Trader Principle - Revision history

67.160.12.48 at 23:51, 29 December 2006

2006-12-29T23:51:14Z

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 From food, clothing, and shelter to automobiles, computers, and pharmaceuticals, the list of human needs is endless. Since man must produce the values he requires to survive, each of these needs opens up an enormous field of work and study. No one man, no matter how great, can master every human endeavor; every minute spent tilling a garden to satisfy one's need for food is one minute not spent knitting sweaters to keep oneself warm in the winter. If every individual had to produce alone everything he needed to survive, the human race would likely have died out long ago. It would be far more efficient if one person could concentrate his efforts on growing food, another on making clothing, and another on building homes. This is the principle of the <i>division of labor</i>.
-Other people can be of great value to a man; they can provide him with innumerable benefits, both material and spiritual. The only question is how a man should go about trying to attain these values from others. The most immediately obvious method is to simply <i>take</i> the things one needs. This may provide for one's survival in the short term, but in the long term it actually destroys the ability of others to produce values, and therefore to be of any value to oneself. As an example, say that your neighbor has a vegetable garden which has just come to fruition. He labored in that garden for weeks, and now, after months of waiting, his hard work has finally paid off. You spot a small patch of carrots which look extremely delicious, and seeing that your neighbor isn't home at the moment, you walk over to his garden, pull up the carrots, and take them home with you, enjoying them that night at dinner. Although you have gained a small value from your act (the filling of your stomach for a few hours), you have, in fact, caused a great amount of harm to yourself in the process. When your neighbor arrives home he will be distraught; the primary reason he planted his garden in the first place was to feed his family and enjoy the fruits of his labor. If this benefit is denied to him, what motivation does he have for planting his garden again next year? Furthermore, he may have been counting on selling some of his carrots in order to purchase seeds for the next year's crop. He now has nothing to sell, and so no way of planting his garden again even if he wanted to. Even if your neighbor never finds out that it was you who took his carrots, you have lost a potentially great source of value in the future. If you do this to enough people, you will eventually find yourself without any source of food at all. A much better way to go about acquiring food from your neighbor is to offer him something in exchange for it, perhaps something of which you have an overabundance but of which he has very little. If you make him a good enough offer, he will accept, and you will both end up benefitting from the trade.
+Other people can be of great value to a man; they can provide him with innumerable benefits, both material and spiritual. The only question is how a man should go about trying to attain these values from others. The most immediately obvious method is to simply <i>take</i> the things one needs through the use of physical force. While the attainment of concrete goods in this manner may provide for one's survival in the short term, in the long term such a policy is devastating to one's ability to live. An individual's focus, in such a case, necessarily becomes not reality-centered, but other-centered. Such a man becomes intensely focused not on mastering existence, but on mastering his fellow man. He becomes a parasite in body and in mind, relying on others to think and produce for him, absorbing his ideas blindly from those around him as he absorbs the product of their labor. Thus, such a policy violates the virtue of [[Independence]]. In turning his focus towards seizing the goods produced by others, a man neglects cultivating his own ability to produce, violating the virtue of [[Productiveness]] and damaging his own [[Self-esteem]]. Such an individual must concoct elaborate lies to ensure that he is not caught, violating the virtue of [[Honesty]] and leading to a constant psychological state of paranoia. Perhaps most importantly, by his [[Initiation of Force]], such a man negates the judgments and conclusions of his victim, inhibiting the victim's ability to make use of his faculty of reason, the very faculty at the root of production. Thus the force-wielder relies on his victims' ability to produce while destroying that within them which makes production possible. When practiced consistently on a widespread basis, the negation of the mind in this manner leads to mass poverty and the total collapse of production, as is readily evident in the case of historic dictatorships.
-The <i>trader principle</i> is a recognition of the fact that the most effective way of gaining values from others is not by deception or theft, but by trading value for value to the mutual benefit of both parties. This is the application of the principle of justice to one's dealings with other men: an individual must not seek from others that which he has not earned, i.e. that which he has not "paid for" to the satisfaction of the other party.
+[[Rights]]

