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Is tyranny intrinsic to governments?

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I understand now.

Yeah there is a medievalist strain in Anarcho-Capitalism that is creepy. Hann Hoppe for instance is an AnCap writer who thinks the monarchy is prefferable to "democracy".

Wow. Well that is what happens when something becomes so popularized and bastardized. I was not surprised to see that the Green Nazi Party of America calls itself Libertarian. It is the "Third Position", psychologically, not politically speaking, what tries to make people think "Yes we CAN have our Cake and Eat it too, it's an OUTRAGE that we have allowed ourselves not to do it before, we need action".

That is enough reason why many of you were correct in taking better care in drawing the line between Objectivism and "AnCap".

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You cannot possibly call yourself an Objectvist, or claim to have anything to do with Objectivism if you think that "duty" or "honor" are virtues.

Duty and honor are just excuses for people who either don't have the balls to get what they really want out of life or who want others to serve at their feet. Neither notion can be proved to be beneficial to life in any direct and necessary way.

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You cannot possibly call yourself an Objectvist, or claim to have anything to do with Objectivism if you think that "duty" or "honor" are virtues.

Ayn Rand described honor as "self-esteem visible in action" at her West Point speech "Philosophy: Who Needs It?". It is very closely related to integrity, one of the seven virtues she singles out as fundamental. Honor had an even more primary place in her thought before she wrote Atlas Shrugged.

A sense of honor is a selfish virtue by definition, because it implies the honor of one's own self. Of one's ego. A man with a sense of honor will not submit to certain things nor permit them to be done to him—the things which he considers dishonorable. Dishonorable to whom? To him. Will not permit them to be done—by whom? By other men. What, then, does a sense of honor require? The placing of self above others. The principle of altruism applied here would become abjectness and depravity—an act of evil.

Maximus will have speak for himself what he thinks duty is, but Rand equated it with Kant inspired ontological ethics so she disapproved.

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You cannot possibly call yourself an Objectvist, or claim to have anything to do with Objectivism if you think that "duty" or "honor" are virtues.

Duty and honor are just excuses for people who either don't have the balls to get what they really want out of life or who want others to serve at their feet. Neither notion can be proved to be beneficial to life in any direct and necessary way.

Had you refrained from using the word Honor, something quiet important in Objectivism as it relates directly to personal integrity, or just clarified that you probably meant honor in the Prussian Military sense; your refutal would have been perfect,.

No one can call him or herself an Objectivist if he or she has a hair of respect for the concept of Military or Patriotic Duty.

Ayn Rand loved America for - oh so many times repeated reasons, but she never meant to create a cult of Patriotism. Conservatives, as they are usually a lot more tolerant of different ideas than American Liberals, gave Ayn Rand a chance because she defended America. But in turn, some people, maybe the guy with the Roman Sturmtrooper in his avatar, have clinged to Objectivism for accidental missunderstandings.

Like the little flag in this board's icon. Why isn't it a Dollar sign or an O, or a flame?

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You cannot possibly call yourself an Objectvist, or claim to have anything to do with Objectivism if you think that "duty" or "honor" are virtues.

The statement that you can't "claim to have anything to do with Objectivism," if you hold a particular view on the application of moral principles seems ludicrously overstated to me.

But ignoring that, it doesn't look like Maximus is attempting to pass his view as Objectivism, as evidenced by his statement: "I happen to disagree with Rand on this [the subject of duty and honor]." Thus, a much more useful avenue of discussion would be to ask him about his reasoning and to have a substantive discussion or debate over that, rather than attempting to impugn his "Objectivist cred".

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Government, with a big G, I'm defining here as an institution based on some common, conceptual based framework that defines man's nature and therefore proscribes what actions are proper to him.

Government is the social and political arrangement that results from a set of concepts about man. The closer those concepts come to properly describing man's nature, the more liberty in a society, the more prosperous it will be. It will also have more order.

The farther from a proper understanding, the more tyranny, the less prosperity, the more anarchy.

My point about Rome proves that. When the early Republic began to recognize the plebeians as actual men with rights, their society prospered. When the people became welfare dependent slugs, Rome was eventually overrun by anarchy.

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I can't answer for Maximus, but as a soldier I have a different view of duty than Rand did as well. When I talk about duty I talk about it in two different senses.

I may have a duty to perform. That would be the equivalent of a contractual obligation which, having accepted the Queens shilling I am bound to do by the very fact that I entered in to a contract. Certainly there is nothing wrong with fulfilling a contract under Objectivism, in fact the trader principle demands it.

