nanite1018

I rather think we should have two words for "open-system" and "closed-system". The closed-system people advocate that Objectivists are people who agree with every philosophical position of Ayn Rand. What the "open-system" people advocate for, I think, is to view Objectivism not as the "philosophy of Ayn Rand"--meaning the philosophy in her head (or perhaps less restrictively the set of philosophical positions and arguments she wrote down/made public)-- and instead view it as "the school of philosophy inspired by Ayn Rand". I've often found it weird that people use "Objectivist" in the first

Well, what you actually are wishing for, in that case, is to be a very wealthy individual in a prior age (for example the 1920s or 30s). The vast majority of lives in history have had essentially no glamour and prestige. Technological advance, for example the advent of the Internet, does not produce a culture dominated by stupidity or crudeness. Rather, the culture of the age may in part be shaped by these technologies, but it is always the people themselves who create this culture. If you have a society dominated by rational people, you will have a rational culture regardless of the technolog

Well that gets me thinking. I currently agree with Childs' argument; it seemed plain that it was correct. Similarly, I thought the quote of Rothbard's in that thread was reasonable as well. My understanding of "objective" has always been the relationship between an individuals mind and reality--you are objective/meeting the requirements of objectivity if you are focused and rigorously applying reason and logic to all the data you get about reality from your senses. If you obey the proper rules of deduction and induction, you're objective. If not, you're not. My understanding was always that ot

There is no such thing as an impersonal context of knowledge. All knowledge is held personally, as only individuals have minds and all knowledge ultimately lies in the minds of individuals. By making independent invention an affirmative defense, and having some well defined standard of proof for independent invention, one retains objectivity in the law (and a reasonable standard of proof would make any uncertainty introduced relatively small, since a simply patent search on Google Scholar will in all likelihood inform someone whether or not their idea has already been done, making truly indepe

Well there's a few things. One is that given a total separation of economy and state, the economy would grow faster and be more stable than it is today--governments wouldn't constantly be mucking up the works with regulations and taxes, nor changing conditions arbitrarily with new regulations, taxes, or manipulation of interest rates for political purposes. As a result, the amount of wealth in the society would be increasing faster than today, making more resources available for less immediately productive purposes. The more capital there is to invest, the longer range can be the investment go

I never denied the validity of intellectual property, nor did I deny the applicability of objectivity in defining inventions or ideas. I am disputing the claim that the origin of an invention, idea, or value has absolutely no relation to who should have a right to it. It is obvious that there are really independent inventors in the real world, yes? I think we can agree that there has indeed been at least one instance of truly independent invention in history. Clearly, then, at least some of the value from the invention is no longer the responsibility of the original inventor (at some point

Just wanted to say that this is really good. If you haven't, I would check out the Paleo or Primal diet (just google it). I started out about where you were in February, 260 lbs, and without exercising really at all lost 40 pounds in ~4 months, and am now at about 205-210 (with a bit of exercise incorporated). I always thought I was going to be fat forever, but you don't have to. And it doesn't have to be a super-hard struggle either (I had no problem dropping the first 30 pounds or so, and while its gotten harder to keep losing weight, it isn't too bad). The most important point about all of

I would like Obama to think about William Lloyd Garrison or Frederick Douglass. They're viewed as heroes today. Patrick Henry, another uncompromising hero. Heck, all our Founding Fathers were fairly radical. Hell, even the Roosevelts were uncompromising in their ideology (even if it was wrong), and both are considered heroes today. The compromisers are hardly ever remembered, or revered. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, is now seen as a disgraced man, someone who helped to continue the existence of an evil institution in the name of peace and compromise.

Each inventor has a monopoly on their idea, i.e. what they created. It just so happens that there are other people who have similar "products". This seems very similar to me as easily substituted products like butter and margarine, or different brands of paint or milk or salt. There isn't really much of a difference between them, which makes it difficult for any one business interest in the market to gain a significant share or affect the market as a whole in a major way (the old "perfect competition" case in neo-classical and Keynesian economics). Each person always has a right to charge what

I agree. There is absolutely no justification for circumcision. It is a holdover from ancient times when it (might have) served some purpose. Now it's only justification is religious belief, which cannot possibly be accepted as a legitimate reason to mutilate a child's body, regardless of whether or not they can go on to lead a happy life afterwards, or whether "everybody's doing it".

I understand it is intellectual property, my point is that if my idea didn't come from you in any way, then I can't be infringing on any conception of property (I can't take anything from you or infringe on anything you have unless I have some sort of connection to you). An idea originates in someone's mind. If I have an idea for an invention, and I didn't get it from someone else (or the creation of someone else, say a book or tv show or journal, what have you), then my idea is my own and I should have a right to the value that comes as a result of my idea. If someone else comes up with somet

How is it relevant how easy it is to know, or what one "should" know? The question here is one of principle: Does one deserve to reap the rewards of one's work if one invents something independently of anyone else? Has such a person violated the rights of anyone else, and if so, how? You haven't addressed my argument that the original inventor no longer can claim to be the creator of all the value from the idea, as the independent inventor must now be held to be at least in part responsible for some of the value others get from the idea (after all, if the first inventor hadn't invented it,

It was way back in post 41 by 2046 and responded to in post 42 by Grames. They used "relational value" (I browsed the whole thread before posting, just to at least attempt to make sure I wasn't repeating something someone else had already said). Basically, it was a question about what "create value" meant--creating a thing, an entity, or creating market value. Basically, it was a confusion over what was meant by "value", because it usually is used to mean exchange/relational value by most non-Objectivists in discussions of property. I knew it had already been addressed, so I put it in there as

If you can have "first to invent", this means that you can prove you invented it before the other person. Why can't you use the same standards of proof, but not for "first to invent" but "independent inventor"? And my point is not that the burden of proof would be easy to achieve, but that in principle there is one and that there might be a case where we can conclude that someone did in fact invent something independently. And scientists have to keep meticulous records to be able to prove they did the research independently (as well as had priority), and do so on a regular basis (or they keep

Let's say I have a carrot. It's worth 1 dollar at present, if I were to sell it at the going market price (this is the carrot's exchange value). Now let's say some reputable medical association comes out tomorrow and declares that carrots are poisonous and bad for your health, and that no one should consume carrots anymore. A few hours later, the market price for my carrot is now a penny. No one has used force, but the exchange value of my carrot has dropped by 99% in a day. More realistically, I own a stock and its price plummets on a bad earnings report. I have lost a lot of wealth (the exch