Capitalism Forever

Hehe, good one!

I lend you a thousand dollars, which you promise to pay back next month. This means that next month you will have an obligation to pay me a thousand dollars. Does that constitute an abrogation of your rights? Why not?

Please go back and read all my posts carefully. NOWHERE did I claim that heterosexuality is always moral; in fact, I made claims to the contrary.

Oh, I was hoping you would at least have a sense of irony. Let me then state it in a straightforward way: There is A LOT more involved than just surface aesthetic differences.

What we have in Iraq now is a political fight between theocracy and liberty. The mentions of Islam in the constitution are a concession to the proponents of theocracy--and a completely unnecessary one, I would say. Yes, you are right that the general political climate is more favorable to the forces of freedom, but this is exactly why we should not squander this opportunity by emboldening the enemy.

I agree. Since the purpose of this forum is to allow Objectivists and students of Objectivism to discuss Objectivism, we have absolutely no use for communists.

I believe you meant to address your post to GC but let me respond to one of your points. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist and he certainly didn't intend to place U.S. law on a mystical basis when he wrote "endowed by their Creator." He explicitly stated that the purpose of a government is to secure people's rights--THAT is the basis for the government he helped create. And it is an explicit repudiation of Christianity as a source of law: the fact that the government is there protect the rights of individuals means that the government isn't there to enforce Christianity. Article 7 of the new Iraqi constitution makes Islam "the official religion of the State" and "a source of legislation." In other words, it says that it is the purpose of the government to enforce Islam.

How old are you? I hate to be the first one to break this to you, but there is a bit more involved than "surface aesthetic differences." A discussion of sexuality requires grown-up participants who have at least read about the anatomic differences between men and women and their significance. This is what I meant when I said this was not a biology forum.

(emphasis added) The point is exactly that Martha did NOT commit a crime. If you lie to an innocent person about an affair etc., you have violated that innocent person's rights. THAT is a crime. However, if somebody attacks you and you lie to him in order to defend yourself, you have not violated anyone's rights: the attacker is in violation of your rights, and has thus forfeited his own rights. This is exactly what happened between Martha and the Feds.

There are two questions involved here: 1) which weapons are, by their nature, suited for personal emergency self-defense but not for large-scale warfare; and 2) among the weapons falling into that category, which are allowed to be used and which are not. The first question is a question of fact; the second one is a question of permission--so I would say that the first question should be answered, in case of disputes, by the courts, while the answer to the second question should be "all are allowed."

It shouldn't be. As you have already stated, Martha did nothing wrong.

In this case, the Feds are the aggressor and Martha is the victim. They don't respect her rights, so she owes them no respect for their rights.

The individual has the right to defend himself in whatever way necessary when faced with an immediate threat of force, IOW in an emergency. Other than that, the government has a monopoly on the use of force: in non-emergency situations and for the purposes of retaliation, individuals use force through their delegate, which is the government. Since WMDs are not the kind of weapons one uses for immediate, personal self-defense, it is up to the government to decide if, when, and how they are to be used.

I tried to make sense of the site's content, but their language has (to put it politely) much less clarity than the Objectivist literature I am used to. I couldn't determine what the purpose of the SFEcon site is, nor why they think there is a Vienna Problem, nor what solution they claim to have found for it. The most meaningful hint I've come across is a link from Sustainable Development Online to SFEcon, which I don't consider a good sign... I am reminded of the Ayn Rand quote: "Don’t bother to examine a folly – ask yourself only what it accomplishes."

It was Google. (The other two results are not pertinent, so SFEcon is the only place in the World Wide Web where the "Vienna Problem" is discussed, at least visibly.)

Nukes are not so special: they belong into the category of severely hazardous goods. As I already suggested, such goods should only be allowed to be kept as long as the owner provides adequate assurances about his peaceful intentions and about the safety procedures he follows--NOT because we do not recognize his right to property, but because we recognize everyone else's right to his life. A right, properly defined, can never conflict with the rights of another person. The nuke guy has a right to keep the fruits of his labor and do with them whatever he pleases--as long as he doesn't threaten the rights of others. There is no exception involved here; it all flows from the norms. The same principles apply to keeping and bearing handguns (or canisters of gasoline, or swiss army knives, or whatever else), only that the principles are applied a bit differently. For example, if one of the patrons gets drunk in a bar and starts fooling around with his handgun, juggling it in his hands etc., the other patrons have every right to forcibly stop him from doing so. While he has a right to wield his handgun, he has no right to create a serious possibility that he will accidentally shoot someone. It's the same for severely hazardous goods--except that their mere ownership gives rise to a serious possibility of an accident, unless safe handling is guaranteed. (The above applies to all kinds of nuclear facilities. In the case of nuclear weapons, the requirement for the owner to show a peaceful intention basically means that nuclear weapons can only be owned as part of a government function.)

