Francisco Ferrer

Clarify this please... Posts #8 and #9 made it clear that national defense should be funded through voluntary contributions. But the gentlemen who took that position also want our government walking the beat in apparently every dark corner of the globe. U.S. Treasury gladly accepts contributions above what it demands by threat of fines and jail time. Seems like the ideal solution, no?

Since Rubio has four children, he's clearly doing his part for provide sufficient fodder for future World Police wars. To keep things strictly moral, couldn't we use the $15 million in voluntary contributions the U.S. Treasury has received over the past five years to invade, occupy and nation-build in "Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia"? Don't "our cost of living" and "the safety of our food" depend on it?

Why make the mistake of having children if you will have to look after them and teach them yourself or pay money out of pocket for someone else to do it? Government subsidies run throughout the warp and woof of society. A population slump resulting from closing government schools may be just as likely as a baby boom from ending government-subsidized pensions. In any case, even if the government is left out of the picture, an organized national campaign to boost the population for defense purposes is nothing short of preposterous and has the whiff of one of Himmler's bouts of madness. Large populations are no guarantors of military strength, of economic growth or of much else. Can anyone claim with a straight face that having four times the population of the U.S. gives India four times its military strength? Furthermore, the assertion that “economic output is proportional to population” is unfiltered nonsense. By that calculus, Bangladesh would be rolling in money and Australia would be impoverished. Yes, in the West the 20th century gave us the rise of welfare states and the decline of birthrates. But the most pertinent datum of the era is the change in women's roles. Post WWII, women stayed in school longer, entered the work place in larger numbers, postponed marriage, and postponed motherhood. All this was made possible in large part by more effective contraception and the disappearance of the taboo against unattached women. Organized campaigns to make babies in order to fill army uniforms (or pay war contributions) makes no more sense than the left's loony crusade to cull the human herd. Smart people leave these matters to the market. If a country is free, the standard of living will rise and people will naturally want to live there. But if all property is private, the newcomers will have a skill to offer-- they will be quality people. “More people would help our economy and our military defense”? Not if they’re the equivalent of the dumb slobs of the past decade who thought they were joining the Army to “fight for our freedom” in Iraq.

I have been certain that this was part of the "secret" negotiations between the administration and the insurance company's lobbyists. A... Thank you for this. I have repeatedly asked my Republican friends, where were the insurance companies during the Obamacare debates?

I never said the U.S. rarely sends its troops abroad. I said that war was rarely necessary. But, sometimes you have to give tin horn dictators a kick in the shins to remind them that thuggery will not be tolerated. Also, when freedom movements blossom in other countries, it is usually in our interest to see that they are successful. Darrell Yes, now that I look at a list of U.S. conflicts called "wars," I see the number is quite small. You could count them on the fingers of your children's hands, provided that you have at least six children and none of them are missing any digits. Ah, but perhaps not all of those conflicts should be called "wars," a term some purists would reserve for big messy things like the conflagrations of the second and fifth decades of the 20th century. By that measure, the U.S. military has been asleep for nearly all of its existence. I guess that in between the long naps, no one would mind a little tin horn kick ass just to keep our boys (and girls) in fine fettle. And if the toppling of the dictator happens to make it easier for an American fruit company or telecommunications company to turn a profit there, who's going to complain? Certainly not anyone who believes in laissez-faire capitalism, which requires a strict separation between state and business--but only in essays for popular consumption. The world is flat, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman tells us. Or if it's not now, it will be as soon as the Pentagon does its worst. In this brave, new, shrinking world, every nation is just over our backyard fence. No country is too far flung to put U.S. Marines on the ground to unmuddy the waters, make folks stand in straight lines, and provide contraception or fertility clinics, depending on the goal of the moment. Fortunately, those who hunger from their armchairs for new lands to be conquered by the DoD are in luck. A new champion of the American Soldier as World Policeman is on the stump, and he's telling it like it is: I always start by reminding people that what happens all over the world is our business. Every aspect of lives is directly impacted by global events. The security of our cities is connected to the security of small hamlets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Our cost of living, the safety of our food, and the value of the things we invent, make, and sell are just a few examples of everyday aspects of our lives that are directly related to events abroad and make it impossible for us to focus only on our issues here at home.

