attraction to values, and the sexual response that triggers -- may lead to feelings of guilt, shame, and concomitant rationalizations.

    For those who reject such a creed, the pleasures available through sex make their own compelling argument as to why it can a "good idea to take someone to bed." Every person, indiscriminately? No. But it is the enjoyment of the experience of sex, in itself, which provides the argument "for," and I don't think there needs to be anything more to it than that. I think that seeking pleasure is a fine thing for a person to do. Is there any good reason to despise pleasure?

    I'm not thinking of f'ed up christian guilt. That's a whole other can of worms. I'm saying that when people are indiscriminate sexually, rather than acknowledge their low standards or poor character judgement, they try to eliminate the cognitive dissonance by raising the value of the person they more or less randomly chose through evasion or what have you.

    And yes, a very good reason to despise pleasure is when it interferes with more meaningful happiness in the eudaimonia sense. Since the cumulative effects of behavior on your character seems unconvincing, you might try to focus on a more concrete example like heroin and ask if there is any reason that heroin use ought not be persued. Even imagine it in a world where it was made safe with no risk of overdose and decide if there is any reason not to use it often or at all.

  13. Doesn't this make some degree of sense? Who ought a person cast as the protagonist in "their story"? Jay Gatsby?

    Hmm..I think I may have chosen my word poorly. Not just protagonist, but really "the good guy."

    It's a well known sales principle that I have in mind where if you, for example, do something nice for someone, you'll usually set about finding reasons to justify it. Same with sex. When people begin sleeping with someone they usually immediately start looking for positive characteristics to justify their choice. Sometime later after enough bad experiences and/or enough time for the endorphin rush to slow down, the negative characteristics become more apparent leaving the person wondering, "what did I see in him...?" or some equivalent sense.

  14. This looser attitude towards sex doesn't really become a problem until it becomes permanent.

    I would tend to agree with this, but I haven't seen these things to be unconnected enough to allow it. The decisions early on, form the habits, and the habits form the character.

    This applies to all things outside of sex as well, and is not without exception, but there seems to exist a strong impulse in everyone I've known well, to write themselves as the protagonist in their story. This usually involves some amount of rationalizing, evading, and changing of values. So to apply that to this issue, when we choose to take someone to bed, we then try to find reasons to explain to ourselves why it was a good idea. If we continue this with many people of various character, our standards, which are just rules to specify our desires, become wider and looser. I haven't seen it play out often(ever actually)that people can just will themselves into higher standards of desire. With enough will power they can certainly change their actions, but what they want, if it ever comes, comes way later.

  15. It is. I was mostly horrified by this creeps explicitly evil psychological outlook.

    About the min wage laws, I was thinking the other day how they are almost completely responsible for unemployment. There are tons of things that people might hire for at $4/hour or $2/hour and ridiculous amounts of jobs at .35/ hour. (I could use some help with keeping my garage tidy.) The lowest price that an employer can find someone to work for eliminates the last involuntarily unemployed person. That true market based minimum wage is kept low by hamstringing businesses with regulations and tax burdens, environmental and otherwise, but the true cause of unemployment is the minimum wage.

  16. This is the attitude and circumstance that pervades government agencies. They have a flamboyant glee in the exercise of their power. Utterly disgusting.

    top EPA official saying the EPA’s “philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies - just as the Romans crucified random citizens in areas they conquered to ensure obedience.

    http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/epa-officials-philosophy-oil-companies-crucify-them-just-romans-crucified

  17. Yes, many people might be allowed to start businesses depending on if the government allows them.

    A friend of mine is a self employed web designer and leftist guy, very much in favor of regulation. After a long and heated discussion I asked him to imagine a world where it was decided that regulating the programming of computers was in the public's best interest. So now imagine that I(who can barely spell Drupal) am politically connected enough to acquire the position of director in chief for the division of safe programming. After some difficulty with comparing different software systems I decide that C is a very useful, multifunctional language and that from now on all programs must be written in C so that we can decrease our approval turn around times for new programs that are going to be allowed to be sold to the public. So after you manage to write a program in C as best as you are able, you send it in. 6-10 weeks later, my organization sends you a letter of rejection. You file an appeal and 6 weeks later you get a hearing where it is decided that you can be allowed to sell the program if you alter about 40% of the code that is outside of regulatory standards and resubmit for final approval.

    Of course, he had no answer, but that is exactly the world you live in if you try to start a business in any established industry from groceries to construction, let alone the well known, heavily regulated industries like insurance, banking, healthcare or education.

    I'm not trying to make the argument that we live in a country where masked government agents break into your home in the middle of the night and shoot you. That only happens to really bad folks, like the one's who try to sell unpasteurized milk. I'm suggesting that if you die from some debilitating disease because the drug or treatment you need is tied up in the FDA for 18 years, then it doesn't really matter that you aren't being starved to death in the Ukraine. Or if you get plowed with an $80,000 OSHA fine because an employee did something stupid that you have no control over, then it doesn't really matter that you are "free" to start a construction business.