24.16.120.9 at 09:10, 23 November 2005

2005-11-23T09:10:04Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 09:10, 23 November 2005
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	From food, clothing, and shelter to automobiles, computers, and pharmaceuticals, the list of human needs is endless. Since man must produce the values he requires to survive, each of these needs opens up an enormous field of work and study. No one man, no matter how great, can master every human endeavor; every minute spent tilling a garden to satisfy one's need for food is one minute not spent knitting sweaters to keep oneself warm in the winter. If every individual had to produce alone everything he needed to survive, the human race would likely have died out long ago. It would be far more efficient if one person could concentrate his efforts on growing food, another on making clothing, and another on building homes. This is the principle of the <i>division of labor</i>.		From food, clothing, and shelter to automobiles, computers, and pharmaceuticals, the list of human needs is endless. Since man must produce the values he requires to survive, each of these needs opens up an enormous field of work and study. No one man, no matter how great, can master every human endeavor; every minute spent tilling a garden to satisfy one's need for food is one minute not spent knitting sweaters to keep oneself warm in the winter. If every individual had to produce alone everything he needed to survive, the human race would likely have died out long ago. It would be far more efficient if one person could concentrate his efforts on growing food, another on making clothing, and another on building homes. This is the principle of the <i>division of labor</i>.

	Other people can be of great value to a man; they can provide him with innumerable benefits, both material and spiritual. The only question is how a man should go about trying to attain these values from others. The most immediately obvious method is to simply <i>take</i> the things one needs. This may provide for one's survival in the short term, but in the long term it actually destroys the ability of others to produce values, and therefore to be of any value to oneself. As an example, say that your neighbor has a vegetable garden which has just come to fruition. He labored in that garden for weeks, and now, after months of waiting, his hard work has finally paid off. You spot a small patch of carrots which look extremely delicious, and seeing that your neighbor isn't home at the moment, you walk over to his garden, pull up the carrots, and take them home with you, enjoying them that night at dinner. Although you have gained a small value from your act (the filling of your stomach for a few hours), you have, in fact, caused a great amount of harm to yourself in the process. When your neighbor arrives home he will be distraught; the primary reason he planted his garden in the first place was to feed his family and enjoy the fruits of his labor. If this benefit is denied to him, what motivation does he have for planting his garden again next year? Furthermore, he may have been counting on selling some of his carrots in order to purchase seeds for the next year's crop. He now has nothing to sell, and so no way of planting his garden again even if he wanted to. Even if your neighbor never finds out that it was you who took his carrots, you have lost a potentially great source of value in the future. If you do this to enough people, you will eventually find yourself without any source of food at all. A much better way to go about acquiring food from your neighbor is to offer him something in exchange for it, perhaps something of which you have an overabundance but of which he has very little. If you make him a good enough offer, he will accept, and you will both end up benefitting from the ~~exchange~~.		Other people can be of great value to a man; they can provide him with innumerable benefits, both material and spiritual. The only question is how a man should go about trying to attain these values from others. The most immediately obvious method is to simply <i>take</i> the things one needs. This may provide for one's survival in the short term, but in the long term it actually destroys the ability of others to produce values, and therefore to be of any value to oneself. As an example, say that your neighbor has a vegetable garden which has just come to fruition. He labored in that garden for weeks, and now, after months of waiting, his hard work has finally paid off. You spot a small patch of carrots which look extremely delicious, and seeing that your neighbor isn't home at the moment, you walk over to his garden, pull up the carrots, and take them home with you, enjoying them that night at dinner. Although you have gained a small value from your act (the filling of your stomach for a few hours), you have, in fact, caused a great amount of harm to yourself in the process. When your neighbor arrives home he will be distraught; the primary reason he planted his garden in the first place was to feed his family and enjoy the fruits of his labor. If this benefit is denied to him, what motivation does he have for planting his garden again next year? Furthermore, he may have been counting on selling some of his carrots in order to purchase seeds for the next year's crop. He now has nothing to sell, and so no way of planting his garden again even if he wanted to. Even if your neighbor never finds out that it was you who took his carrots, you have lost a potentially great source of value in the future. If you do this to enough people, you will eventually find yourself without any source of food at all. A much better way to go about acquiring food from your neighbor is to offer him something in exchange for it, perhaps something of which you have an overabundance but of which he has very little. If you make him a good enough offer, he will accept, and you will both end up benefitting from the trade.

