ZSorenson

I have alcoholism in my family. In high school and college while everyone else was getting stupid drunk, I didn't. Now that folks are more mature, I just don't drink. Because I never have, I have no conceivable desire to drink. The smell of alcohol, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not, nevertheless has no effect of desire on me. Pouring golden beer in a football ad is boring and meaningless to me. I'm incredibly lucky to be in such a position of strength visavis alcohol. But it was also a series of tough, dedicated choices that led to this. I hear alcohol is pleasant. Maybe so. But socializing grows awfully boring once thoughts start drifting, people start adopting that mindless gaze... This is meant for those young enough to be in my position. Maybe you don't have alcoholism in your family - but what value will you gain by trying alcohol? What value will you lose? Think about it.

Nobody anywhere believes in actual sacrifice. Instead, religious people believe that real reality, and real identity, are external to the corruptible mortal form - that physicality itself, egoism itself, is a state of separation from God. Thus, material sacrifice has the metaphysical consequence of aligning oneself with the 'whole' their 'real identity'. Mormonism is a very American, implicitly enlightenment oriented, post enlightenment system. They believe God, and spirit even, have physical substance, thus causing the real world to have actual transcendent meaning. They have adjusted their concept of sacrifice to be epistemological. You sacrifice certainty, your knowledge, in order to embrace God's knowledge (which is knowable by obedience or intution, not reason primarily). But there are no material sacrifices, unless the context demands it (martyrdom, although physical resurrection is promised, so it isn't the body but certainty that is sacrificed). Mormons believe that the Old Testament laws were 'lesser laws' for a primitive and less worthy stage of human civilization. Hence material sacrifice is seen as a teaching metaphor, not a metaphysical requirement. That's just my analysis as a former Mormon.

Is it now too late to turn back? Seriously. We'll see inflation for sure, no question. But will it be 20% and then a recovery? Or is this the end? By end, I mean, there is no hope to pay off this debt even with 100% austerity, Laffer-optimal taxation? What next? How long? Theories, go:

I would contend that the religious in America employ a superior thought process than the intellectual left. The ten commandments, golden rule, faith-oriented epistemology has been very Aristotelean in the modern era. Religious people retain a set of moral principles, whose nature and identity are given, but apply those principles flexibly depending on context. Using universal principles, the build on their knowledge base via induction. They identify patterns, principles, and follow them without a complete analytical grasp of the situation. Liberals live or die by analytical facts. Strict positivistic, demonstrable, rigorous outcomes are required to establish an intellectual hierarchy of who's smartest/deserves tenure/deserves rank. But especially at the higher orders of knowledge, the analytic positivistic approach blinds people. For instance: how stupid is Ben Bernanke now, post-QE2? But it's not his business that's at stake, it's the whole country. Public policy and the 'common good' require a rigorous set of theories in order to find justification. Maybe money velocity is down because people are uncertain during the era of a government that could do anything because it rejects the general principles of property rights and the free market! But to Bernanke it's a money problem - because there's a graph for that! So, Obama as an academic is a midget because his whole worldview is limited to rigorous concretes - even if he isn't a Marxist - and so the most obvious facts, in this chaotic world, that are obvious to Midwestern evangelical Christians are beyond his understanding. This is why leftists are so smug, because they are implicitly aware of the validity of many ofthe arguments from the other side, but have no intellectual framework for dealing with them. Republican epistemic closure is limited to ten generic commandments. The rest of the world is an open book. Leftist epistemic closure is total - it is an encyclopedia. What isn't in the encyclopedia, isn't even real...

I agree that the professional help route is the best way to go. But, I'll offer this: you're not alone. What I mean to say is that the last thing you should do is take a hit in your self esteem because of your situation. You're not in your situation because you're any sort of failure. I know countless young people, particularly males, including at times myself, who struggle with the exact same set of frustrations. I can't offer a good solution, serious, try the advice people have given here. Still, remember that we now have a healthcare bill one of whose main selling points is that it covers peoples' kids until, guess when, 26! Our whole society is sick, and by understanding Ayn Rand you can be there to work towards a solution. But as for yourself, there may be much for you to do, but only a rational understanding of the problem via a psychiatrist will help you chart a path forwards.

Quite the contrary. The ethical principles behind government would be objective. Also, as I have frequently stated, the form of government in using a neutral and objective process in forming and judging the law is critical. I am defending consensus as one factor in that process. Government decision, no matter how neutral, studied, or objective, is not equal to full knowledge of reality. There is a point after which the outcome of rational thinking will vary. I cannot subsume all facts of reality into my knowledge base in order to judge what ideas are/are not objective. I can identify the nature of objective facts, and use the concept of objectivity to judge a given situation. Men can be objective and yet disagree. They can follow objective processes, but the scope and context of knowledge available to each man can nonetheless differ. That way, two men can BOTH be ethically objective, yet disagree. Government is an institution, an entity, which itself has a knowledge base. That base is comprised of the knowledge of the men who take part in it (although, even if the government was a computer, even that computer would have a finite, expandable, knowledge base). If government is to provide the objectivity you call for - which I have argued repeatedly that it must - it will of course apply an objective standard of ethics, but it still must rely on a defined scope and context of knowledge. Men rely on government to objectively settle their subjective disputes - who does government rely on? My point has been: using an objective standard of ethics, government should base its standard on the use of moral force on the common scope and context of knowledge of those of whom it is comprised**. Epistemologically, that's a consensus. It's not an ethical consensus - if the government strongly oversteps its objective moral bounds because of the ignorance of its voters - an individual has a moral imperative to rebel, reject, or abstain from that government. Naturally, each individual must rationally decide when that point is for himself. **(I'll give a very concrete example: a famer's fertilizing agent poisons his neighbor's water supply. The neighbor develops a statistically rigorous method for proving the negative health consequences. The farmer doesn't understand the method properly, and rejects its validity, but is otherwise and objectively moral individual. Now, extrapolate the situation to a population under a government, with some farmers, and others who are their neighbors. Should the law uphold that the fertilizer causes harm, or not? An expert should decide? Who is an expert? How do you tell who's an expert? Why should a subject of the government trust a given expert? Every last person could be objectively moral, but that doesn't make them equally specialized in knowledge. At the end of the day, this disparity in knowledge requires deference to subjectivity. By the way, if subjectivity based on knowledge disparity is so wrong, then the government should ban free trade. An objective government, with objective laws should identify the most capable in any given field who choose to pursue activity in that field, and grant them a monopoly. This of course would be absurd. For the same reasons why consensus forms an integral, if limited, part of a moral government.)

I will comment on the latter quote first. You are right that the common pragmatic argument is a poor justification for forced taxation. My whole argument is explaining that the practical reasons why forced taxation seems necessary are in fact explained by philosophical principles. And these principles are what justify forced taxation in the right context. As for that argument, which you have expressed that you have not understood, I will try again. Let me ask this question: what is force? Ayn Rand wrote a great essay about the Berkeley free speech movement explaining how twisted their view of force was. To them, the only illegitimate force was 'violence'. The only standard by which one could judge a thing as negative was whether or not it caused 'harm'. This is meant in the immediate, perceptual sense. So, a thing is only bad if it causes 'felt harm'. Think about my oil analogy. If a valley contains oil under the ground, and two property owners live in the valley, and their land is split evenly, equally divided in the valley, who owns the oil? Conventionally, as long as your drill is on your land, you can drill and pump until no oil is left. But what if a man purchases 90% of the land in the valley, because he knows it has oil, so he's reasoning that he's paying for that oil, and the other man buys 10%? The 10% man could theoretically build a pump on his 10% land, but pump 100% of the oil. If the 10% man pumps 100% - or even just more than 10% - does that constitute an initiation of force against the 90% man? The Berkeley kooks would say no, of course not. However, there's a good case to be made that that pumping was in fact stealing. If that doesn't make sense, I'll ask: is pirating music stealing? Now, imagine an alternative scenario. Oil hasn't been really prospected yet (it's 1838). The 90% man in the valley bought that land for cattle grazing. The value of his purchase, according to his exercise of reason, is tied to the return he expects for his investment in cattle. Land value in the market is tied to cattle. Now, let's say an intrepid entrepreneur buys the 10%. He buys it from the 90% guy (who perhaps had owned the whole valley). His explicit purpose is not to graze cattle, but to erect a new invention of his to drill and pump this oil stuff he thinks is in the ground. He succeeds and strikes it rich. The 90% cattle-grazer now decides that most of the oil is under his land, and wants a cut. Should he get it? Is the 10% guy still stealing? Or would the 90% guy be stealing if he started pumping - even though he never would have ever thought to drill for oil if the first guy hadn't done it? Yes, good contracts can handle these sort of situations. But what about more obviously criminal scenarios of law? What if you're trying to be like John Wayne and are spinning a loaded revolver through the air on Main Street? You're not explicitly threatening anyone. Are your actions an initiation of force, because of the clear and present risk you pose to the safety of those around you? Thomas Bowden - of ARI - had a great talk suggesting that if we had more private property, and less public (i.e.: no 'Main Street'), a lot of these questions would be answered quite easily. Still, if I'm on someone else's property, that doesn't give them a right to put me in harm through their willful negligence. This is what LAW is for. Law provides a common standard for how 'force' is defined in a society. While cattle-grazing is of high value, it would make sense for law to favor the 10% guy. Once oil drilling reaches a critical mass of importance, the law perhaps would be changed to favor the 90% guy. The goal is to maximize the ability of individuals to live according to their individual reason even while living amongst other men What is necessary in both situations is one outcome that applies universally (particularly for criminal law). People will disagree, period. That's why there's free trade and competition: because people disagree on value all the time, so they bargain and compromise. While an individual has 100% free discretion to enter into whatever trades they choose, they do not have a right to use FORCE against others. An individual can have the rational opinion that he is not using force against an individual, when that individual rationally feels otherwise. There is no way to resolve this contradiction except through a consensus - whereby the points of agreement are retained, and the points of disagreement discarded. A majority vote, with proper limitations on its scope of power, can provide such a consensus. **** Why does this make forced taxation okay? Because the decision over "what is force" includes a decision over what is initiatory force and what is retaliatory force. Initiatory force determines: what is the law. Retaliatory force determines: who should enforce the law and how. The 'how' is normally methods, due process, etc. But the means of enforcement - i.e.: financial resources - are also part of that how. Consistency in obtaining the means of enforcement is as critical as it is for setting a standard of law - for the same reasons. **** Ideally, the majority who voted for the tax would voluntarily pay it. Furthermore, the minority who subscribes to the government would also voluntarily pay even though they disagreed - they've had their fair chance to have their disagreement represented. Only the marginal few - just like with crime - would refuse to pay. In other words, while I think forced taxation can be proper, I suspect that if a government was properly responsive to its people and respected ALL their rights, that an IRS would simply not be necessary. People have to be threatened to pay taxes when they are generally paying much more than to which they agree. Year to year, collection might vary, but there would generally be enough. Still, the law is a good incentive to remind people that "yes, I did agree to that". I hope you now at least understand.

Severe apologies. I did mean to write 'involuntary taxation' as being necessary. This error of editing (I did edit, but the same error repeated since "I knew what I meant") has wasted much of your time. My argument these past few pages has been to explain why involuntary taxation is moral and proper in the right context, for the same reasons that force and coercion can in other contexts be grossly immoral and improper.

