Reason alone as a guarantee for wealth?

[TomL]

Where's the contradiction? Ayn Rand said "intrinsic

in your sense of the term. If you put that statement back into the context from whence it was ripped, you'll see there is no contradiction between Ayn Rand's quote and what JMeganSnow has said.

[JMeganSnow]

Precisely, there is no "human life" apart from the individual lives of individual men, just as there is no "society" apart from the individual men that make up the society.

"Human life" as such is not the source of values; your own, particular, individual and irreplaceable life is the source and measure of your values. There can be no question of values apart from the person (not the people, the PERSON) doing the valuing.

[Marc K.]

JMeganSnow,

I’m not sure to whom or what the “precisely” is meant to address so I’ll state my position explicitly, see if you agree.

Ayn Rand put life in a special category.

She considered only one phenomenon as an end in itself, only one good as intrinsic: life.

Life, as opposed to death or non-life.

Only the alternative of life vs. death creates the context for value-oriented action, and it does so only if the entity's end is to preserve its life. By the very nature of 'value,' therefore, any code of values must hold life as the ultimate value. All of the Objectivist ethics and politics rests on this principle. An ultimate value, Ayn Rand observes, is the end-in-itself 'which sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated'.

-- Leonard Peikoff, OPAR (p. 212)

So in her letter to John Hospers (the source of the original quote):

Since I regard all values as contextual and hierarchical, I would ultimately regard only one good as "intrinsic," in your sense of the term, namely: life.

-- Ayn Rand, "Letters of Ayn Rand," p. 561

What Miss Rand means is that she regards only one good as “intrinsic” in his [and other intrinsicist’s perverted] sense of the term, namely: life.

---------------------

TomL:

If you think I am taking things out of context, then kindly provide the correct one.

[EC]

The correct context is life of a man qua man. Not life in the biological sense you seem to be alluding to, i.e., simple survival, but life as a man using reason in a productive purpose for the ultimate end, his happiness.

[Marc K.]

The correct context is life of a man qua man. Not life in the biological sense you seem to be alluding to, i.e., simple survival, but life as a man using reason in a productive purpose for the ultimate end, his happiness.

The quote we are trying to keep in context is:

Since I regard all values as contextual and hierarchical, I would ultimately regard only one good as "intrinsic," in your sense of the term, namely: life.

-- Ayn Rand, "Letters of Ayn Rand," p. 561

So applying your context to this means that you think the life of an individual man has inherent (or intrinsic) value. This is wrong. We can judge an individual and value him objectively.

All values are contextual and hierarchical but there must be a starting point. There must be an ultimate value which sets the standard by which we judge all lesser values.

Each of us uses our own lives as the standard to develop our individual hierarchy of values but first we must be alive to do so.

Life is good, death is bad but we don’t judge it so, it just is.

In death there is no value, only the value intrinsic to life allows us to value at all.

This is a difficult issue to integrate especially because the concept of intrinsic value is involved -- a concept Objectivists learn early-on is invalid.

Study the following quote carefully and try to integrate it into your current understanding of value.

Only the alternative of life vs. death creates the context for value-oriented action, and it does so only if the entity's end is to preserve its life. By the very nature of 'value,' therefore, any code of values must hold life as the ultimate value. All of the Objectivist ethics and politics rests on this principle. An ultimate value, Ayn Rand observes, is the end-in-itself 'which sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated'.

-- Leonard Peikoff, OPAR (p. 212)

[JMeganSnow]

Marc K., you have made many errors in your above statements.

First off, you ignore the context of the term "value". Value presupposes the answers to the questions "to whom" and "for what". Only INDIVIDUALS can value, a society, group, etc., cannot value any more than it can THINK, what are commonly called the "values" of a society are simply the most common values of all the individuals involved.

The life of an individual man has value, TO HIM. It can also have value to other people but that is a derivitive, not a primary. His life does not possess intrinsic value even to HIM; however, since having a life is the foundation for ALL his values, if he wishes to value anything he must FIRST value his life.

Life and death are not intrinsically good OR bad. If one has no values to pursue, no desire to live, one can morally choose to put oneself outside the realm of morality, i.e. choose death. One cannot value death, as the notion of death negates the foundation of value, but one can CEASE to value LIFE.

