Some may call it conspiracy theories. Don't know if the Russians had anything to do with it; seems like there are a lot of Americans that are voluntarily dying to sign up for slavery.

In some respects, yes. But they are going back to what they're used to - perpetual slavery.

As the economist Walter Williams once stated; "starvation is a powerful motivator." When moochers realize the complaining and pretending to be victims won't get them what they want and if they intend to eat they better find some productive work.

We are burying ourselves

The point you miss is that it is LOOTED from me.
I cannot OPT OUT of it. I am self-employed. I still have to pay it.

It is not insurance. It is a TAX/REDISTRIBUTION. Insurance is optional, and you should collect on it, if you qualify.

How about take what you can get up to the amount they are stealing from you

As a side issue, just wanted to comment that I do not agree with your view of unemployment insurance. Everyone who works (legally) pays for that insurance, whether they want to or not. If a time comes when one needs to use that insurance, they paid for it and they use it. I pay for my fire insurance; if my house burns down, I will use it.

Khruschev once promised that he would bury us. We are living the fulfillment of that.

(With lots of sarcasm) Welcome, comrade!

The USSR Where "The govt pretends to pay us, so we pretend to work!" :-)

I work with Russian Programmers, been there a couple of times, and trying to head back.

It's fun (sarcastically) to watch the Russians laugh at us for being LESS FREE than they are!

Appreciate the thoughtful answer. I came from the former USSR (when it was still USSR) and cannot miss the recognition that I am now back in the USSoA. In the old USSR, to fight the system as an individual on moral grounds was insanity. It appears likewise in today's USSoA. The little wiggle room that we still have is only temporary; soon, the entire concept of an entrepreneur will be punished, as it was back then. I am looking for solutions, but none seem obvious. Not any good ones, anyway.

I hoped (and expected) that CaptainKirk would respond when I brought up the Kobayashi Maru. It's nice to meet you.

On the scale of characters within Atlas Shrugged, I am much like Quentin Daniels. I am a professor at a private institute of technology who is not above cleaning the floors so that I can practice my inventive craft.

And yes, I do have a tipping point. I and several business partners came to the conclusion after reading Atlas Shrugged that it was time to sell our biofuels business when then candidate Obama made it clear that he would subsidize our solar energy competition (i.e. Solyndra). I was perfectly happy to make money off of environmentalist guilt, but I learned a valuable lesson in that you really want Gulch-worthy people as customers. People who do not belong in the Gulch will not recognize the value I create as being sufficiently greater than my subsidized competition, whether be it in my former biofuels to chemicals business, my new tissue engineering test bed business, or my professorial position at a private technological university.

No, 90% are not going to die off. Even under communism, 90% did not die; but they were 100% miserable.

Exactly!
The challenge is that there are actually a continuum of people, not 2 types.
On the one end, you have the PURE Looters/Moochers: => Those with LITTLE to no choice/ability!
On the other end, you have the PURE Creators/Makers: => Those, like JBrenner, who create companies, within a system of being looted

And then you have THOUSANDS of positions in between. You have the temporary looter (collecting unemployment benefits), the temporary business owner. The cheats (on both sides).

And if structured correctly, it should look like a bell curve!

I have made up my mind. I have NEVER collected unemployment benefits. But I know poverty well enough that I avoid POSSESSIONS to maintain emergency funding...

The essence of the question to me becomes:
What do you do, when GOVERNMENT and CORPORATE INTERESTS put their foot down on the right side of the bell curve, to kill off THEIR Competition (eg, the shutting down of conservative voices off the internet!), so they prosper and others can't???

And the answer should be close to what JBrenner IMPLIED: I look for the best opportunity the current situation affords me within my values.

