Author: Curt Doolittle

NEW MORAL PRINCIPLE FOR THE POST INDUSTRIAL ERA?

What was the last moral principle that humans discovered? Think about that for a bit. Because I have been. And, I think I understand the evolution of NECESSARY moral principles as well or better than anyone.

And, while I’m not positive (because I haven’t read every word ever written in this world) I think I might have discovered the first new NECESSARY moral principle of the post-agrarian era.

When I first wrote about it a few years ago, I didn’t think about it as novel. It was just a necessary constraint for suppressing fraud at scale. And I think it transitions an existing MORAL principle to an ETHICAL principle. (In the sense that Moral principles are those where your actions are entirely anonymous, and ethical actions are where your actions are not anonymous but you possess asymmetric knowledge.) So the ethical constraint enforces the moral objective.

We tend to view norms as sacrosanct. But while instinctual morality remains constant (at least within kin) descriptive morality (morality in practice) varies with the structure of the reproductive unit and the structure of the means of production. Our ‘savage’ ancestors would not practice our moral codes nor we theirs. Mostly because the ‘momentum’ of production that we call ‘scarcity-productivity’ is so much higher now that we can afford to take risks that they couldn’t.

We are’t so much morally superior by choice as we are superior by advent of technologies of cooperation and production. And those material advantages allow us to treat increasing numbers of people as kin – by raising our standard of violence in pursuit of calories. to the point now where we rarely need violence for material matters, and most violence occurs over mates or status – which in practice may be the same thing.

At this point in our development, we have forbidden all violence, theft and fraud, and we suppress it well, by forcing all competition into the market for goods and services. HOwever, our ORGANIZATIONS are terribly immoral both in private and public senses. The private are subject to competition so their immorality is just suppressed quickly, and they cannot calcify the way government does, into predatory bureaucracies and survive for long. Whereas the government can devolve in to predatory bureaucracy almost from the formation of a bureaucratic organization.

To make matters worse, we can privatize almost everything that a government does and cure most of the problem. But we cannot privatize everything, because when we say ‘privatize’ we mean tat we o pen it to competition. But in any competition there are losers, and you cannot build the commons willingly if there is a chance that any given participant will ‘lose’. And that is why, whether my libertarian friends like it or not, some form of ‘government’ will always exist: to produce commons in lieu of competition (loss).

As such, what can we do to prevent corruption in the commons? What is the one institutional, ethical principle that we could adhere to in order to prevent all the forms of theft of commons that occur in every bureaucracy?

Humans engage in violence – largely for status and mate seeking reasons. Humans engage in Theft, largely for petty entertainment, or drug use. Humans engage in fraud for many reasons, but usually as a means of income. Humans engage in fraud by omission as a matter of course. And Humans free-ride whenever and wherever possible outside of ascetic protestantism. IN fact, that is what differentiates ascetic protestantism – the prohibition on free riding.

Where there is an organization that they can seek rents, humans engage in rent seeking (‘limited monopoly’, ‘loyalty fees’, ‘charity’, privatization of gains,socialization of losses) whenever possible.

Where they are In organizations, humans engage in interpersonal corruption, rent seeking, privatization of gains, and systemic corruption.

Where they are in control of organizations they engage in systemic theft, systemic fraud, war and conquest.

Humans have an ethical portfolio with just one, one-note song we call competition in the free market. But they have a symphony of immoral options available to them. So it’s no surprise that when we give people incentives to act to steal, that they do so.

We are fascinatingly creative creatures really.

Curt Doolittle

(c a l c u l a t i o n: maintaining causal relations by prohibiting pooling and laundering.)