White Eurocentric Male

The young man worked one year under the new policy. During this year he figured out a better work process. John Galt walked away the moment the new policy was announced. So the young man couldn't be JG. In an objectivist company, the young man's carreer would rise like a rocket, and his wages too. In this place he only got more work. Hmmmm seems familiar.

On this side of the Atlantic, this questioning seems silly. Outside traditional catholic circles, living together without being married is viewed as quite normal. In fact most unmarried couples would say something like " we don't need a piece of paper to be certain of our love". With babies, there's just the extra some extra hassle at the town hall. First the mother has to go to population and declare she has given birth to an infant named XYZ and then the father has to go to say he considers the baby as his son. I think if you do the necessary stuff so you are legally considered the baby's father it's OK. It means you will help your girl friend with your child, even if you brake up later.

Thanks everybody for your suggestions. I've booked the flight and the hotel. I've applied for a brand new passport. I'll be in New York first week of march. I'm looking forward to trying out your suggestions, especially the Italian restaurant.

I'm sorry to be negative, but think for a moment, what are you going to give as a present? Your ignorance about wine! Do you think this is an apropriate present? OK on a less harsher side. Would you give the same perfume to your mother, wife and mistress? No of course, it all depends on the temperament. Try to figure out what the person would like, spicy taste, sweet, fruity... . Try to compare with other stuff, things he/she smokes, eats, his/her favorite taste of chocolate, is he/she a sparkling personality... THEN ask an expert or go to a store where they can help you choose the right wine. BTW champagne has strange effects on women

Well said. This discussion seems like a new version of the perfect world discussion. If everybody would be nice to everybody, nobody would be mean to nobody and there would be peace. If there where no robbers there wouldn't be any need for cops etc. There's ethics, the way I as a person choose to lead my life and deal with others and there's politics, the way society should be organized. I can choose to live according to Objectivist principles. I can't make others do the same without using force. To cooperate with others in numbers that go beyond that what I can manage using person to person communication, rules need to be made. Concerning the poor helpless people. Seems to me people who cannot take care of the self should be taken care of by others. I'm talking here about Down-syndrome, orphans, people with a heavy physical handicap etc. In normal circonstances, i.e peacetime, no major epidemics and no famine, this number is very small. Even if we should decide to let government take care of the helpless, the financial burden would be very small and wouldn't affect economy. Still I believe even the "helpless" have some value they can trade.

Or make it Old Year and leave New Year as it is. Old Year, 25 dec as a day for looking back, coming together. The days between 25 dec and 1 jan can be a sort of launch pad for the New Year, kind of 1 week going from letting go the old to preparing for the new.

It would indeed. Virtue can also mean power, possibilty like medicinal virtues of a plant, virtues of a lifestyle. Men, in ancient civilisations where considered stronger then women. In ancient Rome men did the fighting etc. So it is not strange that manliness and virtue where designed by the same word. Saying of a man, what's his manliness could be like saying what his virtue in battle, his virtue for Rome?

Oops my mistake, I know there's a word resembling vir, which denotes force of character.

The border not to pass with a legion was the river Rubicon. When Cesar dicided to cross, he pronounced the famous words "Alea iacte est", the dice is thrown.

Very fast christianity became burdened by internal conflicts. There are a lot of doctrinal points to disagree in christianity. At the moment of Islam's rise, christians where fighting among themselves and there was only one kind of Islam, because Mohammed was still alive. All wars by the Arabs weren't about religion. A lot of them where about taking control of trade routes. The best known route is the silk road. Islam travelled along with the caravans on this road. People being sick and tired of the old oppressor and his religion and hoping they will have a better life embracing the religion of the new oppressor.

Concerning Roman ethics and values, some things are coming back to me from latin classes long ago. I remember something called “fides romana”, roman honesty. Staying true to one’s word, honouring promises. When negotiating a peace treaty they would exchange hostages. Each camp would send some VIPs to live in the other camp. This ensured nobody would restart hostilities and showed trust in the other side. Hostages wouldn’t flee even if they had the occasion. I think “vir” which means manliness, but also strength and vigour was an important concept. I think their philosophy was one of personnel responsibility and of having enough moral and physical strength to do the right thing. Maybe the Romans didn’t have any written formal philosophy as the Greeks but they had a moral code that can be found in their writings and in speeches. I vaguely have some image of Cicero bringing the conspirator Catalina to justice. Even Cesar had moral principles. In de bello gallico, he talked about his campaigns and what was acceptable warfare. Force, strategy and ruse where acceptable, treason was not. The decadent Rome came with the empire. Circus games are something foreign to Rome. It probably was something they took over from Iberian tribes. I’ve read that Roman circus games and modern day Spanish bull fights stem from one common practice.

See other threads about owning one's life and suicide. I think in a free capitalist society you have the right to sell your life or give it away. However it's illegal to own somebody elses life. Like neuromancer said, you sell bits of your life when you go to work for an employer. But this is based on mutual consent and free will.

I didn't read the Fountainhead yet but just finished AS. Seems to me Stadler thinks the end justifies the means. Somehow, he wanted to make a claim on Galt's life, wanting him to be his intellectual heir instead of a applied scientist. Stadler is very passionate about his work, his mission in life, but doesn't want to take charge of it. Others, especially that faceless blob called society, have to accomodate for his passion. Everything becomes a means for his quest. He is like an cruel alchemist looking for the philosopher's stone. If some sacrifices have to be made in the proces, so be it. Especially since those sacrificed don't understand the meaning of the philosophers stone, so there's no big loss.

It seems this site is biased although I didn't have a time to read it in a critical fashion. Seems to me they are confused about Ayn Rand's reason. They seem to make a difference between some pure, ivory tower reason and reason applied to daily life and society. Ayn Rand they say doesn't make this distinction and tries to treat reason as applied reason. It seems to me Ayn Rand's reason only is applied reason. Reason leeds to error so what? This is known for centuries. When this happens, you have to check your premesis. Deductive reasoning is a sure way of getting to truth starting from true premesis. Having the wright premesis, having enough data, to define a principle starting of with real world observations is the challenge. I think all enlightend statesmen, like the Founding Fathers of the USA, had some notion of the concept social contract. This is individuals forming a nation for their mutual benefit. Like in any other contract there are terms to respect. Jefferson was right that people should bare the consequences of not respecting their contract with society. However I don't think he meant society has precedence over the individual, which would mean ignoring the social contract. In this sense I think Jefferson and Rand agree.

I think there will still be the 3 powers, judicial, law making and law enforcing. The law makers would be elected by the people, as is the case today. They would elect the law enforcers. Law enforcers are accountable to the law makers. Law makers make new laws, abolish old ones or modify them. I've read somewhere laws are a way the people organize society according to their view of an ideal society. Due trough progress laws have to be adapted to reality. Old laws on property and destroing of of property may not be suited for internet crimes and computer viruses. People change in their attitude to marriage, so divorce laws have to change etc. If the constitution would determine how the country is organised in states, and districts it may be necessary from time to time to change it to have a more effective organisation. The law makers should fix the taxes according to budget of law enforcing. Basically people would vote for the law makers on the basis of their views on the new laws that have to be passed and how well they manage the tax payers money. Government contracting to private enterprise is a difficult matter. About the police: in a free republic, policemen would be the only people permitted to use force and violence. For example if an event like the super bowl needs a lot of crowd controle and security, it is unfair to make a whole nation pay for something that benefits only to the organisers of the super bowl. There are two solutions, both unsattisfactory: 1 Make the organisers pay for the use of the police. Drawback: government officials would be inclined to rent the police out and leave day to day police work undone. 2 Make crowd control, surveillance of valuables, chemical plants and such a private matter done by private security firms. Drawback: where do you draw the line between those firms and police when it comes to the use of force. As to other forms of government contracting to private enterprise. Government has people working for it who receive their paycheck trough taxes. If the government manages to sell know-how and labour at the market, taxes should be reduced with the amount the government earned. Reimbursment takes place at the end of the year. Taxes are fixed on the basis of how much the government THINKS it will spend next year. Private companies competing with government are in fact up against a competitor who always gets cheap loans to bridge the gap between paying its workers and being paid for the goods. In my opinion this would be disloyal competition.

The only thing I read by Kant is his letter "What is Enligthenment" with the slogan "Sapere Aude"; dare to know. He critisizes his contempories for not thinking on their own, but relying on priests, physicians, kings etc to do it for them. Seems close to what I read in Atlas Shrugged. Maybe I'll read critique of Pure Reason some day to see what kant's ideas where. Anyhow, I think ideas are important not philosophers. If Kant had strange ideas on metaphysics and ethics but defended free inquiry and speach like his letter suggest; I take the best and leave the rest.

