Strictlylogical

Three things "kids" say and write today irk me greatly although "acceptable" in modern times.

1.  Forgetting the serial comma in a list.  "A, B, C, and D" is correct,   "A, B, C and D" ain't, unless you mean "C and D" is the last thing in the list, in which case A, B, and C and D, is correct.  (as in tuna, chicken salad, and PB and jam)

2.  Using the phrases "different to" and "different than" rather than the correct phrase "different from".

3.  Forgetting to use the possessive form in a gerund, in:  "Your taking the initiative has proven very useful." as opposed to the incorrect "You taking the initiative has proven very useful.".   

This last earsore is rampant throughout mainstream and pop culture...

ugh.

6 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Rapinoe Sendoff

It looks like the woke weird Megan Rapinoe is gone as a current soccer star for good.

Megan Rapinoe's Career Ends After Suffering Non-Contact Injury Three Minutes Into Final Game

WWW.BREITBART.COM

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Megan Rapinoe went down with an injury just three minutes into her final National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) game on Saturday night.

She tore her own Achilles heel on the field all by her lonesome. Not another player in sight.

 

She says this is proof God does not exist.

Gwinn: WATCH -- Megan Rapinoe After Injury in Final Game: 'If There Is a God, This Is Proof There Isn't'

WWW.BREITBART.COM

---

Megan Rapinoe questioned the existence of God after suffering an apparent Achilles injury minutes into her final professional soccer game.

Many people say it is proof that God does exist.

Hmmmmm...

 

Michael

IF she were a philosopher, she weren't no philosopher. 

Not sure if this qualifies:

Far from Good.

But Good from Far.

4 minutes ago, tmj said:

Why not flutterby ?

Flutterby Butterfly?

In the spirit of understanding... in the specific context of misled people being nonviolent assholes and idiots... 

"Idiots' Lives Matter"...

many idiots given the chance of time and the exercise of free will have changed from idiots into decent  human beings.

heh

I'm not rage quitting the forum or anything.

I'm just bowing out of a discussion... and yes I will have a mind to do so a tad more gracefully in future.

On 11/10/2023 at 11:33 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

S,

I don't function at the peer pressure level.

If you don't want to understand what I am talking about, I'm fine with that.

If you want to disagree, I'm fine with that.

If you want to mischaracterize what I am saying so you float caricatures, laugh and tsk tsk tsk, may I suggest sticking to an in-crowd when that itch hits you? 

I expect a little more brains and a little less peer pressure bullshit for me to stay interested.

btw - You might want to notice that every one of the Founding Fathers bore arms and used them. Nah... Maybe you don't want to notice that...

Try cancel culture or something. Who knows? You might do well at it.

   

Michael

 

We disagree at a deep level. 

I completely understand, and I know that having a conversation in such a case ... to some... will feel like the other is trying to pressure them or somehow just doesn't get it (because of course you're right and the other is wrong).

I get it.

Yet, I do not agree.

There are endless ways one could chose to react to someone else's disappointment and differing opinion.  You have made your choice above and you sure have made it clear.

Message heard, know that I now completely understand, and accordingly disengage,

and notwithstanding my choice not to engage any further, all should know my silence is not an indication of agreement.

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

S,

Disproportionate according to what standard and according to whom?

A guy on life-support in an ambulance who cannot get to a hospital in time because there is a demonstration blocking the highway and he can't get there? Is it disproportion action to him? 

I guarantee you, the protestors don't give a damn about a case like that or about any such person. 

And who says "sense of life" has anything to do with legal proportions anyway (or even "eye for an eye" proportions)? When people get fed up with a constant injustice, a tipping point eventually gets reached and some go to war.

That's why I called it a "sense of life" reaction.

 

btw - Do you know what a "sense of life" is according to Rand? It is not "self-defense, justice, freedom, and individual rights." There is an essay in "The Romantic Manifesto" that deals with this. If you haven't read it, do so. She talks there about normative abstractions.

Refusing to be bullied by people who constantly disrupt public highways and public areas is a sense of life issue. Bowing down and licking the feet of such bullies (before one is forced to) is also a sense of life issue. What feels right depends on one's sense of life.

