necrovore

It is possible to have trade secrets without the "inevitable disclosure" idea. If you work for a company, learn its trade secrets, and then deliberately disclose them to a competitor, that is properly illegal. But it's another thing if the employer can say that the trade secrets are things that have become habits for you, so that, regardless even of your own desire in the matter, you would inevitably disclose them, if you worked for a competitor -- and then uses that as a basis for preventing you from changing jobs.
So if you are a "star player" for a company then maybe some personal habit of yours, such as your handwriting, or your typing style, or your method of composing music or flipping omelets, if the job involved such a thing -- might become a "trade secret" of the company, which they then own (not you). So you can never leave, unless you change careers entirely, or retire, or die.
Objectivism (as far as I know) does not support the notion of signing yourself into slavery. But such a thing used to be possible, because your freedom could be regarded as a "property," separate from yourself, which would originally belong to you but could be signed away. "Inevitable disclosure" hearkens back to that sort of idea, because it creates a situation where an aspect of you can become the property of someone else; thus, as I said, the intellect of one person becomes the property of another.
Sometimes I sense this notion that "if you disagree with these ideas then you probably think it's okay to rob banks" or something, but that is not the case. What I disagree with is more like the sort of thing like when Hank Rearden was blackmailed into signing over the patent to Rearden Metal. That kind of thing happens not just to the Hank Reardens of the world but to lots of people, all the time, in a corrupt system, and further, the system will be developed in such a way as to make that sort of expropriation easier to commit and harder to resist, to make it look like it's just laws and contracts operating as they should, to make it look like the sort of people who think that sort of expropriation is going on under a cloak of "legality," probably oppose patents and contracts, and think it's okay to rob banks.

I'm unsure if you're familiar with Rand's position on intellectual property rights but disagree with it or if you're not aware that she actually did have a stance on the issue. She was strongly in favor of both patent and copyright law as a means of protecting "the mind’s contribution in its purest form: the origination of an idea". (Rand 1964, Patents & Copyrights) 
Objectivists have argued that it does not, in fact, make any sense to draw a dividing line between intellectual property and other forms of property since it was ultimately man's mind which brought it all about. When I want the government to protect my factory, it is the preservation of my mind to act freely that I seek since this will enable my survival as a rational being. 
Now, in regards to the scenario you provided, it is highly problematic because you've seemingly plucked it out of thin air. To begin with, if a spear is being used for the purposes of defense or hunting then this would imply a primitive society, in which case the subject of individual rights is moot anyway. But, secondly, you simply can't own the idea of a spear (although you can own the specific type of spear which your company manufactures), so in a free society the government could not confiscate it from you, nor could a company claim sole monopoly on its production in a court of law. 
Intellectual discoveries, however, cannot be reasonably patented. To quote Rand once again: 
"It is important to note, in this connection, that a discovery cannot be patented, only an invention. A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because: (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission. He can copyright the book in which he presents his discovery and he can demand that his authorship of the discovery be acknowledged, that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it – but he cannot copyright theoretical knowledge." 

Ambiguity is the 'enemy' of objectivity, be it political or contractual. Ambiguity moves issues from the rule of law/contract to the rule of hidden-bureaucrats/men. 

There is a very big difference between a vaccine that has a 20-year (or longer) track record of safety, and one that uses a never-before-used technique (mRNA) and was given to people -- and then mandated -- while it was still highly experimental. (They even had to change the definition of "vaccine" for it.) It is a mistake to package-deal these two things, but there is still a big insistence that you're either "pro-vaccine" or "anti-vaccine" and there is no room for being in favor of some vaccines but not others. (There's also a package-deal obscuring the notion that one can support vaccines but oppose mandates. Vaccines are science, but mandates are politics.)
It's also a mistake to say that people either agree with Q (and those invalid epistemological methods) or they don't. If Q says that 2+2=4, am I, as a rational person, obligated to deny it? If I don't deny that 2+2=4, am I then a Q supporter? (Of course it's a question of why 2+2=4, not merely that it is.)

