piekvorst

It is a good thing and it absolutely can function, but not as a society. Ayn Rand explicitly rejected this idea [1]:

    Q: Why is the lack of government in Galt’s Gulch (in Atlas Shrugged) any different from anarchy, which you object to?

    A: Galt’s Gulch is not a society; it’s a private estate. It’s owned by one man who carefully selected the people admitted. Even then, they had a judge as an arbitrator, if anything came up; only nothing came up among them, because they shared the same philosophy. . . . But project a society of millions, in which there is every kind of viewpoint, every kind of brain, every kind of morality—and no government. . . . No one can guard rights, except a government under objective laws. . . . Rational men are not afraid of government. In a proper society, a rational man doesn’t have to know the government exists, because the laws are clear and he never breaks them. [FHF 72]

[1]: Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A, Politics and Economics, Libertarianism and Anarchism

> certain appeals to emotion or outcome are evil tools of fictional villains, while simultaneously doing the exact same thing

You would be correct if that were the whole truth about Atlas Shrugged: defending protagonists on emotional grounds.

But it’s not the whole truth. The very monologue that you dismiss is the tool that provides the emotion with the principle. You know the characters’ reasons for holding their emotions.

Ayn Rand never said that one shouldn’t feel or express one’s emotions. On the contrary, “. . . emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life” [1].

In fact, every emotional appeal used in the novel is supported by argument, sooner or later. You cannot say, for example, that the dismissal of James Taggart or Robert Stadler is purely emotional.

> The jarring transition reveals how the story was really just an afterthought

Your claim would be valid if the jarring transition were not Galt’s speech but some other nonfiction. The case is the opposite: the story and speech are very much integral.

The pause of events as such is a neutral tool, with precedents (The Battle of Waterloo in Les Miserables).

[1]: https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html

This quote would be more meaningful if Atlas Shrugged critics were able to actually criticize it, not the straw-man. Unfortunately, orcs didn’t show them how to do it.

Now I can spy on the software spying at me. Nice.

It seems like this “journalist” speaks English. Guess who also spoke English? That’s exactly right, Satoshi did.

Finding value in giving up one’s values.

You’re assuming that without preemptive permits, nothing stops a company from spewing uranium. But liability, if properly enforced, is a powerful deterrent. The threat of paying full cleanup costs, compensating victims, and facing criminal charges for negligence doesn’t require an official to approve one’s pipe size in advance.

Further, the principle doesn’t deny retaliating in advance when violence can be objectively anticipated.

What alternative would you suggest?

Yes, to settle disputes. The purpose of these laws is the protection of individual rights, not consumer “rights” or any other special “rights” that belong exclusively to one group or race and no other.

I don’t think that either libertarians or Kant are genuinely concerned with freedom. My position is closest to classical liberalism, with different philosophical foundations.

s/zealot/advocate/

s/denier/opponent/

s/late-stage capitalism/socialist propaganda/

If you're asking genuinely:

1. It's wrong to assume beforehand that the other party is irrational.

2. To refute the other side, you have to engage with their strongest argument.

This is an intellectual issue, and no intellectual issue could be resolved by dismissal.

What exactly do you mean by "economic violence"? If you mean fraud or theft, we already agree those are crimes. If you mean something else, I'd like to know what.

> You won't convince them with practical examples, because this is a matter of principle. . . . Libertarians recognize only the particular and reject any notion of the universal, because it negates all particularities.

You describe people who advocate freedom as both mystics indifferent to reality and pragmatists without principle. Which is it?

If "withholding" means actively blocking someone from acessing water they already have a right to, you'd be correct. But that's not what's in your link. Passive possession, "I have water, I'm not giving it to you," is not initiation of force. It's simply not being someone else's servant.

And it's unjust to assume humanity wouldn't help unless forced to.

By calling upon sacrifices, the first target would be engineers, plumbers, and utility workers. Forcing the people who actually produce and deliver clean water isn't justice.

> Is that a semantic difference, or do you think there’s something substantive to it?

"Public interest" today implies a conflict with private interests: a new sports arena, "affordable" housing, protecting domestic jobs. So no, government-as-plaintiff doesn't count.

Personally, I'd define the public interest as interests common to all men: freedom, not sacrifices of some to others. But that's not the modern meaning of it.

> Does the government have to wait until there’s demonstrable harm

Anticipating harm is proper when the decision is irreversible. Example: nobody has a right to physically block a public entrance. That's a right violation you can prohibit in advance. Same with pollution: objective laws ("you may not emit substance X beyond concentration Y") set a clear boundary without dictatign production methods.

But there's no harm to anticipate in, say, Lightning vs. USB-C.

> your premise that The Courts are separate from The State

If you got it from the way I contrasted courts with regulatory agencies, I actually contrasted the way the state can wield force: retaliatory (proper) vs initiatory (improper). Other than that, the courts and state aren't separated.

If people without an access to clean water want it, the proper route is to trade with those who do, not victimize them. There can be no right that involves sacrifices of one man to another.

Trying to wield sacrifices at the point of a gun (by an official or legislator) is the most important and disturbing modern issue. It paves the road to all actual social conflicts, unrest, and misunderstanding.

It's far from minor. To ban physical force from social relationships, people need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights. People's rights can only be violated by physical force. To prevent this, the government's only solution is to hold a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

If this vested power remains unchecked and unlimited, the government will violate the rights of its own citizens. That's why we should limit its power to retaliatory use.

Standardization is a very valuable asset, I don't deny that. But:

1. Standardization is not limited to forced standardization;

2. It's better to live in a world not fully standardized than to accept the premise that it's right to violate rights for a good cause. The "good cause" shifts the question from "should rights be violated?" to "what kind of violation do you want?" Once we accept that, we lose to totalitarianism. A man who says "let's violate a tiny fraction of rights" would lose to a man who declares "let's violate rights of thousands."

It's not arbitrary. It's called the distinction between retaliatory and preemptive force. Retaliatory force requires a victim and evidence of causation. Preemptive force has no objective anchor, hence arbitrary by definition. You can't jail a man for a crime he might commit tomorrow.

I do agree. In many places, governments are weak, captured, or corrupt. But those are mixed economies, in which state and corporate power fuse into one corrupt swamp: corporations lobby for regulations to crush rivals, officials sell favors. That's not evidence that economic power equals political power, it's evidence that abandoning the principle of a government limited to retaliatory force produces a cold civil war of pressure groups. The solution isn't more regulation, it's total separation of state and economics.

> your second paragraph is at odds with your third

No. The government acting as plaintiff is still retaliatory force: harm occurred, the state helps identify the perpetrator. That's not "public interest" overriding private rights, it's the government protecting individual rights by standing in for many individuals who share a common injury.

And yes, corporate leaders want political power. That's cronyism. They want to use force because they can't win in a free market. It's a road to dictatorship, but the road is laid by the principle of "public interest," not unlimited profit motives.

There's no such thing as "the public," only individuals. When one treats "the public" as a blank check to override private rights, one is really saying: some people get sacrificed to others. The taxi industry lobbying to ban Uber isn't about safety or competition. "Affordable housing" mandates that force landlords to subsidize strangers aren't compassion. This institutionalized cold civil war won't end until the state stops pickign winners.

My claim is narrower: the principle of retaliatory force is practicable. That is, a society can function using only courts, class actions, and government-as-plaintiff, without preemptive editcs on screw sizes or battery compartments.

As I said earlier in this thread:

> Determining the best means of applying the principle of suing corporations in practice is an very complex question that belongs to the philosophy of law.

Courts, police, and the army are proper. That's government. The difference is what kind of government. A proper government holds a monopoly on retaliatory force, it acts after someone initiates force or fraud. It doesn't dictate your screw size, battery compartment, or production method before you've harmed anyone.

I don't know the precise legal mechanisms for handling diffuse harms like the ones you describe. Determining the best means of applying the principle of suing corporations in practice is an very complex question that belongs to the philosophy of law. My task here is only to establish the nature of the principle and to show that it is practicable.

