No, I do not. An employer and potential employee reach an agreement between each other on their own terms.

MrA, with the words you're posting here, you're showing that you don't understand causation during the employment process. In the real world, people can be compelled to accept contracts that are not in their best interest. Compulsion in this instance is due to the disparity of starting positions. Employers have leverage that the employees lack. The employee is "compelled" to accept the job offer because it is at least better than their current position. It is the lesser of two evils. Given the choice to work for less than you're able to live on, or not work at all, people choose work. Since income is lower than minimal subsistence requires in this condition, people are forced to have 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet.

By claiming that you're standing up for individual's rights, you're actually trampling on those rights. Subverting the rights of the employer in many cases is required to protect the rights of individuals. If you think that a hands-off approach is best, you're unwittingly allowing people to subvert each others rights in a way that rarely leads to adjudication. It's indentured servitude.

But, if governmental intervention occurs in any of this, it's a violation of their rights. There is no way around that. The principle of individual rights is paramount. To Rand. To me. But obviously, not to you. You'd rather violate rights. In the name of 'fairness".

The consequences of trying to protect the rights of "businesses" by not restricting them are that these "businesses" violate the rights of individuals. When there is leverage or duress during the writing of a contract, the "agreement" simply cannot be fair. Employees rights are violated when employers "rights" are unrestricted. By protecting the employers rights, you are violating the employees rights. Saying that they "agreed" ignores the leverage the employer holds.

It's a semantics game where you pretend no one's "rights" are violated. But the rights of the employee are without question violated, even in those cases where they "agree". Because the agreement is made under duress or informational asymmetry. This is how the world actually works. This is happening now and has happened throughout human history.

Being forced into subsistence living is the consequence of protecting what you define as "rights". It is class warfare, where leverage is held by employers via their ability to organize. A third party is required to protect the rights of individuals against the rights of the market.

You can't have a utopia where "all rights" are granted. Unless you violate the "rights" of businesses in some aspects, human suffering will ensue.

I’ve been waiting six months for an order of steel from Orren Boyle— and now he says he can’t promise me anything, because Rearden Metal has shot his market to hell, there’s a run on that Metal, Boyle has to retrench. It isn’t fair— Rearden being allowed to ruin other people’s markets that way. . . .

No, this tidbit does not relate to what I'm referring to when I mention fairness. This bit from Mr. Mowen is a good example of where the market works. It's an example of where the market should be allowed to work. If there is some unfairness between Boyle and Rearden in how they're operating, the lines of dialogue you posted doesn't show it. Fairness does not mean keeping the incompetent afloat. That is stupid, we can agree here.

What fairness means is that the baseline rules allow for the same opportunities, unburdened by the leverages that come with entrenched interests. This fairness cannot be had in the under-regulated dystopia of Objectivism.

Then we wil remain in disagreement about Rands view on the rights of man, of her system that protects them, laissez-faire capitalism, and the proper moral base and philosophic defense she brings to all of it.

You are in support of violating rights, while I am absolutely opposed to it, on both moral and practical grounds, as Rand is. So since our positions are clear, and will not change, then thats that for discussing them further.

Regulations are immoral/bad/evil/illegal in her system, as any of them in some way, violate man's rights, period. It all comes down to principles with her - in this case, the principle of individual rights.

Wait, you're saying ALL regulations are evil? Even ones that prevent corporations from poisoning the water table or require them to provide a safe working environment for employees? Recent history proves employers will poison the environment or skimp on safety if it's legal and increases profit, so what of the rights of individuals who drink water and work in factories?

In all this talk of rights, why does Rand always side with the business? I s'pose that makes some sense with a sole proprietorship, but they are increasingly rare. I'm sure you realize that despite the Citizens United ruling, corporations are not literally individuals. We'll know corporations are individuals when Texas executes one! :axe: It's difficult to see how the principle of upholding the rights of flesh and blood individuals (to a healthy and safe environment as two examples) against certain activities of amorphous legal entities is a violation of individual rights.

You are in support of violating rights, while I am absolutely opposed to it, on both moral and practical grounds, as Rand is.

I don't support the right to steal. You're right, I'd violate that right by imposing restrictions on those in the position to commit legal theft.

Why are you opposed to violating that right? That's not a right anyone has, stop pretending it is. Leverage in many contracts and negotiations can be defined as theft if used to unfair advantage. That's not a "right" MrA.

We definitely disagree.

LanDroid wrote: Wait, you're saying ALL regulations are evil?

Yes. Immoral. Any governmental intervention in the economy, violates rights, in Rands view.

