SBP2009

My wife doesn't refer to herself as an Objectivist and has not yet read any Ayn Rand. But I would have to describe her as at least a potential Objectivist, or maybe a future Objectivist. She is an ardent supporter of laissez-faire capitalism, and holds the fundamental tenets of individualism. Now if I could get her to pick up Atlas Shrugged we would be in business!

I think your answer is right here. She wasn't interested, didn't want to, didn't feel the same, didn't know what to do. It sounds like she was simply drifting along in your relationship, like a shopping cart in a sloped parking lot. I think that, rather than being an issue of independence versus dependence, she was looking for someone to fill the void in her sense of self. When you weren't there because you were working long hours, you were not filling the void and she couldn't take it. I think you are beating yourself up unnecessarily here. If marriage was important to her, she could have said something as simple as "Remember when we talked about getting married..." You two had discussed it after all. Maybe you both knew that adding marriage to your relationship wouldn't work. That's pretty much the last nail in the coffin, so to speak. Would you really want to be with someone who doesn't want to put herself through the effort to improve your relationship?

Great point, it brings to mind another phenomenon that I didn't mention in my first post. Since we have entered the adoption world we have met several other couples and families who are going through or have gone through the same process. Most of the other couples we have met have been pleasant enough folks, but there is a not-inconsiderable number that hold some tragically mixed premises. For one thing, "Western guilt" and "white guilt" seem to be a common thread among many of the adopting couples. While I certainly didn't expect it to be an Objectivist club, the level of sheer loathing of Western civilization was unexpected. Some of these people seem to view adopting a child from Ethiopia or another poor country as a form of restitution for "exploitation" of the Third World. Some of the couples we have met are also heavily religious, and have said explicitly that it is their Christian duty to "save the orphans". Yikes. That makes me shudder in disgust. I find it very interesting, and somewhat unsettling, that the adoption community has revealed itself to be a microcosm of the disastrous beliefs that are so widespread in our post-modern world. Thanks Marty and Jenny for your insights, and thanks to everyone who has asked questions on this topic. I of course have no intention of letting anything anyone might say stop us from adopting, but it is great to hear the opinions of rational individuals on this issue.

I am currently reading Soul of the Fire and I am excited by the upcoming Sword of Truth TV series. I hope it is faithful to the books...although I think that portrayal of the Mord-Sith could be at risk of veering off into campy dominatrix territory.

Good questions, all. In Canada, domestic adoptions are a provincial matter and provincial boundaries form a legally impenetrable wall with regards to adoption. If we personally knew a Canadian citizen who chose us to adopt her child, we could proceed with a private adoption, but it is actually illegal to seek out a birth mother for this purpose. In our province, there is a waiting list of approximately eight years...to get onto the "official" waiting list which is another five to seven year wait. Plus the birth parents have up to a year to change their minds and reverse the adoption. These are but a few reasons we did not go the domestic route. We chose Ethiopia for a few reasons, namely that the process is very streamlined compared to some other countries and the pre-adoption care in the transitional homes is actually very good, far better than Russia which has large orphanages with a very low number of caregivers.

After years of trying to have a child, my wife and I discovered that we are infertile. Testing confirmed that we would need expensive medical intervention to achieve a successful pregnancy, and the chances of a successful fertility treatment were not high enough for any level of confidence. So, faced with the prospect of spending tens of thousands of dollars to (hopefully) have a child, we thought through and discussed our options. We came to the conclusion that it did not matter if a child was genetically related to us, that it was the value of raising a child, not necessarily giving birth to a child, that we wanted. Thus we arrived at the conclusion that adoption, specifically international adoption, was the proper course of action to form our family. We have chosen to adopt a little girl from Ethiopia, and are in the process of waiting for the referral. According to current adoption time lines we estimate we will travel to Ethiopia to pick her up in approximately eighteen months. We do not have a referral for a specific child yet; as we have requested a girl under twelve months of age, our future daughter has not yet been born. We are prepared for the novelty that will result from our adoption, my wife and I are both Caucasian and our daughter will of course be black. This will undoubtedly lead to questions from people we know as well as from strangers. We are ready for those questions, and are even ready for potential hostility from people with hateful racist beliefs. What surprised us somewhat was the motives that many people ascribe to our adoption decision. We do not seek anyone's approval with our adoption, we do not hope for any kind of prestige or to make a fashion statement or hold any such second-handed consideration. We are not trying to "be like Angelina Jolie." Our extended families are overwhelmingly supportive of our decision, so we are fortunate to not have to encounter racism from those close to us. But many people have expressed that they are "proud of us for what we are doing." They say that we are "doing such a good thing" and showing "a great deal of charity" in "saving a poor orphan" and that our future daughter will be "very lucky." Without saying it explicitly, many people are ascribing altruistic motives to our decision to adopt. I frequently make the argument that we are not adopting as an act of selfless charity, but we want the selfish pleasure of raising a child with our values. We want the joy of having a family, and we do not care if our child is not genetically related to us. But our families, being generally religious and various degrees of collectivist, basically brush off what we tell them. I wonder if I should brush off these sentiments as inconsequential, or if I should lay down the law and let it be known in no uncertain terms that we are not adopting out of a sense of charity. It seems to me that I shouldn't care what others think of our adoption, I don't seek approval from anyone and I don't want to start now. But I guess it still bothers me that people would hold such ideas where it involves our lives and our future daughter. I don't want anyone to tell our daughter how "lucky" she is, or make her feel she should be "grateful" for having been adopted by us. I say that international adoption can be a rational choice. Thanks for reading my post, and thanks in advance for any thoughts on the subject.

My wife and I keep nearly all of our finances in joint accounts. It has worked well for us, in that we both have the ability to show restraint in spending. When we got married we were both in pretty poor financial positions. When we lived together before marriage we had separate finances, opening the joint accounts after we were married. As we were dirt poor when we got married, everything we have bought has been together. There is never an issue of "who pays?" with us. Having joint finances sort of forced us to get our spending under control and to understand our finances better. To this day, we have an understanding that we check with each other before making any purchases larger than $100 or so. I also use Quicken personal finance software to track our spending down to the penny. I can see at a glance exactly how much money is coming in and going out and can watch categories for overspending. Our main checking, savings, credit card and lines of credit are all joint accounts. Our mortgage is a line of credit and is a joint account, as is our car loan. We each also have one separate credit card and our investments are all separate, though we have each other named as beneficiaries of course. In summary, I would suggest that a mix of joint and separate finances are a good strategy. If one spouse is more of a reckless spender than the other, then a separate account and an "allowance" can be a good way to firewall those tendencies.

INTP as well. In fact the test that I paid for returned a score of 65% Introversion, 78% Intuition, 100% Thinking, 78% Perceiving. The single-word test I took at SimilarMinds.com this afternoon returned a score of Introverted (I) 58.82%, Intuitive (N) 64.52%, Thinking (T) 82.14%, Perceiving (P) 56.67%. I have taken MBTI online tests 4 times in the last day, in addition to the paid one three months ago. INTP every time, very heavily T. So it seems sometimes I allow a little bit of Feeling tendencies to come through.

I would add Al Gore, David Suzuki, Maurice Strong. How about George Soros? Going back a few years, Margaret Mead.

I daydream a lot, especially if a long time has passed since I have done any writing. Generally I find myself immersed in my imagination when I am performing mundane tasks, or if I am surrounded by particularly boring or insufferable people. In elementary school, I would get into trouble with my teachers for daydreaming and completely ignoring what was going on in class. I daydreamed very often from grades 4 through 7 and was reprimanded on a weekly basis. It was the cause of my only discipline problems in school, I was otherwise a well-behaved kid. Now I find myself daydreaming a couple of times a day, but I am usually able to carry on routine tasks while doing so. I find it to be a great way to play out scenarios in my mind, especially where potential story plots and character development are concerned.

I'm not particularly familiar with the Bolivian water issue, nor have I watched "The Corporation." The people who have said "You HAVE TO watch this movie" are all lunatic leftists, so I countered with something along the lines of "You want a horror documentary? Maybe I will make one called 'The Government.' I could have an unlimited supply of sequels and die of old age before I even cover the horrors perpetrated by governments in the 20th century." They then followed up yammering about how "EVIL" and "PSYCHOTIC" companies are and held up the Bolivian water issue as a prime example. I may have made some sort of comment to him that contained "Comrade" and "Getting your collective panties in a bunch." But I digress. As I understand it, the film states that one company was given total control over all the water in Bolivia, and that people were getting arrested for trying to collect rainwater. The people then rise up and storm the facilities of the water company, seizing control of it. Conveniently, this act happens to re-nationalize the water facilities. One company being given total control over a resource in an entire company, and their monopoly supported by government force, is so far from being an example of a "free market" as to not require any further discussion. As I have said, I have not seen the film, and gleaned this information from leftist blather. If events unfolded as I have described, it seems to me that the Bolivian government set up the monopoly water company as a straw man to direct the rage of the masses against the purported representative of capitalism. It may have been the Bolivian government's way of getting out of the IMF orders. Again, "capitalism," of the government-granted cartel variety, set up as a straw man and creating support for socialism. If I ever want to waste two hours and become angry for a few days, I may watch "The Corporation." But I doubt I will ever want to subject myself to such Marxist garbage.

I voted for Terry Goodkind, but I should qualify my vote with a disclosure that "Wizard's First Rule" is the only fantasy novel I have ever read. I loved it however and intend to pick up "Stone of Tears" next. While I have not read any other fantasy, I recently picked up a copy of "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" with the intention of reading the series, but haven't read them yet. Stephen King considers his "The Dark Tower" novels to be fantasy, but I consider them to be a sci-fi/fantasy/horror crossover series.

I read "Executive Orders" several years ago, before I considered myself an Objectivist and before I had read (or heard of) Ayn Rand. I think I will re-read the novel at some point to see what I think of it now. I greatly enjoyed the novel. Apart from the somewhat forced plotlines in previous novels that brought Jack Ryan inexorably closer to a presidency he does not seek, it is ultimately a decent thriller about a man fighting for his values. The Middle East war that breaks out in the novel is plausible and believable. Though Jack Ryan is best described as a somewhat libertarian conservative, his actions in defense of America are admirable, even heroic. There are some good passages early on in the novel that fall into political junkie territory, where he appoints a brilliant Wall Street investment banker to tackle America's byzantine and irrational tax laws. Of course, the best parts are where American forces send great numbers of Iranian troops to meet Allah in explosive battles. What's not to love here? "Executive Orders" does fall a bit flat later on, buying in to some aspects of political correctness and a large dose of Just War Theory. I don't want to post any spoilers here for those that haven't read "Executive Orders." It is valuable for any Objectivists who read Clancy's novel to follow it up with a read of Yaron Brook's and Alex Epstein's superb essay "Just War Theory vs. American Self Defense." This essay is available to all at The Objective Standard. Though "Executive Orders" can be read on its own, I would suggest reading "Debt of Honor" before it to get the most out of the backstory.

Given the length and harshness of Canadian winters, an average daily temperature increase of 5 degrees would be welcome!

Ok, by choosing the most consumptive options in all questions, I managed to turn my pig into a huge drooling warthog and it told me I should die at age 1.2. That is, I told it that I am a heavy user of a fuel guzzling vehicle, fly over 40,000 km per year, live by myself in a large house with over the top energy bills, eat a helluva lot of meat, get none of my power from green sources, don't recycle or compost, and spend over $100,000 per year on ordinary stuff. Well, one must always have aspirations!

Impressive! I should have died at 3.4 by this evil little application's calculations. I wonder what it would take to reduce my "death age" to 0? Hmmm, time to revisit it I suppose.

I read about this process in Maclean's magazine. Plasma conversion uses plasma torches to break garbage down to its component elements, and the resulting gases can be used for power generation. A company called Startech is the real trailblazer with this amazing technology. Is this too good to be true, or could landfills, and most traditional recycling, be a thing of the past? Perhaps more importantly, will plasma conversion become widespread or will the Gaia-worshipping ecofascists try to block this innovation? Here's the link: http://science.howstuffworks.com/plasma-converter.htm Also: http://www.startech.net/plasma.html http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007...prophet-garbage

They would certainly be ridiculed by rational people. You and I and most on this board see VHMET for the nihilistic cranks they are. But the thing to remember is how intellectually disarmed many people are. Not to mention that the ecofascists are making a concerted effort to target young and impressionable kids with their anti-man message. Here's a truly revolting site one I linked to this morning, it's from the website of ABC (Australian government-owned television). http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer...nhouse_calc.htm Kids who are fed such a message long enough may buy into the VHMET idea. Some may become rather militant and want to "improve" upon it. Ayn Rand wrote a great deal on the tendencies of irrational ideas to give way to ever more irrational ones. Those who hold more consistently evil ideas will generally prevail over those who hold more moderate ideas. It takes a very small stretch of the imagination to imagine VHMET types pushing for carbon taxes on families, blocking the production of vaccines, pushing for governments to exercise control over reproduction. Think Paul Ehrlich. Eventually some of the more militant VHMET drones may become dissatisfied with the results that "voluntary" measures produce.

You are right, of course. Means of production nominally in private hands but the government is tilting the deck with controls. These are the hallmarks of fascism rather than socialism. Canada is further along this road than is the USA. Canada is deeply into socialist territory with its socialized health care, fascist in many other areas. I certainly hope no Objectivist gases up at Citgo.

A suicidal movement of pure man-hating nihilists like this may soft-peddle their message now, but inevitably there will be some among their number that will want to hurry things along. It won't take long for the Voluntary Human Extinction Project to become the Compulsory Human Extinction Project. So few people (outside of Objectivism) truly understand the logical consequences of the environmentalist movement.

It would depend on the local circumstances. For example, in a rural area a mining company would be motivated to build a road to facilitate transport of personnel to the mine site and to haul equipment and ore away. It would be in this company's self-interest not only to maintain this road but also to ensure people use it, if only to manage the traffic heading to the mine site. Once that road is in place, it would make sense for other businesses to situate themselves along it, and perhaps these businesses would pay maintenance fees to the same company that built it for the mine. I should think that rather than having a "grid" system of roads as many large geographic areas currently have, roads in a capitalist society would take a clustered or hub-and-spoke type of design. For example, here in Saskatchewan we have a huge, sparsely populated province with only a million people living in it. According to the Saskatchewan Department of Highways, Saskatchewan's total road surface is 160,000 km - enough roads and highways to circle the equator four times. This includes 26,000 km of provincial highways. Saskatchewan's disturbingly socialist governments of the 1930's through the 1970's built this massive system of roads (at taxpayers' expense, of course) to basically provide access to every single quarter of farmland in the province. There is no way a free society would be so foolish as to saddle such a small population with such a huge, unmaintainable network of roadways. That our roads are crumbling will come as a shock to no one here.

If the Exxon execs had any balls at all they should have rigged their facilities with explosives and blasted them sky-high as soon as Chavez's thugs arrived. A big final middle finger to socialism, in the spirit of Francisco d'Anconia. Scorched earth for tyrants! If nationalization happens in the US as AceNZ asked, oil companies would surely be a likely candidate. But banks might be first, after all, and the nationalization might be a Trojan-horse-style takeover starting with, for example, the subprime bailouts.

