Dante

I don't see how that's obvious at all. It depends on how much defending his country means to him, and how much he would be willing to risk for it. "Holding one's life as one's highest value" doesn't always mean taking the safer route, especially when some particular value that's very important to you is at stake.

Peikoff should not name a successor because the idea is ridiculous. Experts on Objectivism should be identified by the independent judgment of each listener, and there is no reason to have one as the 'head' of the movement now that Rand is gone.

You are not being restricted in any way from standing up for anyone, nor is any other member. You are free to make your case in support of any of Objectivism's experts, and I'm baffled as to why you think you aren't.

The only question that I found ridiculous was "What sign are you?" Also, a date is an activity, not a place.

This is a ridiculous reading of the position you're attempting to argue against that doesn't belong in an honest debate.

But that's not obvious at all. Try to think about it from a character-centric perspective. The most important resource to sustaining and furthering your own life is your own character. Over the long term, and over the vast majority of situations, production is by far the superior road to success and accomplishment, not dependence. In short, if you're the type of person who instinctively takes responsibility for achieving your own values, you're going to have a much better and more fulfilling life. When you're faced with a desire, it is much better for you for your first thought and inclination to be "What do I need to do to earn that?" rather than "How could I get that without working for it?" If every time you try to engage in productive work, you have to fight through your own laziness and desire to get something for nothing, your own capacity to achieve success and values is greatly diminished. So how does one get a productive, independent character which inclines one towards taking responsibility for achieving desired values? Quite simply, by consistently being productive and independent, and taking responsibility for achieving one's own desires. Any actions which break this trend are also instilling bad habits into the actor. In short, the means by which ill-begotten gains (like a big score) are attained make it so that those 'gains' are actually bad for the actor in the long term. The bigger the score, the bigger the dent in your most valuable resource. This is why principled living is required, rather than just guiding one's life from moment to moment.

Actually, she maintained that both were true. In an egoistic ethical framework like hers, every ethical principle is fundamentally based on the self-interest of the actor, and the principle of non-initiation of force is no different. Consider the spirit of her quote, "To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion." Other people have values to offer us only to the extent that they independently apply reason to their own lives, and nullifying their ability to do that is not good for either party.

If you think about what types of society have those 'worst conditions' you're referencing, where working in a sweatshop is a relatively good job that people compete over, these are also precisely those societies which lack a significant number of super-rich people who could be taxed somewhat without even really noticing it. Once there is enough wealth at the top of society so that we could tax the rich lightly and have more than a few pennies per person for the poor, we find that the sweatshops have already disappeared and the standard of living has risen for all involved. So I would start here by objecting to the possibility of finding a way to secure the goods one needs through redistributive taxation; once there is enough wealth at the top so that this 'providing goods for those at the bottom without significantly harming those at the top' argument applies, there's enough wealth at the bottom so that we don't see people in abject, horrible conditions anymore. EDIT: Not exactly a principled philosophical argument, but that's what I got

Sounds to me like a pretty terrible system that is obviously geared towards the wealthy in society. This is the fundamental problem with having fines as the punishment for major transgressions; a billionaire could commit rape or manslaughter on Monday, cut a check on Tuesday, and be walking the streets scot free on Wednesday. This results in de facto inequality before the law. Fines should only be used to punish minor infractions, and major transgressions punished with prison time.

Yes, well, a great deal of care has been taken in this thread to distinguish between epistemologically irreducible and scientifically or metaphysically irreducible, determine which of these applies to consciousness, and what that means for the emergence properties of consciousness. Is there something that was missed in that discussion that you're drawing from to make this claim?

As a counterexample off the top of my head, I would cite the final section of Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue, which is entitled "Author Meets Critics: Tara Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics." It contains three essays by non-Objectivist philosophers commenting on and critiquing Smith's book, followed by a response from Smith to each essay. Although I would very much like to see many more exchanges like this. And no argument here about the McCaskey affair.

Hmmmmm...... http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/misdiagnosis-of-surface-temperature-feedback/

This would be my first objection. It is too simplistic to simply say that 'a good life' is the objective of rights, in that if we ever found that violating rights would better serve the pursuit of this good life, we should advocate violating rights. Tara Smith explains this well in Moral Rights and Political Freedoms when she characterizes rights as 'consequence-based but not consequence-bound:' This can be explained further if we delve into exactly what type of thing we mean when we say 'good life.' Tara Smith again: The argument is basically that because each individual's life is ultimately inextricably tied to their own actions, rights intended to promote people's pursuit of 'the good life' could never be called upon to justify forcible transfers. Even though physical goods are obviously transferable from one person to another, an individual's pursuit of the good life inevitably requires them to be self-supporting over the long term. Thus, institutionalized goods transfers can never serve the objective in question. So rights should be understood as a necessary condition of human well-being, but not a sufficient condition. We cannot expect rights to actively enhance an individual's well-being, because long-term sustainable well-being must be self-generated. This is fleshed out in greater detail in other parts of the book, but that would be the basic gist of my response, drawing from Smith.