In the quote you have given, Ayn Rand presupposes a human being that values SOMETHING, and she even qualifies her statement by saying that, if she were to speak of ideas such as "intrinsic" etc., then it would be proper to say that she considers life to have "intrinsic" value, however, one who has read the REST of her writings knows that she DOESN'T speak that way.

The term "human life" as it was used earlier in the thread does not refer to the lives of individual men, it refers to some abstract idea of "life" divorced from individual men yet somehow embodied within them. This idea is characterized by such notions as "species survival", that as long as SOME men live, "human life" endures, thus we should act to make sure there are as many humans as possible so that, whatever the disaster, at least SOME of them will survive.

Fragments of this notion are inherent in the ideas of ancestor-worship, reincarnation, and many, many forms of collectivism.

[RoarkLaughed]

Bobby66 said the following in his attempt to learn more about capitalism (he said).

QUOTE

"But just look at those African countries where free trade is being practiced as opposed to those countries where cutting oneself off from the market has logically caused poverty. Now even in these free-trade countries poverty often dominates."

"Just imagining being born there into a poor family and under the circumstances we know, would reason really be of sufficient use to escape poverty?"

My reply:

Bobby, I can give you a perfect example of someone who was born into such a system (Eurasian, not African) and used reason to escape the poverty.

Ayn Rand.

Although her parents were initially wealthy/upper middle-class, they lost almost everything after the Bolshevik Revolution. Rand observed the condition under which she was living, used reason to grasp the fact that America offered better opportunity, escaped a mystical, brutal dictatorship and developed a highly succesful career as an author/philosopher whose work forms the basis of this forum's existence.

Now, do you understand how reason leads to wealth?

[mweiss]

In my opinion, success or failure does depend to some degree on circumstances.

I find that a number of successful people had the fortune of being in the right place at the right time, with the right idea, in front of the right people.

For every success story, there are thousands of failures--people who did much the same types of actions, but lacked the audience of an interested investor, market or regulatory condition.

I am starting to realize too, that success requires DRIVE. If one is feeling fatigued all the time--if one has a low energy level and is timid, shy, reticent--that individual will find it truly difficult, if not impossible, to deal effectively in this brash and rough business world.

I was trying to patent an invention of mine, some 25 years ago, and in my search for a patent attorney, I met an inventor who knew the inventor of a certain type of aircraft propeller. He had gone to a major aircraft manufacturer to sell the idea. Their engineers took the plans, and started discussing changes they would make among themselves, while this inventor overheard, and they rejected his invention, but utilized the plans which they did not return (or made copies of). They stole his ideas right in front of him. The aircraft maker profited greatly from the invention, but the inventor himself never gained a penny and lost thousands trying to prove that they stole his invention. Lacking the deep pockets for an extended trial, he had to drop the suit, as it had bankrupted him.

Back in 1982, I had developed an invention with potentally broad impact on a highly regulated industry. The attornies I approached expressed that it was a very good idea, but that they would not be alive by the time the regulatory red tape had been cleared. My invention got shelved and is nothing more than a memory and a file filled with letters from patent offices.

My next endeavor was typesetting and graphic design. I opened a small business based on the new personal computer technology in the late 80s. I worked hard, pounding the streets every day, soliciting 20 or more businesses a day. I'd land one job, typesetting business cards for $20. In a few years, I made friends with some people who were into Japanese anime and one of them worked for an importer of the progam genre. He introduced me to the CEO of a NYC based firm and I got my first real prepress client. It was rocky from the start, being that the technology was new, untested and fraught with glitches, but I produced a few good advertising packages and made some money. But then the advent of the personal computer became widespread in the early 90s and I was soon replaced by a bunch of minimum wage workers on office computers doing the same work. I was out of the prepress business shortly after that PC revolution.

Now I'm in radio engineering, and I've had a few decent years, until last year, when demand for my services sharply declined. I was forced to raise my rates as my property taxes started to skyrocket in 2001, and the new studios I had built and several stations were running so smoothly that nothing ever broke down anymore and I wasn't being called to fix things as often. Eventually, it got slower and slower, and with satellite radio on the rise, conventional radio is nearing the sunset of its dominance, and with it, my job.

If there is a formula for great wealth, that someone with a sluggish mind can pursue successfully, I would love to learn about it. So far, it's been a life of toil, declining buying power and rising taxes on my home to the point where in another couple of years, we'll be forced to move in with my wife's relatives.

