aequalsa

Please tell me that you realize the irony of judging the whole group of South Africans as one unit, in light of the title of this thread?

I *think* that I've already expressed my sentiments as well as I'm able in this thread, so I'll simply acknowledge my continued disagreement.

However, with respect to this reply to 2046 and the metaphorical "law of the jungle," I'd just like to observe: if "civilization," as opposed to the jungle, exists only when that civilization is respected by all -- if it is at the mercy of anyone who would choose to act as though it is a jungle, and disappears when those who disrespect our notions of what it is to be civil choose to act -- then we have surrendered civilization altogether.

If you suggest that we act according to the law of the jungle when our enemies drag us into it, then it is always the law of the jungle and nothing but. Objectivism has no place there.

Come on, Egoist. You are overreacting, again. When are you going to wise up and stop getting played by propaganda?

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is inherently a political institution and its products are political footballs. Of course they are. How could they not be? If Perry was still a democrat and was a believer in anthropogenic global warming then the attribution of a local sea level rise along the Texas coast to AGW would be every bit as political and anti-science.

The actual document in its original form plus the notated edits is linked here. Some of the edits I can understand because they are speculative assertions. For example, the second paragraph of the summary originally read as follows:

The edited version is:

This is justified because "may well" is weasel words. It also may well not reach 4 mm per year.

Some of the edits are nonsensical. For example,

This is changed to:

This is stupid because the paper reviewed the history of Galveston Estuary going back to before the last ice age when the interglacial high sea level was +5 meters above the current sea level, through the recent ice age when it went to -120 meters below. The changing sea level was not always gradual, but often episodic resulting in the formation of natural terraces of sediments at various depths. Sometimes between these episodes the change was catastrophic and the flooding erased the wetlands and made something closer to a fjord in appearance. The original sentence is fully correct.

There is this sentence on page 3:

Revised as:

This is pure politics having to due with the presumed legitimacy or illegitimacy of filling and building on the wetlands, and whether the role of the state of Texas is to allow people to use their property or merely to make regular potentially conflicting uses of property. The editor is within rights to enforce his or her own point of view, such is the nature of government sponsored science.

In this sentence:

The editors changed this sentence so that it doesn't even make any sense.

Only a rising sea level can create a space for sediment to be deposited, so using the word change is just bad writing.

Some of the edits I don't understand, such as deleting the figures 5.1 and 5.2 which simply makes the paper harder to follow.

The editors sometimes let pass things they should not have:

This last sentence needs a citation to show that subsidence has in fact slowed, not just that groundwater extraction slowed because the center of the oil industry shifted away from the area. Houston is just upstream and its population is growing strongly (2nd in the U.S. behind only Dallas/Fort Worth). Population taps into the surface water supply and aquifers. The editors missed this.

Figure 5.6 illustrating changes in mean sea level 1974-2006 via tidal gauge readings was deleted. Tidal gauges are potentially unreliable, and are definitely unreliable in the Galveston area because of the large land subsidence problem. The state of Texas has established The Harris-Galveston Subsidence District (http://www.hgsubsidence.org/) to deal with the problem. Quoting that website:

Do the scientists writing this paper not know about this issue? W. T. F.?

The editors don't know how to be consistently objective, but very few people do. The scientist original authors had lapses of objectivity. This conflict would not happen if everyone involved could be objective. If enough people could be objective the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would not exist in the first place.

To what extent is Perry to blame for this? I greatly doubt Perry would ever read this paper, and he did not hire the editors Holligan and Nelson (see related Mother Jones article Perry Officials Censored Climate Change Report ). He is broadly skeptical of the AGW and has presumably staffed up with liked minded people, but so would I if I were a governor. I have no doubt Mother Jones magazine would vilify the shit out of me if I were in charge.

I am definitely not pro-Perry. I am just trying to be objective. And remember Heinlein's Razor: "Do not attribute to maliciousness what can be adequately explained by incompetence."

In the end, what you arrive at is a distinction without a difference. The endpoints have different names, but the means are essentially identical. It becomes more about marketing at that point.

Come gather round people
come and join your hands
we're taking Wall Street
and we're making demands
and we're heeding the call
and we're crying for help
only 1% of us have wealth

but first we need posters
we need to make signs
but to do so it seems
that we need some supplies

We need poster board
I can't make it myself
but it's 10 cents a sheet
at the store it's on sale
an example of economies of scale
it's so evil

They're saying that freedom
has done little to stop
Corporations from keeping
the wealth at the top
But at what point in history
would a kid and a king
both have clean water to drink?

