milked

Yes, the Court would mandate that there should be a road across Person A's property, giving Person B free access. And no, that isn't a violation of property rights.

But, to understand why it isn't, you'll have to understand what rights are. Rights, including property rights, aren't the right to objects, they are the right to action. Property rights are the right to use material goods. But it's the right to use them for self sustaining action, not to imprison someone. When people use their property to violate someone else's rights (be it intentionally or not), they are acting outside their rights.

What's the point of having a 300 hp engine, with the speed limit at 60? It's fun, that's the point. We live comfortable lives, with lots of free time on our hands, and we like to spend it playing. We play with cars, we play with computers, and we play with guns. Problem?

And, as an added bonus, the guns will also come in handy if an armed insurrection were to ever be in order. We don't all have blind faith in the government. Some of us have studied history, and know that governments often turn bad.

If this was true it would be an easy matter to overthrow oppressive states.


This won't work because you have reversed cause and effect.

Philosophy is what drives history. It is the fundamental ideas a society holds that determines its course. Leonard Peikoff has written an excellent book entitled The Ominous Parallels that describes this phenomenon in the case of Nazi Germany. The fundamental ideas driving the leaders of a society are the same fundamental ideas held by the populace. In this sense a country gets the leaders it deserves as a function of the ideas it holds.

The politicians and leaders of a country do not set the direction of a country, they follow the direction set by the culture. Because of the ideas they held the Weimar Republic got Hitler, in fact they voted for him. The extent to which the people of the US believe that we should be our brother's keeper is the extent to which we have welfare statism. Most of the Middle East is a cesspool of bad ideas, they don't understand, accept or respect individual rights, they get the leaders they deserve. If you assassinate or remove their leaders there will be plenty of people to replace them who hold the same ideas. Look at Egypt, do you think their new government will be more or less aggressive than their former government?

This is not to say that a culture can't change, it can. People have free will and can choose to accept different ideas but this takes a revolution, a revolution based on different ideas. But people don't typically change their ideas unless they are shown how destructive those ideas are to their lives. War is only necessary when a country's ideas and culture are aggressive. Once a culture becomes aggressive force is usually the only way it can change. The destruction their culture is inflicting on others must be brought home to them.

Iran is the embodiment of the most destructive ideas that exist in the Middle East. It has not only initiated force against its own citizens but also against the US and there is no reason we must stand by and suffer for their bad ideas. The Iranian people will not change their ideas until they are shown in drastic terms what those ideas lead to: death, their death.

If cutting off your hand is a satisfying, healthy, and fulfilling way to live enhance your life and have fun, should one cut off his hand? Is it ethical because it is in an individual's self-interest?

An activity is not in an individual's self interest because it is arbitrarily given that status. An activity is in one's self interest if it logically benefits the existence of the individual. In the case of campaigning for socialism, the activity is furthering the cause of pillaging and oppression. Any individual who committs himself to the cause will be have to deal with logical contradictions, and therefore an unhappier life.

From the contents page, the book seems very different from Reisman's book, which covers a huge range of topics. Reisman's is more like a text book, where one can finds all sorts of chapters and there is no expectation of a single theme as such, even though an Objectivist ethical and political perspective runs through it all.

In contrast, Buechner's book appears to be about building a theory of price upon the idea that values are objective. This is only a best-guess, from the contents-page and from a lectures by Buechner titled "Objective Value". Objectivists often criticize Ludwig von Mises as pushing a subjective theory of value. At the very least, von Mises takes value as a starting point that is not really open to exploration by an economist. It is like saying: "Qua economist, I don't care why you value this good. For my purposes, it is enough that you do. From that starting point, let's see what it means for prices, and markets". In his lectures, Buechner chewed on the idea that values are objective: they're neither subjective nor intrinsic. In this book, he appears to have done much more, exploring all sorts of areas of price theory. [bTW: Other economists too have tried to explore details of how and why people value things. So, I'm not implying Buechner is the only one to attempt it.]

The snippet from Salsman's review is pretty negative, but funnily enough -- to me -- it makes the book seem more interesting than I had imagined.

The productive giant Burt Rutan was given a lifetime achievement award at Washington DC's National Air and Space Museum. This occurred Wednesday night (March 21) at the annual NASM Trophy awards ceremony. Upon receiving his well-derserved award, Burt proceeded to criticize people for never listing his money making activities among his achievements. He considers making a lot of money to be one of the greatest things he's done. Burt went on to tell the audience that wealth is created and that if we want a prosperous America we need cheap energy and entrepreneurs who are not stifled with regulations.

I think what America desperately needs is for more of our most productive people to recognize that wealth is created, making money is moral, and to say these things in public. This counters the destructive nonsense spouted by people like Bill Gates. Burt Rutan is a real American hero and he is far more American than any of the creatures currently running for President.

Jesus Christ, stop already. Peikoff's comment was a throwaway line on the nature of consent, not the morality of sex. At worst, he's wrong about the Kobe Bryant case. Stop acting like you guys never said anything based on insufficient information.