I might also talk about "Doing my duty" in a broader sense, but note the sentence... I am doing my duty. That is I am performing a task or fulfilling requirements of my employment that I tie to my integrity and my honour. The only compulsion (which if I'm not mistaken was the part of "duty" that Rand had a problem with) is my personal drive to be the consummate professional in my chosen field of expertise.

I am truthfully sick ant tired of the number of civilians that equate military service with some sort of mindless servitude. I am a soldier because I want to be, I chose to be and I am bloody good at what I do. I perform my duty to the best of my ability because my integrity and my honour and my sense of life demands it. If that sense of duty makes me unfit to be called an Objectivist then I want no part of it.

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"I am truthfully sick ant tired of the number of civilians that equate military service with some sort of mindless servitude. I am a soldier because I want to be, I chose to be and I am bloody good at what I do. I perform my duty to the best of my ability because my integrity and my honour and my sense of life demands it. If that sense of duty makes me unfit to be called an Objectivist then I want no part of it."

Hear, hear!

But I'm truthfully sick of hearing that we must suffer tyrants. Sic temper tyrannis!

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I am truthfully sick ant tired of the number of civilians that equate military service with some sort of mindless servitude. I am a soldier because I want to be, I chose to be and I am bloody good at what I do. I perform my duty to the best of my ability because my integrity and my honour and my sense of life demands it. If that sense of duty makes me unfit to be called an Objectivist then I want no part of it.

I understand you do it voluntarily.

What makes any service "mindless" or not is whether it is consistent with reality or opposed to reality.

So if you are defending your country against an objective threat, your passion and honor in being a soldier is virtuous. If you are waging an irrational war, then your passion and honor is vicious.

Many Muslim Fundamentalists could use the very same words you are using: "I perform my duty to the best of my ability because my integrity and my honour and my sense of life demands it." They think that, when they surrender their lives to Allah, they are doing it freely. Fpr them it is indeed an act of perfect and true freedom.

Christians could say the same. They are working their personal salvation by accepting Jesus as their own, personal savior.

But the truth is that you cannot survive as a man if you can't use your mind day after day, hour after hour, to grasp reality and act accordingly. To be free means to be free at all time, in all aspects. To use your mind means to understand reality by yourself.

If you are not granting others control of your mind and choices, then your pride as a soldier is well deserved, and you have my admiration.

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  • 1 month later...

What of the notion that [statist] governments which start out the smallest always end up the largest? With small government, you have many economic freedoms. With these freedoms, you are able to produce more capital. The small government then grows explosively from this massive wealth as they increasingly tax it and divide it up among special interests, ruling classes, and dribble a bit out to the parasitic class to keep the productive class powerless in a republican system.

I really want to believe in a just form of state government, as I was previously a patriotic person and had enlisted in the Marine Corps, but it doesn't seem like it is ever a reasonable outcome for any system of government. If there was some way of guaranteeing that a government constrained by the rule of law - which would only be based on restricting the aggressive use of force - then I would be all for it. The frustrating reality, as Bastiat said, is that most men will always use aggressive force to unjustly acquire something if there is not a significant penalty for them to do so. To the next level, in our system of government, there is an incentive to use this force in order to gain the support of this bovine majority who want it to be used.

First post, by the way, I'm new to Objectivism.

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We have no example in History about a State that suceeds in preventing itself to expand.

Or, to say it in other words, we have no example of people succedding in keeping their government in check for long periods of time.

Even the United States, the closest a government has been to the ideal of a free capitalist country during the XIX century, has slowly fallen into a condition of a semifree, mixed economy ( and I am not thinking necessarily in Obama's America, but just in the long distance that separates end-of-century America from the ideal of the Founding Fathers)...

Then the question raises: is a minimum, proper State an utopy? Are the anarchists right, at least in their idea that, even if a minimal State were moral in theory, it can never happen in reality?

Or is it that I am missing the point and rather than States forcing their way to expansion, it is the citizens demanding and furthering that expansion, out of a prevalent wrong philosophy?

But then, at the time of Independence, were the Found Fathers relatively alone in their thinking, whereas the mass of common Americans had other country in mind? If we succeed in bringing a critical number of intellectuals to Objectivism, will they be able to build a free country that lasts long? Or are these efforts doomed to fail because the monopoly of coercion towards criminals ends up creating new laws to translate that coertion (sooner or later) to non-criminals?