	The <i>trader principle</i> is a recognition of the fact that the most effective way of gaining values from others is not by deception or theft, but by trading value for value to the mutual benefit of both parties. This is the application of the principle of justice to one's ~~business~~ dealings with other men: an individual must not seek from others that which he has not earned, i.e. that which he has not "paid for" to the satisfaction of the other party.		The <i>trader principle</i> is a recognition of the fact that the most effective way of gaining values from others is not by deception or theft, but by trading value for value to the mutual benefit of both parties. This is the application of the principle of justice to one's dealings with other men: an individual must not seek from others that which he has not earned, i.e. that which he has not "paid for" to the satisfaction of the other party.

24.16.120.9 at 09:08, 23 November 2005

2005-11-23T09:08:01Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 09:08, 23 November 2005
Line 1:		Line 1:
	From food, clothing, and shelter to automobiles, computers, and pharmaceuticals, the list of human needs is endless. Since man must produce the values he requires to survive, each of these needs opens up an enormous field of work and study. No one man, no matter how great, can master every human endeavor; every minute spent tilling a garden to satisfy one's need for food is one minute not spent knitting sweaters to keep oneself warm in the winter. If every individual had to produce alone everything he needed to survive, the human race would likely have died out long ago. It would be far more efficient if one person could concentrate his efforts on growing food, another on making clothing, and another on building homes. This is the principle of the <i>division of labor</i>.		From food, clothing, and shelter to automobiles, computers, and pharmaceuticals, the list of human needs is endless. Since man must produce the values he requires to survive, each of these needs opens up an enormous field of work and study. No one man, no matter how great, can master every human endeavor; every minute spent tilling a garden to satisfy one's need for food is one minute not spent knitting sweaters to keep oneself warm in the winter. If every individual had to produce alone everything he needed to survive, the human race would likely have died out long ago. It would be far more efficient if one person could concentrate his efforts on growing food, another on making clothing, and another on building homes. This is the principle of the <i>division of labor</i>.

	Other people can be of great value to a man; they can provide him with innumerable benefits, both material and spiritual. The only question is how a man should go about trying to attain these values from others. The most immediately obvious method is to simply <i>take</i> the things one needs. This may provide for one's survival in the short term, but in the long term it actually destroys the ability of others to produce values, and therefore to be of any value to oneself. As an example, say that your neighbor has a vegetable garden which has just come to fruition. He labored in that garden for weeks, and now, after months of waiting, his hard work has finally paid off. You spot a small patch of carrots which look extremely delicious, and seeing that your neighbor isn't home at the moment, you walk over to his garden, pull up the carrots, and take them home with you, enjoying them that night at dinner. Although you have gained a small ~~amount of~~ value from your act (the filling of your stomach for a few hours), you have, in fact, caused a great amount of harm to yourself in the process. When your neighbor arrives home he will be distraught; the primary reason he planted his garden in the first place was to feed his family and enjoy the fruits of his labor. If this benefit is denied to him, what motivation does he have for planting his garden again next year? Furthermore, he may have been counting on selling some of his carrots in order to purchase seeds for the next year's crop. He now has nothing to sell, and so no way of planting his garden again even if he wanted to. Even if your neighbor never finds out that it was you who took his carrots, you have lost a potentially great source of value in the future. If you do this to enough people, you will eventually find yourself without any source of food at all. A much better way to go about acquiring food from your neighbor is to offer him something in exchange for it, perhaps something of which you have an overabundance but of which he has very little. If you make him a good enough offer, he will accept, and you will both end up benefitting from the exchange.		Other people can be of great value to a man; they can provide him with innumerable benefits, both material and spiritual. The only question is how a man should go about trying to attain these values from others. The most immediately obvious method is to simply <i>take</i> the things one needs. This may provide for one's survival in the short term, but in the long term it actually destroys the ability of others to produce values, and therefore to be of any value to oneself. As an example, say that your neighbor has a vegetable garden which has just come to fruition. He labored in that garden for weeks, and now, after months of waiting, his hard work has finally paid off. You spot a small patch of carrots which look extremely delicious, and seeing that your neighbor isn't home at the moment, you walk over to his garden, pull up the carrots, and take them home with you, enjoying them that night at dinner. Although you have gained a small value from your act (the filling of your stomach for a few hours), you have, in fact, caused a great amount of harm to yourself in the process. When your neighbor arrives home he will be distraught; the primary reason he planted his garden in the first place was to feed his family and enjoy the fruits of his labor. If this benefit is denied to him, what motivation does he have for planting his garden again next year? Furthermore, he may have been counting on selling some of his carrots in order to purchase seeds for the next year's crop. He now has nothing to sell, and so no way of planting his garden again even if he wanted to. Even if your neighbor never finds out that it was you who took his carrots, you have lost a potentially great source of value in the future. If you do this to enough people, you will eventually find yourself without any source of food at all. A much better way to go about acquiring food from your neighbor is to offer him something in exchange for it, perhaps something of which you have an overabundance but of which he has very little. If you make him a good enough offer, he will accept, and you will both end up benefitting from the exchange.

