Thoughts on Force
Suppose I'm a mugger, and I shove a gun in your face and demand a single dime from you. You're surprised I only want a dime, but you comply anyway. Then I run away. In such a case, the cost that this mugging imposed upon you was greater than the dime alone; the very fact that someone threatened violence upon you is the greater cost to which the dime is added.- Stuart Hayashi
—John Locke
Which literally says "I own your output, but I will let you keep 48% of the proceeds, I need the 52% for other things. And those who are self-employed understand either flow through, or ~39% business tax + 15% capital gains.
I start seeing the value of striking!
face and demands a dime, if you somehow pull out a gun of your own and shoot him dead right there, as a matter of principle, you are totally within your rights. I am told that the law (in Virginia, at least) says that you may not take life
in defense of property, but I don't care; that law is
in violation of the rights of man. The issue is not
life vs. property, or how much money is involved. The issue is, that he crossed the line.
He had no right to force you to act against your own independent judgment.
To recap:
The Prime Law®
(The Fundamental of Protection)
Preamble
The purpose of human life is to prosper and live happily.
The function of government is to provide the conditions that let individuals fulfill that purpose.
The Prime Law guarantees those conditions by forbidding the use of initiatory force, fraud, or coercion by any person or group against any individual, property, or contract.
Article 1
No person, group of persons, or government shall initiate force, threat of force, or fraud against any individual’s self, property, or contract.
Article 2
Force is morally-and-legally justified only for protection from those who violate Article 1.
Article 3
No exceptions shall exist for Articles 1 and 2.
fact_, unless the government has somehow been derelict in its duty to rectify injustice that has already taken place.
Protection, in the progressive brain can and has been taken too far; I fear we would have to spell it out fully. It's tough to get the concept across to the bicameral brained left. (meaning the two halves of their brain still, after 3000 years, does not cooperated to any sufficient degree.
I had thought his vessel would have one of two origins.
1. Francisco d'Anconia built it for him. Or:
2. It is the former USS Enterprise CVN-65, which was on her way to the boneyard when Danneskjold's crew hijacked it. He might even have managed to insinuate enough of his recruits onto that ship, for what was supposed to be her last voyage, to represent a majority. Thus the worst crime anyone committed, was barratry--when the officer-in-charge steers a ship to a port other than where the owner wanted her to go.
The ship as described sounds like a battleship or heavy cruiser.
A warship also needs support from a fixed port. They don't operate in a vacuum. They need supplies and fuel; even a nuclear ship needs food, fuel for any aircraft, ammunition and various sundries. Ragnar had to have a facility somewhere. That facility could well have included an airfield.
Major point as well: Where would you mount heavy guns on a carrier?
By the way, the ship need not have had nuclear power. John Galt's electrostatic motor technology struck me as easily scalable, even to a scale to move a battlewagon and power all its systems.
Still, while it's an entertaining discussion, we're also dealing with a fictional story that regularly relies on unknown technology as a deus ex machina. So...
The bigger point is that of re-supply. Aircraft don't fly based on nuclear propulsion or Galt's theoretical device, but on fuel which must be drilled, extracted and refined. People have to have food, and a ship's stores can typically only hold enough food for a month. And there's the small detail that the ship itself would have had to have hundreds of active crew for daily maintenance, upkeep, and operations. A warship is a major undertaking.
I think Rand left it intentionally vague not only because it wasn't a critical aspect to the plot but because she herself wasn't familiar enough with the military to write a convincing story. Hmmm. Atlas Shrugged Fan Fiction?
--Originally from Space Balls
When an individual is stolen from; the intent is to send the police to recover, using force, the stolen property and to punish those involved in the theft. When an individual has their life threatened, it should always be right and just to defend that life with whatever means at hand.
The man caught eating the face off a homeless man a few years ago may have felt threatened by the police officer who shot and killed him; but his right to life and safety was forfeit by his own prior actions. Had he managed to kill the police officer who shot him; he would still have been in the wrong despite his fear of threat from the officer.
Atlas Shrugged gave us a world where, knowingly, the government and police are the thieves; stealing everything they could, threatening the very lives of the people and even killing them.
Ragnar used force to retake things that were stolen by force and deliver the value of those recovered items in as appropriate a manner as he was able. A job and a paycheck do not morally entitle anyone to steal or murder those they steal from.
I might be splitting hairs but the crew of a ship
Delivering some goods to the people's republic of
France are unlikely to have been involved in the initial looting.
three students of philosophy here, each with their own convictions on how to destroy the motor of the world.
The ends justify the means? Robin Hood?
Maybe Rand wasn't holding up Danneskjold as a hero. Maybe she was saying a gov't that does not respect property rights turns even honest people into thieves.
P.S. If I could not identify the cargo as "not loot" I'd walk the wharf until I found one. If not that, I would seek other work.
Very unequivocal !!! BT
inadvertently been doing something to the detriment
of the safety of the other people on the road; I do not think that simply being pulled over gives you the
right to shoot the cop.
It is true that the roads ought to be privatized, but until they are, you are not the only taxpayer/victim of the government.
We had a home break-in years ago. They didn't get much (our dog apparently ran them off, or we came home and they went out the back) but the toll on our piece of mind was indelible.
Best wishes,
O.A.
I never had a gun shoved in my face but I think I can kinda relate to how that must feel like.
I'm quite certain that having my life threatened by a gun would have a larger impact on me than being forced to hand over a large amount of cash.
Anyone who asked for a dime I may regard as the crazy humor of someone who is going to kill me anyway. I've been practicing a quick draw and point (not aim) while thumbing down the safety to off with my pocket pistol.
Would I with a hammering heart pull that pistol or or freeze? I honestly don't know, but I keep my spare change in that same pocket and my wallet in the other.
I find that funny...
I was afraid of the dark as a child. I recognized over and over and over again that the fear was unfounded and the dangers way overstated. I may have subconsciously disabled my fight or flight response by recognizing it so often. I've lasted 48 years so far without that reactive response, so I don't have much interest in rejuvenating it.