Thanks for the link, Eiuol. I think I've read that essay you've mentioned, also. Granted, my comments are complete speculation, and so I don't find your comments to be uninformative. I'm particularly drawn to your idea that guilt is a defense mechanism - perhaps semi-rational - to the envy of those with more physical power. This helps explain the intellectual dominance of altruism when such is the case. Nevertheless, might you agree that envy could be a manifestation more so than a root cause? Envy seems to be essentially an attack on individual distinction. Envy would be the product of longing for successful and distinguished individuals to submit to the communal identity. This submission is both metaphorical - sustaining the psychological construction that identifies man's soul more with God than with himself - but also material - making the individual's gains into communal property, thus covering the losses of others. So, you see, I wasn't disagreeing with what I termed the 'classic' interpretation at all. I just felt that it doesn't go deep enough. Taking envy as an example of this, I'd ask: why do people feel envy? If people feel envy historically, than the dangerous implication is that envy might be intrinsic to humanity. But reason is. That's the 'contradiction' I mentioned earlier. Why would envy be so common in human history.? My explanation was epistemological: envy is a product of the failure to fully integrate one's concept of one's self as a spiritual being (metaphorically if that hasn't been clear). I would expect early generations of men to fail along these lines, as they slowly accumlated knowledge over history's course. I think Objectivism hasn't failed at all in positioning itself as a spiritually useful set of ideas. Ayn Rand defined philosophy's purpose along these lines, so naturally the primary purpose of her philosophy would be to provide individual men with a framework by which to live their lives. My objection to the 'classic' interpretation is along tactical lines. When 'pitching' Objectivism to intellectuals, you'd have to start with Metaphysics and work on down. That's proper and good. What I see as possibly helpful would be to pitch Objectivism to non-intellectuals. I think both avenues are needed for the philosophy to be accepted. Someone pays the intellectuals, and from my friends who are actually members of the Harvard faculty lounge (in hard sciences albeit), the importance of social pressure, popularity, 'kool aid drinking', is not to be underestimated. Objectivism has to triumph as an intellectual movement, or its triumph has to be on the heels of its premises having significant sway in academia. But that triumph won't be possible, I don't think, until there is broader cultural acceptance of these premises. We've seen this a little actually recently. To sway the culture, you can't start with metaphysics. You have to frame your argument along personal lines, and show how a philosophy is personally relevant. That's why I favor framing Objectivist ideas as a sort of 'spiritual' solution for individuals. I also feel that if people would learn to properly integrate their 'soul' concept as it applies to their sense-of-life and purpose, they would not only more readily accept Objectivism, but more significantly in the short run they would be less inclined to reject it off hand. So, in answering, finally, the title of my post: people don't accept Objectivism because it challenges their fundamentally held premises about themselves, according to how they've integrated their concept of their own identity. Teach them the proper integration, and they won't reject Objectivism.

