My position is that no man, no organism, is truly independent- we all have to take from our environment, we are all bound by our pursuits of happiness.
You are now at the mercy of those who produce so you can loot. This is not dependence, but the exact definition of a parasite.
Roark, then, also fits into your description of a parasite. He needs to kill trees to build, kills animals for meat. Unless you say of course, that parasite only extends to those who deal with men, and stop at the brink of humanity. We cannot treat fellow men as we treat fellow animals.
If this is your reasoning- that only among men can we not loot and steal, and from every other living thing we can- then this is simply a moral that men collectively have developed to ensure their happiness. At this point, we have to agree that morals is simply a component of practicality, and that morals are followed only so long that an individual benefits from following it.
That’s the essence of the failure of current morality: That one must forgo morality to seek self-interest.
There is no dichotomy between morality and self-interest. Proper morality promotes long-term self-interest. Stealing is immoral (because it is a rights violation), and may be in one’s short-term self-interest, but it is not in one’s long-term self-interest.
Long term happiness and short term happiness are usually used to contradict each other, whereas actually one must look at it like this- Long term happiness + short term happiness + everything else= Total practicality in the pursuit of happiness. A robber robs because he thinks that it is in his best self-interest, whether we agree with it or not.
There is no “proper morality”, there is no universal morality for humans. It was moral to invent sailing to benefit humankind. But was it moral for the third of Europeans who died of the bubonic plague? Instead of sailing, those third of Europeans would have chosen to improve their caravans, becoming “second-handers” as Rand would call them.
What we need to realize is that, since we are bound by our pursuits of happiness, every single action we take is a step towards that. There is no action that comes from a living organism that can be condemned, not a single one. Human morality is seen as important only because we want it to be; it give humans a greater chance of being happy. But when morality is impractical for our happiness, such as dropped money on the ground, we will always act against it. Current thought is that there is an absolute morality we must adhere to, but does not realize that all of our actions are moral, and that we act on our values of the moment only.
Again, men’s anguish comes when his value is proven wrong, when it is proven to be not the best for happiness. At this point he must change his value. A man picking up money on the ground knows that he should not do so, because he may lose money someday as well. However, what if it was a million dollars, a billion dollars, is it still immoral? There is only one way to avoid the anguish men face everyday, to be set on ones’ value. This way a man never needs to change, if Roark realized that his modern buildings have a serious flaw, that it is easy to collide in face of earthquakes, he will still keep on building them for those who want them.
Roark will pay what it is worth to him, or he won’t buy. If the most he’s willing to spend is 10 dollars, then he won’t buy if it costs more.
This applies to everyone, a robber robs because it is worth it to him. Peter Keating is the way he is because it is worth it to him. A living being is only the way it is because it believes that being what it is gains him to the best chance of happiness. We are all first-handers in terms of pursuing happiness- we all do what we want to be happy. We are all second-handers in terms of pursuing happiness- we have conformed, when conformation is necessary; we have separated, when separation is necessary.