Author: Curt Doolittle

WHAT ARE WE TO ACCOMPLISH?

Sheldon Richmond :

———-“So, one of the signs that we want to look out for, and one of the most important signs, happens in how we approach communication. Are we really out to reach human beings? Are we really out to build a bridge to somebody whose context may be very different from our own? Do we still remember that a lot of what we now regard as self-evident once upon a time wasn’t self-evident? Or do we walk into a conversation on the premise: I’ll give you one chance, after which you’re irredeemably evil?”———

The problem with this ambition, like all enlightenment visions, is that the scientific evidence is increasingly persuasive that we cannot convince anyone of anything. Instead well all sentimentally feel, verbally justify, politically advocate and demonstrate by vote, our reproductive interests by gender, class, age, and tribe. All talk is just attempt at negotiation with others in the hope to find allies in order to obtain power by which to increase the possibility that we may satisfy our reproductive interests.

Libertarianism, like conservatism, and like progressivism, assumes a monopoly political order for the provision of commons both physical, institutional, and normative: that OUR reproductive strategy (non-contribution to the commons), is best for all. When in fact, what is best for all is three different political orders: socialist, propertarian (versus libertarian), and conservative (aristocratic). And that the only moral question, is not whether one organizational model is superior to another, but instead, that regardless of which order we prefer – that the only transfer between individuals regardless of order, is voluntary, and therefore moral.

So the question I ask of libertarians (libertines excluded) is, if we cannot persuade anyone (and we demonstrably cannot meaningfully do so, and those we do convince are predominantly frustrated classical liberals), then the entire persuasive strategy, all our talk, is mere self gratification, justification, and illusion. We give ourselves hope, no differently from a mystic promising life after death to the poor and suffering.

Progressives rebel, conservatives rebel less so. We talk to the wind, and even the wind doesn’t listen.

This is despite the fact that we offer the single best solution to the provision of goods and services: the market. BUT WE FAIL TO GRASP THAT THE MEANS OF PRODUCING COMMONS ACROSS HETEROGENEOUS POLITICAL ORDERS REQUIRES GOVERNMENT TO CREATE SUCH A MARKET. Why? Because competition produces a virtuous cycle. Privatization of gains, and Socialization of losses in the market provide us with incentives. However, no commons can be produced if people can privatize the commons, or socialize losses into the commons. For this we require the contractual agreement NOT to privatize the commons – “permitting Usus without Fructus or Abusus”.

The market for goods and services is an artificial construct produced by the organized application of violence to institute property rights, by prohibiting all imposition of costs upon others. The market for commons must likewise be constructed by the organized application of violence to institute property rights for shareholders, prohibiting parasitism upon the commons.

Because otherwise people will not produce commons. That is why low trust societies have no commons, and norther european high trust societies bathe in them.

The west’s competitive advantages came from our success in producing commons that no other culture could produced. Truth telling, trust, property rights, and liberty are the most beneficial commons that we produce by the organized application of violence. These produce economic velocity and innovative velocity. That velocity separated the west from the rest both in the classical period, and in the late medieval and enlightenment periods.

The question is not how we create a libertarian society, but how we create a libertarian class producing our desired commons, in exchange with the socialist and aristocratic classes in producing theirs.

If these different commons are produced by voluntary exchange then we have made use of the knowledge of the progressive short term consumptive, the libertarian middle term productive, and the conservative long term accumulative visions.

None of us is ‘right’. It is a division of knowledge and labor.

We understand the market. We are the smart people. It’s time we abandoned monopoly visions and started acting like it.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine