What makes a union strong? What power does a union have in Galt’s Gulch?
Well, if you would just read the book, all of your questions would be answered. Also, you teeth would be whiter and brighter and your sexual partners would post laudatory comments on your Facebook page.
I think the underlying problem is that Objectivism is pure theory without practical application or experiment. Our chaotic and messy “system” is not actually based on any theory so much a series of improvisations and developments. There are hardly any property rights absolutists left any more, or at least none who are taken seriously. And while I agree with you that Objectivism reeks of elitism, it is never explicitly laid out, save for the somewhat amorphous designations of “producers”, “moochers” and “looters”.
But its an easy sell, isn’t it, that all your problems stem from moochers retarding your prospects, that in a just and equitable system you will thrive and prosper? Maybe you wouldn’t, but surely I would, being so smart and productive, and all. The SDMB and Mensa meetings may be the last place left where a discussion of Objectivism is taken seriously. For my own two bits, I don’t think Objectivism merits any such serious argument, any more than classic Marxism, another set of theories inapplicable to evolved monkeys such as ourselves.
As a springboard for discussions about economic justice and equality, it serves a purpose. Outside of that, its not even a good punching bag any more.
Perhaps if it could be quantified? If all the moochers in America kept in their comfortable indolence is costing me a dollar a year, why would I care outside of my insistent craving for societal perfection? I would shrug it off, bigger fish to fry, and all that. But seems to me that question cannot be answered meaningfully, and we are still left with the conundrum: whatever shall we do with all these useless people? Assuming that Soylent Green is not an option we will contemplate.
Where do you think workers had greater rights? The Soviet Union or USA? Which place would a worker rather live in? Rand is making a very similar comparison to the one I just made. You want to make your own hypothetical, go ahead, but it’s not relevant.
Maybe not all your questions, but all your utterly retarded misinterpretation of the contents of the book may be cleared up, sure.
You are mixing the world, as it exists today in the US, with the world as it existed in the book.
No one would leave the US ttoday o go to Galt’s Gulch because **it doesn’t exist and doesn’t need to exist.
**
In the book, the US is essentially the USSR, only worse. The book is a dystopian novel.
And yet you keep punching, so it seems to be not such a bad one after all, n’est pas?
The government is only allowed to use force to protect property rights (and defend the nation). Right?
Its simple and its stupid.
No of course not, you can’t take away any of the advantages that money gives to people who have money.
This entire thread is 90% about the ideology presented in Atlas Shrugged and about 10% about trash collection in Galt’s Gulch. The trash collection question was just a starting point to explore how stupid the notion of objectivism is.
Insurance is not a Ponzi scheme. Barring some case of a fraudulent policy, insurance is the explicit exchange of a defined premium for a defined benefit.
Conversely, in a Ponzi scheme, what’s been promised by the seller (the proceeds of an investment in some legitimate enterprise) isn’t being delivered, because the purported nature of the investment is a lie.
To answer your question…it depends. If he knows the true nature of his investment and is willing to gamble that he’s an early investor, who might well make a profit on the venture, then yes. If he’s unaware of the true nature of his investment, and believes it to be a legitimate enterprise, then no.
Huh…I’d go with 75% dissing of Rand, 20% of folks talking out of their ass or asking inane (and what they probably feel are oh so leading) questions since they haven’t read the books , with the remaining 5% bothering to address the OP…and all of the rest exploring the burning question of objectivism.
It’s strange. What determines value is based on what he knows about what he’s buying. Doesn’t it make more sense to say that something has value or doesn’t regardless of what anyone knows about it? I buy a coin from someone who doesn’t know it’s worth 1000$. I find out later, but what I bought was still worth 1000$ when I bought it.
An Objectivist Atlas will shrug
If the ladies won’t go past a hug!
Self-reliant as Rand
Is his own nimble hand
On his Fountainhead ready to tug! 
But do they have some legal right to form a union with any legal protection? Or is it a situation similar to what you described for minimum wage: employers can choose to refuse to recognize any unions, refuse to negotiate with unions, refuse to hire any employees who belong to a union, and fire any employee who joins a union.
