—”What is the basis of civilization, language, science, religion, race, a mixture or other circumstances, such as a specific political organization, etc.?”—-
THE BEST ANSWER
The answer is deceptively simple.
(a) We are born with one resource to spend: TIME, and by early adulthood, we must produce more than we expend over a three week period, or we will die.
(b) We are able to produce only so many calories in that time. And, alone, barely enough to survive as a gatherer.
(c) We are however, capable of cooperation.
(d) The returns on cooperation are not additive but multiplicative – on the order a power of five to ten per person added to the division of labor. (Really. its that much).
(e) All our biological abilities: language, reason; our habitual abilities: manners, norms, and traditions; our institutions: money, law, banking, politics, religion, and even war, assist us in cooperating in every larger numbers.
(f) and through that vast system of heartless, mindless, communication, cooperation, we produce and transform infinitely more calories than we could on our own.
(g) for this reason, we have only one form of wealth, time, and we are not wealthier than cave men. We have only made everything infinitely cheaper in the only currency we have to spend when we are born: time.
(h) however, we are all born rational actors, and act morally (do not lie, cheat, steal, or free ride) and immorally (lie, cheat, steal, and free ride) as is in our best self interest.
(i) And the velocity and scale of cooperation is dependent upon truth telling, adhering to promise and contract, and incentives for both reward and punishment if we fail to speak the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, adhere to promise and contract, and follow only those incentives that impose no costs upon the investments(costs) of others.
(j) Science (Demonstrated determinism of the physical world), Economics (Demonstrated human Behavior) and Tort (Demonstrated human Conflict) are the only languages of truth that we know of.
(k) Humans evolved language to ‘deceive’, negotiate, and speak ‘morally’, not to speak truthfully, scientifically, economically, or legally. And humans evolved to cheat where they have the opportunity, and continue to do so.
(l) So the primary difficulty in history is creating language, habits, and institutions, that assist us in truthful, voluntary, reciprocally beneficial, cooperation while suppressing untruthful, involuntary, irreciprocal impositions.
In the end, as inhuman as it may seem, we are all just calculating opportunities to work together to pursue the highest return at the lowest cost in the shortest time with the greatest degree of certainty at the lowest risk. We are calculating, and the ‘equals sign’ in that vast set of calculations is when we cooperate.
We work together to increase the returns on time.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine