Steve D'Ippolito

You do realize that the Fair Tax is not an income tax? This isn't a choice between an income tax and another income tax, it's a choice between a form of sales tax and an income tax. Now of course Objectivists want there to be NO tax but Ayn Rand herself stated that taxes would probably be one of the last non-Objectivist features of a society to go, if we were to start heading towards Objectivism. Given that... what do we advocate in the meantime? Income taxes reek and not just because of constitutional issues, but because they force people to sell half the family farm and/or business when they inherit it. Property taxes are equally pernicious, you can be forced to sell your property in order to pay (or not have to pay) the tax. Only a sales tax won't assess you for more cash than you actually have access to--if you cannot afford the price with tax, you don't make the purchase and do not pay the tax. (It still has the effect of making things more expensive--enough so in many cases to alter your choices--but ANY tax has that, that's why they all stink.)

I know of an author who uses Ø as a symbol for our current money*; he refuses to use the dollar sign $ when they ain't dollars no more. The difficulty I have is in reading his stuff aloud to someone... what do I say when I see Ø? *alas I have to maintain that it is "money", it's just not objective money.

The difficulty here is that one of two things (or some proportional combination of the two) must happen: Either peoples' pay must be cut by about as much as is withheld, or prices (which include the fair tax) must go up, because costs of production include peoples' pay. (Well it's not quite that bad as I will explain below, but follow this argument for now.) The fair tax people like to talk about how there are a lot of hidden taxes in what we buy--but they include the income tax withheld from the workers who produce the product as part of that! For that to go away, gross pay must be cut by the amount being withheld. Doesn't really matter, you say... but I am sure every union in the US would scream bloody murder if you tried to cut gross pay even if take home stayed the same or increased. Some things would actually go away though. These are taxes or tax related expenditures by businesses that _don't_ get printed on peoples' paychecks, so they can be eliminated from business costs and hence the base price of items without people objecting. Things like the compliance cost of paying corporate income tax, and also the "employer's share" of social security and medicare. The elimination of such would probably allow prices to be cut by 10% without having to touch the gross pay of the workers. (Source for that figure: 7.55 percent SS/medicare tax plus my personal guess as to what percentage of costs of doing business have to do with idiot IRS paperwork.) Products can be priced--pre sales tax--90% of what they are today, add 30% to that (which is 27 percentage points, 9. x .3) and if workers refuse to accept pay cuts, the price of everything will show a net increase of 17% (.9 + .27 = 1.17) but you will not have anything withheld from your paycheck. Or you will take a 17% pay cut but not have anything withheld from that paycheck. You will, according to the Fair Tax, receive automatically each month a check equal to tax on the poverty level for your household.. if poverty level for you is $1000/month, you get a check every month for $230. This is a roundabout way of making poverty level income tax free. This check would be sent to everyone without regard for how much or how little they make so no one will have incentive to lie about their income or any need to file; Bill Gates gets this check and so does the unemployed bum. I don't particularly like this provision but IF someone is going to try to make part of one's spending exempt this might be the best way to do it. Personally I think the benefits to this system vs. the current system are enormous.. you are no longer taxing _production_. BUT there is a gigantic trap here. The income tax must be totally abolished or this is a very bad idea.

The Spaniards were using the symbol in the 1750s IIRC. The dollar itself isn't even a US invention, really. In the 1500s if not earlier large silver coins were made in Joachimsthal (now Jachymov in Czechia), originally called Joachimsthalers, which got shortened to "thaler" in western europe (and Yefimok in Russia, but that's another story); the th was pronounced "t" in Germany, so it sounds like "taller" and you can imagine it was a short step from there to "dollar". The Spanish 8 reales coin was "dollar" sized, and circulated widely in the English colonies. In fact it was more common than English coinage. The 8 reales was called the Spanish Dollar. The Mexican peso also historically derives from it, though the peso has been inflated/debased a lot more. And the peso uses the "dollar" sign as well. Anyhow, Thor, given what you said in a different thread I thought you'd be pleased to hear that historically the dollar is a large silver coin weighing 25-27 grams or so. Pegging it to gold (other than via a government dictated weight ratio of silver to gold--bad idea) was a much later development.

Just got the copy I special ordered (B&N was sold out!) on DVD as a gift for my brother and sister-in-law. (They had one blu-ray the other day which I scooped up.) It still has the error on the cover insert.

Me. I collect it (as in coin collecting). I've collected pre-fiat US, Russian Imperial (pre-1917) and ancient coinage. I tend to find the modern base metal crap profoundly uninteresting to collect, though... unless it comes from an era where it was freely convertible to (and hence a convenience substitute for) the real stuff. (Cents and "nickels" from before 1965 for example.) Of course this is _very_ different from accumulating bullion as you are doing. I do that too, but to me it's a somewhat different endeavor: "Coin Collection" =/= "Bullion Stash".