In other words, workers have the right to join a union - as long as their employer gives them permission to do so.
For a system that’s supposedly based on individual freedom, the majority of people in your system are going to have to spend a lot of time asking somebody else for permission to do a lot of things.
Your use of the word ‘permission’ really cuts to the heart of this entire sad, sorry thread. It underscores, once again, that you don’t actually understand the story in question. Not exactly militantly shocking since you haven’t read it.
In a nut shell, the story is about individualism. Galt would be offended at the deepest level that an employee would have to ASK for permission to do anything, including strike. The entire book is ABOUT the producers going on strike, so it’s laughable that you are bringing this up as if it’s meaningful.
Only in the book that’s in your head, as opposed to the one that Rand wrote. 
No, I think it shows that even though you read Atlas Shrugged and I didn’t, I understand what Rand wrote a lot more than you do. I see the flaws in Rand’s ideology that Rand herself was blind to. I’m not giving myself any special credit for this - lots of people have seen those flaws before me.
For me, its the fetishistic fascination with individualism. Now, orangutans are like that, primates who really crave a good leaving alone. They are not social, they don’t cooperate, only time they see another orangutan is when they are making baby orangutans. And even then their eyes are closed because they so damn ugly.
The line of primates we come from live in groups, hunt in groups, devote huge swaths of neural real estate to scanning and interpreting facial expressions. The orangutan most likely wouldn’t thrive if forced somehow to cooperate in a group, the monkey cannot survive without it. One orangutan is a happy orangutan, one monkey is a dead monkey.
Most all of us are part of others and others are part of us, we are concerned for their well-being and they are concerned with ours. Maybe there’s nothing fundamentally “right” about that, but nothing wrong either. Its just what we are. In terms of simple survival, we take care of each other because we are likely to need each other. And it is better if we are in good repair.
It may well be that there is no rational, intellectual basis for altruism. Does it need one? Get right down to brass tax, is a wholly rational basis for a moral standard even possible? The bottom turtle is always an assumption, but Objectivism seems to claim otherwise. Rationalism itself seems to be the assumption,and that can be proven to be superior by rational analysis. Far superior to any faith-based assumption that cannot be proven.
But hey! Whatever floats yours, freak freely. You like Galt better than Bokonon, go for it. Long as you aren’t too pushy, and don’t scare the horses. Hell, I got Bible thumping cousins more obnoxious than Objectivists and not nearly so funny.
Ignorant, and proud of it!
Value is a measure of the economic benefit a good or service will provide to an economic actor. If an economic actor has bad information as to what benefit a given good or service will provide to them, then they will miscalculate the value of it. How could it be otherwise?
In your example, the coin wasn’t worth $1,000 to the guy you bought it from, which is why he sold it to you for (presumably) far less than that. If you try and sell it to another guy who doesn’t know it’s worth $1,000, and just sees it as an old coin, he’s not going to offer that much for it. Information is crucial.
Further, value is subjective and personal. One person might value a $40 oil change at the garage less than they value their own time and labor, and have their oil changed at the garage. The next guy might value $40 more than his own time and labor, and change it himself. In both cases, an oil change at the garage goes for $40, but it has no universal value that can be measured outside of whether a given actor values it, and to what degree. Don’t confuse value with price.
What does this have to do with insurance?
Since value is subjective, what’s the point in arguing about whether insurance has value?
You could argue that people who buy insurance are mistaken to do so, that it’s a bad deal, that they are misinformed, or something like that.
Even if you’d rather use market price (which is an aggreggate of many peoples’ valuations) as the measure of value, though, insurance policies don’t have a negative value just because the insurer builds a (small, as they must compete with other insurers) profit margin margin into their rates. The same is true of most any good or service, from a Diet Coke to a lawn-cutting service. Does paying a guy $30 to cut your lawn, when it only costs him $20 in expenses and depreciation, mean that lawn-cutting services have negative value?
In short: I fail to see how insurance policies have a negative value, under any definition of the word ‘value’.
Sorry, but failing to see or not knowing is not a very good argument, but since value is subjective, all I would need to say is “because I think so”.