what about poor children in the ghetto?

[Selene]

"I would imagine..." Negative on guessing, imagining or thinking that someone would have found out by now. Discover. Follow the Federal Tittle Monies. http://www.ed.gov/po...sea02/pg51.html

Adam

I'm not really sure where this discussion is going.

Do you agree that it is dangerous for freedom loving people to agree to a program that puts private schools at a serious competitive disadvantage?

If you agree with that, then I think we are in basic agreement.

Darrell

Yes, I do agree. Moreover, strategically. it would be irrational to start by playing into a deck that was fixed. The voucher plan would be legal in a particular township or county. Within that community you could equalize the playing field. It is the Federal money that you would be able to argue be equally distributed through each tittle to that particular political community, e,g, township, county to get as close to a truly level playing field.

However, we are more than basically in agreement. Sorry to throw you off "typing out loud".

Adam

[tjohnson]

"Rational," in this context, means logically related to the requirements of man's existence and prosperity.

But people who want to teach their children that Jesus loves them and they have to accept Jesus into their lives think this is "logically related to their existence and prosperity". Religions all over the world believe this and that is precisely why it is so important to remove religion from schools. I think what you are saying is let the crazy people do what they want as long as they don't bother me. The trouble is they likely will bother you and then you will have to deal with it later. Pay me now or pay me later.

[Darrell Hougen]

"Rational," in this context, means logically related to the requirements of man's existence and prosperity.

But people who want to teach their children that Jesus loves them and they have to accept Jesus into their lives think this is "logically related to their existence and prosperity". Religions all over the world believe this and that is precisely why it is so important to remove religion from schools. I think what you are saying is let the crazy people do what they want as long as they don't bother me. The trouble is they likely will bother you and then you will have to deal with it later. Pay me now or pay me later.

I think you're too hung up on the religion issue. Remember, we are basically a product of "Christian Civilization" as Winston Churchill called it. If Christians were all a bunch of crazies, we wouldn't be here.

Darrell

[Barbara Branden]

They live in cities because they do know the value of cooperation -- when they share common goals and values with their fellow city-dwellers and when force is not allowed. But when race turns against race and religion against religion, when the poor turn against the rich, when the weight of taxation becomes unbearable -- when force begins to take over the cities --that's when people start to leave, as they are doing in so many cities now. If my wealth. my safety, and my freedom require that I serve your purposes and my neighbor's' purposes and his neighbor's purposes rather than my own, why should I continue living among you? BarbaraP.S. As for your remarkable statement about "what Objectivism seems to lead to" -- yes, of course, it's well known that Objectivism teaches the evils of cities and everything that goes wiith them -- business and industry and trade and art and music and science, and all manner of human achievement, in favor of the bucolic life.

Interesting that you mention "when the poor turn against the rich". So you think poor people should live along side of rich people and accept their lot and not make any trouble? Frankly, I'm surprised the poor haven't revolted like they did in the French Revolution. As long as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer we will not have a stable society.

They live in cities because they do know the value of cooperation -- when they share common goals and values with their fellow city-dwellers and when force is not allowed. But when race turns against race and religion against religion, when the poor turn against the rich, when the weight of taxation becomes unbearable -- when force begins to take over the cities --that's when people start to leave, as they are doing in so many cities now. If my wealth. my safety, and my freedom require that I serve your purposes and my neighbor's' purposes and his neighbor's purposes rather than my own, why should I continue living among you?

Barbara

P.S. As for your remarkable statement about "what Objectivism seems to lead to" -- yes, of course, it's well known that Objectivism teaches the evils of cities and everything that goes wiith them -- business and industry and trade and art and music and science, and all manner of human achievement, in favor of the bucolic life.

Interesting that you mention "when the poor turn against the rich". So you think poor people should live along side of rich people and accept their lot and not make any trouble? Frankly, I'm surprised the poor haven't revolted like they did in the French Revolution. As long as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer we will not have a stable society.

No,I don't think poor people should accept their lot. .I think they should try to become rich,if that's what they want. And here, as opposed to France at the time of the Revolution, it is possible for them to do so. Do you really think that everyone who is rich was born that way?

Barbara

[BaalChatzaf]

No,I don't think poor people should accept their lot. .I think they should try to become rich,if that's what they want. And here, as opposed to France at the time of the Revolution, it is possible for them to do so. Do you really think that everyone who is rich was born that way?

Barbara

The U.S. was built by poor boys who made good. Proof: Turn on the electric light.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The U.S. was built by poor boys who made good. Proof: Turn on the electric light.

Bob,

Not only that. This country was made by people who were not afraid to fail as they became rich. The story goes that it took 999 attempts before Edison got the light bulb right. When asked how he was able to endure so much failure, he replied something to the effect that he merely discovered 999 ways to not make a light bulb.

