Hannibal

And it benefits unions too, who don;t wan't cheap unskilled labour (i.e. young people) taking their unionised jobs.

An obvious way that the minimum wage actually harms the people it's claimed to help, is that setting an artificial floor incentivises to employ people who hold the qualifications & productivity levels worth that lower wage limit. So employers that would normally employ unskilled workers with very low levels of productivity are now more likely to ignore those people and employ better skilled & more productive workers, considering they must pay the price either way.

You're storing your wealth in gold, because noone can print more gold and make it worthless. It is not a cash replacement - although it could be in future - it is simple a store of wealth. In Zimbabwe if you had a fortune in the bank, denominated in Zimbabwean dollars, you'd now be stone broke, and have a few South African rand in your pocket. If you kept your fortune in gold, you could now convert that gold to South African rand and buy a big shiney yacht. Lets say the currency doesn;t collapse at all, but we just have 10% inflation for a couple of decades - when you decide to spend your gold, which would currently buy a yacht, in 20 years you could still buy a yacht. If you kept your wealth in paper money instead, you'd only be able to buy a yacht about 2 thirds of the size! I think before you think about buying the bullion, you should have a read-up on money, what it is, where it comes from, and it's nature & relation to real wealth.

If destroying stuff could end depressions, then all we need do anytime the economy is struggling is build a load of warships, and then build a load of other warships to blow up the first lot. Problem solved! Who knew it was so easy ; )

I've not read the book, bt from what i've gathered it seems like this: You don't want to pay people to take responsibility for themselves. You do want to pay people for working for others. Paying your kid to clean his room is the kiddie version of the welfare state. Pay your kid, instead, for prodctive work - even if it's contrived.

Sorry, I had missed the "If" at the beginning of your phrase "If it's sensible to use some kind of license". I thought you had said "It's sensible to use some kind of license". Apologies. Cool. I was a bit confused

It's a common misconception that if you release your work to the public domain, others can stop you from using it. If you want to make this claim, please supply some references. All of NASA's space photos are in the public domain. I challenge you to copyright one yourself, so that you can stop NASA from using it! The only claim I made was this So i'm not sure what you're getting at.

If it's sensible to use some kind of license to make sure that noone else can effectively stop you from using your own work (by copyrighting it themselves), then fine. But I don't really get all of the suggestions about creative commons licensing, etc. If intellectual property doesn't exist (as a 'thing' and as a valid concept), then you can write whatever you like in the footer - it's all junk.

Lying about why you're late for work, for instance, might be in your self-interest in the short term, but in the long term when you do this kind of thing repeatedly you end up either getting found out as a liar, or even ignoring that you are changing reality in your mind. You're sense of reason, grounded in reality, is your only tool for prosperity. I'm sure you'll have seen yourself habitual liars who just seem to spiral down into a foggy mire of bullshit. It's not healthy in the long run to lie. Even in the short run, we don't get pleasure from unearned values, right? You won't enjoy a car you stole like you would a car that you earned. For these kinds of reasons, lying is not rational self-interest. If the purpose of life is to live and to enjoy living, then sacrificing the long term for not getting ahouted at by your boss now is not rational. If a stranger asks you how your day has been, I dont think you owe him anything, and should you say "yeah, great", even if that's not true, then I wouldn't realy call that a lie. Even if it is a lie, then it's not worth worrying about.

What do you mean with "rational self-interest" exactly? and how can lying never be part of that (even in the absence of lifeboatscenarios and self-defense against violence)? So, just to be clear, I define morality as a code of values that guide me through life, so that I can live the best life I can. I.e. the objectivist kind of morality (I can't think of any other definition of morality that makes sense). Ok... while I don't like some of the seemingly dogmatic aspects of groups like the Ayn Rand institute / atlas societ, etc, that doesn't stop alot of their content being top-notch. Check oput this recent video, starting at 32:00 just for a few minutes. Its a good video so I'd recommend the whole thing, but start here for this point where he starts talking about bernie madoff. You might want to scan back a little too (I can't remember if he talked about lying before that or not).

Sounds reasonable. Perhaps something like "lying to obtain an unearned value" is more specific. Although that doesn't cover lying for no gain other than to hurt someone else.

It depends on your definition of morality. Basically yes, because it's not in your own rational self-interest.

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that capitalism is about capital and its accumulation (which essentially means an increasing capacity to do more and more work). It's not about freedom (from work). If you're looking for fredom FROM work, then you're looking to ignore reality and the nature of man. You can't have your cake AND eat it. We work to live. We invest capital to increase production so that we may live better. To want to not work is to want to not live.

I think more than being a tool to work out what can and can't be moral, it's real purpose is to show that morality is objective, or at least why it should be if it is to have any meaning and if it is to be worth having.

So you don't think capitalism's unrestrained emphasis on work (as opposed to freedom) is going to produce violence in people? Just inquiring. I don't understand the question you're asking there. Capitalism *is* freedom. Capitalism is free men exchanging value for value.