Karl

If there were more than one then it wouldn't be a reality.

Yes its narrowly confined to reality.

It is no unicorn. There is one form of capitalism and that's capitalism. Anything else is the use of force to extract production and that immoral, evil and the preserve of criminals who want to consume without producing. The point of a government and laws is to prevent this kind of immoral activity and not to promote it. If the government is unable to perform the action of objective arbiter and judge, then we are better off without a Government. It's like a car manufacturer that steals cars to sell to other people, we don't need that kind of manufacturer.

It's quite funny that people are unable to grasp a simple moral framework without complexity. Tonight I go to a pizza restaurant and I hand over my cash for a delicious fresh pizza made with organic ingredients. The guy behind the counter is proud of his produce and wants to please me so that I come back and buy more pizza, or tell my friends about the produce. I want to seen as a good actor and hand over the asking price because I want to come back and enjoy another pizza at some time and I don't want to seen as the kind of person who steals things. Neither of us set too with guns or fists during the negotiation. No one forces me to pay, nor forces the proprietor to make a delicious pizza, but, amazingly ( sarcasm) we conclude the trade. Later I tell the proprietor how good his pizza was- he is pleased, and asks if I will return-which I have. There are no police, no state, no laws, no disputes. It's just me handing over something I produced in the form of cash, for something I prefer to the cash. In a nutshell that's all life is about. We produce and consume. The result is an increase in wealth. There is no need for taxation, welfare, or anything else. It's only when someone wants to cheat that we need an arbiter and someone who will crack heads and get justice.

No, it wouldn't be a random pipe dream, it's common sense. It's simple to put the philosophy behind it, but for most people, well, they get it. Few of us like violence, we get no pleasure from theft or cheating. What you had was in the past. There will always be bad actors that's why we need laws and justice. We have to grow forward. We make mistakes, it's human, but we learn, we adapt, we learn ,we integrate an move on. Your country and mine eventually concluded slavery wasn't moral. Objectivism would have confirmed that truth even before there was slavery. Don't hurt people or steal their stuff.

Only if you want it to be, for me it is very real. I trade my baskets for your apples. We decide a fair exchange that suits us both. I get the apples I need and you get the baskets you prefer over all those apples. We don't butt head. I don't attempt to give you substandard baskets, or try to steal your apples. You reciprocate. We don't fight or steal, we just trade. I don't know why anyone thinks this stuff is complex. The only requirement is an arbiter, someone we both trust if the trade goes sour, or we start resorting to underhand tactics. Instead of retailiating we need an objective law to decide justice in case of a dispute.

We haven't yet had fully laissez faire capitalism under one law. The 19th century was as close as we came and even then it created a magnificent increase in wealth despite its incompleteness. However, it is not good enough to simply proclaim a system as the right one, we have to know exactly why it is the right one.

That's why I said lassez faire capitalism. It shouldn't need to be said, but it appears people don't know real,capitalism.

What about them ? either they can or they cannot, but I find the telephone or internet functions more reliably and the spread of medical knowledge is more effective from the point of view of healing.

What things occur without mind ? None, so don't go looking for things that cannot be. Introspection reveals nothing more than the mind. Even Buddah was reduced to describing perception with the mind.

I half agree, but it isn't a disobedient mind-like some pet that does what it likes- it is our minds and our minds that are are doing this at our bidding. It isn't a badly trained pet, but a wilfully trained reality. We can choose what we think and how we think it, let's no apportion blame to some mythical 'other mind'. We are our minds as we are our bodies. If we fail to get our bodies fit it is not the fault of our bodies to the extent we can change behaviours.

