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Miles White

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Everything posted by Miles White

  1. How about a better question to ask, "What about all the people in countries with socialized medicine being forced to wait years in queues in order to maybe get medicine that they must pay outrageous taxes for." Not only is it voluntary to stick with private medicine, but you'll be guaranteed service when you want it and you'll be guaranteed real service from good doctors as opposed to just union doctors who are given government payed for vacations when ever they want. The private sector, when given the space to, will always give the best service at the most competitive price. In a pure capitalist economy were people are allowed to keep all of the money that they earn to themselves, people would have more money to spend on medical care and the private hospitals would compete with one another to see which one gives the best service with the lowest price. Private hospitals are mainly so expensive today because of inflation, and subsidies that take away all the competitive motivation of the businesses.
  2. If you believe that a fetus should have rights then do you believe that children should be trusted to live their own lives with out being monitored by a parent in any way shape or form? If so, show me your "reasoning". If not ... well then it's a contradiction and against objectivist metaphysics as I stated previously. It's as clear and black and white as that, and if you don't understand black and whites then you really must not understand objectivism.
  3. My only concern before was wether he might flip flop again since he's already done it recently, but I doubt it. I trust Romney for the most part but again, Mccain is another story. Frankly, I don't trust Mccain as far as I can throw him.
  4. I don't like "turnaround" presidents typically because you can't trust them. I'm not talking about presidents that change their opinion once in a while (for good or for worse), I'm speaking of the ones that constantly go awol on the parties platform (Bush's no child left behind act). John Mccain is being referred to as a "Maverick" because he changes positions so much. I typically like a president with stability and I do believe that Romney's stable enough, however Mccain is a whole another story. As for Ron Paul, I love his fiscal policy but his foreign and social policies flat out suck. *** Mod's note: Ron Paul related replies have been moved to the Ron Paul topic. - sN ***
  5. I agree that Romney is good in the manner that we don't have to worry too much about his religious principals being incorporated into government (He's no Huckabee). However, me being a recent Guiliani converter, I'm still sad that Guiliani's doing so awfull. Ron Paul is ok too, but I can't stand his typical Libertarian Pacifist views mixed with religion. My only major problem with Romney is his lack of consistency. I hate flip-floppers, and I really find it funny that Mccain has recently accused Romney of flip-flopping. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
  6. Do you also believe that trees have rights? A fetus basically has the same intelligence and volitional conciousness of a tree, and they are both compositions of cells. Ergo, you must also be an Eco-Hippie. The fact of the matter is that you can't just claim natural rights for merely being alive, there is a maturity level that is required in order to officially make rational decisions of your own. Children aren't even allowed to fully take responsibility over their own natural rights and you expect a fetus to take responsibility over it's own? A fetus, being a thing that is so under developed that it doesn't even have a gender yet is to be trusted to wield more rights than a kindergardener? The point that I'm trying to make is yes, a fetus does have natural rights, but like children, are not to be trusted with them, thus rendering the "right to life" argument to be null and void. The only reason why somebody would be "Pro-Life" is because they beleive that a fetus is a creation of god and therefore does have some god given right to life that would be a sin if we took away. It is a contradiction to be a Pro-Life Atheist.
  7. I absolutely agree, it's also the reason why I've always been reluctant to become a physiocrat or a "Georgist Libertarian". There're many flaws with that system too, like if all I have to do is change land in order to own it, then does that mean if I roll on the grass over the hill and flatten the grass that the hill is mine? What about the miles of earth beneath the surface, how does one claim a piece of the earths mantle to themselves just by changing the surface? and why should a government claim random ownership over that land as some "collective entity", if man didn't make land then I can bet you anything that a government sure as hell didn't make it either.
