A.West

I see mostly proprietary forecasts, but here are some free links on the web: http://www.economist.com/countries/ has some free articles and data on various countries Morgan Stanley economists regularly discuss Europe: http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/diges...est-digest.html These sites discuss trends in economic freedom and provide historical data on numerous countries http://www.freetheworld.com/ http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/

Is anyone familiar with John Galt Solutions Inc.? They make business forecast and enterprise planning software. It looks like it's high-end stuff that gets implemented in management information systems. I see they have a package called the "Atlas Planning Suite." So I'm pretty sure the name isn't accidental, but there's no mention at all of Ayn Rand on their website, http://www.johngalt.com .

What's the smiley face for, Brent? I see nothing humorous in a statement that implies a belief or suspicion that Objectivists are incapable of honestly judging people or making decisions. I think it would be better if you just explicitly state your hypothesis/accusation, and without a smiley face. Furthermore, why would an Objectivist care who Kelley endorsed? I think it's well established that Objectivists consider Kelley to have committed enough dishonest errors that any particular new one would be of no interest whatsoever, other than for the purpose of keeping detailed statistical records.

Take the religionists on head-on. Promote reason and science and tie it to progress. Objectivists will be the only people left willing to go on TV (besides Christopher Hitchens) to object to state religion, because the Democrats will be too cowardly or religious to do so. There will be many great opportunities for Op-Eds. Questions & topics like these are like hanging curveballs waiting for Objectivists to hit out of the ballpark.

Differences in time preference and and forecasting certainty could lead one to a different decision, I think. For example, a person who sees the long term as very unpredictible and subject to many potential influences may believe that minimizing certain near-term harm is more important than suffering near term harm in an attempt to avoid a perceived long-term harm. (DIM is still a hypothesis, right?) E.G. if I worry about theocracy long term, but think it's not predestined and that there are many things to do about it over the next 30 years, then the question of a higher or lower tax rate over the next 4 years, when I expect a high taxable income, becomes an issue of greater weight to me. Agreement in principles but disagreement in conclusions happens in investments all the time - people may agree on the same facts, and even share the same methodology, but have different time horizons, and thus disagree on valuation or buy vs. sell decision. Similarly 2 people can use the exact same framework to value stocks (same investment philosophy) but even slight differences in forecasts applied to multiple long-run variables can lead to dramatically different conclusions. And when you're attempting to forecast long run human actions, with people capable of changing their minds, changing course, etc., then I think there is always a lot of uncertainty in forecasting. For example, even the best industry analysts have great difficulty forecasting earnings with any accuracy beyond a 2 to 3 year horizon. I believe the in the Bush/Kerry debate, the pro-Kerry side was presented (at least at first) that a Bush re-election would create a chain reaction leading to religious tyrrany in the long term. I perceived many pro-Bush counterarguments to be that religious tyrrany was not a sure thing long-term and that Bush wasn't a sure causal link to such a future anyway, and that Bush, for the next four years, was a less unpalatable choice. For me personally, my family would have probably paid an extra $5k to $10k in income taxes over the next 4 yrs under Kerry, since Kerry defined me as a "rich" person, much to my surprise, "not paying my fair share". Just having those tax hikes just delayed 4 years is valuable to me.

I'm hoping that every tin-pot tyrrany in the U.N. now realizes that the U.S. voter doesn't give a damn about their feelings, and they can't pressure the U.S. voter to abandon its interests to "world opinion".

Ray, I have Gotfhelf's book. I read it once, then never found a reason to come back to it, because I saw it as pretty much summarizing material I already had. I think the target audience was an academic looking for a concise treatment of Ayn Rand's philosophy. It think it was controversial when it came out though, because some Objectivist intellectuals (I forget whom) though it was a bad idea. Do you know anything about that?