Scores/Resumes are an imperfect measure of ability in any case. Ideally you could hire someone and if it turned out that they were in fact bullshitters who interviewed better than they worked and could take tests but not truly understand the subject matter, you could let them go. But current labor law in the US makes that not an option. Which is why a lot of people bring in temps via a temp agency and simply send them back to the agency if they don't work out. It's the only way today to try someone out before committing to a bunch of bogus employment costs mandated by our government which after all is only here to help us. /sarcasm

There was another condition though, for being invited to the valley, and that was to be ready to quit working for the looters. Eddie never approached this, and Galt talked with Eddie a LOT so he'd know this. I've no doubt he otherwise qualified to be in the valley; there were quite a few others there who were perfectly "ordinary" people--the fishwife, the truck driver, etc.

That's OK because we have religion to tell us all those other purposes are evil and wrong. /sarcasm

I hope you meant deceased, not "diseased".

Well said, EC! You've managed to encapsulate my attitude towards it quite well. (Well, other than spelling whatsisuselessness's name as "Taggert!" )

My apologies for going overboard on that. The only explanation I can offer is that one of my pet peeves is the alleged fan who gushes about "Ann Rand" and her characters "Taggert," "Gault," "Reardon," and "Rourke." (Oddly, I don't think I've ever seen d'Anconia's name butchered.) Of course the asshats out there who have never read the book but participate in the slime campaigns can butcher all they want and it will just make their stupidity more apparent. (You know the slime campaigns: Rand approved of Hickman, Rand used drugs, Rand collected Social Security and Medicaid.... there's a place out there somewhere telling all the mushbrains to put those comments on any comment thread they can find.) I just watched the commentary track... and looked forward to the commentary explaining why they did NOT portray Rearden's guilt-driven disgust with himself the morning after. (To me that's philosophically FAR more important than whether or not the sex was rough, since it brings up in yet another way the problem that Rearden is having, giving his sanction to his enemies.) I forgot to mention that criticism earlier, and I think if there was _exactly one_ thing I could change about the movie, that would be it. Anyhow... they claim they chose not to do it that way because it would have stopped the pacing in its tracks. (Bull! Like that long morning after on the patio scene and wilderness shots they showed instead, kept up the pace....) If there were TWO things I could change... The Mysterious Stranger With No Neck came to Wyatt's house just a bit too early; I'd have reordered things a bit to make it clear that Wyatt "gave up" after the directives that Mouch so loudly announced. If there were Three--Galt's voiceover and Ellis Wyatt's phone message at the very end gave away WAY too much to the first time viewer/reader. Four--add two flashbacks... Dagny and Francisco as lovers (with Francisco not looking and acting like a schlub), and the scene where Francisco struggles with his decision to go on strike, while lying in bed with Dagny. This is important stuff, but it wouldn't be seriously too late to do this in Part II, perhaps as Dagny is continuing to work the mystery of why everyone of any worth is disappearing, she can consider the case of Francisco.. who didn't disappear but seems to have become valueless. Again I don't consider d'Anconia and Akston's demeanor, appearance, behavior, whatever in the outside world fatal changes... this is now a visual medium and the viewer is supposed to wonder why great men are no longer carrying burdens... and the best way to suggest it _visually_ is to show them as unkempt slackers, regardless of the way it's described in the non-visual book where a lot of exposition can take place. (Would Akston have been better done in a spotless diner, cooking a hamburger for Dagny, and the conversation occurring more as in the book? Yes, I think so... but it's not a _gigantic_ flaw.) If they act/behave this way _in the valley_ in Part III, yeah, that's an irretrievable screwing of the pooch. One thing that came through in the commentary was that the producers talked a lot about Objectivism... but it was subtly off point. They discussed a lot of "why should these people produce when they are going to get punished" and "we should thank these people for what they've done to make us more productive" and even brought up the example of the inventor of the motor deserving to be a trillionaire if he can reduce energy costs to the equivalent of four cents a gallon. They then point out that the inventor would be vilified for being rich rather than thanked for cutting the cost of energy. They got a lot right. But they danced around the forthright _egoism_ that is properly the justification for capitalism.

Spoilers for AS the novel here: Some fairly legitimate criticisms actually. In _many_ cases these complaints could be positively addressed by doing the right things in Part II (e.g., Akston's bizarre behavior could be part of an act he is putting on as part of the strike; likewise d'Anconia's grunginess.) Given that they come from a fan of Atlas Shrugged, the criticisms would have more credibility if you had spelled "Rearden" correctly. The best complaint I've heard, actually is that Dagny _should not_ have (implicitly) offered to sleep with Francisco for the loan. d'Anconia (Jsu Garcia) on the other hand played this counterfactual scene (I say "counterfactual" because it wasn't in the novel and rightly so--of course the whole novel is counterfactual,,,) quite properly... resisting GREAT temptation for the sake of the strike. It is what he would have done, I think, in the novel, if AR had flubbed Dagny's characterization that way. Ironic that his most true-to-the-character acting should be in a scene that was false to Dagny and Atlas Shrugged.

