MOTIVATIONS We make arguments to test our ideas. We don’t know if they will succ

MOTIVATIONS

We make arguments to test our ideas. We don’t know if they will succeed or not until we make them. And even then, until they’re refuted. The only way to know if you’re argument stands is if you can’t, and others can’t, refute it. All arguments are hypotheses open to refutation. If not, then they are simply tautologies. That’s the only scientific proposition to hold.

In the sciences we make hypothesis and subject them to scrutiny. That is not true in politics. Where we establish our wants, and then simply argue for them.

This creates a problem in political discourse, because it is very difficult to tell the difference between hypotheses as requests for criticism, and propaganda as a means of building consensus. The first seeks the truth. The second is purely utilitarian.

My hypothesis is that prosperity is what we desire. And prosperity is a rarity that is produced by complex circumstances. It can be produced by accident (finding oil). It can be produced by conquest (theft). It can be produced organically (the evolution of certain norms – property, reason and hard work). It can be produced by intention (setting up property rights, investing in education, developing good industrial policy, and creating sound money).

And prosperity is fragile because of its rarity and complexity. This is the essential principle of conservatism. The only persistent form of prosperity comes from technical innovation. Conquest and resources are not something we can be proud of — they tell us nothing about our actions. The first is a harm, the second is an accident. Neither are virtues. And of the two, only conquest is reproducible. — hence the fall of the islamic empire, and the exhaustion of the roman. And unlike commercial productivity wich is mutually beneficial, in conquest, each gain is someone else’s loss.