The only value a dollar has is the ability it gives to a person to purchase other values. Dollars, are really valueless accept for the fact that they can purchase other values. I think dealing with a global economy will inevitably necessitate, as it does today, transactions between populations that stand at polar opposites on the value spectrum.

What I do with my dollars will be totally different from what another man does with his. It gets more extreme when trading with the likes of Al Quaeda.

However I agree with Mark? So what? The regulations in legislature or even in your own moral mind would prove so impractical to purchase or sell anything to anybody. The only way really to do this would be to have tariffs and trade restrictions on ‘naughty’ countries. You then would victimize the free trade businessman in Iraq from doing business.

You could of course choose not to deal with someone whom you know is directly linked to infringing other people’s rights. But in reality, I think all you would be doing is masturbating your sense of self-righteousness.

Because a world economy necessitates transactions between individuals, some of whom have activities which directly or indirectly infringe on others, it would be impossible to effectively withdraw trade.

One of the respects in which Eli was offensive was saying all profit is good regardless of how it is made.

Yes, I'd forgotten that. I was simply thinking on the post that got him finally booted. I stand corrected on 'that' point.

This appears to be the view you are now urging him to reiterate. To trade with your destroyers in the name of that which they seek to destroy is folly, or worse.

It's on this point that I seriously part company with Sandi (possibly yourself). In a time of war, you do not trade with your enemy. I realise the position on this board is something approaching we are at war with the whole of Islam, to which I would agree from a philosophical viewpoint, and on that we should be absolutely unrelenting, but we are not 'at war', in a declared sense, with Moslem businessmen such as those based in Dubai. Sandi has on other threads been promoting not trading with MacQuarie, the Canadian Pension Plan, et al, which I believe is ludicrous. As I asked on another thread, what is being advocated here? To set up a Company Purity Register of which companies I am or am not allowed to trade with? What further bureaucracy is going to run this register and doesn't it seem more akin to the tactics of a Banderton than arising from the ideals of a free man?

The capital held in Moslem hands is now huge, even since mid November Dubai based conglomerates have bought up large tracts of ownership in the Western finance and banking sector. To not allow ourselves to trade with this group is not just a 'minor' policy matter to try and bring the mystics into line, given the capital they control it is from our point of view a straight out isolationist policy (Banderton again?) that will ultimately marginalise 'us' to being a bunch of red necks sitting on a hill behind a WWI machine gun nest, enduring a subsistence living, feeding ourselves from our organic (because we won't be able to afford pesticides or GM crops) vege garden. And quite possibly no wine (I'll have a distillery going, although I've just got this awful feeling I might be restricted to that dreadful potatoe mash whisky the Americans drink).

Anyway, here is my point in summation, again. The economic system that supports freedom is laissez-faire capitalism. When I read many of Sandi's posts I'm all too much reminded of those luddites you see protesting outside global trade summits. I still think the capitalist system will be to Islam (through Dubai), what Hong Kong is being to the Chinese Communists: that is, their destruction, and from the only platform that ultimately matters, ideas.

Let me say once again that my business activities this year involve trading the ASX200 share index; and trading shares on margin in Australia; and the odd bit of gold (to keep my hand in).

It is simply impossible to know if I am trading with an enemy, but I doubt very much it is happening.

I would not get too paranoid about Macquarie as vast amounts of compulsory superannuation savings money of 'Mum and Dad' Australians flows into that organisation, so not entirely sure where the Islamic idea comes from.

One further point ..even if Al Queda (sp?) Islamic terrorists were on the other side of the trade a fat lot of good it would do them because 99.999999% of my trades are very profitable for me so I would be helping to prevent terrorist funding by fleecing them! :p

National has always simply been an avenue for people who want to be career politicians - i.e. produce nothing. It has long been the bigger political whore of the two main parties. It did virtually nothing to roll back the state that Labour grew until after 1990. It only did so then because Labour did the bulk of the brave economic restructuring, and because Ruth Richardson was tough, intelligent and drove economic policy when the likes of Bolger and his mates were out of their depth. The economic crisis in 1990, partly worsened by Labour's profligacy and increases in taxation, gave her a window - and she was stabbed in the back after 1993 as the sacrificial lamb when the slobbering masses voted overwhelmingly for MMP and put National in with a 1 seat majority.

The Nat's last attempt at political testicles was Don Brash who took them from the 21% of Bill English in 2002 to just short of 40% arguing for lower taxes, getting rid of special treatment for Maori, and being tough on crime.

I await to see if the Nats can repeat the billboard campaign of 2005, except of course what is different with John Key compared to Helen Clark, except she's initiated evil and he's merely prepared to let it continue.

You say:

Elijah (welcome back by the way [I think]) you have the balls to get banned for being outright offensive in areas where you were straight out of order, yet here, you don't have the balls to defend the free market on which you rely for your living.