  8. How many Proletariats does it take to make a pancake. None, because there's no Bourgeoisie to tell them how to.
  9. Well I don't know about you, but Dominique Francon was my favorite character in Atlas Shrugged.
  10. I'm shocked that I haven't herd more people talking about Herbie Hancock and the headhunters, or WeatherReport. Jaco Pastorious has to be the greatest bassist of all times and Joe Zawinul who composed the famous hit "Birdland", and lets not forget the great Wayne Shorter on saxophone who also collaborated with Steely Dan for the album Aja (one of the best albums ever next to Heavy Weather). Also my personal favorite (not only jazz but guitarists period) Larry Carlton, Pat Metheny, Allan Holdsworth, Lee Ritenour , Denny Dias, and Pat Martino.
  11. I am also currently writing a novel, However I have no planned finishing date but I did make a new years resolution to finnish it before this year is over. I'm going to get it published by http://www.authorhouse.com which is an online print-on-demand self-publishing company which provides you with the tools to publish it your self. So far I have finished the prologue and chapter 1, I plan on making it a 12 chapter novel. It is a coming of age novel about an immature smart aleck and his friends (all of which have a deep interest in abstract philosophy, mainly ethics) and how they struggle to adapt to a private Law school that has become overly corrupt and excessively bureaucratic ever since the original creator of the school (Marcus May) became hospitalized for cancer. The Vice Dean of the school is a irritating weasel like character that has written a letter a month to congress urging them to nationalize the school. The main characters of the story (James Horton, Lloyd Sellers, Rudy Tilton, and Danniel Fane) are boys who wield the potential for greatness but are halted from it due to misunderstood premisses. They have no interest in any particular philosophy of their own and are very skeptical and relatively nihilistic towards everything except for the Nichomachean ethics that all four of them worship like a bible. Eventually the characters encounter Marcus May himself and he describes to them the error of their ways. I don't want to give away anything else because I want the title of the novel "Marcus's Law" to remain ambiguous until the end. What I can say is that the end is very heart warming and has an overall message devoted to loyalty only to truly loyal institutions and that there is an objective way of determining wether they're virtuous. Another big message of the story is the fact that there is no such thing as a contradiction. The main goal of the novel isn't necessarily to promote a particular political or ethical philosophy within it's moral, but rather to simply state the fact that there is no such thing as a contradiction, and to let the reader determine for him/herself exactly what is or is not a contradiction in their lives. I feel rather confident that it should do fairly well and I will get it done as soon as possible because frankly my main motivation for writing this book is profit and I feel very excited about it. Here's a portion of chapter 1 were the main character James Horton and his best friend Lloyd Sellers are driving themselves home from the graduation ceremony of their high school and are contemplating their future and some other things that annoy them. The character of James Horton has a scholarship to a Law school and Lloyd just reveals to him that he's going to attend the same school and can get away with it too do to his rich family which was explained previously before this little excerpt. The novel is narrated in a first person with James Horton doing the narration. "So what college are you going to?" I asked. "I? well..." Lloyd began with a smirk. "I believe that I'm not going to just any college. I'm going to Marcus's school of Law." "What?" I exclaimed. "You're not happy?" "Well it's just that... it's an expensive school and to just go to it for no reason seems kinda ridiculous." "Ah, but that is were you are wrong my friend. I don't just wish to attend it for no reason, I want to learn about justice." Replied Lloyd sarcastically. "It's not funny Lloyd, you really shouldn't waste the money." "Oh hush up you. I know what I'm getting myself into. I actually really am curious about the place, I here it's like a friggin land mark. The campus, that is. Suppose to be one of the oldest Private schools in the United States." "Really?" "Yeah, I've been reading an article all about it that I tore out of some magazine. You can have it if you want, I've read it several times." "You sound like you've actually been looking forward to it." "well, why not. Anything has got to be better than high school." "Definitely." "I don't know man, I just can't stand most of our friggin peers ya know. How they demand independence from 'The Establishments' that make students wear uniforms, when in reality their just going to make uniforms of their own by yielding to whatever the fashion industry pumps into their heads." "Yeah, and I can't stand how teenagers at high school all except any load of crap that a teacher, or rather, any relatively authoritative looking figure propounds into the minds of the mindless." "If a teacher told a teenager that eating fecal matter was incredibly healthy for you I wouldn't be surprised at all if