Remember to keep in mind that if rights are violated in the economic sphere, you have the government to go to, as its function is to protect, and uphold your rights. The government, for example, cant issue a minimum wage on employers, because that violates the rights of employers to employ at a price they choose to hire at, and it violates the rights of a potnential worker for working at whatever amount they are willing to work for an employer for. If you work, and are supposed to be paid, and the employer doesnt pay you for that work for the agreed upon amount by contract, then you can go to court for money they owe you.

There is a system of objective law, a court system, criminal justice system in laissez-faire capitalism. All based upon upholding protecting individual rights.

In all this talk of rights, why does Rand always side with the business?

No, she always sides with individual rights.

Interbane wrote: I don't support the right to steal.

Great, so am I, because of property rights. Thats also why I am, and Rand, opposed to taxation, too. That is governmental intervention in the economy, taxation. The government is supposed to protect your rights, not violate them. It cannot become such a theif itself.

The point is, if you are for regulation in the economy itself, you are in support of someones rights being violated, in Rands view.

John Galt wrote:The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

Mr A has made several comments on Ayn Rand's views on rights and law, including quoting the first part of this extract from John Galt's extremely long broadcast to the American nation. Galt's statement that governments should "settle disputes by rational rules" appears to stand in conflict with Mr A's assertion that a government can do without regulation.

Absence of law is anarchy. The anarchist tradition in American libertarianism, in my limited knowledge of it, includes Murray Rothbard who has been discussed here for his caustic views on the Rand cult. All of these matters touch on complex problems of politics, economics and culture. I found Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty a very informative read on these topics, especially his analysis of law against the theory of evolution, with the idea that institutions evolve organically by precedent, with rules coming into existence that best address the historical experience of cultural conflict.

I got the impression from Mr A, perhaps misunderstanding him, that he thinks each conflict should be resolved without reference to an established body of case law to ensure a consistent and predictable government polity. I didn't get the impression that Mr A had thought through these issues very carefully, especially regarding where disputes arise from a conflict of legitimate rights.

The idea that rights are absolute is absurd. Rights are always conditional, dependent on context. Companies have a right to go about their business unhindered, unless they infringe on other people's rights. Setting the boundaries of acceptable conduct require balancing of rights in a predictable and consistent way, which is why governments regulate so people know what they can and should do.

Great, so am I, because of property rights.

The financial sector, when left unregulated, stole millions from Americans. Some people wouldn't use the word "stole". But here's the thing; if what they did is legal, and what they did was wrong, then therefore some regulation is good.

Some regulation is needed to prevent even greater harm. Some rights need to be violated to protect even more important rights. Ayn Rand was wrong MrA. Her philosophy works in fiction, but not in reality.

Robert Tulip wrote:

John Galt wrote:The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

Mr A has made several comments on Ayn Rand's views on rights and law, including quoting the first part of this extract from John Galt's extremely long broadcast to the American nation. Galt's statement that governments should "settle disputes by rational rules" appears to stand in conflict with Mr A's assertion that a government can do without regulation.

It does not at all. It's the economy I am saying that is unregulated in laissez-faire capitalism, not the government as you claim I claim. In laissez-faire capitalism, the government is constitutionally limited to only recognizing, upholding, protecting man's rights, through a system of objective law.

Rand's sytem is for unregulated capitalism, with limited government. Unregulated applies to economics.

Her writing "The Nature of Government":
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer? ... government

Her speaking about Objective Law:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer? ... reg_ar_law

Objective Law:
http://principlesofafreesociety.com/objective-laws/

Robert Tulip wrote: Absence of law is anarchy.

Correct. Rand is absolutely opposed to anarchy/anarchism. She is in full support of objective law and a system based on the principle of individual rights,that of laissez-faire capitalism.

Robert Tulip wrote:That was an inference I drew from Johnson's post, that the moral evil of Nike-style inequality should not be allowed, and a new crusade is needed like the abolition of slavery.

And maybe you're right to make that inference... I rarely nod my head in agreement with anything Johnson writes. But do recognize that to mention the moral evil of Nike-style inequality is not necessarily a call to ban this moral evil should the public happen to desire it (or for that matter, not desire it.)

The big question in Atlas Shrugged is the risk of pernicious regulation with collusion between populist governments and cartels. If a government regulates to force a private firm to trade with one supplier or customer and not with another, without any objective basis of demonstrable harm from allowing free trade, it opens the door to injustice.

I didn't notice this was in the Atlas Shrugged forum until after I posted. I haven't read the book. I'll leave the conversation by mentioning that $1 in 1967 had the buying power of $6.93 in 2012. This kind of takes the starch out of the everything's going rosy chart!