George Washington was
the richest man of his age
But he lost all his teeth
at a very young age
Because they didn't have Scope
and they all crapped in trays
we're not wealthy?

now there's fountains on streets
from which clean water pours
Four dollar generics
at all big box stores
a sultan and student
both have iPhone 4s
it's not fair

Come gather young people
come on everyone
and I'll tell you a tale
of a fortunate son

He's born in a country
and given vaccine
and rendered immune
to all kinds of disease
the Kardashians are on
all his TVs
it's not perfect

Banks don't need bailouts
on that we agree
so let's start up a group
and let's take to the streets
because if we do that then
you know what that means
we're racist.

"Some of those armed force people are just really F*cked up in the head. I should have spoken up and told him that if he wants to go that far, he'd better go get a condom, but he knew what he was doing."

Well, so did you. Or did you not know that sexual activity can transmit sexually-transmitted diseases? I also have a hard time believing that "armed force people are just really F*cked up in the head" anymore than the rest of us. Trust me, ordinary non-military folks can be just as screwed up. Don't make blanket statements about the military, many of which are good and decent men and women serving their country.

I was initially at least somewhat sympathetic to your plight, but the more you have written, the more I feel sorry for this boyfriend of yours. You are indeed trying to "fix" him, which is death for any long-term relationship.

Let me play armchair psychologist for a moment: I don't think that your boyfriend is actually worried about STDs. I think that what you are seeing is a passive-aggressive response to your dismissal of his upbringing and his mores as "stupid". He's not man enough (yet) to actually challenge your attitudes about sex and any other modern notions you might hold that make him uncomfortable, but no doubt he can see the difference between his parents' and grandparents' more elevated view of sex, and your more modern attitude (his grandparents probably didn't have to worry about STDs -- you do).

This is a way of asking: "Why do parents value their babies?" For starters, from a range-of-the-moment perspective, babies are so cute and cuddly that most people warm up to them. Not just human babies: people are warm and fuzzy with puppies and kittens. What's the logical and fairly universal reason for such an emotional reaction? Usually people will talk about the "innocence" of the young, but I'm not quite sure what the real reason is. I suspect that the young -- with their visually-obvious youth, their need to grow, and fall, and learn -- symbolize life more than do older animals and older humans, who have peaked biologically.
Leaving aside the range-of-the-moment view, in the best of cases, a parent has decided to have a child for various reasons. In other words, they have a set of reasons for thinking a child will be a value to them. Often, the reasons can be summarized as wanting to witness, aid and shape the growth of another human being. Again, life -- in it's fullest sense -- is the value.



I think Hitler's parents ought to have rejected him. However, if we're speaking of younger children, it's quite different. I don't know if very young children can evade in the same way as an adult can, since such children do not know about consequences. However, even when children start to sense the consequences of evading, certain types of evasion come very naturally to human beings: in particular, to go for some short-term value while evading the fact that it is not a value when viewed longer-range. In a way, this is like our non-human animal self asserting itself. We need our uniquely human ability in order to understand the future outcomes. Also, we need our imagination to make that future as real as we can: to counter the very real short-term effect that we can see more readily. Therefore, being a naturally available choice, with children, evasion is often part of the learning experience and cannot be viewed the same as an evasion by a mature adult who ought to know better. Therefore, the parents would not reject the child for this. They might let the child learn from it, or they might explain the consequences, etc.
As for "unconditional love", I have just one child, but I think parents do value their children differently, particularly when the children are older and exhibiting very different traits. This is evidence that parental love -- at least for older children -- is based on something about the child's self, not "unconditional".


It is natural for humans to put try putting two and two together. In fact, other animals too learn from their experiences in their own way. With greater human capacity, the human child is able to take this much further. Once children have learned to speak (about 2 years old) they transition to putting sentences together. By 3 or 4 they are forming propositions. Reason is quite natural, just as natural as some types of evasion. It is not automatic because it has to be self-initiated -- usually by some "motivating purpose".

Yes, it's immoral to lie. By lying you are evading reality, in this case your boyfriends character. You seem to know what his reaction will be like, while trying to avoid the consequences of telling him the truth. Think about what effect that attitude will have on your relationship in the long run.

I suggest you tell him straight. Then deal with it. Either you'll come to terms with each other, or it will cause a break. The important thing though is that you deal with each other as who you are, and not how you wish the other person would be.

