It is a local Objectivist party. I am not much of a party person, normally, but this one has the theme of objectivism on Friday the 13th - its conceit is that the group is holding a 'clinic' to 'cure' people of 'fear of Friday the 13th' (Friggatriskadecaphobia). Backyard Skeptics, Freethought Alliance, sponsors.

Here is a link: http://secure.campaigner.com/Campaigner/...

It sounds like fun, so a friend and I are planning on going.

Jan

scott posted about a Memorial Service for National Branden hosted by the Atlas Society in Los Angeles this Friday

What's happening this Friday?

lolol What IS that??

????

I agree with your points. I avoided those restaurants. So did a lot of other people.

I just found it interesting that when the government forced the establishments to give up some of their rights, their sales and profits increased. And my wife and I returned as customers.

That's all I meant by "complicated." That does NOT mean that I wholeheartedly advocate government controls as ANY kind of 'universal benefit' or panacea to ANY problem or problems.

I just like observing situations, changes and results.

Cheers!

Your comment about smokers rights ending when the smoke touches your nose would be true if we were talking about your house or a public place that you had to go in. However, when it comes to a restaurant, if smoking is allowed by the owner then you know it before you go in. If you do not want smoke to touch your nose you simply make the choice not to go into that private property where you know smoke will be. You are trying to hold smokers responsible for your choices. I just want you to think about the logic and realize that even though it is worse for you and your wife, freedom is the right thing to support. Thanks

1957 to 2015 has been insufficient in terms of time because the thinking of the citizens has been insufficient, not because of an inherent time requirement.

Prior to Atlas Shrugged and the ensuing publication of more of Ayn Rand's philosophy the trend almost had to be down because of the lack of a proper philosophy. The emphasis on reason and individualism of the Enlightenment made this country possible, but the ethics of egoism and the rational rejection of all mysticism and altruism was largely only implicit. The intellectual dominance of the church was overthrown and the right of the individual to his own life and the pursuit of his own happiness was endorsed but not supported philosophically. See Leonard Peikoff's book The Ominous Parallels. The intellectual revolution had not gone far enough.

The long term decline had nothing to do with the fact that the constitution was written by a "committee" and did not endorse anarchism. That is not only wrong, but is arrested at the level of politics.

Beautiful. Love your sense of life as evidenced in this and other posts

I'm with you on the purpose of this place, Mamaemma - you [and Rand] put it beautifully.
It is to allow the intelligent, thinking individuals here to play and laugh with others who know how serious the joke is, where we can breathe and go back out to face it again.
It is that place where "we never had to take any of it seriously", even if it's just for a little while.

I was commenting on the complexity of the overall issue and my observations of the results.

One could (possibly) follow a similar line of logic on each side of the vaccination 'issue' today... freedom to control your own body versus data that show benefits if 'everyone goes along...'

I believe that exemptions were made available in NC to establishments whose ENTIRE clientele comprised smokers... non-smokers would be infinitesimally likely to even want to enter such places.

Perhaps the lawmakers where you are weren't smart enough to differentiate those two markets when they drafted their regulations. That would be my guess.

When the issue came up a few years ago in NC, I didn't want to give up my free-market-capitalist position, but I also knew that there were restaurants that my wife and I avoided because of the smoky air inside. Since the laws went into effect, we've returned to several such restaurants and enjoyed the cleaner air.

One MIGHT also consider the 'your rights extend to the tip of my nose or the tips of my toes, whichever sticks out further...' axiom... smokers have, in my opinion, too, the absolute right to do ANYTHING they want to THEIR bodies without my interference in those rights, but does that mean they abdicate ALL responsibility for their actions which DO reach my nose, throat and lungs? Or are they saying that it's NOT THEIR responsibility to not endanger ME, but it's the responsibility of the restaurateur?

It's still, imnsho, 'complex.' I LOVE Occam's Razor, but sometimes things just aren't all that simple.

Oh my! I cant believe you got sucked into those arguments of distraction! It is completely irrelevant whether business did good or bad after the smoking ban! Even if you are doing something that is good for a business owner, it is plain evil if you are forcing them to do it. There is nothing complicated about it!!!!! It is a simple matter of whether or not the public has a right to force a property owner to do things against their will simply because a lot of people think it will be more convenient for them. As to helping businesses, there were a couple business in my town that closed their doors because they had no more customers. Their business for the past thirty years had been devoted primarily to smokers. And when you talk about opposition evaporating, it is because they divide and conquer. The way it generally works around here is the ban might allow for an exemption or two to win over a large enough population to pass it. Then after they get people used to the ban they come back and modify the law to do away with the exemptions since they now have a very small population of businesses and customers to push around.

In all seriousness....you have ventured way over into the looter side if you let yourself be swayed by "well after we forced them to do it turned out OK" argument. I am so disappointed I can not even express it. And by the way, I have never been a smoker or a business owner. I just associate with this argument so much because I can not think of anything that is a clearer case of black and white, evil coming from the power of the majority.

Then we must suppose that since 1789 to 2015 is insufficient?
please start here:
http://no-ruler.net/?s=failure+of+the+fo...

There is no time limit on the right work that has to be done, which is much more than "spreading the word" for one lifetime. Ideas do not implement themselves and appeals to politics alone are woefully inadequate.

If a spiraling decline were to cut off freedom of speech and thought, making the sufficient spread of better ideas impossible, then it _would be_ impossible, short of starting over after another Dark Ages, but no one knows if that will happen. Frustrated abandonment of what is required in a pursuit of hoping that an accelerated plunge into a collapse will suffice does not make the impossible possible, it only accelerates the destruction.

Okay, well then Global Collapse is not in the picture? Wrong!

Supporting Rulers and their Governments is merely throwing good money after bad. We've been working on all this for most of a long lifetime, spreading "the word". Yet it just keeps getting worse. Darn few listen. So where's the "hope", anyway?

mdant, I've been on both sides of the restaurant/smoking discussion. I'm a non-smoker, but don't usually have a strong reaction to cigarette smoke in my life. I believe that the risks to me are real, although small.

I have libertarian beliefs and free-market beliefs, so I didn't support making smoking illegal in places owned by people. It appeared to me that the free market had come down on the side of the owners and they'd concluded that having smoking sections worked well for them.

Then smoking in specific places in NC, where I live, was made illegal. Prior to the action, catastrophists predicted dire results and closing businesses as a result.

Then reality AND the free market, after the laws went into effect, provided the real, measurable answer: more customers came to restaurants AND bars AFTER the smoking prohibition went into effect. Higher sales and profits resulted and complaints and opposition to the laws evaporated except for establishments whose explicit business IS to provide a place to smoke. Exemptions appeared.

Some situations are more complex than they appear... :) It makes me a bit more cautious about taking sides when new issues appear which might also have 'complicated' associated with their situations.

DeanStriker: "The only way of escaping this trip is by refusing to support the beast, and getting rid of all GOVERNments of Force and their Rulers. This will hopefully occur during the coming Great Collapse."

Refusing to support them does not make them go away. A collapse would create chaos and demands for more government to "help". It would be sold as proof of the failure of freedom. If you want to reverse this it will take more than "hope".

Reversing the course of a nation and a culture requires the spread of the right ideas of rationality, individualism and freedom. Without the right knowledge of what is possible people are too frightened to "risk" freedom. Spreading the right ideas is an absolute requirement and cannot be bypassed with hope.

Without the spread of the right ideas of rationality, individualism and freedom, the crashing of one statist system is replaced by another, worse, statist system as people demand government protect them from everything and provide their needs. Without the right knowledge of what is possible people are too frightened to "risk" freedom.

For many years I was blind enough to think the problem was education, or as plusaf suggests, miseducation. However, I eventually had to accept the painful truth that for most people you could spend all the time you wanted educating them properly and it would not change anything because they are whom they want to be. For example, I used to spend a lot of time trying to educate people as to why it is wrong to force a restaurant owner to ban smoking when no one is forced to come in. What I typically found if I pushed the subject hard enough is people would admit that it might be wrong to force the owner to do this, but they did no care because it was better for them. I found this was the most common basis for their reason, they just tried hard to avoid admitting it, even to themselves.

Are you, perchance, planning on being at the Objectivist Friggatriskadecaphobia 'Clinic" on Friday the 13th? I am hoping to go, though my plans are not finalized.

Jan

We should start a group!

H-

I live in LA too.

Jan

I share the sense of relief.

But we do not actually work in the Gulch and exchange products, so there is no real work that we can bring out of hiding. What we have is a philosophical oasis. This refuge allows us to have discussions which don't get stuck at 'step one'. (If I try to have a discussion with most folks, and I begin with the premise that a person owns the profits of their work...this assertion is immediately attacked. I never actually get to talk about the 'next step' topic that interested me.)

What we do not have is any protection from the regulations that impede our freedom and decrease our productivity. It would take a real Gulch to do this.

I think that the purpose of the Gulch is to network a large number of isolated individuals. Synergy is happening.

Jan

I like your attitude. I have had enough of doom-sayers. I think that we may be headed for rough times, and we need to take precautions as individuals so as to weather them well, but these bad times are not guaranteed, and we should not despair. If such times should indeed come to pass, then they will change the nature of the political game - not necessarily for the worse.

Jan

Galt's Gulch for me is that sometime in the future it will become a reality.It will be a place where a smaller society can be a creative and enterprising state. I'm so angry that all the gov't regulations is stifling the US economy and we produce very little in tangible goods.