	The <i>trader principle</i> is a recognition of the fact that the most effective way of gaining values from others is not by deception or theft, but by trading value for value to the mutual benefit of both parties. This is the application of the principle of justice to one's business dealings with other men: an individual must not seek from others that which he has not earned, i.e. that which he has not "paid for" to the satisfaction of the other party.		The <i>trader principle</i> is a recognition of the fact that the most effective way of gaining values from others is not by deception or theft, but by trading value for value to the mutual benefit of both parties. This is the application of the principle of justice to one's business dealings with other men: an individual must not seek from others that which he has not earned, i.e. that which he has not "paid for" to the satisfaction of the other party.

24.16.120.9 at 09:01, 23 November 2005

2005-11-23T09:01:16Z

New page

From food, clothing, and shelter to automobiles, computers, and pharmaceuticals, the list of human needs is endless. Since man must produce the values he requires to survive, each of these needs opens up an enormous field of work and study. No one man, no matter how great, can master every human endeavor; every minute spent tilling a garden to satisfy one's need for food is one minute not spent knitting sweaters to keep oneself warm in the winter. If every individual had to produce alone everything he needed to survive, the human race would likely have died out long ago. It would be far more efficient if one person could concentrate his efforts on growing food, another on making clothing, and another on building homes. This is the principle of the division of labor.

Other people can be of great value to a man; they can provide him with innumerable benefits, both material and spiritual. The only question is how a man should go about trying to attain these values from others. The most immediately obvious method is to simply take the things one needs. This may provide for one's survival in the short term, but in the long term it actually destroys the ability of others to produce values, and therefore to be of any value to oneself. As an example, say that your neighbor has a vegetable garden which has just come to fruition. He labored in that garden for weeks, and now, after months of waiting, his hard work has finally paid off. You spot a small patch of carrots which look extremely delicious, and seeing that your neighbor isn't home at the moment, you walk over to his garden, pull up the carrots, and take them home with you, enjoying them that night at dinner. Although you have gained a small amount of value from your act (the filling of your stomach for a few hours), you have, in fact, caused a great amount of harm to yourself in the process. When your neighbor arrives home he will be distraught; the primary reason he planted his garden in the first place was to feed his family and enjoy the fruits of his labor. If this benefit is denied to him, what motivation does he have for planting his garden again next year? Furthermore, he may have been counting on selling some of his carrots in order to purchase seeds for the next year's crop. He now has nothing to sell, and so no way of planting his garden again even if he wanted to. Even if your neighbor never finds out that it was you who took his carrots, you have lost a potentially great source of value in the future. If you do this to enough people, you will eventually find yourself without any source of food at all. A much better way to go about acquiring food from your neighbor is to offer him something in exchange for it, perhaps something of which you have an overabundance but of which he has very little. If you make him a good enough offer, he will accept, and you will both end up benefitting from the exchange.

The trader principle is a recognition of the fact that the most effective way of gaining values from others is not by deception or theft, but by trading value for value to the mutual benefit of both parties. This is the application of the principle of justice to one's business dealings with other men: an individual must not seek from others that which he has not earned, i.e. that which he has not "paid for" to the satisfaction of the other party.