adrock3215

You are going to continue getting negative replies until you acknowledge that, in principle, the borders should be open and free. Once we establish that you agree with that principle, then we can show how you are straying from it by not advocating the immediate opening of the borders. On the other hand, you may be taking the "well, it's right in principle, but not in practice" approach, in which case, that has also been dealt with in Objectivist literature.

That's disgusting. You should try reading some of Rand's work.

"Better prepared to fit in"? This sounds like something Michael Savage would say. As if 'American culture' (whatever that is) is some sacred treasure. The recognition of individual rights is not a gradual process. It needs to be done immediately. Check out this picture on Dianah Sieh's page: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/uploaded_im...tion-764383.jpg

This is my impression of him too, from my limited knowledge of his music. Am I the only one who really likes his Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring? Anyway, your post was great! Thanks for sharing all this information with us!

The law should recognize individual rights. If the law is unjust, then it should or should not be broken, according to the particulars of the situation. In most instances, the law involving immigration is so absurd that it should be broken. My advice to people who want to come here but can't get a visa, or who want to come here but have to wait 5 years to get one, is that they should consider coming illegally. While here they should take advantage of as many free social services as they can. Right, and that is altogether logical. But what you're missing is that it doesn't follow that I should care if they speak English or not. So what if they don't speak English? If they can't trade with anyone, they just die. What does that have to do with me?

Reasoning spelled out above.

Who cares? They can speak English or make crude clicking noises and stomp on the ground. What does it matter? Regardless of whether they speak English or not, they possess rights. The purpose of government is to protect already pre-existing rights, not violate them. One of those rights happens to be that individuals can move wherever they want so long as they pose no threat, and the other is that they can speak whatever language they want. I'm having trouble trying to quantify your crappy attitude. Are you "anti-immigration"? If not, then why does this idea sound ridiculous to you? Freeing up the borders should be done regardless of the economy, and it should be done immediately.

The appropriate response is to say "No, of course not. I do not want people to starve, which is exactly why I am against this bailout." Then establish that the bailout proposes to steal from the productive firms in the agricultural and food industries and give the stolen capital to the failing auto industry, where it will be squandered away. Proceed by asking him for his proposition on how the agricultural and food industries will be able to invest in the necessary factors of production to continue producing the desired amount of food and agricultural goods.

True points. I never said that one should read fiction to learn chemistry. Fiction is not conducive to technical writing in a narrow field. Like philosophy, fiction is concerned with universals; that's why the two overlap so much. Read the quote I posted by Rand. A work of fiction will tell you your relationship to existence. Your assessment of your relationship to existence (done either implicitly or explicitly) will tell you whether or not you even have the ability to learn anything, much less approach the study of chemistry. We all approach our studies through a certain fundamental worldview, namely, one that tells us--at least--that we have the capacity to understand the world around us, and that we can exercise our free will to do so. There isn't much more to say on this. If you all want to learn about it, read Romantic Manifesto. In it, you will find the following quote from Rand: "Of all human products, art is, perhaps, the most personally important to man and the least understood." Note that non-fiction writing is also a human product. I agree with her. If you don't know why Rand says this, she will clarify it for you in her work better than I can in a few unedited lines here.

Tenure hit it on the head. The integration may not be unique to fiction writing, but the concretization is. Point in case: Rand was able to show her philosophy through the character of Roark, as contrasted with the character of Toohey. Non-fiction would not be able to concretize the intimacies of her philosophy is the same way. Incidentally, this is why many philosophers have sort of sat on the wall between fiction and non-fiction, i.e., Plato (dialogues) Nietsche, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Marcus Aurelius, etc. Likewise, many literary giants wrote fiction that was extremely philosophical, i.e. Rand herself, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Kafka, etc. As for the importance: Fiction is more important precisely because it concretizes abstractions. As Rand writes in Romantic Manifesto: That "certain way of looking at existence", i.e. a man's worldview, is really the basis for his entire philosophy. In a way, it's pre-philosophical, or, at least, pre-conceptual (since it starts forming when you are very young).

I agree with this statement, and believe we are in agreement for the most part. Personally, I would never read her books. On the other hand, the movie is a minimal time investment, and the cost is negligible. Say that Greebo generally sleeps for the awfully generous time period of 7 hours a night. It woudln't be a tremendous sacrifice to stay up a few hours later and sleep for 5 hours, considering that the time would be used unproductively anyway (sleeping, that is). I understand your point about the economics class reading. As an introductory text to capitalism, Klein's work would be disgusting. In my first post, I assumed that Greebo already knew about Objectivism, since he's been registered for awhile here, and therefore I didn't think that he was comparable with the students "first learning about capitalism", as you put it. Operating under the presumption that Greebo is a total idiot (meaning, he cannot think critically) and knows nothing about Ayn Rand or Objectivism, I rescind my first post and state that he should not watch this film.