The reason we are not as free as we should be is because when the founding fathers started this new nation, based on such noble ideas, they used the help of tyrants to get to their goal. Slave holders were tyrants, same as kings were. If slavery would have been abolished at the start, there would have been no contradictions in this new nation's philosophy and the US would have never become any less free. If the declaration of independence would have been taken by its word throughout the US as it did in Massachusetts for example, where "Mum Bet" sued her master for her freedom based on the state constitution, there would be no reason for anyone to feel the need for bigger government.

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I really want to believe in a just form of state government, as I was previously a patriotic person and had enlisted in the Marine Corps, but it doesn't seem like it is ever a reasonable outcome for any system of government. If there was some way of guaranteeing that a government constrained by the rule of law - which would only be based on restricting the aggressive use of force - then I would be all for it. The frustrating reality, as Bastiat said, is that most men will always use aggressive force to unjustly acquire something if there is not a significant penalty for them to do so. To the next level, in our system of government, there is an incentive to use this force in order to gain the support of this bovine majority who want it to be used.

First post, by the way, I'm new to Objectivism.

Welcome to Objectivism then!

It is certainly true that in the past that men have not scrupled to use the government to gain themselves advantages, or material goods or money, either through outright expropriation by the government or by passing laws favoring you over your competitor (e.g., a charter granting an enforced monopoly, but also simply by means of getting the government to pass a regulation that only big companies can afford to comply with, or (conversely) by passing a regulation that only applies to big companies).

What Objectivism did was identify that this is wrong in principle. There was an implicit understanding of this by some Americans in the early days of this country but it is eroding, because it was never logically validated with a correct philosophy, an ethics validated by reason. Without that understanding, a possible--and ethically permissible so far as one knows--response to the government granting others privileges that disadvantage you is to try to gain countervailing privileges, and that is much easier to accomplish politically than repeal of the previous privileges.

Now that we understand all of this, we can fight against the imposition of improper laws in the first place (by being able to argue that they are improper), but also work on structuring government in a way that makes it *far* easier to repeal laws than to implement them, in case that an improper law manages to be instituted in spite of understanding by the populace that the law is improper (this is all predicated on changing our culture in an Objectivist direction!). For example after writing clauses into the constitution that (ought to be) ironclad prohibitions on the government mucking with the economy, we could also ensure that laws require a 2/3 majority to pass and a 1/3 minority to repeal. (One of a series of suggestions made in Heinlein's "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.") Thus it would have taken a 2/3 majority to pass Obamacare and only a 1/3 minority to repeal it. (And under such a government Obamacare would also be instantly tossed out by the Supremes as unconstitutional--the more safeguards the better!)

So I tend to agree with Bastiat in his context--a context where the proper role of government was not understood at all by almost everyone (and partially understood by a few), and where governments are structured so that laws get passed and never get repealed (a later contradictory law might get passed, leaving it to the people who codify the laws to sort the mess out and determine what the current law actually is). But I do not thing all hope is lost--the context *can* change.

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The reason we are not as free as we should be is because when the founding fathers started this new nation, based on such noble ideas, they used the help of tyrants to get to their goal. Slave holders were tyrants, same as kings were. If slavery would have been abolished at the start, there would have been no contradictions in this new nation's philosophy and the US would have never become any less free. If the declaration of independence would have been taken by its word throughout the US as it did in Massachusetts for example, where "Mum Bet" sued her master for her freedom based on the state constitution, there would be no reason for anyone to feel the need for bigger government.

First contradiction OR as I see it PARADOX: The early settlement of America.

The one and only state that had abolished slavery was the descendant of the religious Bay Colony, the one pillar of American foundation that Objectivism dennounces.

The other pillar, the economic one, Jamestown, became the seed of the system that allowed for those same tyrant slave masters: Virginian aristocracy (where about half the Founding Fathers came from?)

--

Second contradiction or as I see it PARADOX: Even without the slavery problem, one of the premises of America in the XIXc being a Free Country is the concept of the expanding frontier.

Native Americans were human beings, some where inside the incorporated states but were not given equal rights (trail of tears). Some (most) were outside the States and even had some nomadic sort of sovereignty: certainly the concept of it otherwise they wouldn't have signed contracts which as far as I know, was not them who breached.

--

Is the ambiguous concept of Utopia not worth considerating? Is it a case closed?

What non-dogmatic mind could think that?

