Madison, WI

We agree.

I taught Economics and Finance for fifteen years. I told my students to have side projects, no matter what their primary sources of income were. Even if it is a hobby that pays for itself—like trading comic books or finishing and reselling furniture bought at garage sales—it could become one's primary source of income between jobs, and it might even grow into one's career.

As I point out above, sell "Eat the Rich" t-shirts for all I care. Just do something productive, and above all do not be a burden on others.

"[H]aving them learn it in school - especially having them to run an "experimental" small businesses for the teaching experience - is much better than what is done currently."

Even if that experimental business is selling Che Guevara and I'm With Her t-shirts. If people are dumb enough to buy swag like that, then you still have to cover your costs, maintain sufficient inventory to avoid having to turn customers away, manage vendors and employees, etc.

And, not that I'm arguing your point - I know most probably will not be entrepreneurs - but having them learn it in school - especially having them to run an "experimental" small businesses for the teaching experience - is much better than what is done currently. I like your plan - trying give them hands on as closely as possible is great as I don't think most people do get that by being employees of small businesses. Thus why I would also include a business component to a school when/if we set on up. To me it is very important to get them to understand that businesses are not their enemy - quite the opposite.

Right - but my big issue with people working for small businesses is that they still don't see what it is to be the business owner. They know practically nothing of taxes, regulations, the responsibilities, the risks, etc. When I had my IT company in Tampa - I primarily did IT work for small businesses dealing with the owners, their accounting data, POS and inventory management systems, etc. I frequently spent a lot of time learning their businesses to understand their processes and how to best implement a system for them. As such I had to work with the employees top to bottom. The vast majority of them regularly making comments that told me they CLEARLY had no understanding of these kinds of details of the business or it's owners. It was the typical socialist/collectivist crap that they would spew.

Being the employee simply cannot translate to the experience of being the business owner. Their inexperience will never let them properly conceptualize it. This was one of the reasons why I decided to go in a different direction - I really got sick of dealing with the employees in many of these cases. Some of my best friends are previous clients that became millionaires - but while they were building up - and having to take second mortgages on their home to cover payroll - their employees were blasting them for being greedy, rich, fat-cats, that didn't care about them - while getting paid well for their job types with benefits, etc... and the business owners were even easy to get along with and personable. It really got under my skin.

Although the ideal would be for each of us to pursue entrepreneurial careers, the vast majority do not, but they do work for a business, charity, or other organization that must receive at least as much in revenues as it spends to cover costs, in order to survive.

In spite of this, Business is not emphasized in the standard K-12 curriculum, while laboratory sciences are.

This really grinds my gears, because if leftists believed 1/100th of what they said, then they would be promoting entrepreneurship and the Business disciplines among the poor, because Marx called on workers to seize the means of production. In the middle of the Industrial Revolution, that might have meant that they should expropriate their employers' factories, but today in an economy based on Information and Services, that means being the capital.

If I am misunderstanding you - please clarify - but I meant that more people should be involved in owning and running their own businesses. I know very few people in the community that own and run their own business. And even then, many times their kids are not involved. I think the number of people who owned their own businesses has declined over the last half dozen decades. As such - they only know of it from TV, media, or some corrupt "education" teaching them that businesses are corrupt and evil. They have no personal experience to draw from and fall for it.

I'm not sure what I think about him either - but - it doesn't matter really. It matters what his ideas are and whether or not they are correct.

There are a couple of points that we disagree on - and a couple I disagree on with Rand. Some that I don't like - but I don't have enough study yet to decide who is right.

On thing that Peikoff said in Teaching Johnny to Think that I thought was pretty contradictory was when he said "Why would a genius write a book?" - meaning, in context, that he didn't think it was worth a genius's time to write one. Maybe he did not consider Rand to be a genius - but if he did - that was not a very well thought out comment. I think she was. I also think it is pretty insane. A genius is the perfect person to write a book - to pass along their understanding in mass and for longevity. Look at Rand's books. They are teaching beginners yet today - and will be for many years to come - hopefully decades and/or centuries. I would like to have seen his lectures in real time - but as I didn't - I can't. "He" did not write Teaching Johnny to Think (nor some of "his" other works) - but turned them over to editors to write the books for him based on his lectures without him even reading the finished products for accuracy. That to me is not genius - if you have great thoughts and don't pass them on - they are wasted. Passing them on in lecture will never reach the numbers it can reach in book form - if published in mass as Rand's were.

Very good! I knew is was TN or KY - just couldn't get it to come to me when writing you. As they are no state income tax - I would assume they do well bringing in industry or any other kind of business doing well. Your mom was our "neighbor" - we moved from Tampa. Me and my wife met in Melbourne while attending FIT.

Where are you?

"a school that has a philosophy, but the director has no idea which one."
Yes. The world needs more reason-based schools. We would send our kids there if one existed in our area and if it were not dogmatic.

It beats the alternative.

That said, youth is wasted on the young.

I remember JA, but I worked after school and didn't have time. At the time I thought it was great making money, but the better choice would have been to do better in school. I had to do a lot of "catch up" in my 20s and 30s, but made out OK in the end.