If it sounds like I'm a bit sore, it's because I've received one tax lien too many this month. I'm not a rich guy. I just want the freedom to live my life enjoyably, not toiling at three jobs just to feed an oversized government.

End of rant..

[RoarkLaughed]

In my opinion, success or failure does depend to some degree on circumstances.

If there is a formula for great wealth, that someone with a sluggish mind can pursue successfully, I would love to learn about it. So far, it's been a life of toil, declining buying power and rising taxes on my home to the point where in another couple of years, we'll be forced to move in with my wife's relatives.

If it sounds like I'm a bit sore, it's because I've received one tax lien too many this month. I'm not a rich guy. I just want the freedom to live my life enjoyably, not toiling at three jobs just to feed an oversized government.

End of rant..

MWeiss,

There is a formula for great wealth but it requires your mind to go from sluggish to fully active (and I'm not saying I'm to that point either). In fact you stated part of it=drive. The other part is the ability actively recognizing the evolution of markets, which you seem to be able to do since you have identified the inevitable decline and fall of conventional radio as a viable medium. I'm in the newspaper business and I recognize that my job is going to either dramatically change or be obsolete in a few years. So, I'm exploring options to catch the next market wave and ride it successfully (can you say news-on-demand-via-PDAs?). To understand the mentality of wealth-builders, read "The Millionaire Next Door" and The Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators."

In the spirit of benevolence, I offer some practical solutions to your above-mentioned problems.

Problem: It's been a life of toil

Solution: Break into a market or job that doesn't seem to be toil but jubilation. Geography isn't as important to a specific kind of success as it once was so move somewhere cheaper and continue to market your inventions while working at something you love. Hit Monster.com and find the right job.

Problem: declining buying power and rising taxes on my home to the point where in another couple of years, we'll be forced to move in with my wife's relatives.

Solution: Four Words (Five for emphasis): Get the hell out of CT.

There are plenty of places, especially in my beloved South that offer low tax bases, an efficacious lifestyle and dirt-cheap real estate which also feature easy access to large cities (not New York size but mid-metro range). An example would be the Raleigh-Durham (NC) area (close to major universities, the mountains and the beach as well as boasting a nice high-tech sector). The South is no longer the hillbilly haven portrayed in Deliverance. We even have running water

Besides, we can certainly use more students of Objectivism in the South to combat the religionists who have dominated the culture (though not for long). Of course, I understand there may be circumstances that may prevent a move but first embrace the mentality that says: "How can I make a change," instead of "I can't make a change."

To bring this back to the topic in a more abstract way, realize that wealth creation is not a zero-sum game — possibilities are infinite as long as we retain even a modified/bastardized version of capitalism (OK, it's technically a mixed economy so don't smack me). I'm trying to inject a note of reasonable optimism into the thread because to quote Rand: "The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."

[Marc K.]

First off, you ignore the context of the term "value".  Value presupposes the answers to the questions "to whom" and "for what".  Only INDIVIDUALS can value, a society, group, etc., cannot value any more than it can THINK, what are commonly called the "values" of a society are simply the most common values of all the individuals involved.

First off, I have said NOTHING in contradiction of this and have NOT mentioned or alluded to society ever.

Hmmm, does the term “value” exist in one context only? I think not. It is you who are ignoring the metaphysical context that I have carefully enumerated. So let me try again quoting Ayn Rand from “The Objectivist Ethics”, VOS:

An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means -- and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. [...]

Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means [...]. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of “life.” To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.”

To expand on this we might say that value exists apart from human beings. We know this since plants and animals also value. They value automatically, but they do value.

His life does not possess intrinsic value even to HIM

This is precisely what I have said, here:

[...] you think the life of an individual man has inherent (or intrinsic) value. This is wrong. We can judge an individual and value him objectively.

If one has no values to pursue, no desire to live, one can morally choose to put oneself outside the realm of morality, i.e. choose death.

I don’t think one can morally choose to put oneself outside of morality, this is a contradiction in terms.

In the quote you have given, Ayn Rand presupposes a human being that values SOMETHING, and she even qualifies her statement by saying that, if she were to speak of ideas such as "intrinsic" etc., then it would be proper to say that she considers life to have "intrinsic" value [...]