I asked how a country that does not collect taxes would encourage people to have kids. Your answer: stop welfare payments. Great. And I suppose if that didn't work, the non-tax-collecting country could stop government-financed education. And if that still didn't work, maybe the non-tax-collecting country could remove the part of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance plans that offer dependent coverage to make the coverage available until the adult child reaches the age of 26. And perhaps if even this failed to produce a bumper crop of infants, the U.S. Department of Defense could institute future soldier breeding farms, "with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male," of course.

If I follow correctly, you argue that the abolition of bad laws in a society will remove any tendency towards coercive behavior in that society's members. Such an outcome would be not only wonderful but miraculous! But should we really suppose that with the end of state coercion, there will no longer be a need for padlocks, security fences, burglar alarms and bank account passwords? You put me in the same company as liberals who hold that people "need to be forced to be good." On the contrary, much of the left’s ideology derives from Rousseau who argued that man in his natural state is uncorrupted. Your own suggestion that a radical change in government would yield radical change in human nature resembles nothing so much as the Jacobins of the French Revolution and the Marxists. It was, after all, Friedrich Engels who promised that following the dictatorship of the proletariat, “The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away.” To test that your theory that the minimal state will make people less predatory, we only have to look at the early history of the American republic. In the wake of the Revolution the federal and state governments were at their smallest size. If minimal government makes the citizens more moral, where did the people who pushed for the expansion of the government come from? Where did the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion come from? Or the Alien and Sedition Acts? Or the Tariff of Abominations? Or national conscription? Or government counterfeiting? How could a minimal state give us such “mean spirited, self-serving” Americans who sought power over the lives of others?

Francisco, I didn't find your arguments about the difficulty of protecting U.S. citizens or citizens of foreign countries very convincing. The U.S. is able to exert a great deal of influence on foreign countries without going to war. The simple threat of war or other reprisals is usually enough to obtain the desired results. The results are not always immediate; the hikers in Iran were imprisoned for years before they were released, but they were released. I'm glad the mere threat of war usually does the trick. This, I am sure, explains why the U.S. very seldom sends its troops abroad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations I'm not sure what a country that does not collect taxes would do to "encourage people in this country to have more children." Give them a gold-plated "Hero" badge?

I say "World Police" because "World's Policeman" is the term Dennis Prager embraces in his defense of the idea that the United States should perform the role of keeping foreign criminals in check: "The world needs a policeman. The world in no way differs from cities needing police." Perhaps you can distinguish your position from Prager's by establishing, for example, that you don't think the Marines should invade Ruritania in order to make it a better market for American products. As for preventing "a small number of people [from] receiving a benefit at the expense of many," I do not see why that is any more likely to be the case in a "free capitalist society" than in a mixed economy. Most people are too busy to devote much of their time to politics. Some individuals, however, can afford to hire a large team of specialists who do nothing all day long but make sure that elected officials vote the right way. I look forward to a day when all costs are "paid by the people who were willing to pay for it and benefit directly or indirectly." But there is no reason to suppose that no man will ever fail to resist the temptation to get the government to foot the entire bill for his pet project. If the government of Ruritania refuses to allow any competition with state-owned telecommunications, it would certainly be less costly for the owners of Intercontinental Telephone and Telegraph to get the United States government to stage a coup there than for Intercontinental to cover the entire cost of having a private army to do it. Having a Constitutional prohibition on lying will be no more effective than having a prohibition on interfering with the right to keep and bear arms. The judge in every case where the government is on trial is hired and paid for by the government.