BUT, there is a POINT at which even JBrenner would set his fields ablaze and move on (Galt style). That point would probably be (like TrueTheVote), when the ENTIRETY of our government is WEAPONIZED against him, and aimed squarely (and even illegally) at him, his wealth and his family. When they step in, at gun point, freeze ALL of your assets, and lobby false claims against you. (again, in the TTV case, the government had to ADMIT they ILLEGALLY targeted TTV, but then under Jeff Sessions, said THEY WOULD NOT pay TTV legal fees!). Meaning, you can win the moral victory, and be completely looted in the process!

Again, I believe it is HUMAN Nature to optimize your choices/actions to get the most you can for the least risk/loss possible. For many, that is simply being a cog in the wheel, and drinking their beer every night after work.

For me, it is settling for SOME 2% returns, when I know that 6-8% is possible, and having SOME make 20% and SOME make 6% so that all of my risk is not in one place or direction. But watching people get targeted by our government is scary. And recent IRS rulings say "We can use ANY information against you in an IRS court, EVEN IF it was obtained ILLEGALLY!" (This is a warning so that no GALT stands up). It should be ILLEGAL for our government to FREEZE your assets before they PROVE there was a crime committed!

Finally, when the bell curve is so stepped on, as to force everyone into poverty and serfdom, even the CREATORS... You will have a revolt!

The essence of my question is in a later comment to jbrenner: "In Rand’s version, there was a [convenient] escape mechanism. I am taking the Socratic approach. With no escape options, no retirement, no personal business or bank deposits. The Socratic method is to force a decision given two extremes. Then we can discuss the middle ground." I posed a very direct question, hoping to channel a discussion along those lines. What I am seeing in all of the comments are attempts to avoid the direct question. In a society that takes away all that it can from a producer and gives it all away to moochers, turning producers into the face of evil, while honoring theft, and presenting it, as we can see around us, as the standard, should an individual be a modern Don Quixote, or should he [perhaps] devolve into Leo of "We the Living"? It is worth keeping in mind that Don Quixote was insane, while Leo at least survived. And should a person enter into voluntary servitude to achieve... what? In our current environment, I believe that these are relevant questions. The purpose is not to justify any pre-determined personal action or inaction (as some here indicated), but to establish a sane and defensible moral avenue. Unfortunately, escapes to Pacific islands or retirement on stashed millions do not resolve the moral issue.

The Melbourne area is still a great place to be. I'll invite you to our next Gulch meetup. There are a couple others just north of here, and several of us met when freedomforall came for a visit a couple of years ago.

Never mooch. Accept help when needed from one another. Free will includes giving to each other to help- recieve it if needed. But mooching is taking when you are able to produce for yourself. Its an issue of what you allow yourself to become. Morally- a person should do for themselves what they can, help those they choose to help. Trust God for the rest. As a producer, there will always be those who feed off of your work. It would be exhausting to attempt to stop it all from happening. Its when the enjoyment of the fruits of your labor are eclipsed by the theft of them by others that its time to drop out- and there's a lot of rural land in our country to allow for that, if a person wants to badly enough.

I also am a Melbourne resident. Melbourne/Eau Gallie was a great place to grow up in the 50's/60's. But like the rest of the world it has grown into something different. I am off subject. Just a shout out.

i'm retired now...in the prep mode for the coming collapse...and 90% die off...if I live that long...feel bad for my son and grandchildren...it's a numbers game...one we can't win until the numbers come down..

This is precisely what Venezuela has become...

Jamestown, anyone?

Escort the moochers to a place far far away where they can never escape. They will learn to produce real quick.

Perhaps this is why I have never been a big fan of the Socratic method. If I like neither of two options, then I invent a third in much the same way that Capt. James T. Kirk devised an alternate solution to the Kobayashi Maru.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayas...

In Rand’s version, there was a [convinient] escape mechanism. I am taking the Socratic approach. With no escape options, no retirement, no personal business or bank deposits. The Socratic method is to force a decision given two extremes. Then we can discuss the middle ground.

If an Objectivist were to mooch, would that be even more extreme than what Galt, D'Anconia, and Danneskjold did?