Here's an story from my early 20s that I find interesting: Years ago in the early 90s there was an event held in Central Florida, promoted adequately in the newspaper to get a few hundred people to show up to an auditorium. It was a "Birthday Party" for Ayn Rand. I went with a couple of friends at the time to witness the farce. There was a musician who renamed a piece of electronic new-agey music "Wyatt's Torch", who introduced himself by recounting a dream he had of Ayn Rand coming to him and telling him to quit smoking, and that dream meant a lot to him. He later commented that he really disliked Rachmaninoff's music because it was "pretty". Babs Branden was the keynote speaker, and predictably she started by saying how great Ayn was and how she changed her life and the world, and then provided about 30 minutes of psychological criticism of her and people who like her, and then wrapped up with some psuedo-inspiring statement about the future. She got a standing ovation from most folks, then everyone had punch and a slice of dollar-sign cake. A college acquaintance of mine was studying journalism and interviewed her and was still doing so when I left. I later learned that they decided to continue that interview all the way into her hotel room that evening. This Kelleyite to be told me he was excited by the idea of having sex with someone who had sex with someone who had sex with Ayn Rand. I told him that was pretty disgusting, especially considering the horrid speech, moral character, and unappealing grandmotherly figure Babs presented. I don't know what he did that night. I did manage to undermine the efforts of several future Kelleyites to stage another disgusting "Birthday Party," this time with Nat Branden, the next year. I couldn't believe my ears when I discovered some people were planning to invite him as the main speaker, and created a schism at the Objectivist Club Christmas party by publicly denouncing the materializing party plan as immoral and evil, and an affront to Ayn Rand's memory, followed by some lady screaming at me and marching out. Fortunately, the club sponsor and host of the party sided with me, people took sides over the next few weeks, and the plan gradually dissolved - facilitated by the fact that N. B. wanted something like $5000 for his hour of spitting. When you're hoping to find a local Objectivist group, be careful what you wish for.

I've noticed the media and politicians constantly harping on lost jobs and unemployment. I have a couple of interesting observations that come from my work analyzing commercial transportation stocks, suggesting that people who really want work can find it. The trucking industry is currently desperately looking for people willing and able to drive trucks. Standards are not terribly high - no drugs, can do a few weeks of training, and can pass some exams that just about any literate semi-intelligent person should be able to pass. Driving a truck isn't a glamorous job, probably pays about $30k + a year, and the lifestyle isn't so great. But for people who say there are no jobs out there, this proves them wrong. If people didn't have welfare to fall back on, and had to get off their couches and off drugs to avoid starving, there wouldn't be a shortage of $30k/yr truck drivers. Of greater interest to maybe a few people on this board, I'm hearing that the railroads are strongly increasing their recruiting for people working on trains. Union Pacific has been particularly desperate, with lots of older people retiring recently. Burlington Northern Santa Fe (a better managed operation) has been hiring too. Standards are higher for railroad employees, as are the rewards, as salaries for these kinds of workers appear to be well over $50K/yr and higher, health & retirement plans, the main downside being that new folks tend to get the worst hours, the most time away from home, etc.

I don't see anything new in the Al Qaida tape, except that it's a semi-American person making the threats. Is "American streets filled with blood" really a new concept for them? I thought it's what they've been after all along - that if they could use an atomic bomb on the U.S., they would. They may prefer Bush to lose, but they'd kill Americans whenever they can, regardless of who is president. Look at the surprised bootlicking French who were so bewildered when French people were held hostage by terrorists - "Mon Dieu! Don't you realize what great appeasers we've been? Why hold us hostage?"

I'm just going to guess on the tennis question, though I bet Betsy probably has a well-reasoned explanation, given her many essays on the subject of relations between the sexes. An element of initial romance involves some tension between the two parties. The early stages of romance are not like the early stages of a non-romantic freindship. It's not necessarily conflict, but a tension in that they are both aware that the man (and/or the woman) is thinking of the other as a sexual conquest. That can become something of a contest. One element of tennis is that it's very physical, and thus very fully engages your body while your mind still has to control and calculate your actions. So its an integrated mind/body experience that involves a contest. I think Ayn Rand may have used the tennis match to combine sexual tension while heightening each characters' awareness of their bodies. Why did Dagny feel she had to win? Well she was competitive, and even though she worshipped Francisco, she wanted to show she was his match in every way. I'm not a woman, but I suspect that even a woman who wants a man to win her, does not want that victory to be easy, but hard fought and difficult, proving to her how desperately he does in fact want her. Francisco detects Dagny's motive during the game, and does her one better, by acknowledging her purpose and turning it to his own purpose of stretching her physically beyond her own expected limits, and then telling her of his victory in his tennis defeat. Tennis creates all of this physical tension between two bodies, but separated by space and a net. Soon after, the space between the two bodies is closed.