Well Canada certainly is not an example of free speech being taken away as property rights remain intact. For one, our constitution does not recognize property rights, and the ironically named Canadian Human Rights Act, through the kangaroo court system of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals, is becoming an ever greater threat to freedom of speech. These fascist thought police are enforcing political correctness rather brazenly. Every clause of the Canadian Charter of "Rights" and "Freedoms" basically gives the government an escape clause to violate individual rights.

My first was Atlas Shrugged. I found Objectivism though a rather long and meandering path. First, when I was in university I gradually came to reject the Roman Catholicism with which I was raised. I considered myself an agnostic, and possibly and atheist. Then, over a decade later, I gradually became more and more interested in politics, specifically with trying to figure out what was wrong with Canada and my province of Saskatchewan. This was in 2004. I knew that I agreed with absolutely nothing the Liberal Party stood for. The NDP (New Democratic Party, a leftist "social democratic" party along the lines of UK's Labour Party) was so wrong I understood it to be evil, although I was not sure of my philosophical basis for loathing the NDP. The NDP ruled Saskatchewan at the provincial level at this time, and the Liberals ruled Canada at the federal level. I thought the Conservative Party of Canada was somewhat better, they are a centre-right party by Canadian standards. Canadian standards are very left wing, however. But I disagreed with many of the fundamental tenets of conservatism, namely the role of religion and the social conservative stand on most issues. So I knew I was neither a conservative nor a modern "liberal" and I sure as hell wasn't a leftist. So what did that leave for me? Where did I stand? I looked for online political discussion groups. I found one that was geared towards Western Canadian independence from the rest of Canada. I knew that Canada was a corrupt nation with a runaway welfare state, and I knew that there was a "lunatic fringe" that wanted to secede from Canada. I was supportive of that goal, because I knew Ottawa to be a pit of welfare statism, cronyism, corruption and disturbing anti-Americanism. But one question bothered me. What would stop a new Western Canadian nation, should it be achieved, from falling into the same trap? What would be the guiding principles, the ethical foundation, the philosophy of a new, free country? Some other posters on the independence forums had mentioned Ayn Rand. They described some of her ideas. Reason, individualism, egoism, laissez-faire capitalism. A government that is limited by an objective code of law in its constitution, and that acts as the agent for its citizens, to defend their individual rights. All of which were sympatico with my own convictions. I looked up Ayn Rand online. It was the summer of 2006 and I wanted more than my usual light reading. I decided I would read her books. It only made sense for me to start with her greatest work, and I therefore bought a copy of Atlas Shrugged at my local bookstore. I knew the clerk behind the counter from some other times I had dealt with him at the bookstore, and I knew him to hold some rather left-wing convictions. He handled Atlas Shrugged as though it were something dirty. He swiftly placed it into a brown paper bag, as though I had just bought a piece of trashy pornography. He avoided eye contact with me through the whole transaction. He grunted when I concluded my purchase with my usual "Have a good day!" I got back to my car and laughed. I was still laughing when I pulled into my garage. That afternoon, I relaxed in my back yard, lounging on my hammock in the July sun and began to read the book that changed my life.

I vote in civic elections, provincial and federal elections. I have yet to vote in a school board election. My thinking is that even though most people running for city council are vile leftists, there are always some local businesspeople that run for city council. Two civic elections ago we elected a mayor and city council that is likely the most business-friendly this city has seen in decades. The result was commendable action in reversing several problematic meddlesome bylaws. This in turn led to the building of at least five new neighborhoods and two major power strip centers. While the city (unfortunately) still has a very long way to go, there is now new residential development in an area of the city's outskirts that had not seen anything new built in over thirty years. They also have kept property taxes from going up. Now of course, I won't really be happy until my city is a property-tax-free bastion of laissez-faire, but keeping rampaging socialists out of city council is a start.