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Randroid

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Everything posted by Randroid

  1. Translation: "I know I'm wrong and I don't care." Translation: "There is already plenty of legalized injustice around and I'm fine with it." Translation: "I know that what I propose is evil and cannot be justified, but I want to do it anyway." If that is inaccurate, then please, tell me what you really mean.
  2. So, your argument, as I understand it, is this: You are perfectly aware that economic rent is an invalid and, more importantly, unjust and evil concept, but there is already some evil and injustice in the world, so we might as well go full hog and forget all this useless crap about human rights completely. Is that about right?
  3. Until you can prove that scarcity rents are a valid concept, they are certainly not a fact of life. Whatever is in that person's rational self-interest. They can try to find unclaimed land somewhere else. Or they can buy land. Or they can work for the farmer. Or they can choose a different vocation. They may not, however, initiate force. No, my position is that scarcity rents are an invalid concept, i.e. not real. An insane fantasy made up by people who know as little about reality as they know about economics.
  4. The burden of proof is still on you. You make the claim that someone using a resource has to pay the people who don't use it a fee for that privilege. You must show why, I don't have to show why not. Saying that a bunch of other people also say so proves nothing, even if they have degrees or are famous or really pretty. Okay, when I turn my head to the left and look out of my window, I can see some fertile land. The problem is, I don't know how to cultivate land. I don't know where to get crop seed, when to plant it, when to water and fertilize it, when to harvest it, I don't know how to operate a harvester, etc. So, even if that land was mine, I wouldn't know what to do with it. It's useless and of no value to me. If someone who does know (or can figure out) all these things and claims the land as his property, I don't lose anything. It imposes zero cost on me. In fact, my life improves significantly: The farmer grows food that I can buy from him and eat. Why should he pay me for that? "But what about the other farmer, who also knows how to cultivate land and now doesn't get to?", you say. Why the hell didn't he, then? You snooze, you lose. He was sitting on his ass, doing diddly-squat, playing with his toes, and now he says, "Aw, shucks, I coulda/woulda/shoulda thought of that!" and demands some of the money the productive farmer makes by growing and selling food. He demands money for doing nothing - literally. No wonder I can't get the Dire Straits out of my head. You're getting my arguments mixed up again. This has nothing to do with discovering fertile qualities, I was referring to the land itself. I didn't say they are mutually exclusive, I said that you have only shown that demand exceeding supply can increase the price of a commodity. I agree. You have not shown, however, how or why demand exceeding supply causes inalienable human rights to evaporate.
  5. Logical fallacy: Appeal to authority. Try again. Those are actually two different objections. Regarding the former: Fertile farmland is utterly useless and therefore worthless to anyone who is not a farmer. Regarding the latter: The pioneers may be dead, their heirs aren't. My argument still stands. By the way, it's Randroid, not Randriod. Demand exceeding supply only causes a rise in price, which, as I understand it, is different from "economic rent". You still have not adequately explained how or why landowners (who are on the supply side) are the ones who have to pay the people on the demand side. That's kinda the opposite of how reality works. If you have something that I want, I pay you for it, not the other way 'round.
  6. And they won't let you switch from public to private easily, either.
  7. And if I don't feel like sharing what I have earned with people who did not earn it and therefore have no right to any of my stuff, what are you going to do then? Oh, yeah, that's right: Use force to take it anyway. Looting. Scarcity does not create value. No matter how rare something is, if it's useless to you, it's worthless to you. First, I never said he should get to own the entire continent, only the land that he can actually use. Second, I already did challenge you on that one. An explorer (and everybody else) does not owe anything to future generations, or existing generations for that matter. You earn it, you own it. You don't earn it, you don't own it. It's not exactly quantum physics.
  8. Bid to whom? Why should people who didn't lift a finger to create a specific value receive a share of that value? When someone like Columbus discovers a new continent, why should the people in the Old World, who didn't even know the land existed, get paid for graciously allowing the discoverers to use the land that they alone found, through their knowledge and effort? You want something for nothing - literally. That is looting.
  9. Very powerful! I got goosebumps. Well done, except for the voiceover where "Connor" is replaced with "Galt". I could imagine that if you don't know what to listen for, you might mistake it for a sound glitch.
  10. Wow. Nothing but strawmen and ad hominems. Quelle surprise. By the way, 2046, I can't see your comment there. It was probably shipped off to Siberia for dissent.
  11. Ruslana Lyzhichko, Znayu Ya http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEN4pBFhA4M Ruslana Lyzhichko, Svitanok Unfortunately, her albums with the original Ukrainian lyrics are hard to get in Western Europe. -- Edited to add my other favorite song from her.
  12. I disagree with condition B: You will not be able to show that this original-state land has some intrinsic value because there is no such thing as intrinsic value. All value is subjective.
  13. Landlords can certainly ask for any rent. If, however, their expectations exceed what their potential tenants are willing to pay, they will lose. They still have to keep the land in good condition without any revenue or they can simply abandon it, thereby losing all previous investments. Supply & demand. Yes. You cannot charge rent for something you do not own. Scarcity is irrelevant. Just as A does not owe any money to B in our previous example, C does not owe any land to unborn generation D. It certainly does create value: You don't have to look for suitable land yourself and you don't have to be the early bird (first to claim it), either.
  14. That's easy: The exact amount the landlord and the tenant voluntarily agreed upon. Let's not say that, because value is subjective. To you, the irrigation may be worth $20, to me maybe only $10, because I think I could have done a better job, and to someone else $30, for whatever reasons. Scarcity is indeed a fact of life, but that does not mean that this fact warrants or justifies any sort of distribution by means of force. And certainly not distribution of imaginary "costs", the idea of which I have already refuted and will refute again: So Thomas Edison was being unfair when he invented the light bulb, thereby depriving other people of the chance to invent it?
  15. Exactly. If you have no use for the land, it is of no value to you. Value always presupposes an answer to the questions "to whom?" and "what for?". Wrong. First, of course the use of property is associated with a cost, at the very least opportunity cost; but that cost is incurred only to the owner himself (see below). Second, if you wouldn't know what to do with the land if you owned it, you can't claim ownership of the land. The above principle applies. Remember, private property is basically the right to exclusive use of the land. If you have no use for the land at all, how can you claim exclusive use? No. B's shortcomings are not a valid claim on A's life or property. It's not A's fault that B doesn't know what to do with a patch of land or figures it out too slowly. A does not owe any money to B because B is slow or inept. As Francisco D'Anconia said in his "money speech", money isn't made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools or by the able at the expense of the incompetent or by the ambitious at the expense of the lazy.
  16. Ideally, law enforcement would be voluntarily paid for by you and others who also want their rights protected and are willing to voluntarily pay for that service. That means that law enforcement itself is not a right. If, however, there is law enforcement, you have the right to have law enforcement protect your rights, because that's what they are there for.
  17. Thanks for the heads-up. Now I gotta find me the original series. I watched it as a kid, but I remember very little except being scared ***less.
  18. Just to clarify, it was not my intention to chastise the OP. I was merely pointing him in a direction where lots more information on the topic is available, if he is interested. Please don't take my response as "STFU, n00b!", Rudmer. Just trying to be helpful.
  19. Welcome to the forum and congratulations on your "conversion". Birth. Ultimately, it does not matter whether a late-term fetus has a right to life. Rights cannot contradict each other. If the fetus' hypothetical right to life apparently contradicts the woman's right to life (in the Objectivist sense), then one of those rights doesn't exist - and it's obviously not the latter. There is already a very long thread on the topic. Just search the forum for "Abortion" and you will find what you're looking for.
  20. Oh, you're HowTheWorldWorks? Cool, welcome to OO.net! I'm already subscribed to your channel, great debunking video. Two small points: 1) I haven't checked, but are you sure that a government-run fire dept is constitutional? Not that it really matters, Collectivists won't call you on that, of course. Although it would be hilarious if they did. 2) You could have been a little more detailed on why a non-government-run fire dept would not work the way the original video claimed. That's quite a bit of uninterrupted and uncommented original footage, which makes the entire section appear to be mostly unaddressed. Thanks for making these videos. They are well done and enjoyable. I favorited this one, BTW.
  21. ... then war is peace, freedom is slavery and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
  22. I found this blogger's observation rather concise.
  23. Randroid

