Reputation as you frequently use it is based on shame and guilt. It’s irrelevant to rational individuals. I’m not saying one should not do things others consider shameful or blameworthy. I am saying that when you avoid them, it should not be because you fear for your reputation. It should not be because you are trying to please the small minds and limited intelligence of others. You should be making the correct moral choice, because it is in your best interest to behave morally and “correctly”.
That is the point of the Lapin lecture. We don’t need to feel guilt about profit, because profit is a moral good. Good decisions must necessarily be moral decisions instead of only looking at it as moral decisions are good.
For the umpteenth time, I am not an Objectivist. I am not a war monger or bigot.
Conventional definitions are meaningless to me. On this forum, one can use terms like capitalism, free markets and profit freely, without the baggage of the masses lack of understanding.
Yes. Always obey.
Make a point of watching it. You will not be disappointed.
Exactly. And there’s no doubt in my mind they’ll continue to make it progressively worse. They’re a bunch of mini-McCains at heart. They want their Keynesianism, their entitlements, and their warfare. They’re a ruthlessly greedy bunch who seek to drain every last penny from the rest of us. They also whine when the rest of us don’t stand for the silly national anthem.
There are decent old people, of course. But a good number of them tick me off.
I answered another one of your posts above, but just quickly I’d like to point out Hoppe’s argument here. He states that such societal guilt etc is a feature of democracy.
When a monarch goes to war, most people realise they’re doing it for themselves, they’re enlarging their tax base and gaining more prestige, but that’s fine as far as the people are concerned because the king pays for all of this out his own wallet and fights it with his own troops. On the other hand under a democracy people identify themselves with the nation and you get total war as you saw with WWII and even Iraq.
And you can be sure your own generation will do that to ones below you. Now stop ranting and go learn to respect your elders.
LS, I’ll get back to you later, “Using Adjusted R Squared to Choose between Nonnested Models” calls in the meantime.
I was really enjoying his Lapin’s talk but the ridiculing, belittling, sardonic tone of his creationism speech - which implied that only creationists can be true capitalists turned my impression less than favorable.
I don’t get too worked up about creationism, but I can see how that could be a turnoff for some people. I don’t think it takes away from the points he makes throughout his speech though. Capitalism is moral, because it produces a profit voluntarily, and serving your fellow man, is a theme that Walter Williams also has promoted in some of his talks.
Again, actually run the numbers before you come to the plate with the argument that charity is insufficient, in the United States, where I am assuming you are from, private charities benefit the “needy” of ALL walks of life on a fraction of the available funds, cutting the income tax and SS tax that supports these programs gives the individuals the money to decide how much (more) will go to these private charities, if any, and the market will shopw the winners and losers in this process…
Not to mention that once the taxes are lifted from businesses, they will prosper, looking toward expansion and once they are lifted from the individuals the lower paid will need less than they do under the current situation, therefore the demand for charity dollars should decrease for all but the "so disabled and lod they cannot work…
As for health care, get the government out of the medicine business and watch as the price falls…
All assumptions, none of them proven. See this. And look up the article on “friendlies” on the Freeman (IIRC.) There is no problem the private sector cannot solve that government.
No, it is a strong reply to a pathetic appeal to emotion. One may ask “why don’t YOU do something to help them instead of bitching about confiscating other people’s income?” In fact turn it around on them, because the schemes they support are usually the cause of impoverishment of the elderly. To be honest though, like Cork, I am sick of hearing about the “old”, just like I am sick of hearing about the “children” as if these makeshift parasites deserve all our energies and resources from now until infinity.