I don't believe human beings can exist above a limited amount of people without official rules/laws that govern all. The Gultch has founding Fathers, they should create such laws as ours did here in the USA. As far as punishment? I will say and have always believed that the punishment should fit the crime. I also think if I were building a new society, I would make provisions for those offended choose the offenders punishment and even be able to carry it out themselves if they wish whatever it might be. This country has proven that without swift capital punishment for capital crimes, we just waste hard earned money keeping useless and offensive people alive under the guise of being humane?! Seriously?! Just as no one should give their life for another's benefit, then why not apply that same edict to capital crime & punishment? Money saved, offended person have quick closure, and it IS a deterrent.

i think the first step in answering this is to reduce the problem to a rather intimate level. I think in doing so you can illustrate the fundamental notion that a philosophy of individualism precludes a binding multi-individual one.

Consider a marriage. Can two people love each other, possess and embrace an individualist philosophy such as Objectivism, and still share enough to be "bound together societally through a philosophy"? I think the evidence is certainly there to answer in the affirmative. While it is anecdotal my wife and I are *very* individual and have a philosophy that embraces and encourages it. However, we are still very much a loving couple. We don't have need to establish rules directly based on our philosophy - any rules we do have are a natural *result* of our philosophy.

If it were true that two individuals can not retain and practice an highly-independent philosophy which strongly stresses us as individuals and remain bound into an agreement such as marriage it would cast doubt on the larger sized collections such as cities, states, and the vague "society". While two people doing it does guarantee a million can, it does mean it could.

Can it work when the parties don't personally know each other? Absolutely - we have that every day in our current society. Laws are simply laws - they can be heavily enforced or ignored. People can choose to, or intentionally, not go along with the laws/rules. But the underlying web of trust is still there. For two people it is simple, but how to go to larger numbers? Consider a driving analogy.

Without laws, how can we resolve the problem of four cars arriving at an intersection? By observation and the basic understanding that none of us want to crash into each other. We don't know everyone at the intersection - I'd say we often don't know any of the other drivers. But when the power goes out and the stoplights are dead we handle it. Based on the unspoken philosophy that none of us wants to get in a wreck and we all want to go along our business.

Sometimes someone steps up and directs traffic. And we follow those directions not because we know and trust the *person*, but the basic underlying principles of what the person is trying to achieve. We are "bound" by that collection of individual desires. We trust the others to share those values - and by and large that trust is rewarded. I could argue the human nature to trust similar people has been a significant factor in our climb to the position we have achieved. Sure, modern changes make some of those innate factors more difficult to process at times and can be overplayed, but fundamentally it does indeed work.

Consider the 98% of people are not socio-/psychopaths assertion. We do not, despite the media, go about our daily lives assuming the inverse. Can you image what would happen if we did? If not, feel free to watch any "cataclysm happens and ALL of society goes in the crapper instantly" movie - which is almost every disaster movie.

Thus, I would argue that in the extreme case of even "just" 98% of the planet were Objectivists there is no reason to believe Objectivism would fail because we can only know a minuscule portion of the population. The underlying mechanisms of trust, I expect, would be even stronger. We would indeed be collectively bound our our shared philosophy of independent individualism.

When you really get stuck into it, the politics of fear are driven by the small portion of our society which has fundamental trust issues. Socialism, Fascism, Communism are all driven by the fundamental lack trust - *we* can't trust *you* to do "The Right Thing", so we're going to impose sanctions on you prior to you actually exercising the choice. This is, IMO, the ultimate reasons such philosophies and political machinations do not work at scale - they are driven by a lack of trust but in the end still rely on trust existing to actually function. To put the final nail in their coffin, those systems do nothing to foster trust, and do plenty to foster distrust.

Objectivism, as I understand it, is the opposite. That it relies on trust is clear (to me) from the onset, and the tenets demand that trust be earned and maintained. The tenets and mechanisms of Objectivism to me seem almost designed to engender trust and provide people the opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness. While it may not be the only system/philosophy with this characteristic, that it has it means it is more likely than those without it to answer the question of whether a large society of Objectivists can "work" in the affirmative.

even two good people can have disagreements and need some sort of resolution options

Damn! Only 2%? And we were lucky enough to get one as our president!?

"Repels instead of binding". The best illustration I have ever seen of this is the story of the 20th Century Motor Company. It showed that collectivism is not only impractical; it is evil.

Every society will have different levels of value to respect others (I like the way you expressed that), but it is essential that the framework of the society (Constitution, courts, laws) be based on Objectivist principles.