One subject relating to Objectivism that has always concerned and interested me is why altruism and Kantian philosophy have such a powerful hold over modern intellectuals. At the heart of this subject is what I see as an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, we understand (as Objectivists) that man’s nature demands he use reason to live and thrive. On the other hand, there has been a constant struggle between altruistic philosophies and objective reality-based philosophies. In this struggle, the primitive philosophies dominate the greater part of human history. The contradiction is: if man by nature requires reason to survive, why is irrationality such a huge part of his history, and likewise so dominant during the modern era? By irrationality, I mean a rejection of reason philosophically, rather than an incomplete intuitive primitivism. Objectivism, Ayn Rand particularly, seems to provide an answer. Ayn Rand held that man is born tabula rasa. So man is not by nature born to be rational. He must learn to be rational, and choose to be rational. This he may do, and must do, if he desires to live. Nevertheless, the choice is open. Cultural factors, and perverse incentives, can cause man to choose unreason. To this effect, many good explanations have been given for why ‘mystics’ and ‘Atillas’ arise. This includes an overview of their motives and tactics. If I am not mistaken, Ayn Rand’s solution – beyond the generic ARI tactic of educating young intellectuals and exposing them to new, Objectivist, ideas – was for men of reason to cease sacrificing themselves to the mystics. By this tactic, the mystics lose their incentive for upholding philosophies of unreason, and thus the intellectual culture can be cleansed. Towards a Different Tactic I do not object to the ‘classic’ interpretation which I have laid out (and forgive me if you think I’ve got it wrong – better yet, correct me). However, I think it is not quite focused enough. I think this classic interpretation fails to properly account for incentives as they operate for individuals. As such, I will reexamine the contradiction which I have earlier pointed out. Man needs reason to live. Man historically has chosen unreason, and lived in misery, dying young. Why is this? Why would man be so often so quick to work against himself? I have a theory that resolves this contradiction. Different Levels of Identity Man’s identity is defined simply. It includes many parts, such as his physical body, his ideas, his history, his desires, his name, his consciousness and so forth. Nevertheless, the union of these components as man’s identity is easy enough for even any child to grasp. This, I posture, is because consciousness itself has its basis in self-awareness. The primary for consciousness is that there is a self, which is a thing apart from everything else. The question remains: what is this self? Specifically: how does one define it? I’ve pointed out all of the components that are included in the definition of self. The answer, then, is that context determines which definition is relevant in particular. For example, a man in relation to his children is a father. A woman in relation to her employee is a boss. And so on. These contextual definitions differ along epistemological levels as well. Perceptually, a man who has not eaten in a long time is hungry, or hunger is part of his identity at that moment. Likewise, a man who accomplishes a goal might be considered successful. These last two definitions relate adjectives to a definition of identity. Consider that the identity itself would be: “a hungry man”. After a certain point, there are concepts which are open-ended that can be included in the definition of a man’s identity. Virtues are an example of this. A man who consistently accomplishes his goals as a matter of character, would have the virtue of industriousness – perhaps. This sort of definition doesn’t refer to specific instances of what a man does, but generally refers to whom he is. This is important because this sort of characteristic can be predictive of what man will do in the future. An argument might be made that these character traits are the only proper way to define man. One would not answer: “Hungry” to “How is Bob like?” The reason for this is critical to revealing my theory. Man’s Spiritual Identity When one asks, “How is Bob like?” they are specifically asking about the man’s man-ness. They know Bob is a mammal, they know he has two legs, and so forth. Now, Bob might be hungry, but this trait does not relate to those characteristics that distinguish Bob as a human being. Character traits, virtues, vices, and so forth, speak towards a higher, abstract, conceptual level of man’s identity. This level exists only because man is a creature of reason. Man’s actions are the product of his reason – whether he chooses to believe it or not. Even brute instincts are indulged because at some point a man has chosen to evade his rational abilities, because he has chosen to place himself in a situation where instinct would rule him. The key concept to understand in order to see this requires looking at the big picture of a man’s life. A man in a hotel room about to commit adultery, unable to resist temptation; a series of choices led him to that situation. Therefore, regardless of any contextual definition of man’s identity, there exists a more refined definition of his identity that links the different contexts together. In other words: man, in the context of his rationality, is defined by the uniting purposes that link his decisions and actions together over the course of his life. Rationality defines man as man. Man's rational purpose defines his essential identity as a man. Most of man's follies are derived from a failure to identify this fact. It is base and dehumanizing to define man by his conscious-state. Such a definition would imply that life is nothing more than an arbitrary chain of instinct-gratification. Such a life would not be possible to a creature of reason. Reason and awareness demand some opinion of self-purpose. In order to be a brute, a man would be forced by his nature as a rational animal to first view himself as a brute. How is purpose defined? My conclusion is that a man takes all his memories, thoughts, understandings, ideas, perspectives, opinions, feelings, fears, hopes, dreams, aspirations, experiences, and does his best in retaining all the information for how those things have produced value in his life, omitting the measurements. This concept, an automatic holistic conclusion that results from introspection, is the basis of man’s soul. The extent to which this ‘soul’ is well-developed depends on the effort exerted in introspection, and the rationality and wisdom of the introspective individual. A well-developed soul will lead an individual to obtain the most self-relevant values for himself in his life. In a word, this is called ‘harmony’. Why People Fail to Achieve a Well-Developed Spiritual Identity Note the apparent contradiction in how I’ve defined ‘soul’. On the one hand, a holistic conceptual understanding of one’s life and values specifically takes the form of purpose. On the other hand, by omitting the measurements, that purpose is open-ended. The error that many fall into is to equate purpose with destiny. Purpose, as I have defined it, is open-ended. Evidence from the world, properly integrated, that speaks towards possibility, does not determine the outcome of action. The omitted measurements are: what will yet be accomplished in reality. Purpose is defined by potential. Nevertheless, identity exists. A well-developed person has a specific purpose. That purpose exists in reality. The stark reality of purpose in defining man’s most important level of identity makes it foundational in a person’s rational, purposeful, living. When fate doesn’t fulfill the promise of potential, a person might enter into an existential crisis. This is to be expected. Purpose as a product of reason is what sustains man’s life. When a man’s plans fail him, he ought to react strongly. His plans existed to sustain his life, and so he must double down in his efforts to construct a new purpose when the first fails. This effort to construct a new purpose requires reason, as always. Also as always, a person can improperly integrate the facts of his life. The process of constructing purpose, and a sense-of-life, is ongoing throughout a man’s life. Destiny is a stop-gap primitive concept that assists the epistemological process for those operating with primitive knowledge. Believing that one’s fate is inherently programmed to fulfill a purpose-linked destiny allows a person to retain the greater measure of their sense-of-life as fate fails to fulfill their expectations. “I don’t know why this happened to me, but there has to be a reason.” Religion, Spirituality, and the Intellectual State of Civilization My theory, after this lengthy explanation, is that the utility of destiny (providence, God, etc.) as a primitive stop-gap for enhancing the epistemological process that man uses to construct a sense of his own purpose leads man to fall into, and to too readily accept, destiny as a proper concept existing in reality. All religion and unreason, I believe, is derived from this – or any similar – failure by man to rationally determine his purpose in life. More critically, when pseudo-conceptual stop-gaps – such as God, or ‘the Party’, or ‘the Fuhrer’ – meant to free man from uncertainty and solidify his sense-of-life succeed in redistributing gains from the rational to the irrational, these pseudo-concepts produce temporary real effects. Once validated to man, these concepts are infamously difficult to eradicate from his sense-of-self. And because sense-of-self is at the core of a man’s rationally determined purpose, he is committed to defending it perhaps more fanatically than even all his other values. If you agree with me that self is one’s highest value (as a matter of fact), the truth of this is self-evident. Those that hold that self-sacrifice is a value, I believe, have improperly integrated the concept of self (they don't actually accept self-sacrifice). Specifically, I think they conflate destiny with some sort of amorphous meta-identity. A man’s spiritual identity, if tied to destiny, forms a component of God’s identity. Because ‘self’ is equated more essentially with ‘God’ than with the tangible self, then self-sacrifice is not ‘self’-sacrifice. This is the conceptual essence of altruism, and religion, and conscious-state ethics, and Kantian duty, and eastern nihilism, and so on and so forth. The failure of world philosophy to properly and objectively pursue knowledge is because of subjective bias based on this one single flaw. The flaw lies with failing to understand how man’s spiritual identity is to be integrated. Western philosophy demands that a man’s purpose be tied to some analytically determined outcome. But purpose is open-ended. Eastern philosophy denies that purpose can have any tangible relationship with reality. Purpose and desire are to be denied, and left to fate. But purpose is the product of man’s identity, and identity exists. It’s the analytic/synthetic dichotomy all over again. In Conclusion The proper, objective, definition of man’s purpose and spiritual identity takes into account the fact that it is open-ended but defined. When men can rationally understand that their focus is not determined by the outcome they receive, but is instead determined by the outcome they work towards, then they can live fully rationally. If you don't believe me, try this experiment: produce something. Ask yourself if your sense-of-life, self-esteem, self-awareness - whether you feel alive - are more actualized while you are working to produce that thing, or whether you are enjoying it later. This specific, almost self-help style of knowledge is what needs to be taught. Once a man grasps this concept, he will be liberated. Well explained, unattached to preconceptions or superstitions, I believe this understanding will be easily adopted. My opinion is that much of the energy expended by people to defend broken ideologies is directly the consequence of their souls seeking to be found. But the soul isn’t found in some transcendent answer ‘out-there’, it is found as man applies his reason in his work and efforts to live. The tactic I propose is developing this idea as a well-formulated concept, and teaching it as a ‘spiritual’ solution. I don't propose founding a movement, though, because any spiritually-oriented insitution automatically grows dogmatic because of the reasons I have outlined previously. I know I have produced quite a few sentences here, and before you conclude that my idea is hopelessly complicated, consider the past. America was founded on philosophical principles that had their origins in Aristotle, who essentially was nothing more than an advocate for reality. In the Declaration of Independence, the listed self-evident rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This was adopted from Locke’s life, liberty, and property. That a subtle appreciation for reality would translate the importance of property to the “pursuit of happiness” is a testament to the reality of man’s nature. While the values he must obtain are what are important to man, his focus is more greatly directed on what he must do to obtain them. An animal consumes value. A rational animal pursues value. That is the secret of man’s success.

