Author: Curt Doolittle

THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF PROPERTARIAN ETHICS

(revised and expanded)(worth repeating)

0 — Man is a costly form of life in an unpredictable universe.

1 – Man must acquire resources to live amid this unpredictable universe.

2 – Man must act to acquire and inventory resources:

3 — Man must defend that which he has acquired and inventoried. (His property is demonstrated by what he defends from loss, and what he retaliates for imposition of costs upon.)

4 – Man demonstrates that he acquires and defends:

……4.1 Life, Time, Rest, Memories, Actions, Social Status, Reputation

……4.2 Mates (access to sex/reproduction), Children (genetics), Familial Relations (security), Non-Familial Relations (utility),Consanguineous property (tribal and family ties)

……4.3 Organizational ties (work), Knowledge ties (skills, crafts), Insurance (community)

……4.4 Several Property: Those things external to our bodies that we claim a monopoly of control over, having obtained them without imposing costs upon others.

……4.5 Shareholder Property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (physical shares in a tradable asset), Commons: Unrecorded and Unquantified Shareholder Property (shares in commons), Artificial Property: (property created by fiat agreement) Intellectual Property.

……4.6 Informal (Normative) Property: Our norms: manners, ethics, morals, myths, and rituals that consist of our social portfolio and which make our social order possible.

……4.7 Formal Institutional Property: Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws.

5 – Man must act cooperatively to disproportionately improve acquisition of resources. (Cooperation is disproportionately more rewarding than any other activity.)

6 – Man must only cooperate where it is beneficial and preferable to non-cooperation. As such all cooperative actions or sets of actions, must result in:

……5.1 Productive (increases property)

……5.2 Fully Informed (without deceit – a form of discounting)

……5.3 Warrantied (promise of non parasitism warranty of restitution)

……5.4 Voluntary Exchange

……5.5 Free of negative externality (imposes no costs on the property of third parties).

7 – Man must act to preserve and extend cooperation to preserve the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Cooperation is itself a disproportionately valuable scarcity)

8 – Man acts to preserve and extend cooperation by the suppression of parasitism that creates the disincentive to cooperate, and therefore decreases the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Man evolved necessary and expensive moral intuitions to preserve cooperation – including expensive forms of punishment of offenders.)

9 – Man engages in parasitism by:

……7.1 violence,

……7.2 theft,

……7.3 fraud, fraud by obscurantism, fraud by moralizing, fraud by omission,

……7.4 externality, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses,

……7.5 conspiracy, conversion, immigration, conquest, war and genocide. (Violence, Theft, Fraud, Externality, and Conspiracy.)

10 – Man suppresses parasitism by threats of interpersonal violence, promises of interpersonal violence, interpersonal violence, interpersonal ostracization from cooperation, organized ostracization via norms and commerce, when he must by remuneration, and when he can by organized violence in law and war.

……10.1 Man possesses three weapons of influence: violence(imposition of material costs), gossip(imposition of opportunity costs: ostracization-inclusion), and remuneration(transfer of assets: exchange).

……10.2 Man uses all three weapons of influences, usually in concert, to different degrees.

……10.3 Some men specialize in one weapon of influence: Warriors, Sheriffs and judges: Violence; priests and public intellectuals: Gossip; Organizers of Production: Remuneration.

11 – The most rapid means by which man can organize the suppression of parasitism is by defining property rights as all demonstrated property, and creating a court of universal standing under the common law, under the rule of law before a jury of his peers – since any innovation in parasitism is suppressed by the creation of a new prohibition with the first suit adjudicated. (Common, organically evolutionary law most rapidly prevents expansion of demonstrated parasitic opportunities.)

12 – A market for goods and services produces consumables, but a market for commons produces non-consumables. Non-consumable goods that provide utility whether those goods be privately constructed (use by private shareholders only) or publicly constructed (use by all citizen-shareholders). Commons (whether physical, normative or institutional) provide a disproportionate return to shareholders by preventing consumption and preserving utility.

— dissent and adjudication not assent and confirmation –

–division of cognitive labor–

— the family-regulation of reproduction–

13 – A condition of liberty is constructed when all men, including those who participate in the construction of commons – members of the government – are equally bound by the prohibition on parasitism: the common law against parasitism. (Morality is a synonym for non-parasitism. Liberty is a synonym for a moral – meaning non-parasitic – government.)

14 – A condition of both interpersonal morality, and it’s mirror: legal liberty, both forces all human action necessary for man’s survival into productive participation in the market by denying parasitism, and reduces or eliminates transaction costs (frictions due to risk), which in turn maximizes the potential economic velocity of the group.

15 – If one does not engage in parasitism by doing so, the forcible increase of the suppression of others’ free riding is always by definition moral and just. This increases the possibilities of prosperity for all men. (Legal colonialism is moral. Economic colonialism is not.) (Aristocracy is obliged to increase the pool of aristocratic people whenever possible, and affordable.)

There is no competitive strategy greater than the suppression of parasitism in all it’s forms. Because all human effort is limited to the market for productive ends, and all market activity is conducted under the lowest possible speculative friction.

The optimum group evolutionary strategy is to suppress all parasitism, while constantly driving up it’s intelligence by suppressing the reproduction of its lower classes (non performers). This causes no harm, and produces the greatest and longest term competitive benefit.)

If many groups follow this strategy, the largest group with the highest median IQ and aggression (competitive energy) will produce the most innovation.

Some groups cannot compete. So they will continue to act as parasites. (Gypsies).

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine