Dante

From the fact that I used the phrase "fruits of one's labor" in an abbreviation for a theory of property rights, you get all that nonsense? The answers to all those questions from the perspective of any coherent theory of property rights is fairly obvious; are you asking them because you honestly expected me to express an entire theory of property rights in a single phrase, or to be argumentative?

What physical object possibly fits this bill? Food is definitely necessary to survive, but you taking my sandwich today won't kill me today, tomorrow, or in 50 years. What single item's theft would possibly result in the person's death in the future? This is not a viable requirement, and it isn't necessary either, because... Having, on principle, the right to dispose of the fruits of one's labor is absolutely required by man to engage in the self-sustaining actions which maintains one's life. If these actions result in the ownership of a T.V., then the theft of that T.V. is a denial of the principle of property rights and is detrimental to the victim's well-being. The principle of property rights is vitally connected to one's right to life.

The thing to keep in mind here is that for Objectivism, an ethical system is supposed to be helpful to the individual, a guide to living one's life to the fullest and best extent possible. There is no universal ethical minimum of science knowledge needed for this; requirements are context-dependent. The requirements for an understanding of biology and human anatomy are obviously much higher for a doctor than for a layman; it would be irresponsible for a doctor to practice without a solid and in-depth understanding of such subjects. However, even for a layman, would it be beneficial to one's life to attain a basic understanding of, say, how disease transmission works? Absolutely. The bottom line would be, if you have reason to believe that you will benefit significantly from attaining some level of knowledge in a particular scientific area, even given the time and effort it takes to attain, then you should go for it. However, there's no reason to think that everyone should attain a solid understanding of (for example) the scientific theories of evolution or global climate change, or else they're immoral. It depends on the relationship between that knowledge and one's individual life. Plenty of people have little to no reason to spend the time it takes to learn any particular scientific theory. Heh, now that I look, basically what DonAthos said

Okie dokie.

That information alone is not nearly enough to make a valid induction about causal factors. There are a huge number of factors that need to be considered when attempting to account for GDP (and also significant problems with using GDP as a measure of material prosperity). You would need to account for other possible factors influencing GDP before you could consider making the statement that economic freedom has caused much of the material prosperity in relatively free countries.

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. The amount of economic knowledge that can be gained from simply reasoning from human action is quite limited, and those principles are quantitatively undefinable. To answer any meaningful question about a past economic occurrence requires empirical data. Because of the nature of economic data, arguing for causality in an economic context often requires advanced econometric techniques to isolate and estimate the quantitative effect of one variable on another. In short, empirics and econometrics are vitally important for economic knowledge. You might consider principles of economic behavior deduced from human action to be the skeleton of economics if you like, but a full body of economic knowledge requires much more than simply a skeleton. It is simply incorrect to hold up a deterministic interpretation of Friedman's positivism as the only alternative to economic reasoning from human action. Empirical work can tell us a lot about how people tend to behave in economic matters without claiming perfect prediction as the theoretical goal.

Your jump from the concept of "the right to life" as discussed in Rand's essays and Trebor's post to the impoverished "right to live" (which you seem to define as the right to not be killed immediately) is invalid. These are not the same things in this context. As Rand argued in her work on the foundations of ethics, life is fundamentally a process, not simply a state, and a self-sustaining process at that. This fuller conception of life is what leads to the corollaries of liberty and property, as both are required by man to engage in the self-sustaining actions which maintain one's life. This equivocation and failure to understand the conception of life operating here is what leads to all of your subsequent errors of reasoning. Perhaps you should hold off on the condescending lectures on logic for now.

Well that's just ridiculous. The usage of the dollar sign in an Objectivist context anywhere outside the pages of AS requires a separate and similarly lengthy exposition? Was it inappropriate to put a 6-foot dollar sign at Rand's funeral without reading 1000 pages of text to accompany it? The context established in AS concerning the dollar sign was relied upon there, as here, such that no separate explanation is required, which is not an unreasonable thing to do.

... Here being the site logo. What makes you think its usage here is different than Rand's usage of it as a symbol of free trade and a free mind? I doubt Rand mentioned ObjectivismOnline in her 1964 interview.

What exactly makes you think its meaning is different here?

Ah, I see. And when you decide that $100 is too high a price to pay for a stability in the loss of money, you can just stop paying and go your own way, like Sam's club, right?

That's clearly two different uses of 'expletive.' Profane words are not meaningless; if they were, what could possibly be profane about them? Profanity has a time and a place, like all language.

Thanks for the tip James. My avatar is no longer squished.

The problems with allowing the government to unilaterally determine interest rates and the money supply go far beyond chronic inflation. The roots of the problem are the general issues associated with central planning of any variety. The interest rate is, at root, a price, the price of intertemporal trading. Allowing the government to dictate this price suffers from the same problems as all price-fixing: the severe lack of information on the part of the central planners, market distortions, inefficiencies, etc. Advocating a commodity standard and a free market in money is simply a result of the more general stance of supporting utilization of the market mechanism to organize economic activity, rather than central planners.

