Read Ayn Rands essay on the cult of moral grayness. You're demanding that I be politically correct so your FEELINGS don't get hurt.

I am happy to address this. But please don’t try to poison the well because I am posting a long and involved premise.

we do not have a good working def. of capitalism. when Rand said capitalism, she was talking about an economic system nestled in freedom.

I agree that we do not. And by what definition constitutes freedom? To me it means pursuing my physical, creative and intellectual interests. Without coercion, indentured servitude or deontological ethics infecting my brain.

1.humans main survival tool is their rational facalties. brains have to be free to function effectively. true today as when Rand first stated.

True but humans didn’t require a student loan to invent a wheel then have to pay it back. They did it because it freed human energy. We apply our creative energy to relieve the burden of labor. If this wasn’t the case we would not have developed agriculture or anything making life easier. We started capitalizing later, when we realized we could hold out to the highest bidder.

2.Monopoly(game)=life. False. Monopoly is not win/win. it is a zero sum game essentially. in a capitalistic econ. that is not the case.

Not for those that loose!

3. capitalism comes back at the point of a gun. False. antithesis of capitalism. capitalism is the removal of guns/force as the method of persuasion.

Really? All capitalists insist on a Laissez faire government? A government with Guns… “To Protect the rights of individuals and their property.”

I see, you wish to win the monopoly game and keep the losers at bay via threats of guns, cops and cages with your proceeds.

I can think of something better: An educational and access economy to goods and services wherein if I happen to need a car for an hour I check one out. Why should the resources be wasted to build a car for every possible social stratification and personal taste. Do you need a pearlescent red car to get you from point A to B? No.

4. every intelligent creature wants to be free. False. plenty of people who are happy to be dictators and moochers. they r not free, and they don't want it for others.

That’s right and they have nuclear bombs!

Well, then you have the same problem I do! The people that you are speaking of believe in duty-centered ethics by force, whether to God or the State. I reject it. An access and educational based “economy” (for lack of a better word) of shared ideas that improve life for all without force is a much better idea in my estimation and opinion. However, it can only be voluntary. Same problem with Capitalism. I think capitalism is a step backwards considering present technology.

5. loans/credit=slavery. False. TAXES are slavery. credit and loans are part of your freedom to contract.

True if we operated in pure capitalism but the creditors are so far from ethical it is nauseating. The system today is designed to create indentured servants to a reality-faking corporate oligarchy, who is coupling itself with the government and becoming a totalitarian dictator. The masses are still deprived (I believe intentionally by Dewey, James and Woodrow Wilson) of a classical education. Instead it has been replaced with progressivism. Education has turned into a gate-keeping system of indoctrination and grooming of the individual to be placed into the “proper class” or area that the system tells him he is best at: Liberal Arts and Politics perhaps, or maybe “Factory analyst and systems supervisor”. If he demonstrates that he can think too much he is probably groomed into the sciences so he’ll keep his creative ideas in the lab.

It is now almost impossible for a doctor (thanks to Obama) to enjoy a practice of helping people. No. Now he spends a tremendous portion of his time complying with regulations rather than treating people. You all know this…

6.capitalism does not arbitrarily assign ANYTHING to society’s goals.

There is no such thing as a “societal goal” per se. Society is a broad abstraction that represents individuals. And yes it does require some “agreed upon” standard (by capitalistic definition precious and scarce) in order to represent the energy of human labor.
For example lets say 1 gram of gold equals 1 pound of wheat to represent that individuals ability and energy to produce it. If I needed a chicken and it provided an equivalent amount of food energy I don’t need to fool with the gold coin.
The only argument that one could posit here is the fact that we need to move goods from point A to point B. Gold is heavy, it can be “cut” or stolen by bandits. Thus fiat currency was developed to stop bandits from stealing the gold you were carrying to exchange for 1000 pounds of wheat or whatever via promissory note.


I am not going to continue. because every premise you build your argument on, is inconsistent with the ideas of Ayn Rand. False premises=false conclusions

I see, Ayn Rand is the final word on objectivism. We can all Stop thinking, we need go no further. She has all the rules laid out for us. Oh Brother!

Thank you for your civility, maturity and respect!

I accept that I bear the burden of proof for this.

I am not in the least saying that capitalism was not sound at some point in human history.

However to advance a philosophy that will support capitalism, will require integration as per Leonard Peikoff’s terms in the D.I.M Hypothesis. In other words, one must be re-educated to abandon their [Mis] and [Dis] -integrations in an effort to achieve “rational” integration and induction i.e. the scientific method.

Alternatively, to advance a philosophy that shifts from a resource scarcity mentality to a resource abundance mentality, also will require an ‘integration overhaul’ in an individual’s philosophy.

This is a problem for either of us, and I think we all agree that the use of force is absolutely immoral and unethical. It must be voluntary.

Consider for a moment that we here in the Gulch, built an actual protected utopia, where people live conservatively, only for the necessities required to sustain creativity, and use the best manufactured devices and tools that are designed for quality (“The best that men have to offer, rather then the shoddiest..”) in order to ease the burden of labor, free the creative mind and thus extend life.

In the Gulch, everyone had some basic laboring job to earn gold, which they traded for their basic living requirements.

Ok, now presume that I ask the “value producers” for surplus materials that would otherwise be discarded, they give it to me voluntarily; I didn’t coerce them by force or by emotional, intellectual, or legal disarmament –I built my laser display and design business literally from lasers (perceived to be worth $20,000 dollars or more) that I scrounged from dumpsters!- then use my creativity to assemble them into a robot that can perform all the manual labor. Suppose, I decide not to ask for gold, but rather,

“I’ll build you a robot that will plant, grow and harvest those potatos for the duration of your life and beyond, as long as I can have enough to live on during my life.”

Then I repeat, for chicken, clothing, fruit, a toaster etc. etc. etc. I am now not in a capitalist economy I am in an abundant energy economy. There is no reason for Dagny to clean Galt’s house and use those irreplaceable precious hours scrubbing the floor when she could be redesigning her railroad.

Now the problem is, “Doesn’t Dagny have a right to charge (some arbitrary price) what she determines for use of the railroad?”

Yes, she certainly has the right to do what she wants: its her creation. I think she is going to want the benefits of a labor-relieving robot though. If she wants it, the most rational decision is to allow me to use the railroad in exchange for the use of my labor saving robot. I don’t need gold or fiat currency to do that. I only need my mind and access to resources.

Money is a shared, agreed upon social standard. I believe that it is an orthodoxically shared delusion raised to near religious fervor as is evidenced in response to my posts.

Economics is no more a science then day-trading. It is merely a theoretical guess based on the movement of the medium within a group associated with their philosophical constructs. It is not empirical.

However, man is an empirical existent. His nature is to act on reality -the natural world- by invoking his frontal lobes integrations and inductions, in order to ease his burden of labor i.e. the harnessing of fire, the use of a club, and the invention of the wheel for instance. He did not require money in order to find the incentive to ease his burden of survival.

Man is NOT an entirely philosophical being, he is also a very complex emotional creature, and is saddled with some evolutionary behavioral traits:

1. Kin Selection
2. Sexual selection
3. Individual selection

Game theory and cooperation:

1. Tit for Tat / reciprocal altruism – the prisoner’s dilemma
2. Rock paper scissors / all other organisms refrain from interspecies harm because they behave for the organisms survival.

…and much more.

See Robert Sapolski –Stanford.

We’ve evolved not to kill each other. We began to do so when we started hording resources or to compete for the “alpha’ role in order to propagate our progeny.

Mans labor is represented by energy and time empirically. He has a finite amount of each THAT is the only currency he has to “trade”.

Attaching an arbitrary value to his energy immediately causes him to turn against his nature and adopt a social construct of compliance. He will then in order to relieve his burden of labor, continue to inflate the value of his time and energy arbitrarily by pitting one’s human need against another in an auction clearing house to the highest bidder.

I will repeat this example a lot, however:

Consider the game of monopoly. How do you win? Total acquisition and bankrupting your less skilled opponent! What is it that is happening in the west now?

Suppose you wish that those that lost would stay in the game because you squandered all the resources on the board. You can either:

A. Redistribute your wealth and return it the game so others may continue to play.
B. You can print more money and circulate debt to keep them enslaved in the game. (Our present situation)
C. You can quit playing by the rules mid-game and decide that this is damaging to the looser (in the real world) and share the resources and refocus on how they can be used to improve life for you and everyone.

What metaphysical reason, or even a rational emotional reason do people need 6 green houses, 2 red hotels, ownership of Park Place etc etc.? Is it metaphysically necessary just because, “I want it!” Does the desire to want something and own it supercede all reason?

For most capitalists I have listened to, their argument is childish, “I want a Lambourgini!” “(and if I don’t get it I am going to throw a tantrum!)”

“Ok, but this Randmobile 3000 is a more reliable, more comfortable, safer, more efficient, costs less and has less environmental impact.”

“ I don’t care! I DESERVE A LAMBOURGINI! Everybody else has a Randmobile 3000…” That is exactly what we are dealing with in defense an perception of capitalism.

As I pointed out to Khaling, what will you do if there are “sore losers”?

Back to monopoly:

What will you do with sore losers who have nuclear weapons? You can’t win a nuclear exchange. And you aren’t ever going to get the D and M mode mentalities to go along and graciously accept your “win”. I believe this would be irrational.

You are essentially asking young people to burden themselves with labor against the realization of what technology is capable of. They perceive, and rightly so, that “capitalism” (I know our economy is basically totalitarian) represents the worst evils, transgressions, bad shit that has ever been done to humans and the planet in the name of “profit”.

It is unobjective to think you will get them on the capitalist’s side. What will you do when the nameless faceless majority who either, is not intellectually capable of competing, or has a mental disorder, or is a complete Kantian Disintegrator, forms a mob and demands your resources be redistributed? Kill them all? I don’t think so, at least I hope not!

That is happening now!

Therefore, it is irrational to continue this (any economic system) when 80% of the jobs, are now in the service sector and quickly being eliminated in favor of robots for reliability, speed and energy efficiency as compared to human labor.

We have to face the facts that machines are out-competing us! Either we turn them to our advantage to relieve the burden of labor and realize the Good Life of a self-actualized man, or we scramble like rats for the last piece of cheese, all the while filling our nest with useless shiny bobbles.

We all know a change must occur, a major shift in thinking must occur, we all agree on that. In order to have the good life we must check our premises, and if we find we are orthodoxically following a pattern of indoctrination that manifests in emotional fervor, we better reevaluate our place on earth and in humanity.

We are at a point in human history where we have capabilities of evaluating and shaping our world via technology than we never had before. Are we really going to maintain a 3000 year old invention and apply it to the needs of man today? It would be a colossal logical error to do so.