they all began eating it." We both had a very good laugh after that statement. "Sad but true." Continued Lloyd. Then, there was a long pause until I decided to speak again. "Lloyd, why are we so weird?" "Why are we so sane, you mean? I don't know why we are so awesome, but seriously it really is pathetic how desperate most of our peers are to conform to non-conformity." "The saddest part is the fact that their teachers are actually encouraging their stupid behavior." "It's almost as if they all lack such esteem, and yet are so desperate for it that they have to become apart of a gang in order to gain some sort of false sense of pride. Like a drug." "That's... a very deep statement. I would've never expected you of all people to say it." I laughed. "You can learn allot from me Jimmy, if only you'd open your ears." "What's that suppose to mean?" "Oh hush up you, I was just kidding. You know that you're my only like mind, and if you really are my true counterpart then you should also know what Aristotle said about it." "'A friend is a second self.'" "There ya go." Me and Lloyd were having such an intriguing conversation that I didn't even witness the car stop and park in front of my house. "Well Lloyd, either we're the wisest of our generation or the most conceited." "You'd be amazed how those two depend upon each-other. For our sake, let's hope it's both." With that departing message, I bid farewell to Lloyd, got out of his car, and walked into my house. I always felt extremely comfortable when being around Lloyd, for it really is amazing how analogous minds can feel so at home with one another, and yet I also wonder, if our peers feel the same sense of serenity hanging around with the kind of goons that are manufactured out of what ever their twisted society deems as popular... I shudder to think what a mind like that truly feels about it's own life, or wether, if it even knows that it has one.
  12. I understand that, how ever what I meant to say was who is the most virtuous or least of all evils to you.
  13. I meant to say 82 minus 100. I can't necessarily be a negative number.
  14. This is a very interesting thing I stumbled upon. It's a map of every single department and bureau that our current federal government has, and the amount of money it spends to fund them. http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/site/index.p...c6057924eb63466
  15. I stumbled upon this new little united states third party that's coming up called the Liberal Capitalist Party. It seems to have a pretty interesting platform based upon what it has said about certain issues. They seem to be fairly level headed. http://www.liberalcapitalist.com/faqs/c_20/
  16. Your entire presumption rests on the fact that all immigrants are evil and want to change our government to fit their evil agenda but this is clearly not the case in at least most of the time. The reason why people come to america would be to seek freedom, not impose their will. Also, something to keep in mind is that just because someone is foreign doesn't automatically mean that they hate freedom. Lets not forget were Ayn Rand was originally from.
  17. Johnny Winter is a phenomenal blues guitarist. You'd think that he'd take the frets off of his firebird so he could slide better but guess he doesn't need to. I've always been fond of slide guitar, and the blues is my 2nd favorite category of music (Jazz being my first).
  18. You don't literally have to find a specific reason in order to save their life. The fact that their death will bring you displeasure and unhappiness (even if it's temporary) should still easily be enough motivation to save the life of a loved one. If a loved one died, you probably would want to kill yourself for a while, but not to do so would not be a contradiction because your motivation for staying alive is not dependent upon them. Your motivation to keep them alive could just as easily be the fact that you don't want to temporarily experience such pain as to loose them.
  19. Not to get to off topic, but there is an interesting theory called M-theory which states that sub-atomic particles that we use to identify as fundamental pieces of matter are actually interpreted as waves vibrating off of even more fundamental pieces of matter known as 0 branes 1 branes and 2 branes. Unfortunately, there's no way to prove it right or wrong because these pieces of matter would have to be so incredibly small that it would literally take a particle accelerator bigger than our entire solar system just to smash quarks let alone these branes.
  20. This is an interesting bit of information from wikipedia, it says that the oregon state government generated $604 million dollars through lottery alone. Maybe Rand was right about funding the government entirely off of lottery, heres the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon
  21. I don't mean this as a critique, but I was just wondering wether statistically speaking is it realistically possible for a monopoly of coercion to be purely voluntarily funded? I mean even government limited to police courts and military would still have allot of people working under it who need paychecks. I guess what I'm asking is wether anyone can show me how much money the government actually takes in and spends and how much can be voluntarily obtained.
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