 

I agree that an alternative response by the shooter would have been far better since we are no longer in the Wild West. I am not in favor of killing unarmed people, even when they will not take your threat seriously. But in this case, I understand it.

Which is more than I can say for the entitled mentality of the protestors who believe they have the right to disrupt the lives of everyone for their pet cause. These idiots were not asking to be heard like in a normal demonstration that, when it disrupts a road, is over in a few minutes after the protestors go by. These idiots were causing people to sit in their cars under a hot sun for hours out in the middle of nowhere.

Hell, forget the ambulance. What about strokes and heart attacks? Dehydration? 

At least now that these idiots know they can be shot by someone having a bad day, maybe they will think twice before they organize to bully everyone and remove their rights en masse to go and come freely.

 

My post is more of a warning than a celebration. A boiling point is nigh. But I won't go weasel. My main thinking is peaceful and law-abiding, but part of me loves it when I see bullies get comeuppance as they go down. Part of me felt good to see that guy's reaction. And I don't feel even a slight tingle of guilt for that feeling of pleasure.

 

Americans in general do not kiss the feet of bullies. They did that in Europe in relation to their respective ruling classes and this is the reason many left centuries ago. People here, in general, feel repugnance when they are called on do that. And when all else fails, when the cops won't take care of nonstop illegal bullying, they go out and solve the problem. When that point is reached, proportions be damned. They get the job done and remove the bullying.

Americans are tolerant until they are not. This tolerance has recently led them to be killed in huge numbers by a bioweapon and poisonous remedy so that very evil people can make money and get more power. (Not to mention stealing elections and all the rest.) Some people see this as a trend they will no longer tolerate. And they connect constant disruptions of their lives in public places as a continuation of a major threat, as a part of the same thing.

What's worse, the justice system is siding with the bullies all the time.

 

If you are worried about legalities, notice that the shooter did not attempt to flee. He waited and allowed himself to be taken into custody in a peaceful manner.

The protestors were not there legally. There is no law permitting people to disrupt highways. Yet the cops would not remove them.

 

There is a name in Objectivist thought for all of this. It is called context. We can either deduce reality from a principle in a contextless manner, or we can look at people's actions in context.

I choose the latter.

And speaking of that, what is the principle? Proportionality? Of... what? Being so pissed off about people constantly bullying you that you lose it? What is the right proportion for that? How much bullying is the right amount to demand that people tolerate? Why isn't the bully (or mob of bullies) judged harshly? Why is it only the victims of the bully?

Believe me, this guy would not have shot any person who was in an accident that disrupted the traffic. He shot bullies who were taking his rights away, and had been doing that for a long time, and were mocking him to his face as they did it.

My own sense of life is a hell of a lot closer to his guy than it is to the protestors working openly to enslave everyone.

 

And if you want to use NIOF, who initiated the force? It was not the shooter. Since when is lashing out at a person or persons who use constant force against you to keep you illegally constrained a violation of NIOF?

As for the dead, as the saying goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I would prefer them not to be dead, and I am sincere about that, but in this case, emotionally, my empathy muscle has wandered off somewhere...

Michael

Disproportionate... as in the common sense "way out of line".  I'm not talking about legality or technicality but as common sense human decency, a sense of morality, a sense of justice, and a sense of humanity... which always were and still are part of the American sense of life.  

BTW:  I am familiar with the sense of life piece I read it.

Choosing to act with restraint rather than from emotion and choosing actions which are measured rather than insanely over the top is not at base related to the choosing between obedience and independence... a civilized, balanced, moral, and just response is no less independent, but in fact relies on an extraordinary level of it.  The leash of emotional dependence has loops at both ends too.

You speak of context as though it is an excuse of a person "losing it"... where in the American sense of life is "loosing it" to the point of killing your fellow citizens with whom you disagree?

LOL... your NOIF discussion is laughable.  SO lets just go ahead and kill anyone who initiates any kind of nonlethal force or fraud if they do it repeatedly, if you are annoyed, and lose it... 

In context, there was no emergency, the person was not acting in self defence, the response in context of shooting people down in cold blood, although something many famous american criminals have done in the past...  is, in my opinion, unamerican.

Dismiss the Founding fathers all you want, but their sense of goodness and freedom go hand in hand, and I would take the eloquence of Washington or Jefferson or better yet John Adams, as exemplifying the spirit of America more than any thug who can't control his temper and kills people in a moment of irresponsible evil.

I'm more disappointed.

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Even though this was violent, this was a "sense of life" response in the same sense as in Ayn Rand's final Ayn Rand Letter, "A Last Survey." She was afraid the American sense of life (which, in that essay, she called "the common sense of the American people") was not enough to save America. She trusted this, but also feared.

For this 77 year old lawyer, it was enough. This shooting happened in Panama, but he is an American (born in Panama). 

He got fed up with constant traffic jams on main thoroughfares from protests.

He went to get the tires and stuff off of the road and the protestors goaded him. So he shot two of them dead after being mocked about the gun he pulled.

American Lawyer in Panama Pulls Gun on Climate Protesters Blocking Highway, Shoots Two of Them Dead (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Mike LaChance

WWW.THEGATEWAYPUNDIT.COM

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An American lawyer in Panama has been arrested after he shot two climate protesters who were part of a demonstration blocking a highway.

 

The very best comment I have seen about this came from Styx:

Does he have to look so much like George Lucas?  

Anyway, that is called a sense of life response when all else fails.

And for the Deep State, this is not good news.

This guy is not alone, and he is not the only one with that sense of life, not by a long shot.

Michael

Clearly disproportionate action in reaction to behavior (in the place where the justice of appropriate action should be), which infringes other's individual rights, their most sacred ones, is NOT part of the American sense of life.

Kyle Rittenhouse is a much better example of the American sense of life... self-defense, justice, freedom, and individual rights.

I am disappointed.

23 hours ago, Strictlylogical said:

Perhaps, but it's got a lot the same self-sacrifice, higher power, stuff we see in religion and well of course it does, its based on religion even with the willingness they seem to show to cooperate with enlightened human spirit loving atheists.  Jordan throws some realistic nuance in.. sacrificing the short term hedonism to the long term flourishing...but he and his crew seem to believe as many religious people do, that ultimately without God or this higher power, there can be no morality.  So the "pill" comes in the form of mental chains, perhaps not chains for literal service of predators, but even chains to higher things are chains.

Ans so, I find the approach taken to be little more than an invitation to religiosity as such with its perils of blind obedience and unthinking fervor.  It is a capitulation, an admission that the mind of the common man is to be forever a slave to a higher power, rather than a proud exponent of his own virtues and existence,

and for all their talk of countering prevailing pessimism about the scarcity and crises of the world with ideas about abundance and the human spirit, they are ultimately pessimistic about the capacity of man's soul... leading them to conclude that that the peace and flourishing they seek requires humbling oneself, subservience, and sacrifice... rather than a lifting of everyone and everything of value in response to a love of life, self, and the joy of being.

 

Still watching various talks and mulling over this.

I should walk this back a little...

it seems there is a wider variation than this... on the collectivist - individualist spectrum.

I do think in the end it will be a good thing...

inasmuch as good can come from an enlightened free Western democracy based in a society with a religious culture made up of mostly kind and honest people. 

16 hours ago, tmj said:

Perhaps their "brand" of collectivism is more like co-operationism?

Individuals exist inside of societies, civilization presupposes many. It's not like Hank just made a bracelet.

Perhaps, but it's got a lot the same self-sacrifice, higher power, stuff we see in religion and well of course it does, its based on religion even with the willingness they seem to show to cooperate with enlightened human spirit loving atheists.  Jordan throws some realistic nuance in.. sacrificing the short term hedonism to the long term flourishing...but he and his crew seem to believe as many religious people do, that ultimately without God or this higher power, there can be no morality.  So the "pill" comes in the form of mental chains, perhaps not chains for literal service of predators, but even chains to higher things are chains.

