Michael Archer

WHY DON'T I REMEMBER THAT MAGNUM? I probably assumed that since he didn't get it the first time it was available, he never got it.

Guys... This is the gaming thread. This thread is about Bioshock and its setting. Eleven out of the fourteen replies has nothing to do with the game. I'll just ignore those. I never felt Ryan was a tyrant. Throughout the game, I always did feel like I was playing on the wrong side (until Fontaine came in, that is). Ryan was never a "greater good" kind of guy. That's more Sophia Lamb. I don't remember Ryan murdering anyone; I haven't played this game in a long time, I could be wrong about that. What I do remember is that Ryan was quick to suppress any enemies of the state (and rightfully so) e.g. Julie Langford in Arcadia. He's rejecting, in order: Socialism, any form of government where religion is the head of the state, and communism. Basically, he's rejecting statism. Yeah, that part struck me as odd too. Objectivists always stress that all men need to live under the same code of morality if they're going to survive peacefully. Maybe he means "the scientist won't be hampered by people who think what he's doing is immoral?"

I just got to the part in Atlas Shrugged when Francisco delivered his "So you think money is evil?" speech and James Taggart's wedding reception... I've been mindfucked. You guys should read it too. No propaganda, no lies, just honest facts: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/579185/posts Actually, the reason I'm posting this is that I want some people to refute these points. If you haven't read the book, shortly after Francisco delivered this speech, a woman came up to him and said you're wrong. Francisco responded, "If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully." She sputtered, "I don't have any answers...but I don't feel that you're right so I know that you're wrong." Francisco said, "How do you know it?" To which she responded, "because I feel it." I'm posting this speech, because I'm hoping the denizens of the Accursed Farms forum are smarter than James Taggart's dinner guests. Also, Bullseye, if you're still reading this, I want you to know that "Rational Anarchist" is a contradiction in terms. You're trying to combine reason i.e. the primary tool of man's survival with Anarchy i.e. a system where the defining principle is the use of force, which is the polar opposite of reason. Now, let's address some of the naaaaaaysayers. Smartguy, it's you're first: What? She's not talking about that. She's talking about capitalism and why it's the ideal system and why any forms of statism are evil. Please watch them. I watched yours... Also, Democracy is another form of statism, but that's for another time. If you want to discuss it now, I'll go first: Democracy is evil and it's incompatible with capitalism. Now, keep in mind I said "Democracy", not "republic". The two things are very different. Democracy is what the ancient greeks had, a republic is what the United States is. You are a slaveholder and you're using the government as your whip. But I guess you can claim an iota of moral high ground, since you support the idea of yourself being a slave. Poor walmart! They didn't go out of business because they lost to their superior competitors, they went out of business because the government outlawed their existence. Antitrust laws are probably one of the first things I would repeal, if I was president; all they do is punish business' for being successful. To set up an establishment and to live by your own effort is a right; I would hate to live in Germany where those things are permissions granted to you by the government. Which won't happen. I think that maybe 99% of people would willingly give 5%-10% of their incomes to fund a government that protects rights i.e. to fund the military, courts and police. Only the other one percent would give 90% of their income to make your communist state. Which is why the only way for communism to "work" is if the government forcibly took the income of the 99% of the producers-the men who created that wealth to begin with. No government does. Money is only "pumped" through production and trade. The only system that caters to that is capitalism. ____________________________________ Koockaburra101: That's why the burden of proof is always put on the plaintiff. If the plaintiff cannot prove his case, the issue is dropped. Even if the judge feels that the case was proven, judges are not perfect despite the process in which they're picked. And that's why we have an appeal system. ____________ Brakeu: Are you a real communist? Wow! I've only read about you guys! Anyway... Corrupting? What do you mean by that exactly? In capitalism, the government holds a monopoly on the use of physical force and they're bound by a constitution. In communism, the government is really only limited to the limits they place on themselves. The government is much more easily corrupted if it holds unlimited power. Excuse me? Corporations are human beings. All of corporation is is a collection of human beings. All human beings need to be able to own property and pursue their own values; corporations need those things protected just like any other human being. What do you mean by "inequalities?" And this is why democracy is bad; it is essentially mob rule. Here's a question: does an individual have the right to rape, rob and murder another? Capitalism/Individualism says no, under no circumstances. Democracy says, yes, if it's the will of the majority. I imagine the working class would somehow feel entitled to money that isn't theirs, so they would use democracy to make the government take the money away. And like in the speech I posted earlier, this is an egregious double standard; they live by force, but they depend on people who create the value of their looted money by nothing but their own effort. Despite what you've read, there is no such thing as "public ownership." That just means no one owns anything. How do they get the means of production? They forcibly take it out of the hands of those who's work produced these things. See, the difference between communism and capitalism is apparent. In capitalism, men deal with each other with dollars and by peacefully trading. In communism, men deal with each other through the government which holds the barrel of a gun to anyone that would try to oppose it. I'm going to assume that everything you just said about the sociopaths business' is true (I'm not sure if it is or not). If someone dumps waste in their own land, that's none of your business. The only time it becomes your business is if it negatively affects you and your property. The fact that the Africans can bring no legal claim against these business' is a criticism of the current state of the governments in Africa, not capitalism. By "stalled efforts to reduce carbon emissions", you mean the same way a person pulls out a gun to defend himself against a murderer. The environmentalist movement always had its roots in anti-capitalism. Production, ownership of property and liberty are all things a human being must do in order to survive; this is what the enviromentalists hate. Live beyond our means? I invite you to look at a picture of New York City (preferably, during nighttime) and then immediately look at a picture of Pyongyang. Do you see the difference? New York City is a byproduct of capitalism and what man is capable of. Look at the pristine skyscrapers; all this is only possible by wealth and production. The skyscrapers are owned by billion dollar corporations-the people responsible for creating all this wealth in the first place. Now look at Pyongyang. The buildings are crumbling, there's a massive hotel that doesn't bring any customers since it's structurally unsafe (they lost funding), they're going into famine, and there are shrines so the masses can worship their great government-the government that made all this possible in the first place. This is the key difference between USA and North Korea. USA is a (relatively) capitalist nation; it is a product of the ability to reason-it shows what happens when men are free to trade with one another and to produce. North Korea is a statist country; they can't produce anything. The only resources they have is what they can steal from other countries. Note that in the 20th century, all those wars were started by statist countries. Statism needs to steal the goods from others to survive; statism needs war. What do you mean "oppressed?" No one is being forced into anything. The only body that can opress people is the government. I've always thought that the fact that obesity is a problem in the USA is a testament to how great capitalism is. The system allows the Americans to produce so much, they're getting sick from it. The capitalists are parasites? They're parasites for wanting to create as much as they can, to provide the best products they can, all so they can create the most amount of wealth they can? These people are parasites? I want you to explain to me how this "working class" you speak of that you said should cry out for their own share in the means of production (which I remind you again, they took NO part in creating) are not parasites. And with a limited government, things like this wouldn't happen. The government is going outside their boundaries when they forcibly take money away from the creators to spend on things they can't afford with or without their consent. United States is a mixed-economy, not capitalist. Fail? Yes. Explosively? Maybe not; we don't want Anarchy, which I'm sure we both agree is a worst system. When the system fails (i.e. the government goes bankrupt) the people will realize that government was usurping their money without their consent and then maybe, just maybe, we'll have the ideal, lassiez-faire capitalism. _________________________ Doom Shepard: The system you're looking for is called "lassiez-faire" capitalism. In that system, the Ant is entitled to work for his own effort and choose how he uses it. In Anarchy, the grasshopper would get a bunch of his friends to go attack the Ants. In Socialism and Communism and Mixed-Economy, the grasshopper would get his friend (an animal that easily overpowers the ant and for that matter, the grasshopper) to take it from the Ant.

He didn't even get the magnum, I remember he just ignored it. Wrong, watch the episode again... He took it as punishment... Quote: "I'm taking your gun, you don't deserve it." SmartGuy is right, you're wrong:

Just listened to the entire musical of Wicked: on stage. I just got back from Buffalo after seeing Wicked for the second time, and the first time with seats that had an unobstructed view. From start to finish, the show is amazing, but the part that always sends chills down my spine is when the wicked witch is lifted up by a crane during the bridge section of "Defying Gravity." While strobe lights flash around her and an offstage fan blows her cape, she sings the most defiant, proud, and passionate part of the musical--of any musical and of any song I've ever heard. The feeling I get when I watch that part...I...I can't describe it. If you go for any reason, go for that song. I really, really, really love this musical; in a way that I should probably tell my therapist about.

I stopped playing it because of the lack of updates and hard to find servers. Maybe I should start again. The concept is amazing. I'll tell ya, there's nothing better than hanging on a wall above the scared marines saying stuff like "I see you"; then jumping down and quickly swiping them with my knife before jumping behind a box and listening to the injured marine spray bullets wildly. That reminds me: here's a hilarious video made by the Janus Syndicate (the same guys who made "Counter-Strike For Kids"):

For those of you who've never played Bioshock: leave this thread immediately and go buy a copy. It's a brilliant game. For the rest of you: I loved Bioshock. Not so much for the gameplay, but more the story and the underlying philosophy. If you didn't pick that up, the philosophy that Andrew Ryan advocates is Objectivism: a philosophy that was defined by Ayn Rand; it holds that reality exists independent of consciousness and that human beings must observe it. Your goal in life is to pursue your own happiness and that the only system conducive to that is lassiez-faire capitalism. I loved Bioshock's intro and I like how the only difference between Andrew Ryan and Ayn Rand is three letters and a penis. Don't believe me? Read this: http://www.nasonart.com/personal/lifelessons/fountainhead.html But just about now I started thinking: is the message of Bioshock that capitalism is a bad system? When you get there, the society has gone to hell and anarchy. Is the message that capitalism is bad? I worried about this for a long time. I loved Bioshock and I really didn't want to have to throw it away. Fortunately, the more I thought about it, the more it looked like it wasn't a criticism, and if anything it was advocating it. Certainly the beginning of it is amazing when you come out over the city and you see what is possible when man puts his mind to something. I think that the reason Rapture went to hell was not because of Andrew Ryan, but because of Fontaine. Fontaine was using force to try to topple Ryan's legitimate limited government all in the name of helping Sofia Lamb expand her statist ideas; Ryan was simply responding with retaliatory force. Fontaine won, Ryan lost his credibility, the people went crazy and everything went to hell. Bioshock 2 was not that great. Yeah sure, it was saying how statism could not fix a society and it made me like Andrew Ryan even more, but one thing that stuck out was one of the audio diaries. The game was trying to make you care about your daughter, and I did; one audio diary instantly changed my mind. In it, she said, "Mother's philosophy [statism/subjectivism] is just as corrupt as Ryan's [objectivism/capitalism]" Somehow, she's throwing out both the subjectivist and the objectvist theories...what does that leave left? Well, there's the intrinsic theory (the theory that things are intrinsically good or bad), but really, it's subjectivism. So, what do you guys think? Is Bioshock commie propaganda?

And like I said in another post; this is why the reputation is retarded.

Thatsmartguy, was your first video an attempt to show me how capitalism is bad? All it did was convince me that capitalism is the best system. The only thing with which I disagree with Mr. Friedman is why capitalism is the best system. He says that capitalism is the best system because it "benefits all"; I side with Ayn Rand, when she says that capitalism is the only system consonant with man's rational nature. I got about half way through the second video that I realized that you're pulling the old Guilt By Association fallacy. Just because I share my opinion for the best system with some retard religious redneck (ooh, nice alliteration) does not make the idea any worse. His reasons for it are horrible; I think he's more of a disservice to capitalism than the statists. Man, I loved that third video. Thanks for sharing! I always thought of Reagan as a uneducated redneck; you sure proved me wrong! All these years, I just realized what a great message The Little Red Hen had! If I ever have children, I'll read that to them; right after I'm done reading them Atlas Shrugged . If it's greedy to want to own a private jet, two yachts, my own island, and a couple of multi-billion dollar corporations, then yes, I'm greedy. In what universe is that a bad thing? Now watch some videos of my own please: (Yeah, she sounds like communist with the accent at all; she couldn't be farther than that) (Same person.) (Gecko is a great character. That's why Wall Street 2 was so bad: not enough Gecko. This video is just for entertainment, mostly.) If you can watch these videos and still be a statist, then I consider you on the same moral level as slaveholders and people who support government taxes.

Right now? "Wonderful" from Wicked. It's one of the weaker songs, but I'm listening to the whole thing because I'm seeing the play on Saturday. Again. If you go for anything, go see it for the song "Defying Gravity". It's a huge spectacle.

But...but...Freeman isn't as funny without his shotgun and submachine gun. I can see Freeman dying from exhaustion before he gives up his weapons.

Are you implying certainty is not possible and that we can't know anything? Heh, because of the French thing? Bob has the right to defend his property; in Anarchy, he would shoot Steve if Steve looked at him funny. But Bob wants to live in a peaceful society, so he delegates his right to defend his property to a government so the government can look at it objectively. Both systems are based on the premise that some men have the right to initiate force on others; if force is being initiated on you, you're not free to think and to choose how you live your life. The use of force can be subjective or objective; it depends who's using it and for what reasons. The evidence that second-hand smoke is bad for you is shaky and exaggerated (although it may very well be true), but let's say that you're right: You don't have to be around the second-hand smoker. Unless he's in your house, you have no more of a right to be there than he does. Whether he can smoke or not is up to the owner of the property. Suing someone is never initiating force; it doesn't get any more peaceful or civilized than the court of law. Men will have honest disputes; that's what the courts are for. As for class action, that's really something best left up to the legal professionals. For oil companies: if you can objectively prove that their pollutants are harming you, then they shall forced to stop. Socialism, communism...it's all statism and it's all evil. They produced it and it's rightfully theirs. They get to decide who they give it to and under what conditions. The United States is a mixed economy and is not a capitalist state. You'd be surprised how many issues there are actually caused by the government. There is no such thing as a right to a job. In a capitalist society workers compete for jobs. If the man in Bangladesh will work twice as hard for a fraction of the price, you better find a way to be better than him; the same thing goes for corporations: they compete for consumers and try to make products as high quality at the lowest cost. This is what keeps prices low. You sound like a Fox News anchorman. I think you mean "would harm.", but not important. I don't know what you mean by "harm America." Are you implying that an individual (the corporation or the Bangledesh man) should be working for the country? Are you implying that it's wrong for individuals to work for themselves? Your job, as a lassiez-faire capitalist, is to work for your pleasure and your own happiness. If happiness means helping other people then do that.

I never bore any grudge against you, Ross. After all, you're using your own sweat and blood to provide up with Free (pun) entertainment. As long as I know you've read this thread, I'm satisfied. As for the student academy thing, that sounds like fun! I hope we have something similar to that in Canada, although I sincerely doubt it. That's fine. My suspension of disbelief allows me to go that far.