    Abortion

    Sorry for replying to this so late, I've been reading the thread but hadn't had the time to respond properly. There is no such thing as automatic volunteering. This is something that Collectivists made up. You will encounter the same sort of argument when Collectivists prattle about their imaginary social contract. "You accepted this or that, because I say so." Actually, there is a contract between a patient and the surgeon, that's why he can't just quit in the middle of it. I've already explained when and how parenthood begins. The purpose of the state is to protect the rights of actual, individual (this is important) people. As long as the fetus is still inside of the mother, it is not an individual. To attribute any rights to it would directly contradict the rights of the mother. That is why the fetus cannot have rights until birth and why the state (and everyone else) has no business meddling in any way with the pregnancy or termination thereof. If the fetus is already out, with only the umbilical cord intact, a "post-natal abortion" is by definition no longer possible. Abortion means termination of a pregnancy. By the time the fetus is out, the pregancy is already completed. There is simply nothing to abort anymore, therefore we're moving into the realm of infanticide. I have already refuted your other point. If it were indeed possible to preserve the life of the fetus without legally, emotionally, physically (both in terms of risk and surgical trauma) or financially imposing on anyone, you might have a case. I don't want to raise the squick factor unnecessarily, but I doubt that induced birth or a C-section are exactly the same as a late-term abortion in every way. Location is an objective fact of reality and, as such, matters and can make a lot of difference.
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