Introspection is the beginning of the application of reason, until we get under the hood we can't begin to do anything to fix the problem. The things we endured in the past are memories, but these 'hurts' are the result of our philosophical understanding at the time we developed the emotion. I must return to the three questions to illustrate: where am I ? How do I know it ? What should I do ? These questions explain each position along the road our life takes. When our philosophy is immature at an early age we don't understand some of the things that we experience. A child told that his Father has died in an accident has a propensity to try and find some internal blame for the tragedy. You see here that it is our philosophy that needs to be straight, or we will find ourselves taking on board, or reacting to events in ways that impart suffering and then this suffering becomes part of the philosophy. Our philosophy is an interactive program, it is not like a locked computer program. As we take decisions and react to things we are adding to the philosophy in real time. We are being shaped by our actions and reactions like a pebble in a stream. It is not only the pebble that is worn away, it also changes the flow of the river itself. So, Buddah had a philosophy, just as we all do. His philosophy led him to actions, those actions fed into the philosophy. We must conclude that no one makes us, we entirely make ourselves. Of course this is not the case with a damaged mind either physically, or through severe mental/physical trauma which results in irreparable damage to the cognition. If Buddah said he saw and experienced certain things, then it is true for him that he did, it is additionally true that we accept that this is what he believes he experienced. However, whatever he experienced has no bearing on our own lives. We are not Buddah, we should not seek to emulate him. If we have introspection we can rewire our internal philosophy (which is our program of living ). It's not a matter of erasing hurts and emotional pain, but to put these experiences into the correct context. The child who's father died in the accident can then see that no blame can be taken- that he would be dishonestly gaining a negative value of guilt by shouldering that belief. As soon as that context is restored then the effect is not just on that one area of history, but across the entire history and now, as a result our actions in the present and future reflect that altered philosophy and the areas of misappropriated sadness, guilt, hurt no longer weigh upon us either in the past or future. We can feel sad and melancholy, we can remember the experiences, but they no longer form part of our future in the sense they once did. Isn't it true we just want to feel happy, to have confidence in ourselves and pride in our actions ? Isn't that inner strength and light exactly what we need to create, to love and to feel love without any sense of guilt ? That we don't need to be hedonistic and search for pleasure- which should be the result of gaining honest value and not an end in itself. When we feel good about ourselves we can be open and loving, creative and productive, we no longer fear our shadow and act with direct knowledge. That is the full flowering of the ego,that a man becomes his birth right. That's the best we can be and then we can accept failure, we stop carrying baggage and the light of our inner self confidence and wisdom carries us forward.

Yes, next. A peaceful voluntary exchange of goods and services between people, without coercive interference couldn't exactly be anything else.

You need to do some research on the mess the state has made of national parks in recent history. Yellowstone is a good example. What's more, the moment the Government is denied its increased spending budget, guess what gets closed down first ? Hint, it isn't the tax office or Airforce one. There are numerous examples of private parks which were eventually procured by the state due to public pressure that have since been ruined because of the well understood 'tragedy of the commons'. In simple terms, you wouldn't drive a private car like you would a rental. Private property rights and ownership make it far more likely that an area would be far more succesfully managed than under state control. You don't see Disneyland locking its gates because it doesn't get its way in congress. Of course there is an option. Delimit the government to objective upholding of laws to protect the rights of the people. The Government shouldn't be involved in anything else. That was your constitution Stosh. This isn't something new. The state is no better at looking after national parks than it is of looking after the economy. It's role is to be the monopolist of aggressive force and violence. Why would anyone think it had some special knowledge, or a better way with anything. Would you invite the state into your home to sort out your interior decoration, or mend your broken ironing board ? Anyone who has had spent even a tiny proportion of their time trying to negotiate with state bureaucrats will realise the utter futility, incomprehensible stupidly and inflexibility that faces them. Fuck the state.

Spot on. Hey, look over there a shiny Marxist thing full of caring, equality and fairness ........grab, grab, grab.