I voted for the Greeks. Tough choice between ancient Greece and Rome in their golden age. I second Free capitalist: Greek theory, Roman practice. We owe our philosophy, and science to Greece. But Rome spread it. I think Romans where better engineers, concentrating at practical matters like aqueducts and bridges. The organisation of the Roman state and Roman army is as close as you could get to a modern state at that time. Rome continued to shape history long after it was gone. Roman cities stayed strategically strongholds during the middle ages. The victories and loses of their legions determined the advance of the different tribes invading their territory, which fixed the geographical location of different European cultural families (Germanic, Latin, Slavic, Celt, Orthodox…). Heck even the Ottoman empire and Islam was influenced by Rome. After the Greeks, Rome wins, hands down. A word for the Mongols. They had much influence in Asia and founded a large empire. The Grand Moguls of India where Mongol descendants. China was ruled over a long period by descendants of Mongol kings. As to war, see also this article on pax Mongolia http://www.silk-road.com/artl/paxmongolica.shtml. It was said that at a certain period a girl carrying a pot of gold on her head could travel across their empire without being attacked.

non-profit means a non profit objective. Like promoting Ayn Rands writings and philosophy, promote trade in general (like chambers of commerce), do a sport etc. Profit organisations would be everything that has to do with commerce and industry, for example baking waffles and selling them for money. Non profit organisation do not divide a share of the earnings to their members. This doesn't mean members don't have profits. The profit to the member of a non profit baseball team are the facilities they dispose of to practice their favorite sport.

One of the basic requirements of a free democracy is the separation of powers. The three powers are Legislative, :i.e. making the laws, this is congress, parliament etc Executive: enforcing the law and executing the law, these are the government, police force and all government agencies etc Juridical power: interpreting the law, punishing people who infringe the law and verifying coherence of the law with constitution and older laws. Police is the 2nd power, law enforcing. To determine if your property rights apply or not in a criminal investigation, police has to turn to the 3rd power. This has nothing to do with magistrates being cleverer then police officers. If somebody or some organisation would unite 2 or 3 powers, our rights would depend on the arbitrary judgement of that person or group of persons. This was the case until modern times, when the king had absolute power.

Next year I would like to cross the atlantic ocean for the first time and see New York for real. Apart from the skyline and the Statue of Liberty, which things should I see that are of Objectivist nature like museums or expositions?

So that's where the people from Monty Phyton get their ideas. I'm amazed at the frienly lions at the Taipe zoo. Come on bite me the man said and the lion did bite. Instant gratification, how much friendlier can you get?

Seems everybody is arguing about a question that's not clearly stated. The greatest genius according to what? What do you compare? Accomplishment, beauty - elegance of theories or solutions, number of fields they where active in...?

I would like to answer with a few quotes “To thine own self be true” “Pay according to work” “Value for value” An investment banker and a trained nurse are very different if it comes to material gain. They also have different values and hierarchies of values. The nurse will value human contact with the patients, the fact that she made a difference to someone’s life in a difficult time or maybe having an unlimited supply of babies to cuddle if she works in the maternity ward. The investment banker will value other things. None is better than the other. Both merit payment for their work and according to their abilities, quantity and quality of work. Both trade value for value, the nurse trading her nursing skills and people skills for her wages and the values mentioned above. The investment banker trades his skills for the thrill of making money and the material benefits that come with that money. Both are traders and morally equal. Things go bad if any of the three principles above are not applied. People living by another set of values then their own, like being what their parents want or what society expects. People not getting fair wages or fair prices for their products. People not trading value for value. Those are the people who think life owes them a living, for example, artists living of government funding and producing works of art nobody would ever want in his home. On a sidetrack: sometimes we hear of geniuses who disappeared or whose talent totally dried up, like the chess player Bobby Fisher. Could there be an objectivist explanation to this?

I've read The Tipping Point. It's about applying the study of epidemics to social phenomena like the spread of fashion trends or the feeling of insecurity in a city. The Tipping point is the critical mass when things tip over and everything gets out of control.

Here in Belgium, tipping is not customary.. Bills mention taxes and tips included. The law says it's the boss who has to pay the waiter decent wages, not the customer. If we do give tips, it 's more to express we are pleased with service above standard, a kind of sign of apreciation. I think the people running my favorite Greek restaurant are closet Objectivists. Whenever I give a tip for the fine quality of the food and the service, they come back to my table and offer me a brandy on the house before I leave.