Matt Faherty

The ideas I laid out were all "potential" forms of voting restrictions. I do not have my mind made up on the topic. But I do really like the idea of restricting voting for paid government employees.

All of the above. As for wealth voting, I will change my position to say it shouldn't exist in a proper state with voluntary funding, but in a state with involuntary taxation I can see its use. If people can vote to control the wealth of others, then those with wealth should have a disproportionately large say in how that money is used.

If you haven't alredy seen it, you would love the Nick Cage movie, "Adaptation."

In a proper state, what are the valid restrictions on voting? I think the topic is generally considered archaic today in the West with such wide suffrage, but perhaps voting restrictions hold the key to staving off potential "public choice" problems. Off the top of my head, a few potential criteria include: - Age - Mental Health - Criminal or ex-criminal status - Wealth - Education - Knowlege (ie. civic tests) - Citizenship/residency - Civic participation (taxes or membership in state functions) I honestly have not thought too deeply about the topic, but I have a few ideas. There should be a minimum age requirement and residency for a certain time period. Criminals of a certain degree should be prohibited from voting (would have to think more about specifics). I would like to see some for of simple civics test. I might also consider voting power being tied to wealth in some capacity.

Rothbard's book is great but it doesn't say much about the end of the depression. It provides intricate detail about the Austrian business cycle, the expansion of the money supply in the 1920s, and then the horrible interventionist policies of Herbert Hoover. But the book pretty much ends after Herbert Hoover.

Don't forget that at the end of the War, Congress slashed the budget by something like 30% and started rapidly paying down debt. Also of note, private living standards and consumption were lower in 1944 then during any time during the Great Depression.

Woa! That was one of the strangest things I have ever seen on TV. I was shocked that neither said just went off and punched the other. Its a shame that Jones was actually right on target whenever he talked guns and then went batshit whenever he mentioned anything else. Morgan's last topic trump card was a genius move.

That is what happens when money ceases to be a medium of exchange or a store of values for future investment and it becomes a fetish. Ultimately the only sound basis for an economy is to produce for use rather than make short term attempt to garner wealth beyond any reasonable disposition thereof. One of these days 90 percent of labor, in production, distribution and services will be doable by robots. The "wages" of robots are their immediate power needs and maintenance. When that happens the wages of human labor (of all kinds, including managerial labor) will not clear the market of goods and services produces. How the shall the produce of industry be assigned, allocated, distributed to all of the population? What happens when you have a shit-load of potential energy and you do not know how to convert it to kinetic energy (kinetic energy, the energy of action and motion is the only kind of energy that produces anything useful to humans)? Does anyone have an answer. I don't. Ba'al Chatzaf You are falling for the "Luddite Fallacy." New technology may create short term unemployment, but the newly unemployed will cause wages to fall and thereby become employed elsewhere as resources are shifted throughout the economy. There is no need to "clear" goods on the market as Marxists believe; supply and demand are intrinsically linked via Say's Law. Remeber, we don't have 90% unemployment in the Western World despite the decline in agricultural importance.

Gary Johnson has made it an explicit goal to get 5% of the national vote this year. However, the 4% figure listed above is at best insanely, widly optimistic, and at worst, entirely false.

You can like a villain without endorsing his ethics or world view. Often villains offer great insights into potential pitfalls of the virtuous or talented. The best villains are those with great potential who succumb to or embrace a "dark side" which leads them astray. Ellsworth Toohey and Gail Wynand (pre-meeting Roark) are good examples of this. Both are doubtlessly geniuses who, with the right direction, could have been Howard Roarks of their own who could have contributed much to the world and lead wonderful lives. Yet despite their abilities, both men became fixated upon destruction and turned against their own minds. Toohey's keen insight into human psychology could have made him a great intellecutal leader and teacher, but instead he became a "conqueror of souls" obsessed with using his talents to make others self-destruct. Likewise, Wynand's creativity and passion for work could have made him a heroic industrialist of a great media product, but instead the hatred of quality he saw in others drove Wynand to try to destroy all of the good in the world before the second-handers could get to it. Both men act as warnings for those who try to lead good lives.

