Still far from the best option.

Oh, I see. I was approaching this based on how evil their actions were in isolation, not from the perspective of the protagonist or narrator. I can kind of understand why, within the constructed morality of each book/movie's plot, Gekko is worse than Gatsby. I still wouldn't use such a subjective metric for a chart…

You guys really don't get that Gatsby's forged stocks and bonds were a big deal? He was like a Roaring Twenties Bernie Madoff. Hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent assets. If he were real, the market reaction to the discovery of his fraud alone could have triggered Black Tuesday.

I guess I'm a complete asshole, then. But Gekko still didn't steal from anyone or actually do anything other than make savvy business maneuvers (companies shut down and get traded, it's just how things work). And crime isn't ipso facto evil (see Chaotic Good). I agree that Gekko is a jerk, but all things considered…

Eh, the schlubs would get hired by the myriad airlines who bought Blue Star's assets. If the company was that sellable, it meant that the assets were more valuable in the buyer's hands than Blue Star's.

Spoilers?






I feel like Gekko should be neutral and Gatsby should be evil. Gekko's only "sin" was insider trading, which isn't evil, it just violates regulations. Gatsby, on the other hand, committed fraud on a massive scale to generate his borrowed wealth, leaving creditors with nothing once he died.

It doesn't have to be an LCP, but any 380/9mm pocket pistol is a good backup to have in case your primary weapon jams/runs out of ammo/is taken. Preferably DAO or striker-fired, despite the appeal of a Colt Mustang or Sig P238/P938.

Similis Indiana, Sed Patria

Right, Locke was working under the deprecated labor theory of value (also used by Smith and Marx, to name a couple). Obviously labor is not homogenous and not even objectively valuable, so it is a poor basis as a means of conversion of nature to property: hence my use of the word "claim," which is the modern (post…

Sorry if you hadn't realized, but I'm referring to the Lockean system of natural rights, namely life, liberty (freedom of action), and property, that formed the core of Anglo-American liberal thought from the 17th-20th centuries. Obviously it's dominant position has been usurped by positivism and even postmodernism…

But they don't have that right. I understand the hypothetical you present, but that really is irrelevant. Plenty of rights have bad consequences. For example, people starve all the time because it's illegal for them to steal food from farmers. However, these sad incidents don't justify establishing a legal regime…

Ideas can have value, I don't deny that. Nor do I uphold the concept of starving artist, so let's set that strawman to the side.

The issue is that ideas are not scarce, and it is not theft to replicate patterns. That's really all there is to it. Your right to write, think, and build what you want trumps my or anyone…

I think monopolies on information and ideas are unethical. "Intellectually property" is a bit of an oxymoron, since matters of intellect are inherently non-scarce goods. The fact that someone can take my real property because I've echoed something they said or wrote in the past is absurd.

I'm not sure why CCP being in the right legally means they are in the right morally. We don't have to accept behavior just because it conforms to the current legal status quo.

You're right, drugged out maniacs are scary. His "arsenal" is not. I don't like the exploitation of guns as a means of sensationalizing something that is otherwise just mundane, if unfortunate.

Yeah, you have to pay a tax stamp, but it's the same background check for the 40mm m203 as it is for the 37mm Havoc. If you can buy a rifle, you can buy an NFA weapon. The only restricted items are post 86 machine guns.

There are more than 18 guns in my house and we have a shooting range in the back. It's hardly a frightening place, even with daily gunfire.

You guys know grenade launchers aren't a restricted item, right? They're treated as single-shot rifles, legally. Then again, you seem pretty freaked out about the idea of people having firearms at all.

2 creppy

Huh, I never realized that it was a gay anthem. Always just associated it with feminism.