Mixon

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/06/sen...kers/index.html So basically the government is giving up to $4,500 cash to auto dealerships each time a customer trades in a car with a fuel economy of <18mpg and buys a new model car from an approved list. What I didn't know until today is that in order to receive the credit the "clunker" *must* be scrapped. http://www.cashforclunkersfacts.com/bill-faq Q: What will happen to the car I trade in? A: The car will be sent to the salvage yard. Some parts may be kept but the engine and drive-train must be destroyed. Specifically the engine will be injected with a liquid glass solution to permanently disable the engine and it will be the responsibility of the dealer to make sure this is done to the engine. This seems insane to me. Isn't the government essentially destroying wealth? I fully expect to open the paper one day soon and read about a new government initiative to burn down foreclosed homes as a means of increasing home values.

Define "right to live." In my reading of objectivism no where have I seen it written that one person has the right to live at the expense of another. If I don't feed my neighbors' children and they die am I guilty of interfering with their right to live? Infanticide/murder is not equitable with abortion. Murder/infantcide by definition both involve an initiation of force. However, if a mother chooses to withhold nourishment from a fetus by seperating it from her body (abortion) or from her infant by refusing to nurse it that does not violate the force principle. I'm not sure what you mean by a "scientifically fully developed human being." A fetus, infant, or young child is not developed enough to survive on its own. If a fetus/infant/child is to survive he/she must be cared for by someone by an act of volitional choice in order to be moral by objectivist ethics. Using force or coersion is expressly forbidden regardless of motive, be it the motive to feed one child or all the children of the world.

From English common law tradition, all contracts must have at least these characteristics to be held valid. 1) Offer & Acceptance 2) Consideration (exchange of value) 3) Legality 4) Capacity (age of majority) All contracts implicitly involve at least two parties. Both must be of the age of majority for the contract to be held valid. In the US the age of majority is reached on an individual is 18 years of age. Therefore no contract exists between a mother and her children, born or otherwise. You claim that such a contract does exist. I must ask when you would hold the mother's end of the bargain to be fulfilled? Does having a child obligate the parents to care for it their entire lives?

It might be helpful to define "rights." Much of this discussion has been confined to arguing over when rights apply or to whom without addressing what they are. No where in my reading of objectivism have I seen it argued that any human being has the "right" to exist at the expense of another. If a fetus is a human being and as such has the right to live at its mother's expense, then does that mean a starving man has the right to live at my expense or yours? If you object on the grounds that a fetus or infant cannot survive on its own, then do disabled adults have the right to exist at the expense of others?

I had the good fortune to attend a small Q&A with Warren Buffett a few years ago and one of my fellow students inquired about investing in physical gold. He gave a rather memorable reply which I will attempt to paraphrase from memory. "You pay a guy to dig it out of the ground. You pay another guy to smelt it down. Then you pay another guy to dig another hole in the ground. Finally, you pay a guy to stand guard over it. It has no utility just sitting there. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their heads." If you are looking for a good book to read on investing I would recommend "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham. One other word of advice that comes from painful experience. You can learn just as well from a $500 mistake as you can from a $50,000 mistake.

That question reminds me of a Louisana politician who was assassinated in 1935 named Huey P. Long. His "Share the Wealth" platform made the New Deal look pale by comparison, to say nothing of the current crisis. I cringe at the thought of that scenario playing out again. I will answer your question with two questions. Does any breach of individual rights, regardless of its scope, merit a death sentence? Must retalitory force neccessarily be deadly force?

I don't advocate that the navy is to provide security for the entire globe. It is our navy's responsibilty to maintain our control of the sea lanes. This includes protecting our merchant ships from acts of piracy on the high seas. Other nations who use the same trade lanes do benefit from the umbrella effect of our protection, though we are operating for our own interest. The US Navy is not fulfilling its responsibility fully and that is why private forces have stepped in to pick up the slack. As you mentioned early, our Navy certainly has the capability to place armed sailors on our merchant ships but they haven't embraced that strategy. Why? They have the responsibility and the means, yet they aren't doing the job. Is that not cause for legitimate criticism?

I just happened to be reading an excerpt from "The Virtue of Selfishness" that speaks to your question. It's from the essay 'Divine Right of Stagnation' p. 142 "Every achievement of man is a value of itself, but it is also a stepping-stone to greater achievements and values. Life is growth; not to move forward, is to fall backward; life remains life, only so long as it advances. Every step upward opens to man a wider range of action and achievement and creates the need for that action and achievement. There is no final, permanent "plateau." The problem of survival is never "solved," once and for all, with no further thought or motion required. More precisely, the problem of survival is never solved, by recognizing that survival demands constant growth and creativeness." In this context I would not regard John Galt as a perfect man or symbol of perfection. He is the only character who consistently practiced the virtues required of him by existence. What was Galt's greatest achievement? The motor? The strike? or perhaps an unknown wonder he would create when the Men of the Mind returned to the world? He never stopped. His achievements enable an even higher degree of achievement. It reminds me of a quote "If I have seen farther it comes from standing on the shoulders of giants." (paraphrased) This is stark contrast to Jesus in the Christian tradition for example. He is considered perfection and that level of perfection is by definition unattainable to man.

Certainly, but that isn't the point. The point is that with all the vast resources at its disposal, the Navy didn't come up with that elegant solution first. A small group of thinking individuals did and the market will reward them handsomely for it. That is the value of the profit motive.

It's refreshing to read about how a relatively small group of men armed with the profit motive are able to provide better protection to merchant shipping than a multi-billion dollar navy.

I finished reading Rand's essays on collectivized ethics and government financing in a free society. I now understand the reasoning and see how my plan violates Objectivist ethics. Governments may not use coercion by law (force) to collect taxes though it would be permitted to charge for services (giving value for value) or accept money from those who give voluntarily out of self interest. A government's only responsibility is to protect them from foreign invasion, criminals, and provide a court system. It is not the responsibilty of government to provide any material needs of its citizens (infant or adult) or protect them from nature. Accordingly, the needs of any person or group cannot be legally or ethically turned into a first mortgage on the lives of others. It would be unethical to deprive any individual of property by force, even to save his own life.

Of course not. An infant lacks the immediately capability to maintain his life let alone own a business. You have the capacity to do both. If you can produce more as a business owner, save your capital or convince a lender of your ability. If you generate excess production you will pay back the loan. If you fail, your loan is repaid by those who borrow and repay.

If all forms of taxation, which by the coercive effect of law, are considered examples of physical force by the state against its population then wouldn't that make all non-voluntary taxation illegitimate? If so, how does the government legitimately raise money to support a military, police, and legal courts? Today our government is taxing us all by force, yes? Does that give us a moral justification to respond with force? I suppose an infant may refuse a bottle, and by not refusing accepts a debt. Though this choice seems a bit illusionary morally speaking. If all adults begin life as a tabula rasa are they just as capable of volitional choice as infants? If NO, and that which is outside the province of choice is also by definition outside the province of morality, then aren't they indeed morally blameless? Or put more precisely their capacity for volitonal choice grows from infancy into adulthood. If YES, then isn't that infant just as responsible for repaying the debt as I am for paying my credit card?

A future producer is by definition a producer, if he stops he would become a looter and starve accordingly, from that point he's responsible for himself. The debt he pays off is his own and it doesn't go away until paid, it is in essence a loan (not welfare) from the older to the younger. Welfare is given as alms, with no expectation that it will be paid back. When it's given to the elderly, they have no possibility of paying it back. They are at the end of their productive lives. No rational man would lend money when the probability of repayment is virtually zero, and only a fool would refuse a loan that saves his life. If he does refuse, that is your first hint you will be dealing with a future looter/evader and you should withdraw support to minimize loss immediately. The purpose of handling it via taxation is to spread risk among all taxpayers, whereas if a small group of taxpayers helps only a small group of infants the risk to them is enormous. The 1 million figure is arbitrary, but you need a sufficiently large figure to achieve a lower statistical variance. The larger the pool of infants becomes over time, the greater the aggregate expected value of productivity will match up with actual productivity. It is true that this loan, facilitated by government, is made without the consent of either party though both do benefit from it over time. The scenario is similar to a young person who lands in an ER, where law demands he be treated. His life is saved and the ER bills him. He works and pays his bill. This is in effect a forced extension of credit by the government. It certainly infringes upon the liberties of both parties, but again both are able to benefit.