He did not say it's moral to have sex with a woman even if "the parts don't fit", he didn't even say it's moral to have sex with her if she's doesn't like it. He didn't say it was OK to choke her even though she's not into that, he didn't say it was OK to twist her arm behind her back to cause pain, but making sure you leave no physical mark, he didn't say it's OK to anally rape a man.

And yet, all those lovely images somehow made it into people's arguments on how he is wrong. I guess what he actually said isn't all that egregious. Why else would you feel the need to spice it up like that?


I do not wish to continue this post. I want to stop. Hope that's clear, I want this to be the end of my post. I don't want to write this next part. I don't wanna. No. (this last No. should be read in a forceful tone, please)

Anyways: sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Obviously. If there is no fraud or force involved (which, incidentally, Peikoff made sure to specify), then that person is free to leave at any time. Their declarations really don't mean as much as their actions. The owner of this site has no reason to feel bad about me continuing this post despite my declaration that I don't want to. The declaration was pretty meaningless. They often are.

Rape means having sex with a woman against her will, not without her explicit consent. In Peikoff's example (though I have no idea if also in the actual case he cited, because, like I said, I don't keep up with celebrity news), the woman is clearly there by choice, and free to leave at any time. Unless next you guys are planning to also add kidnapping to the list of stuff Peikoff never said but somehow found their way into this thread anyway.

The book he wrote suggests he doesn't. You're gonna go with the pointless speculation off of the throwaway line in a podcast though, huh?

SOPA should be opposed because its mandated takedown of websites based on accusation is a denial of due process, because its interference with the internet's Domain Name System is damaging to the operation and security of the entire internet, and because it is a corrupt neo-fascist subsidy of a declining business sector whose most persuasive "argument" is the bribes it gives to congressmen's reelection committees.

Why should anything be someone's property? Think about that for a little bit. I assume you believe that property rights exist, am I correct? (If not, we should probably address that first).

If you accept property rights as right in other cases, then why do you think writing a novel should not be covered under property? If you created something with your mind, it is yours just the same as if you create it from raw materials with your hands. Rights cover more than just the physical, you own your own mind just as much as you own your body. And in an extension to that, because human beings need to pursue and gain values in order to live, the products of your body (labor I mean here) are yours by right as well.

I think possibly you're thinking of property too literally? What do you think is fundamentally different about intellectual property (like copyright) that makes it unownable?

I think once you accept that you do own the products of your mind, this dilemma vanishes. It doesn't make sense for more than one person to own a piece of intellectual property (you can have joint ownership, but I mean in the sense of two competing claims), any more than multiple people can properly lay claims on a house.

I don't know a whole lot about the Austrians, but from what little I know of them, I like them. They argue for the free market, and if I'm not mistaken, their reasoning for this is that the free market works the best. In contrast, Objectivism promotes the free market for moral reasons. But Objectivism regards the moral as the practical. Objectivism's moral recommendations are there because they work (for the individual). Objectivism promotes Capitalism as righteous because it is the social system that's best for the individual. Objectivism argues that it is both practical and moral, but primarily argues that it is the morally best system.

Like I said, I don't know a whole lot about the Austrians. But if I'm not mistaken, there are areas that Objectivism contradicts the Austrians. In ethical and epistemological premises like the above posters have argued. But one difference I've noticed between Objectivism and at least some Austrians is intellectual property. Objectivism promotes intellectual property and argues that, in essence, all property is intellectual property. Whereas some Austrians argue that intellectual property violates property rights. That's because the Austrian(s) in question don't grasp that the human mind is responsible for the identification and creation of all values, and that intellectual property is therefore one of the most important property rights to protect. If I'm not mistaken, some Austrians might be anarchists, but I am probably mistaken on that one. Hopefully the Austrians recognize that the government needs to be there to protect people from criminals.

Like the above posters have noted, Objectivism doesn't have any economics to it. Economics is more of a specialized science than philosophy. But Objectivism has political recommendations that amount to Laissez-Faire Capitalism being the ideal social system for man. One of the reasons Objectivists are generally careful with people promoting freedom is because they'll just be making a political recommendation without any philosophical base for it. This problem can be observed in the fact that you can have such seemingly small, yet very important differences even among Austrians, such as whether intellectual property is good or not. Consistent Objectivists will generally agree across the board on many issues like that, because they're the logical conclusions of shared premises. Whereas libertarians and even Austrians can't be guaranteed to share the same philosophical premises and can therefore come to contradictory conclusions from each other.

Oh, their path was lost. I think it starts that way. Since you seem to have seen it I can tell you that much of the storyline coincides with the world history of philosophies.

I don't know if you noticed but Jack's father's name is Christian Sheppard. The first time we meet the villain of the story he is standing among the reeds. He has taken on the appearance of Jack's dead father. That means that the first time we see the villain he is fraudulently appearing as the false resurection of Christian Sheppard.