No, if this was the context she had intended she would have said “a life” or “an individual human life” or “the life of man qua man”. Instead she uses the most basic, metaphysical concept of life, meaning life as opposed to death or non-life -- existence vs. nonexistence.

Be that as it may, the part of your quote I have emphasized corresponds precisely with what I have said here:

What Miss Rand means is that she regards only one good as “intrinsic” in his [and other intrinsicist’s perverted] sense of the term, namely: life.

The term "human life" as it was used earlier in the thread does not refer to the lives of individual men, it refers to some abstract idea of "life" divorced from individual men yet somehow embodied within them.  This idea is characterized by such notions as "species survival", that as long as SOME men live, "human life" endures, thus we should act to make sure there are as many humans as possible so that, whatever the disaster, at least SOME of them will survive.

I am not the one who used the term “human life” and in fact I have no idea to what it refers. This confusion was the impetus behind my original clarification. Again, I have said NOTHING in contradiction of this.

Marc K., you have made many errors in your above statements.

[...]

Fragments of this notion are inherent in the ideas of ancestor-worship, reincarnation, and many, many forms of collectivism.

Let me end by saying that if you want to have a friendly conversation, I am happy to do so. However, ignoring the context I have been careful to specify and making unsupported accusations of error on my part by attributing claims to me that I never made is hardly friendly. And further, to imply that my argument echoes of collectivism by the same fallacious process is a slap in the face that grates on my benevolent nature.

So please, in the future, quote what you consider to be my most egregious errors and demonstrate where I have gone wrong using logical argumentation and perhaps an occasional Ayn Rand quote. Or if you don’t understand what I have written, ask questions.

Sincerely,

Marc

P.S. -- This is an important issue probably deserving of its own thread if we want to continue in this vein.

[JMeganSnow]

First off, I have said NOTHING in contradiction of this and have NOT mentioned or alluded to society ever.

In the context of this thread the term "human life" was being used as a collectivist idea by Bobby66. It was that erroneous use of the term that I was trying to denounce and correct, not the general Objectivist principle of life as the ultimate source of values.

I continue to maintain that life does not have an intrinsic value (however I now understand what you meant to be the context for that quote so we are not in disagreement); if life holds only misery and pain with no hope of escape, it has no value.

[Bobby66]

Bobby66:

I want to be careful not to compare you to Hitler because that is an insult few in the history of man deserve. But I do want to show you how your argument is the same as his so that you may reevaluate your philosophy. Please take it in the benevolent manner in which it is intended.

Hitler used genetic determinism to deprive certain groups of individuals of their rights, you do the same.

He used genetics to determine who was good and who was evil and went about destroying the evil.

You use genetics to determine who is deserving of a sacrifice (the handicapped) and then you use ability to pay as the means to determine who will be sacrificed (the wealthy).

This is pure evil.

Does the phrase “from each according to their ability to each according to their need” ring a bell? In order to grasp the evil contained therein you must read Ayn Rand and understand the ideas that compose Objectivism: the only fully rational, completely integrated philosophy.

OK, but let me show you why any comparison to Hitler would be purely and simply false:

Contrary to Hitler, I don't use genetic determinism to justify the killing of millions of innocent jews.

Contrary to Hitler, I don't just pick out some incomplete scientific knowledge to support some racist ideology. Hitler claimed to have proof for a "superiority of the aryan race", completely ignoring for example, how all major sports in the US (Football, Basketball, Baseball) (apart from Hockey) are dominated by blacks, completely ignoring that the most intelligent human being at that time, Albert Einstein, was a jew, which was why Hitler turned down any knowledge of nuclear physics as "jewish deception", thus proving to be nothing but an obsessional neurotic, as well as a madman and coward.

Contrary to Hitler, my aims are not to deprive anyone of anything for the sake of a non-existing "racial superiority" but, if at all, to redirect certain excesses of happiness to the blind, deaf, mentally retarded, excesses, which otherwise would be wasted, because no billionaire can ever enjoy every single Dollar he owns more than a millionaire. He's just kinda cheating himself when he claims that.

I now understand why there's no moral way to force anyone to give to charity and that there's no right to expect it, so I'm taking back the my-life-your-life dichotomy I presented earlier in this thread. But I'm trying to show why altruism (in the sense I described it) can be worth practicing.

