Craig24

My action? I'm stuck on a train that will kill 1 person or 5 people no matter what I do. I can only minimize the casualties.

To the extent that liberty is established and protected, something resembling "social order" is a by product. That's as far as I will go with it.

What will make you happier. Having the ability to climb a mountain or just being at the top of it?

False dichotomy. This assumes men have to choose between one or the other. Why can't he be both? Something else occurs to me: If you make enough money to be a good provider it means that you are productive. Productiveness (one of the seven major Objectivist virtues) is an "alpha" quality. What's "beta" about it?

You are making my point for me. Thanks.

Is that what you made? A mere assertion? I think you know that no one is obligated to disprove a mere assertion. There is an invisible pink elephant in my bedroom. Can you disprove that assertion? Should you have to?

This presupposes that a family has to be sustained. Why is that necessary?

It's still not a duty. If you believe it is and choose accordingly you are just wrong.

No. It's ONLY a philosophy and NOT a movement. No philosophy is a movement. A movement to promote the philosophy isn't itself the philosophy. This distinction needs to be understood.

But is that really a duty? It wasn't god, people or nature that imposed this responsibility on the parents. There are options: abstinence, safe sex, abortion, adoption. If you choose to bypass all four, you're choosing to be a parent.

I've read them. I'm still not convinced that duty to family exists. Where would it come from? If it is imposed by a member of the family, which member and what gives him/her the authority to impose it?

Duty to whom? To do what? I'm confused. Ayn Rand defines duty as: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest.

What is health and how do you achieve it? Reason supplies the answer Why do you want to be healthy? Purpose supplies the answer Are you good at being healthy? Yes? Self esteem is the result Now substitute wealth for health and ask the same three questions.

Based on what nature? Does the thief have a different nature than a non thief? What caused that different nature?

Short answer: no Long answer: You launched into a lecture about the morality of squandering one's inherited wealth and compared it to squandering one's stolen wealth. You needed to separate the two things. How one obtains wealth is not related to how one uses it. Inheritance by definition is getting what a dead person willed you to get. You had the owner's permission to get it. That's not theft by any objective meaning of the concept. I could squander earned wealth too. Does that make earning it in the first place theft?