It does. Capitalism is a system of individualism and individual rights, so things that infringe on individual rights are not allowed. It's implicit that there are things we should not be able to own i.e. we can't own things that which in their very existence violate individual rights. For example, you can't own nuclear weapons since the only purpose of that is mass destruction, which is a violation of individual rights. Also, you can't own human slaves; that violates rights. Corporations should not be allowed to patent discoveries, but inventions should be allowed. Why isn't it moral to patent medicine exactly? So what if there are two lives involved? What does that imply? Are you saying that the woman does not get to decide how she lives her life? Arguing against abortion because "there are two lives involved" would be like arguing against the right to self-defense and self-defense laws because "there are two lives involved". "Deserve to have" implies a sense entitlement to fruits of another's labor, despite taking no part in producing them. I am not morally entitled to your money, nor are you entitled mine. If I was, I could morally take your money from you by force. The only difference between a back alley mugger and the taxman is that taxes are legal and are sanctioned by a majority vote. That's it. That does not make the taxman morally right. You are not entitled to to someone else's property, nor do you have the right to use the government to seize that property for you. Because we live in a world of limited resources, this is all the more reason you do not have the right to these resources. If things were limited, and you were robbed, you could say "Oh, no big deal; resources are unlimited and therefore have no value. There will be no shortage of resources, so it's not a bad thing that I was robbed." It's easy to tell which rights are real and which ones are not, even if you don't accept the notion "rights can't violate rights." Just ask yourself this question: does nature grant this to me as a condition of my existence? If yes, then it's your right. Rights are conditions of existence. For example, because nature demands that you sustain your body with material goods as a condition for your existence, you must own property. In a society, if someone deprives you of your property, they're depriving you of life since you must own property to survive. That why there's a right to own property. There is a popular notion of the "right to healthcare". The reason you don't have this right is that nature does not provide you with doctors as a condition of existence. And whaddya ya' know? It infringes on a real rights, such as the right to property. But it is relevant. By the same logic, masturbation is immoral, since a sperm cell is a stage in the life of a human being. Again, you're equating the potential with the actual. A fetus is different from a baby, so nature forces us to treat them differently the same way nature forces us to treat an acorn differently than an oak tree. Liberty and the right to property are also mandatory conditions of survival and you're advocating using force to take away the rights of one in favor of another. It's arbitrary (and therefore irrational and shouldn't be entertained) to say that one set of rights are more important than another; but that's assuming the fetus has rights. I'm saying the fetus does not have rights. Human beings use reason to survive in a social context, that's what rights define: freedom of action in a social context (it has to be social; if you're on a desert island, who's there to violate your rights?). Human beings need freedom of action to survive (rights); human beings cannot properly function in a society without a code of individual rights. If you don't believe me, look at any anarchist society; better yet, watch Black Hawk Down. It shows you what I mean and it's an awesome movie. A fetus does not take any course of action, so it does not need freedom; ergo, no rights. All a fetus does to survive is wait and feed off the nutrients provided by the host. Human beings survive by trade, which needs freedom of action. Do you see the difference here? The other forms of life survive by initiating force on each other; that's what makes human beings so special. No one "dictates" what has rights and what doesn't; they're conditions of existence. You can complain all you want, but it's a fact that in order to survive, humans need to think, and they need to own property. What we call "rights" are basically what nature demands of an individual. Ah, the old "I'm rubber, you're glue" argument. Clever. Care to elaborate? How so? Government's powers only extend to what the people have. Basically, we're saying to the government, "We have the rights to freedom and property, and we also have the right to defend these things with retaliatory force, but we want to live in a civilized society where we're not shooting the first person we think took our wallet; we delegate these rights to you." Like you said before, the government only has power that the people give them. So even if the people willed it to execute an innocent man, it would not happen. "Will of the people" simply means "deriving their power from the consent of the people" as Thomas Jefferson put it i.e. government holds the powers that the people already have. Because I do not have the right to forcibly take your money, I can not give permission to the government to do it for me. Just keep that in mind. Good thing I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that rights are conditions of existence, whether you like it or not. You can hate the fact that you need to be free to think in order to survive, but that doesn't change the fact that you need to do that. LOLWUT? The role of the government is to protect the well-being of people from people? Are you somehow implying that corporations are not people and are not entitled to the same protection from the government? Creating jobs when there weren't any to begin with is hardly taking advantage. In that case, if a corporation doesn't pay what the market demands, they'll go out of business. The government has no part in the free market. I defended a corporation's right to liberty and property and the freedom from the initiation of force? I defended their right to decide what trades they'll engage in and on what terms? Yeah, I'm such an evil person. If by "extremes", you mean "absolutes" then yes; I'm not talking from a pragmatic point a view. I'm talking about how a society should be, not how it is. I don't know how to fix the world, but I do know that the solution does not involve injecting more statism. Then why the hell would you do it? Sure, the person is happy, but what about you? Aren't your feelings important too? Selflessness in the literal sense of the word, is bad. How so? Surely you're not implying all life has the same value e.g. the life of an ant has the same value as the life of a human. Otherwise, I don't understand what you mean. Yes, which is why as we grow, our conditions of existence and survival are different; for this reason there's a huge metaphysical difference between a baby and a fetus. That's why it's insanity to treat them alike. YES! Thanks for bringing this up. "You're a Catholic the moment dad came" "Let the heathens spill theirs on the dusty ground; God shall make them pay for each sperm that can't be found" "God loves those who treat their semen with more care." Pretty much sums up the anti-abortionist movement.

Yes, the Glock and the MP5 do indeed use the same rounds, if Wikipedia is taken to be accurate... A submachine gun would be preferable to a pistol in any situation. It shoots faster, has a deeper magazine, and the main advantage is that not every shot has to count. But assuming he could...

