Vladimir Berkov

I remember it in the context of Sunday school, where I suppose I was one of the failures. I must have been very young, like three or four and we were supposed to be making "Jesus fish" (like the ones on the back of cars) on construction paper by gluing on pieces of pasta, glitter, etc. Only I didn't like the way the Jesus fish looks and wanted to make mine with an eye and with fins, which the teacher grudgingly allowed. At that age I guess I didn't even understand what a Jesus fish was, I thought we were just making pictures of normal fish.

I agree, it certainly erodes the author's credibility in my mind. I remember the Goosebumps books when I was a kid, I think I read a couple of them but never really got into them simply because I found them boring. Btw, what kind of recommendation is "Little Lord Fauntleroy?" Good luck getting kids to read that...

I think there is some crazy guy who has a website with this idea, I think he wants to create some sort of floating city out in the ocean. I am sure someone here has the link.

A good example I can think of is in social situations where you are asked to attend and you don't want to for some personal reason you would rather not tell the host. In such situations you might say "I have a prior engagement, and can't attend" even though the truth is "I could attend but I don't want to because I hate your friends."

The value comes in not answering questions truthfully when telling the truth would lead to a greater wrong than telling a lie. This often comes up when one is asked a question which is rude or improper to ask, but an answer is demanded anyway.

I don't see "white lies" as sacrificial at all. When you tell a white lie you are simply valuing something else (friendship, politeness, decorum, etc) above the telling of an unnecessary and largely irrelevant truth.

It is not "only a matter of time" in regards to nukes, or even force for that matter. In particular with nukes, as it is what we are talking about, there has never been a non-free country which has used nuclear weapons in warfare. Ironically only the US, a "free" country has used them. Even statist countries see the risk that the use of nukes poses to them, and even though often these countries fight in conventional wars they hold back the use of nukes (as do "free" countries, like the US, Britain, France, etc.) because of the potential risk. That is why provoking an attack, even on a non-free country which might result in the use of its nukes is dangerous, because it is by no means assured that such a country would otherwise ever use its nuclear arsenal.

It is not "only a matter of time" in regards to nukes, or even force for that matter. In particular with nukes, as it is what we are talking about, there has never been a non-free country which has used nuclear weapons in warfare. Ironically only the US, a "free" country has used them. Even statist countries see the risk that the use of nukes poses to them, and even though often these countries fight in conventional wars they hold back the use of nukes (as do "free" countries, like the US, Britain, France, etc.) because of the potential risk. That is why provoking an attack, even on a non-free country which might result in the use of its nukes is dangerous, because it is by no means assured that such a country would otherwise ever use its nuclear arsenal.

As I said, I have the unique faculty of knowing my own wants and desires, of knowing what causes me pain, and knowing what does not. I thus don't see how it is a logical contradiction to say that "I should live, but you can die." Yes, rights are based on the metaphysical requirements of survival, I agree. The question then becomes what things should be protected via rights so that they can survive. And I am still trying to figure out what unique property of humans mean that all humans requirements for survival should be protected, but no other animals.

I accept the law of non-contradiction, but don't see how it is applicable here. There seems to be a very great essential difference between my life any other human. That is that my life is mine, and that any threat or injury to it hurts me, whereas injury to others doesn't directly hurt me in any way at all. For example, the thousands of people dying in Darfur doesn't make me physically hurt, it doesn't make me lose any of my life. It is really only of consequence to me to the extent that the physical risk from whatever killed them might kill me in the future, and that risk is virtually nil. The same is true for families, tribes, nations and all larger units of men. Death and destruction among another group is always of much less importance and concern than similar death and destruction among the group itself. In regards to drawing distinctions on which class of beings has rights and which does not my point is not that "blacks don't have rights although animals do," but rather that if the right to life is based solely on a living being's desire for life, there seems no principled way to decide which class of beings should be protected by rights and which should not.

I am not quite sure what my potential disagreement with objectivist philosophy has to do with my understanding of it. For instance, I understand much of the philosophy of Hume and Kant even though I don't agree with most of it. I just was looking over my copy of OPAR, trying again to find an answer to my question in several of the chapters and came up empty-handed. I just don't see where objectivism explains why the desires of men to live (man's life) is a valid starting point for everything else which follows. Peikoff does a decent job of explaining how, given the proposition that mans life is the ultimate value, that a right to life and all other derivative rights are necessary to preserve mans life qua man in a social context. But the nagging question which remains is why the man's life should be preserved. Perhaps objectivism sees this as axiomatic, although that seems a bit strange to me as it is almost completely arbitrary. It would make almost as much sense to say that the lives of all white men, or of all mammals should be preserved, and build a moral philosophy from either of those axioms. This issue is like the foundation of the objectivist building, it needs to be sturdy and well-designed else all that is built on top of it risks collapse. This is why I think it is so odd why the objectivist literature essentially devotes no effort to it, instead seemingly accepting it as an axiom and moving on to less problematic discussions of how rights are the only means of letting man live qua man.