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First contradiction OR as I see it PARADOX: The early settlement of America.

The one and only state that had abolished slavery was the descendant of the religious Bay Colony, the one pillar of American foundation that Objectivism dennounces.

The other pillar, the economic one, Jamestown, became the seed of the system that allowed for those same tyrant slave masters: Virginian aristocracy (where about half the Founding Fathers came from?)

It is not the case that there was no economy in the northern states, and it is not true that there was no religion in the southern states. That is not even close as an approximation. There is no justification for claiming the "religious states" were against slavery. There is no justification for claiming "rich states" were in favor of slavery. This is rationalizing history as mind vs. body.

Second contradiction or as I see it PARADOX: Even without the slavery problem, one of the premises of America in the XIXc being a Free Country is the concept of the expanding frontier.

Native Americans were human beings, some where inside the incorporated states but were not given equal rights (trail of tears). Some (most) were outside the States and even had some nomadic sort of sovereignty: certainly the concept of it otherwise they wouldn't have signed contracts which as far as I know, was not them who breached.

There is no paradox. America was not free because it had a frontier but because it had the Constitution. Americans, like everyone else in the world at the time, were racists. Most of the world still is racist and racially segregated, much more than America is now.

Is the ambiguous concept of Utopia not worth considerating? Is it a case closed?

What non-dogmatic mind could think that?

What has this thread to do with Utopia?

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They chose to ignore the nature of rights therefore they had none. Just like a criminal gang has no right to a purse it collectively stole.

They had rights, but not the rights to all the land they claimed. Sometimes they did clearly have right to the land they lived on, and they were run off of it anyway. The "Trail of Tears" in particular was utterly unjustified pure malicious racism.

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It is not the case that there was no economy in the northern states, and it is not true that there was no religion in the southern states. That is not even close as an approximation. There is no justification for claiming the "religious states" were against slavery. There is no justification for claiming "rich states" were in favor of slavery. This is rationalizing history as mind vs. body.

Nice try but no. Jamestown settlers were religious just as Massachussetians needed to fish, yes.

Let me be more specific: Objectivism often claims that the root of evil in the American case were the Pilgrims, or their ensrhinement; while often points out how the "true" spirit of America is in Jamestown.

Here I point out that, oh chance!(??) that it was precisely the "religious" colony which became the first (and for a long time only) slave-free state.

I am not taking the side of the Pilgrims here, I am pointing out how things don't fit so roundly, and further I insist that this might not be a contradiction but a paradox.

There is no paradox. America was not free because it had a frontier but because it had the Constitution. Americans, like everyone else in the world at the time, were racists. Most of the world still is racist and racially segregated, much more than America is now.

So is it another coincidence that the Sherman Act was passed when the frontier was about to be closed? And all the regulations that followed culminating in the Spanish-American war, the creation of the National Reserve and finally the "inexplicable" American involvement in WWI?

The point here is that Ayn Rand specifically call for XIXc American Capitalism minus the Christianity. I say that's great but different from Hong Kong or Singapore or "The Internet". To SOME EXTENT Americans were free and "self-reliant" not because they had a Constitution but because they had a horse a gun and prairies as far as the eye could see.

Same could be said about a Cossack.

If anything Americans were less racist than the rest of the World. Please, not my point.

What has this thread to do with Utopia?

Everything. I'm trying to think, with your(pl) help, whether it's utopic to think of a government that doesn't evolve inexorably into tyranny of one sort or anothr. Read Hotu Matua's earlier post(s).

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Second contradiction or as I see it PARADOX: Even without the slavery problem, one of the premises of America in the XIXc being a Free Country is the concept of the expanding frontier.

Native Americans were human beings, some where inside the incorporated states but were not given equal rights (trail of tears). Some (most) were outside the States and even had some nomadic sort of sovereignty: certainly the concept of it otherwise they wouldn't have signed contracts which as far as I know, was not them who breached.

It's absolutely not the case that an expanding frontier causes a nation to be free or productive (I am not sure that that's what you are arguing--if you aren't then please take this as a side point).

Russia is parallel to the United States in many respects. After Ivan IV (the Terrible) conquered the Kazan and Astrkakhan khanates, he owned (literally) everything east to the Ural mountains. A group of independent adventurers managed to overthrow the Siberian khanate immediately east of the Urals, and at that point there was no significant opposition to Russian expansion through the northern part of Asia. (Some of the indigenous people had access to firearms before the Russians got there, but even that made no difference.) Russia expanded into Siberia primarily for the fur trade--they'd enslave the local population, use them to hunt the sables nearly to extinction, then press on. This gigantic expanding frontier (which makes ours look tiny) did not help Russia become either free or particularly prosperous.