Should it be illegal for an individual to purposefully incite violence against another person or property? This is an article by Walter Block which explains his position on the legality of the incitement of violence: http://lewrockwell.c...k/block201.html Useful Quote (actually from Murray Rothbard in the article): "Should it be illegal …. to ‘incite to riot’? Suppose that Green exhorts a crowd: ‘Go! Burn! Loot! Kill!’ and the mob proceeds to do just that, with Green having nothing further to do with these criminal activities. Since every man is free to adopt or not adopt any course of action he wishes, we cannot say that in some way Green determined the members of the mob to their criminal activities; we cannot make him, because of his exhortation, at all responsible for their crimes. ‘Inciting to riot,’ therefore, is a pure exercise of a man’s right to speak without being thereby implicated in crime. On the other hand, it is obvious that if Green happened to be involved in a plan or conspiracy with others to commit various crimes, and that then Green told them to proceed, he would then be just as implicated in the crimes as are the others – more so, if he were the mastermind who headed the criminal gang. This is a seemingly subtle distinction which in practice is clearcut – there is a world of difference between the head of a criminal gang and a soap-box orator during a riot; the former is not properly to be charged simply with ‘incitement.’" I am personally leaning towards Rothbard/Block's view on the issue, but I am not completely there yet. Given the context laid out in the above quote, I agree with them, but I worry about applying the same principle to emergency situations. For instance: I am walking down the street with an armed friend and I suddenly yell out to him, "Oh my God! That guy behind you is going to shoot you! Quick! Shoot him!" My friend may very well turn around and shoot the innocent third individual without a thought due to the misinofrmation I have provided to him. My friend can't be blamed for reacting in such a way since he had a valid reason to suspect his life was in danger. It is technically true that my firend could have paused and surveyed the situation before following my advice, but to do so would have have put him in grave danger. Another version of this scenario is "yell fire in a movie theater" though I don't really buy this one as much since in that scenario, a rational individual should be able to pause an examine the scene before acting.

Walter Block has pointed out that in a proper legal system with no government property (aside from the bare essentials), immigration would be a non-issue as all immigrants would need to gain access to an individual's private property who has the right to let in or keep out whomever he pleases. Given this perameter, there is no risk of the "3rd world flood." But even with the US's current framework with government property and welfare, immigration is both a moral right and economically beneficial prospect. More individuals working with better technology leads to a greater degree of the division of labor and therefore more wealth for all. Additionally, the Cato Institute has done plenty of research to demonstrate that the vast majority of immigrants have historically produced more economically then they have taken in welfare. It also amazes me that anti-immigration people always fail to abstract their arguments to other formats. Should wealthy US states prevent immigrants from poorer states from entering? Should Manhattan close the briges to all but the fabulously wealthy and those few needed to clean the toilets?

This is not true. While it is true that we use emotion sometimes to guide our actions, doing so is either illogical, or only logical given our logical understanding of its use in certain contexts. For instance, my instinctual reaction to a man charging at me with an axe is an instance when it is rational to use emotion as my arbiter of action. Thus, there is a "primacy of reason" if you will.

Paul, It makes for a poor-ass story. I'm serious. Story is how we think. It's fundamental to our awareness. To show how fundamental it is, think of all the wars throughout history. Most have been over differences in totally implausible stories that have no way of being proven. We humans literally kill each other in mass for not believing in each other's story. If you want a cause for why people don't accept the claim that the underlying cause of everything does not, itself, have a cause, there it is. We need a story. No good guys or bad guys in the causeless universe formulation. It ain't sexy. That's not the only reason, but I think it's a major one, if not the main one. Michael I have to give credit to the poster "Grames" who taught me this stuff on the OO forum, and I think he does illustrate it very well with somewhat of a story. I recall first hearing about it in a "determinism/free" will thread when the pro-determinist was using the classic argument that there are know "consciousness cells" in the brain and therefore no scientific basis for the consciousness or free will. Grames then drew a parallel between consciousness and life in general. I am alive. The cells which make up my body are alive. Yet the atoms which make up my cells which make up my body are not alive. How is that so? Does this mean my own life is an illusion? Of course not. Life is an emergent property of atoms which is not reducible. Even if scientists could find some "thing" which causes life in atoms, that would just beg the question as to what causes the "thing" and so on. I've explained this to a few people with some success. Thus far it's the best illustration I've seen.

If it is argued that God requires no cause, couldn't an atheist counter this by "matter requires no cause"? Matter doesn't require a cause. The law of causality is not a primary, it is a correlary to the law of identity. All entities have identities which manifests themselves in ways which cause "causes." These identities do not have to have "causes" themselves, otherwise you will run into the "infinite reduction" problem.

I agree that Romney did extremely well and won the debate. He had a fire and passion in him that we have not seen in either of his presidential runs. Even though I think its a pretty stupid attribute, I think his aggression and willingness to run over the moderator will give him a more "real" feel to undecideds.

