Economic freedom. Dang I was hoping for something I didn 't know

Who? A mystery! I want to play!

I wasn't clear, Mike. My "hear,hear" was in response to khalling's comment.
Edit:sp

But Mike. yes there is common ground but the writing styles of those two are quite different!

You may recall- a year or two ago, we had a number of contributors who strongly defended creationism. The style, not just the content makes me fairly sure that two or three of them were just the one person.

Where? Where? Salty Dog is a mixed-premise conservative. See khalling above. Anytime the government "levels the playing field" it interferes in the market. Why should playing fields be level? Is no one ever allowed to seek and hold - or create - the high ground, the commanding heights? I think we need to discuss this. Topic post coming.

Right. I figured that out. I know that Vinay Kolhatkar (Frankenstein Candidate) also posts here. I thought that Salty Dog was a pen name. My mistake came from wanting to know more about Salty Dog. I clicked the Shopping Cart and was taken to Savvy Street. I just now clicked your Shopping Cart and was taken to Real Estate Sales, which I know is not you. So, the Shopping Cart just takes you to the Store.

Last night, I attended a meeting of User Interface/User Experience designers. I met a guy who just took one class at the community college and now wants to turn professional. You get that with new markets.

"Condemning" may be too harsh a term, but certainly "good people" who choose to use force against others should be called to account. That's why, for example, I don't have a huge amount of respect for those among America's Founding Fathers who chose to be slaveholders.

I never said that government has a responsibility "to" business...what I said was that as far as business is concerned, government has a responsibility to keep the playing field level. This in fact is the diametric opposite of picking winners and losers, as government now seems to be in the business of.

Hear, hear.

My understanding of "unemployed" is it means someone has looked for work and did not find it. I take this to mean they didn't find the job they wanted because any person of able mind and body can find some work. With all the amazing opportunity I see all around me, it's very hard to understand an analogy to a sinking ship.

"His theory rests on the assumption that a case would not come to court if it were not arguable. Therefore, every case is unique."
When I was at the museum was President Lincoln's neighborhood, I learned that in Lincoln's time, the average person was much more likely to be a party to a law suit than today because today there are ordinances regulating things that used to make it to the court. I certainly don't want excessive regulation, but if the courts consistently rule that music that enters my property at a certain volume at a certain time of night, it makes since for this somehow to be codified and not litigated in every case.

I'm not sure that you do understand the law. But that aside, the laws are in fact applicable in this, our physical world. To that extent, we're going to have to agree to disagree.

You can have the last word on this if you like.

FWE

I disagree that government should have a responsibility to "business" in any regard, save enforcing property rights. Government has not devolved into picking winners and losers, salty, govt involved in business is de facto picking winners and losers from its first involvement.

Saltydog is not a part of SavvyStreet. It is under the editorial direction of Vinay Koldhatkar.

I understand the law. You made a value judgment: "The primary function of government with respect to business is to keep the playing field level. To that extent insider trading laws are appropriate."
Insider trading laws are not appropriate. They are non-objective law: they have no basis in physical reality.

Savvy Street is not my blog.

I'm not repeating assertions...I'm describing the law. It's not important how you choose to characterize it, it's still the law, and no matter who prosecutes if, if you're found guilty of violating it, you will be penalized. As to your "global warming" assertion, well again, just run afoul of some EPA regs and see what happens.

I have read your book, albeit some years ago in college. That's beside the point...I'm merely describing how the system works as it is, and if you choose to participate this is what you must do to navigate through it if you choose to stay out of prison. If you want to change it, fine...so do I; let's do it. But I'm not prepared for the consequences for 'civil disobedience'. Are you?

Your "Savvy Street" is a nice blog. You claim to stand for reason and individualism. However, in those last two comments, you only repeated the assertions of the government regulators. "Insider trading" is just "global warming" applied to investments.

If you do not own a copy of Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal you should treat yourself to some insightful commentary. It is a little dated, but the principles apply.

Martha Stewart and Michael Milken were persecuted by looters.

It does, in fact, exist Mike. (Just ask Martha Stewart the next time you see her.)

If I, as CEO of a corporation, know that tomorrow my company will be announcing information such as a revolutionary new product, a takeover, spinoff or an acquisition and I either act upon it or cause someone else to act upon it before it becomes public knowledge I am guilty of insider trading. They watch that VERY closely in the securities industry.

So-called "insider trading" does not exist. Like "monopoly" it is a floating abstraction - a logical construct without an empirical basis. Every trader believes that they know something that no one else knows.

I reviewed The Invention of Enterprise for the The Libertarian Papers a few years ago. The editors assembled a set of essays spanning the history of trade and commerce from Sumeria to the 20th century. In every society, in every place and time, people make the best of the situation they are born into. We might condemn Marc Antony for looting Pergamum's library and giving it to Cleopatra, instead of creating value by bringing new goods to market. But that was not the culture of Rome. In Rome, a successful businessman turned his enterprise over to his slaves and freedmen, and retired to the countryside to live like the ruling class.