Ans so, I find the approach taken to be little more than an invitation to religiosity as such with its perils of blind obedience and unthinking fervor.  It is a capitulation, an admission that the mind of the common man is to be forever a slave to a higher power, rather than a proud exponent of his own virtues and existence,

and for all their talk of countering prevailing pessimism about the scarcity and crises of the world with ideas about abundance and the human spirit, they are ultimately pessimistic about the capacity of man's soul... leading them to conclude that that the peace and flourishing they seek requires humbling oneself, subservience, and sacrifice... rather than a lifting of everyone and everything of value in response to a love of life, self, and the joy of being.

Still watching various talks and mulling over this.

33 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

S,

How about a link or two?

Michael

Done, not sure about the "403 Forbidden" when add a link to the organization.

Hi all, I have not done a really deep dive into this, but I thought this might be an interesting thread to start.  (Although, on this site with the low numbers of active posters, it seems that a good dose of MSK is needed to keep ANY topic alive... I hope you are interested MSK!)

Anywho... so as some may know ARC was the brainchild of Jordan B. Peterson, and was founded by him, John Anderson, and Baroness Stroud earlier this year, as an "answer" or foil to the WEF and is currently holding its first conference.

ARC Forum

I will be looking into this more closely, but one big reservation I have is that because it is, at least is in part, a rallying call for those who have influence or power to act better, it appears as almost an apologetic mimic (or a straw-man imitation with a heart of gold) of the top-down WEF, which is the quintessential paternalistic/tyrannical, "we will figure out everything and tell you what to do" kind of organization, only now the elites, politicians, authors, and academics appear to be "benevolent" rather than hell-bent on coercion and conformity... .  On the other hand how do you rally both the general populace and persons in power or influence towards a better world without involving the elites  in so called "thought leadership" (a term I hate but seems appropriate here)... and that is where my second reservation comes in... the ARC smacks a little of utopianism and collectivism... in fact much of the language used is inherently collectivist... as if they perhaps have drunk the same koolaid from the Marxists and Socialists as any collectivist central planner, that the only way to really persuade or convey something profound is to denigrate the individual and raise the group...  some purpose beyond persons... something above individual rights ...

a purpose beyond purpose...
 

I am a little saddened at how things look, at least at first glance... but I will keeping an eye on this group, and hoping at the very minimum it will tend to steer us away from Global Tyranny.

here's a groaner we have all heard:

"workin' hard or hardly workin'"

Isn't it funny that:

"overlooking something" and "looking something over"

are really quite opposite,

while

"upside down" and "downside up"

are really the same thing?

1 hour ago, tmj said:

John Campbell had a recent video on this. I think in the video he explained that those amendments or articles that were taken off the table are going back in, in a 'worser' version, worse in the sense of national loss of sovereignty, the betters taking  more power to do the better things to the herd(s).

Grr....

Multiple videos on Youtube about the amendments to the WHO "agreement", recently there was debate in the UK government... although there is some we are not getting much coverage or discussion (not even by politicians) on this side of the pond...

Do nations and individuals just not care about sovereignty and freedom from central tyranny?  The vote is next May I think.  IS this going to be avoided before Trump gets in?  What about the rest of the west?

9 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I have thought a lot about manmade climate change. Too much, really.

I understand the manmade climate change grifters--all that government money and power is tempting for the morally weak.

I understand less the manmade climate change true believers, but I'm getting there. These are mostly religious fanatics on a crusade and following a different god .

But for as ridiculous as I have found them all, I never thought they were capable of following.

Wanna see?

Here we go...

I stand in awe.

Eco-friendly tanks and vegan hand grenades?

I mean, come on...

I want to laugh, but first I want to see if this is real.

What's worse, I think it is.

 

Michael

Haha... it's funny as heck but not the best deepfake.  Look closely at her mouth while she speaks.  For lack of any accepted term... its aT2 Skinpuppet.

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I caught this cartoon on the Interwebs.

It is a perfect depiction growing public awareness of the real trouble in America, and, frankly, the world.

This awareness is what is taking down the Deep State more than anything I know of. We can thank the Internet for that.

Michael

Ok that was a literal loL..

lots of emphasis on the second L.  

31 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The Dems are going to try to evade what this means, but they will not be able to evade the reality.