Suppose I agree to provide you with a microphone. I don't know ahead of time what you are going to say with it. I could put terms and conditions on my provision of the microphone, and take the microphone back if you violate those terms. Everybody could agree up front that those were the rules. It's my microphone. Facebook has the same rights that I have in that regard. I don't dispute this (although some politicians dispute it and they shouldn't).
However, suppose my terms are ambiguous. I might say that I don't want you saying anything "racist" but it's possible that people may dispute whether a certain particular statement is "racist." And in fact, it might be a political hot topic right now, whether a statement (or a historical figure, or a politician, or a political party) is "racist" or not. Some people claim that the Constitution is "racist" or that the whole Republican party is "racist" or things like that. In such a case, a dispute may legitimately arise as to whether you actually violated my terms or not. Further, if it's a subject of political discourse, then I can actually manipulate the political discourse when I choose to interpret the rules one way as opposed to another way -- in order to ban "racist" statements, I have to take sides on whether the Republican party is "racist" or not. (I can also make people appear more "racist" by banning their speech for "racism." In some cases, this could even be actionable as libel.)
In this case, perhaps the interpretation of the rules shouldn't be up to me alone. But that's the way Facebook has it. They can deem something "racist" even if it isn't racist at all, and the poster has no recourse, not even to a court of law.
(A more expensive example would be, if I offered millions of dollars for Steven Speilberg to make a movie. I might describe the movie in vague terms, but the movie I get might be different from what I expected, and in that case there might be a dispute about whether I have to pay him the money -- but a court could resolve that dispute.)
Why does this situation exist?
Part of it, I'm sure, is that Facebook is afraid that, if they allow "racist" posts, they can be accused of being "racist" themselves. That is not the case, and that is where it matters whose speech it is. If somebody makes a "racist" post on Facebook, it is the poster who is "racist," not Facebook itself. That's where "common carrier" status is supposed to come into play. "Common carrier" is really just the notion of "don't shoot the messenger," it's the notion that the originator of the message is the one responsible for its content, not the conveyor of the message.
(All this goes out the window, though, if the "conveyor" of the message alters its meaning in transit. As Eiuol has pointed out, "lossy" compression may change the content of the message due to errors. Automatic translation between human languages can also cause this -- and it may be the case that, for example, my message is not "racist," but a program translating it from English into French has a bug which causes the French translation to come out "racist." That is not my fault. If everyone is properly informed that the translation program may have such bugs, this may not be a problem at all, though. Bilingual people can look at the original English and translate it properly.)
Facebook can choose whether they want to be a "common carrier" or not. But there has to be honesty about that choice, both from Facebook and from the government. If you're providing a "public square" you shouldn't be liable for the speech of everybody in it, even if you are conveying it.
It is part of the problem that even people in government seem to be insinuating that if you convey someone else's "racist" message that you are somehow responsible for it. This is not necessarily the case, and is not the case at all for common carriers.

Free speech is being debated in the news again and is about to be taken up by the Supreme Court.
The question being ignored in all this is, whose speech is it, anyway? The way I see it, there's my speech, and then there's, say, Facebook's speech, which is separate. It's a pretty fundamental question, but it's being ignored.
If I ask Facebook, or Twitter, or a phone company, or whatever, to relay a message, then it's my speech. That's why it's an infringement of my rights if the message is modified in transit, or deliberately not delivered, or the like.
This is not the same as Facebook's own speech, like if Facebook has a blog or press releases.
I can't just sign away this right, either. It's inalienable. If somebody receives a message from me, whether it's directly or by phone or via Facebook, then I have the right to control its content, and the recipient has a right to expect that I have controlled its content. if Facebook modifies the message and then tries to pass it off as being from me, that's fraud. (The only way it wouldn't be fraud is if they had an agreement both from the purported sender and from the receiver. If the receiver knows the message isn't really from the sender, then the sender might not be needed at all, like in a comedy show where the audience knows the comedian impersonating a celebrity isn't really that celebrity.)
If a person receives a message from me, that is not the same thing as if they receive a message directly from Facebook. You do not interpret every phone call as if the phone company itself is the one calling, and this is part of the reason the phone company itself is not liable if you don't like the contents of the call -- and it would be fraud if the phone company modified the call to make it sound like the caller was saying something they weren't. (It would also be fraud if I called someone and claimed to be from the phone company.)
There are rules for when multiple people cooperate to produce a message; the purpose of these rules is to make sure that if your name is attached to a message, it's your message, or at least, something you have agreed to. This kind of thing has great importance in the movie industry, for example, because many people work together to make a movie. This is a separate question from who owns the copyright, too! Sometimes this leads to movies directed by the pseudonym Alan Smithee because the director didn't think the movie was consistent with what he wanted to say, but the movie company would have owned the copyright in either case. There can also be people who work on a film even though they don't agree with all of it, and they might even be okay with having their name in the credits, because even if they worked on part of it, it is still clear they are not responsible for the whole movie.
Whose message is it, is also a separate question from who is paying for the delivery of the message. It's important not to force some people to pay for the delivery of other people's messages. Ayn Rand has pointed out that your free speech doesn't entitle you to a radio station or even a megaphone paid for by others. Contracts can exist where a publisher agrees to pay for the production or publication of something only if it fits some general description. An editor of a magazine usually has general guidelines which you know about before you submit, and if you do submit something, they usually tell you if they are going to use it or not.

Ayn Rand wrote that the question of whether something is in one's self-interest or not is a question of fact. Genuine selfishness has to be fact-based, i.e., requires dealing with reality, i.e., requires self-sufficiency, i.e., requires not having victims -- and is thus very different from the popular conception of "selfishness," which is whim-based, meaning that it is not reality-based at all, and thus ends up leading to self-harm as well as harm of others.
Narcissism, on the other hand, is a mental illness, and as such is not reality-based. On that basis alone, she would not approve of it.

There is a very big difference between a vaccine that has a 20-year (or longer) track record of safety, and one that uses a never-before-used technique (mRNA) and was given to people -- and then mandated -- while it was still highly experimental. (They even had to change the definition of "vaccine" for it.) It is a mistake to package-deal these two things, but there is still a big insistence that you're either "pro-vaccine" or "anti-vaccine" and there is no room for being in favor of some vaccines but not others. (There's also a package-deal obscuring the notion that one can support vaccines but oppose mandates. Vaccines are science, but mandates are politics.)
It's also a mistake to say that people either agree with Q (and those invalid epistemological methods) or they don't. If Q says that 2+2=4, am I, as a rational person, obligated to deny it? If I don't deny that 2+2=4, am I then a Q supporter? (Of course it's a question of why 2+2=4, not merely that it is.)

