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I didn't "mispresent" his post, it stood on its own. Anyone here can read what he said and know what he meant. I am simply pointing out a very closely related issue. I don't know why this needs to be pointed out to you. Your posts frequently send the following implicit message to me: "I, George, am intimidated by Shayne, and will ignore almost any good point he has, or fabricate any spin no matter how egregiously dishonest, in order to try to make him appear smaller than me." The only trouble with your apparent strategy George is that it only works on acolytes; an actual reasoning human being can see what I said and why I said it. Shayne

You had no opinion on a very severe problem: patents. Also, you admitted to facts that clearly lead to small businesses being killed to the benefit of big ones. You are arguing more from bias than from actual understanding. Shayne

It has nothing to do with your intentions. I know Dennis doesn't mean to endorse either (or at least hope he doesn't). But if countenance one kind of injustice while railing on a different kind, it sends a message. I don't know why this must be explained to you. Shayne

Bob_Mac, it's unclear to me what your overall point was intended to be. You quibble over some details but your quibbling doesn't seem to add up to much. Shayne

Yes, I've noticed that a number of things are beyond you. Objectivists have for years been biased in their attention toward communist elements in government while virtually ignoring fascist/corporatist elements. This lack of attention is an implicit endorsement of these fascist elements. A lack of attention in general stimulates communist sentiments in the public at large. They do not comprehend precisely what is going on nor what the solution is, they just see a bunch of masters and they are associated with big money, big banks, big business (who get bailouts when they fail so they stay in their positions of power). To blame the average person for drawing an obvious conclusion from the premises is more stupid than their mistaken conclusion. Your job is to teach them what's what and you're failing. Shayne

Quoting from my book: Consider the following fascist tendencies in the United States: Onerous tax codes heavily favor big business over small business, for it is very simple for a big business to hire a professional accountant, but a huge burden for a small business to do so. Only big business can afford to pay for lobbyists in Washington. Therefore, the political tendency is to favor big business. Only big business can afford to jump through all the legal hoops required in order to obtain investment capital from the general public. Only big business can afford to devise and implement the complicated tax-shelter schemes the current legal environment encourages. In spite of the propaganda about patents benefiting individual inventors, the facts demonstrate quite the opposite. Patents guarantee that big business can hold its monopoly position over small businesses. Indeed, even the allegation of infringement can cost a small business a million dollars to defend, something easy for the big business to handle, but impossible for the small business. The Federal Reserve hands out money at low or no interest to big businesses, who then either use it to compete directly with small businesses who have no such access to cheap fiat money, or loan the money out at substantially marked up rates to the smaller businesses. Among many other victims of this process is the small farmer, who has systematically been driven out of business by the banking system. There is a revolving door between many big businesses and big government positions. This biases laws and their application in favor of big business. Government regulatory compliance is virtually impossible for small businesses in some fields. This leads not only to the stifling of small business, but the removal of life-saving products from the marketplace. Government dominion over wild lands greatly favors rich and connected individuals when it comes to getting permission to extract natural resources. The whole history of medical insurance is the history of individuals losing their ability to insure themselves in favor of big business's ability to shackle the individual to their job, all made possible by government regulations. This again favors the big business over the small one. Only big businesses can be “too big to fail” and get bailed out of mistakes that would bury any small businessman. So it's obviously a big racket. Big government likes big business. To borrow a phrase from Ayn Rand: it makes one neck ready for one leash. (Ironically, Ayn Rand's followers, the Objectivists, can be generally be relied on to come to the defense of big business while remaining almost totally silent on rights-violating actions of government that favor big business at the expense of small business. But this fascist shift is a reversion to a form of serfdom or slavery; it is a step backward for human society and is something that must be understood and fought and reversed.)

