User blog comment:GrandMethuselah67/Character Sheet: Malcolm River/@comment-4867780-20161014010956/@comment-26322734-20161015055555

"It cannot be learnt, but can still be replicated by Bradley's Data Warping ?"

Yes. The way Bradley's data warping goes is he copies it from the ground up, so to speak. So, for example, if Bradley were to replicate a tree he'd previously scanned, he isn't just creating a "copy" of the tree, he's replicating the very reality and existence of the tree. He's copying the concept of the tree.

Same thing goes with Quantum Magic. Bradley wouldn't just be copying the power, but Malcolm's connection with the meta-structure that gives him the power in the first place, as well as Malcolm's (actually limited, for now) mastery of it.

"I do agree that freedom is an essential component of a happy life (that's why it is so predominant in Selforge City), just not quite as much as happiness itself. Because if you're unhappy, then isn't freedom useless in the end ? So I see freedom as a mean to the end that is happiness, rather than the end itself with happiness as a potential bonus."

What use is happiness if you don't have the freedom to decide how you're happy? There are many ways to be happy, but when you have freedom, you have the ability to be happy by your own devices and agency, as opposed to living in a world where the best is decided and chosen for you.

"Isn't Malcolm's political ideal just an alternate version of social darwinism ? Where the strong and cunning feast on the less fortunate ? Where everyone manipulates and sacrifices everyone else's interests all the time to further their own, and the world is dominated by the most calculating and ruthless minds ? Isn't that just the law of the jungle in the end ? How is it any better than what we already have in real-life, least of all "ideal" ?"

Well first off, Malcolm wasn't seeking to create a utopia. Nobody in his line of thinking thinks utopia is a possible goal, really. He just wanted to create the best possible environment where he or anyone else can suceed and persue their own interests uninhibited by the state.

And that's where the "ethical" part of "ethical egoism" comes in. Malcolm is Objectivist, which is a libertarian ideology, meaning he believes in the free market. In the place he'd created, people behave generally ethically because of three reasons:

1) The Non-Aggression Principle: It is the idea that instead of force or coercion being used to get what one wants (and this can apply to anything, such as welfare through taxation, etc.), relations and deals are kept equal and sound through the use of voluntary contracts, which can be both verbal or written. It is made sure that one knows what one is getting into before they sign the contract (or else the contract is nullified). One of the few roles of the Technocracy and individual governments within the Coalition are to protect and enforce contracts (more info on the Coalition's government is on the T.C.H page), acting as a neutral third party to see that each side holds up to their end of the deal. In the Coalition, all laws are treated as social contracts between the people and the government, and the people have the right to enforce the contract if the government doesn't hold up to their end of the deal (through lawsuits heard in private courts), and the government has the right to enforce contracts on the people if they don't hold up to their end of the deal (policing).

2) Free-market principles: Private interests and corporations, being the ultimate self-interested groups of individuals, are basically at the mercy of consumers via consumer sovereignty. Because the government is so small (being designated only to enforcing laws and contracts, protecting the people, and paying for things everyone benefits from), corporate interests can lobby government to get them to distort the market in their favor, but doing such a thing won't really work or lead anywhere because the government simply doesn't have the power to do so (this minute power of the government is considered part of its social contract with the people, and is enforced by the Technocratic Council rather than the people themselves). So in the free market, the only two forces are the consumer and the firm (the producer of a product or service). If a firm were to, say, perform an unethical act that is detrimental to the society, such as dumping toxic waste into a lake or working employees to death, consumers would simply stop buying from the firm and instead buy from one that doesn't do this. This would result in the firm failing and being forced to go out of business. This ties into another free market principle, competition, which ensures that businesses, individuals, and entrepreneurs stay ethical to maintain good public relation with the consumer, so that they continue to buy from them.

3) Property Rights: Each individual, so long as they have properly paid for it, is entitled to their own property. This is another social contract, because the act of buying property is considered a contract between the owner and the rest of society at they own it, and thus incentivizes them to use it or capitalize on it. Violation of this contract is a crime called theft, and is dealt with by the government like any other criminal offense. Things like slavery are considered a violation of property rights because one's body is considered the property of the individual that inhabits the body, therefore they cannot be legally forced or coerced into doing anything that they don't wish to do, which goes back to The Non-Aggression Principle.

So in short, it would be simply social darwinism if it weren't for the free-market principles keeping everyone at the mercy of everyone else, incentivizing them to act ethically, or else suffer penalty due to violation of contract or simply have their business fail.

A common misconception about the ethical egoist is that their rejection of altruism means they wish for a "survival of the fittest" world where they are the only beneficiaries of their philosophy, but that's incorrect, as that would be simply egoism as opposed to ethical egoism. Ethical egoists simply want a world where everyone follows their own interests (their as in their own, rather than the interests of the ethical egoist in question), because it is impossible to accurately know the best interests of everyone because everyone is an individual that wants different things in different ways, so everyone would be better off persuing the interests of themselves off of their own agency.

" Get down from your piedestal Malcolm, give up all your powers and defenses and assets and insurrances and whatnot, become the weak and fragile average mortal who has to struggle day after day to preserve what little he managed to get, and may lose everything to someone stronger and smarter. Then, you will understand the "point of security at the cost of freedom" ^ ^; Demi-gods living in their ivory tower have no right to make this kind of lecture."

Malcom is a self-made man. He's had to build his business from the ground-up, had to spend countless hours studying, and had to survive on the barest minimum of income like everyone else had to. He wasn't born privileged, and he definitely wasn't born with superpowers. So it isn't like he doesn't know what it's like. I'd argue that his experiences with that lifestyle are exactly why he thinks the way he does. So he isn't living in an ivory tower, he's speaking with the benefit of hindsight.