The shortcoming of Ayn Rand's defense of procedural restrictions on property use is that she did not identify explicitly the legal principle involved. Ayn Rand was not a lawyer so this is no surprise or moral failing. I'm no lawyer either, but I have the power of a fully operational internet that makes research into such matters much easier.

The legal principle involved is the "Coming to the Nuisance" doctrine. The principle was stated as follows by David Wilens (ed: who is a lawyer):

If a property owner is using his property so as to cause a nuisance to another property owner, then the property owner who was the earlier to start his particular use is the one who has the right to continue his use.

The coming to the nuisance doctrine brings objectivity to the process of establishing which uses of property are rightful and which are not. The full article by David Wilens is at Capitalism Magazine serialized into four parts.
Part one is a statement of the problem created by zoning laws.
Part two is an introduction to the 'nuisance' problem, which zoning laws are supposed to address.
Part three is the statement of the 'coming to the nuisance' doctrine.
Part four shows how the coming to the nuisance doctrine solves the many problems created by zoning laws.

And yes, public sex and nudity is attention getting and distracting and can qualify as a nuisance. Note that the 'coming to the nuisance' works both ways, either the party having a sexual display or the neighbors objecting to that display can invoke the doctrine depending on which was first to establish the property. It is possible in laissez faire capitalism to prevent new strip clubs from being opened next to your house. At the same time no existing strip club should be closed down just because some fool wants to open an elementary school next door to one.

I used to think Barack Obama was just extremely ignorant and irrational, but today, I flipped through his book "The Audacity of Hope" for the first time, and I am deeply disturbed by some of the things he wrote. For example:





In other words, he was clearly aware of how dangerous the deficit was even when it was MUCH smaller, and he clearly understands exactly what is going to happen when foreigners realize we can't pay out debts without debasing our currency. This suggests, to me, that he is not a well-intentioned liberal idiot, but an intelligent man who is deliberately raizing America to bring about misery and death.

Do you think my inference is tenable, and is this what Peikoff means when he calls Obama a nihilist?

One may argue that the use of the phrase "one may argue" implies that the writer disagrees mildly with the claim in question. One may also argue that the use of the phrase implies that the writer agrees mildly with the claim in question, however this is a less tenable interpretation, unless one presents other evidence from the context.

This isn't your last word, this is your original word. You didn't adequately address the principled arguments made against yours in the other thread. These arguments of yours are pragmatic.

You have a stack of, say, a hundred letters and envelopes to mail. You must process these by hand. Is it faster to do each step of the process for all the letters before progressing to the next step (again, for all the letters), or is it faster to everything for each letter, one letter at a time?

The answer may surprise you:


Why does stuffing one envelope at a time get the job done faster even though it seems like it would be slower? Because our intuition doesn't take into account the extra time required to sort, stack, and move around the large piles of half- complete envelopes when it's done the other way. It seems more efficient to repeat the same task over and over, in part because we expect that we will get better at this simple task the more we do it. Unfortunately, in process-oriented work like this, individual  performance is not nearly as important as the overall performance of the system. Another writer elaborates further, in response to people who were skeptical of this claim:


The shorter stuff and seal times, though, are due to the fact that you are already holding the item from the previous step. You gain 1 second each time from not having to find and pick it up...

You lose between 2 and 5 seconds every time you move the pile around between steps. Also, you have to manage the pile several times during a task, something you don't have to do nearly as much with [one piece flow]... Returning to the first post, there are other advantages that have nothing to do with the efficiency of the process:

magine that the letters didn't fit in the envelopes. With the large- batch approach, we wouldn't find that out until nearly the end. With small batches, we'd know almost immediately.
There are other advantages to doing work in small batches that apply even for processes that are, or can be, automated:


All these issues are visible in a process as simple as stuffing envelopes, but they are of real and much greater consequence in the work of every company, large or small. What if it turns out that the customers have decided they don't want the product? Which process would allow a company to find this out sooner?

Lean manufacturers such as Toyota discovered the benefits of small batches decades ago. When I teach entrepreneurs this method, I often begin with stories about manufacturing. Before long, I can see the questioning looks: what does this have to do with my startup?

But the theory that is the foundation of Toyota's success can be used to dramatically improve the speed at which startups find validated learning. This last point is impressive, and it reminds me of how an engineer once solved a challenging problem by learning how to "fail faster".

I have to admit that I was highly skeptical that stuffing one envelope at a time could outpace batch processing, but I suspect that it was my passing acquaintance with the great advantages automated manufacturing can offer in  terms of time savings. It is interesting to learn that batch processing not only doesn't always save time, but has other disadvantages.

This post is a reminder that our thinking about even simple things like stuffing an envelope can be limited by implicitly-held premises or assumptions. Checking against reality can very easily refute one's "wisdom," and discovering why one was wrong can both correct and lead to new  knowledge, including about matters that are not obviously related to one's original query. 

-- CAV

Cross-posted from Metablog

Giving your numbers the benefit of the doubt, don't you think it dangerous to come to a conclusion on the effects of fed policy by analyzing 1 cherry picked, 10 or 20 year period? If you were to go back a mere 25 years you find a world where a nice, average home in orange county, Ca could be bought for 60k and a new Toyota for 2 grand. This with only a %50 decrease in minimum wage. The differences are more stark as you go back. In the 1940's my grandfather payed .09/gallon for gas and bought running, used cars for $25.

And of course, as usual for defenders of inflation, you ignore the the massive value gained by a technologically advancing civilization. Even if there was 0% perceived inflation on all goods and services, there still remains a massive transfer of value, from everyone else, directly to the owners of the printing press when the world is increasing its productivity through technological advance. When a washing machine is invented, the hours of labor required to perform that work is reduced by maybe 90% versus a washboard in the river? If the price to have clothes washed remains unchanged, where did the extra value of that labor go? The theft is even more magnificent when you consider the value created for all businesses when industrial geniuses like Al Gore in vent the internet for us. What more is produced by the use of computers? 10, 20, 50% of the US economy in terms of true labor? A lack of deflation alone, is a sign of theft on a grand scale in our current world. Inflation is just their refusal to even give us a reach around.

http://american.com/archive/2011/march/fools-gold

This is a nice historically-based essay on the non-effectiveness of the gold standard in accomplishing anything useful.

***

On this anniversary of 9/11, I am reminded of one of the early debates about airline security in the post-9/11 world: whether pilots should be able to carry guns.

I recall plenty of arguments on both sides, and some had merit and some didn't. It was ultimately decided by the FAA that such a move would not improve security (I personally have no opinion on the matter).

I recall this debate only because of one argument in particular: that a pilot could "go nuts" and start shooting people. This is an obviously example of somebody not thinking the whole thing through: if the man flying the plane you were on "went nuts", then a mere gun would be the least of your worries.

This is a great analogy for the gold standard. Yes, without the gold standard, governments are free to inflate their currency and fuck over the population. However this is certainly not their only means of doing so, and arguably not even the most effective one.

In the last 20 years our currency here in the USA has been relatively stable. I defy anybody to show me somebody (an actual person, not a contrived example) who has been "wiped out by inflation" in the USA in the last 20 years. Inflation has been relatively low, and relatively predictable. It most certainly has not made any difference with respect to all of the bad things that have happened to cause the current Depression: all of that could have just as easily happened on the gold standard.

If you are fighting for a better government, then solve problems that are problems, not problems that are... not problems. The latter makes you sound like a crazy person and diminishes are ability to fight for anything.

And those differences are? The only thing I can think of as a big-ass difference off the top of my head (besides plumbing) is that women have a shorter time-frame, vis-a-vis their entire lives, to have children than men do. This might cause a reordering of life priorities IF AND ONLY IF having biological children is important to you.

What, in your opinion, are the salient differences between men and women from the perspective of "harmonious interaction"?

I'd take it a good deal further and say that if a company could be shown to be causing a neighbor direct physical harm they should be responsible for any and all costs associated with returning the individual to their original state or compensating them directly when that is not possible. In fact, that is was our legal system does. Of course, you need to actually prove your case against an individual entity. So this is only accomplished in a specific and objective way.

What you seem more interested in, though, is to avoid the impossible task of tracing actual harm and lump all businesses into one category and label it "damaging to our health." This would affect software companies with 15 employees and virtually no "carbon(or any other) footprint" and large car factories with thousands of employees bunches of smokestacks responsible for this same harm. Doing so, vaguely holding all businesses and wealth producing individuals responsible for every harm that occurs to anyone is capricious and myopic in nature.

