[niv]

THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG by Jack London http://www.trussel.com/prehist/strength.htm Basically, the story tells that a tribe figured out that the basic "law" was that no man should use his strength to abuse others, so whenever one would abuse his strength, the others would kill him as to not weaken the tribe. Much later in the story, they figured out that money (among other things) also was a strength that you can use to abuse others.

This is why (more or less) I don't agree with Ayn

[dualogy]

How so? 'Abusing others' was certainly nothing she was advocating. Her point was that simply earning money or being good ('strong') is not at all an abuse of poorer or 'weaker' people. While one may get 'rich' by abusing 'weaker' people (i.e. robbers or slave drivers), that is exactly the kind of person she is up against. More specifically, against the kind of robber or potential slave driver who seeks to gain support and assistence of one group to rob or enslave another -- by denouncing the latters as the 'actual robbers and slave drivers' when all they did was voluntary exchanges and independent creation etc etc. Now, that I'm sure we can agree on, does exist and did happen in reality and history. Anything I'm missing?

[jibiki]

How do you feel about things like sweatshops and sharecropping? (Personally, I'd rather be a debt slave than starve to death, but many people see these sorts of businesses as abusive.)

[mistermann]

Rand excessively spoke about freedom, and free competition. "Sweatshops", as we see them today, would not occur in an ideal Randian world, as, in free economies, competitors inevitably arise and are more than happy to take your underpaid employees off your hands.

The fact that sweatshops do exist does not prove this false...you'll notice that almost all sweatshops exist in third world countries that are notorious for government corruption. When Rand spoke of freedom, she wasn't joking, she meant real freedom, meaning politicians that are not on the take, that couldn't yank an operating license from a competitor who chose to offer better working conditions.

If you want to speculate and say honesty is literally impossible in human society, feel free, but that is something entirely different than saying that freedom leads to sweatshops.

[niv]

but the world is not ideal, and if money is a strength that can be abused, should you allow anything, without restriction, to be done with it? I believe totaly free economies lead to abuses. It happened in the past.