2046

Also there's an argument to the effect that, well look, the representatives in Congress deserve this. While, strictly speaking, this is correct, it doesn't follow merely from that fact that this is the right thing to do. Every member of Congress deserves to be huddled in their home in fear, as they would have the rest of us do the past few months. But part of a virtuous action is that it is done in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. 
Consider someone performing some courageous act to impress an onlooker. Such an action isn't merely "doing the right thing for the wrong reason," it's literally not doing the right thing. This is an aspect of all agent-centered virtue ethics. The agent has to be in a certain state while performing the action. They cannot be counted as virtuous someone who does something by accident, in the same way consulting tea leaves and guessing the correct thing doesn't make some belief knowledge. See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics II.4 for details.
So it's possible to believe that the "demand side" if you will, the "getting what you deserve" might be good in some small way. I mean it certainly is funny to see the viking at Pelosi's desk. However, the "supply side" if you will, is people yearning for a dictatorship and indulging in epistemic vice. The "demand side" wasn't even substantial enough to change anything about lockdowns other than, people now screaming about "sedition" and "insurrection." Expect more bipartisan surveillance, policing, internet censorship.

Thank you, 2046.
One book to which I keep returning to learn more is Kris McDaniel's The Fragmentation of Being (2017).
On potentiality, I keep learning more from Handbook of Potentiality (2018) and Barbara Vetter's Potentiality - From Disposition to Modality (2015).
I have concluded that the grade I'll be having to give myself at the end of my life is assuredly: Incomplete.
Your ideas on how Rand's system might profit from use of Aristotelian analogy of being is good for me to keep in mind. It could bear also on univocality and unity of existence in general in my own system as well.
It is hard for me to see how Rand could apply levels of perfection across existence spanning more than living existence. Within the living domain, it might be natural to count Howard's Roark's greater thingness or entification of person in comparison to Peter Keating's as a factor in Roark's more perfect aliveness. And Roark's greater integration and selfness as factors in his more perfect aliveness. But I can't see how Rand, given her setting of value and function and intelligence wholly within living sorts of existence, could go on (in her mature system) and have degrees of thingness or of unities, for examples, be factors for being able to say there are any levels of perfection across all of existence.