This could be fair, but first you would need to add up all of the values they produce and subtract the cost from them. So for example, the car factory where you purchase your car might be able to be shown to produce enough poisonous fumes to take 5 years off of your average lifespan. So if that was determined to be 100 years based on your healthy lifestyle and long lived grandparents then they would be responsible for compensating you, at least financially for 5% of your life...or roughly $165k in the US plus some reasonably determined amount for the emotional cost of that lost year. But then we would need to factor in your gains from being able to drive a car rather than walk to places which would amount to around 14 years of your life or around $462k. Also we would need to add in the lessened cost of all of the material items you consumed due to the mechanization of jobs over your whole life so, maybe $974k for that. Also some reasonably determined amount for the emotional value gained by having access to so many products and services that would be unavailable without those dirty factories. We can just say that those cancel out, for the sake of argument. So...$1.436 million - $165,000 comes out to $1,271,000 that you would owe to them. You know, if you wanted to be fair.

As a side note, this myopic-ness is one of the most frustrating things that I routinely come across in interacting with leftists. Opportunity cost is impossible to measure and always massive. So taking 50% out of everyone's pay has a cost that will end in being orders of magnitude higher than those actual dollars because there is no telling what businesses may have gotten started, what ideas could have been pursued, or what technologies invented had that money stayed in the capable, productive hands of them that created it.

I'd take it a good deal further and say that if a company could be shown to be causing a neighbor direct physical harm they should be responsible for any and all costs associated with returning the individual to their original state or compensating them directly when that is not possible. In fact, that is was our legal system does. Of course, you need to actually prove your case against an individual entity. So this is only accomplished in a specific and objective way.

What you seem more interested in, though, is to avoid the impossible task of tracing actual harm and lump all businesses into one category and label it "damaging to our health." This would affect software companies with 15 employees and virtually no "carbon(or any other) footprint" and large car factories with thousands of employees bunches of smokestacks responsible for this same harm. Doing so, vaguely holding all businesses and wealth producing individuals responsible for every harm that occurs to anyone is capricious and myopic in nature.

This could be fair, but first you would need to add up all of the values they produce and subtract the cost from them. So for example, the car factory where you purchase your car might be able to be shown to produce enough poisonous fumes to take 5 years off of your average lifespan. So if that was determined to be 100 years based on your healthy lifestyle and long lived grandparents then they would be responsible for compensating you, at least financially for 5% of your life...or roughly $165k in the US plus some reasonably determined amount for the emotional cost of that lost year. But then we would need to factor in your gains from being able to drive a car rather than walk to places which would amount to around 14 years of your life or around $462k. Also we would need to add in the lessened cost of all of the material items you consumed due to the mechanization of jobs over your whole life so, maybe $974k for that. Also some reasonably determined amount for the emotional value gained by having access to so many products and services that would be unavailable without those dirty factories. We can just say that those cancel out, for the sake of argument. So...$1.436 million - $165,000 comes out to $1,271,000 that you would owe to them. You know, if you wanted to be fair.

As a side note, this myopic-ness is one of the most frustrating things that I routinely come across in interacting with leftists. Opportunity cost is impossible to measure and always massive. So taking 50% out of everyone's pay has a cost that will end in being orders of magnitude higher than those actual dollars because there is no telling what businesses may have gotten started, what ideas could have been pursued, or what technologies invented had that money stayed in the capable, productive hands of them that created it.

*getting it out of the way that I am talking about straight relationships here and do not have any experience with any homosexual ones and have no desire to do so if it sounds biased

Growing up in the age of the 'manchild' where traditional masculinity has been tossed aside by our culture (Adam Sandler's typical characters are excellent examples of this archetype) I believe that feminism and the prevalence of single mothers have allowed most younger men to remain stuck in a prolonged adolescence. Our culture also contributes to this phenomenon with mind numbing displays of irresponsibility like MTV and Jackass. This environment teaches young women they are strong and powerful and independent, and better than men, but on the flip side it also degrades men and the absence of father figures tends to lead to a specific situation of romantic incompetence. Two relatively common symptoms of this can easily be described as the "will you please go out with me" approach from men who's mothers taught them to be 'nice' and shower compliments on their girlfriends, or the irresponsible man who does not take pride in himself and coasts along. I myself was the former for a while until my father retaught me about interacting with the opposite sex, and from my experience it is much easier to find girls and many more are interested in you as a man if you reflect the more traditional masculinity and maintain an almost arrogant air about you, but always keep the tone light and playful.

So in short: Yes i believe men should pursue women, but not try to 'win them over' as many try to do.

What does objectivism hold as the rational way for the opposite sex to pursue romantic interest? In general, is it the most rational for men to pursue women, or is this irrelevant? I find that usually in our culture, men do not think of women as members of the opposite sex, but as buddies with different plumbing. It is very unsatisfying as a woman, I like to be pursued, and be appreciated through my feminine qualities, not as a buddy with benefits. It is very frustrating to have to change my own natural behavior to have a conversation with a timid man who I am interested in.