The legitimacy of consensus presupposes a proper scope for that consensus. That scope is over the standard for judging and executing retaliatory force. A system whose consensus purports to rule on issues broader than that is illegitimate. Granted, I imagine that point has been understood. The reason why consensus is necessary is because humans cannot think collectively. Determining a standard for retaliatory force requires reason. A free market allows men with different judgements to coexist. That mechanism is called competition. But competition cannot operate when there are disagreements over force use. Two men can rationally disagree over the use of force, with both their positions being legitimate: say to attack a foreign foe, or continue diplomacy. The legitimacy of either proposition is not in question, but rather the propriety. Voluntary taxation is a necessary feature of civil society, the practical argument being justified by the philosophic. We're better off understanding objectively why, than rejecting it off hand. The individual retains the right to reject an illegitimate consensus. His personal use of reason always trumps, and properly forms the basis of the societal consensus. But my use of consensus considers how a man might rationally interact with other people assuming properly that their knowledge will differ from his own.

Is OP's implication that any government philosophy other than, say socialism, is contradictory? That force and values are necessarily tied in the social context, and to separate them is to produce a contradiction? By Objectivism, morality is derived from the process man uses to obtain his values: reason. Government supports man's values by enabling the free exercise of that process. Therefore it regulates the use of force to its proper moral purpose of retaliation (further nuances being irrelevant to the topic). Force is an issue that doesn't have a moral relationship to value outcome. You could use force to obtain a value, but this is not a rational long-term proposal, nor a moral 'strategy' by Objectivism. The question of the moral use of force pertains to the morality of the process used to obtain value. Process is key here, because of its hierarchical precedence to the value it produces. So OP's point is moot. Campaigning for pro-terrorism does not require detailed terrorist plans. Detailed terrorist plans, the standard I assume being that they are detailed enough for the actual carrying out of an attack, these plans constitute a threat which is a direct initiation of force. So OP's logic is flawed. But I think he glazes over this fact because he's trying to connect the moral use of force directly to value. I.e.: Law stops terrorism, guy supports terrorism, ergo guy contravenes moral object of law. The law opposes the process of terrorism. Therefore, one can advocate for the value of terrorism, without violating the law. If your metaphysics is anti-reason, your ethics is conscious-state, and your social policy is altruism, then your politics equates law with values. It's all... connected... Oops, except values require some, I don't know, thing, in reality to exist..... Actually, Mr. OP, if you aren't a troll, please forgive the snark. Nevertheless, think about what I'm trying to say.

Well, it's not like he can ruin the original series anymore by rewriting its backstory.

I don't support the Tea Party in particular, or Gingrich. I think the Tea Party is committed to distance from the Republicans as such. The benefit of the Tea Party lies with its ability to open up American society to more competition: in financial culture, in academia, in politics, in economics, public schools etc. Our political/economic elite is dominated by people with closed paradigms - a la Berkeley/Harvard. So, as long as we break the notion that there's this 'consensus' about all these issues like global warming - but also economic intervention by the government, and multiculturalism, etc. - when there's no such consensus, and when the consensus ideas are often wrong and harmful - that will be good. The Tea Party is therefore generally good, as long as it doesn't support any policies that are similarly totalitarian to the ones it replaces. By totalitarian, I mean "the answer". I don't think there's any intellectual movement - ARI/ARC included - in this country that has enough knowledge to construct an ideal political solution for us. What we need now is an opening, a diversity of idea that can compete, so that that knowledge can emerge over time.

What if the GM plant overgrows to the property of other farmers? So, let's say Monsanto patents the seeds, and no one else can produce them in a lab and sell them. But let's say the plants cross-pollenate and through Monsanto's negligence of allowing this feature, grow outside the places Monsanto sold the plant to. I'd say someone has no right to either harvest or sell the seeds of that plant, if it can be proven. But Monsanto, or the negligent farmer, would have to pay damages for the removal of that plant, and the losses therefore incurred. I'm thinking that if I leave my car on your property, I have an obligation to remove it, but you by no means own my car.

I think of 'measurement' in this context as the contingent element of a concept as it relates to the retained characteristics of that concept. So, however a given characteristic can differ, while remaining what is is as per the definition of the concept, is what the measurement captures. Spatially, 'measurement' refers to this element. And spatial concepts are easy to grasp, but not all concepts are spatial, and not all 'omitted measurements' are spatial or scalar measurements.

I see my arguments are being ignored while people go on to continue discussing issues I've challenged as if I haven't. I've been accused of incoherence, and then organized my thoughts quite clearly. Next, my posts have been called walls of text, that are "unreadable". So I will make these points again, and briefly, since my other posts are more comprehensive. If I'm being redundant, it's only because I have been given evidence that people have not actually read the substance of my posts, so I'm acting as if I've not said them. Principle 1: There are no givens in human behavior. If a person chooses to violate your rights, your only option is to deal with it. Hopefully, you'll be in a situation where your rationality will give you an advantage over their irrationality. So, if the population you live within (since 'society' doesn't exist, and is 'only a concept'), wants to take your money, they will. Your ability to produce better guns is what might stop them. Principle 2: There is a point after which you would decide to deal with other men like men, rather than like beasts. This is when the population you live within generally holds reason as the proper means of interaction between men. If these people want to steal the gains you produce, you would have good cause to rebel against them. If they find such actions illegitimate, and agree with you that rational men should not use force against each other, then you should return the favor and not use force against them. Principle 3: Reason is the process by which a man judges how he should interact with other men. Reason is a process that occurs in the mind of an individual man. Free trade acknowledges that this process can and does reach different outcomes depending on the man. This includes different outcomes concerning the proper times and means of the use of legimiate retaliatory force. If you are treating men as men, and not beasts, your judgments about the use of retaliatory force in your interactions with them must be based on a common standard that is known to all so that all may rationally plan their actions around that standard. Otherwise, you reject the rationality of man. Because men cannot think collectively, consensus as an epistemological process must be employed to determine the standard for the use of force. A man cannot hold to his own personal standard for the use of force, if he is to treat those with whom he interacts as rational men. By personal standard, I do not mean the fudamental ethical standard of initiation vs. retaliation. By all means, if his neighbors reject that standard, a man should rebel against them. I refer to what constitutes initiation of force, and what the proper retaliation should be, and by whom. So, by no means can the consensus legimately decide that your economic gains should be their property for their needs. That misses the point.

