OK, 200 MPH is much better.

I quite agree with your assessment. The guilty party is wrong. They, knowingly entering into a situation with potential consequences must act accordingly and bear their own responsibility. Just as they do on the Autobahn. People will adapt to the environment.

Yes - I'd agree with that, though the guilty party will not. He might simply argue that he's "forced" to you raise your situational awareness on the road, and how can that be a bad thing since you should be paying good attention anyway. He has not set out to harm any particular individual, and now he's got this over-reacting counter force coming down on him, putting a stop to his actions when no harm resulted, on the argument that there was "potential" for harm.

I have to agree; though I would make a slight proviso. The police are using force to counter force are they not?

Hadn't even thought of tailgaters! My argument still holds here. A guy is tailgaiting you. He's doing it because he thinks it increases his MPG. He doesn't think he's being reckless. Shall we permit him time to realize this, or have the police use force to put a stop to the behavior?

I think it falls under the heading of reckless. adherence to a speed limit doesn't stop tailgaters, for instance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usegOdGMc...

So, you are in favor of sometimes achieving the good by physical force, then. :-)

That's the only point I'm making. Sometimes you just cannot wait for people to come to their own realization of the good because their inability to figure it out this instant is putting others in harms way.

Hello LionelHutz,
If you are sharing the road with others, certainly there needs to be some basic rules to govern our actions, so we do not endanger others. I can live with keep to the right and yield to faster traffic, like on the Autobahn. The police strictly enforce and ticket the slower drivers for obstructing traffic there.
Regards,
O.A.

Speed doesn't kill. It is the differential that gets you.

I think you're making my argument for me, as I can reverse my position quite easily in favor of the slower driver.

Shall we just let him drive 30 miles under the limit until he figures out on his own that he's creating a safety hazard for everyone else, or shall we have the police pull him over and explain it to him?

Hello overmanwarrior,
I have read most of Rand's books. I have yet to read the "Romantic Manifesto" and "We the living.” I have, however, watched "We the Living" the movie many times. I think you will find her non-fiction works quite interesting.
Good luck hunting trolls.
Regards,
O.A.

I've always found posted speed limits absurd. Sometimes drivers driving too slow are just as much a reckless hazard as a driver speeding in great excess compared to the cars around them. I have always been a firm believer in staying with the flow of traffic. I think those pushing for rules have to have the burden of proof-significant burden of proof- that the rule in actuality makes one safer. I think very few of our laws would survive scrutiny, including speed limit laws.

In an nutshell, I think she is saying "It is wrong to force people to be good".

Premise #2: A mother that will not feed or clothe or shelter her children because she's much to busy making meth. Shall we apply force here, or just let her figure it out on her own?

You're spoiling my premise by injecting someone doing 55 in the fast lane. Take that out of the equation - that's not what's under discussion.

And, for the sake of making it more interesting, lets raise the speed to 200MPH.

I drive 100 MPH down the road a lot. So my vote should be obvious. And I've never hit anybody. In that regard, I should not be limited to the mental and physical restrictions of those who desire to drive slower. I drive careful or reckless based on the value I have for my vehicle, and my needs at the time. Maybe I have a meeting in Cincinnati at noon then in Columbus at 2 PM, and I promised my wife I'd be home at 5 PM. I will apply the need for speed to execute those obligations according to my skill to achieve all those acts. Because I trust my ability to do all those things I say yes to each engagment. I also say yes knowing I can do the driving, since I wish to avoid catching a plane because of the aggressive TSA restrictions. My limit to these successful fulfillments should not be some pin head who wants to drive 55 MPH in the fast lane thinking they are doing society a favor by keeping traffic backed up on the highway. The poor soul may need pop bottle glasses to drive, and has gout in their knuckles, so they are limited in their physcial ability. They belong in the slow lane with both hands on the wheel. They should not be in my way. There is room for both of us on the highway and I will gladly pass them up at twice their speed, but they don't have a right to keep me from hitting my 2 PM meeting. And they don't have a right to make me late for dinner either back at my home. They don't have a right to force me to get a hotel overnight because my meeting ran late, or because there are too many rules keeping me from getting home in time for bed. So "yes" it is wrong to force people to do good. People should want to do good on their own because they have value for life, their property, and their relationships with others.

If I wreck into someone else at 100 MPH that would cause some serious property damage, so I would only do so if the profit outweighed the risk. If I bring harm to someone else with my action by infringing on the rights of someone else, then I've lost my ability to defend my property by infrining on someone else. But its not for some white knuckled wimp to decide that my speed is too great because it exceeds their limitations.

Now, that should get some discussion going. : ) Come on, where are the liberal nut jobs today? I want to hear more about how great movies like 2001 Space Odyssy is compared to Atlas and what John Galt would or would not have done if locked outside a space ship (its and inside story). Where are the bold proclimations?

In an nutshell, I think she is saying "It is wrong to force people to be good".
If you see a guy doing 100MPH down the highway, do you want the police to pull the guy over and give him a ticket?
Or should we just let him keep doing 100MPH until he figures out that speeding is bad on his own?

I LOVE Nasa, and they have done some great work. BUT, because they are government, when a radical group like Obama and his gang of thugs are in office, they can turn off that science to fullfil their crazy agenda of global equality. Government should be out of science because of it. Let the free market do all the work. Government allowed Nasa to grow when we were competing with the USSR, but stopped making those types of investments the minute the Berlin Wall came down.

I'm still reading Capitalism, but so far I agree with everything except how blunt she is at times. But the content is very good. I can't blame her for her presentation. It just made her an easy target for people who don't have the courage to deal with the truth.

"right about everything" overman, did you really agree with everything before you read it? and/or surely you might have disagreed with some points in the book?
when I first read it, I was still in college. and so somewhat unshaped by all the ideas in the book. for example, I worked, but not for myself. I do not believe I totally formed ah-ha s about so many of the concepts in this little book, until I did work for myself.
In Atlas Shrugged, for many years after reading it several times, I could not agree with Rand on funding science. a cornerstone of my young life was seeing men on the moon. I just would not agree with her that NASA should not have existed as a part of the govt. I finally came to agree on this point when my children were going through school. for me, anyway, life experiences changed me but I had the influence of her books most of my adult life.

You're correct about figuring out some of this stuff as we get older. I like the feeling of 'I wasn't wrong back then, they were'.

So far it's been crickets. I want to see some of the big mouthed anti-Rand people who scroll around this site argue that statement. Where are they? I know they are reading. Come on, lets have the debate.

The book itself is great. I am shocked that I haven't ran across this stuff earlier, but I'm happy they are available now. When you get to a certain point in life, and you figure these things out through living life, you don't need a book to tell you anything. But its nice to read that somebody else came up with these ideas from a different time and place and knowing that in hindsight she was right about everything. For me, it only validates the argument because when she first wrote these books the ideas were theory, and I can see why people would be skeptical. But now they are facts and we have measured results. They cannot be disputed. So I invite the trolls here to engage in conflict. Lets go. Throw out a refute on that statement based on collective mentality.

Great quote. Another book for my long reading list. I like your challenge. It will be interesting to see the attempts made to prove what's true to be untrue.