That's the spirit that made us. That is our inheritance.

Michael

[shadesofgrey]

Just because a teacher or parent decides it is rational doesn't make it so. One might ask whether it is rational to "rationalize."

How do you know that the child won't recover? How do you know that if you teach the child socialism and multiculturalism, he will recover?

So who does decide what is rational, you?

"Rational," in this context, means logically related to the requirements of man's existence and prosperity.

I have never heard of a school teaching socialism and multiculturalism.

You've never heard of a school treating all cultures as equal? You've never heard of a school running down the great industrialists by calling them "robber barons"? Must I go on?

Darrell

Welllll......I think there are certainly individual teachers that espouse ideas that your average objectivist would oppose; you hear about it every so often when a group of parents get up in arms about some idea their kids brought home. However, I think the idea that there is a concerted, organized, federally-sponsored effort to teach the virtues of socialism and all it entails in US schools is alarmist conspiracy propaganda.

As for the multiculturalism, I would think that the idea is to impart the idea that all human life has value and that value is somehow expressed through a culture (itself being a variety of expressions of a people). I don't think every culture is equally valuable depending on your reference point. The idea of value itself is completely relative. So while teaching children that each culture has an empirically measurable value equal to all other cultures is erroneous, teaching them that all humans have the potential for greatness as expressed through various cultural media is a decent way to get kids to appreciate their neighbors.

Regarding Robber Barons, I have no doubt that good men were caught up in the label and unjustly categorized, but there are plenty of examples of unscrupulous behavior by "great industrialists". Simply making money is not a measure of value or productivity in objectivism, you have to make it FAIRLY. You have to provide a quality product or service at a price that allows you to profit while not exceeding the intrinsic value of said product or service. You have to pay employees a wage commensurate with their value to the company, allow the possibility of wage increases, and provide cost of living and inflationary adjustments. Competitive suppression based on principles other than superior value are also immoral. Many so-called robber barons ran monopolies (at least temporarily) and a monopoly ALWAYS ends up producing an inferior product at an artificially elevated cost. Competition is the lifeblood of the capitalist system and without it the consumer becomes the victim.

While many of these industrialists were also substatial philanthropists, that alone does not negate harmful business practices, as it amounts to stealing from Peter to pay Paul. It would be most accurate to teach that while these industrialists helped make the US the foremost economy of the 20th century, their gains (both personal and industrial) were not always achieved morally and that while we may aspire to their achievements, we cannot lose sight of our values on the way there.

[sbeaulieu]

The U.S. was built by poor boys who made good. Proof: Turn on the electric light.

Bob,

Not only that. This country was made by people who were not afraid to fail as they became rich. The story goes that it took 999 attempts before Edison got the light bulb right. When asked how he was able to endure so much failure, he replied something to the effect that he merely discovered 999 ways to not make a light bulb.

That's the spirit that made us. That is our inheritance.

Michael

I'm officially using this statement to compel my children not to quit their endeavors! They sometimes give up so easily on the easiest of things. They feel like no matter what they try, they have to get it right the first time. I keep telling them it doesn't work that way. This is sage advice

~ Shane

[Wolf DeVoon]

Simply making money is not a measure of value or productivity in objectivism, you have to make it FAIRLY. You have to provide a quality product or service at a price that allows you to profit while not exceeding the intrinsic value of said product or service. You have to pay employees a wage commensurate with their value to the company, allow the possibility of wage increases, and provide cost of living and inflationary adjustments.

This is so bizarre it's almost breathtaking. Ragnar is laughing, Rearden refuses to sell you anything at any price, and a quarry worker just raped your daughter. Galt is rewriting his radio speech, putting reasonableness and intrinsic value ahead of purpose and self-esteem.

I'm sure the kids in the ghetto will be pleased to hear that they're getting free vouchers, but disappointed that their drunk, drug-addicted, ignorant, abusive mixed-race socialist parents have an Objectivist right to religion and are sending them to a maddras in Indonesia. As long as they refrain from falsely shouting "Fire!" in a theater and take care to provide cost of living adjustments for others, there's no limit to what these sweet little tykes can achieve in community organizing and government service.

Edited December 8, 2009 by Wolf DeVoon

[anonrobt]

Simply making money is not a measure of value or productivity in objectivism, you have to make it FAIRLY. You have to provide a quality product or service at a price that allows you to profit while not exceeding the intrinsic value of said product or service. You have to pay employees a wage commensurate with their value to the company, allow the possibility of wage increases, and provide cost of living and inflationary adjustments.