Does modern feminism dehumanize men and rob them of their sexual self confidence? This is what I've always thought. There is an implicit hatred in society for traditional masculinity, and most young men learn to de emphasize their behavior because of this. Acknowledginng the strengths that one sex tends to have which is complemented by the other, is not in any way sexist.

The government was scheduled to run out of money completely within a week give or take, within the confines of the law, provided the president didn't exert certain statutory powers (e.g. the $1T coin etc.). Clearly had the deal not been reached, the president would have been duty-bound to override congress' attempt at ending our democracy.




Yeah, instantly removing the livelihood of tens of millions of people with no prior warning wouldn't have any bad effects at all. We should totally do that.

***

Ayn Rand once called Objectivism, "a philosophy for living on Earth". I guess people are free to use it however they want, and some are perfectly happy using it as a mental exercise, or a puzzle, or a way to win meaningless arguments at cocktail parties.

What a waste.




OP

Well, for a little help, here's how a prominent online dictionary defines the word, "default":

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/default

default -- "to fail in fulfilling or satisfying an engagement, claim, or obligation."

Anybody buying t-bills are buying debt denominated in US dollars. Yes, you can inflate those dollars, but no, that is not "default" in any sense of the term. Investors know what "dollars" are, and they act accordingly. The treasury also sells TIPS, for example, which is the product for customers who would like to bet FOR inflation.

But all that said, in today's environment, significant inflation in the US is utterly laughable. The ONLY thing going up in price these days is gold, which is obviously a speculator-induced bubble, not a sign of the 500% inflation it portends.

To say it again (as I have in other threads), I'm quite afraid of what are otherwise very rational people being made to look like crackpots in resting a lot of conclusions on something is utterly without evidence. The next decade will be about DEflation not inflation (see: Japan), t-bills are as safe as mother's milk, and S&P was just manipulating public opinion not making any kind of judgment that people expect from them (which amounts to fraud).

Getting on S&P's side and defending them is a BIG mistake. And yes, S&P (and many of the other ratings agencies) absolutely SHOULD be investigated and potentially prosecuted for the fraud they committed during the subprime fiasco. I have no idea why these cases haven't been brought forward--and I wondered that two years ago, long before this downgrade business.



OP

Since taxation involves the direct use of aggression against the rights of property, it is per se incompatible with Objectivist ethics, and thus by its nature illegitimate and criminal. Supporters of individual rights have to favor any decrease in the initiation of force. Thus, if we can keep someone's money in their pocket, we should favor it. There can be no such thing as "excessive" tax cuts.

You state that taxes don't reduce the size of government, but this is wrong. It reduces the amount of aggression the government commits, so it does reduce government reach and influence, and advance individual liberty.

It doesn't necessarily reduce the spending of government, true enough. But it does reduce the amount of money the government has available to spend. Now certainly, the problem is that the government borrows and inflates on top of the amount it takes in direct taxation. If the government is intent on spending all its tax revenue and borrowing and inflating on top of that, it won't matter how high direct taxes are. It will take in $n in taxes, and spend more than $n anyway, so not wanting inflation and debt is not a valid reason to maintain any level of taxation.

The objection that cutting taxes means we have to pay for something later, as you mention, but you jump from the fact that we are currently forced to pay, because we accept taxation, to the value-judgment that it is better that we should pay (sooner over later.) But the whole point is that we should not have to pay for this public waste, period. The government will have to default and be liquidated to remain consistent with Objectivist ethics.

Edit: And also, this kind of confusion is actually poisonous because is adds to the idea that tax cuts are bad because they "add to the deficit." But tax cuts only "add to the deficit" if you implicitly consider all the income of the citizens as the property of the government, and thus cutting taxes constitutes increases spending. But who is the owner of the funds paid in taxes? Once it is established that the citizens, not the government, are the owners of the funds in question, revenue and expenditure are essentially the same things then, and any amount of taxation can never be justified. Tax cuts aren't spending increases, and tax increases aren't spending cuts.

It's not making money that leftists actually resent; it's the assertion of the individual mind towards self-beneficial production -and thus, putting itself beyond the reach of second-hand manipulators like the author. The whole anti-money meme is just a deceptive euphemism; as a rule, people who have blocked their minds from reality have to "communicate" via euphemisms and code language that appeal to human weakness like fear and envy. Note that for most people, religion isn't a matter of personal choice as it is a deterministic circumstance of birth.

Hello.... goodbye.