I'm not sure where exactly to place Rand on this, but I will argue to lean towards analogy. First, I would preface this by saying that I don't think she was aware of these debates which were pre-modern inter-Scholastic debates. Maybe in some discussions she had, but she only wrote things which can incidentally wander into these issues at some times, like the whole act-potency issue. She does not really have a developed doctrine. We moreso comment on what she doesn't appear to think on some issue because she never mentioned it specifically, like say, the issue of perfections of nature. But, I think we are just as justified in asking whether other positions she does take commit her to that position, like whether her adoption of life-based teleology, causality as identity in action, and the non-existence of evil commit her to, or at least gel with, perfections of nature.
In the quoted part above, I think there's something about the act-potency distinction that commit us to rejecting univocality of being or existence. Consider the following argument:
1. Act is real ie., it exists.
2. Potency is real ie., it exists.
3. If potency existed in the same univocal sense in which act does, then it wouldn't really be distinct from act.
4. Potency is distinct from act.
5. So potency cannot exist in the same univocal sense as act.
Potency-in-being is not being-in-act, they are really different things, after all. But potency isn't nothing either, it really exists, ie., is a kind of being. And since it is really distinct from act, we can't say it exists univocally or equivocally, so it must exist analogously (a Thomist would argue. Of course we'd have to develop that further to establish to positive treatment of the analogy of being.) The relationships between the existence of an actuality and the existence of a potentiality are not identical, otherwise the potentiality wouldn't exist as a potentiality, it would be actual, and everything that exists would be actual. There would be no act-potency distinction. Nevertheless there is a similarity between the relationships, they both exist, just in different non-identical ways, hence analogous and not equivocal.
Of course much more could be said about primary potency and secondary potency to round out the case. And much more smarter people than I have been debating this issue in much more detail, with many more distinctions and examples, than I will ever probably understand. However I just want to make the point that I think Rand is committed to the analogy of being. The reason for this (beyond just that she appears to hold an act-potency distinction) is as follows:
Univocal terms, of course, are perfectly valid among many things, and can be applied to very different things sometimes. But there is a crucial difference in the case of existence or being (I'm using them interchangeably for now.) A term like "animal" is applied to dogs, giraffes, fish, mammals, etc., because they are all species (logical usage of "species," not the biology term) of animal. In that way, "animal" is univocal. It names a genus under which various species fall. What's different about each is captured by the differentia and the differentia is external to the genus under which the thing it specifies falls. But, being or existence does not name a genus, such that substance, accident, essences, powers (or in the Randian) entity, attribute, actions, relationships, etc. are not understood as the various "species of existence." You yourself say:
Correct. And Rand says (ITOE 59)
"Since axiomatic concepts are not formed by differentiating one group of existents from others, but represent an integration of all existents, they have no Conceptual Common Denominator with anything else. They have no contraries, no alternatives. The contrary of the concept “table”—a non-table-is every other kind of existent. The contrary of the concept “man”—a non-man—is every other kind of existent. “Existence,” “identity” and “consciousness” have no contraries—only a void. It may be said that existence can be differentiated from non-existence; but non-existence is not a fact, it is the absence of a fact, it is a derivative concept pertaining to a relationship, i.e., a concept which can be formed or grasped only in relation to some existent that has ceased to exist."
So we can't grasp entity or attribute (substance or accident) and so forth without grasping them as having being. But we can grasp, say, being cold blooded apart from "animal." There is nothing that can serve as a differentia to existence or being in that case to mark out existence because the only thing external to existence is non-existence, which is nothing, and it can't serve as a differentia precisely because it's nothing.
So while all the concrete entities, attributes, actions, relationships and so forth that do exist are units of the concept of existence, they are not in fact species of existence, that is not how they are related. Thus, existence cannot be predicated of things in a univocal (or equivocal for that matter) way. It is predicated on a proportion or relationship of similarity, but not identity. Existence in relation to entities is identity, but entities do not exist identically and aren't predicated that way either. Thus, it seems if Rand wants to maintain this notion of the concept of existence, she should be committed to the analogy of being.

But potentials and actuals, or act and potency, are not existents. They are modalities of existents, or ways of dividing being vis a vis change, permanence, multiplicity, and unity. Or we may say they are principles, employed to speak of the ways existents exist, but the primary existence is the substances or entities themselves. 
It is also possible to speak on the one hand of potentiality and actuality, and of the presentist view of time on the other hand. Presentism is the view that only present things exist. Eternalism is the view that every moment in time is real. Different varieties of eternalism state that they are real in different ways, or equally real, or are real things, (ie., we can speak of "past existent.")
The two are related, and related to views of space as well. My only point here is that one can speak of potential-actual without adopting eternalism. One can speak of the past potentials as having existed without speaking of them as past existents. And note that the persistence of the substantial form accounts for its continued existence through time, on the Aristotelian view, which is related to its actuality, not its potentialities. Matter becomes, speaking metaphorically, located in space-time when it receives form.

This is not a "valid deductive argument," per @2046's post. You'd need an additional premise that an entity ought to perform the function it was created to perform to make the argument deductively valid.

Imagine thinking having books will increase your status and allow you to assert more things

I mean consuming anything by Gilson should profit you substantially. His Methodical Realism is a very good, short read. His Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge is good for setting the ground rules on engagement with Cartesian and Kantian epistemology.
More neo-Thomist stuff:
Anthony Lisska's two books Aquinas' Theory of Perception and Natural Law is a reconstruction of Thomistic epistemology and meta-ethics that engages with contemporary analytic philosophy.
John O'Callaghan's Thomistic Realism and the Linguistic Turn employs Aquinas' semantic theory to describe how concepts as formal signs of knowledge are replaced by words in contemporary pragmatism targeting what he calls the "third thing" thesis of Quine, Putnam, and Rorty.
Edward Pols' Radical Realism engages with the presuppositions of what he calls the "linguistic enclosure" of knowledge from reality by employing a Thomistic point of view.
Henry Veatch's Rational Man is a Thomist counter to existentialism and all around classic. You should pretty much think of Veatch as the American version of Gilson and consume all of his stuff actually.
Anything by Anthony Kenny, Eleanore Stump when reading Aquinas.
 

