>>16
Charity or trade? I meant neither. I was repeating a dude named Aristotle. And another guy named John Locke. And most significantly I was stating an obvious anthropological and sociological fact.
If you keep stretching this far you're gonna pull a muscle.
I'm not gonna respond to your equivocations. Unless you're a troll, it's beneath you, and since a careful re-reading will show that I have already clearly addressed all of your concerns, I have to end this here. It's time for you to put Atlas Shrugged back on the shelf. I keep it with the other philosophies presented in works of fiction(Camus, Sartre, Hesse, Kafka). I keep it right next to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and all of those between real philosophers, and scriptures.
Then you should think about this. Whatever we create is a reflection of ourselves. Poverty will exist until we create a benevolent society, and we remain incapable of creating a benevolent society because most of the active members of our contemporary society are more selfish than generous. They abuse reason by using it to argue for selfishness, calling it "enlightened self interest" and deny the sole characteristic that makes us truly human, truly humane. Compassion. My value system is simple. I believe that what I believe is more important than my life, and that my first duty is to protect the weak. Now you tell me what you believe, and let's do the math.