    The beauty of this system is that the damage done, the amount stolen and mal-invested, the lives ruined by poor, standardized educational practices, all of it is almost completely obfuscated by this pretense of freedom and the difficulty(near impossibility, actually) of measuring opportunity cost and the fact that a pretty small subset of people are baring the majority of this burden in such a way that the vast majority never see it. Basically the freedom is there just so long as you don't try to do much of anything. If you make $400 in an ebay selling business you're probably fine. Even if you don't bother filling out a tax form. Change that to $400,000 in revenue and see how many people you need to talk to for permissions or what happens when you "make a mistake."

  18. With respect, I wonder if that argument (Nixon and Carter sucked too) is valid?

    One thing that makes it all so much worse now is the unprecedented (I hate to use that) in the history of the world capacity that governments have to control people. There was a time when it was plausible for a person to simply get lost. Nearly impossible now and becoming more impossible with each pasing day.

    Something else which makes now worse is that all of those things are cumulative. We have all of FDR's communist garbage, and all of johnson's, and bush's and obama's. We didn't get rid of osha and replace it with homeland security or ditch medicaid to make room for mandated insurance purchases. we get all of them and they build on their past failures and become more intrusive than anyone who had to deal with them in 1937 or whatever.

  19. First, I never said totalitarian dictatorship. What they do is way more sloppy. Less efficient.(I'm assuming here you mean north korea or something like that) Compare collected tax rates between the US and China or anywhere else in the world. We are near the top in collections with more successful regulatory bureaucracies because we have the money for enforcement.

    The fact that things come into existence is neither here nor there. China produces a lot of the worlds goods. Doesn't make them not communist or not a controlled economy.

    My guess is that you're holding a more dichotomous view than I or maybe others. Free vs Dictatorship or something like that. Successful statism relies heavily on the fascist approach of allowing freedom to the extent that it serves the political needs of those writing or buying the laws. It's more blurry and gray but no less infringing. This is all pretty far of topic so I'll just end now and say that it is far, far more than inconvenience that businesses deal with. An inconvenience is pulling a permit or spending three days on tax forms. I'm talking about arbitrary rules that can put you out of business over night through no fault of your own. These problems are real and pervasive.

  20. Yes, our privately-owned corporations are in varying degrees or regulation, some heavy, some almost not at all. That's a far, far cry from government-controlled and/or owned.

    I've started and run businesses and promise you it is not a "far cry" from being government owned and controlled. I can follow my own beliefs and philosophy less then 50% of the time without running afoul of regulation. This is to say nothing of the amount of my production I am able to actually keep nor does it compare in anyway to the kinds of regulations larger companies than mine, in almost all industries are subjected to or the amount of taxes that are paid through the double whammy of a 50% tax on profits with a 38% capital gains tax on the remainder. The government controls and owns far more of the economy than most communist rulers could ever have hoped for, not least of which is banking and oil which are secondary ways of taxing and controlling what is allowed to exist.

    I agree with you about not being too defeatist but you shouldn't kid yourself about how far gone it is or how difficult the challenge we face is either. They've been very successful at hiding the governments involvement from the 99% of people who are employees. With automatic withholding and a relative lack of regulation on private individuals it is not very apparent how completely controlled we are but we very much are.

  21. I want to hear what you all have to say about this. Was this statement made by the ARI consistent with Objectivism, as stated by Rand, and, if so, does Objectivism have a defense against this modern science (should it)? I am proud to call myself an Objectivist, but this particular issue really bothers me.

    I would call it a gross over simplification, but really that whole page is. It was written in the context of a brief explanation of freewill so I would recommend thinking of it in that light. That said, I doubt many Objectivists would argue that freewill exists independently of existence. A man can not will himself to float into the air or make a cheeseburger materialize in front of him. Choices have to be made with regard to something and that something is reality. What(I assume) they mean is that if your given a choice to drink either a glass of water or a glass of cyanide, your choice isn't predetermined in any way by the facts of your existence. You bring your rational faculties to bare on the circumstance before you and make the best choice freely, within the context of those choices available to you. If those are your only choices then you can't choose orange juice, but that's not the same thing as being determined, philosophically. The relevent part is your freewill applied to the specific reality you happen to be in.

    Same with the more complex issues of genes and upbringing. Those things massively shape the choices available to you, but they do not free you from the burden of being responsible for the choices you do make with regard to what is available to you.

    Obviously you would hold those things as relevant in determining someone's moral worth. Making a million dollars from scratch is a world away from making a million dollars after inheriting a million first. Likewise in considering a disability or emotional disorder.

  22. Evidently he means that his life belongs only to him. If it so, then please tell me, by what right Galt owns his life and why Mr Thompson cannot own Galt's life?

    Thompson has the power to kill Galt, but that's not the same as owning his life. Without Galt's acquiescence he cannot force him to design a motor, for example. I Galt's life belongs to Galt because nothing else is metaphysically possible.For a real life example, you'll witness this very same principal every time our statist rulers try to raise taxes. No matter what the rate, they can't yet get more than 24%of the GDP. If they raise taxes on income in a certain bracket, people stop making that income. They can't force productivity and especially they can't force thought.

×
×
  • Create New...