I mean consuming anything by Gilson should profit you substantially. His Methodical Realism is a very good, short read. His Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge is good for setting the ground rules on engagement with Cartesian and Kantian epistemology.
More neo-Thomist stuff:
Anthony Lisska's two books Aquinas' Theory of Perception and Natural Law is a reconstruction of Thomistic epistemology and meta-ethics that engages with contemporary analytic philosophy.
John O'Callaghan's Thomistic Realism and the Linguistic Turn employs Aquinas' semantic theory to describe how concepts as formal signs of knowledge are replaced by words in contemporary pragmatism targeting what he calls the "third thing" thesis of Quine, Putnam, and Rorty.
Edward Pols' Radical Realism engages with the presuppositions of what he calls the "linguistic enclosure" of knowledge from reality by employing a Thomistic point of view.
Henry Veatch's Rational Man is a Thomist counter to existentialism and all around classic. You should pretty much think of Veatch as the American version of Gilson and consume all of his stuff actually.
Anything by Anthony Kenny, Eleanore Stump when reading Aquinas.
 

You keep giving different versions of the same scenario. I keep asking each time why you think it is a conflict of interest, or phrased differently, which interests conflict. 
At this point it's clear that you just aren't reading, or you don't understand what you're reading despite clarifications and explanations. No, I don't mean agreeing, I mean even understanding what Rand said so that you actually know what you're disagreeing with.

Okay, so using the word desert can include disinterestedness, where a deontological rule says a person deserves something without regard to their interests. Or it could mean something more consequentialist, where you just try to figure out how things need to end up. We need the work of the word "interest" because we want to keep in mind the agent acting, trying to work for goals and objectives, and some consideration of the nature of the agent acting. So instead of taking only what people deserve, we are also keeping in mind the whole point of needing to deserve anything anyway. 
You're right to think that things get complicated here, because we are trying to distinguish what is actually in your interest, versus simply having goals. The principle of 2 definitions is the best thing I have here to say, which DW mentioned in the previous post. 
This doesn't make sense, because irrational people are just as free to sell and exchange anything and everything they want. For that reason alone, there can be many things in the free market where the result is not fair. So I have no idea where you get the idea that free markets are markets where everyone is rational. Yeah, a free market of rational individuals would produce fair results, but free markets also include individuals being irrational on occasion, or all the time. 
You can say that free markets have the best allocation of resources, and the only markets where individuals can truly have no conflicts of interest, but it doesn't follow that the allocation of resources is always fair in the free market, or that conflicts of interest will never occur in the free market. Basically I'm saying that if at least one person is acting irrationally, there will be a conflict of interest. 
 

This is another good point. I have a bit of a soft spot for the ordinary language school. I think it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask whether the everyday common sense usage of "conflicts of interest" comports with the meaning Rand employs here. And if it does not (which it definitely doesn't) what motivates our moving from the one usage to the other?
And the answer to that lies in the answer to the question: why does Rand need there to be no conflicts of interest? What work is this doing in her overall system? I mean what's the cash value of the thing? Suppose she's wrong, sometimes my good will just conflict with other people's, and that's just a pervasive fact of reality? So what?
I think she needs it due to her political philosophy. She needs a free society that does not, at least structurally, prejudice some people's good over others. And she needs that because she needs it to be entirely up to you whether or not your good is achieved. That's why taking a wider view of the context of your interests refocuses you on what's in your control vs not. That's why the ending is not weird or odd that she take it to politics at the end of the day. (What's weird to me is that she gives it two sentences and ends right there.)

That's just the thing. You really believe your posts at least met 1, but they didn't. And unfortunately, you felt insulted when you were told that your reasoning sucks. Do you want to have a better discussion, or do you prefer to insist on discussing things the same way?
ET, I don't see any issue with saying that there would be "no more" conflicts of interest between rational people, mostly because the conflicts of interest don't actually exist in the first place. It's not that they go away, it's that people realize they were never there in the first place. As was mentioned before, you may initially get the impression that a conflict of interest exists with another rational person. All you have to do is pause for a moment, and reflect on the situation. Maybe even consider that you were the irrational person. We can get into some of Swig's ideas if you'd like, but to me those are more about why it's difficult to figure out how to evaluate everything correctly. 