Objectivism doesn't state what exactly life should be, except for "the own life of an individual", thus leaving it over to the individual to decide what he should pursue. And that's fair enough, there's no argument for forcing someone to anything else. I have only given a scientific, an thus objective describtion of human desires and concluded what makes sense to aim at, based on that desires. If you apply my meaning of altruism, you'll find that it only supports that aim. But most probably you simply didn't understand what aspect of altruism I was talking about. I think this excerpt from Wikipedia's article on altruism describes what I meant:

In common parlance, however, altruism usually means helping another person without expecting material reward from that or other persons, although it may well entail the "internal" benefit of a "good feeling," sense of satisfaction, self-esteem, fulfillment of duty (whether imposed by a religion or ideology or simply one's conscience), or the like. In this way one need not speculate on the motives of the altruist in question.

And now I must warn you, with the following statement you have become an advocate of evil:

This is the idea that is responsible for nearly every evil of scale in recorded human history and the idea which completely contradicts Objectivism.

Please read the forum rules, such advocacy is not allowed on this forum.

If you think its evil to give to charity, evil to fight aids in Africa and evil to provide foreign aid to third world countries, which all are acts of altruism, then I simply can't argue with you.

But probably you don't, and we were just having different semantics of the term "altruism".

I hope we can leave it at that, because Niki is right, we're really getting off topic here.

[Nxixcxk]

In common parlance, however, altruism usually means helping another person without expecting material reward from that or other persons, although it may well entail the "internal" benefit of a "good feeling," sense of satisfaction, self-esteem, fulfillment of duty (whether imposed by a religion or ideology or simply one's conscience), or the like. In this way one need not speculate on the motives of the altruist in question.

This definition (if you can even call it that) is contrary to any definition of altruism that I've found.

Altruism IS selflessness. Practice complete selflessness for three days and if you are able to come back and describe what a wonderful experience it was, I'll give altruism more inspection and consideration.

If this "type" of altruism is not your position, then what exactly IS your position?

I now understand why there's no moral way to force anyone to give to charity and that there's no right to expect it, so I'm taking back the my-life-your-life dichotomy I presented earlier in this thread. But I'm trying to show why altruism (in the sense I described it) can be worth practicing.

What is the difference between this view here and Objectivism's idea of living for one's self?

[Bobby66]

What is the difference between this view here and Objectivism's idea of living for one's self?

Does this question refer to both of my sentences or only the first?

In case it's the first sentence:

You answered the question yourself. The difference is that my view is a view, that is to say a judgement on how far politics can be morally allowed to interfere with private life, not an idea, not a guide for live. The latter is a private issue, where I can at most give advise.

[Bobby66]

This definition (if you can even call it that) is contrary to any definition of altruism that I've found.

Altruism IS selflessness. Practice complete selflessness for three days and if you are able to come back and describe what a wonderful experience it was, I'll give altruism more inspection and consideration.

If this "type" of altruism is not your position, then what exactly IS your position?

My position on this is rather a positive hedonist one, but to understand that you must apply the meaning derived from my wikipedia excerpt, not "selflessness". This, and not only selflessness, is the meaning applied in many circles that consider themselves "pro altruist". I think it's chiefly this semantical confusion that causes unneccessary quarrels between people. Of course there are people that think you should suffer for the sake of suffering, which we would surely both view as complete nonsense.

Edited April 18, 2005 by Bobby66

[mweiss]

MWeiss,

There is a formula for great wealth but it requires your mind to go from sluggish to fully active (and I'm not saying I'm to that point either).  In fact you stated part of it=drive. The other part is the ability actively recognizing the evolution of markets, which you seem to be able to do since you have identified the inevitable  ...... 

To understand the mentality of wealth-builders, read "The Millionaire Next Door" and The Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators."

In the spirit of benevolence, I offer some practical solutions to your above-mentioned problems.

Problem:  It's been a life of toil

Solution: Break into a market or job that doesn't seem to be toil but jubilation. Geography isn't as important to a specific kind of success as it once was so move somewhere cheaper and continue to market your inventions while working at something you love. Hit Monster.com and find the right job.

Problem: declining buying power and rising taxes on my home to the point where in another couple of years, we'll be forced to move in with my wife's relatives.

Solution:  Four Words (Five for emphasis): Get the hell out of CT.

There are plenty of places, especially in my beloved South that offer low tax bases, an efficacious lifestyle and dirt-cheap real estate which also feature easy access to large cities (not New York size but mid-metro range). An example would be the Raleigh-Durham (NC) area (close to major universities, the mountains and the beach as well as boasting a nice high-tech sector).  The South is no longer the hillbilly haven portrayed in Deliverance. We even have running water

Besides, we can certainly use more students of Objectivism in the South to combat the religionists who have dominated the culture (though not for long).  Of course, I understand there may be circumstances that may prevent a move but first embrace the mentality that says: "How can I make a change," instead of "I can't make a change."

To bring this back to the topic in a more abstract way, realize that wealth creation is not a zero-sum game — possibilities are infinite as long as we retain even a modified/bastardized version of capitalism (OK, it's technically a mixed economy so don't smack me). I'm trying to inject a note of reasonable optimism into the thread because to quote Rand: "The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."

Thank you for a well-though out response. And thank you for the two book title suggestions. I will pick them up soon.

I am doing everything I can to break into a market that I enjoy.

I realized about twenty years ago that I could never work out in a regular 9-5 job. There were just too many social, environmental and political conflicts, not to mention the commutes and the low wages. I literally quit on the spot, a factory job I had twenty years ago, when a recent illness brought on by inhalation of paper fibers in the mill, caused me to exceed the 8-days per year sick leave, triggering a 3-day suspension. That event spurred me to break out on my own. It was a disaster. The first time I did so, I did all the legal trappings of a legitimate business, opened a business bank account, after registering a trade name in the county, got all the licenses, and did the advertising. I got whomped big time on taxes and had to close that publishing business the following year.

Since 1968, I had come to realize that everything I do was toward satisfying my interest in media communications. Everything--the electronics, building radio transmitters in the 70s, the "DTP" revolution I jumped on in the 80s, the music/MIDI revolution in the 90s, and now the video/animation/CGI revolution.

I just love to tinker with these things. Money was never a big object of interest to me, actually. It was playing with new technology, testing it out, seeing what it can do, and creating some interesting end products with that technology.

However, unlike the stock broker, money is not my interest, nor is making it. Sure, I'd love to have money, because it lets me by more toys, and provides a buffer against Totalitarian thuggery, but I view money as a necessary evil, not something that is positive in my life.

While I realize that energy, drive and ambition are important factors, I was doing some introspection recently that led me to suspect that a contributing factor for me is fear of PARTIAL success--just enough economic success to get into trouble with taxes. Just enough to get bogged down in corporate paperwork, regulations, tax reporting requirements, etc. Once you go above the poverty line, the tax burden becomes huge. And one becomes under a great deal of pressure to estimate quarterly taxes, and pay taxes and fines at the end of the year if one underestimates. To be working really hard, and make it that far is a scary point. Especially when so many of the ventures I have started have had a short lifetime. The business goes bust after two years, but one is left cleaning up the tax fallout for the next seven.

So maybe partial success, to the point where I go from paying little to no tax to paying a large majority of my earnings in tax, but not really making enough profit to make the hassle of the paperwork and taxes worthwhile, is providing another negative incentive for me. Living below the poverty line for the past 20 years has been a fascinating realization: that I can live just as well on $8000/year paying no income tax, as I could living on $50,000 or more a year and paying full income taxes and lawyers and accountants' fees.

The property taxes are the biggest problem in my life now, and have been since the 2000 revaluation. But selling is not a clear solution. I won't go into details, but I'll say that the property is 'unbelievable'--it has environmental issues (which don't bother me, but would invoke certain EPA laws that would trigger cleanup costs that would be four times the value of the property), the house is self-built, but now 40 years old and has never been finished, thus suffers deterioration/water damage from incomplete/improper weatherproofing/roofing, and I have been on a reconstruction phase for the past four years, trying to demolish and rebuild whole rooms at a time. The house has sentimental value; the property has been in the family for generations. I also consider CT to be safe, geologically and meterologically--we haven't experienced killer earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and devastating fires, the way much of the rest of the country seems to. Our only danger is government up here.

So I'm between a rock and a hard place here. I could not get enough money for the place (assuming putting it on the market would not result in a real estate agent reporting the place for condemnation), but at the same time, the town no longer considers condition of the property because doing so would encourage every property owner to let it go to pot, so it is based on square footage and locality (prevailing property sale prices) and with million dollar homes springing up all around me in the past 5-7 years, I've been shocked by the increase in my home's valuation. Too bad I cannot sell for that amount, lest I'd be able to build a really nice home somewhere else.