BREAKING: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Officially Announces He’s Running as an Independent (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Anthony Scott

WWW.THEGATEWAYPUNDIT.COM

---

Presidential candidate Robert.

By RFKj running as an independent, he is splintering the Dem side of the Uniparty.

This is going to make it near impossible for the Predators Class to steal another election unless the dorks try without even a minimum of a smokescreen.

 

Michael

Saw his entire speech… wow.

 Legacy media will fail to convince the public this guy is a crackpot (and they will have to try their darnedest at the behest of their overlords) so his message will get out.  and it’s a good one.

I think the gig is up for the corrupt uniparty system… they were already desperate in the struggle with Trump… and the MAGA movement, now with RFK jr running on another dismantle the corruption platform… they have enemies of corruption coming at them from everywhere.

”Declare your independence”

This is getting spicy!  Love it.

9 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

S,

Of course I agree with the first statement.

I do not agree with the second. Granting immunity to private entities actually is the role of government. The government makes laws and grants exemptions by definition. We are talking about a law. A bad law, but still a law. Who or what else is going to make laws? In fact, granting immunity is what the government is doing this very moment.

Should it? I don't like the idea, but I do recognize that reality comes with severe contexts at times. But so long as we treat the problem of supplying the government as belonging to laissez-faire capitalism, I don't see how we can keep the government from granting immunity to private entities at whim. Or from buying medicine, for that matter.

 

The problem is when people have a monopoly on force, why on earth would they obey you or me?

Because what? Syllogisms? Reasons? Moral condemnation? Someone uses the word "proper"?

The guy with the gun looks at you and says, "So what?"

We can't just make a structure and tell everyone, "Obey my rules of what is proper," and expect them to obey. I know we do a lot of that here on O-Land, but notice how much that works in practice. The fact is it doesn't. 

We can make it work in novels and syllogisms and principles. We can morally condemn left and right. We can't do that with living breathing human beings and expect much to come of it, though. We need something more. We need a connection between the idea and reality in the form of physical action and that aligns with human nature.

 

Enter the greatest gift the Founding Fathers ever gave to mankind. It goes even deeper than Individual Rights. It is called Separation of Powers with Checks and Balances.

 

A person who has power wants more. Is that as it should be? Is that proper?

Nope. It just is. That is how human nature works, or at least a fundamental part of human nature. One accepts that reality about humans or one ignores it (blanks it out), but it will keep being what it is regardless. All those human suckers out there just won't obey a good idea when someone tells them to. In fact, more often than not, they want you to obey them.

So whatcha gonna do when that happens? Complain? Withdraw moral sanction? Pout?  

 

The Founding Fathers knew what to do. They knew the best way to curtail the power of one man was to give another man half the power (oversimplified to serve as an example). Both want to expand their power and the only place to get more is from the other man. So they block each other.

Since the slice of power each has is real and can be used in reality, they do things with their portion of power--things in reality. This is how the wonderful ideas in the Constitution go from syllogism and principle and suggestion into reality. That's the mechanism.

Nobody can rule other humans (for good or ill) without the power to back it up. That goes in spades for a document to rule other humans. 

The Founding Fathers did not ignore the inner power-monger inside all humans. They accepted that it exists to some degree and outsmarted it by slicing power up into lots of pieces. They forced the inner power-monger to obey Individual Rights, thus let the idea of reason in the document to emerge long enough to seduce it--in practice.

 

 

The rub has come when the people in government perceive places to expand their power that does not come from the power of another person in government. For example, when they authorize purchases in the name of the government.

Buying medicine does not take away any power from a judge or legislator or even member of law enforcement. So nobody in government has much interest in stopping it when other people in government suggest it and start doing things to make it happen. Why should they bother? It's no skin off their nose, so to speak. But buying medicine expands the power in spades of the person who authorizes the moolah and purchase.

And once the laws become so convoluted, nobody can understand them anymore, and there are taxes and purchases galore to provide lots of moolah to go around, who the hell in government wants to obey? In that scenario, there is plenty of power to go around. Just set up your gang and set up shop. You don't need to step on the toes of other people in government. You have the entire country to step on.