Although Rand never mentions how she reached her theory of art, it's reasonable to assume that she did it by induction from established and important works of literature, painting etc. Virtually all art up until the late 19th century has been representational. Rand's contribution is a theory of representational art, so it can be argued that it has little application to alternative frameworks such as non-representational and conceptual art. Whether this is a limitation or not comes down to your personal preferences. If you like non-objective art and want to integrate it with representational theories of art, Rand's aesthetics will at best give you some hints for your project.
What is art for?
People love to occasionally take a break from the real world and live inside an idealized world. Granted, there are alternative ways to experience a different world: daydreaming, video games, intoxication and even sex come to mind. Art is unique because it's ready-made; no productive participation is required of the consumer.
Rand stresses in many places that any justification for art other than enjoyment chips away at the very soul of the artistic enterprise:
Why does art portray a total philosophy, and not just a few individual philosophic principles?
Let's say a novelist writes a novel about a hairdresser for celebrities. If his hero is fictional, the novelist will construct his life according to what he thinks human beings go through in virtue of being human beings: despair, triumph, futility etc. If, on the other hand, his subject is a real historical person, he'll make it seem as if the events of his life are perfect examples of the despair, triumph or futility of life. This is akin to how religionists take everything to be a proof of god—fortune or misfortune, the existence of the world or the non-existence of the world etc.—it doesn't matter what you throw at them, they'll find a way to convert it into evidence for their beliefs.
In art, every action, political rant, brushstroke etc. is in some way consistent with the artist's basic assumptions. By contrast, the real world contains some degree of randomness, e.g. Peikoff's example of fumbling while trying to elegantly open a champagne bottle during a date [OPAR 425]. (whether randomness exists outside of human actions is a much-debated philosophical topic).
Some O'ists find it puzzling that a four-line stanza or a statue can hold a total, entire, complete philosophy. This is because they look at the object and not at 'where it comes from', i.e. the source of the selections that construct the work. Such a concatenation is supposed to evoke a distinctive kind of world to your consciousness:
A person can hardly enter another world by means of a statue if he looks at it the same way he looks at a G.I. Joe action figure. Most of the philosophical sciences look outward to the external world; aesthetics is uniquely tasked with studying man's inner world in correlation to outward objects of the senses, such as a canvas. Is music a microcosm? Despite being built out of invisible air vibrations, you'd be hard pressed to find a quicker way to tune out of your bus ride and slip straight into another world, than by putting a pair of headphones on.
Is architecture art?
I'm inclined to think that Rand simply commented on the traditional list of fine arts, rather than reconstructing such things from the ground up. In my opinion, architecture doesn't fit in with her definition of art. If buildings can be art, lunch boxes can be as well. Both are non-representational; both can be either enjoyed for their visual style and significance, or used to enclose people or sandwiches.
Why is aesthetics even a part of philosophy?
Art has existed for much longer than philosophy, so it certainly wasn't invented by philosophers.
When we describe man, characteristics such as having two eyes and a nose won't suffice—too many other animals have eyes and noses. By contrast, the moment you mention 'reason = primary means of survival' you've instantly narrowed the search down to a single entry: man. Likewise, if you want to build a universe in miniature, you have to ignore contingencies and go straight to the essential, important characteristics of earthly existence, i.e. metaphysical features. This is what gives your mini-world an instantly recognizable character, what we refer to when speaking of the world of Rembrandt or Monet.
Theory is hard and makes people's brains hurt. By contrast, everybody understands what they encounter in the world of the five senses. Philosophy can be downright unintelligible without the superheroes, pop idols and ancient myths that seep into popular culture and act as statements of what human life is all about.
The philosopher, priest and artist deal with the same topics, but in different forms. The philosopher describes the world in a conceptual form, the priest allegedly connects you to the immanent essence of that world, and the artist builds a world for contemplation.
Aesthetics is an objective science
Creating art is a skill. Natural talent and inclination is crucial, but producing tight artworks requires technical know-how. This technical toolkit removes restrictions to expressive freedom, rather than constraining it with asinine rules:
Does aesthetics study beauty?
It can be argued that non-beautiful art has little appeal for those who seek art specifically for enjoying themselves. Rand makes no mention of aesthetics as a theory of beauty, but she does discuss a closely related subject: taste. Understanding precisely how taste works can help us identify why combinations that come across as 'tacky', 'sophisticated', 'chaotic' etc. can also come across as beautiful to some people and not to others.
The subconscious mind integrates everything we believe about the world. Thanks to this, we naturally feel the overall context underlying our everyday existence, with no further need to translate this feeling into words. Rand calls this phenomenon a sense of life. In my experience, this sense only comes to the forefront of my conscious attention in moments when something makes me feel that life is amazing, or when I feel that life is offensively not how it ought to be. Those strong reactions are an instance of my sense of life being converted into full-fledged emotions. Artists are so attuned to their sense of life that, during creation, most of their selections are almost forced upon them by their subconscious 'computer', as if possesed by a muse. This kind of inspiration works the other way as well: Rand notes how an essentialized fictional character (concretization of ethics) is just like an essentialized world (concretization of metaphysics): it can summon selections to your conscious mind, as if divinely inspired;
Your sense of life, to be useful, needs to be rekindled constantly, the same way a fire needs a constant stream of logs to remain active. Otherwise it subdues into nothingness, and you're no longer able to make effortless and 'inspired decisions' the same way the artist does while creating. Put differently, you have to work much harder, because the conscious and subconscious are practicing social distancing rather than being a whole. Your brain is famished, and art is what it craves:
Sex and art
Implicit in good (human) sex are two interrelated feelings:
1. That having sex is a special, out-of-the-ordinary activity. Some couples even use stories and role-plays to enhance the feeling that something special is going on. (By 'special', many people understand 'illicit', e.g. a nurse breaking the code to do naughty stuff with a patient. I'll leave other possible examples to your imagination.)
2. If sex it that special, then it's not something open to every Joe or Jane, right? Sex is a response to a person that you feel has a unique ability to navigate life. Both men and women look for strong partners; even if the masculine sex usually takes the lead in a sexual relationship, underlying the woman's sexual attitude must lie a strenght on par with the man's. The more flustered, excited and adoring your partner is, the bigger and greater you feel. Sex doesn't provide self esteem, it merely allows you to enjoy its perks. Branden notes [BPO 58] that no rational person will be motivated to keep himself pristine and admirable if his effort is not rewarded somehow. (It's even harder if you're being punished for it by government goons).
Sex is philosophical, just like art, in this manner: no sense of life is involved when you hear somebody say that water is a solid rather a liquid; you just find it goofy. But hearing from somebody that living is a meaningless, futile and mindless ritual?? I'll have to stop you there, buster. Pleasurable sex only happens when you feel that you're wholly entitled to that pleasure—as a human being and as this particular individual. If you genuinely feel like you're a useless blob of determined matter, there's no adoration to 'deserve' and sex is a farce.
--------------
BPO 58 - Nathaniel Branden's taped lectures on the "Basic Principles of Objectivism" Lecture 16 (1958)
FW 58 - Ayn Rand's 1958 fiction-writing recorded course
PO12 76 - Leonard Peikoff, "Philosophy of Objectivism" Lecture 12 (1976)
RM - Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

