Socialism

[motivez]

Originally Posted by 7960

when was the last one?

i'll give you a hint, 1862.

I guess Julius and Ethel Rosenberg weren't convicted of treason, I thought they were

[lew]

Lincoln was executed for treason in 1865.

[Phantom]

Originally Posted by lew

Lincoln was executed for treason in 1865.

joke, right?

[lew]

Originally Posted by Phantom

joke, right?

Si.

[thewise1]

Originally Posted by motivez

I think you'll find most of the libertarians we have here think selfishness is a virtue.. If everyone acts in their own best interests, everyone prospers (or something to that effect)

lew or thewise1 or some other Ayn Rand-er can explain it better than I can

Oh boy, where to start, ya know? This subject is so near and dear to my heart that I have about a million things to say about it and I fully understand that no one wants to actually read them all

First off, I'm not really an Objectivist, per se, but I like a LOT of things about Ayn Rand's philosophy. I can't claim to be an Objectivist, however, because I do continue to believe in God. This is not a 'rational' belief, it is based completely on faith and things that I've experienced that I would not consider rational.

Now, I do believe that selfishness is a virtue... but not in the way you might expect. I am all about helping my fellow man, but you generally won't find me donating money to United Way or some other charity group.

I suppose to start this, I should explain the base principle to all of my beliefs. I realize that in our current state, the United States no longer fully supports this, but I believe we should move back toward this as a paradigm, as it made us great.

The very core of liberty, in my opinion, is the idea of self ownership. You own your life - To deny this is to imply that another person has a higher claim on your life than you do.

Originally Posted by An excellent video I watched once

No one else owns your life, nor do you own the lives of others.

Because we exist in time, this can be described in terms of past, present, and future.

To lose your life is to lose your future.
To lose your liberty is to lose your present.
To lose the product of your life and liberty is to lose that portion of your past that produced it.

A product of your life and liberty is your property.

Property is the fruit of your labor. The product of your Time, Energy, and Talents.

Property is that part of nature, which you turn to valuable use.

Property is the property of others that is given to you by voluntary exchange and mutual consent.

Two people who exchange property voluntarily are both better off or they wouldn't do it. Only they may rightfully make that decision for themselves.

At times, some people use force or fraud to take from others without voluntary consent. The initiation of force or fraud ...

To take life is murder.
To take liberty is slavery.
To take property is theft.

It is the same whether these actions are done by one person acting alone, by the many acting against the few, or even by officials with fine hats.

You have the right to protect your own life, liberty, and justly acquired property from the forceful aggression of others. You may ask others to help defend you, but you do not have the right to initiate force against the life, liberty, or property of others.

Thus you have no right to designate some person to initiate force against others on your behalf.

You have the right to seek leaders for yourself, but you have no right to impose rulers onto others. No matter how officials are selected, they are only human beings and have no rights or claims that are higher than those of other human beings, regardless of the imaginative labels for their behavior, or the number of people encouraging them.

Officials have no right to murder, enslave, or steal. You cannot give them any rights that you do not have yourself. Since you own your life, you are responsible for your life. You do not rent your life from others who demand your obedience, nor are you a slave to others who demand your sacrifice.

You choose your own goals based on your own values. Success and failure are both the necessary incentives to learn and grow. Your action on behalf of others or their action on behalf of you is virtuous only when it is derived from voluntary mutual consent.

Virtue can only exist where there is free choice. This is the basis of a truly free society. It is not only the most practical and humanitarian foundation for human action, it is the most ethical.

Problems in the world that arise from the initiation of force by government have a solution. The solution is for the people of the earth to STOP asking government officials to initiate force on their behalf.

Evil does not arise only from evil people, but also from good people who tolerate the intiation of force as a means to their own end. In this manner, good people have empowered evil people throughout history.

Having confidence in a free society is to focus on the process of discovery in the marketplace of values, rather than to focus on some imposed vision or goal. Using governmental force to impose a vision on others is intellectual sloth and typically results in unintended perverse consequences.

Achieving a free society requires courage to think, to talk, and to act, especially when it is easier to do nothing.