That's a reality that will not go away by saying the word "proper."

That needs to be fixed. And keeping that reality hidden as theory, as "laissez-faire capitalism," essentially grants it moral credibility it does not have in reality. 

And with moral credibility, with equating the man in a deal with no guns to the man in the same deal with guns, the first thing to go out with window is Individual Rights. Not all at once. Instead, bit by bit.

Michael

I lean towards the sentiment attached to "Bad Laws are not law at all"... when I think of how things should be and yes what "proper" government would be, but this "ideal" so to speak is not grounded in wish or faith or intrinsicism or any thing other than the political principles springing from ethics, i.e. morality (rational selfishness)... how the economy "should" be, what "government" should do, how the market "should" interact with "government" are all premised on what kind of systems individuals should set-up and maintain... and guard with eternal vigilance.

I know, in the real world setting up things is more than wishing and speaking with two friends who might tell two of their friends... setting up systems has been incredibly laborious, bloody, and complicated in the past, and it would ever be so.  It must come from an overriding culture and sense of life as well, ultimately ideas, individuals have, morphing into some "we" deciding to act on it because they know the kind of society which leads to flourishing.

But in the real world every system involves people, and people are flawed in innumerable different ways and to different degrees... but why even bother keeping the idea of what is "proper" in mind in terms of a system or government, if we have no one too staff it with diligence and integrity?

I'm not at the point of throwing out "shoulds" and "propers"... to me they are still lodestones, and principled... ideal even.. and like perhaps an unreachable infinity... they still are "directions" toward which can all face and move, knowing the end is never reached and the striving never ends.

I have thought of your points many times before, and bemoaned the fact of reality that although we may be able to determine what "we" should set up for ourselves based on ethical principles and human flourishing... it is somehow unattainable because "we" (the only ones who could) cannot implement it as flawed human beings... but this feels like Peter saying he knows what he should do but he cannot... it is synonymous to someone initiating the individual task of personally seeking moral principles but giving up entirely when he realizes he is flawed and cannot be completely and infallibly trusted to DO or ACT in accordance with those principles. I, however, believe in free will... for individuals AND for cultures/societies (even if Harry Seldon would argue the statistics prove determinism for groups..) and so I have hope.

But of course, these things are NOT easy, so principles both individual and societal need to take into account the frailties AND the virtues of human nature... obtaining a result according to principles requires implementation which soberly takes into account human nature. So, insofar as the balance of powers works with and takes into account human nature without giving up on the principles those powers are meant to uphold... I see great genius and benefit in something akin to that.. if one day someone could think that up.

I do agree that something along that vein ... of aiming to live by and set up principled proper systems, necessitating the inclusion (and made possible by) specific kinds of systems, or procedures, or machinations which attenuate, balance, cancel...etc... the effect of our lower natures.

The principle "laissez-faire" means government leaving alone private parties... free individuals etc. to deal with each other however they choose.  This principle applied to a deal BETWEEN government and private parties does not take the same form of "leave the dealers alone" BUT must be in the same spirit and provide the same outcome as the wider principle.  The wider principle is the separation of government and the economy.. or government "leave the market alone". In the same manner the principle of honesty is not an imperative forbidding one person for uttering falsehoods to another, but the wider principles of adherence to reality and not faking reality to gain a value.  So too, "applying" the principle of "laissez-faire" to a government deal does not mean leaving the GOVERNMENT alone (to deal however the heck it wants), but means structuring the dealings so as to ensure they leave the market alone and as untouched and unaffected as possible.  [The deal also should leave the government and its agents unaffected... and untarnished...]    How to systematically achieve this, structure it to attenuate the darker side of the people implementing it from affecting the intended results... that is another mystery new Founding Fathers will need to tackle.

I agree with you in broad strokes, the separation of powers of the branches of government work well to balance that power, but the interface of that power with the people and the economy needs its own mechanism, it needs to be somehow inoculated from the the opportunities and incentives of corruption.

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

S,

So you are OK with medical products being sold to the government? Like vaccines? And if so, are you surprised a lot of medical products receive immunity from being sued?

No.

A proper government does not buy medicine... why would it? 