Err no, that's a myth by the way. Firstly Rand was explicit that we should ensure we grab everything the state promises to give us, because we are simply taking back what is ours. This was explained in Atlas Shrugged as portrayed by the pirate that took the gold being sent abroad by the state and returning it to the rightful owners. We are stuck with the state and its coercive theft of our production, just like any kind of prison of war camp we should work to gain freedom at a cost to the camp commandants. Secondly Rand did not suggest that we can all be successfully self sufficient, only that we should make the best use of our minds through good reasoning to obtain the values we desire and thereby pursue happiness. She readily accepted that some will fail regardless and also that some are simply incapable of self sufficiency. However, she was opposed to state welfare in all its forms due to its inherent immorality and made voluntary giving through charity effort the means of coping with short term failure or longer term incapacity. Thirdly Rand did not take any welfare from the state despite having no objections to doing so. She was succesful throughout her career and left a small fortune, plus the income from the continued sales of her work to the ARI institute. The myth comes about because it is rumoured that Rand's lawyer, acting for Rand after she became too ill to act for herself, allegedly used welfare to cover the costs of her final days. This has never actually been substantiated, so, if you have some pertinent information that sheds additional light on this myth then please add it to the pile. As of now you are simply spreading rumour which may well be a complete fabrication. We don't need humility, we need to get on with life and if we fall we had better be prepared to accept that we might need to find a charity to help us. In today's world the 'humility' of failure is not evident, people expect hand outs as a given right and they arrive through the post like a pay day cheque. Real humility would be falling on the voluntary mercy of others and not expecting the state to steal from others and give us money as a right.

Capitalism is the only moral system. It's as simple as that. However, what we currently have is not capitalism, it is corporatism, or fascist economics, or state control of trade, but it certainly isn't capitalism. These days we have to call it laissez faire capitalism in order to try and distinguish the continued encroachment and bending of the concept by the state. Obama talks about the 'free market' but there isn't one, there hasn't ever been one, the closest was the USA during the 19th century which resulted in a wealth explosion that created a superstate in less than 100 years.

Oh heck the Government is involved ? Wave goodbye to the newts.

And your point of view only applies to you, but of course I accept that as part of any argument, it is implicit. What's your point ?

I don't really have time to try and reduce your reply into something I would consider coherent. Where I see a problem is your assertion that we 'reduce with language' which has the quality of nominalism. The other parts appear to be a poetic kind of description familiar to me as skepticism. If you we are reducing things to language as word reality, then this is precisely what you are doing. This is inescapable to those who would deny direct perception of reality. No matter how you approach your philosophy you are forced to accept the same rules that I am. You can conceive things as you do, but that is also a conception. There is an interconnected web of causality, but life is unique in that it is not indestructible. Dead is dead, but our material parts will certainly be recycled. New life will emerge out of the very same material building blocks. We don't know what life is, only that it is temporary, finite and cannot be sustained without effort on the part of the living organism. Is that not how you live your life, do you imagine indestructability ? Are you indestructable, can you survive without any food or water. Can you survive by doing nothing at all. I'm afraid that this is concrete reality, you aren't indestructible and any experimentation will prove that reality wins over your conceptualisation. It makes your philosophy false, no matter what you say, it is just as effective as the gravity which will smash your body if you jump off a high cliff. You might imagine you can fly, or that you won't die, but this is not how life is.

In a word. No. ;-)

What are you doing about the crater lake newts ? Presuming these are a high value to your life I assume you are doing something properly practical in your personal love of these creatures. Why not buy the crater and then look after it ?

There aren't any demons. If you understood what a full ego meant you would never harbour such ideas. Everyone has to eventually accept their death, those that have the most crippled egos are more likely to welcome it much earlier. Those with full egos fight for survival until they cannot fight any more. Spirit dies when we die, they aren't separable.

What experience do you think you have that I don't ? You live in one small area of a massive country and receive your information in the same way as we all do. Economics and politics are universal. The laws of economics don't change from country to country. One of the poorest arguments in logic is the ad hominem (circumstantial). That you are too old, young, not in the country, out of touch with modern, not a woman etc etc. I'm sure you realise that this is a logical fallacy and not an argument.

Yes you got it dude :happy clapping hands: :-)