Given this, yes, I am selfish with my own property and I believe it's a virtue to do so. That doesn't mean that there aren't benefits to giving it away. I do choose to help some folks - the details aren't really relevant here - but I profit when I do so, and I reserve my help for those situations where I can do so. This may not be monetary profit. There are a lot of people who would absolutely love to have this clarity of mind and become producers as well, and to help someone like that move beyond their current constraints and become productive is certainly profitable to us all.

However, I believe it's wrong to intiate the use of force against my property to support those I'm not willing to support. If you truly want to produce, you will eventually become a producer with or without my help; I can only speed that up. However no amount of charity and help will turn a rotter into a producer, because it's a state of mind, not economic condition that makes someone loot instead of produce.

By the way, that brings me to the definition of producer and looter. A producer creates new things and wealth. They might add value to broken down things and resell them, or they might manufacture something, or they may produce by giving a company valuable advice and knowledge that allows the company to either spend less or make more money. Whatever they do, they multiply their time by their talent and create property - be it intellectual property or physical property - that has value to it.

A looter, however, is willing to initiate force against others in order to take their property. In my world there is no grey area where it's ok to steal - stealing a penny is just as bad as stealing someone's home. This could be everything from someone who accepts welfare and never uses the opportunity to go move from looting to producing, to someone who uses political connections to pass laws that limit the expansion of a company because they can't compete. A looter has lots of excuses for why property rights should be violated, but most of them are based on logical fallacies and appeals to emotion. Unfortunately, the mathematics of balanced finance does not include a variable for emotion.

One excellent life story to read is the story of James J. Hill. One of my personal heros, this man defines producer for me. He headed the Great Northern Railway (which eventually became BNSF) and became known as the Empire Builder. Even in spite of competition backed by government, this guy thrived. Incidentally, some say that Ayn Rand modeled Nat Taggart, the original mind behind Taggart Transcontinental after this man. I can only hope that someday I have a tenth of the legacy of this man.

Anyway this is getting really long but what I'm trying to essentially say is that rather than the rubbish that has been espoused in this thread about capitalists hurting people, capitalists, through the building of their own wealth, actually help people through the creation of jobs, opportunity, need for the reagents of civilization, and most of all, hope for the future knowing that if you find a way to compete - and it's not that hard - you are not limited by some government that has decided you're only allowed to own a house of a certain size or have a certain amount of money in the bank. You're also not limited to watching government fail at projects because you can't compete with them - NASA is a great example, I'd love to compete with them but couldn't if we lived in a truly socialist system because I couldn't amass enough wealth to do so.

Socialism simply is not a rational system. No rational man is going to produce extra for no return to himself. If we moved to complete socialism, I would simply take a job as a janitor and deny the world my production. If forced to stay in my position I would simply exhibit no creativity or initiative, doing only as I was ordered, because I will not support the theft of myself - the product of my time and talent, which is my property - for the good of the whole.

[C4Casey]

The U.S has a fairly strict policy for executing people for treason. Basically, the death penalty comes into play when a treasonist act directly results in the deaths of American citizens, or when it severly compromises the safety of the United States. Part of the rational in executing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was that providing atomic secrets to the Soviets severly compromised the safety of the United States.

And, since Joe Castro seems to think otherwise, disagreeing with and voicing opposition to the current party in power does not constitute treason, at least not in the U.S.

[7960]

Originally Posted by C4Casey

The U.S has a fairly strict policy for executing people for treason. Basically, the death penalty comes into play when a treasonist act directly results in the deaths of American citizens, or when it severly compromises the safety of the United States. Part of the rational in executing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was that providing atomic secrets to the Soviets severly compromised the safety of the United States.

except that they weren't executed for treason.

[jimeigh]

Originally Posted by Joe Castro

Come on, there is only 2 of us.

ah, well 2 more then there used to be.

[Joe Castro]

Originally Posted by C4Casey

The U.S has a fairly strict policy for executing people for treason. Basically, the death penalty comes into play when a treasonist act directly results in the deaths of American citizens, or when it severly compromises the safety of the United States. Part of the rational in executing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was that providing atomic secrets to the Soviets severly compromised the safety of the United States.

And, since Joe Castro seems to think otherwise, disagreeing with and voicing opposition to the current party in power does not constitute treason, at least not in the U.S.

RCTV took part in a coup against the democratically elected government and their actions led to the deaths of 19 Venezuelans. I think that meets your standards for execution.