There is only one law, and that is property.
If the different forms of property are understood: life, private property, common property, norms as property, and if the forms of theft are understood: risk transfer, indirect involuntary transfer, direct involuntary transfer, theft, fraud and violence, then no other law need exist, and people need be educated to confirm to no other laws.
But once the principle of property is violated, so that we allow various forms of theft, we must create a multiplicity of artificial laws the same way that by telling one lie we must tell a dozen to hide it, and a dozen for each of them, and a dozen for each of them.
Complexity in life comes from lies in all their forms. Telling the truth makes for a simple life. Complexity in the politics of life comes from abuses of the one law of property. Respecting property in all its forms makes for a simple life, and a simple government.
All else that we need can come from contracts and not laws. Contracts exist within the one law of property, in all its forms. Contracts can be fulfilled, they have a definite time period, they require specific performance, and specific When you move to an area, you can sign the contracts that are currently in place, or not move to that area. And the contracts may not violate the one law of property, and judges can resolve conflicts over them easily.
The problem judges face is largely to do with the complex network of ‘commands’ and institutionalized thefts masquerading as laws that distort or violate the law of property.
The second problem judges face comes from the complexity that arises by justifying the monopoly of the state: the artificial scarcity of judges, the necessity of taking cases rather than taking cases on merit, and the inability to specialize.
And the side effect of violating the law of property, is that we MUST degenerate into totalitarianism of commands: the lies and the impact of the lies, the commands masquerading as law, the thefts masquerading as contracts. We must degenerate, because there is no longer a common principle that these laws share. And it is the commonality of principles which determines the habits of the population that must make judgements day in and day out over generations. People who must memorize overlapping complex commands, will soon abandon them.
There is only one law, and that is property. The rest is lies masquerading as law. The purpose of which is to empower government with the ability to enslave.
Does this mean that redistribution is not warranted, and that we must rely on voluntary investment? Or that the unfortunate must be left to charity? No. It does not. If we have contracts that require performance there must be a return on that performance, otherwise it is not an exchange, but a theft. Markets must have consumers and providers: buyers and sellers just as do shopping malls. just as the mall obtains profits for its shareholders, so do the marketplace’s investors obtain profits for their investment in their market: their geography.
To become an investor in that market one need only respect property, and the contracts that are required of the participants in that market. And as an investor, one is due returns on it. Since we all take the same actions to join the market, by adhering to contract, and the one law of property, which are payments in the forgone opportunities for theft, we are equally due returns on our investment in that market. Since we unequally take commercial risks in that market we are unequally due returns from our commercial risks, even if we are equally due returns from our investment in forgone opportunity, which we call respect for the one law of property: which makes the market possible.
The commission that investors make on transactions in their market – commissions which can come from sales transactions, or rental fees that come from uses of the commons, can vary, and can be progressive. Otherwise there is an involuntary transfer from the market. However, the contracted terms must not be open to alteration. Because if they are, then there is an opportunity for the majority of shareholders to steal from the minority of shareholders through the act of fraud that we call ‘bait and switch.’
If services are privatized, so that they are not run by a bureaucracy, and contracts cannot be violated by that bureaucracy, and all relations outside of those contracts are voluntary, then we do not create the problem with government: bureaucracy and regulation which manufacture commands and organized thefts masquerading as law. If we do not have ‘elected representatives’ but hire professionals who must respect that law of property, then we do not create the opportunity for government to be a vehicle by which individuals and the artifice of bureaucracy can be purchased by special interests whose entire function is to violate the one law of property and the contracts that have been established.
Elected representatives were only necessary because of a lack of ability to communicate preferences in time and space, and the lack of education in the population. If it is not possible to violate the law of property, only to issue new contracts as old one’s expire, and if these contracts are marketed like any other good or service, then they can be purchased by investors who vote their shares. There is no need for the system of theft and corruption we call bureaucratic government.
There may indeed be a need for a judiciary. And a record of the common laws which illustrate the means by which knowledge of property evolves over time. And there is certainly the need to hire administrative talent to manage the investment that all members make in their market by their forgone opportunities for fraud theft and violence. But there is no need to allow them to create laws, rather than to administer contracts. There is no need to grant them that special ability to violate the law of property. To create an opportunity for individuals to be purchased by special interests – which we call corruption. There is no need to create a vehicle for our enslavement.
Because we are no longer limited in our ability to communicate. So we no longer need to delegate our decision making to anyone.
Society is the market. Property is required to make the market. And legislative representative government is the means by which we destroy the institution of property which makes that market possible.
It is not a government that protects people. It is the judiciary and the common law, under the one law of property. If all people are possible to sue, and no person is given special protection from it, and the court has the ability to enforce the one law of property, and punishment is limited to restitution, then the institution of property will naturally prevail.
We only have problems of abuse within capitalism because the government engages in corporatism: granting thefts we call privileges. SO this is not an appeal to anarchy. It is not an appeal to the absence of government per se. It is government by law: the one law, that no one can violate. Where we do not ask mere human beings to both respect the one law, the rule of law, while at the same time, create an institutionalized means by which their sole purpose is to violate that institutions of property.
That we even engage in so foolish a conflict of motives is confirmation of our ability to use the power of myth to deny the obvious.
Society is easy to construct with the one rule of property.
It is easy to destroy without it.