THE RUDE QUESTIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL FORMATION (From The Natural Law Volume 4 –

THE RUDE QUESTIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL FORMATION
(From The Natural Law Volume 4 – The Law)

As conscious beings possessed of degrees of agency, the first question upon which all others depend is why not to suicide? This choice is that of personal philosophy.
The second question one must answer is why engage in cooperation rather than free riding, parasitism, and predation? This question is that of ethics.
The third a group must answer is why engage in cooperation rather than free riding, parasitism, and predation? This question is that of politics.

The answer to all three question is that persistence of the opportunities of existence, of the returns on cooperation, and of the returns on the production of commons, are preferable to engaging in suicide, separation, free riding, parasitism, and predation, and the condition as a victim of the vicissitudes of a nature hostile to all but the gods we imagine.

For these reasons we organize into families, clans, tribes, nations; and territories, villages, cities, and polities; in the defense of, and for the advancement, of all; and to do so to preserve the returns on cooperation, while increasing proximity and number, and dividing our labors, we produce habits and rules of order consisting of habits, norms, traditions, institutions, processes, rights and obligations, by accident of circumstance, dictate, or choice.  When man makes such rules by choice under sovereignty he produces a contract of processes, rights and obligations because that is all he may.