As more of a rant than anything else (I have a few friends of this bent), I want to say that when you try to argue with these people they always shift the argument. They'll argue: "The historical data show that we can enact X (welfare, minimum wages, banking regulations, monetary policy, 90% income tax) and the economy does pretty well." Or whatever. But you point out cases where it hasn't done well, and they say: "Well that's because of blah..." And you say, no it's not necessarily, and they say: "There's an academic consensus, stop with the revisionism." At the end of the day, these people are operating with a conscious-state standard of ethics. The good is what feels good, and any and all other considerations are irrelevant. This standard of ethics successfully explains basically the entire Left. It's worse than just a crude hedonism - it's a metaphysical standard. Reality itself is filtered through this understanding, with base dialectic materialism as an example. It's awful, but they take it so seriously. It's like a state of permanent pre-adolescence.

I think that some of the points here are employing a serious fallacy. This fallacy is the idea that because government is a certain way today, that it must be that way. History provides evidence of how government has been, and therefore offers insight over how government can be, how it might be, and even perhaps how it possibly must be. Nevertheless, "government" does not receive its exclusive definition from history. Government is a concept derived from ethics and human nature, primarily. There has not been a government historically, that has been founded primarily on the foundation of objective ethics and individual rights. America had come close, because of how Lockean philosophy approximated Objectivist principles, but it was never, by any measure, and objective government. Therefore the argument that taxation opens the door to tyranny, or redistribution of wealth, is completely fallacious. Yes, unlimited power to tax - for the 'general welfare' - would indeed lead to that outcome. But if taxation is defined in its proper, moral, context, these arguments don't apply. This sort of argument is similar to the 19th century argument that 'equality' was a societal ideal because of the aristocracy of the previous century. Was Alexis de Tocqueville's 'equality of conditions' refering to equal individual rights over an aristocratic system, or what he refering to economic equality? I actually don't think he had worked that out completely. He employed this same fallacy, of viewing ideal government through the forcing lens of historic government. Another fallacy I've seen in these arguments is the contextual misapplication of ethical principles. Initiation of force vs. retaliatory force is an ethical standard, not a form of government. Government serves to preserve that ethical standard between people. That doesn't mean that government's means of doing so is strictly retaliation for strict initiations of force. Wave a gun in my face, and you put me at risk, even if you aren't threatening me. Government has the right to initiate force against you because your actions constitute a tangible risk - a risk of force initiation. Don't tell me the waving is already an initiation. It is if you explicitly threaten me. But if you're joking around carelessly, there's no force. Saying so would imply that breathing and living, for its potential implications, constitutes force. No, the waving of the gun represents a plausible risk. Government provides the process by which people can define common standards to deal with these sort of situations. And I explained very clearly why consensus is a legitimate standard for law. Consensus is an epistemological process. Consensus cannot hold claim to a man's life, rights, actions, and gains. Consensus can tell a man what standard of use of force he must use when he's dealing with other men. The consensus has a scope that applies to the men who engage in it, no greater. Challenge that, or rather, I challenge you to justify the unjustifiable notion: "Each man is free to independently create a standard of the use of force with any or all other men". By standard I do not mean the foundational ethical standard of initiation vs. retaliation, but rather, the specific modes and means of measurement and enforcement when applying that foundational standard.