The dollar has been in a bear market since the early 70's. All these 1-2 year bounces since then are just bear market rallys. The dollar will be strong for a year or two, then it will be right back down making new lows. The Fed does not have the ability to keep the dollar strong. In fact, the current dollar strength has nothing to do with the Fed, it has more to do with the enormous amount of deleveraging occuring in the financial system. People are selling out all of their positions all over the world and buying dollars to fund redemption requests. America is a service based economy that doesn't produce much in the way of actual goods. We import most of our manufactured goods, i.e. cars, toys, steel, oil, etc. When Americans buy imports, we pay foreign firms in dollars. This means that dollars are sent abroad. But foreigners have nothing to spend them on, because Americans don't produce any goods that they need. That's why there are foreign nations sitting on mounds of US dollars, and trying to find ways to deploy them. They'll buy real estate here, or equity stakes in US firms, simply because there is nothing else for them to use the dollars for. There aren't many manufactured goods that they can buy from us, so there is nothing for us to export to them. What happens is that the foreign firms will just sell their dollars and convert them to a useful currency. This selling pressure is nothing but bearish for the dollar in the long-term, and it's the reason the dollar continues to lose value. It's because of our enormous trade deficit. The Fed has no control over this. So long as Americans continue consuming indefinitely, and don't begin saving, investing, and producing goods that people want and exporting them, the dollar will continue its long-term slide.

A well-informed capitalist would be concerned with all dissenting views, and be able to disprove them with ease. Your example assumes that human beings do not have free will, along with its corollary capacity of critical examination. As if reading books or watching movies will automatically force the beholder to agree with their assertions. A well-read and well-informed Objectivist can and should critically question every film he sees and book he reads based on its contradictions/agreements with the sum of his prior knowledge. Once it is established that there is a conflict, the individual can either reject or accept the versimilutude of his new knowledge. Since Greebo has demonstrated that he knows the central tenets of Objectivism, and since he presumably has the intellectual capacity to form rational judgements, there is not any harm done in watching the film. The economics class you described is essentially the modern university. It has no effect on the man who is confident of his certainty. I have read the Klein text which you introduced to the discussion as well as Marx's Das Kapital and Communist Manifesto. Obviously, they've had no effect in terms of changing my opinion on capitalism. However, reading them was a productive activity, because it is nice to know exactly what your antagonists claim and how they argue for their positions. Having a broad base of knowledge establishes that you are intellectually serious while allowing you to understand the arguments of your opponent better than he does. That way you can dissect and destroy them with ease.

Let me try to approach this entire issue more simply. The economic purpose of financial markets is to transfer wealth from net savers to net borrowers. Interest rates are the price mechanism by which these transformations are made. In a fiat system, interest rates are determined by a central authority. Given these premises, do you really think that it is totally implausible that interest rate fixing is the source of business cycles? Remember that almost every school of modern economic thought (not just Austrian) thinks that monetary policy is either the most, or one of the most significant contributors to output fluctuation.

I saw the movie and wasn't disgusted at all. I read Passion of Ayn Rand's critics and wasn't overjoyed either. The most I remember about the film was a line where she was talking to Nathienal about her time in Russia and said that she used to listen to music in her childhood for the joy she could hear in it, that "if she could hear the joy, it had to exist somewhere." Otherwise, there isn't too much to say about the film. It certainly wasn't good, but I didn't come away from it deeply offended. I recommend watching the film and forming a judgement yourself. That's it. Not a ridiculous proposition by any means. I have a large problem with religion. But that doesn't mean there isn't some value to be gained by reading its texts (at least the Old Testament...at this point, I haven't read much of the New. And I am getting to the Koran sooner or later).

Oh. I thought we were talking about the topic of the film, not a judgement about the film's veracity.

I'm not sure what you mean or how the previous responders say anything relevant. I saw the movie. It is most evidently about Ayn Rand. It is called "The Passion of Ayn Rand."