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It is a very serious question though. Is it possible to constrict a state-based government to its just functions? It is said that the weakest argument that can be made of any legislation today on the house floor is that the legislation is unconstitutional. It's anachronistic. If anything, the Bill of Rights and such are just an insecurity blanket for people to wrap themselves up in whenever some new grave injustice occurs.

I am not saying I know the answer to my question. I do not know the answer, but it is an answer I would like to know. Currently, I believe the answer to be that it is not possible restrict government in such a way and that all statist governments will eventually lead to tyranny and then destruction. It is obvious that this trend could be prevented, theoretically, if the prevailing will of the people were to keep a vigilant watch on the expansion of government, but this has never been the case. In fact, the prevailing will is often the opposite as politicians are able to use the tools of government to achieve legal plunder and reward those who support them.

Obviously, having an anti-state viewpoint is distressing in the respect that it is a tall order to replace this system (in reality, it will probably not happen in my life time). If there was an alternative to make a state-based government work, like that of the United States, then I would very much be open to methods of first retracting our current government and then methods of keeping it at a just level of operation. This seems like an impossibility to me, much like it would be impossible for anyone to talk the mafia out of being a violent criminal organization.

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It's absolutely not the case that an expanding frontier causes a nation to be free or productive (I am not sure that that's what you are arguing--if you aren't then please take this as a side point).

Russia is parallel to the United States in many respects. After Ivan IV (the Terrible) conquered the Kazan and Astrkakhan khanates, he owned (literally) everything east to the Ural mountains. A group of independent adventurers managed to overthrow the Siberian khanate immediately east of the Urals, and at that point there was no significant opposition to Russian expansion through the northern part of Asia. (Some of the indigenous people had access to firearms before the Russians got there, but even that made no difference.) Russia expanded into Siberia primarily for the fur trade--they'd enslave the local population, use them to hunt the sables nearly to extinction, then press on. This gigantic expanding frontier (which makes ours look tiny) did not help Russia become either free or particularly prosperous.

It is PART of my point: I claim the frontier was a factor among more than just one in shaping America.

Thanks for the Russian example, I often see Russia as America's Evil twin, because Europe expanded East and Westwards. One required technology (ships) and self-administration (island continent be AMerica). The other required military dexterity (as you say the Tatars were not easy prey, it was a liberation war the one led by the first Tsar) and probably centralization as it was an extended landmass that could (and can) have the risk of breaking away.

Now you talk about the Russian conquest of Siberia as if that hade been meaningless. Yermak is celebrated even today. Exactly my point, I believe they named Yermak one satellite or saceship of some sort. I believe that if the frontier didn't help the Russian become freer (it might have, look at the cossacks, look at the German settlers in Trans-Volga, or the same Rus fur traders) it certainly made them more expansionist (I am making a direct connection with Space Exploration here, and 1000 years earlier to Arctic and Antarctic exploration)

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Let me be more specific: Objectivism often claims that the root of evil in the American case were the Pilgrims, or their ensrhinement; while often points out how the "true" spirit of America is in Jamestown.

That is argument about essentials and symbolism, not about those cities. In the historical evolution of those cities it was the reverse. The Pilgrims were the just the first to arrive, they were followed by other colonists who were not Pilgrims. By the time of the Revolution Boston grew into a cosmopolitan city based on sea trade. The behavior of the original Tea Partiers was not Pilgrim-ish. Meanwhile, Jamestown was all but completely plowed under and forgotten.

So is it another coincidence that the Sherman Act was passed when the frontier was about to be closed?

Yes. If you are willing to be sufficiently fuzzy in using the term "about", then everything happens at about the same time and everything is coincidental. On the other hand the practice of sending Americans to Europe to be educated, the importation of European professors, and mass immigration from Europe had the effect of changing America's governing philosophy at the same time America was being populated, so it was no coincidence at all.

The point here is that Ayn Rand specifically call for XIXc American Capitalism minus the Christianity.

She does identify that period as the closest to pure capitalism the world has seen, but it is not the ideal and what needed to be removed is not merely the Christianity but the mystical, altruist and statist elements that persisted.