Let's consider this. From a totally free market perspective, would it be proper for the government of Free and Prosperous Country X to send its warships to bombard (or threaten to bombard) the capital city of Unfree Foreign Country Y, whose government has refused to permit the business interests of the Free and Prosperous Country X to engage in trade with the people of Unfree Foreign Country Y? And from a totally free market perspective, would it be proper for the government of Free and Prosperous Country X to tax all of its people in order to finance the cost of this military campaign to open up Unfree Foreign Country Y? Or should such costs be borne solely by those businesses in X who would find it "in their interest to protect the rights and freedom of their potential customers" in Y? Or perhaps be borne in large part by the newly freed "potential customers" in Y? In short, does the need to "protect the rights and freedom of . . . potential customers in any country" justify a World Police force? Francisco, It seems as if there are two questions: (1) How should the government of the United States be funded? And, (2) Should the United States adopt an isolationist foreign policy or be actively involved in foreign affairs. If we assume for a moment that the United States government were funded by a totally just method, then only the second question would be relevant and it is my opinion that it is in the interest of the people of the U.S. to selectively promote liberty throughout the world. There several reasons for my view: (a) Free foreign countries make better trading partners. (b) Free countries are more likely to be our allies and less likely to be our enemies as our interests coincide. © Free countries could be a place of refuge if the government of this country were ever to fall into despotism. Right now, if the U.S. fails, there is almost no place on earth to which the citizens of this country could flee. Most European countries are not too bad with Switzerland being my first choice, but it couldn't absorb a significant fraction of the population. If your main objection is to the method by which the U.S. government is funded, that is a whole other discussion. Darrell I've dealt with the financing issue in my response to Mikee above. I've also attempted to show the practical difficulty in fulfilling the promise of protecting every citizen's life and property--and especially potential customers--abroad. If it is in the interest of the "U.S. to selectively promote liberty throughout the world," then wouldn't it likewise be in Switzerland's interest to do the same? But Switzerland, someone might answer, does not have the resources to send armed forces into over a hundred foreign nations. Based on the lessons of the past decade, neither does the U.S.

So far, so good. But, financing aside, there can still be an ethical/political problem with diverting public resources for private advantage. Suppose, for example, in a society with minimal government, a citizen with political influence is able to get police patrols doubled in his neighborhood by having fewer police patrols in other neighborhoods. The effect is that public resources, generated by voluntary collections from the whole community, are now more narrowly focused on benefiting a particular segment of the community. Now, let's return to the issue of a nation's military as world policeman. Presumably the function of an armed forces is to protect the lives and property rights of the citizens and funders of the those forces. In the case of an outright invasion, no one would dispute deploying all available soldiers and weapons to defend the nation's territory. But consider a less clear cut case. What if Citizen A from Free Country X takes a vacation in distant Unfree Country Y? Suddenly and without just cause, Citizen A is jailed and tortured. What if diplomacy fails, and the only way to secure A's release is for Free Country X to send its entire fleet and air force halfway around the globe to threaten or physically compel A's release? What if the conflict drags on for years at the cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars? Even though the billions are voluntarily collected and the lives are voluntarily given up, would the citizen/funders of Free Country X be out of line in wondering whether it's their obligation to rescue every helpless tourist? Another example: Suppose the majority of stockholders in the Acme Croquet Mallet Company are citizens of Free Country X, and suppose Unfree Country Y suddenly and without just cause seizes the mallet factory that is located there and permanently nationalizes it? Are the Acme Croquet Mallet Company stockholders entitled to command the entire armed forces of Free Country X to save their investment? Ten of billions to save a million dollar factory? Another example: What if the Faultless Mousetrap Company in Free Country X decides that it can sell 20% more products overseas if the dictatorship of Unfree Country Y is toppled? Wouldn't it be in the interest of Faultless to lobby the Congress and President of Free Country X to devote the nation's armed services to that purpose, even if it meant Free Country X's borders became a little less secure? Thus, no matter how the military is financed, there are problems with a World Police in theory and in practice. Anyone who believes it is in the interest of a government "to protect the rights and freedom" of their citizens' potential customers in any country, has to be prepared to build the military to gargantuan proportions so as to enable it to invade any country on the planet at a moment's notice. But such an undertaking may paradoxically make the "free and prosperous" country much less free, less prosperous, and less safe.