I drive a 04 Honda Odyssey (surprisingly powerful and smooth for a family-hauler) and a 97 Toyota Camry (to park at the train station daily). From '94 to '02, I drove a 94 Acura Integra GSR. It was a fantastic machine, light, maneuverable, fast, and had an engine that revved to 8000 RPM. And it was extremely sound mechanically, and highly engineered, in a way that inspired reverence for good mechanical engineers and the future of humanity in general.

In a situation like this, I think it's better to make sure your own behavior is above reproach. No rolling of eyes or giggling or anger. The professor would use that against you. If he does it again after a meaningful period of totally polite behavior on your part, then you might consider taking him on with the school management, and you can add the Hitler comment on top of your new complaint.

F.C. I agree that integrating the Objectivist philosophy into one's life and other knowledge takes much more time than most novices suspect. I vaguely recall about 10 years ago ARI philosophers going on something of a anti-Rationalism crusade to make sure student were really grounding their ideas in reality. Maybe that was the start of L.Peikoff's many works on induction. I think the process of integration is also where many newbies discover that they do not in fact disagree with Objectivism. My suggestion for people with less than 5 yrs of studying Objectivism - if you think you've found a "flaw" in Objectivism, first look long and hard for where you may be wrong, after that, quietly and politely ask more experienced people how to resolve the apparent contradiction. I've met plenty of people who "understood all of Objectivism" after a few months study, and then from month 6 through yr 3 told everyone they met about their "solutions" to all the "mistakes" they found in Objectivism, and then past yr 3 they pretty much went to D. Kelley or the Libertarian Party, or Christ, or whatever. But I don't generally check peoples' age or experience levels before addressing their comments on online forums.

Megan, I still don't know what Objectivist historians or works you are thinking of. I've really only been exposed to a couple of Objectivist works on history, but all have been quite well done, with plenty of philosophy. The Ominous Parallels is quite philosophical of course, and must be a model for identifying the influence of philosophy on history. I also took a course by Eric Daniels, a history professor, at a Summer Objectivist Conference, on American History, and found it the most clarifying, interesting, and philosophical discussion of Early America I've ever encountered. When you say "Objectivist historians" are you thinking of teenagers and random amateurs found on online forums who randomly cite various historical facts? Or are you saying that you've closely observed the serious Objectivist scholars who have devoted years studying both Objectivism, philosophy, and history, and found them lacking? As for the rest of the multitudes of words Free Capitalist unleashed in your general direction, I find many of them quite wrong, or at least silly. He's either accusing you of being a total rationalist parroting the words of others, or he's completely rejecting the Objectivist view of knowledge, or both. And I doubt Kant could have expressed himself clearly enough to you to convince you to commit suicide, an assertion that also implies that your current philosophical values are totally unintegrated floating abstractions.

When I was pursuing my MBA at NYU a couple years ago there was a gay & lesbian club and special career fairs/events were held especially for them. Many companies apply typical affirmative action stuff to this, and it boggles my mind to think that companies would be more eager to hire me if I tell them, in effect, that "I want to stick my penis in another man's mouth or anus" as opposed to the traditional practice of not discussing at work what one likes doing with one's penis or vagina. It was a difficult recruiting market in '03 for MBAs, and I wonder how many students joined organizations like that just to score more recruiting points under "diversity," to help them land a job. After all, nobody can determine if one is gay, or just pretending.

Drugs are bad, M'kay? I knew some people who smoked pot. They would smoke, and then talk a bunch of bull, and think they were making all sorts of deep, philosophical, and creative comments. But really it was all just stupid stuff that the drugs made seem better.

There is a big difference between attempting to practice a virtue illustrated by a fictional character and attempting to immitate a fictional character. Are you saying that the virtue of integrity, as practiced by Roark, is impossible, inhuman, and harmful to your health if you should try to emulate it? Might not one also say that Objectivism itself is dangerous because it doesn't come with a detailed enough instruction manual, and thus causes rationalistic people to make mistakes by trying to practice a philosophy they can't fully understand or integrate into their life? I've seen arguments along these lines before.