Isaac's view of potentiality WOULD be correct IF every event in the Universe were predetermined. In that case, it would be true that something can happen if and only if it does happen. Of course, an argument that relies on the assumption of predetermination is not a valid one when you are trying to prove predetermination.

Lemme guess: you've been reading this site, right? So just what is this "solution" they have found for the Vienna "problem" ?

In that case, there would still be the danger that something unintended may happen to it (stolen by terrorists, accidental detonation, etc.). You do not have a right to endanger the lives of other people. The solution could be a law requiring anyone who wishes to keep any seriously hazardous object to implement documented and verifiable safety measures.

Well, assuming it isn't so, and one day we'll have all we want--what's the problem?

Of course I mean him. He signs his posts as "John K Clark," so I suppose there is an "h" in his real name ... or that he is a dyslexi-feminotheist.

You didn't get my point. I didn't specifically cite anything related to sets as your mistake. What I did cite as your mistake was that you built a formalistic framework and tried to fit reality into it, rather than going the other way around. Specifically, that you put an equals sign between "the entity" and "the entity's attributes" and proceeded to use the two phrases as if they were universally interchangeable. I only brought up sets in my reduction ad absurdum, demonstrating that putting an equals sign between "the entity" and "the entity's attributes" (which happens to be a set) and using the two as if they were universally interchangeable can lead to absurd results. So, my critique of your argument has nothing to do with sets. My point is that your formalism does not refer to reality, and this is what I was hoping you would address. Play again.

You nailed it perfectly--as usual!

What I meant is that you build a formalistic framework and you frame it so as to make it possible for you to "prove" your proposition. It's a bit like saying that God must exist because he is perfect and existence is implied in perfection. (Stretching that latter one a bit further, our feminotheist friend John might even prove that GOD is a gorgeous blue-eyed blonde and SHE wants to be his girlfriend.) This is where you sneak your desired result into your formalism: These statements are simply prose for the following formal deduction: The entity equals its attributes and the cause of the action equals the entity, therefore the cause of the action equals the entity's attributes. Very nice, very clever--too bad it has nothing to do with objective reality. In reality, an entity (isn't that a singular?) does not "equal" its attributes (isn't that a plural?). To say that it does is more than mere context-dropping; it is what I like to call framing. You can use the above formalism to "prove" predetermination, but you can also use it to "prove" a lot of other things, including nihilism. Here we go: p1: An entity is its attributes. p2: "Attributes" is a set. p1 + p2: => c1: An entity is a set. p3: Sets are abstractions; they do not exist in reality. c1: An entity is a set. p3 + c1: => c2: An entity is an abstraction; it does not exist in reality. nothing exists -- Q.E.D. Have I convinced you to become a nihilist? If not, what is wrong with the above argument? You haven't convinced me to become a predeterminist for the same reason I haven't convinced you to become a nihilist.

Your argument is based on juggling with the words "nature," "identity," and "attribute," so let's take a closer look at their meaning. The nature of an entity describes the way it is and the way it acts; it may indeed be thought of as the "sum" of its attributes. However, we do not say that the nature of an entity causes the entity's actions; we say that the entity causes its actions. The entity's nature only constrains the kinds of actions the entity may cause. For example, an entity may be constrained by its nature to cause action A (and not action B or action C); in this case, the entity is bound to cause action A. But it is also possible for the entity's nature to constrain it to cause action A or action B (but not action C); this means that the entity will either cause action A or it will cause action B. Since its nature does not constrain it tightly enough for it to invariably follow a specific course of action, this entity gets to choose, within the constraints of its nature, what exactly it does. The concept identity captures the notion of sameness (the word comes from the Latin phrase "idem idem" ; "idem" is Latin for "same"). It doesn't make much sense to say that "the identity of an action is determined by the identity of the acting entity" ; again, this is just a way to inject an unrelated proposition into the fact that actions are caused by entities. "The identity of an entity" is a conceptual handle to distinguish the entity from other entities; it has nothing to do with how tightly an entity's actions are constrained. "Argument by injection!"