I love this series, despite the incredibly nitpicky and pedantic things I'm about to say about it; just to make things clear. I don't know if this has been brought up before: at the beginning of Episode 6, Freeman remarks that he found a Glock off of the security guard. He then mentions that it has a full "clip" and that the "safety's off". For one thing, Glock handguns are magazine fed; they don't use clips. Glock handguns also don't have safeties that you flip on and off; they have trigger safeties that are disengaged if you pulled the level on the trigger. In this sense, Glocks safeties' are always on, until the trigger is pulled. Also, it's always struck me as odd when Freeman uses his pistol, despite having a shotgun and a submachine gun. Who is he, Laura Croft? The only purpose of a pistol is to defend yourself until you can fall back to a better weapon or get more ammo for your primary weapon. It looks weird when Freeman uses his pistol despite his many remarks that he has enough ammo for his submachine gun. This has happened many times throughout the series; more recently, it happened in Episode 32 when Freeman is "tidying up". But I guess all these things can be attributed to Freeman's eccentricities...

Does anyone still play this? I remember I had so much fun with this. It was hard to find a decent server, but when you did, MAN OH MAN.

It's called lassiez-faire capitalism, for the record. It's French! The role of the court system to objectively (capitalism is all about objectivity) determine who initiated force whom and to objectively apply retaliatory force. Bob should sue Steve, like you said, and it's not up to Steve to say if he did something; it's up for the courts to objectively determine. For example, I could murder someone and they'll claim I'm initiating force against them, but I could swear by my life that I'm not. It doesn't matter what I say; it just matters what reality is. Capitalism is a system of freedom and that's exactly what man and his mind needs to survive. It is mostly an economic model, but I'm talking about about the ramifications. For example, if trade is going to be free, it makes sense that in capitalism, the initiation of force is banned. Like in China? I'm not sure what I'd call that. In capitalism, corporations exist by right. In China, corporations exist by permission. That's socialism, if anything. Capitalism is about objectivity (objective prices, objective wages, objective justice); statism is about subjectivity, like a totalitarian dictatorship. If the dictator decides to make it capitalist, then the business' are still operating by permission and not by right.

I love Yahtzee's similes and his abrasive nature, but I can see why you wouldn't find the juvenile humor to be funny. Like Paul from Unskippable said after Yahtzee said that their show was too easy: "do you think [our show] would be better if we had a bunch of stick figures and swearing on a yellow background?"

Why do we have two reputation threads?

I hate the reputation system. It implies that a user's credibility and usefulness to the forum is defined by a majority vote. Being right is not a democracy or a popularity contest. People will look at me and say "Oh, he has a low popularity; he must be a troll and doesn't contribute to threads!", when this is not true.

I don't know how you can read the Deceleration of Independence or the Constitution without thinking these are egoist ideas. In both of them, they outline individual rights: moral codes to protect the individual against the majority (e.g. "Freedom of speech": even if there's massive outcry from every single person in the country, the individual is still legally allowed to speak) The assertion "the individual should not be subject to the will of the majority" is egoism/individualism. Yes they are. Capitalism is the economic theory based around egoism and individualism: an individual's body (and all property) belongs to the individual to use how they see fit; to use their best judgment to decide the best course of action for their lives. Statism is based on collectivism: an individual is not allowed to own property; similarly, an individual's body does not belong to them and instead, belongs to the the government to dispose of it in any way they see fit e.g. using an individual's body to fight in a war they don't agree with (the draft), forcibly taking an individual's money without their permission (taxes), forcing an individual to remain pregnant so they can make babies (outlawing abortion) To outlaw abortion is to say an individual's body does not belong to the individual, but it belongs to the state to use it in any way they see fit. This is statism, which is anti-capitalism: the two ideas are diametrically opposed. Rights can only be violated through force: since you're saying that rights can violate rights, are you not also saying that you have the right to initiate force on other people? If so, then that's statism. You can try to context-drop all you want, but the fact still remains: outlawing abortion is statism. Are you even reading what I'm saying? I never said a fetus was potential life. I said it was a potential baby. A "fetus" is not a "baby". A baby is one that's born. To treat a potential baby (a fetus) like a real baby (one that's born) the same way, despite the fact that they're metaphysically different, is insanity and detached from reality. It's like treating an acorn like an oak tree. Abortion does not involve sacrificing anything to anyone, since there is no right to live as a parasite (of course, if you think rights can violate rights, then I guess you could somehow conceive of the right to live as a parasite; that would alse be statism). Forcing someone to remain pregnant is using an individual as a means to an end, so that is immoral. Your view can be boiled down to "living things have rights, because we're nice and we don't want things to suffer needlessly" (why exactly should we stop things from suffering?). This is subjective and arbitrary (and by corollary, irrational and shouldn't be entertained). Just because we're nice, it does not follow that other things should have rights. It also doesn't explain why we have rights as living things. It relies on the premise that reality exists in your mind and that we decide what's the best way to treat others, as opposed to nature deciding what's the best way to treat others. (I'm not even going to go into what constitutes "we"; because this would be arbitrary). This is subjectivism, which says reality, good and bad exist only to what people decide it is and that reality is malleable. The opposite of this is objectivism which holds that reality exists independent of your mind, and it's up to humans to observe it and draw conclusions from the real world: reality is firm and absolute. Objectivism holds that no one decides what's good or bad, it just is and that it needs to be observed. Subjectivism holds that people decide what good, bad, and reality are. Now, let's apply these two theories in a social context. Objectivism seems to mesh nicely with capitalism (objective free-market, objective government). What fits with subjectivism? Oh yeah, STATISM (government DECIDES what's good and what's bad). I guess it's easy enough to say that the objectvist theory is incomplete, since if I accuse the subjectivist theory of being incomplete; you can simply say "well, I decide then how I can complete it". It doesn't matter; it's congruent with reality. This view doesn't rely on arbitrary statements like "we should try to stop suffering, therefore, we create moral codes". My view is dependent on nature, which is the real world. Wait, what? Did I say that it's right to "underpay" workers? All I said is that the government has no place regulating economics. What do you mean by "underpay?" Do you mean "pay below minimum wage?" If so, I've already explained how minimum wage is arbitrary and as humans, we need to reject the arbitrary. Or, did you mean "pay below what is objectively defined by supply and demand?" If so, it would not be in a business' self-interest to do that. In a proper free market, corporations compete for labor. To underpay your workers would mean to lose business. In either case, the government has no right to intervene if no physical force is being involved. That's all I said. Now who's the one with the scarecrow arguments? This implies an act of force. There's a difference between treating people as a means to an end and a mutually beneficial and voluntary trade between two parties. It also suggests that the employer-employee relationship is viewing other people as a means to a end. Please stop with your scarecrows. A redundancy in terms. To understand why it's bad, you must first understand that "altruism" is not a synonym for "kindness". "Kindness" is helping people because you can and it's enjoyable. "Altruism" is the tenet that actions are only moral if they benefit someone else. For example, altruism says that it's morally wrong to feed yourself if there are other people that are starving. Altruism says that you do not have a right to exist if you don't give money to hobos. This is why "ethical egoism" is a redundancy. Metaphysically (and physically, in a sense), they are complete separate entities. This is the key difference here.

Evolution is a theory, just like atomic theory and probability theory. It doesn't get any more scientific than evolution. Everything that evolution presents is demonstrable, so it makes sense that it should be taught in schools. Creation is not demonstrable and is taken entirely on faith. Again, the term "scientific theory" does not in anyway express doubt. A scientific theory is a model to explain how things work in real life. I believe evidence is first gathered, and then a model is built to explain that. Just like the atomic theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_theory "Theory" and "fact" are not mutually exclusive.

Anarchy is abolition of the state, I believe. There is no government. I put Anarchy in there for the sake of completion; I didn't expect anyone to actually vote for it. Anarchy has to be one of the worst ideas ever. In anarchy, the individual is subject to anyone who desires to initiate force against him. It's the rule of the jungle. The use of retaliatory force is no longer in objective hands; in Anarchy, if a man loses his wallet and suspects it's stolen, he can shoot the first man who looks at him funny. The use of force is placed in the hands of individuals who use on on whim. A society needs a government to properly function, because people will always have honest disagreements; the role of the government is just to make retaliatory force objective.

Pripyat is on-topic; there's two levels in Call of Duty 4 that take place in Pripyat. I want to visit Pripyat because it would be a taste of living in an apocalypse. The run down buildings, looking at signs that indicated that life was once there...it's extremely eerie and it's a cool feeling. It's been over twenty years; I can't imagine spending a day there is any worse than taking a flight across the ocean, radiation-wise.