OK, just thought at the time that you would like to know that someone saw it.

There's evidence that I've seen but don't have. I can't present it to you because I don't have it anymore, but there are sources that keep producing more, and it's consistent with information going back decades. I have a long memory.
I actually get frustrated with news websites that present useful information (often with quotes, pictures, etc.) only for it to "scroll off the screen" in a day or two.
Like the time when Nancy Pelosi claimed that her house was vandalized, there was a picture of something spray-painted on her garage door, but looking at the picture you could see that the spray-paint mysteriously stopped at the exact edge of the door and did not intrude onto the brick next to the door, where it would have been much harder to clean off. It was as if someone used a board or something to protect the brick from the spray-paint. Why would real vandals be so kind? Unfortunately I doubt if I could find that article or that picture today. It's not like Google would be of any use, because of their own political leanings.
Sometimes I "print to PDF" but often I don't, there is just too much.
Occasionally these sources remind me of something they said six months ago, and I'm like, hey, I remember that! That wouldn't mean anything to somebody who didn't see it the first time, though.
I think a lot of the people here who agree with me know what I am talking about, though.
By contrast, certain people in power would like to suppress information that is inconvenient to them. They create "disinformation boards" and such to do it officially, too. That's a good reason not to trust them. As I've indicated before, I don't trust that general approach to knowledge.
I trust reality, and the approach of starting with reality, and following it wherever it leads -- not ignoring it or suppressing it, either because it's inconvenient or for any other reason.
Reality still exists even if you do ignore it, and ultimately it can't be suppressed.
There is more than one Western philosophy and some value reality and some don't. (Also, there are degrees of valuing reality, and there are some philosophies that value it different amounts in different contexts.) In that sense, we might want to choose carefully which Western values are worth defending. I would generally side with Ayn Rand.

There's evidence that I've seen but don't have. I can't present it to you because I don't have it anymore, but there are sources that keep producing more, and it's consistent with information going back decades. I have a long memory.
I actually get frustrated with news websites that present useful information (often with quotes, pictures, etc.) only for it to "scroll off the screen" in a day or two.
Like the time when Nancy Pelosi claimed that her house was vandalized, there was a picture of something spray-painted on her garage door, but looking at the picture you could see that the spray-paint mysteriously stopped at the exact edge of the door and did not intrude onto the brick next to the door, where it would have been much harder to clean off. It was as if someone used a board or something to protect the brick from the spray-paint. Why would real vandals be so kind? Unfortunately I doubt if I could find that article or that picture today. It's not like Google would be of any use, because of their own political leanings.
Sometimes I "print to PDF" but often I don't, there is just too much.
Occasionally these sources remind me of something they said six months ago, and I'm like, hey, I remember that! That wouldn't mean anything to somebody who didn't see it the first time, though.
I think a lot of the people here who agree with me know what I am talking about, though.
By contrast, certain people in power would like to suppress information that is inconvenient to them. They create "disinformation boards" and such to do it officially, too. That's a good reason not to trust them. As I've indicated before, I don't trust that general approach to knowledge.
I trust reality, and the approach of starting with reality, and following it wherever it leads -- not ignoring it or suppressing it, either because it's inconvenient or for any other reason.
Reality still exists even if you do ignore it, and ultimately it can't be suppressed.
There is more than one Western philosophy and some value reality and some don't. (Also, there are degrees of valuing reality, and there are some philosophies that value it different amounts in different contexts.) In that sense, we might want to choose carefully which Western values are worth defending. I would generally side with Ayn Rand.