Apologies for the poorly constructed argument. It's a bad habit, as the translation of ideas into words is no small feat. There was much confusion about my argument, justifiably so. I still need to clarify. One principle about forcible taxation is that it is only moral when it serves its moral purpose. Forcibly acquired funds can only be morally used by the government in order to to facilitate its efforts at retaliatory force. Moreover, those efforts must also be morally legimate. As a point of logic, because there exists a condition under which forced taxation is moral, than one can rightly argue that forced taxation is not inherently morally illegitimate. That will probably explain much of my argument. It seems as if some believe that I'm saying taxation is always, or generally moral. No, I'm saying that it can be moral in specific cases. My oilfield analogy is worth revisiting, because it captures the issue that explains both the necessity for a force monopoly (government) as well as why that monopoly may employ force in taxation (or perhaps even iniate it in general). If you take two oil drillers in a valley, under which is one oilfield, then the actions of one can adversely affect the other. This is a real scenario from history. The market might favor a slow steady supply, but competition between the two drillers would cause them to ramp up production above that which market demand would otherwise favor. It's an example of tragedy of the commons, and is a consequence of what happens when human beings' actions overlap without clearly defined standards of property. The historical solution to the oil problem was to assign ownership rights to the oilfields themselves, not just the drilling sites. Reason and human nature determine how property should be defined. A man who decides to drill a well employs his reason to anticipate what sort of gains he might achieve from that well. It is therefore not controversial to rely on a rational standard of ownership for natural resources. What happens when two people disagree about that standard? There are three possibilities. 1) The men employ force to resolve the issue. 2) The men let reality determine who's process of reason was more accurate. 3) The men find where they are agreed (consensus) retain those points, and omit the measurements (areas of disagreement, or subjectivity). 1 - Between two men, the first option is a possibility. The first man might reason that the second is an irrational brute, and that his actions constitute an initiation of force. Thus he reacts with what he reasons is moral retaliatory force - say by burning down the gent's oil well. This scenario seems rational, but it is far from it. It represents a stolen concept. Just as man must employ reason to obtain his values, he must also employ reason to discover them. Assuming that a standard for property is universal, and therefore justifies the personal dispensation of justice, ignores human nature. I won't go so far as to say that we all have to wait around for men to discover that they have to use reason. But once a man is using reason to discover ethical principles, they have as much a right to that process as they do to property, for the same reason. But aren't some men truly brutes? Yes. A good threshold for labelling a man as a brute (and more broadly rebelling against a government), considers the point after which that man no longer seems to even be attempting to employ reason to determine what is just. 2 - This option works only if force isn't an issue. Rational disagreement implies a disparity of knowledge between men, who therefore come to different conclusions despite using reason. In business, this equates to competition, because a man would not rationally compete with another whom he perceives to be more effective (parenthetically, I want to point out that this is good evidence of the basic fact that reason very often does not produce the same conclusions between men - as part of human nature). If two men are competing in business, they are free to take whatever actions, engage in whatever consensual trades, they desire. Reality will vindicate whose reason was more consistent, and tied to the facts of reality. If two men disagree over, say, a standard of property, they disagree over the use of force. Reality can only resolve this issue along the lines of who has bigger muscles. Thus reason is divorced from human action in this scenario. 3 - Just as a lone man must employ concepts to understand himself and his actions, multiple men must use the same epistemological process to govern their interactions. If two men are interacting morally, the standard for their interaction must be shared. This is as simple as getting what you paid for. Five dollars for a burger has to mean the same thing for both the vendor and the customer. Like I said, the realm of voluntary interaction can deal with epistemological disparity. If you want to pay five dollars for a burger, and the vendor charges six, you won't engage in the trade. When force is involved, that's not possible. Back to the oilmen, let's imagine that one believes he has scientific proof that the majority of the well is under his property, and wants total production rights to be split proportionately. The second doesn't trust that conclusion, and supports free pumping while it lasts. There's no voluntary standard of trade to resolve this dispute. Only force will resolve it. And if neither employs violence against the other, both actors' actions represent force if not violence, because both adhere to their respective individual standards. A majority vote, and the resultant consensus, is basically an epistemological process. That's all it is. Such a process, between two oilmen, might literally involve drawing of straws. If the omitted measurements include the standard of property itself, but both men agree that there must be *a* standard of property, then drawing straws would be the best option. Sounds bizarre, but I've explained my reasoning well. - Finally: Consensus is the only rational way to resolve rational disagreement between men over the use of force. Ideally, indeed morally, that consensus would only apply insofar as a man is participating in trade with other men. Therefore, peaceful market interaction occurs under that consensus on the use of force. Trade and property are possible because of these sort of agreements. Note that the government (the agreement/consensus) is not justifying and creating trade or property, but that trade, property, and government are all equally derived from the same objective ethical principles. Yes, I'm saying government is as natural as trade, property, and reason, to man. Now a brief word on force. Force is used by men specifically to make economic gains. Those gains are used specifically to increase the power of the thug. Thus, force, power, and economics are interrelated. Economic power doesn't equate political power you say? That is because of government, and creating the legal standards that seperate economics from politics is essentially the purpose of government. (so a government that gives equal representation, and has the power to tax, would not require an anti-trust rule to preserve that seperation) When I discuss the oilmen, and talk about reason and force, I can equate the former with economic gain, and the latter with political power. I'm extrapolating their situation to one involving a population of men. So: if a government is applying force, acting according to the consensus, then what amount of force it applies is also subject to that consensus, as well as the resources expended towards that effort. The oilman who wanted proportional rights to the oilfield loses the gains he might have under that situation, if the consensus ruled against him (in this case it is a random draw). Taxation is the same situation over a broader scope. Yes, there are personal loses to a person's economic gains. However, those losses, where they legitimately fund the proper use of retaliatory force, were never the moral entitlement of the person who lost. No one is morally entitled to the product of their reason at the expense of someone else. Economic gains are only legitimate when the market is more or less free from coercion. Just as consensus determines the standard of property, it determines the means of enforcing the law, which naturally includes funding. On a more practical note (I anticipate misunderstanding), let me explain what *sort* of taxation might be moral. I'm not sure, but I imaginge a flat consumption tax might be one example of a moral tax. It doesn't punish success, or discriminate. You can think of it as a market user fee, if you want. And the utility of democratic processes, properly limited, should be obvious in terms of determining this 'consensus' I keep mentioning.

This is a deeper discussion on the purpose of government, one which I've been having in the other topics, so I'll be brief. Government is instituted to preserve rights. That is the moral way to protect rights in a large group of people - through government. In order to remain moral, government must employ processes for establishing the law, and then properly enforce that law. The system of laws in the USA and California generally do serve the purpose of protecting individual rights. I mean, the system itself does. There is a hierarchy here. The system is built out of the rights, and laws are built out of the system. You can't skip a step, is my point. You can try and change the system, but again you must do so properly. You can't pick and choose laws unless you have decided that you are in open rebellion because the whole system itself is greatly unjust. As for the other issue, I've said that in particular there's no reason from my point of view to exclude gays from marriage. Moreover, an ideal form of government most certainly wouldn't have things get to this point. But our government, that we do have today, has a concept of marriage. It comes from the majority. There wouldn't be a concept, or legal status of marriage without that majority's decision. This judges said gay marriage was protected under equal protection - one part of our system that's very good I think. Unfortunately, because the system allows for things like marriage to be instituted because of majority will, then it allows the majority to define what that is. Marriage is something to which gender is essential. Or at least, there are reasonable historic definitions to that effect, and the popular vote by the people basically sealed the deal. The concern shouldn't be about whatever outcome is desired - that's pragmatism - the concern is the process, and whether it is moral. Our government is morally legitimate if not very very flawed. So we have to uphold its processes, even when the flaws are manifested. We are very free to participate in those processes and affect the outcome. This is in large measure why the system retains legitimacy.

