ARISTOTLE ON DIVERSITY
Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be “a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants”. – wiki
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-19 12:06:00 UTC
CULTURES ARE PORTFOLIOS OF PROPERTY RIGHTS
Cultures are portfolios of property rights. The composition of, and distribution of those property rights, varies from culture to culture. In each culture, those rights are expressed as norms. Property rights themselves are a norm. Those property rights perpetuated by norms may be more or less beneficial than other portfolios of property rights.
But any idiot who thinks that (a) formal institutions don’t matter – such as libertarians or (b) that formal institutions are sufficient – such as progressives, will have history prove him wrong to the chagrin of the people who understand (c) that norms are a form of property – conservatives. Norms are a commons that we all pay for. The tax we pay for them with is forgone opportunity to consume them, and absorbing the risk that no others will absorb them too.
Aristocratic Egalitarian Culture (The West) prohibits not just fraud, theft and violence, but the more deceptive versions of fraud: profit from asymmetry of knowledge, and profit from involuntary transfer via externalities.
Market competition itself, is an involuntary transfer via externality from people outside of the exchange (competitors). This is why humans naturally object to it, and must be trained to respect and practice competition. But this externality provides instruction and incentive to all in the market, such that we all seek greater variety and lower cost of production. It produces beneficial ends. But it is non-trivial to create the norm of respecting and practicing competition. That’s why so few cultures did it.
Rothbard was wrong. The market isn’t sufficient to maintain the norms against fraud theft and violence, and certainly not against externalities. The marginal impact of reputation in the market is lower than the marginal impact of fraud. That’s why only the west developed the high trust society – by out-breeding such that the entire nation to be an extended family – at least within it’s social classes. Without excessive out-breeding that destroyed the perception of extended family through common physical properties, and common normative behavior. In order to retain the sense of extended family, both physical properties and normative properties must be similiar enough that signaling is consisten within the group, and only class (selection quality) within the extended family differentiates between group members.
Trust. The extension of familial trust to all possible exchange partners, by prohibitions on externality and asymmetry, when backed by warranty, is the composition that creates the high – trust society. Only AFTER these informal institutions are enforced by formal institutions, even if only the formal institution of the common law, will trust develop. And with trust, the velocity of trade that makes extraordinary marginal wealth possible for a group, because that group is more competitive than other groups.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-19 01:54:00 UTC
ORGANIZED VIOLENCE
We can use organized violence to create government.
We can use organized violence to create property rights.
We can use organized violence to enforce property rights.
We can use organized violence to destroy property rights.
But you can have neither government nor property rights without violence.
The source of freedom is violence.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-18 01:48:00 UTC
DEMOCRACY: HELP MAKE IT PAST TENSE.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-17 12:17:00 UTC
[O]nly humans can act. 1) Any description of a political concept, that is not articulated as action, is an attempt to obscure those actions. THis is the meaning of praxeology. It makes the involuntary transfers visible. If you cannot describe rights in praxeological terms, it’s because you are either unable to articulate thema s action, and therefore fail to understand them, or you are engaging self deception in order to justify your thefts, or you are engaging in the deception of others in order to justify your thefts. 2) Describing property as that which we obtain through voluntary exchange and homesteading, is an epistemic statement: it tells us only how we can KNOW something adheres to the contract for the institution of property, and therefore we have exclusive (a monopoly) of control over its use. It’s an epistemic statement. It still requires the contract in order for others to respect the property of yours. Implicit in any claim for several (individual, private) property, is that the grant is reciprocal. The fact that you don’t articulate this reciprocity is an accident or a contrivance. But if it is reciprocal than it is an act of exchange. It must be.