One of the respects in which Eli was offensive was saying all profit is good regardless of how it is made. This appears to be the view you are now urging him to reiterate. To trade with your destroyers in the name of that which they seek to destroy is folly, or worse.

Would Ayn Rand have traded with Islamists?

Such as MacQuarie, for example? In a free capitalist system, yes, of course she would have. Otherwise she could not have called herself an Objectivist. Prove otherwise.

Sandi, Elijah wants to trade with MacQuarie. Say that you are, God forbid, in a position of power to ban him from doing so, or from banning MacQuarie from trading with Kiwis, or any conglomerate from Dubai trading with Kiwis, or vice versa, then are you going to put the ban in place and stop individuals trading freely with one another?

[Matty, remember this is the same Sandi who wanted to outright ban the sale of Auckland Airport to the Canadian Pension Plan because they, snort, had links to Islam.] 

I don't think Sandi proposed any law against trading with a muslim.

have traded with Islamists?

No

Sandi was attempting a witch hunt, a particularly absurd one, trying to call you out on possibly daring to trade on a free market with a Moslem (such as the Al Quaeda infiltrated MacQuarie), and your answer sounded to me like a retraction, certainly leaving the door open for the meaning that if you thought you were trading with a Moslem, then you wouldn't.

You should have simply launched into an unqualified defence of the capitalist system, and in global context, stating you'll trade with who you damn well like.

The world according to Mark.

"..Elijah (welcome back by the way...).." Thank you, Mark...it is good to see you, too!

I was merely saying that I do not trade Oil, mainly because of the timezone we live in.

Indeed, our annoying timezone caused me to stop getting up at 3am to trade Cattle futures and all US markets, back in December, because my Doctors warned that surviving on 4 hours sleep per night was starting to kill me (!)

I was also saying that if you trade oil you could (reasonably) expect the chap on the other side of the contract would be from some dubious Islamic part of the World, whereas my current activities (in the Australian market/s) makes that unlikely.

I think if I traded Oil futures it would be different, as you could have an educated guess as to who the other traders are and where they would be located, but I do not do that.

Elijah (welcome back by the way [I think]) you have the balls to get banned for being outright offensive in areas where you were straight out of order, yet here, you don't have the balls to defend the free market on which you rely for your living.

Get with the program.

You can take if for granted I'm feeling outright manky. If I make the mistake of watching the thieving Cullen's budget this week, I won't have a TV left afterward.

I think if I traded Oil futures it would be different, as you could have an educated guess as to who the other traders are and where they would be located, but I do not do that.

Elijah (welcome back by the way [I think]) you have to balls to get banned for be outright offensive in areas where you were straight out of order, yet here, you don't have the balls to defend the free market on which you rely for your living.

Get with the program.

I stand up for what I believe in and I do not spend money nor trade or invest with Muslim governments.
Do you?

I keep assuming that those posting here are Objectivists, and that the primary motivation is to work toward a world where individual freedom is the single most secularly sacred thing.

But then I am wrong, aren’t I.

Sandi, can you just confirm for me please that because you have given away the notion of being able to operate a global free market, then for you, your individual freedom, and hence mine, is not a priority for you?

Can you not envisage the possibility that trading with Moslem nations, letting them see how their standard of living can only come from a capitalist system, might just be one of the ways out of the Stone Age for them. Or is the entire basis of your belief really that we just have to just ignore them, or perhaps even ‘get rid of them’? Because given the numbers, the latter approach is nothing short of insane. What galls me here, is that if enough people start pursuing your approach, then I might as well just carve myself out a cell in the hills and lock myself in it, for over my lifetime my personal freedoms can only be diminished at an ever greater rate.

Note, I’m not advocating pandering to Islam, far from it: they enjoy our freedoms, and allow us our freedoms, the Western classical liberal tradition unfettered, or they can ship back home (if they’re prepared to allow it, so be it). But how do you seriously propose to pursue freedom when you are proposing the abandonment of the only economic system that can support freedom?

How? Do we just dispatch with rational approaches to obtaining freedom?

Disclaimer: I have in the past held MacQuarie investments, and I will do so in the future if they offer a good return for acceptable risk. It's called a free market.

MacQuarie springs to mind.

Sandi, 90% of my activities are in Australia, and although it is impossible to know whom the purchaser of a futures contract or parcel of shares is when I am selling, or seller when I am purchasing, my conscience is clear on that front.

I think if I traded Oil futures it would be different, as you could have an educated guess as to who the other traders are and where they would be located, but I do not do that.

What I think is best is for people to stand up for what they believe in and to vote for a party who is committed to the things you believe in

I stand up for what I believe in and I do not spend money nor trade or invest with Muslim governments.

Do you?