Granting immunity to private entities is also not the role of government.

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ditto for information products developed by DARPA and given a free market pass (especially Facebook and Google). They, too, are immune from being sued. And get this. They get to censor who the government wants censored.

Here you speak of corrupt government doing improper (non proper governmental) things.

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

After the government spends money developing, or helping to develop, products it later grants immunity from prosecution to, it buys products from the companies it helped set up to sell them.

I see a pattern here... a corrupt government, an improper government, can and does things which are corrupt and improper... 

this is not an argument for why Rand's statement that government should interact with the private market in a laissez faire manner.

I submit again, a proper government should do so except for services and goods which are not properly in the free market.

6 hours ago, Strictlylogical said:

What a proper government is and does, will still require many of these things and it would be senseless to have them provided only within the government from scratch ... we know government is not the entity which is good at providing any goods or services.... quite the opposite.  Furthermore, government must not and should not obtain any goods and services from the free market at preferred or coerced prices... indeed prices which are artificial in any way.

Ok so you know what I think, how do you think a proper government (minimal... three branches) should interact with the free market in a proper and free society, with respect to goods and services properly offered in that free market to others?

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

But then she said the market was morally correct to serve the government in a laissez-faire capitalism way.

In my view, this is a humongous misidentification. The premise is that the government is capable of acting as a simple laissez-faire capitalism customer.

I don't think it is a huge misidentification though.

I think there is a lack of a critical distinction/identification.

In the free market anyone is free to provide goods and services to anyone... and this is true for sealing wax, haircuts, office supplies, etc.

What a proper government is and does, will still require many of these things and it would be senseless to have them provided only within the government from scratch ... we know government is not the entity which is good at providing any goods or services.... quite the opposite.  Furthermore, government must not and should not obtain any goods and services from the free market at preferred or coerced prices... indeed prices which are artificial in any way.

OK, so much for the business of the Justice System, laws, courts and all...

What about the police?  What about weapons?  Without thinking harder on it, its not perfectly clear to me whether there is a justification for the police, in executing their duty to protect individual rights of the people via enforcement, to have any armaments which are prohibited to the law abiding individual citizens... to me it seems there should be a symmetry or mirroring of both professional and non-professional alike ... defending themselves, loved ones, and neighbors.

What is clear to me is that the weaponry and tactics and offensive devices of a military for use against foreign powers must be greater and of a different kind from that provided to and used by the police and the citizenry.  As such, here we have a CLEAR situation where the government has a complete and utter monopoly on use of and engagement with surveillance, cyber, conventional, and nuclear weaponry dealing with foreign threats.

In this way then, there will be some products and services which have only one customer... the military.  THOSE products and services, for which there is properly NO free market, must be differentiated, and should likely be controlled by government according to principles of the role of a  proper government.  Likely this would prohibit Global entities from providing these to America as well as other countries whose interests may not be aligned...  In fact engineers and scientists creating said weapons should likely be employed by the military.  Now drilling down further... there will be components IN those products which are on the free market... but then we go back to what I said above.


So Rand I think was right for (just about) at least two branches of government, but not for SOME products and services solely within the power of the third ... the military branch.

54 minutes ago, tmj said:

In zee furture vee vill give you all zee cola you may wish, ( if of course you are 'able' to recieve), but vee have now a situation vere vee have Coke and Pepsi , soon leibshen vee vill finally have A cola maker , have patience und soon vee vill macht  du happy.

If everybody owned property, had ze caars, ate steak, und lived in ze house inshtead of ein hoomble living pod, ze planet would kaput in next years..

somebody has to eat ze boogz, own nossing, an live in pods…

ze solution is that YOU do so, zat way togezzer WE are zaving ze planet.

If the American people would just vote to get rid of the FED, and tied the currency to something real, maybe you would have a choice of saving your money instead of being forced to gamble it on others enterprises, just to keep the money's value and purchasing power.

Given the current situation  though, betting on the best and most sound horses out there would be a good idea... as long as you can get reliable information and clarity.  But the system is designed so that you are forced to invest or transfer wealth to others... soon property will be myth, and you will be "rewarded" based on your credit score.