I mean, you've been asked a few times exactly why you have a different view. You began the discussion by suggesting that Rand didn't understand the "common meaning", and/or was really only talking about something trivial, so you gave examples that you thought would easily make us call into question what she was talking about in her essay. So people corrected you that you were missing the point, or were misinterpreting her, or otherwise not reading her essay carefully. Fair enough. Then you gave a hypothetical. Great. But when you were given analysis, you were combative, didn't answer clarifying questions, even going as far as to say it was impossible to demonstrate that your example was a conflict of interest among rational people. Then went back to repeating your first post, and accusing 2046 of refusing to talk about what anyone else means by conflict of interest (need I remind you that the whole thread is about what Rand meant?). But you yourself refused to answer what you meant by conflict of interest when I asked why you thought you thought experiment demonstrated a conflict of interest! 
Just for looking at things carefully, we can see that Merjet has failed to be rational. Is he rational most the time? Maybe. It's not as if Rand was saying that normally rational people will never fail to be rational. When they fail to be rational, they will see what they believe to be conflicts of interest, and probably think they are being rational at the time. Merjet might believe that here, it is in his interest to argue as he has so far. Arguing in a manner that other people think is poor form. The conflict of interest would be that 2046's interest is to argue in a relatively precise and academic way, but also by introducing other information that we can clarify our own thinking or find a point to argue with, while Merjet's interest is trying to argue about this other meaning of conflict of interest, without meeting the context of the original question, and focusing on a particular narrow dispute about definitions.
A way to resolve this of course is Merjet to admit some error and that 2046 has a better way, or at least admit that a different course of discussion is better. Unless of course his wider interest is just to "win the argument", in which case the conflict of interest remains. Getting to the truth is the rational course of action. That might take some time, but in either case, we know that getting at the truth can and should be a mutual interest here. When we realize that, we also realize that there actually is no genuine conflict of interest exists if we hold rational interests. 
The difficult thing might be figuring out the difference between irrational and not smart enough. If somebody is having a bad day, and you just need to engage them tomorrow when things settle down, that's a case of irrationality. Sometimes a person is characteristically irrational, and they will routinely use appeals to emotions, or threats, or lies. Other times, neither applies because the person is not capable of understanding the concepts in question. It doesn't matter how patient you are with them, they just won't get it, no arguments will sink in, and you'll actually look stupid in their eyes precisely because what you say doesn't make any sense. Or could go the other way, that you're the one who is not smart enough to understand.
Imagine a chess grandmaster against an amateur chess player. The chess grandmaster thinks on such a higher level that they simply do not compare. The amateur chess player is not even capable of understanding what the grandmaster does except at the very basic level of how the pieces move. I'm not saying that the amateur is stupid about everything, I only mean stupid about chess. The same can apply to philosophical arguments, or anything else in life. Even then, general intelligence is somewhat of a thing, or at least several related measures. There might be a minimum level of intelligence someone needs to be able to comprehend certain ideas. It wouldn't matter how rational they are. Can everyone understand the mathematics of quantum physics? I don't think so. 
 
 

I mean I'd say neither. There is a conflict in the sense that the plans conflict since you stipulated they are incompatible. And that's fully coherent with saying one, both, or neither of them is being irrational. We don't know that yet. But this tells us nothing about whether there is a conflict of rational interests. Again, the thesis is about interests: whether there is a basic conflict in our individual human good. It's not a thesis about conflict of conclusions, conflict of plans, or legal/financial conflict.
So to rework your example to make it more relevant to the problem at hand, I'd say you'd have to change it to where whoever's plan (E1 or E2) gets chosen by the boss to be implemented, gets a promotion (with corresponding pay raise and increase in status and authority), and then ask is it an example of a conflict between E1 and E2's good if the other's plan gets accepted, since it seems like either of their good will be served if their own plan gets accepted.

