SR VII: It's extreme male brooding!

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 stonebeard wrote:

 Epignosis wrote:

 Henry Plainview wrote:

I don't know, I'm not in your secret club.
BUT MOVING ON

Alex, I finally read the Wiki article for Atlas Shrugged (because I'm not going to read a book that long), and I would like to ask you a question: How does John Galt plunging the world into a massive depression, killing countless numbers of people, just to prove the point that he doesn't want to share his free energy not make Ayn Rand a bad person?

Counter question.

Let's say there is one person in the world with the skill to cure a wasting disease (spot the Rush song).  Let's say, AIDS.  It takes four hours per procedure for this individual to cure one person of AIDS, and costs him $1500 in resources and staff for each treatment.

Is that person obligated to cure people?

Is that person obligated to teach others how to cure it?

Is that person reasonable in expecting people to pay for either?

Look at me being all philosophical and sh*t.

Better make it a different example; for something as big as AIDs, if there's a cure, it gets cured. I don't care if people can't afford it. It's like saying if the Black Death was killing homeless people you'd expect them to pay. F**k no, but the government should, or someone should steal the guy's ideas and give the cure away. No one's obliged to be nice, but I won't feel bad for someone who makes no money trying to sell a cure for a horrible disease. It's unconscionable. 

This is where the greatest happiness principle should apply, because the cure gives an advantage to so many individuals, at the expense of so few, it would be crazy not to allow it to occur. Yes, it may be legally dubious, but in this case say for AIDS or Cancer, it would and should be permissible.