"Party Line" Objectivists are useful idiots for this kind of thing. The storm clouds are gathering and yet they persist in their antics. Shayne

Speaking of the Nazi salute: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute Shayne

Dennis, If you want to defend the wealthy, defend the equality of rights of all men. But all you're doing here is defending fascism/corporatism, and if the communist reaction to the fascism continues, the wealthy will be beyond your help. Shayne

Would a free, rational, moral people pay for something they were convinced they were getting value from? The answer is easy: certainly they would. Ninth's question is unimportant. Shayne

It sounds like you're about as naive as I am about liberals (or at least this class of them). Shayne

In a recent discussion with some self-professed "rational", "scientific", "atheist" liberals, I was discussing with the the ideas in my book, "For Individual Rights". I didn't get too far when each of these liberals picked up one of the following themes and started relentlessly, zealously, self-righteously trying to make the case that: Liberty is slavery Liberty is racism Liberty is crime Liberty is sociopathy/psychopathy/mental disease One liberal making the last case even went so far as saying that in the future, people like me would be forcibly "cured" by being held down and medically manipulated until I adopted "healthy", collective-oriented thinking patterns. The manner in which they were doing this was bizarrely disconnected from anything I was saying, and they were utterly immune from being in any way corrected. The whole experience reminded me of a book I had read, "The Masks of Communism". Is this a common thing among liberals? If so, they are far worse than I'd ever supposed. Has anyone experienced anything like this? I did see Chris Mathews pull something very similar. It seems like there's a liberal playbook here. Shayne

You're such a petty little sniveling coward Ninth. How long have you held this grudge since I kicked your ass in debate? Hasn't it been over a year now? You'd think you'd get over it by now. But no, it's still cowardly snipe here and cowardly snipe there. I didn't watch your little home video of yourself getting neutered, the after effects are off-putting enough as it is. Shayne

I'd call that psychologically revealing, if I didn't already have some kind of sense for Ninth's psychology. Shayne

This is perhaps the matter that separates the dogmatists from the actually rational thinkers. For the dogmatists, their perceptions are their unquestioned presumptions and are the end of the philosophical road for them. Because Nature is not perverse, they often appear to be correct; but because she is sometimes subtle, they can often be found persistently stuck in delusions. And nothing will help them with the latter; it appears to be fundamental to how they are using their minds, including how they use them while you try to get them unstuck. Shayne

I think George is intimidated. Otherwise he'd be less sarcastic and more edifying about what is really going on. ShayneI prefer to discuss Hume with people who actually have a clue about his ideas. That definitely leaves you out. Whether intentionally or not, you are actually a model Humean. Every time you blink it is a new day. Ghs Actually, you'd rather kick dust into the air than answer the OP's question. Your sarcasm and personal attacks are utterly irrelevant to the question on the table, but I presume you're hoping that no one will notice. Shayne

I think George is intimidated. Otherwise he'd be less sarcastic and more edifying about what is really going on. Shayne

Mormons take that approach too. It works! Shayne -Anyone will believe anything, so long as you're nice enough to them when you say it.

You're grossly misinterpreting Hume George, but far be it from me to try to convince you otherwise. Shayne

I recognize that many corporations are unwilling corporations. They do not want to be a branch of the government. Yet most are quite willing and happy with the situation overall. I think even Apple, as good as they are, is quite happy to block competitors using bogus patent suits. If they get smacked in the face with antitrust suits at some point, they will have earned it. Shayne

A mental identification is a cause, a perception is an effect of the cause. We reason from the effect to the cause by integrating not just a single percept, but many over time. Read David Hume's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", he was far, far better than Rand at analyzing matters like this in slow motion, but I would warn that it's easy to misread him. Shayne

That we we cannot do in order to make the distinction between a perception and its object. Since I can't see without seeing something, and I can't see something without seeing, how can I distinguish between "seeing" and "what I see" using an ostensive definition? Oh you're talking about Rand's theory. Yeah she had some confusions, particularly at the foundation of her epistemology. What can one say? Shayne

Brant, what do you say about the fact that lobbyists have a huge sway over Washington, and that corporations fund the lobbyists? Who's actually running the show if it's not the people with all the money? Looks like a vicious cycle to me, the problem's not all in government nor all in the corps, but the cycle has to be broken in once place or the other or both. Formally speaking, a corp in today's world is actually an arm of the government. That is literally the truth. So in that sense, to go after Wall Street IS to go after the government, at least that arm of the government. Dennis of course will not understand the first thing about what I just said, but I think you do. Shayne

Presidential candidate Gary Johnson on the protests: Shayne

Obviously we can do it, so that's not what you mean. It's unclear to me what you think the problem is. Shayne