SCARCITY VS COST (worth repeating) Scarcity is a universal, unknowable, marginal

SCARCITY VS COST

(worth repeating)

Scarcity is a universal, unknowable, marginal indifference. It is praxeologicaly non-existent. I cannot know and act on it. Cost is particular, knowable, and decidable because of marginal differences. It is praxeologicaly existential. I can know and act on it.

Scarcity is important between states, that need not reduce local transaction costs, but which must avoid conflict despite differences in local rules.

Morality is important between individuals, because they must reduce transaction costs sufficiently to engage in production in a division of knowledge and labor.

Polities must form laws (rules) of cooperation, that mix the necessary rules of morality (prohibition on free riding), with the rules necessary for the production of commons, with the utilitarian allocation of privileges (norms) that assist in either parasitism or the organization of production or both.

Rothbard, as a cosmopolitan, was trying to justify separatism. Not describe necessary properties of cooperation, nor the necessary properties of rule of law, under which a group of people can cooperate without allocation of discretion to individuals with authority.

Not sure why this isn’t terribly obvious. But then I have been working on the problem a very long time.

Curt Doolittle