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Capitalism Forever

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Posts posted by Capitalism Forever

  1. When could you demand him to follow safety procedures, though?

    If you lived within the radius where the explosion could cause irreversible damage to you or your property. (And it should be noted that you wouldn't get to choose the specific procedures for him to follow; if he can demonstrate that the way he is running his business is safe, he has a right to continue doing so.)

  2. Women are not depicted positively in those commercials but they are just collateral damage in the attack on the male target audience. This product is presented as a substitute for social skills and a shortcut to romance sex.

    Advertisements sometimes do a little humorous exaggeration. I would say the message is simply that "Axe has a really, really attractive scent."

  3. only the right-wing respects individual and human rights.

    You make it sound like human rights are something different from individual rights. This is not the case according to Objectivism; all humans are individuals, and the only fundamental rights that exist are individual rights. The term "human rights" is mostly used by UN types and other socialists as an attempt to introduce new "rights" (such as "a right to a home"), and perhaps as a way to evade the fact that rights pertain to individuals.

  4. Assuming we're all adults here, how about you just listen to the music? Put on a CD of Beethoven, listen, don't think. Just listen. Do you like it? If not, you don't.

    You can learn to appreciate music, but you can't learn to *like* music. You like what you like, and while your tastes may change over time (even as an adult), you can't change the fact that at a particular moment you like something. Music is not a matter of thinking. Music is supposed to evoke emotions, not deep philosophical thoughts about the meaning of life. You may think such things *after* listening to something because the emotions you felt while listening prompted you to think about such matters. But that's not what I'm talking about here.

    "If it feels good, play it" ?

  5. I would agree with the previous posters that the sentence is meaningless, but I suppose its author thought it did have a certain meaning, and that it might induce some people to believe in God. But I can't figure out what this message is supposed to be.

    My best guess would be: "When things coincide in an unlikely way, it is in fact God that causes them to coincide, he just doesn't let us know he did it." If that's all it says, I don't see how this could make me believe in God if I don't already believe in him.

  6. If the word "man" were not in the definition, it could also apply to the perceptual apparatus of animals. Is that the problem you see with the definition?

    If yes, my answer is: The word "man" IS in there, so the definition makes clear that what we mean is the kind of identification and integration specific to man. Objectivist epistemology provides a very clear explanation of what the difference between the perceptual-level consciousness of brutes and the conceptual consciousness of man is; if you have understood that difference, there is no way you can read the definition in any other way than as referring to the sum of the perceptual and conceptual faculties.

    I'm curious about what alternative definition you would propose, though, if you think Miss Rand's one is incorrect.

  7. I was jsut wondering if the government should DECLARE federal holidays and give state employees the day off.

    Whether state employees are given the day off is an internal matter of the government agencies in question (provided it does not affect national security or the protection of individual rights).

    Designating a day as the recommended day to celebrate, say, the founding of the nation, is fine--but of course the government of a free country may not require anyone to celebrate anything, nor force businesses to give a day off to their employees, nor prohibit trading on any day, etc.

  8. It was more an inquiry as to your position. If it's the same as OPAR, I'll check it out.

    Well, I should add that in addition to perceptual concretes, I think "entity" can also refer to conceptual-level integrations such as corporations, baseball teams, forum threads, etc. But there always has to be some objective basis for the integration; you cannot just point to any random collection of things and declare them to be an entity. You cannot say: "Society is the collection of all men" and then go on to talk about society as if it had attributes and actions like a perceptual concrete. I think the same applies to the Universe as well.

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