Let's not forget that the full title of one of Kipling's best known poems is "“The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” Kipling urged the U.S. to Go send your sons to exile To serve your captives' need To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child In taking up this burden, the United States military would kill several hundred thousand Filipinos who had the temerity to "assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."

I suppose you mean "The Strike."

Let's consider this. From a totally free market perspective, would it be proper for the government of Free and Prosperous Country X to send its warships to bombard (or threaten to bombard) the capital city of Unfree Foreign Country Y, whose government has refused to permit the business interests of the Free and Prosperous Country X to engage in trade with the people of Unfree Foreign Country Y? And from a totally free market perspective, would it be proper for the government of Free and Prosperous Country X to tax all of its people in order to finance the cost of this military campaign to open up Unfree Foreign Country Y? Or should such costs be borne solely by those businesses in X who would find it "in their interest to protect the rights and freedom of their potential customers" in Y? Or perhaps be borne in large part by the newly freed "potential customers" in Y? In short, does the need to "protect the rights and freedom of . . . potential customers in any country" justify a World Police force?

I believe that Dennis Prager has some fans on this forum. So perhaps someone here can help with a question raised by an article he contributed a few months ago to National Review. Prager takes the position that because of "America’s strength and willingness to use it," the U.S. is a great "force in history for liberty and world stability." Prager asks us to "Imagine that, because of the great financial and human price, the mayors and city councils of some major American cities decide that they no longer want to police their cities. Individuals simply have to protect themselves." The result, he says, would be that "the worst human beings would terrorize these cities, and the loss of life would be far greater than before. But chaos would not long reign. The strongest thugs and their organizations would take over the cities." "That is what will happen to the world," he says, "if the United States decides — because of the financial expense and the loss of American troops — not to be the 'world’s policeman.'” Now here's the question. When an American city government sends its police out on rounds, it pays them from tax funds collected from citizens/property owners within its city limits. It may be that some residents there pay a higher portion of those operating costs, but the point is that all services are performed and all revenues are collected within the same geographic parameters. Yet in moving to the world stage, we see a disconnect. Clearly, for example, the residents of Afghanistan are not being taxed to finance the American-uniformed world policemen in their neighborhood. I don't know where precisely Prager thinks our global cops should best be deployed, but even if it is only in half of the foreign countries they currently occupy, shouldn't the residents of those countries be taxed to share the burden U.S. citizens presently bear alone to provide for "liberty and world stability"? And how would that work exactly? Would U.S. Treasury present a bill to the Karzai government for $500 billion? Would Karzai in turn assess that sum from his people (about $16,000 per capita in a country with a GDP per capita of about $1,000)? Or should the IRS attempt to collect it directly from the Afghans, as Great Britain once taxed colonial America to pay for the French and Indian Wars? Or do we just write off this debt as one of America's altruistic gifts to to the poor and benighted of the world? Or, to be consistent with our principles, declare it was all spent in our rational self-interest to rid the world of collectivists and mystics?

Why should they have? When Hitler came to power, Friedrich Krupp AG was Germany's largest manufacturer of steel, armaments and ammunition and had a 400-year history of selling weapons to German governments. These merchants of death were only too happy to do business with the Fuhrer. The family heir Alfried joined the SS even before Hitler came to power and greedily accepted offers to seize factories in occupied lands and to use Jews as slave laborers. Hitler and the Third Reich died, but Krupp lives on.

Agreed, there are similarities between the character and Rand, but it is more likely that costume designer Edith Head was the inspiration for costume designer Edna Mode. Coincidentally, Rand once worked under Head in RKO's wardrobe department.