Of related interest: 
"A Metaphysics for Freedom argues that agency itself-and not merely the special, distinctively human variety of it-is incompatible with determinism. For determinism is threatened just as surely by the existence of powers which can be unproblematically accorded to many sorts of animals, as by the distinctively human powers on which the free will debate has tended to focus. Helen Steward suggests that a tendency to approach the question of free will solely through the issue of moral responsibility has obscured the fact that there is a quite different route to incompatibilism, based on the idea that animal agents above a certain level of complexity possess a range of distinctive 'two-way' powers, not found in simpler substances. Determinism is not a doctrine of physics, but of metaphysics; and the idea that it is physics which will tell us whether our world is deterministic or not presupposes what must not be taken for granted-that is, that physics settles everything else, and that we are already in a position to say that there could be no irreducibly top-down forms of causal influence. Steward considers questions concerning supervenience, laws, and levels of explanation, and explores an outline of a variety of top-down causation which might sustain the idea that an animal itself, rather than merely events and states going on in its parts, might be able to bring something about. The resulting position permits certain important concessions to compatibilism to be made; and a convincing response is also offered to the charge that even if it is agreed that determinism is incompatible with agency, indeterminism can be of no possible help. The whole is an argument for a distinctive and resolutely non-dualistic, naturalistically respectable version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom."

I'm not sure this is really showing an example of amoral values or choices. I think 2046's post is a good example of why this isn't really a good example. If we conceive of Rand promoting virtue ethics generally speaking, we don't need to think of certain actions not consequential "enough". Sure, you're not going to die the next day because you impulsively bought ice cream. Nothing much negative would happen. But the point about being moral is to have a flourishing life, not a good "enough" life. What does it say about you if you sometimes give in to impulse and laziness? Why would you on one side acknowledge you are being lazy if you went to buy ice cream, but then say it won't affect your life? It would say you aren't living life to its fullest, and really don't mind if you fail at something (because the consequences don't seem big). 
Going by Aristotle, and Rand whose characters never really have any moral struggle when in their ideal being, doing the right and virtuous thing isn't a struggle. You make choices with awareness, choosing to eat ice cream with full focus rather than a passive unfocused impulse to eat ice cream. You care about your life, and don't half-ass it at any point. You could certainly argue that individual moments in the day have almost no moral weight, but as you said, sometimes a thousand little choices are no longer a thousand little choices. Making laziness into habit begins with that one time you giving to your impulse to buy ice cream and not attaining mastery of your own behavior. You would say it was an error, then decide you wouldn't do that again. 
I miss read it a little bit, I thought you were saying that the hypothetical was giving in to buy ice cream. But I wouldn't change much anyway. What would it say about you if you literally do not care one bit whatsoever about the flavor you picked? I get not driving 5 more minutes to get a particular ice cream, but there are ways to choose without feeling you are "giving in" for mediocre ice cream. You can think about trying different flavors, different toppings, or waiting for another day when you pass by the ice cream place that you prefer. It completely depends on your creativity. Add some pizzazz, affirmation that ice cream is really fun. 

Ah well, now you see you've gotten into a bit of a pickle. We are discussing your dislike of paisley. Your dislike of paisley is a value-judgment, no? At least at this point in the conversation that is all that is implied by the terms "dislike of paisley." You might say, no it's an emotional state or disposition, and thus, not a choice.
In Rand's psychology, an emotion is an automatic subconscious response to a value-judgment. And a value-judgment is an act of measurement. Thus, you are not on the hook for your emotions per se, but you are for the value-judgments they are based on.
Next you say, ah well it's not a choice/action that determines "the purpose and course of [one’s] life," so not moral. But I don't know about that. She does say, once again, morality applies to "all those aspects of existence which are open to his [man's] choice" (VOS 26.) So either there's a blatant contradiction, or your interpretation is wrong, right? It can only be one of the two.
(And here's my argument for it being the latter.) It couldn't possibly be that simply classifying "watering grass" by its most conspicuous external trait ("grass got water, yea or nay") is only a surface level reading of the context within which such a choice or action takes place? That, a series of choices/actions that make up a whole life includes not just basic goods that would keep one alive for a certain natural lifespan, but also the virtues. And when we are speaking of virtues we are speaking of what kind of person one is. And when we are speaking of a virtue like industry or productiveness, we speak of expending a certain amount of effort to do those things one actually values. Or when we speak of integrity, we speak of being the kind of person that actually does put into action those things one claims to value. And when we speak of rationality or independence (or practical wisdom in non-Randian virtue ethics), we speak of having the kind of excellence at weighting and balancing those values in life that are worth expending energy on to us as the kind of person we are and want to be.
Additionally, we we speak of a lifespan, we speak of the here and now as much as the future encompassed by the natural length of said lifespan. And one needs excellence at weighting which possible values to expend energy on because whatever one does, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant, constitutes a slice of that temporary life. We only get a fixed amount of this life, so spending it well is important to being the kind of person we want to be and making the kind of overall life we want to have. Even a small misplay of time and effort constitutes a drain on a limited account. 
Thus, as best I can argue, Rand does in fact mean "all" when she says all, and there is no such class as "non-moral values" in her axiology. Further, cutting the grass is important inasmuch as it is an action and thus the kind of person one is who takes that action (and thus the virtues) is brought to bear on it. And finally, even a small portion of one's lifespan is important to the whole lifespan because of its limited nature.

