gauri

Suppose you were to let him take it, and found yourself feeling absolutely calm during the process and afterward, would that make you an irrational person?

Rand's objectivist theory underlies a call for a highly vigilant society -- a society whose antenna are tuned in to opportunities, risks, rights and freedoms. It is an aware society and a motivated one. It believes man is fundamentally a moral being, and given an opportunity his deepest self interest which lies in desiring to achieve the highest moral order of functioning, will eventually lead him there. If this is understood for its deep meaning, then the queries raised by you relating to governmental regulations can be presented in context. Assume in a non regulated environment, a building collapses. The building could have collapsed either due to lack of sufficient understanding of the engineering design, materials etc. or through fraudulent motives of deliberately using poor quality materials. If it is the former, the engineer's reputation takes a toss and if he is an honest engineer and he can survive this nightmare which has affected his life, he will immediately go to work on trying to figure out what is wrong. For all you know, his career may be over and no one will give him a contract again. Or he will start again with a small project and try to rebuild. Or if the engineering community believes in him still, they will get together to work out a solution. The victims themselves will also do soul searching on what went wrong. They will sue the engineer for breach of contract and will proceed to work out a mechanism to figure out how to avoid such situations in future. If possible, they will try to spread the good word and deed to as many as they can with the resources they have. In fact, many famous associations in America have started with just a single person turning around a personal tragedy to create a movement. Objectivism does not say that you will constantly and forever be in great shape, free from all troubles and will never be cheated. It says the environment will always be free for you to do your best, to access resources within your reach -- without anyone providing things on dole or restricting you legally with their concept of what is right and what is wrong. Contrast this with building regulations imposed by the government. a) the regulators hardly can keep up with the number of buildings coming up. they have no primary interest in the building advancements being made c) the imposition of regulations becomes their bread winning job - so now their own self interest is involved against the interests of those for whom this office was created in the first place, i.e. there is a conflict of interest between the implementer and the person for whom the service was originally created. Gradually, the regulator becomes more and more divorced from the activity it is regulating. In many countries, governmental regulations are broken at will by sections of society having 'connections', so the entire regulatory environment becomes a farce. Food regulations are a bigger joke and so are environmental regulations. In India, sandalwood is a product under government's list of products in which individuals are prohibited from dealing freely. The purported rationale is the protection of the sandalwood forests in Karnataka - south India. The joke is, the sandalwood forests have disappeared with smugglers and poaching under the eyes of the very same governmental officials designated to protect the forests. There are thousands of individuals whose hearts are weeping at this loss, wondering what they can do to save this precious, incredibly beautiful tree from perishing. But when the government's guns are protecting the forests and are pointed at anyone willing otherwise -- thinking, willing, highly motivated and sincere individuals are helpless about pursuing this goal. If only it were a free society, those forests would have become the tourist attraction of the world. The current banking crisis is just such a tragic, tragic farce. The European Union came out with Basle II -- and US with Sarbanes Oxley. Suddenly the thoroughly brilliant and smartest people in finance developed this theory: If the government has appointed regulators to check whether we are doing wrong, then why should I bother about doing right or wrong. I will do as I please, and if I am wrong - let the regulator find out. After all, why should I do the regulator's job for him? My job is to make money. This is the philosophy that pervaded the entire financial sector. The finance sector will focus on making money, the regulator will focus on ethics -- and whatever portion of the money derived unethically is undetected, that becomes legal money. Today's joint stock company concept is primarily responsible for the market crisis. The public holds the equity, but the responsibility of the directors is limited. How can that be? It effectively means noone owns the company, hence noone is responsible. Had the public believed that a businessman can earn limitless profits, no self confident and responsible businessman would hand over his company to the public -- in fact, one of the reasons some of the European companies have been cushioned from the crisis is because they continue to remain partnerships who are dedicated to the job of running their organisation prudently. For them governmental regulations are a legal solace, not a foundation without which they will cease to function ethically. Their foundations are within themselves, and for societies teeming with such individuals governmental regulations become irrelevant.