This is so bizarre it's almost breathtaking. Ragnar is laughing, Rearden refuses to sell you anything at any price, and a quarry worker just raped your daughter. Galt is rewriting his radio speech, putting reasonableness and intrinsic value ahead of purpose and self-esteem.

I'm sure the kids in the ghetto will be pleased to hear that they're getting free vouchers, but disappointed that their drunk, drug-addicted, ignorant, abusive mixed-race socialist parents have an Objectivist right to religion and are sending them to a maddras in Indonesia. As long as they refrain from falsely shouting "Fire!" in a theater and take care to provide cost of living adjustments for others, there's no limit to what these sweet little tykes can achieve in community organizing and government service.

Not to mention there's no such thing as 'intrinsic value'... [see Tara Smith's Viable Values]

[Wolf DeVoon]

Tom Edison was a poor boy who became rich, mostly on his own efforts.

Bob, I've thought about this for several days. Edison made some money initially on improvements in telegraphy, which he studied on the job as a telegraph operator. Wall Street backed him thereafter because brokers and railroad tycoons put telegraphy on a fast track financially, and despite Edison's eccentricity. He failed to deliver funded projects more than once.

I think Edison personally invented the grammophone, but nothing else. His staff did the work on electric light, electric generator, motion picture camera. And Edison's DC power distribution was a disaster. Westinghouse won hands down with AC.

However, that's not why I've been thinking about Edison. As a person of average intelligence, I often thought I was born in the wrong century. I could have given Edison some competition. But not Shockley, Armstrong, or Turing.

[BaalChatzaf]

I think Edison personally invented the grammophone, but nothing else. His staff did the work on electric light, electric generator, motion picture camera. And Edison's DC power distribution was a disaster. Westinghouse won hands down with AC.

Indeed. Edison was not a champion of abstract scientific or mathematical thought and his gang of doers did most of the doing. But it was Edison through his drive and vision who founded the company, got the contract to wire lower Manhattan etc. etc. Edison created a place for the more scientifically acute folks around him.

Edison was somewhat of a philistine in regard to theoretical physics. He had stumbled onto the Edison Effect in 1883 and if he knew any science he would have invented the diode then and there. We would have had t.v. in 1910 instead of 1936. He also had a blind spot with regard to alternating current and he let Tesla (who was a scientific genius get away).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[shadesofgrey]

Simply making money is not a measure of value or productivity in objectivism, you have to make it FAIRLY. You have to provide a quality product or service at a price that allows you to profit while not exceeding the intrinsic value of said product or service. You have to pay employees a wage commensurate with their value to the company, allow the possibility of wage increases, and provide cost of living and inflationary adjustments.

This is so bizarre it's almost breathtaking. Ragnar is laughing, Rearden refuses to sell you anything at any price, and a quarry worker just raped your daughter. Galt is rewriting his radio speech, putting reasonableness and intrinsic value ahead of purpose and self-esteem.

I'm sure the kids in the ghetto will be pleased to hear that they're getting free vouchers, but disappointed that their drunk, drug-addicted, ignorant, abusive mixed-race socialist parents have an Objectivist right to religion and are sending them to a maddras in Indonesia. As long as they refrain from falsely shouting "Fire!" in a theater and take care to provide cost of living adjustments for others, there's no limit to what these sweet little tykes can achieve in community organizing and government service.

Not to mention there's no such thing as 'intrinsic value'... [see Tara Smith's Viable Values]

Intrinsic in terms of the market value. Fundamentally, the value of all things is relative, yes, but using a car for instance, there is a basic market value that reflects the neighborhood price that most people will pay as agreement that the car is pretty much worth that price once you take manufacturing costs, labor, materials and all that into consideration.

Hey, Wolfy....take a break. You don't have to be an idiot EVERY day. Did you even read the book? Rearden paid the most because he had the best workers. Ragnar never went after anyone who wasn't already stealing themselves. And Galt is about as REASONABLE a person as you can get. If your "response" resembled anything approaching a coherent point, I'd have more to say about it. But, since it doesn't, I don't.

[Wolf DeVoon]

You don't have to be an idiot EVERY day. Did you even read the book?

Age 31, I remember it well.

[Selene]

You don't have to be an idiot EVERY day. Did you even read the book?

Age 31, I remember it well.

Interesting discussion. I am a big Tesla advocate. What was your take on him?

Adam

searching for the founding fathers in Philly for the next five days

[Wolf DeVoon]

I am a big Tesla advocate. What was your take on him?

Adam

searching for the founding fathers in Philly for the next five days

Undoubtedly a bright fellow, although I remain skeptical about transmitting electric power from a tower without wires. Next door to Independence Hall be sure to visit the old Congress Hall and ask a guard to point out which dinky little desk was Madison's. The Philosophical Society has a first edition of Paine's Common Sense on display.