I've had the Verizon MiFi for a number of years now, and it works quite well; however, for any kind of extended use or large downloads, it's cost prohibitive.

The bigger question is to what end? It's all fine and good to define a morality, but one should never forget that morality is the road - not the destination.

With all due respect, it does not obviate law in the slightest. It means perfect obedience which leads to a state of perfect freedom. The laws still exist because as soon as a law is violated, the consequences kick in.

It is not because there is no "need" for law, there just becomes no abrogation of such and therefore enforcement by penalization becomes moot.

You can try different things for the internet. We got a Wilson booster and ran it atop a length of pvc piping. It does work. We ran a mifi system through verizon. Lots of people use a satellite arrangement. It 's a fair amount of work to set up and take down, but I liked the change in scenery. There are often monetary advantages to staying a week or a month. If you don 't have a W/D in your rig that can be a bit of a hassle. In general, it 's cheaper and faster to find a laundry in a town then it is to rely on the park facilities. We did save money by investing in a Good Sam 's card, which is accepted at most RV parks.

Most of my experiences are with KOAs and Disney, so my remarks are colored by that. With that said, if haven't run into those kinds of challenges. It's good to know!

Db and I did it for not quite a year. Ultimately it was too difficult to run the business out of. Getting adequate internet can also be a challenge. Met some very interesting people that way. But also sometimes you would be parked next to someone you wondered about. Mostly met retired snowbirds. Or adventurers that like to play with toys. Some of the parks we stayed in were lovely. Some were not.

I like that thought.

I don't know if anyone here is an RVer, but I bought one two years ago. It's decidedly a learning curve, but something that I've found is that there is a significant number of folks who live in their campers full time. They'll pull in somewhere and get a little job of some kind. Many times it's working for the RV park itself. They have no permanent residence, no ties to any place. They're known as 'road gypsies', and I am ever increasingly finding myself drawn to a life like that. In a sense, they're little one or two person gulches in
themselves.


Sp

Yes.
That's why I see many small "Gulches". Pockets of freedom here-and-there and not one large Gulch.

In Atlas Shrug the gulch had a government ready to go. They based it of the US constitution with a few (non-specific) changes.

Your point was also brought up in the book.

I suppose that is one way to summarize capitalism. It seems to me that Objectivism, at its core, asserts man's liberty. In other words, man is his own private property, and nobody may infringe on that right. Since he owns himself, including his mind, whatever he produces with his labor (mental and physical) is also his. When he produces more than he needs, he has a surplus he can trade (with another willing Man) for a better quality of life. So yes. Both Objectivism and Capitalism, it seems to me, share the core beliefs of man's liberty, private property, and the virtues of being producers.

Couldn't agree more on both points. That's why I'm doing this: www.rifinst.org

That's a good parallel. I would say the same of religions, too, even those that tell people to behave in the same ways a libertarian or objectivist would.

The answer to all three situations boils down to, you can't expect a large population all to agree with your ideals, no matter what they are, even after you've had your society running a while. So if you want government in a form that relies on everyone believing, then you need to form a proprietary community, which can kick out those who disrupt it, preferably in some way that's "fair" but there must be absolutely no way for an outside state to overrule that decision.

Which implies either some sort of *small* new-country project, or a "Gulch" that is strong enough militarily to defeat an attempt by the country it's in to take it over or shut it down. There are places where the latter is possible (for example Somalia), but they tend to be havens for the kind of serious bad guys that will provoke a major country to shut them down.

So the smaller and more reclusive the community the better? You can't bring together 25 people anywhere, even here, without disagreements arising where some get rather nasty, demeaning or insulting.

The pilgrims were extremely insular. Today they are misrepresented as the poster-children of America when they wanted nothing to do with anyone else. I think if a Gulch were to get to large or if external society encroached on it, even peacefully, it would fracture and fall apart.

Isn't that capitalism in a nutshell?

This is what I was thinking when I read the original post. Objectivism upholds man's self-esteem in a way that can be unifying. Man is alone responsible for his own survival. But more than that, with industriousness he can do more than just survive, but thrive by overproducing for just himself. The virtues and values that requires will be attractive to others, and the mutual benefit of like-minded people will have a synergy that is also attractive. In this way, I think Objectivism can be very unifying for society.

Or if demand were high enough, another "Wyatt" would rise up to fill the gap (whether it is find new oil, or find alternate energy sources). Regardless, the free market will correct the problem. Under no circumstances should Wyatt be forced to sell oil against his will.