avgleandt
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Posts posted by avgleandt
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is there no point at which keeping wealth for your self becomes irrational?"....if you take that to an extreme, I can't see how a world would be 'rational' if 100 people control all of the wealth on the planet
Hi DougW. Well it depends, did these 100 people create the wealth themselves or did they take it by physical force? If they created it themselves, then the rest of the population has not lost anything, the weath would not exist without the top 100 anyway. Though the rest of the population don't have direct ownership of the wealth it is very likely that they have highly benefited from it. Attacking, killing, ect the only productive people in population would be very stupid of them, they would perish much faster without them. That would be a classic example of bitting the hand that feeds you. Furthermore in a proper free society the top 100's rights would be protected by government.
Your main question is "is there no point at which keeping wealth for your self becomes irrational?"
Yes that point does exist. The point is when keeping the wealth for your self no longer makes you happy. Objectivism holds that the proper moral purpose of one's own life is the pursuit of one's own happiness. Happiness is the state of consciousness that proceeds from achieving one's values. Thus the proper moral/rational purpose of one's own life is the pursuit of one's values. If you value education then you should pursue that. If your rich you can open a charter school. If your not rich like me you can donate to organizations that promote educations such as Ayn Rand Institute for individual rights. The list of values you may hold goes on and on. Now you may ask whats the point of keeping your 60th billion if you already have 59 billion? I don't know what the point might be, but I can imagine one. Maybe they are trying to save enough money to buy a piece of land and start a new country. Or think of it this way. When Bill Gates reached 3 billion dollars what would be the point to continue, that is arguably enough wealth. However, he went on to create even more wealth 60 to 80 billion. And now you look, he decided to give most of it to charity, if he stopped at 3 billion the charities would miss out. The point is you should be doing what makes you happy, that which achieves your values.
In addition addressing your other concern. In a proper free society you would be free to criticize and judge the values that people are perusing. You would be able to speak out for or against them, and even try to persuade people to persue that values you think are important. But you would not be able to use physical force against them yourself or through a third party such as the government to force them to do what you want.
Pual Krugman advocates the use of physical force to achieve his values, do you agree with him on that?
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Just to close out my side of this. I never said the stock market was a zero sum gain. I said traders who make a living day-trading are playing in a zero-sum gain game. I said this before, but there are so many posts maybe it was missed...I do understand the workings of the stock market, I worked on the Comex (which is commodities, not stock so a bit different, but....) so I already know about what triggers buys and sells and where proifit is taken. I am not condemning the stock market, or investing in corporations, or capitalism or even Objectivism or Rand as a philosopher! I am looking at a very specific aspect of the stock market (and perhaps of capitalism in general) and calling it into question. That is the aspect where a person buys something, adds no value to it and then trades it soon after for a profit. D'kian, thank you for the reference about Francisco. AS is so long it's hard to keep every plot point in memory, but you're right, by giving that little bit of Francisco's history, it seems Rand is accepting the use of intellect, market knowledge, etc. as a means to acquire weath through speculation. This just seems very weird to me.... Rand was so explosively angry about people who 'took from the system without contributing'.... I don't see how this reconciles...
If it takes a fixed amount of effort to imagine/design/produce/deliver a good or service to the market, and a person injects himself into the system without contributing to that effort, why is he not a moocher? Is it simply because he doesn't "expect" payment, but is taking some risk? Is it the risk involved in day-trading that makes it an acceptable way to make a living, or is it more like 'any method of making a living that doesn't interfere directly with the rights of others is acceptable'. Perhaps what Objectivism is saying is that if the collection of individuals that we call the market has a problem with these 'no-added-value' traders, they could simply avoid buying goods that they have 'marked up'. The choice is theirs to be freely made...
Maybe Rand would accept someone who made a living gambling (not against stacked 'house' odds where losing is inevitable, but playing games directly against other men where ultimate profit will be based upon the skill of the player...). That would seem to make sense in light of the attitude on speculation...
Ic. Though I would agree with you that day trading is not nearly as productive as inventing, producing ect. I believe, for the reasons I listed that it provides a value. The system/market that the day trader injects him self in, becomes more effiecient due to his actions. Every trade he makes, is a value because it enables the opposite party to make that trade. Ayn rand wouldn't call him a hero of productivity but she wouldn't categorize him as a moocher as well.
This is an aspect of the stock market not of capitalism as a whole. There is nothing that says capitalism will have a stock market and will have day traders. Capitalism is just a social system under which your individual rights are recognized and protected, as long as you don't break someone elses rights. And you are free to engage in volunatary trade/activity with anyone you wish. I guarantee that some people will engage in unproductive activity. But productive activity isn't the point nor the justification for capitalism, its just a secondary consequence, just something that happens when people are left free. The justification for capitalism is that its a system the protects individual rights, which are necesarry for human survival. Under capitalism the unproductive moochers are only sustained by your voluntary consent.
So by participating in the stock market do you voluntarly sustain moochers? If you believe so then you are free not to participate. However, I do think thats the case for the reasons I stated.
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Doug Regarding trading.
Stock market as you know is a system for effeciently allocating capital. People who buy stocks, take the money they have already produced, and buy a piece of a company with it. The company uses this money to expand productivity. If company is successfull it makes more money and thus creates more wealth, jobs, ect. The person who bought the stock is called an investor and contributed to this process by giving some of his previous accumelated productivity(money) to the company. But it seems that you understand that investors have value, you think that people who day trade produce no value and have easy jobs.
A day trader is usually called a market maker in the profession. The value they bring is basically in their name, they make markets. When a person wants to buy or sell stock he has to buy or sell it to someone else. If that someone else was not present they would not be able to make a transaction. Imagine you want to buy 40,000 shares of abc, you would have to wait until someone wants to sell 40,000 shares of abc. Luckily for you there are already market makers who have entered both a buy and a sell. The difference between the buy and sell price is called a spread. The more market makers there is in a market the smaller the spread. Which means you can buy abc for 10.01 and sell for 10.00. If you remove a good portion of market makers the spread can go up a lot. The more market makers there is the lower the ability of one person or company with a lot of money manupulating the market. As a result the value that market makers add to the stock market is more liquity less volitlity, and overall more effeciency.
As if the job is hard or easy. Wether you are trading from home or on the floor its extremly hard. It might not be hard physically but defently mentally, a lot of stress. Not many market makers come out successfull. As the saying goes, if it where easy, everybody would be doing it.
The stock market is not a zero sum game. The companies involved actually create new wealth and thats why their prices go up and why they can pay out higher dividens. What you might be talking about are options and futures contracts. These may seem as a zero sum game because whatever happens one person of the contract looses while the other one gains. However, options and futures are not invesment tools, they are risk hedging tools. Options and futures are very usefull for many different companies and people to decrease the risk of doing business. For example corn farmers can hedge the price of corn so they don't have to worry what the price of corn will be when its time for them to sell it.
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We can start a party once we find a place to stay for good. I think it's better for now to just get better at your job and get some money
Anyone who wants to join and is going to create an account anyway, please click that so we earn extra gold! that'll make it a lot easier to start companies and stuff
joined norway slavbergor area.
name: alucard2999
Has anyone more familiar with the model of this game. Would we be succesfull in this game if we run things following the principles that we like?
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since something must be firts produced before it can be consumed a shortage simply means a product has not yet been produced. there is nothing you can do to attain this product because another unit of it simply does not exsist. this type of shortage is the corner stone of any socialized industry or economy, and rarely happens in a free market. in a free market if a person cannot attain a level 5 health serivice because he cant afford it does not mean there is a shortage of level 5 health serives. and if they needed it to save there lives they could go to extreme measures to attain it such as selling house finding a charity ect. if a shortage exsisted however like in a socialized market then attaining level 5 health serive would be impossible bc it wld not exist due to the shortage.
they basic direction of any socialized industry is down, less availabe less quality, while the direction of free market is more avaiabe more quality. this has been shown to be the truth by every example in history.
lets explore ur example of getting rid of level 5 care in order to provide evryone with level 3 care. at first there is no shortage of level three bc we are destroying 4 and 5 to get more 3. the quality is automtically decreased. eventually as all of 4 and 5 are destoyed in order to provide 3, there begins to be a shortage of 3, so we get ride of three and give everyone 2. then there begins to be a shortage of 2 wen all 3 has been destroyed to provide 2, and ect until u have 0.
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What Einstein discovered was that physical entities are located with respect to one another only and not with respect to the space-time manifold.
This is not what Einstein discovered. Mach argued something like that. When Newton developed his equations he proposed an experiment, that from then on was known as Newton's bucket. He observed that water in a spinning bucket also begins to spin. He asked the question what if this was happening in an empty universe, universe with no matter. What is the water in the bucket spinning in relation to? I am not going to go into the details, but Newton concluded that the water was spinning in relation to absolute space. Later Mach made an argument against that. And at one point Einstein did write to Mach and said that he thinks that the stuff he is working on will prove Mach right. However, when Einstein finished special and general relativity he concluded that the water was spinning in relation to what he called absolute space-time.
Experiments do not show that space-time (or space) is a physical entity. Experiments show that a massive entity affects the actions and relationships of oher entities in its vicinity (i.e. entities with a certain maximal distance relationship to the massive entity). These experimental results are not dependent on space existing as a physical entity with a warping geometry.The visualization of a warping space-time is a means of describing the results of General Relativity to people (like me) who do not have the requisite mathematical knowledge to otherwise understand it. However, this visualization is not technically accurate, and should not be used to justify the reification of space as an entity.
You failed to explain why "space" isn't, by your criteria, a "mental construct".The warping geometry is not just something scientists use to explain things to us, it is actually what is happening. Einstein's equations are actually very simple.
If space and time are just a mental construct, as a consequence of humans having a memory, then all humans should then have the same memory, should all agree on the shape of things, and how much time elapsed. Though this seems to be true in everyday life, it is not what Einstein's equations show, and it is not what the experiments conducted to test Einstein's equations show.
Ex: Bob is standing at the train station, Mary boards the train which will pass the train station going at 50% of the speed of light. Mary is holding a meter stick, both Bob and Mary will measure the meter stick as the train passes the train station. Mary and Bob compare the results, Mary has 100cm, Bob has 50cm. If Mary and Bob aslo both had stop watches, Mary would of recorded that she was on the train for 30 seconds, while Bob would have recorded that she was on the train for 1 minute. These are the results of real experiments conducted in partical excellators. But Einstein predicted this even before any experiments where conducted. The reasoning in this prediction, is very simple, even mathematically. The equation for velocity is v=d/t. Einstein new at that time already that experiments show that the velocity of light is constant. Lets go back to the train except first at normal speeds. Mary is on train, train is going at 90 miles per hour, Mary throws a baseball at 30 miles per hour. Mary records the baseball speed at 30 miles an hour, Bob records it at 120 miles an hour. Now the train is going at 50% the speed of light, and instead of throwing a baseball Mary turns on a flashlight. Both Mary and Bob record the light emiting from flash light going at 186,000 miles per second. How can this be, how can both Mary and Bob record the same velocity. Einstein realized that since the v in the equation(v=d/t) must stay constant, that it means that the other side of the equation must be changing. The other side is d/t, distance and time.
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avgleandt: If by "standing between you and the source" you mean where she is physically standing, then I cannot understand why this is a justification for use (not sure it would count as initiation) of force against her, but my example is not. In both cases, she is not the source of force, and we ask whether the fact that she has NOT done something (move, lend you the gun) means you may use force to alter what she is doing. On the other hand, we could read "standing" in the metaphorical sense, and say that by not lending you the gun, she is standing between you and resolving your situation favorably, in which case again her actions seem no different from obscuring your line of sight to the target.
In any case, you say that you would take the gun because it was an emergency. Me too. Why is it wrong for the government to take a bunch of guns in response to an even bigger emergency?
To clarify: Keanu's Law says simply: "Shoot the hostage." Or rather, "You may shoot the hostage in the situation described, and the moral responsibility falls on he who initiated force."
Let me clarify, retalitory force can only be used directly against the initiator of force. Physcial proximity is only important in this example because we are using a gun and hostage is only going to get hurt if he is close. This is not keanu's law of shot the hostage, you are directly shooting at the initiator of force the hostage may or may not get hurt. If you would to steal a gun from alice, you would be initiating force against her. Your need for a gun, food, ect. to even save your life does not give you the right to take away someone elses property. If you still don't understand the difference between using direct retalitory force against initiator, and using force agaist alice, let me know I will attempt to eleborate, or mabye someone else can explain it better, but essentially this difference is the important part.
If I do steal the gun, then I become a criminal and will have to repay, or be punished in someway, the court decides based on alice's charges. So me taking the gun is wrong. Similary if the government breaks your rights, takes your property even in response to a bigger emergency, they become the criminal. Criminal goverments don't have the right to exsist. The only way to punish a government is to dissolve it and reinstate a non criminal government.
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In my view technology is evolution. I view evolution as being advancments in information technology. Its latest most important advacment was reason. Since reason is a natural process, then I don't see why the products of reason are not natural as well. I think technology is just the next step of evolution.
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Objectivists typically hold that taxation should be voluntary. And yet, they also typically accept that it is not wrong to use force against a third party if necessary to protect yourself against a prior initiation of force, your use of force being understood as the responsibility of the initiator. For example, If I am shooting at you, and I have taken a hostage who I am using as a human shield, you may shoot the hostage as part of your attempt to defend yourself (I call this "Keanu's Law"). And Objectivists typically accept that to use force preemptively is not wrong if one has sufficient justification that another will initiate force.
Certainly, to kill another is a greater injury to him than to simply take his property. So if I am coming to kill you, and your friend Alice has a gun, but she refuses to let you use it ("It has new gun smell, you'll ruin it!"), you may steal it from her and use it to protect yourself, and the theft is not your responsibility, but mine, since I am the initiator of force.
On these grounds, I submit that not only may a government expropriate its citizens for national defense, it may expropriate them solely for its own defense, with no regard to their survival. However, it is probably in the government's interest to provide complete national defense, if only to ensure that the citizens are around to expropriate next time. The blame for this expropriation rests not on the government, but on those foreign enemies of the nation who make the world dangerous.
Did I screw up? Did Rand?
In your example Alice is not the source of the force initiated against you, nor is she standing between you and the source of the force, so there is no justification for initiating force against her. So you have no justification for steeling her gun, or using any of her property without her permission. Offcourse in an emergency situation, to save my life, I would take her gun, but I would have to repay her after the situation is resolved. Keanu's law is also a little bit unclear. You wouldn't be shooting the hostage directly, its just that in defending your self against the force initiator you are not the one responsible for innocent people that the force intiator puts in your way of defending your self.
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But what if they act irrationally as most people do, especially in Washington? It's not that I'm an environmentalist, I like to hunt, and I would be bothered by a species of animal going extinct.
I understand that if I cared enough I could buy the land and make it a reserve, but this seems sort of unrealistic as I would need to buy nearly every piece of farmland in Western Washington, to truly protect the species.
I mean, I guess I could accept the fact that whatever people choose to do with their property is their choice, as I know it rightly is. It just bothers me because I know that irrational people will destroy something that I value, and that I do not have enough money to protect that value.
I hope this makes sense.
I think first of all the task of the government regulating that a certain bird can't get killed on someones property is an impossible task. Most people won't shot a bird because they don't have a gun. Then others won't shot a bird because they can just shoo them away with a stick or something. The small number of people who are actually irrational enough to shot animals just because they are on their property will do so if the government makes it illegal or not. And the to make sure they don't do this, or to catch them and punish them with some sort of successfull rate is impossible. The only thing this law would accomplish is set a precendent for further government controls.
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Only IF the premises of Relativity are sound. I wish folks would ask themselves what the essential characteristics of the concept entity are.The part about extra dimensions to me is absurd and rest on not defining the word and using it consistently. Someone once said "Math seems to be the lubricant for hammer square pegs into round holes".
What evidence leads you to believe that relativity is not sound?
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You're not answering the question I asked or Thomas, you're addressing a totally different question (one which I have yelled at Thomas before, and to quote Jake, arrgh). How does that have anything to do with the concept "dimension", and why does the concept "dimension" not apply equally well to time.
oh, I am sorry. I am misunderstanding your questions, or arguments. My belief is that space and time, or more accuratly spacetime exsists as in its a physical entity. You can observe its effects on us and reality and vice versa. I don't think space and time just tools of our brain, I don't believe that they just exsist in our conciousness.
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Arrgh. This argument, and others like it have been bugging me for weeks. I'm working on a post to discuss it...
This is a reification of space as some primary feature of reality. Distance is a relationship. To say that objects A and B are 1 meter apart, means that the distance relationship between them has a value of 1 meter. It does not literally mean there is 1 meter of nothingness between them that must be filled either discretely or continuously in order not to violate "Existence exists."
If spacesial dimensions are not real, then why experiments show that lengths and distances change depending on how fast you are traveling?
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Why would you think that the other three so-called dimensions are dimensions, except also figuratively?
Because if nothing exsisted between matter, then all matter would be touching.
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I think you are responding to avg but I consider the premises behind your question to be faulty,and they rest on improper definitions of "time","dimension","space" being used so often in relation to physics.
If I have improper defenitions that would mean that I do not know what the words mean, or at least not in the same way as you. This is a huge barrier in our ability to communicate with each other since the words I say mean somethign different to you. So please what are the proper defenitions so I can communicate wit you?
Meanwhile I will refrase the question.
How do you explain a particle such as a muon, which has a certain life span, and is traveling at a certain speed. At the speed it is traveling and the life span that it has, traveling from the top of earth's atmosphere toward the earth it should not even make it a fraction of the way before it diseapers, however it makes it all the way the surface.