This refers to just one of your many jumbled dichotomies/concepts/definitions. As far as I can tell, here you are confusing "irrational" with "intangible." Intangible refers to "things that are recognized but not easily quantified" (source: wikipedia). It is indeed extremely difficult, if not impossible, to measure qualities like "timing" or "charisma," but that does not mean that these qualities are mindless or irrational. It means that they are not quantifiable or that their quantifiability exists beyond human perception. I think you are getting at the point that there are times when we utilize these qualities based on "feeling," and this is basically true in a short run sense. A comedian does not sit down and litterally chart out how many miliseconds he waits before saying the next word in his routine. But again, this is not generally irrational. The comedian is conciously and RATIONALLY aware of his skill with "timing" and thus has parlayed this ability into stand up comedy. He RATIONALLY determined the value of his timing and its use. When he is on stage he is likely "in the zone" and acting on instinct or memory muscle, but the entire context of his actions are taking place within rational bounds. Though I don't know how much you will get out of this explanation since you refuse to consider the true meaning of "reason" (it is not just "cause and effect").

I am not sure of the scientific basis of animal self-awareness, but I think it may be possible for them to be self-aware at a perceptual rather than conceptual level. For instance, a human can concieve of himself conceptually as a being who exists in a certain place, a certain time, within a family, within a country, as a member of a political party, etc. Meanwhile, some intelligent animals may just recognize their body perceptually as a component of their concious, as in an extension of their actions. For instance, when a monkey wants to climb a tree it recognizes that it controls the arm which grabs the tree branch.

Thank you Michael, you are spot on. Audiognostic, we are mostly ignoring your larger arguments because they are built upon very basic errors in your premises. Everything you are saying about "rationality," "emotion," "creativity," etc is irrelevent in an Objectivist context if you do not understand the meanings of those terms or how they relate to each other. It is fine that you are attacking Rand's philosophy, it is even ok if you don't understand some of the premises which underlie her conclusions, but what you are doing here is attacking some very basic components of Objectivism without understanding the even more basic components upon which they are built. In terms of addressing these issues, I think you need to break them down in other specialized threads, since to address them all right here would be a rather sizeable task.

"the question is WHO SAID that is the value which all standards of action lay upon???" It is a metaphysical fact. By nature, human beings are concious entities with free will who take action. When a man acts, he is implicitly or explictly seeking to attain value, ie. the goal of his action. A man cannot litterally NOT take action or NOT value anything. He is metaphysically bound to pursue value. The question then becomes, "what values should men pursue?" Life is the fundamental value because it is the value which enables the existence of all other values. Non-living entities do not have and cannot pursue values. This is because, by definition, value requires a valuer. Thus the fundamental choice comes down to "existence or non-existence." Should I choose to continue living or should I cease to live? As alredy stated, there is no value in death, there is only value in life. Therefore, the question can accurately be rephrased as "should I value (live) or should I not value (not live)." Logically, to "value nonvalue" is a contradiction. Thus the objectively correct choice is to pursue life. This is the basis of objectivist ethics.

I appreciate that you tried to answer my question, but there is really too much here to repond to. You have seriously jumbled up a huge pile of concepts accross multiple philosophical categories to the point where your whole thought process is a big mess. I recommend going back to the basics of metaphysics and reason to work your way up. One issue I can pin point is this bizzare "left brain/right brain dichtomy." There is no dichotomy between reason and creativity or however else you are phrasing it. Abstract conceptual connections are not arbitrary or emotion based (or at least they shouldn't be so). And furthermore, just because you "feel" something to be true, that doesn't mean you are acting irrationally or without reason. The fact that you "feel" red to be your favorite color means that you are rationally determining your innate preference. You don't have to be able to write out a detailed explanation about wavelenghts and color theory to make such a preference "rational."

My question: "What does "rationality" or "reason" mean to you?" Your answer: "Left brain formulaic logic" Even if we ignore the fact that you used a synonym of the concept in question in the answer, you still have not answered anything. You have not stated what "logic" fundamentally is. If you cannot answer this basic question, then everything else you have written is irrelvent since it is all based off of some attempt at the use of logic.

Well you certainly wrote a lot, but you failed to answer my simple question. All I asked is for you to explain what "rationality" is at a conceptual level. As far as I can tell, you are juggling a giant pile of false dichotomies and definitional confusions which you should sort out. Probably lying at the center of this is your continued "(mis)use of logic to deny logic." Also this is very important: "There are some irrationalist terms to describe people who do not comprehend the world outside the left brain "geek, nerd"... people who are trying to be vulcans but are totally out of touch with reality.. these are terms which I would bet describe a rather large amount of people populating this forum.. Including their hero Ayn Rand herself.." Have you read what Ayn Rand wrote about emotions? As far as I can tell, you believe her stance was, "emotions are evil and irrational and should therefore be banished to the greatest degree possible, like in that Christian Bale movie, Equillibrium." This is not accurate.

I probably shouldn't respond but... What does "rationality" or "reason" mean to you?

I don't have a citation on hand, but I believe Rand refered to conciousness in "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" as "awareness of existence." In this case, all animals are concious, though not at the same level of integration. Humans are "conceptually concious" whereas all other animals are "perceptually concious." Plants and other living entities are not concious.