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Several questions for Objectivists.

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Karmorda

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1: Were does the right to private property come from?

2: Whats the common Objectivist opinion on strikes, do you believe the government should intervene to protect companies from strikes?

3: I noticed the forum rules say "Participants agree not use the website to spread ideas contrary to Objectivism. Examples include religion, communism, "moral tolerationism," and libertarianism." why the hostility to libertarianism? I understand there are differences between it and objectivism but both pretty much follow the same course of "less government , more freedom".

4: I noticed a lot of Objectivists (including Ayn Rand herself) are ardent supports of Israel , however doesn't the fact that Palestinian land was taken and given to Jewish settelers when Israel was founded clearey violate the "right to private property".

*please excuse any grammer or spelling mistakes , English is not my first lanquage*

Edited by Karmorda
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Welcome to OO.net

The forum has been around for some year, so you should be able to find some answers to your questions by using search.

1. The right to property comes from figuring out what it takes for people to free, but in society

2. If a strike is peaceful, the government should not intervene. Still, a company should have the right to fire the strikers (within the bounds of any contract it has signed).

3. --- use search, this is an oft-repeated topic --

4. This too has come up often. Palestinians as a collective did not own land, individual people did. If Mexicans and other foreign individuals with no nefarious agenda want to come to the U.S. in overwhelming numbers and buy up land, they should be free to do so.

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1: Were does the right to private property come from?

2: Whats the common Objectivist opinion on strikes, do you believe the government should intervene to protect companies from strikes?

3: I noticed the forum rules say "Participants agree not use the website to spread ideas contrary to Objectivism. Examples include religion, communism, "moral tolerationism," and libertarianism." why the hostility to libertarianism? I understand there are differences between it and objectivism but both pretty much follow the same course of "less government , more freedom".

4: I noticed a lot of Objectivists (including Ayn Rand herself) are ardent supports of Israel , however doesn't the fact that Palestinian land was taken and given to Jewish settelers when Israel was founded clearey violate the "right to private property".

*please excuse any grammer or spelling mistakes , English is not my first lanquage*

1. It is a primary right and immediately follows from the right to life.

2. Strikes of employees are perfectly acceptable; protecting the strikers' jobs is not. Amd government-sponsored (e.g. public) unions do not serve a rational purpose as did original private unions.

3. Libertarianism is not a philosophy; being imcomplete, it makes many errors unacceptable to Obj.ists. Its errors can certainly be discussed. But Obj.ism should not be irrationally challenged in this forum.

4. Lands were taken in war after being attacked by Arab nations. They are retained for their own safety given the goal of neighboring arabs is to destroy them.

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I'll take a stab at it.

1: My Right to Property follows from My Right of Self-Determination: I own (and can dispose of) that which I obtain/possess without violating another's Right of Self-Determination. I possess my Life without violating another's Right; so my Life is my Property, and mine to dispose of, i.e., mine to make decisions with respect to without requiring permission from others. I am the sovereign possessor of my Right of Self-Determination and all that follows from it.

2: No one is allowed to trespass, as that would be violating the Right of Self-Determination of the owner of the property. So, requiring business owners to allow free association of strikers on business property is baloney. On the other hand, if strikers picket outside business property per se, then the question is, do the strikers maliciously interfere with the natural business? In this context, it ought not be sufficient for the business to show a marketing or public relations problem as damages; but, if the business can demonstrate that strikers maliciously interfered in material fashion, e.g., holding pu pizza deliveries or something where time is of the essence to service provision, then I think there is a case to be made that police ought to enforce the business owner's right to work towards earning a living. Not sure how this jibes with common position, but the point is, do the strikers respect the Right of the business owner? And vice versa? Legally, nothing much else matters.

3: Well no, Objectivism does not follow "less government, more freedom" per se. Objectivism follows the precept "less fantasy, more reason". In this regard, government intrusion into value judgments and disposition of economic values is considered highly subversive of the human spirit, and hence highly destructive of economic wealth. Thus, Objectivism advocates separation of State from Economics, strictly speaking. The problem with libertarianism is that it tends to veer into various forms of anarchic thought. Objectivism considers government a necessary GOOD, not a necessary evil. That is, I think, the difference.

4: Regarding Israel, I have no idea what you are talking about. Versus the various strains of quasi-Arabic monarchies, of course, a constitutional republic such as Israel looks dang good to Objectivists. By comparison, I saying, not necessarily on an absolute scale. Is that what you are referring to?

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1: Were does the right to private property come from?

2: Whats the common Objectivist opinion on strikes, do you believe the government should intervene to protect companies from strikes?

3: I noticed the forum rules say "Participants agree not use the website to spread ideas contrary to Objectivism. Examples include religion, communism, "moral tolerationism," and libertarianism." why the hostility to libertarianism? I understand there are differences between it and objectivism but both pretty much follow the same course of "less government , more freedom".

4: I noticed a lot of Objectivists (including Ayn Rand herself) are ardent supports of Israel , however doesn't the fact that Palestinian land was taken and given to Jewish settelers when Israel was founded clearey violate the "right to private property".

*please excuse any grammer or spelling mistakes , English is not my first lanquage*

1. The most fundamental answer is “the law of identity” as applied to man's nature and the facts of reality. A quick walkthrough of what this basically means that we examine man and see that he is a being of a specific nature, and therefore has certain requirements and needs for survival and flourishing life. In ethics, we look at these requirements and proscribe norms to guide in how to accomplish that. We also see through ethics that since man's life is the ultimate value, ever man is an end in himself, not the means to any further end. So when we combine these realizations, that man survives in a certain way, and that if he is to survive and thrive, he needs to do certain things, thus we arrive at the concept of rights. Since these moral norms come from man's nature, all rights are an indissoluble whole, such as the right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc.

Not only do we look at man's nature, but also the world around us. We see that we do not live in the Garden of Eden or in some Heaven and we do not float about like ghosts in some immaterial world. So given the kind of being we are, and reality being what it is, we arrive at the realization that the only way to implement man's rights, including the right to life, liberty, etc., is the concept of private property. So the right to private property is implicit in all rights, as without ownership and control over our minds and physical bodies, and over our own lives and work, then no independent action would be possible at all. For example, the abstract "right to free speech" is not some vague concept floating around, but the private property right of an individual to write a newspaper collumn, or to purchase a concert hall, or buy airtime on radio or television, or to assemble on some property you have permission to be on, and without the individual property rights involved, there would be no objective way to implement "freedom of speech" without some contradiction or conflict.

Key to understanding this would be reading four articles:

The Objectivist Ethics

Man's Rights

The Nature of Government

Collectivized “Rights”

2. Since every man has a right to his own life, and must live by his own rational judgment, then it is certainly possible that men can come into conflict over value-judgments. The whole point of a government, according to Objectivism, is to ensure that each man can live by his judgment, without forcing or sacrificing others. If two men agree on some value, they can trade. If they disagree, they still can only deal with each other by means of reason, not violence. One can only secure his rational self-interest through production and exchange, not parasitism and violence.

In a strike, we basically have the management which evaluates the labor services of workers to be a certain amount he is willing to pay, and you have the workers themselves which evaluate their labor services to be a certain amount they want to be paid. In a free society, the law of supply and demand determines prices, including the price of labor services. There is no intrinsic “fair price” or “just wage” or whatever that in the eyes of God or the central planners constitutes the inherently “right” price or wage. Men have a right to organize into unions, provided no one is forced to join, and provided no management is forced to deal with them. Management has a right to ignore the union demands or fire workers and seek others that are willing to work at the wages offered. The fact that the workers are demanding to be paid more is simply their pursuit of their own economic self-interest, as the management trying to pay a low price for labor services is pursuing his. Just like when you go to the store, for any other purchase, you want to pay less, the seller wants to get more. The law of supply and demand solves the problem. If the buyer's demands are too high, the seller will go somewhere else. If his demands are unjustified, then you will find a cheaper seller. There is no rational reason for any intervention. The only role of the government in the event of a strike is the general police forces and law courts to protect people from the initiation of violence and to protect contracts.

This issue is addressed in Rand's book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Chapter 5 “Common Fallacies About Capitalism,” in the third section “The Role of Labor Unions.”

3. Believe it or not, Objectivism isn't primarily even about politics. Libertarianism is basically the attempt to arrive at freedom without delving into philosophy. Needless to say, Objectivists just generally think this is wrong. Freedom, to the Objectivist, isn't some axiomatic or self-evident thing, it has to be adduced from reference to an ethics and its roots in metaphysics and epistemology So they don't accept the approach of the libertarians, nor the conclusions of all the different types of libertarian, which ranges from anarchists to religionists to drug-users to nihilists, and all sorts of various idiots and plain scum. Aptly enough, while most libertarians consider all these philosophically disperate groups to be libertarians, but they don't even accept Objectivists as a type of libertarian, because they insist too much on there being one rational justification for political liberty (i.e. the same reason why most people reject Objectivism: because they stubbornly insist on one reality and truth, and won't let you have your whims.)

A key article to understanding this is “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty” in Ayn Rand's book The Voice of Reason.

4. Snerd's answer above was pretty much succinct on this. We don't consider this “Palestinian land” or belonging to the Palestinian people. By defending Israel, we are defending the homesteading principle and the rights of European settlers to homestead and (as they mostly did) buy up land and erect a civilized Western nation amidst wilderness. Jewish settlers did the same, as did Boers in the Transvaal, as Spanish settlers in Argentina, or as the various Europeans did in North America for that matter. The fact that some religious fanatics and racists declared war on them and some got kicked off their land is all the more reason to support the Israelis. We are not, as some neoconservatives and such often are, “Israel Firsters,” or support Israel out of some sort of religious eschatological attachment. Our support only goes as far as moral values we have in common, namely in defending Western civilization against mysticism and tribalism.

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Other people already answered the questions sufficiently, so I'm only approaching property right from a more concrete perspective.

1.

For a scientist being allowed to think means being allowed to check thinking with experiments. Furthermore, scientists think about the results of experiments which may be performed, based on the results of prior experiments. Without the ability to earn property or material resources a scientist cannot actually perform experiments, and no scientific thinking is possible in the realm of natural philosophy. The more ambitious the man and the greater his vision - the more long term his effort will be and the more he will need property rights.

Whether you're trying to draft a theoretical model or create a business, you need the product of your labor to remain in your hands.

"When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind." - AR

Edited by Q.E.D.
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A key article to understanding this is “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty” in Ayn Rand's book The Voice of Reason.

I have this booklet by Schwartz, while it is good in some respects, it is not in others. I suggest people look at other sources as well for the issues surrounding Objectivism and Libertarianism.

Edited by CapitalistSwine
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