The views of capitalists and liberals historically developed out of opposition to things that came before them. Locke developed the natural rights doctrine and laid the foundation for liberalism, but was a bit of a mercantilist in economics. Late 17th and early 18th century thinkers like North, Cantillon, and Quesnay began to develop free trade movements out of opposition to mercantilism and utilized Lockean and generally Enlightenment-influenced arguments about "rights of man" and "laws of nature."
The physiocracts and French liberals in the 18th century were among the first to mix laissez-faire and free trade economics with anti-slavery doctrines, foremost among them Mirabeau. The Manchester School and the American individualists in the 19th century also combined abolitionism and free trade as basic positions. Thomas Jefferson, if anything, is representative of a movement that certainly did exist mainly in America that combined rights-and-free-trade-talk with pro-slavery views. See Calhoun for example. The point there is simply that these just wouldn't count as genuine liberals precisely on those grounds. There, a distinction could be drawn between rhetoric and deeper value structure.

The views of capitalists and liberals historically developed out of opposition to things that came before them. Locke developed the natural rights doctrine and laid the foundation for liberalism, but was a bit of a mercantilist in economics. Late 17th and early 18th century thinkers like North, Cantillon, and Quesnay began to develop free trade movements out of opposition to mercantilism and utilized Lockean and generally Enlightenment-influenced arguments about "rights of man" and "laws of nature."
The physiocracts and French liberals in the 18th century were among the first to mix laissez-faire and free trade economics with anti-slavery doctrines, foremost among them Mirabeau. The Manchester School and the American individualists in the 19th century also combined abolitionism and free trade as basic positions. Thomas Jefferson, if anything, is representative of a movement that certainly did exist mainly in America that combined rights-and-free-trade-talk with pro-slavery views. See Calhoun for example. The point there is simply that these just wouldn't count as genuine liberals precisely on those grounds. There, a distinction could be drawn between rhetoric and deeper value structure.