Perhaps I should have used "business" in place of "capitalist" but I can call it neither given his reliance on taxpayer money. I didn't see any essays within Selfishness or Capitalism containing charity in the title, but will keep a lookout while reading. My initial post didn't originate from emotion, though I can understand the misinterpretation as "compassion" or a "reverance for human life." It's an issue of statistics and wealth creation. Let's say I take 1,000,000 infants, who without intervention will die, or suffer permanent disability. This tranlates as a loss of production or reduction in productive capacity. I can't make an accurate prediction about any single infant's intrinsic worth (his future productive capacity) today. Any single infant could be a John Galt, a Fred Thompson, or anyone in between. What I do know in aggregate is that the winners, over their lifetime, will more than pay for the cost of getting to the point where I can tell the producers from the looters. At which point the producers pay back what they owe and the looters are free to mend their ways or perish. Thus gaining for the infant producers life and all the rewards entailed, and for those producers who financed them a partial or full principal repayment (depending on structuring) plus the trade value of the infant producers future production (which without intervention would have been reduced or 0). Whatever losses remain from unrepentant moochers can be spread among the producers in manner so as to make the effect on any one individual negligible, much as loss by theft or bad loans are rolled into product and borrowing costs. This loss, however structured, represents the true cost of the infant producer surplus trade value. No physical force is involved, though there would be a tax to support the effort (which is repaid by the aforementioned direct and indirect means). I think a similar reasoning is behind Buffett and Gates search for a malaria vaccine. Though it is technically a charity.

That is part of what I ask. Thank you for putting it so succinctly. To expand and clarify: Do infants/children deserve special rights entitling them to the productive effort of strangers (or even their parents)? The justification being that they lack the means to pay today nor can they claim it by force, but a healthy upbringing will on average yield more production tomorrow. So they gain the benefit today, but pay later. This would only be permissable for orphans or infants whose parents lacked the means to provide a base subsistence and only for those not taken care of by private charity. Initial funding would come from taxes on adults, paid back by the recipients as they gain the capacity to produce. It's an inverted form of social security, which should function to create wealth in society rather than destroy it.

I recently watched a short documentary on the famous virologist Jonas Salk, who developed an effective vaccine against polio. Afterwards I also read a brief wikipedia article concerning his work which left me with some questions pertaining to Objectivism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk The excerpt that caught my eye was this: "In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. While working there, with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, Salk saw an opportunity to develop a vaccine against polio, and devoted himself to this work for the next eight years. The field tests Salk set up were, according to O'Neill, "the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers." When news of the discovery was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a "miracle worker," and the day "almost became a national holiday." He further endeared himself to the public by refusing to patent the vaccine, as he had no desire to profit personally from the discovery, but merely wished to see the vaccine disseminated as widely as possible." Salk seems to fit the definition of one of the "Men of the Mind" based on his work and ability to achieve that which others had failed. The development and distribution of the vaccine was not carried out using a capitalist model, but through a combination of voluntary charity (March of Dimes) and taxpayer dollars. Was Salk wrong in not patenting his discovery? Was the non-profit distribution an example of altruism and sacrifice? I wouldn't feed an adult who refused to work or claimed his right to exist without labor, but I have difficulty embracing the same stance with regard to children. In the first case, a being of volitional conciousness makes an irrational choice and deservedly suffers for it. Yet children have no choice when it comes to the character of their parents and it strikes me as a waste of human potential to not vaccinate infants who cannot pay. I've read AS and am currently working my way through Selfishness & Capitalism. Is there an objectivist essay somewhere that speaks to the topic of children should be treated in society?

Energy prices have been highly volatile over the past few years, though I can't see a connection between higher prices and Enron's bankruptcy in 2001. Enron was a mixture of a "good=profitable" business & several "bad=not profitable" businesses. Enron's core business consisted of managing thousands of miles of pipeline used to transport oil & natural gas across the country. This business was highly profitable and cash generated from its operation were invested by Jeff Skilling and his associates in a variety of ventures which ultimately proved to be unprofitable. During the bankruptcy proceedings Richard Kinder, who was a former President of Enron, bought the pipeline business and it still operates today as KinderMorgan. As to government responsibility, the energy sector is in close competition with banking for the honored title of most highly regulated industry. There are at least two criticisms which may be fairly levied at them. The first is that the disaster occured despite all existing regulations. The second and more serious charge was when FASB allowed Enron to use the mark-to-market accounting rule in valuing its long term energy contracts. This perversion allowed Enron to estimate and book revenue today which it would supposedly deliver years down the road. This accomplished the feat of allowing Enron to create revenue out of thin air by simply adjusting its projections at whim. What it could not create out of thin air, the reality it could not fake, was the lack of which ultimately leads any company to bankruptcy: cash. As Enron reported record revenues & earnings its cash position became weaker and weaker until the pipeline business could no longer support the operation and growth of its unprofitable brothers. Enron's CFO Andy Fastow used a variety of tricks to evade that reality for a time, but like all evaders they were eventually wiped out. If you ask any passerby on the street today what caused the Enron scandal, without any thinking or regard to the facts they will reply "greed" or "human nature." If you would like to learn more may I suggest the book "Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, & the Death of Enron" by Robert Bryce.