Let me try. I'm arguing for forced taxation. 1) The purpose of government - explicitly - is to provide a single standard concerning the proper use of force for all of its participants. This is derived from man's rights, which are derived from his nature and the corresponding ethical principles. Thus, the purpose of government - abstractly - is to create conditions by which reason and consent are the only legitimate modes and means of interaction between men. 2) The need of government is derived from the fact that men are not omniscient. It is not the scope of a man's knowledge, or reason, that define him as a man, but rather his capacity for reasoning. Different men have different levels of knowledge, due to time, experience, choice, or born capacity. If all men were capable of employing some perfect or equal level of reason to their lives, there would be no need for government. When one man seeks to understand a principle by observing nature and integrating the results, he employs reason. When man does this during his interactions with other rational beings, the employment of reason and resulting integration occur within the processes and actions of government. 3) Government properly holds a force monopoly, and may employ force against individuals even possibly against their judgment. When two men disagree, reality can judge who is right. This, however, is only an effective principle when two men have divergent opinions based on their process of reason. Reality cannot properly judge the rational correctness of something when men employ whim or force in their opinions and actions. Thus, while men might make mistakes in their process of reason, if those mistakes lead to a justification of disproportionate or inappropriate force, then the natural and free process of interaction between men fails. To give an example: two men drill in a valley for oil, both reason that they have rights to the oilfield. You either have an irrational race to the bottom, or violence, if each man's reason alone is to resolve the issue. There are appropriate times to use force, and property is often an abstract and difficult issue to resolve. So, government exists to establish clear and objective laws ahead of human action, to govern the the use of force in society. You might disagree with how, say, oil rights are assigned, but as long as the process sought to objectively decide how men under that government ought to employ retalitory, moral, force, then the outcome itself is not morally illegitimate. Interaction with men, in particular the establishment of a standard for the moral use of force, requires accepting the outcome of the political process even when you rationally might disagree. You are not sacrificing your thought process to others, rather, if the process is moral, and you are the minority, requiring others to accept your thought process is asking them to sacrifice theirs. Ideally, a system of government will compartamentalize decisions so that this 'will of the majority' only applies when one has business with that majority. It is the price of interacting with other men. 4)Taxation by force is moral. When it comes to funding a war effort, the same principles apply. Many men might conclude, rationally, but incorrectly, that the funds the military leadership requests are too much. It might be the case that they might not be. Now, the generals shouldn't run the government, but if a majority agrees with the generals, and are donating the requested amount, then the minority's ignorance (that's generous of me really) will cost the nation the war. There cannot be a diversity of opinions concerning the conduct of war, just as there cannot be concerning the form of the law. Rational people can legitimately disagree about how to conduct a war. Because the issue involves force, and not reason alone, it is morally legitimate for there to be a single standard established by force. Ideally, the minority will begrudgingly volunteer what they did not want to give, but by all measures not doing so is as much criminal as theft. It is material support for the enemy, because the government has reached a consensus on the conduct of war, in a morally legitimate fashion, and so your refusal to support that effort is maybe treason. Note that war and national defense are not business arrangments. The employment of deadly force is not subject to a rational trade. You cannot pay someone to use force, in a normal marketplace. Instead, the employment of force for national defense (like crime fighting), is subject to a consensus of minds. The soldier, the funding, the operations, are all monopolized under that consensus (at least as far as a legal commission). People form nations in the first place to reach a necessary level of critical mass so that at the level of consensus, enough force can be brought to bear to defend against the perceived threats. 5)The issue of why a government holds a moral mandate to maintain a unified posture against outside threats is better understood if the same scenario is considered for internal crime. Mafia organizations have, throughout history, worked at the edges of the law to gain an illegal edge and accumulate wealth. Law enforcement has a history of sometimes having a really difficult time breaking conspiracies, proving guilt, and busting the mob. This is because the mafia exploits the fact that men have disparate levels of knowledge. They exploit the fact of human nature that justfies government in the first place. They organize their extralegal efforts from within the safe umbrella offered by the law. This is how corruption operates, and only highlights why an 'imposed' consensus is needed. One way to think of it is to diminish cheating. If government were only rules, and not an actual arm of enforcement, then people could exploit the disparity of knowledge to break rules. So, not only must the rules be centralized, but for the same reason their enforcement must also be centralized. There has to be a 'big picture' agent that looks at all interactions (not just one person's, or one set of clients) to ensure the rules are applied equally. Otherwise the rules are invalid. To reiterate: points 1), 2) and 3) discuss these rules and their necessity. Without the big picture agent to deal with force uniformly, reason cannot properly remain the standard of interaction between a large group of men. Crime and economics do not occur in seperate spheres. In fact, that they occur in the same sphere is why the former must be prevented. If a criminal agent (mafia) is using force for an edge in society, it will skew the economics in its favor. In fact, that's the reason for using illegal force in a society. The government executive agent must enforce the law, and that means it morally must retain the right to forcibly interfere in economics, in order to uphold the legal standard for the use of force. Likewise, a national army protects the entire economy itself, and the rules established to create it. Thus it has a right to use force in economics, to prevent force in economics. Forced taxation to prevent foreign conquest. [EDIT - This last point is important, so I'll give a crude but clear metaphor to further explain it. The market is like a swimming pool. The government keeps the pool clean. If someone pees in the pool, the whole pool's dirty. This metaphor applies because government is the agent that creates moral legitimacy in a marketplace.] (Conclusion) The issue is moral legitimacy. Is it moral to forcibly tax? Many here have used the standard of initiation of force vs. retaliatory force, almost nearly as a stolen concept. Between men, there is force, or reason. Morally, men should use reason in all initiations of interaction. Morally, men should use force in retaliation to force. Defining force, its nature, and man's actions require the employment of man's reason. When the outcome of two men's reason differs, reality can judge, but only if neither has reasoned that the use of force is justified. Thus the moral purpose of government is to establish a universal consensus - a meta-process of reason (in other words, the limit where men can come to rational agreement) - so that in a large group of men force can be employed morally, and reason can remain the proper standard for interaction. The nature of this consensus is that it represents the final word on force. Because the concept is morally legitimate, derived from the ethical standard for the use of force between any given two men, it can apply force at its discretion, morally. While the method for obtaining this consensus (form of government) is *extremely critical*, its abstract moral legitimacy is not in question. Taxation can be a necessary employment of force in an effort to defend the very survival of the system that is required to establish a moral standard of the use of force in the first place.

Yes, it is necessary to use force against men who deal in force. While men have reason, different men have different levels of knowledge. Normally, reality is the arbiter, but when force is involved, it cannot be. So, an institutional application, an establishment of reason over the use of force.

Government, with a big G, I'm defining here as an institution based on some common, conceptual based framework that defines man's nature and therefore proscribes what actions are proper to him. Government is the social and political arrangement that results from a set of concepts about man. The closer those concepts come to properly describing man's nature, the more liberty in a society, the more prosperous it will be. It will also have more order. The farther from a proper understanding, the more tyranny, the less prosperity, the more anarchy. My point about Rome proves that. When the early Republic began to recognize the plebeians as actual men with rights, their society prospered. When the people became welfare dependent slugs, Rome was eventually overrun by anarchy.

You're right, philosophically, but not legally. The structure of government as a means of expressing the constitutionally limited desire of a voting majority. These flawed legal systems actually provide what liberty we have, and my premise is that this decisions harms liberty more than helps it. That the ruling is in favor, pragmatically, of liberty, doesn't justify the way it contravenes the institutional checks that ultimately preserve liberty by upholding a rational process for creating objective and transparent laws.