Inventors, entrepreneurs and other creators produce wealth. None are playing a zero-sum game. Assiduously protecting individual rights is essential if we are going to advance. Please note that we have the right to own our own life, to own property and the value we create and the right to pursue happiness, not the right to happiness. We must earn our happiness. The numerous and recently invented so called rights are phony pipe dreams.

So true, and so sad.

So much said in so few words. I heard a speaker from South Africa, last week at a conference. His name was Dr. Michael WG Gaffley. He gave a course as well as speaking for us all, he really didn't say anything very profound, for the most part it was all common sense and old world wisdom. After he spoke, he ask me directly what I thought of his course. I told him it was a great story of old world wisdom and basic common sense and that it was nice to hear it in our world that was so lacking these things. He was so pissed that he stormed out and wouldn't speak to me again. Speakers really hate it when you can see through their bullshit.

Except for those involved in the protection of the individual rights of citizens--yes. Particularly as the funds to support them are coerced from the citizen under threat of and actual carrying out of violence. Nearly every agency of the federal government now has a SWAT team. As an example, the NOAA (sic), the EPA, Social Security, Dept of Education, Post Office, etc. If your work ethic is directed or utilized for the control, intimidation, and application of force and coercion to citizens, you are as guilty as the SWAT member.

If I understand your comment correctly that in order to be a true Objectivist I must consider "All" those in government to be moochers and looters. Is that correct?

There is a possibility of a centuries-long process, but I doubt it. All that's required is an economic collapse, followed by an objectivist resurgence that allows no collectivism, and it will be done. Apparently, that's what John Galt deduced.

To get the magnitude of the task before us, it would be a good idea to read the story of the Exodus. Pharaoh refused to give up his slaves, even after his economy was totally trashed, and it was only after his own child died that he relented temporarily, long enough for the Israelites to get out of Dodge. We see a similar affliction in the slave-holding South, where much of the Confederacy had to be destroyed before they saw the light. At the end, they were even willing to have black troops in the Confederate army, and they recruited 90,000. There was also the refusal of the elite in Hero's time to pursue an industrial revolution, because they'd have to give up their slaves. The perverse incentives offered by the looting philosophy is a wonder to behold, making people do the most boneheaded things, rather than give up their pet teat. So, don't expect the change to come quickly.

Thanks Herb. Lets hope this is rock bottom.

became; One must ask 'What is the proper role and purpose of government?' In Objectivist thought and AR's study and writing, it is solely the protection of individual rights. Any individual that works for and draws a paycheck and benefits from government at any level, in activities not directly related to that purpose are moochers and looters by definition. They are not 'good' people. If they truly felt pride in their 'work ethic' and in 'providing value for the dollars they take home (stolen from citizens under threat of violence)', they wouldn't be working for government. They would be out producing value.

You really can't have it both ways. Either you support individual liberty or you support an oppressive and destructive government against individual liberty.

Not all government Employees are moochers (no I never worked for the government). Believe it or not there are people that go to work within the government every day and have the same work ethic as "Dagney" in Atlas Shrugged. Just imagine what it would be like if they weren't there. They pride themselves on providing value for the dollars they take home every day and do it when those around them don't.
Recently, however useless jobs have been being created simply to lower the unemployment numbers, and we currently have a huge increase in other benefits. When I was young, very few people in line at the grocery store used food stamps. Today, half the time the person in front of me is swiping a food stamp "card". You have to look closely and lean to recognize the cards, because the rule in politics is appearances, public opinion, and "sleight of Hand".

I think she is right. Pull back a few eons to see evolution moving from wriggling creatures to mammals, ever advancing in complexity of adaptability, developing more efficacious brains. View today's world as a transition stage from the hybrid animal/hominid to the full human enlightenment that our ever more highly developed brain equipment will make possible.

As the past is coded into our DNA, so Rand's ideas will be coded into our mental software. Some evolutionary leaps can happen very quickly, just like some ideas going "viral". Today we are seeing the final struggle between consciousness emerging towards fully rational thought and the last deathgrip of the stage where we were predatory animals. Rand iwrote the blueprint for that future. What an adventure, to be living in these times and being the rungs of that ladder.

I don't think that even A.R. could fortell the slide down the depths that America has taken since her death.

Nail-on-head, Rich!
Right now, the future doesn't look all that cheery.

Exactly! +10, philosophercat!

I suspect you have hit it on the head. people WANT the security of being a child (at least emotionally). I dont know what made me want to be on my own, but thats what needs to be nurtured in order to turn this country around. In the meantime, too bad one or two states cant secede and the independent people move THERE, and show the rest how things could be !!

Sort of pulling ourselves up by the neurons? That's mental work!

I think tem is correct in making the link to childhood. This may be the root of why socialism regrows, why this ethical system is persistently taught. People have a rose-colored view of the childhood they had (or the one they imagine they should have had). It is explicitly an image in which independence is traded to a benign authority in exchange for nurturing.

It is not so much that people have to get over 'being children' as get over 'wanting to be children'.

Jan

I just wish we werent paying them to breed.

I like the way you think, philosopher. It is time for man to rise above primitive impulses and use his mind.

Agree with Wm Shipley...my daughter is a fourth grade teacher...she is the only teacher in her school that does not rave how wonderful the Big O lier is.

may that future arrive immediately!!! -- j
.

The sad reality is that there is just too much money and too many people dependent upon the money they are taking from others. They have a vested interest in promoting the concept that you have an obligation to give them your assets.

Even teachers, who provide value for what they do, are caught up in the game because they are not paid by their customers, but by the government so they promote ever more taxation as a way of growing their 'business'. And everyone gets taught by teachers.

With deficit spending the government is able to make ever more people dependent on money from the government and invested in the rightness of getting that money. They can ostensibly give more than they take because the money they take via inflationary debt is invisible.

I don't really like the idea of throwing in the towel on promoting self-sufficiency, but I am more focused on getting rid of government interference in the economy. If somehow we can persuade the moochers that there will be more for them to mooch if they leave producers alone to produce we could at least be able to make things.

Sadly the same people who think that "you did not build that" also think that "we have to share THE wealth" -- a zero sum game.

The pessimistic comments already made tell me the work to integrate Objectivism into the culture is seen as a long way off. Peikoff's Dim Hypothesis makes the case for integration but he believes its a long way off as well. I beg to differ.
While philosophy is in lala land science is making great strides towards what I call the Glass Slipper moment; when it is discovered that only Objectivism fits science. From that moment on Miss Rand's vision of man's potential will be realized at an accelerating rate. The theory in science is done but the hard work of exposition in still to come. I say 5 years to the glass slipper moment and then the gulch grows. Its coming because its true.

you must be very, very very old.
I can't imagine 10 percent moochers as a low number since 1860.

I am of the opinion it has been 40 to 50 % since then. They were and still are known as government employees.