Another factor is that my clients are here and my wife has a full-time job close to home. Moving would make us both unemployed, with no certainty that we'd find work at the new location. My wife has also formed bonds with many people in her Fil-Am association, which has helped her to adjust to the relatively isolated residential location with no neighbors nearby.

Now if I made a million or more dollars a year after taxes, I wouldn't feel bad about paying these taxes, but with me earning next to zip after business expenses (this year I reported a -$63 business profit after all expenses were deducted on my Schedule C), having to pay the price of a car every year in two lump sum payments is just killing me.

If there were a large community in a favorable state, in which the community were made up of Objectivists, I would be more likely to risk a move, but as it is, even NC is still too religious for my liking and I find that there seem to be more horror stories of corrupt cops down there than up here. For all the problems we have with taxes, I have to admit that the cops up here handle situations with skill and courtesy. Down south, they are corrupt and steal property from individuals just for passing through their state (thinking of the I-10 car confiscation scandals).

The world I desire may exist in some abstract, but right now there are too many imbeciles out there who believe strongly that society is the most valuable entity that individuals should be glad to sacrifice to it. I am engaged in countless arguments with these people in forums all over the internet, and while there are maybe 2% who roughly agree with me, there are 60% for vehemently attack what I say, attack Ayn Rand, and who express Kantian ideas whilst claimng they are originating their own ideas.

So can it be that fatigue is a metal disorder that stems from the overwhelming attitude of "why should I struggle hard if the government is going to take it all in taxes?"

Speaking as a 'marginal performer' for the majority of my life of doing other people's bidding (going to public schools, working 9-5 jobs, etc.), I am often frustrated that I don't feel motivated to any particular endeavor. While I like working with computer hardware used in media production, I don't see a clear career point for myself. But all through public school, I felt disinterested, unmotivated and wanted to be elsewhere. The same was true with the first 5-6 jobs that I held. Since I've been freelance, I have never been happier, but the problem is that the earnings are not enough to pay the property taxes anymore. My wife's earnings pay the utility bills and buy food and clothing for our daughter and that's about it.

I think I perform much better when I'm in control and I'm working for myself, but the problem is that there is little market for the product of my passionate interest, and the field is very competitive, with only the very best, young, energetic and quick-minded getting into positions where they enjoy a semblance of real income.

I have to work very long, hard days and commute hundreds of miles a day to make a decent living. When a construction project comes up, I'm working like this for up to 8 weeks and earn 70% of my annual income in that time. But I am thankful it's a temporary condition, because I grow tired of the stress of commuting and physically tired from the long hours of physical work. I feel jealous of the people who get by nicely on 3 hours' sleep--I need 10-12 just to feel awake enough to drive without nodding off at the wheel!

If I can solve this problem, a major obstacle will have been removed from between me and financial success.

[Marc K.]

I continue to maintain that life does not have an intrinsic value (however I now understand what you meant to be the context for that quote so we are not in disagreement); if life holds only misery and pain with no hope of escape, it has no value.

It is apparent to me that we are still working from different contexts.

If the life of an individual held only misery and pain, then we could properly judge it to have no value.

What we cannot judge is that which allows us to value in the first place: the phenomenon of life. It is a metaphysical fact that we must be alive in order to make a choice.

And as Leonard Peikoff said in OPAR pg. 213:

The distinctively Objectivist viewpoint here, let me repeat, is not that life is a precondition of other values -- not that one must remain alive in order to act. This idea is a truism, not a philosophy.

[backpacker]

Does it matter whether equality of opportunity exists? If I happen to be born in a more fortunate position than someone else, does this create an obligation for me to help them?

Consider the following: some people are born far more physically attractive than others, and these people will be more likely to attract the 'best' members of the opposite sex thus increasing their chances of being happy. If someone were to declare that this were unfair, and that good-looking males were morally obliged to help their less physically well-off brethren find mates (or worse - that they should forcibly disfigured, or legally compelled to sleep with unattractive women etc), would this be a moral idea? This is pretty much identical to the case with earning potential.

what abut gens?

and brain chemicals ?

(will it not mean that you aslo need the rhigt to good genteherapy and smart drugs just like you have the rhigt over your private propety ?)

soory 2. lanuges are enghlis