These are just unsupported assertions, however. Why is it "right for man to live?" You say that it is something more than the desire of the individual to live, but how can this be so? Certainly the universe doesn't care whether a man lives or dies. It only really matters to the man himself, because he has a desire to live which you say is not protected. Again, I think it is obvious once you prove that there is some necessity to having individual men live then a system of rights to protect that life is necessary. But I think it is by no means obvious where this right comes from other than the simple desire of men to live and not to die. This is why I think consequentialist arguments such as SoftwareNerd's are dangerous, because they in no way require that all humans have rights or even that those who do have rights are respected. Obviously if you ask any individual he will say he wants to live and that he doesn't want other people to kill him. But to each individual the solution to the problem need only encompass his own life. For example, if I were to possess a "doomsday machine" perhaps I could theoretically tell every other human that he has no rights and that only I do, and live accordingly. This is only one end of the spectrum. In most of human history the rule is that one group of people has rights and the other does not. This can be based on race, on class, on gender, on national boundary lines, on whatever. And if practical considerations are all that underpin the notion of a right to life, it seems that such a state of affairs is inevitable as groups who have power thus have an interest in saying that groups without power have no rights. Such a state of affairs thus perfectly protects the powerful group's lives, but of course at the expense of the group which has no rights.

I am not disputing the fact that rights are important. I am trying to figure out what objectivism bases a universal human right to life upon. Why should every mans desire to live be protected? Obviously once you accept that it becomes easy to determine that rights are the method of protecting that life. If volition is just the power to choose, then animals also posses it. If volition includes a meaningful amount of reasoning, then small children really don't possess it nor do the severly retarded. Then again you have the problem that certain higher forms of animals (gorillas, dolphins, etc) also seeminly possess some minimal intellectual/reasoning ability. Since it doesn't seem that objectivism sees the right to life as a scalar quality, then there must be some bright-line rule distinguishing what has rights from what does not. "Volition" doesn't seem to yeild such a rule, nor is it clear why it should.

This doesn't make any sense at all. Why is it a moral requirement for men to survive? Why isn't it a moral requirement for animals to survive? If animals don't have rights because they can't comprehend the concept "morality" again, why do small children and the mentally retarded have rights? If rights are based on the individual regardless of society then why should the individual bother respecting the rights of others? At best respecting the rights of others is a form of calculated reciprocity, and where this reciprocity doesn't exist (where the victim has no possibility to harm you) why not violate rights? I honestly wish I could understand where objectivism bases its conception of the right to life. Once you have a univerally-applicable human right to life, getting to all other derivative rights and political structures becomes easy. It is the foundation of the right to life I am not seeing explained. Somewhere in the objectivist literature somebody must have explained why the starting assumptions I listed earlier are necessary and why they can be depended upon. As it is, it seems that objectivism plays "fast and loose" with the argument up until the point where a right-to-life is stated and then goes from there with more convincing arguments for derivative rights.

We already know of such species. Not to bring up that talking apes thread again, but I believe many scientists would agree that gorillas have the intellectual capacity of very young children. What I would like to know is why objectivism makes the following distinctions: 2-year-old human child = rights 40-year-old human with intelligence of 2-year-old child = rights Brain-damaged 40-year-old human with no conciousness or motor control =rights Gorilla with intelligence of 2-year old child = no rights Dog with intelligence less than human child but more than brain-damaged human = no rights By utilitarian I mean that the only justification for a human right to life comes from the need to prevent such violance in society because that is the only way society can properly function. As such, the human right to life depends on the structure and requirements of that society. It would thus not be inconsistant to have a society where slaves have no right to life, or where women have none, or the mentally ill have none, etc. It all depends on what sort of conception of rights best allows for the growth and survival of human society.