I say that's great but different from Hong Kong or Singapore or "The Internet". To SOME EXTENT Americans were free and "self-reliant" not because they had a Constitution but because they had a horse a gun and prairies as far as the eye could see.

Same could be said about a Cossack.

Sure, to some extent. But what is in common with the Cossacks has different results in America. When the same cause leads to different effects the only conclusion to be drawn is a negative one, this is not important.

Regarding utopia, it is definitely utopic to try to control the future centuries in advance. It is just as true that every tyranny evolves into rebellion and disintegration, so there is no lesson to be learned about what is inevitable. Given enough time both everything and nothing is inevitable.

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You're very much clarifying honoring your signature in Latin. I'll have to think about this better. I believe I'm trying to discriminate a philosophy for Man on Earth from a philosphy for a citizen of the United States of America in the XXc.

Yes. If you are willing to be sufficiently fuzzy in using the term "about", then everything happens at about the same time and everything is coincidental. On the other hand the practice of sending Americans to Europe to be educated, the importation of European professors, and mass immigration from Europe had the effect of changing America's governing philosophy at the same time America was being populated, so it was no coincidence at all.

It's not fuzzy, Human History is long and during the short period between 1860 and 1920 many things happened among them: the second industrial revolution --> the revoke of slavery in the States, the revoke of serfdom in Russia, birth of Nationalism and the subsequent unification of the last European countries (Italy and Germany) and the desintegration of the last European Empire (Austria into 16+ nations). During that same period Antarctica was finally discovered, the South Pole reached, and the last confines of inland Earth were discovered, interconected and settled, in order: Northwest North America (Yukon, Alaska), heart of Africa and Conference of Berlin, and Tibet was reached and charted by Europeans not before the 1900s. At the same period, after the Civil War allowed for a new more centralized Nation to form, America completed its expansion and integration into the newly acquired Western Territories. That allowed for the importation of millions of inmigrants, and culture&education, JUST as it happened pretty much equally in the exact same period in Canada, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina. For a European it was all just "The America, the New World where there is no hunger nor religious oppression" While the results were vastly different, the truth of the matter is that any Russian of the past (and maybe even present) century would have killed for a passport to any of those promissing nations. Even today Brazil or Argentina are great destinations for hungry Ukranians - if they can't get to the states.

My point is that during the crest of European (as an ethno-linguistic group) hegemony, the new territories that were the Canadian and American praries, the Argentine and Uruguayan pampas, the Cuban and Brazilian plantations, (later Australia, much much later Rhodesia which like Cuba failed miserably and was the last and most extreme example in history of what I'm talking about) were open to civilized settlement, and wealth was rather inevitable.

That wealth allowed people to become better in all aspects of life, most particularly in the art of separating private and public affairs, how Ayn Rand describes the process of Civilization.

The concept of frontier plays a key part for it's what allowed that bonus, that advantage best expressed, rather subtly in the wording of this part of one of Ayn Rand's favorite poem:

"

I waste no thought on my neighbor’s birth

Or the way he makes his prayer.

I grant him a white man’s room on earth

If his game is only square."

She does identify that period as the closest to pure capitalism the world has seen, but it is not the ideal and what needed to be removed is not merely the Christianity but the mystical, altruist and statist elements that persisted.

During that period "The White Man" had a bonus, and advantage: "room on earth". And we are now whitnessing the backlash. My quest is to identify how Objectivism applies, or adapts? to the very different stage we're living in. How it does without the wild card on the hand.

I don't believe Objectivism can work in a closed system (such as places and societies like Finland, a Switz Canton) and as territorial Globalization is now complete, the World is a close system. Unless we find a frontier (really the internet is the most obvious example).

The question remains: does Objectivism need a frontier, a space of growth to work?

If governments evolve into Tyranny then don't we need new ones? (for the sake of relating it to the topic of the thread)

it's really the same question

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Currently, I believe the answer to be that it is not possible restrict government in such a way and that all statist governments will eventually lead to tyranny and then destruction. It is obvious that this trend could be prevented, theoretically, if the prevailing will of the people were to keep a vigilant watch on the expansion of government, but this has never been the case.

It has never been the case because there was never proper and adequate philosophical support for the idea of limited government. There was a disagreement from the start which is still very much alive today about the proper function of government. The erosion of what was established started almost from day one. I think that when the society is predominantly driven by altruistic morality and when most are generally confused about where prosperity comes from - it is not possible to restrict the growth of government.

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