That said, here is my principle: at any time, the government is orders of magnitude more powerful than any corporation. I think it is proper, in some cases, for the government itself to act as a plaintiff, to aggregate evidence, bring suit, and prove causation statistically. I can't delimit that role precisely, but I side with you that in some cases only the government has access to all necessary evidence.

And no, I don't agree with the idea of "public interest." Any claim that "the public interest" supersedes private rights means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests of others.

It means you can sue for product liability under common law. Negligence, breach of warranty, or strict liability, depending on jurisdiction. Court decides after harm.

> why market participants are being given special treatment here. There are laws, and they must be followed.

Laws are contextual, they depend on more fundamental principles. A regulation that says "you must use this specific screw size" isn't a law in the same sense as "you shall not murder." When a "law" violates the principle of non-initiation of force, when it tells a manufacturer how to exercise his property rights under threat of imprisonment, it's not really a law but edict.

The issue is who decides and when. A court decides after harm occurs, based on evidence of actual negligence or fraud. A regulatory agency decides before anyone does anything, based on hypothetical risks, and compels compliance under threat of force.

> Which problem is personal and which isn't?

A personal problem is one that doesn't involve the infringement of rights against another person. Most problems are personal. One's homelessness doesn't give one a right to another's property. The moment you say "your need obligates me," you've crossed the line into compulsion.

> in your worldview, there is no morality at all. . . . People like you behave toward the state like moody teenagers toward their parents.

That tells me enough about the depth of your study on this subject. Morality is a science of identifying the principles by which a rational being sustains his life. You're not discussing that science, you're reaching for a metaphor.

> But I read what you write and interpret it.

"Cognitive dissonance" is an accusation about the state of my mind, not an interpretation. You don't get to call me internally contradictory and then say "I'm just interpreting."

If I buy a can of soup and find glass in it, I have a valid claim against the manufacturer. It's a matter of holding someone accountable for fraud or negligence, not a matter of regulation. The proper route is a court, not a bureaucratic agency that preemptively dictates production methods on the assumption that every manufacturer is a potential prisoner.

> get in my face if I don’t follow their rules

If a shopkeeper asks me to leave because I refuse to follow his rules, he's exercising his right to control his own property, he's not initiating force.

> You’re selling your freedom to big corporations.

I'm not selling my freedom to corporations, they can't throw me in jail, or take my property by edict. The government, by contrast, holds a legal monopoly on force.

I am not an American, so I cannot diagnose declining life expectancy, homelessness, poor food, and other problems from afar. But I do know this: personal problems don't give one a moral claim on other people's labor. Need does not justify compulsion, and citizens are not sacrificial animals.

> I am an unfree European blinded by communism.

You hinted that Europe's communist past was somehow not a cautionary tale.

> The perfect example of cognitive dissonance!

Dressed-up ad hominem. You have no idea what I do or don't hold in my mind.

Laws protect everyone’s rights, both consumers and producers. When they are targeted to favor a specific collective, it’s fair to bring up the issue of physical force. The 20th century is repleted with examples of one social group fighting the other by seeking special privileges and favors.

So I don’t think it’s ridiculous, I think it’s efficient.

Having the government regulate the free market is an issue of physical force and should always be discussed as such. Are you willing to deal with men by force beyond retaliation? This issue is moral, not practical.

Besides, it’s easy to sell one’s freedom to a competent government, but it’s insanely hard to get it back when it rots. This has been the case of many welfare states. “Let’s force them to do the damn thing” is the very root of all social conflicts, not a magical solution. Being able to withstand it is a commendable exception, not rule.

Long lines make reading rhythm uncomfortable (long jumps, prolonged eye movements) and long words make the text too dense and slow down the reading. It’s bad typography.

I have heard an idea that a good variable should be understood by just reading its name, out of context. That would make “ProductIndex” superior to “i”, which doesn't add any clarity.

You can use this article to guide your choice of rulesets. And you still have to exert some artisan labor to develop any taste.

Parochialism here is saying “just use AI” in disguise.

Personally, I don’t mind. Train however you want.