THE VIRTUE OF SIMPLE RULES
Simple rules compensate for the diversity of human intellectual ability, and the variance in knowledge and experience between the ignorance of youth and the wisdom of old age.
Do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (The golden rules two sides of a coin. They produce different results – you have to adhere to both of them.)
Speak the truth even if it leads to harm.
Keep your promises even if it causes you losses.
Adhere to manners, ethics and morals even if they make no sense.
Take no other person’s words personally – they are a self description of the speaker.
Save one fifth of everything you make.
Read at least one book every two weeks.
Sample every bit of life that you can – we get only one chance at it.
Master a craft, it is how you become valuable to others.
Master an additional new craft every seven years.
Become a skilled and patient lover.
Keep a dog. It will teach you loyalty and love.
If you choose to marry, choose well, and late in life. Marrying young, romantically and poorly is the most expensive error we all make.
There is only one law, and that is property: a prohibition in the involuntary transfer of property by violence, fraud, theft of indirection.
We are all different. Political equality is achieved not through majority violence, but through exchanges between groups facilitated by institutions. Institutions that compensate for the inter-temporal differences in our productivity, because the incorrectly named division of labor is instead, a division of knowledge and labor in time: we function on different time frames. The future is kaleidic. And we build that future as a division of knowledge and labor and time — not because we agree upon it. But because it is what is possible for us to achieve despite our inability to agree.
Anything else is not high mindedness, but brutal theft under the mythology of communal government.
Source date (UTC): 2012-04-23 10:54:00 UTC
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