War is the literal destruction of capital , what capitalist promotes war ? 
The criticism was directed at the political leaders whose decisions lead to the financial machinations of prosecution of war and how purposefully prolonging conflict has the effect of aggregating currency into the means of war prosecution , financial or capital expenditures that can only occur ‘during’ the prosecution of war.
Military expenditures are and can only be wealth consumption. 
 

I never made an anti-capitalist argument.
My argument was that US funding of NATO was subsidizing European socialism, because the governments there didn't have to spend money on their own defense, and were free to spend it on social programs instead.
"Fundamentally standing against your values" is not an initiation of force.
Putin attacked Ukraine, sure, but he did not attack NATO or the US. NATO is technically not obliged to defend Ukraine, as it is not self-defense for NATO to do so. Ukraine isn't part of NATO yet.
However, the "political class," who stand against proper values as much as Putin does, thought it would be a good idea to intervene. I have my doubts.
(When you say "the West," do you mean the rulers, or the people? They are opposites. Or perhaps you mean Western ideals such as "freedom"? Freedom is not valued by the current rulers of the West.)
Ayn Rand wrote that a free country has the right, but not the obligation, to destroy a non-free country at any time, because the non-free government consists of criminals. Setting aside the issue that Western countries are arguably not free at this time, there is also the issue that, even though a free country will eventually grow richer and stronger than a non-free one, it may not be richer or stronger at a particular time, and may wish to avoid conflict at that time.
Even if Europe discovered the value of freedom tomorrow -- which would be great -- it is still in terrible shape because of the damage done by decades of bad policies. It is in no shape to go to war. But its leaders want war. They think they can keep everything under control, and they don't care if the people suffer. They probably think suffering people are easier to rule.

The political class is not capitalist. Just because someone has money doesn't mean they're capitalist. It is even possible for someone to earn money legitimately and still not be capitalist. They can be corrupted later, or as they go. (If they are not corrupted, I would not call them members of the political class. There is no "capitalist class.")
The political class are criminals, like gangsters or bank robbers. They have the same psychology. They don't earn money by producing anything; they get it either by favors or by taxation or by just printing it. They regard productivity itself as a plum to be handed out, or a favor to be fought over; although they are willing to compete against each other, they do not want random people being productive and inventing new successful businesses in their garages (unless they can seize them, or buy them with printed money). They would rather have a few big businesses than thousands of little ones. (One of them said "I don't think we want people starting banks in their garages.") They want businesses to be awarded to people. They want to control who succeeds and who fails, so that they can ensure that they keep the successes among themselves and their friends. They do not want capitalism or freedom for anyone else ("You will own nothing and be happy"), just themselves, and maybe not really even that. They are trying to create the "state of ultimate inversion" that Ayn Rand warned about, where the people have to act by permission, but the government can do anything it pleases. That is fascism.
Some of them claim to be supporters of Ayn Rand or freedom or capitalism but they are not selfish in the Ayn Rand sense. They have victims and (metaphorically speaking) they hide the bodies under layers and layers of bureaucracy.
The political class likes to provoke crises and emergencies ("never let a crisis go to waste") because it gives them an excuse to seize political power and do end runs around mechanisms (such as due process) that are intended to protect individual rights, because, hey, it's an emergency!
Even if they didn't originally provoke the war in Ukraine, they are acting to prolong it, because it is useful to them.
The political class seeks to eradicate the rights of the West's citizens. They seek to have all the wealth for themselves. They would rather destroy wealth than not possess it, so Ayn Rand's observations that the mind is the root of wealth and that the mind only functions when free, are irrelevant to the political class. The never-ending "emergencies" are just one way for them to proceed. (Sensing that time is running out, they are trying to speed up the process.) The Covid lockdowns were the first large-scale example, but that didn't work. They've decided it's in their best interests to keep provoking Putin and to deliberately get rid of any possibility of a diplomatic solution. (Blinken was recently caught saying that the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines was a good thing...)
This does not make Putin a good guy and I don't much care what happens to Putin in all this.
What I do care about is the people of the West who are losing their rights (and, secondarily, their wealth) because of the self-appointed elites in charge of the bureaucracies of Western governments. (Douglas Adams was right when he said that the purpose of the President was not to wield power, but to attract attention away from it...)
As far as I can tell the populist leaders who keep getting elected, like the Prime Minister of Italy, or Donald Trump, are derided because they are obstacles to the ongoing quest of the political class. Such populist politicians, if elected, are not always effective because all they (and almost all the people who voted for them) have is a sense of life and not an integrated philosophy. This can cause them to make stupid anti-freedom mistakes such as trying to ban "woke" books and the like. However, they are not integrated fascists; the political class are. And of course, as Ayn Rand herself observed, the mistakes of the defenders of capitalism make it easy to pick holes in their philosophical positions, and the holes, unfortunately, are very real.
On the other hand, the political class has much bigger holes in their theories, and they are doomed to fail eventually. If they keep printing money, the currency will collapse. If they keep pursuing shortsighted environmentalist policies, they will destroy their own ability to produce energy (or win wars). If they keep pushing Putin, eventually Putin will be forced to react violently. The important questions are only how many victims the political class will take with them -- and what, if anything, will arise to take their place.