Forget the concretes and read the abstractions in Hugo's work. In Hugo's world, man controls his own destiny. Man has the ability to change the world according to his ideals, whatever those may be. In Les Mis, Hugo writes: There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul. In my opinion, if one had to take a single thing away from Hugo's writing, it should be this thought. Most of Hugo's main characters are driven by ideas, which I also love. I think Javert is a brilliant character. If I ever get around to it, I may jsut do a comparision between Javert, Petronius from Quo Vadis, and Gail Wynand from Fountainhead. There are a lot of similarities between the three. The other gem of a character in the work of Hugo that I have read so far is Pierre Gringore from Notre-Dame de Paris. Interesting that Enjolras got much attention from Rand. I'll have to go back and reread some sections with him to understand why.

Sense of life. To me, the critical characteristic of a partner is that she thinks highly of herself because she knows she can achieve her values in this world. I totally disagree with Maarten. I like a woman who sees thinks for what they are and should be, rather than just what they are. If her sense of life is right, all the other values and virtues named in the posts above will follow. My wife is all of the above and more. (No, she's not an Objectivist.)

The film is about Ayn Rand. You are interested in Ayn Rand. Therefore you should watch it. Decide the truth of it yourself, don't ask people on an internet board. The question is like saying: "Should I read Ovid's Metamorphoses? After all, since I haven't read it before, it follows that I don't know what I'll think about it. Tell me what I should think about it, and if that agrees with what I think I should think about it, then I will read it."

I'm not sure. Keep in mind that a bankruptcy of either would be catastrophic for the economy, but it has nothing to do with all the reasons the politicians tell us. It has to do with the trillions of dollars tied to CDS contracts written on the Big Three's debt obligations.

I'm not sure if it's a fragment or not, but I am certain that it is a poorly constructed sentence, and I hope that you don't write that way in your professional correspondence. I would maybe phrase it something like: With the exception of the spell checker, I turn all the automatics of my word processor off when I write creatively. Either way, writing on a message board and writing for something else are going to be different. Really, the form of your writing should be adjusted to meet its purpose.

And now, to put the nail in the coffin and finish this part of the debate, I will introduce the exact data that you described above. I already introduced the balance sheet, and the graph, both of which proved my point, but you claimed that neither was sufficient. Therefore, I have no choice but to disprove your position with the data you requested. Here you will find a report from the Fed entitled "Domestic Open Market Operations During 2007". In said report, you will find a 38 page detailed summary of all open market operation processes that the Fed trading desk used last year, along with several historical graphs and charts. Please scroll down to Page 16. Here is the relevant quote: Now, let's see that graphed historically: Hmmm....holdings of repurchase agreements appear negligible when compared with the big blue space. Scroll down to page 20: Continuing scrolling down to page 22 to compare it with the other fact we are talking about: That's the end to that issue. John McVey introduced the mistaken concept that somehow repurchase agreements are the main conduit used to implement Fed policy, which Capitalism Forever seconded. Then Cap wrote: "What you showed is that the Fed's balance sheet contains a lot of securities held outright and not as many repurchase agreements." Granting him his premise that I did not adequately show my own point, I have subsequently given him the very information that he wrote would consitute absolute, definitive proof.

No, that's not what it shows. It shows that, in the long-term, a low funds rate goes hand in hand with a high rate of growth in the monetary base, and vice versa. Now, there is something more to be said here. Economic data is not like the data gathered in a physics experiment. Firstly, it is hard to measure economic data exactly. Secondly, since economics is the study of human action, and humans have free will and can decide to do whatever they want, there can be wide discrepency in compiled data. What is positive evidence of a correlation is a long-term trend, which this graph shows. Yes, after 9/11, monetary growth spiked up temporarily. However, let's look at the peaks and troughs and their relation to one another. They tend to be opposite each other. The data and the fits are not perfect and do not show a 1 to 1 correlation, but there is no economic data that will ever show a 1 to 1 correlation. Regardless, the correct conclusion to draw from this graph is that the FFR is manipulated primarily through expansions and contractions in the Monetary Base. Before we go on...do you agree with this conclusion?

I'm going to disagree here. As evidence I present to you the worship of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and all the other writers who totally ignore grammar. Now, I will give that there is a definite split in modern English departments between the more modernistic professors who think form is everything, and the old-style professors who want to preserve the language from what they perceive to be the onslaught from modernism. Harold Bloom, preeminent literary critic and Yale English professor, definitely belongs to the latter category. He's gone so far as to label the nasty deconstructionists and most of the other 20th century movements in literary criticism as the "School of Resentment". Incidentally, his words have a tremendous amount of weight in most English departments. Whether or not it's enough weight to stem the influence of form-based literature is debatable, but he's definitely my favorite critic.