"What about-ism" isn't a counterargument. It's a distraction. Communism and Maoism are more like Marxism+, that is, there are elements of Marxism. What would change about her argument if she mentioned them? She easily could condemn them on grounds of expropriation. An anticapitalist could say that every attack on Marxism should mention imperialism of the US, but you would rightly respond that the essay is about Marxism, not about the ways that capitalism has been corrupted in the US. The essay is about capitalism, so let's talk about capitalism. 
By the way, my basic response would be what 2046 wrote, but I felt some things were worth analyzing in more detail. 
First we need to consider exactly how she is defining capitalism.
"By definition, a system devoted to the limitless expansion and private appropriation of surplus value gives the owners of capital a deep-seated interest in confiscating labor and means of production from subject populations. Expropriation raises their profits by lowering costs of production in two ways: on the one hand, by supplying cheap inputs, such as energy and raw materials; on the other, by providing low-cost means of subsistence, such as food and textiles, which permit them to pay lower wages."
For us, we probably would usually respond by saying that capitalism requires individual rights. Expropriation is an explicit violation of individual rights, so what she is describing isn't actually capitalism. (Although low-cost means of subsistence sounds like a good thing to me, so even the description is a little weird, unless she is claiming something like exploited at poverty levels). Fraser seems to anticipate such a response from a capitalist. 
"The common thread here, once again, is political exposure: the incapacity to set limits and invoke protections."
She is saying that capitalism and rights are incompatible. As much as capitalists like us might want protection of rights, she would say that we will never get what we hope to achieve. But I think she fails to make this argument. She gives examples of expropriation, without making a clear-cut case why capitalism necessarily requires expropriation. 
Look at the definition before. It amounts to saying that it is advantageous for capitalists to expropriate people, especially with imperialism. But I'm not seeing why we must assume that a system of rights cannot exist that is rigidly enforced. Her argument might apply to anarcho capitalists, and that would make sense. Rand made arguments against anarchism on grounds that it would necessarily lead to rights violations. If Fraser were talking about capitalism without government, she'd probably be right. But when you throw in everything about exploitation, she is trying to talk about any kind of profit as denial of workers of what they earned. 
"Advantageous even in “normal” times, expropriation becomes especially appealing in periods of economic crisis, when it serves as a critical, if temporary, fix for restoring declining profitability. The same is true for political crises, which can sometimes be defused or averted by transferring value confiscated from populations that appear not to threaten capital to those that do—another distinction that often correlates with “race.” "
All she really has to go on is that expropriation is "appealing". This is about as strong as her case seems to be that capitalism *cannot* protect rights. For the most part, she goes over the ways that people can be expropriated:
"And it is largely states, too, that codify and enforce the status hierarchies that distinguish citizens from subjects, nationals from aliens, entitled workers from dependent scroungers. Constructing exploitable and expropriable subjects, while distinguishing the one from the other, state practices of political subjectivation supply an indispensable precondition for capital’s “self”-expansion."

I go to Ford to purchase a new car. I buy a car with all the latest features, but I get home and the car is missing some features. I go back to the Ford dealer and summoning my best Karen, I ask to speak to the manager. I bought the package with all these features, but my car doesn't have these features, I say.
Ah, but you bought the car from StrictlyLogical and Merjet. They were your salesmen. And they're not here. They're gone. Sorry, you're out of luck. And they won't be in tomorrow, or the next day. In fact, they're saying home and we're shielding them. And you can't get reimbursed from Ford because, see, you only have the right to get reimbursement from those who sold you the car. No such entity "Ford" sold you the car, see? SL and MJ sold you the car. And you will never see them again. Now begone!
If I were to do some cliche Randian analysis, beyond just peppering every other sentence with boilerplate jargon like "objective" this and "metaphysical" that, would probably conclude that this is the "concrete-bound" mentality. I would probably conclude that it is the refusal to abstract. And the reason for that is because organisations and institutions are groups of people, and these various people are representatives of the organization. And they know that, they're just being an insufferable pedantic.

I go to Ford to purchase a new car. I buy a car with all the latest features, but I get home and the car is missing some features. I go back to the Ford dealer and summoning my best Karen, I ask to speak to the manager. I bought the package with all these features, but my car doesn't have these features, I say.
Ah, but you bought the car from StrictlyLogical and Merjet. They were your salesmen. And they're not here. They're gone. Sorry, you're out of luck. And they won't be in tomorrow, or the next day. In fact, they're saying home and we're shielding them. And you can't get reimbursed from Ford because, see, you only have the right to get reimbursement from those who sold you the car. No such entity "Ford" sold you the car, see? SL and MJ sold you the car. And you will never see them again. Now begone!
If I were to do some cliche Randian analysis, beyond just peppering every other sentence with boilerplate jargon like "objective" this and "metaphysical" that, would probably conclude that this is the "concrete-bound" mentality. I would probably conclude that it is the refusal to abstract. And the reason for that is because organisations and institutions are groups of people, and these various people are representatives of the organization. And they know that, they're just being an insufferable pedantic.