I never made an anti-capitalist argument.
My argument was that US funding of NATO was subsidizing European socialism, because the governments there didn't have to spend money on their own defense, and were free to spend it on social programs instead.
"Fundamentally standing against your values" is not an initiation of force.
Putin attacked Ukraine, sure, but he did not attack NATO or the US. NATO is technically not obliged to defend Ukraine, as it is not self-defense for NATO to do so. Ukraine isn't part of NATO yet.
However, the "political class," who stand against proper values as much as Putin does, thought it would be a good idea to intervene. I have my doubts.
(When you say "the West," do you mean the rulers, or the people? They are opposites. Or perhaps you mean Western ideals such as "freedom"? Freedom is not valued by the current rulers of the West.)
Ayn Rand wrote that a free country has the right, but not the obligation, to destroy a non-free country at any time, because the non-free government consists of criminals. Setting aside the issue that Western countries are arguably not free at this time, there is also the issue that, even though a free country will eventually grow richer and stronger than a non-free one, it may not be richer or stronger at a particular time, and may wish to avoid conflict at that time.
Even if Europe discovered the value of freedom tomorrow -- which would be great -- it is still in terrible shape because of the damage done by decades of bad policies. It is in no shape to go to war. But its leaders want war. They think they can keep everything under control, and they don't care if the people suffer. They probably think suffering people are easier to rule.

The political class is not capitalist. Just because someone has money doesn't mean they're capitalist. It is even possible for someone to earn money legitimately and still not be capitalist. They can be corrupted later, or as they go. (If they are not corrupted, I would not call them members of the political class. There is no "capitalist class.")
The political class are criminals, like gangsters or bank robbers. They have the same psychology. They don't earn money by producing anything; they get it either by favors or by taxation or by just printing it. They regard productivity itself as a plum to be handed out, or a favor to be fought over; although they are willing to compete against each other, they do not want random people being productive and inventing new successful businesses in their garages (unless they can seize them, or buy them with printed money). They would rather have a few big businesses than thousands of little ones. (One of them said "I don't think we want people starting banks in their garages.") They want businesses to be awarded to people. They want to control who succeeds and who fails, so that they can ensure that they keep the successes among themselves and their friends. They do not want capitalism or freedom for anyone else ("You will own nothing and be happy"), just themselves, and maybe not really even that. They are trying to create the "state of ultimate inversion" that Ayn Rand warned about, where the people have to act by permission, but the government can do anything it pleases. That is fascism.
Some of them claim to be supporters of Ayn Rand or freedom or capitalism but they are not selfish in the Ayn Rand sense. They have victims and (metaphorically speaking) they hide the bodies under layers and layers of bureaucracy.
The political class likes to provoke crises and emergencies ("never let a crisis go to waste") because it gives them an excuse to seize political power and do end runs around mechanisms (such as due process) that are intended to protect individual rights, because, hey, it's an emergency!
Even if they didn't originally provoke the war in Ukraine, they are acting to prolong it, because it is useful to them.
The political class seeks to eradicate the rights of the West's citizens. They seek to have all the wealth for themselves. They would rather destroy wealth than not possess it, so Ayn Rand's observations that the mind is the root of wealth and that the mind only functions when free, are irrelevant to the political class. The never-ending "emergencies" are just one way for them to proceed. (Sensing that time is running out, they are trying to speed up the process.) The Covid lockdowns were the first large-scale example, but that didn't work. They've decided it's in their best interests to keep provoking Putin and to deliberately get rid of any possibility of a diplomatic solution. (Blinken was recently caught saying that the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines was a good thing...)
This does not make Putin a good guy and I don't much care what happens to Putin in all this.
What I do care about is the people of the West who are losing their rights (and, secondarily, their wealth) because of the self-appointed elites in charge of the bureaucracies of Western governments. (Douglas Adams was right when he said that the purpose of the President was not to wield power, but to attract attention away from it...)
As far as I can tell the populist leaders who keep getting elected, like the Prime Minister of Italy, or Donald Trump, are derided because they are obstacles to the ongoing quest of the political class. Such populist politicians, if elected, are not always effective because all they (and almost all the people who voted for them) have is a sense of life and not an integrated philosophy. This can cause them to make stupid anti-freedom mistakes such as trying to ban "woke" books and the like. However, they are not integrated fascists; the political class are. And of course, as Ayn Rand herself observed, the mistakes of the defenders of capitalism make it easy to pick holes in their philosophical positions, and the holes, unfortunately, are very real.
On the other hand, the political class has much bigger holes in their theories, and they are doomed to fail eventually. If they keep printing money, the currency will collapse. If they keep pursuing shortsighted environmentalist policies, they will destroy their own ability to produce energy (or win wars). If they keep pushing Putin, eventually Putin will be forced to react violently. The important questions are only how many victims the political class will take with them -- and what, if anything, will arise to take their place.

The political class is not capitalist. Just because someone has money doesn't mean they're capitalist. It is even possible for someone to earn money legitimately and still not be capitalist. They can be corrupted later, or as they go. (If they are not corrupted, I would not call them members of the political class. There is no "capitalist class.")
The political class are criminals, like gangsters or bank robbers. They have the same psychology. They don't earn money by producing anything; they get it either by favors or by taxation or by just printing it. They regard productivity itself as a plum to be handed out, or a favor to be fought over; although they are willing to compete against each other, they do not want random people being productive and inventing new successful businesses in their garages (unless they can seize them, or buy them with printed money). They would rather have a few big businesses than thousands of little ones. (One of them said "I don't think we want people starting banks in their garages.") They want businesses to be awarded to people. They want to control who succeeds and who fails, so that they can ensure that they keep the successes among themselves and their friends. They do not want capitalism or freedom for anyone else ("You will own nothing and be happy"), just themselves, and maybe not really even that. They are trying to create the "state of ultimate inversion" that Ayn Rand warned about, where the people have to act by permission, but the government can do anything it pleases. That is fascism.
Some of them claim to be supporters of Ayn Rand or freedom or capitalism but they are not selfish in the Ayn Rand sense. They have victims and (metaphorically speaking) they hide the bodies under layers and layers of bureaucracy.
The political class likes to provoke crises and emergencies ("never let a crisis go to waste") because it gives them an excuse to seize political power and do end runs around mechanisms (such as due process) that are intended to protect individual rights, because, hey, it's an emergency!
Even if they didn't originally provoke the war in Ukraine, they are acting to prolong it, because it is useful to them.
The political class seeks to eradicate the rights of the West's citizens. They seek to have all the wealth for themselves. They would rather destroy wealth than not possess it, so Ayn Rand's observations that the mind is the root of wealth and that the mind only functions when free, are irrelevant to the political class. The never-ending "emergencies" are just one way for them to proceed. (Sensing that time is running out, they are trying to speed up the process.) The Covid lockdowns were the first large-scale example, but that didn't work. They've decided it's in their best interests to keep provoking Putin and to deliberately get rid of any possibility of a diplomatic solution. (Blinken was recently caught saying that the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines was a good thing...)
This does not make Putin a good guy and I don't much care what happens to Putin in all this.
What I do care about is the people of the West who are losing their rights (and, secondarily, their wealth) because of the self-appointed elites in charge of the bureaucracies of Western governments. (Douglas Adams was right when he said that the purpose of the President was not to wield power, but to attract attention away from it...)
As far as I can tell the populist leaders who keep getting elected, like the Prime Minister of Italy, or Donald Trump, are derided because they are obstacles to the ongoing quest of the political class. Such populist politicians, if elected, are not always effective because all they (and almost all the people who voted for them) have is a sense of life and not an integrated philosophy. This can cause them to make stupid anti-freedom mistakes such as trying to ban "woke" books and the like. However, they are not integrated fascists; the political class are. And of course, as Ayn Rand herself observed, the mistakes of the defenders of capitalism make it easy to pick holes in their philosophical positions, and the holes, unfortunately, are very real.
On the other hand, the political class has much bigger holes in their theories, and they are doomed to fail eventually. If they keep printing money, the currency will collapse. If they keep pursuing shortsighted environmentalist policies, they will destroy their own ability to produce energy (or win wars). If they keep pushing Putin, eventually Putin will be forced to react violently. The important questions are only how many victims the political class will take with them -- and what, if anything, will arise to take their place.

Capitalism requires a separation of state and economics. What we have with NATO is not capitalism at all; it's cronyism and corruption. There's plenty of evidence for it.

"I can't argue that Newton's Laws are not true because they are just generalizations that Newton made up..."
(My point being that what you are saying could be applied to any argument whatever and therefore is a rejection of reasoning as such)

I didn't say "just."
Why "nevermind"? A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom (capitalism) and controls (e.g., socialism or fascism), so this does not rule out what I said.
If two countries agree that each one will defend the other if attacked, then there is no need for money to change hands, even if the attack actually occurs. It might cost money to honor the agreement, but that money would not need to flow from either country to the other.
Maybe after World War II, Europe was too weak to defend itself, and it might have made sense for the US to help it then, but the flow of money continued long after it should have ended, and then it took on a life of its own.
What they don't need is free money or loot.
They think they can have both, but they are neglecting the former in their pursuit of the latter.
On what basis? You're accusing me of saying a lot of things that I didn't even say.
Also, whether something is a "narrative" or not is beside the point: what matters is whether or not it's true.
I don't think you can argue that it isn't true. Maybe you could argue that it isn't important, or that it leaves important things out, but I think it's important.