Craig Biddle does not write here. Posts by the account "The Objective Standard" are automatic reposts from The Objective Standard blog, with Craig Biddle's permission; the original posts can be found here. This blog was added to the Objectivism Meta-Blog a few months ago. Stephen Boydstun, who posts here (occasionally) and on OL (more often), created and published in the journal Objectivity, which has some great content.

Whoa there. I think you need to re-read the argument; it's not just about mere survival. Her ethical and political system is not at all geared towards immediate survival or 'morgue-avoidance' as she derisively termed it. It is about a flourishing life, the best possible to man, a life of man qua man. We discover what political system is proper to man by looking at the requirements for individual men to live fully and flourish, not simply what they may conceivably need to survive the next five minutes.

Well all I'm saying is that we're never going to know unless we get the government out of the way, and out of energy in general, and that's made more difficult by unfounded public fears about the safety of nuclear power.

So what would you say to Ayn Rand's proposition that airwaves should be registered property? I'm pretty sure you can't incinerate a broadcast frequency.

Wow, thanks for the incredible condescension to people who, by my count anyways, have responded to your concerns in this thread with articulate and well-reasoned analysis rather than dogmatism or appeals to authority. Buh-bye.

Even without this in there, the Op-Ed presents an important message that desperately needs to be heard in the wake of what happened in Japan. The Op-Ed is focused on the safety aspects of nuclear power, and the Reason source you provided is in 100% agreement with the message of the Op-Ed: that nuclear power is far safer than other source of power. Whether or not nuclear power is an economical long-term solution to our electricity demand is something that we can make educated guesses at (with numbers like those you've provided), but the best method of settling that question is still trial and error through the market process. The danger here is that the regulations against nuclear power will become stronger and harder than ever to repeal in the wake of public fears about nuclear safety. If we had a truly free market in energy, we might find that new breakthroughs in nuclear energy render it more efficient than other sources of energy, or we might find that it still loses out to coal and natural gas. However, we will never get that opportunity if we don't first dispel the safety concerns of nuclear power, which is the focus of this Op-Ed.

There's a great exchange in the "Business Ethics" episode of The Office where one of the characters brings up the question, "Would you steal bread to feed your family?" Michael Scott, the idiotic regional manager, replies with "I would not steal the bread. And, I would not let my family go hungry." It's intended by the writers to be just another one of his stupid statements that shows his failure to understand things, but in this case he actually gets it right.

If the public-spirited politicians you're speaking of here don't have a good understanding of individual rights and why they are important, then this proposition scares me just as much as a government full of corrupt politicians. Some of the biggest blows to capitalism and limited government have been done by people who were honestly worried about the welfare of the country.

There would most definitely be a benefit to doing so, which would be basically moving home consumption up to the present; being able to move into the home now. You have to live somewhere, and if you're not paying down a mortgage, then you're probably renting. Mortgage payments get you closer to owning your home, while rent does nothing more than let you live there for another month. It's a trade off, and which route makes sense for any particular situation depends on context, but there's no reason to write off mortgages as inherently irrational.

But that alone is not evidence of a lack of independent thought. It's completely understandable to think about the opinions of people whom you respect when making decisions. For example, I often find myself thinking, "What would my dad say about whatever it is I'm about to do?" Thinking back to him and the example he's set for me often helps keep me grounded. Of course, this doesn't mean that I will automatically do what I think he would have me do after asking myself that question; it depends on whether his advice would make sense to me or not. In other words, I still evaluate his hypothetical opinion with my own independent judgment before I decide whether he'd be right or wrong. If the advice that he would give me would be based on an opinion of his that I don't agree with, then I discard it, but often just thinking about him starts a thought process that makes me realize I really shouldn't be doing whatever it is I'm considering. If one greatly respects Ayn Rand's perspective on the world, then doing something similar with her would make sense, and it doesn't mean that person is surrendering their independent judgment. Now, what would be surrendering one's independent judgment would be to succumb to hypothetical-Rand's opinion without understanding why she has it or what thought process lies behind it. That would be taking her opinions on faith, which would definitely be an abandonment of cognitive independence.

The shooter's motivations seem to be reminiscent of Geert Wilders, who's been noted recently several times in the Objectivist blogosphere for being on trial in The Netherlands for "hate speech" against Muslim immigrants and other related topics: Geert Wilders Speaks Without Fear in Tennessee (Rule of Reason blog) Geert Wilders is Not Brave Enough to Be a Coward (The Objective Standard blog) Geert Wilders: Free at Last? (Rule of Reason blog)

Well first off, whether or not someone else is harmed by this is not the standard of whether it's right or wrong. Someone squatting on land owned by someone else is wrong, even if the owner never finds out and is not harmed in any way. So if someone's property rights are being violated, that would make it immoral. However, it sounds like in this case the people have relinquished their claim to the stuff by leaving it behind, similar to people leaving crap out on the curb to be taken away by the garbage truck or whomever wants it. They just figured disposing of the stuff would be the bank's problem. What I'd be concerned about is whether this activity of your friend's is something that his boss would object to, if he found out about it. If taking this stuff for himself is something that he's not supposed to be doing from the perspective of his employer, than he is abusing his position and taking advantage of his boss's ignorance. That would be immoral.