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"Time doesn't exist in reality. In reality there is only matter and movement. Time is a mental human construction, a side effect of humans having memory."
Time is an existent but not an entity.[a "mental something''] One needs to be careful to use this word "exist" consistently.
If time is not a dimension of reality, then how do you explain hundreds of thousands of experiments that show that motion in the spacial dimensions slows down motion in the time dimension. The faster you travel ghrough space, the slower time passes for you relative to to someone who is stationary or traveling slower then you through space.
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If you take away obama talking, audio. its acutally pretty good, skyscrappers, technological achievement, education, rights, human colaboration in cleaning up disasters, american greatness. THe problem is his annoying talking, asserting that somehow all this was because of some kind of service to the country and not what it realy is, the desire to achieve. if you play the video backwards its really nice, cuz then it would end with zooming from the ground up to the skyscrapers and then show the flag of america and the words greatness. lol
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drudgereport has a link about atlas shrugged movie mabye thats why.
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I don't get it.
lol, u don't remember, Bush chocked on a pretzel.
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South park usually points out all the hypocracy and irrationalities, and rightously makes fun of them, but it never presents a solution. On one hand thats good because I wouldn't imagine south park writers to come to rational conclusions. On the other hand its bad, because its promotes kinda whats the use, finding the truth is futile mentality.
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Thank you for sharing your story.
So, in your opinion, why would the guy Marty encountered want to go back to that? Just too lazy to take care of himself or what??
It could be many reason, would have to question him further. Could be Servile dependence <-- good article. He could be one of those people who was brain washed. Or he could be a person that is better at surving under that kind of enviroment where things are done with bribes, favors, people you know, ect instead of achievement and trade. There was, and is plenty of every kind.
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So I go to my doctor who happens to be russian. I sit there in the waiting room which is full of Russian speaking patients (A russian Doc would attract similar language speaking patients) I'm sittin next to this russian guy and he tries to explain to me how much better Russia was under communism. he actually takes out a pen and paper and shows me "I made 200 a month, rent was 20 a month, bread was .75 etc vacation was a full month rather than two weeks etc. I was incredulous, I mean, like, what on earth did he do with all the rest of his money? its not like he would be allowed to buy a bigger house or start a business with all that extra cash... what do you think?
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I was born in USSR, more specifically Kiev, in 1983, we escaped to United States in 1991 just before it fell. Housing was 10-20 rubbles a month. Salary out of college was 80-110 a month. My mom was pharmaceutical technician made 80 at first and then 180 later. My dad was mechanical engineer made 110 at first then 250. You had to live and work in the city you where born in. The rations for housing was 4 square meters per person. My mom and her sister lived in their parents place which was a 3 bedroom apartment. When my mom got married my dad moved in there as well. When I was born, the space in the apartment still exceeded the 4 meters per person so no one was eligible to apply for a new place yet. Thats 3 generations under one roof. Just around the time I was born they passed a rule that teachers can get more space. My grandma on moms side was a teacher so she got in line for more living space. Five years later she got a space which she let me and my parents live in. The average wait was 15 to 20 years, the only reason it was so fast was because they decided to build what they called corporate towers in Kiev and let people buy condominiums. Buying had nothing to do with ownership, basically if you had a lot of money saved up and you give it to them they let you move up the waiting list and live in these towers for the usual monthly price. The towers where 9 stories high. Me and my parents never had a phone in this new place because there wasn't enough phone numbers, the wait for a phone number was also on average of 15-20 years. The only reason we had enough money to get this place was because my dad's father was a dentist and he gave us the money. The only reason he had money was because he did some of private work, which was illegal, basically he made people dentures. The average 200 rubble salary was spent on living space, necessities like food and clothes, and your 1 month vacation. When Chernobyl happened in 1986 my parents wanted me out of Kiev, we paid people of in Moscow to let us live with them for a little bit, and also lived on a farm somewhere lol. Since you could not live outside the city you work, we where criminals.
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I don't think modern science has a complete accurate view of what space, time, or spacetime is so far. However, if we are talking about special and general relativity, then those two theories conclude that thee is such a thing as absolute spacetime. To see what Einstein thought about this subject, you can look up the Bucket and spinning water thought experiment. Various scientists including Newton, Mach, and Einstein discuss what the water in the bucket is spinning relative too.
post your favorite you tube videos here
in Miscellaneous Topics
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This is not necessarily my favorite video, but i just finished making this.
I want to post it somewhere else in this forum also.