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JMartins

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Posts posted by JMartins

  1. I voted for "I prefer sex-segregated restrooms: I am male". For some reason I don't want to be reminded that women aren't completely pure and clean superbeings who don't really need to use the toilet at all. I don't want my extremely romanticized image of them to be threatened, I guess. :P

  2. To maintain a high level of productivity, one must maintain focus as to prevent oneself from becoming distracted. To ensure this, one requires strong willpower. Obviously, some people have a stronger willpower than others. Are there any factors involved in determining a persons willpower, besides his free will? Would it be correct to say that the only way to increase ones willpower, is through using ones free will to enforce self-imposed regulations?

    I'd appreciate some insight into this.

  3. Saying that they are doing it to kill the competition can be just as well said to anyone who is doing something to promote themselves or their own interests. When I like a girl, I don't flirt with her to kill the competition, I do it because I want her. Yet, the dummy who wants the same thing but doesn't have the ability to get it more often than not will hate me, and feel personally wronged by me. This is the same exact claim, and the consequences are the same: I'm happy, and he is even more miserable than if he realised that I'm not his problem, his own methods of treating girls like they owe him something are. And someone stepping in and enforcing his claim that I should stay away would not help him at all. All that would do is make everyone miserable.

    Great analogy Jake, thanks.

  4. I'd appreciate it if someone here could respond to the following criticism of Wal-Mart. Is there a logical fallacy in this argument, or will big corporations such as Wal-Mart profit from employing such tactics? I think I read something about this in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal", but can't recall what it was.

    Whenever a new Wal-Mart moves into an area, they start out with artificially lower prices (often taking a loss, but hey--they can afford it in the big picture) specifically in order to get people excited about their fabulous low prices and to out-compete pre-existing local businesses. Then once the competition is gone, they slowly jack their prices up to a more-profitable level, sometimes even higher than the now-nonexistent competition's prices had been. I have heard this story in various forms over the years, first from frustrated community members near a new Wal-Mart in Mexico, then from a friend who worked at a Wal-Mart in Idaho, and most recently from talking heads/analysts. I have also observed it for myself in my own community now.
  5. I'm interested in learning the Objectivist position on the following agencies; FBI, CIA and NSA. Are they considered fully legitimate for government funding, and vital to national security? That's always been my opinion, though I've never heard an Objectivist intellectual comment on either before. Do you believe them to be operating as they should, or is there good reason to believe that they, too, are acting on a policy of self-sacrifice? Do you believe that either of them are infringing too much on our personal liberties?

    Thank you.

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