This is where we reach the "is-ought" gap in Rand's thinking. If it were literally true that "the price of destruction [is] the destruction of their victims and their own," then Rand's argument would be simple and straightforward. However, since the world abounds in instances of successful human parasites with disgustingly long lifespans, Rand and the Objectivists must resort to the "qua man" hat trick. It goes something like this: since reason is man's necessary means to survival, man's goal in life must be to live as a rational being. The problem is that the second part of the proposition does not follow from the first. The fact that you need a boat or an airplane to get from London to New York does not imply that the goal of your journey is to be on a boat or an airplane. Nor does it follow that that those who prey on others are acting without reason. Any serious study of modern government will show that the system by which wealth is regularly transferred from from the productive class to the non-productive class is quite ingenious. It is not a system invented by an animal.

It was not a thoughtful critique of "The Objectivist Ethics" if it included theft and murder. Respect for the rights of others is part of Ayn Rand's version of rational egoism. As I recall the criticism of "The Objectivist Ethics" centered on this paragraph: The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals. But just as animals would not be able to survive by attempting the method of plants, by rejecting locomotion and waiting for the soil to feed them—so men cannot survive by attempting the method of animals, by rejecting reason and counting on productive men to serve as their prey. Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment, at the price of destruction: the destruction of their victims and their own. As evidence, I offer you any criminal or any dictatorship. The author of the OO post pointed out that there are men who do in fact survive by preying on other, more productive men--and a number of such men do so successfully, not "for the range of a moment" but rather over the course of a lifetime. In our own mixed economy, one does not have to look far for examples. Rand says the proof of her theory that "the price of destruction [is] the destruction of their victims and their own" can be found in "any criminal or any dictatorship." But there are bookshelves full of accounts of men who pulled off crimes and were never brought to justice. Similarly, history provides us with long lines of dictators who were never destroyed in any meaningful sense of the word.

This is standard operating procedure for OO. A few years ago, someone posted a thoughtful critique of "The Objectivist Ethics," showing that in theory one could carefully pursue one's rational self-interest and still commit theft and even murder. The resulting debate went on for many days until one of the moderators shut it down. The original poster was never heard from again--no doubt banished for life. Shortly thereafter, a new thread was started, this time with only hard shell Objectivists contributing, all in perfect accord that respect for the rights of others must follow logically and invariably from rational egoism. Then there was another thread in which someone had argued with some cogency that intellectual property rights should not be treated differently from rights in physical property. In other words, that patents and copyrights should come without an expiration date. The best response anyone could offer was that the original poster was defending a form of theft, as the patent holder would be monopolizing something he had no right to. There was no real effort to provide a rationale for the legal distinction between intellectual and physical property. This thread disappeared entirely. Apparently for want of a good comeback, the moderators decided the challenge to Rand's position on IP should not exist on the web at all.

The defects of the film have little to do with its budget (Part 1 cost $20 million). As a fan of independent film, each year I see dozens of films made with far, far less while still managing to be beautifully shot, edited and acted. Film is a visual medium, and the creators of Parts 1 and 2 have apparently never encountered the idea that in order to engage the viewer, one must show more than tell. Atlas the Book is a tapestry of arresting images, startling contrasts, and larger than life heroes. Atlas the Movie is flat, lifeless and thoroughly ordinary. There is more drama in a puppet show.

That's the best part of the shutdown. A significant part of the criminal class is prohibited from "helping" us.

Can we kickstart not to have another Atlas movie? I'll put up $20, the sum I wasted on parts 1 and 2.

In that case, I wouldn't say I'm not a fan of her "contradictions . . . her soap opera trashiness, overwrought emotions, and thin characterisations."

You'd think Cunnigham would at least get the spelling of Branden's name right. It's clear that Cunnigham is not a fan of her novels or her ideas. Regarding Rand's collecting Social Security checks, he writes,