"the single most common (the only?) omission I've encountered in the Objectivist corpus is the lack of attention given to acquisition of virtue, to progression from Worse to Better." In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand provided concretizations of how one progresses towards virtue. For example, we saw Hank Rearden gradually learn and exercise the virtue of justice. (I think I first heard this explained by Hull, to give credit where it's due.) In the beginning, he treats his family and others unjustly (mostly much too well), by the end of the novel, Rearden has strengthened his understanding and has begun to fully apply the virtue of justice to everyone in his life. Similarly, on the opposite direction, she showed in Dr. Stadler how failure to practice one virtue can gradually undermine all remaining virtues in a character. In The Fountainhead, Roark's life was practically a handbook for how to practice integrity. She didn't have to explicitly say - here's integrity, behave like this, and repeat daily for the rest of your life. In Ayn Rand's non-fiction there is constant advice to the reader on how to practice and improve one's virtues of reason, integrity, honesty, justice. She taught by her own example and exhortations to the reader to be rational. When she asks her readers to not use emotions as tools of cognition, to not drop context, etc. Does she not get credit unless she prefaces each section with something like "now here's where I'm going to show you how to progress from being irrational and start practicing the virtue of reason"?

JRoberts, The reason is that this thread is about comparing 2 existing philosophies. To do so, you have to present the 2 philosophies properly. I see nothing wrong with guiding someone to material that will help him to do so. The question wasn't what we think, it's about what Aristotle and Ayn Rand thought. Are you being ironic by telling us to speak for ourselves, and then quoting Seneca at length to make your point?

I highly recommend this if you're interested in studying the acquisition and practice of the Objectivist virtues: (From AynRandBookstore.com) "Chewing" the Objectivist Virtues (Audio) by Gary Hull These classes offer intensive discussions of how to apply the Objectivist virtues of integrity, productivity, justice and pride. Dr. Hull focuses on often-neglected aspects of these four, for example, the corollaries of courage and confidence. The course ranges from the role of justice in evaluating another's moral character to the role of pride in shaping one's own moral character. (Audio; 6-tape set; 7 hrs., with Q & A) " I attended a lecture by Hull on the Objectivist virtues at a summer conference in 94. I belive this is the same (or similar) lecture. He discussed the need to exert effort to make virtue a habit, and indicated the importance of seeing virtue as an integrated whole. The section on pride was particularly good. I believe Hull would definitely reject the idea that virtue can be calculated like a batting average of individual acts.

This isn't my site, and these sorts of decisions belong to the owners and operators of it. From my perspective, it's irritating to see Libertarians taking advantage of the number of interested people that Objectivism draws here, to promote their agenda. My guess is that all one can do practically is terminate threads or memberships when the activity becomes particularly blatant. Maybe the forum rules should be more specific in what constitutes anti-Objectivist and irrational ideas that may not be promoted?

So you got what you wanted now? Your very first post was a polite kick in the teeth to Objectivists, because you proposed something you knew very well that Objectivists disagreed with. Then you made no substantive case for your assertion, claimed you were familiar with all the arguments against it, etc. Now your rants show what you thought about Objectivists all along, when we reject your Libertarian Party propaganda. The same sort of anger I'd expect a Libertarian Party NAMBLA member to feel when a disgusted young boy scout throws his gift box of chocolates back in his face.

If you're looking for such an exercise, every other major philosophical school disputes one or more key elements of Objectivism, and thus can be taken as the other "side". Just read any Philosophy textbook and you should be able to identify numerous disagreements with Objectivist principles. So if you like, you can try to identify and refute such wrong ideas. Objectivism's biggest philosophical enemies don't typically confront it head on - they simply propagate their own bad ideas.

The argument that appears to be most convincing to ex-pseudo-Objectivists is: "Objectivism makes me feel uncomfortable when I'd like to evade thinking, dis-integrate concepts, tolerate contradictions, or engage in hypocrisy, thus either Objectivism is wrong or I am, and I don't want to be wrong." You can find this argument in pretty much all anti-Objectivist material, between the lines. Since we take Objectivism as the philosophy that's true, how can you ask us to characterise a publication that objects to that philosophy as "good"? It's impossible to recommend a good lie or a good mistake.