I am still not seeing how the arguments connect. Accepting a right to life seems to be based on two assumptions that the right itself can't prove. 1.) The desire of all human individuals to live needs to be protected for some reason. 2.) Humans are metaphysically equal. I guess I am just not seeing where the justification for a right to right rests for objectivists. Is it a utilitarian rationale, IE that a right to life is a precondition for organized society and is in the best interest of the vast majority of individuals? Or is it a sort of natural law, which admits of no societal justification or modification? In regards to animal rights, the argument I am seeing against them is because animals are not reasoning beings they don't have rights? I am not sure how this follows either, since human rights are ultimately founded on the desire for humans to live, it seems logical that an animal right to life can be founded on the same justification. Whether or not animal rights can be reciprocal seems somewhat irrelevant in this regard. Saying that because animals don't understand the concept of rights they can't have rights seems to mandate that small children, senile old people, and the mentally retarded similarly have no rights. It seems that any protection of rights for these classes of humans can exist only as a legal fiction. And if so, why not extend this legal fiction to include higher forms of animals as well?

The problem is that I don't see a clear logical jump from the propositions "all individual men have a desire to live" to "all men have a right to life." The fact that one man desires to live in no way necessitates that all other men's desires to live are relevant or should be protected as a "right." Because again, I don't see how the line can be drawn based on a meaningful principle. Why not say that Aryan people have a right to life but don't have to recognize the right to life of Jews or blacks because it is not in their selfish interest to do so? Certainly it is not possible to reason with animals, but that hardly seems a meaningful line since we extend rights to children and the disabled as well as reasoning adults. The capacity for reason may also matter in areas of conflict or self-defense (where there is no option with animals other than the use of force) but this doesn't translate into the idea that animals have no rights at all, and may be killed at-will for any reason or whim whatsoever.

How does a species "need" to survive? There is certainly no natural necessity, since species go extinct and other new species are created all the time going back billions of years. Specifically, why does man need to survive and how does that translate into saying that a man needs to survive? For instance, if rights stem from the survival of the species it would seem that it would be entirely consistant to kill off even large numbers of people if it meant preserving the species. For instance, if there is a shortage of resources such that the group will not all survive, it would be moral to kill enough people until the land would be able to support the remaining few. This is one of the things which I have never understood about objectivism, namely how a right to life exists is founded on anything other than as a selfish desire of individuals to live. And a desire to live is something shared by animals as well to which objectivists ascribe no rights at all.

I am afraid it doesn't lend itself to the movie format, it would make a good book though. The most interesting business-related movie I can recall seeing recently was "Barbarians at the Gate" which shows that finance and business can be interesting though, if presented in the right format.

If sandwich = bread + filling then a lot of really WIERD things can be called a sandwich. Perhaps moo shu pork? Hot dogs?

Interestingly one of the German nicknames for the Americans was "chewing gum soldiers" which refers to how the Germans saw the Americans as fat, sloppy soldiers always with gum in their mouths.

The problem with corruption isn't that the prison officials have a direct say in who gets sent to prison. They do, however have a say in who stays in prison. If prisons are a profit center then they may be reluctant to see prisoners be released if it means a drop in productivity. The same is true of the government as a whole. There may be an institutional bias in favor of having prisoners if prisoners contribute to the government's revenue. Comparing prison labor to foreign sweatshop labor is a bit problematic as domestic wages are certainly far higher, and not just because of minimum-wage laws. I don't think market interference is a "killer" problem with prison industry, but rather it is a contributing one. The more useful prisons are in putting prisoners to work the greater the potential competitive risk versus private industry. I see it as less of a problem if the prisons only contract with government agencies, as this essentially saves taxpayers money otherwise spent in the budget.

I am afraid I don't see how in an ideal society a prison should be self-supporting, any more than a police department or fire department should be self-supporting. The two big problems I see with prisons as industries are 1.) corruption and 2.) market interference. Corruption is a problem because if there is a profit to be made from prisoners as (essentially) slave laborers, there is also a benefit to having more people in prison. Market interference may also result from prison industries, operating with sub-market labor costs, competing unfairly with private non-prison enterprises.

We simply don't have enough soldiers at the moment. Not only do we have massive commitments all over the world (and in Afghanistan) already, but we are already having to use non-regular troops. If we want to really up our military strength in Iraq we will have to do some major reshuffling of troop strengths both in the US and all over the world. I don't think the political capital exists for that unfortunately.

I believe Israel has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons although they have never denied it either, and it is a certainty that they actually have them. The whole Israeli nuclear affair in a way is rather disconcerting, by the way. The Israelis basically either stole or were "given" nuclear material and expertise in order to make nuclear weapons by the US. Regardless of what the current state of US-Israeli relations is, such actions by the US are at best suspicious and at worst a massive breach of national security and self-interest.