I go to Ford to purchase a new car. I buy a car with all the latest features, but I get home and the car is missing some features. I go back to the Ford dealer and summoning my best Karen, I ask to speak to the manager. I bought the package with all these features, but my car doesn't have these features, I say.
Ah, but you bought the car from StrictlyLogical and Merjet. They were your salesmen. And they're not here. They're gone. Sorry, you're out of luck. And they won't be in tomorrow, or the next day. In fact, they're saying home and we're shielding them. And you can't get reimbursed from Ford because, see, you only have the right to get reimbursement from those who sold you the car. No such entity "Ford" sold you the car, see? SL and MJ sold you the car. And you will never see them again. Now begone!
If I were to do some cliche Randian analysis, beyond just peppering every other sentence with boilerplate jargon like "objective" this and "metaphysical" that, would probably conclude that this is the "concrete-bound" mentality. I would probably conclude that it is the refusal to abstract. And the reason for that is because organisations and institutions are groups of people, and these various people are representatives of the organization. And they know that, they're just being an insufferable pedantic.

I go to Ford to purchase a new car. I buy a car with all the latest features, but I get home and the car is missing some features. I go back to the Ford dealer and summoning my best Karen, I ask to speak to the manager. I bought the package with all these features, but my car doesn't have these features, I say.
Ah, but you bought the car from StrictlyLogical and Merjet. They were your salesmen. And they're not here. They're gone. Sorry, you're out of luck. And they won't be in tomorrow, or the next day. In fact, they're saying home and we're shielding them. And you can't get reimbursed from Ford because, see, you only have the right to get reimbursement from those who sold you the car. No such entity "Ford" sold you the car, see? SL and MJ sold you the car. And you will never see them again. Now begone!
If I were to do some cliche Randian analysis, beyond just peppering every other sentence with boilerplate jargon like "objective" this and "metaphysical" that, would probably conclude that this is the "concrete-bound" mentality. I would probably conclude that it is the refusal to abstract. And the reason for that is because organisations and institutions are groups of people, and these various people are representatives of the organization. And they know that, they're just being an insufferable pedantic.

Lawrence Edward Richard, firstly, welcome. I wondered if you are related to the Lawrence Edward Richard who died in 2011, because a Facebook man of that name stopped posting there at that time and recently that page has started again having posts under that name. I wondered if perhaps you were his son or other relation. Anyway, welcome to Objectivism Online. I enjoy your posts, as so many others here.
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I think Rand, as any person in a sensible moment, would squarely object to the statement of Feynman’s as stated, which William Hobba rightly disputed, at the root post of this thread. In its context, which is unknown to me, we might see some better sense to Feynman’s remark. To the remark as it stands here, I would add to Mr. Hobba’s remark that Newton’s definition of Force, as well as its expanded formula by Einstein/Planck, is precise. They are both precise. That the later one is wider in correct application and contains the earlier one in the appropriate physical limit, does not make the later one more precise, but more widely correct. On and on, there is precise definition in physics. The definition of what are canonically conjugate pairs of dynamical variables is precise. The indeterminacy of their precise joint values in the quantum regime is precise. The definition of what is a Feynman Diagram is precise.
Rand praised modern science a lot, but had criticisms of a number of general things being said about science by ’57, quoted from the fictitious book Why Do You Think You Think? (AS 340-41). Also in Atlas Shrugged, she made a couple of criticisms of some particular modern science. Most famously, she criticized Behaviorist psychology, which critique she extend in a later essay concerning Skinner. She indicated what was by her lights a wise attitude towards QM, with its “Uncertainty Principle” so salient with the educated public at the time, through words of the fictional character Dr. Stadler (346). She never returned to QM physics stuff herself, but she put her stamp of approval on all the contents of Peikoff’s 1976 lecture series “The Philosophy of Objectivism” which included his understanding and critique of the “measurement problem” in QM.
Rand’s rejection of Behaviorism and (with Branden) of human instincts (under some prominent meanings) and the subconscious (under some prominent meanings) was under her view in what is usually called philosophical psychology. Her conception of What is a human being? was at odds with those quasi- or pseudo-scientific psychology schematics. 
Rand carried in The Objectivist a serial article on epistemological issues in biology that was authored by Robert Efron, a distinguished neuroscientist (Christoff Koch was a student of his). The title was “Biology without Consciousness” (1968). Rand savaged a paper by philosopher of science Feyerabend in her 1970 essay “Kant v. Sullivan.” Rand’s philosophy has also had some interface with science in her conceptions of what sort of thing could or could not be a cause anything.