"I can't argue that Newton's Laws are not true because they are just generalizations that Newton made up..."
(My point being that what you are saying could be applied to any argument whatever and therefore is a rejection of reasoning as such)

So for example if the risk of killing someone is 7%, that's okay, but if it rises to 8% then it counts as initiating force?
That doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter what the actual percentages are, either. An increase of risk cannot "rise" to the level of physical force.
The distinction is not a matter of how much risk it is, but of whether it's a matter of deliberate choice or not.
The initiation of force can only be done by deliberate choice. Failure to get vaccinated is not an initiation of force. Forcing someone to get vaccinated, is.

My "conspiracy theory" is that people wrote books hundreds or in some cases thousands of years ago, and then died of old age, but many people today are still following those books, and their actions come out to be coordinated even if they do not communicate with each other at all, because they are following the same books.
That may not be true for much longer. The environmentalists are now banning nitrogen fertilizer in places. If this becomes widespread, billions of people will starve, and I think the environmentalists would welcome that as "less of a load on the Earth." (Of course Peikoff quoted one of them as saying "we can only hope that the right virus comes along," and along comes COVID-19...)
The selfishness of self-defense is a virtue. (I use "selfishness" here in the Ayn Rand sense, which could be described with redundancy as "selfishness without victims.") There is something in Atlas Shrugged (probably from Ragnar Danneskjold) about the killed attacker achieving the only destruction he has any right to achieve -- his own. And I suppose it's okay to regard it as a sad thing if someone commits suicide, perhaps more so if they do it at your hands, as it were...
Technically the Left is correct that they are "more Christian than the Christians," in the sense that they are more consistent about self-sacrifice than the Republicans. The Republicans support both freedom and Christianity, even though consistency would make it an either-or choice. A lot of Republicans are too anti-conceptual to see the contradictions, and they don't want to see them. (They sometimes argue that such inconsistencies prove that reason is inadequate by itself and that religion is necessary, but this argument is circular, because it is religion that creates the inconsistencies in the first place.)
In the past I have interacted with atheist groups, but was disappointed that they wanted to be "Good without God" which suggests that if you take God out of the Bible you can get something good. Thomas Jefferson also tried that, writing his own Bible with the miracles edited out, or so I've read. But if you secularize Christianity and make it more consistent, you get Communism, as Ayn Rand observed. Thomas Paine ended up a Communist, if I remember correctly... (I don't recall the chronology around this.)
Ayn Rand was right to call selfishness (as she defined it) a virtue. American intellectuals have been unwilling to embrace what she said (or even read it I think), but what is left of the originally American sense of life seems to understand it perfectly (without reading Rand or knowing that she provides a logical basis for it). It is this sense of life that the Left seeks to destroy, and they are trying to use Christianity as a tool with which to do it. I hope this is not successful; I would hope it undermines support for Christianity instead, but far too many people would rather give up consistency.

My "conspiracy theory" is that people wrote books hundreds or in some cases thousands of years ago, and then died of old age, but many people today are still following those books, and their actions come out to be coordinated even if they do not communicate with each other at all, because they are following the same books.
That may not be true for much longer. The environmentalists are now banning nitrogen fertilizer in places. If this becomes widespread, billions of people will starve, and I think the environmentalists would welcome that as "less of a load on the Earth." (Of course Peikoff quoted one of them as saying "we can only hope that the right virus comes along," and along comes COVID-19...)
The selfishness of self-defense is a virtue. (I use "selfishness" here in the Ayn Rand sense, which could be described with redundancy as "selfishness without victims.") There is something in Atlas Shrugged (probably from Ragnar Danneskjold) about the killed attacker achieving the only destruction he has any right to achieve -- his own. And I suppose it's okay to regard it as a sad thing if someone commits suicide, perhaps more so if they do it at your hands, as it were...
Technically the Left is correct that they are "more Christian than the Christians," in the sense that they are more consistent about self-sacrifice than the Republicans. The Republicans support both freedom and Christianity, even though consistency would make it an either-or choice. A lot of Republicans are too anti-conceptual to see the contradictions, and they don't want to see them. (They sometimes argue that such inconsistencies prove that reason is inadequate by itself and that religion is necessary, but this argument is circular, because it is religion that creates the inconsistencies in the first place.)
In the past I have interacted with atheist groups, but was disappointed that they wanted to be "Good without God" which suggests that if you take God out of the Bible you can get something good. Thomas Jefferson also tried that, writing his own Bible with the miracles edited out, or so I've read. But if you secularize Christianity and make it more consistent, you get Communism, as Ayn Rand observed. Thomas Paine ended up a Communist, if I remember correctly... (I don't recall the chronology around this.)
Ayn Rand was right to call selfishness (as she defined it) a virtue. American intellectuals have been unwilling to embrace what she said (or even read it I think), but what is left of the originally American sense of life seems to understand it perfectly (without reading Rand or knowing that she provides a logical basis for it). It is this sense of life that the Left seeks to destroy, and they are trying to use Christianity as a tool with which to do it. I hope this is not successful; I would hope it undermines support for Christianity instead, but far too many people would rather give up consistency.