OK, I have to write this reply to my own note to correct a misquote! I didn't think it was correct when I typed it in, but figured it was close enough. After typing I did some yard work and then had to jump in the shower before going out to dinner tonight (Note to Dino: Yup, the shower straightened it all out!!, LOL) and the real quote popped in my head. The wrong quote: "All code is FORTRAN, except maybe in another language.". The right quote from the '70s: "FORTRAN code can be written in any language."

Sometimes getting old sucks. I hate it when that happens, LOL!

Junior Achievement was fun, but we were completely unprepared for it by our high school classes. It would have been a lot more enjoyable and useful, if we had had some kind of introduction to Accounting, Budgeting, Financial Analysis, Marketing, and Management.

In my case, I enjoyed Chemistry and Physics, and I completed Calculus in the 10th grade. I would have enjoyed Statistics, if they had offered it.

Nonetheless, although I have used Calculus a few times in my academic work, I have had no need for Chemistry or Physics.

The only thing of Peikoff's that I have read is Teaching Johnny to Think and "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy" in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. That's not enough for me to express an informed opinion; however, it also was not enough to have me run out and buy anything else that he wrote.

Then again, even Ayn Rand strayed outside her sandbox in some of her later applications of her earlier foundational work.

I don't like Peikoff.

Sure, he was groomed by AR but he is far from being the heir of her abilities.

"However, Business is not emphasized in the standard high school curriculum..." I wish it was. I was fortunate to have one of my HS math teachers cut aside a block of time to cover business and the financial markets. I don't think it was part of the regular curriculum, but he thought it was something we all should know. No textbook, as I recall, just his notes he passed out. Some of the things I learned in that snippet of time I came to appreciate much more later in life. A lot!

"...definitely have computer programming woven..." Yes, for sure. The basis is Mathematics/Logic, which is on the list. Here's my own experience as an example. I went to high school in the '60s and there wasn't much computer programming going on at that level at that time. However, I was very fortunate to have a 10th grade geometry teacher that taught the course as more of a logic course than a vanilla geometry course. The emphasis was on how to think (logically) rather than what to think. Later when I did become a programmer it was as natural as breathing. There was a humorous saying back in the '70s: "All code is FORTRAN, except maybe in another language.", and I'd whisper under my breath "And FORTRAN is simple geometry.".

"The IT guy in me would definitely have computer programming woven in..."

Coding is 21st Century literacy.

In re, Teh 1%™: It all comes back to envy.

Whether it is Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth "Warren" Mann (aka The Red Herring) carping about billionaires, the War on Christianity, Democratic National Socialism, Occupy, or pretty much any other popular radical obsession, it all comes back to activists' not wanting others' stuff, but instead wanting others not to have their stuff. They are obsessed with wealth destruction, rather than wealth creation. This is why they torch limousines and police cars, rather than steal them.

Above all, my message to children is to be ashamed of feeling envy. (For the inner-city children: Get Rich or Die Tryin'.) If someone has a toy, and he did not take it away from you or anyone else, then go ahead and be jealous, in the sense of wanting to have that kind of toy and taking steps to get one, but do not stoop to the level of a dog watching another dog play with a chew toy. If we could convey only that one simple message, then the motivation to embrace socialism could evaporate.

" I am very pro - 'more people being in business'."

My position is that the vast majority already are. Approximately 10% of the US working population is employed by government at some level, including bureaucrats, firemen, policemen, DMV ladies, etc. A small percentage serve in the military, and the vast majority of them are not career military. Ignoring a handful of other very small sectors, the vast majority are employed in business, both commercial and charitable.

However, Business is not emphasized in the standard high school curriculum as much as Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, even though only the tiniest minority of adults are employed as laboratory scientists.

We can teach quantitative methods, critical thinking, and logic through business disciplines like Accounting, Economics, and Finance, as easily as we can through laboratory sciences, and with much greater relevance to the pupils' lives as independent adults in the real world beyond their mothers' basements. Likewise, field experiments in Management and Marketing can be much more fun and useful that timing the descent of balls dropped from a table or mixing hydrochloric acid with sodium hydroxide to make salt water.

If you go with a school that does not have a philosophy, then you go with a school that has a philosophy, but the director has no idea which one.

See Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It? for details.

My mother moved to Eastern Tennessee from Central Florida. She is very happy there. Sales taxes are high, but there is no state personal income tax, and she can shop in North Carolina and Virginia. (There is also a tradition of haggling in some shops, such that the 'discount' offsets the sales tax.)

There is a world-class heart center in Knoxville. Normally, one would have to be in New York City, Los Angeles, or South Florida to get equivalent care.

Politically, the locals should be amenable to what your are up to, and the industrial employers attract skilled employees who earn incomes high enough to afford private school tuition.

I can't imagine how much work is involved. I had a bad experience with my kids in a school that had a philosophy. After that I sought a school with no philosophy. My thought was just "just teach them," and don't worry about philosophy. Now I would like a school with a reason-based philosophy, although I'd still be cautious of it turning into dogma. I would approach an Objectivist-oriented school with extreme skepticism since the ostensibly Rand-inspired ideas I encounter online are the opposite of what I took away from the books.

I know putting together a business plan an executing it is incredibly hard. Even after you think everything through carefully, things take about three times the amount of work you think they will.