A positive morality of enterprise only started to develop with the Northern Renaissance. Even today, of course, it is not the dominant philosophy. However, the Horatio Alger stories of the late 19th century showed that people then did think well of doing well.

The most Objectivist entrepreneur I know is T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor. He runs a good company excellently. He also speaks out against government partnerships
here - http://www.greentechmedia.com/article...
and here
http://www.cypress.com/documentation/...
and here
http://www.cato.org/policy-report/may...
and against altruism
here (where he kicks a nun) - http://www.cypress.com/documentation/...

khalling condemned Mark Cuban for using government power to violate other people's property rights for his own benefit. I assume that she referred to the construction of a stadium for the Mavericks, but he owns a lot of other stuff, so I don't know. Maybe she can explain that. Anyway, my point is that sports is what it is.

Ed Snider (Philadelphia Flyers and other franchises) told a story at the 50th Anniversary of Atlas Shrugged. He explained how he discovered Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. (NIne minutes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb88q... He credits Peter O'Malley with the introduction. I have never seen Peter O'Malley listed as an Objectivist businessman. However, if you look at how the LA Dodgers do business - going back to his father, the great Walter O'Malley - you will see that they had a different philosophy (since changed by the present management). The Dodgers were committed to their players, while paying modest salaries rather than chasing big-name power for big money. Also, significantly, Dodger Stadium ("Chavez Ravine") was built with private money.

"O'Malley wanted to build a new, state of the art stadium in Brooklyn. But City Planner Robert Moses and New York politicians refused to grant him the eminent domain authority required to build pursuant to O'Malley's plans. To put pressure on the city, during the 1955 season, O'Malley announced that the team would play seven regular season games and one exhibition game at Jersey City's Roosevelt Stadium in 1956.[5] Moses and the City considered this an empty threat, and did not believe O'Malley would go through with moving the team from New York City.

...When O'Malley heard that LA was looking for a club, he sent word to the Los Angeles officials that he was interested in talking. LA offered him what New York would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a ballpark, and own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all revenue streams. When the news came out, NY Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. and Moses made an offer to build a ballpark on the World's Fair Grounds in Queens that would be shared by the Giants and Dodgers. However, O'Malley was interested in his park only under his conditions, and the plans for a new stadium in Brooklyn seemed like a pipe dream. O'Malley decided to move the Dodgers to California, convincing Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move to San Francisco instead of Minneapolis to keep another team on the West Coast to ease approval of the moves. There was no turning back: the Dodgers were heading for Hollywood." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Ang...

But the story is a bit more complicated and does involve public housing projects and eminent domain. See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodger_...

We Objectivists have a "take no prisoners " approach to life. So, does that include condemning good people who make choices that we like to think that we would not?

I agree that "the effect compounds year after year." I see this in the hidden statistics of the unemployed. We here very easily condemn them for not working, but ignore the fact that the economic slide is beyond their control. You can say that everyone is responsible for their own outcomes, and we are, but the fact remains that when the eco-nomy (human eco-logy) has an environmental shift, some individuals do not survive, while others adapt. It is not a matter of moral choice. Some people survived the Titanic (or Lusitania - take your pick); many others did not.

You are going to get a lot of arguments on the value of regulation. Wolf Devoon's Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch is predicated on the power of the courts. His theory rests on the assumption that a case would not come to court if it were not arguable. Therefore, every case is unique.

It is easy to theorize that in the absence of legislation or regulation, common law would protect property rights against environmental polluters. As I understand it, when the first railroads were spewing black smoke, some farmers sued and lost because the court rules that the social benefit of the railroad was more important. Courts are just human institutions. They err, too.

The primary function of government with respect to business is to keep the playing field level. To that extent insider trading laws are appropriate. However, government seems to have devolved into picking winners and losers, and as such, is inherently unfair.

Global warming is settled science (which it is not),+ solar energy is the future (more or less neglecting nuclear, geothermal, wind generated, tidal, etc.) = Solyndra (epic failure).

"many of them are socialists dedicated to globalism"
Socialism and globalism do not go together in my mind. Globalism arises from the fact that technology allows us to spread value around the world faster. It's not an ideology. It's a simple fact of life related to the ratio of the size of the world to our technology.

What I took away from the people supporting the corrupt gov't was that even people who where not into philosophy would eventually have enough of it and stop producing. They did it in a dramatic allegorical way in the book, in which a great person expostulates with them. In real life, I imagine it takes the form of millions of people making little decisions like "should I buy another pick-and-place machine", and they look the amortized cost of the maching, the expected value of its percenet utilization, the labor costs, and they look at regulatory and taxes. It's not John Galt exposutulating with them, but just little decisions that can add up to a slower growth rate. The effect compounds year after year.

I also don't take this to mean regulation is always bad. If it sets up a structure to prevent pepole from having to litigate to deal with things like making a polluter pay for the damage he caused to your property. The book is a warning, though, if we go overboard and take business leaders for granted, they will stop producing the things that make the modern world possible.