What, just like the employer forces you to actually do work for him? You are following the same logic that has people saying you are "forced" to buy products, etc. A job is a voluntary transaction.

FWIW I just showed the movie to a friend who hasn't read the book in decades (and only got halfway through it--not a reader) and she enjoyed it.

Whoever made the mistake I am sure that in this instance, it wasn't Aglialoro and company--the packaging is totally new, not looking anything like their artwork promoting the theatrical release. I understand they got a major distributor to do the DVD/Blu Ray release. No doubt some individuals who do artwork and copy for many, many movies for a living did completely original cover art and cover copy... and the likelihood that any of them are Objectivists is vanishingly small. This is akin to a phenomenon authors have to deal with a lot--cover art that has nothing to do with the contents of the book. AS got off lightly with this flub.

Whatever you do, if you want to appeal to rail enthusiasts don't call it a "set". To them the word evokes images of a prepackaged toy for kids.

LOL!! I just got home, having purchased the Blu-Ray. (I will be buying a DVD as a gift, and would have done so today but the store was fresh out except for ones on hold.) Sure enough mine has the mistake you mentioned! Might become a collector's item some day. Edit: this probably means it will be more than the week the salesclerk guessed, before the copy I have reserved actually arrives.

EC, the money speech was at the party for Jim Taggart/Cheryl Brooks wedding. It is in Part II of the novel. (I had the same reaction you did--and someone had to remind me. It's the most common complaint about the movie that proceeds from misremembering the book.)

Ahmedinejad could not have become the president of Iran without the approval of the mullahs as they approve every name on the ballot. I can't imagine they'd pick someone that they considered nutty. So if Ahmedinejad is nutty, he must not be too different from them.

I can well believe this. There's a joke about a guy driving around in Ireland and he is stopped at a roadblock. The toughs manning the roadblock want to know if he is Catholic or Protestant. Not knowing whether these are Provo thugs or IRA thugs, and knowing the wrong answer could get him beaten or worse, he tells them he is an atheist. The response? "Are you a Catholic Atheist or a Protestant Atheist?" It's a very common attitude; I just saw a lecture that discussed in part the travails of Jews in medieval Spain who converted to (Catholic) Christianity. These conversos were regarded with suspicion, even unto succeeding generations and the Spanish Inquisition was founded, in large part, as a result of those doubts that they were "really" Christians. So I would well believe some anti-Catholic baptists somewhere deciding you are still a Catholic just because of your origins, even though you are an agnostic.

In answer to Prometheus--Yes, I PMed David quite some time... and he asked me what software was running and I told him; after that I heard nothing. I've since seen people gripe about it from time to time but no apparent action or response, and there were no replies in the thread having to do with the forum upgrade. (A simple "we are working on it but it's a cast iron bitch" would have been reassuring.) For me the problem is intermittent--sometimes things load quickly, other times I watch the thing sit and spin for 10-15 minutes, with no throughput on my connection, waiting for the reply thing to load. And when it finally does, it's often non-functional... hitting the "Post" button does nothing, but "More Reply Options" MAY work (after a couple of minutes) or it MAY give you your draft with a bunch of HTML fishfood in it. At least, it has been a while since last I got an error that said cloudflare was having a problem.

Grip all you want, it falls on deaf ears.

Ironically I just wish my (much more primitive) phone had a voice command to get it out of voice command mode. The number of times I've accidentally bumped whichever button it is that gets it INTO voice mode and didn't realize it until I heard "Please wait... please say a command" is large, and "Buzz off" "Go away" or more colorful equivalents don't work. I have to pull the thing out and manually switch it off. It's supposed to be more convenient, isn't it, yet I would love to have words with the guy who designed it. Surely Apple did a better job than this. PS The posting options are broken, again. I had to de-HTML this when I edited it, and that's after having to go to "more reply options" because the "post" button was broken, AND all the format buttons are missing AND it took ten minutes to finish loading over a connection that wasn't being taxed. Can we go back to the old version of the software?

From the website of the Supernova Early Warning system (http://snews.bnl.gov/popsci/neutrino.html): "The Neutrino is a subatomic particle famous for its ability to slip through matter without interacting. Neutrinos have none of the "handles" by which most other particles affect one another: no electric charge, almost zero mass. They are so elusive that a light-year of lead, nine and one-half trillion kilometres (six trillion miles) would only stop half of the neutrinos flying through it." ..and these folks work with the little slippery ones daily so they ought to know. Think about how far a neutrino would have to travel through the universe (which is mostly vacuum) to encounter enough matter to be the equivalent of half a light year of lead, and thus have had a fifty percent chance of being absorbed. The vast majority of our solar system (about 15 billion KM across) is empty space, the few objects in it contributing less than two million km of thickness if lined up end to end )which they aren't) and not made out of lead... and the solar system is downright dense compared to intergalactic space. Something tells me the answer to how far a particle must travel before encountering a light year of lead-equivalent is quite likely millions if not billions of times the age of the universe. The overwhelming majority of neutrinos that have ever been created are still out there.