You can still get to chat by clicking on the "Objectivism Online" tab to the left of the "Forums" tab, and the link to chat is on the right. Hopefully the link will be put back up on the forum pages as well shortly.

It takes a heck of a lot more than religious faith to do what the jihadis did on September 11th ten years ago; it takes a conscious hatred of man and willingness to do evil. Religious faith is certainly a destructive cultural and philosophical force, but to say that religious people are evil in the same way as the 9/11 terrorists is simply absurd. It is simply not the case that "Religion and "god" are 100% false and 100% evil -- and everybody knows it." In fact, religious people would not accept this statement, and to accuse them of consciously perpetuating evil simply because they are religious is ludicrous.

The point of contention here is what Ayn Rand was referring to when she used the term 'tabula rasa.' Thus, it doesn't help at all to show how other people use the term. Rand made her claim concerning tabula rasa very clear: people are not born with any conceptual knowledge. To saddle her with some other claim just because other people use the same term to refer to different things is equivocation. The point here is that if we have been successful in identifying true moral principles, then they apply whenever their context obtains. They are absolute within that context, like scientific principles. If you find yourself defying one, you know that you're harming your own life in the long run. 'Adapting yourself to Objectivism' in this case means taking those moral principles seriously and attempting to use them to better your own life, rather than pretending they aren't true when you don't feel like following them. Of course, applying these principles to concretes often involves a lot of individual context, so it is also true that concrete applications of principles are highly individualized. I disagree. Biological altruism, to the extent it is true, is a fact about human nature. It cannot be wished away by any philosophy, including Objectivism, and no philosophy should seek to. It must be taken as given when constructing a moral system. Philosophical altruism, on the other hand, is a man-made position on the fundamental nature of morality, one that should be rejected in the strongest terms. Objectivism is a fact-based philosophy, and biological altruism is a fact. There is no conflict there. Philosophical altruism, on the other hand, is in direct conflict with Objectivist moral philosophy. Any 'reinforcement' that occurs between different usages of the term altruism is only due to confusion about the issues and unclear thinking.

What Brian said. You completely misunderstand Rand's conception of tabula rasa as well as her view of the scope of our control over our emotions. In addition, you also completely misunderstand the content of 'altruism' that Rand opposed. Altruism in the biological literature refers to a sense of empathy or concern for the well-being of others of our species. This is a completely different usage of the word than philosophical altruism, which originated with Comte and consists of self-denial of values. It is this second sense of altruism that was virulently opposed by Rand. And as for conclusion C, if you have grave concerns about society collapsing, just build an underground bunker somewhere out in the woods like everyone else who worries about that.

... I suggest you re-read the post you responded to. 'State issued currency' in the paragraph you reply to obviously does not refer to gold. It refers to dollars, the supply of which is purposefully 'manipulated' by the Federal Reserve in an attempt to engage in economic planning. This is not a claim about some nefarious government conspiracy, but a simple statement about what the Federal Reserve does on a daily basis, which is to influence the money supply.

Bad link.

And it is the liberal, who claims that freedom is the correct state of man. However I am argiung that slavery is a part of that concept and thus must also be a correct state of man. One cannot speak of freedom without indavertently referring to slavery. Half of the argument promoting freedom is an argument denouncing slavery. Liberalism is an anti/pro philisophy. It is just as equally concerned with slavery as it is with freedom, therefore slavery is half of the philosophy. Withouth the false dichotomy, the liberal would not have a philosophy at all, therefore their whole state of being an liberal depends on the very existence of that which they denounce. Liberalism is the act of distinguishing between, therefore they are inadvertently emphazing both, though they claim to be against one. "AGAINST" is a tricky concept to use as a foundation because come to rely on that which they are against. Slavery is irnonically a part of them, more than it is a par of any other philosophy. Funny how that doesn't make sense at all.

In this letter, she is not 'wishing away' the altruistic element in Christianity; she acknowledges it quite straightforwardly and argues that it is at odds with the sacredness of one's own soul, which "introduces a basic contradiction into Christian philosophy, which has never been resolved." I think this take on Christianity is spot-on; all of the Christians I have ever spoken to believe that their moral code of sacrifice is also the path to personal happiness, fulfillment, and salvation. In short, they believe that altruism is the path to personal gain. Since this is not true in actuality, it introduces contradictory elements into their moral code. She does argue in the letter that the egoistic aspect of Christianity is more fundamental than the altruistic aspect, which I think could be argued either way. It certainly reflects a more benevolent view of Christianity on Rand's part to hold that for them, egoism is more fundamental than altruism.

You seem to think this has some relevance to Objectivism. It doesn't. I highly recommend that you go to Rand's primary works and attempt to understand her on her own terms so as not to post irrelevant diatribes when attempting to criticize her ideas.

And? It doesn't so much matter what she thought, as what she could prove (or at least support), and I'm not so sure she did on this point.

Speaking for myself, it's not that I wouldn't rather be discussing ideas than people, it's simply that I think you've made a compelling and thorough case, and reading through it all a few times I have found no point of contention from which to generate a discussion. The only contribution that did jump out at me was the opportunity to correct a characterization of the different sides of the debate, even though I understand that's secondary to your main objective.