Um. I would say this analysis is exceptionally well done, other than i mean ‘cal

Um. I would say this analysis is exceptionally well done, other than i mean ‘caloric’ in the broader sense of literally ‘anything’ that changes the state of the individual’s possessions, property, assets, capital (property in toto), either as a premium or discount, gain or loss.

So the first sentence I’d cut. Otherwise ‘this is how it is done’.

by James Augustus Berens

—“[CUT:] Caloric shortages shouldn’t be given too much weight as a selection pressure for cooperative human groups.[/CUT]

Cooperation arose from intergroup warfare: cooperative groups out-compete less-cooperative groups, increasing the frequency of genes, norms and institutions that encourage and maintain cooperation.

However, this brings into question free-ridership. An individual can benefit by defecting from his groups expensive war efforts. Groups with high-proportions of free-riders, those unwilling or unable to fight, were out-completed by more cooperative and able groups. Hence, altruistic punishment becomes adaptive insofar as it allows groups to discourage defection, desertion & free-ridership. Punishment occurs even in small-scale societies [1]. And there are some suggestions that cooperation, sharing, raiding and defense, punishing free-riding or other violations of social norms are a costly signals of an individuals fitness [2].

Again, caloric-shortages likely had a negligible impact–as an incentive for cooperation–by the time we were anatomically modern humans. Cooperation evolved via group-selection; and warfare was the major selection-pressure. Along with cooperation, we have a a co-evolution of prosecution and punishment. Which brings us to the crux of the issue: scale. (I will leave the treatment of asymmetric warfare for a later date)

As cooperation increases, so to does complexity, and so to the cost we must pay to IDENTIFY the more abstract forms of human parasitism (because they simply no longer occur on a human scale). So rather than a shift from caloric shortage to caloric surplus as the impetus for the formal suppression of parasitism (as shown above we have been prosecuting/punishing since we’ve been cooperating), it is the increased scale (complexity) of the post-industrial ‘information’ age that necessitates extending the domain of law to be inclusive of the production of information–the latest, and most complex human endeavor.

The problem and solution are the same: free-riding and suppression, respectively. What’s novel is that because of cooperation, we’ve surpassed human scale, and so to has parasitism. Before propertarianism, we had no means of resisting, identifying and prosecuting impositions of costs on the informational commons.

We do now.

Postscript (bonus for the autistes): The Evolution of the Scope of Natural Law

|—–cooperation—->

|—–complexity—–>

…………..Law

|—(0)(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)->

0. Domestication of alphas (in-group elimination of asymmetric violence)

1. Reproduction

2. Inter-subjectively verifiable property.

3. Normative and Institutional Commons.

4. Capital & Credit

5. Information

[1] Punishment sustains large-scale cooperation in prestate warfare

http://m.pnas.org/content/108/28/11375.short

[2] Costly Signaling and Cooperation

http://www.sciencedirect.com/…/pii/S0022519301924063

“— James Augustus Berens