[callout]Any attempt to state that rights are acquired other than by organized violence is an attempt to acquire them at a discount. In other words, it is an act of fraud. Any attempt at utilitarian justification then opens us to the utilitarianism of involuntary transfer, and undermines the entire libertarian argument that property rights are absolute.[/callout]
3) It is entirely possible to state that you are not engaging in a reciprocal contract (an agreement) but in fact,t hat you are stating demands that you will back by violence. And this is, in fact, how the institution of property was created in the west, and eventually extended through enfranchisement to the militia, and then through political and tax enfranchisement to the middle class, and finally through vote-enfranchisement to the proletariat. (Who were advanced to consumers because of industrialization and capitalism.) Unfortunately, thinking that your violence is meaningful as an individual is an absurd proposition, since there is no evidence that individual violence can achieve anything, property included, without allies to enforce egalitarian property ownership by violence. The source of property is violence. But it is organized violence for the purpose of egalitarian (enfranchised) individual ownership of property. 4) the natura, instinctual, and genetic order of man is tribal – the ethics of the extended family. The west invented private property for a sequence of reasons that resulted in the high trust society that made our western exceptionalism possible. But the rest of humanity still engages in racial, tribal and familialism. And the most primitive and sedentary cultures, on matrilineal familialism. It is instinctual. while alpha males desire to crate tribes, and strong tribes. Women instinctively desire both to constrain alphas in order to control mate selection, and desire to place responsibility for the feeding of their children on the tribe – not themselves. These are our competing genetic strategies and they play out in every aspect of life. With women enfranchised into the voting pool, and increasingly abandoning the artificial institution of the nuclear family, they are exercising their instincts to restore the primitive, pre-herding order of human society. This is what we see in western voting patterns. Not a change in the distribution of male philosophical predisposition toward political orders, but an increasing expression of the female reproductive strategy let loose from the agrarian constraint of the nuclear family. 5) Rothbard recreated the mystical jewish religion of the ghetto, ignoring in his example of both the ghetto and Crusoe’s island, that there is a walled fortress of soldiers around the ghetto, and the violence of the ocean around Crusoe’s island. These are convenient defices that obscure, like his property rights, that the source of property is not choice, not will, not a divine right, not a gift from a divinity, not an abstraction. The source of property is the application of organized violence to acquire and hold property rights, such that all who participate in the violence used to obtain and hold those rights, possess that right of sovereignty: property rights. Any attempt to state that rights are acquired other than by organized violence is an attempt to acquire them at a discount. In other words, it is an act of fraud. Any attempt at utilitarian justification then opens us to the utilitarianism of involuntary transfer, and undermines the entire libertarian argument that property rights are absolute. Rothbard did us a favor by inventing propertarianism. Even though it appears that he did not understand what he had done. But we must, absolutely must, free libertarianism from the ghetto, and return it to the aristocracy that created it. Property is not a belief. A moral code, a sentiment, or a feeling. It is an institution created by the organized application of violence. Because property CAN only be created by the organized application of violence. Hoppe has succeeded in creating the institutions necessary for a homogenous polity. But he did not succeed in creating institutions necessary for a heterogeneous polity. Hopefully I’ll succeed. Not quite sure yet. Time will tell.
All Government Is Violence
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-17 03:43:00 UTC
TODAY THERE ARE 45,000 WORDS IN THE PROPERTARIAN GLOSSARY
“To converse with me, first you must define your terms.” – Voltaire
I took that statement to heart, and about three years ago, started compiling my glossary. It is still a draft. And I’ve learned quite a bit writing it. Much of it needs a good editing pass. Some of the terms are still marked with ‘Undone’.
Today, it’s just over 45,000 words, or 180 novel length pages, and perhaps 120 academic lengthy pages. I would expect that when I’m done it is no less than a third larger. Making the definitions of terms as I use them, a 200 Page academic book, or full novel-sized paperback.
Oh. That’s WORDS not TERMS. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-17 02:53:00 UTC
[C]onservatives speak in emotionally loaded, allegorical, (and therefore archaic) language. That does not mean that the content of their beliefs or allegories is irrational, only that it is arational. But it does mean that they can’t articulate their ideas rationally. And worse, it means that their arguments, and their way of life are perpetually vulnerable to criticism. It also means that conservatives cannot find practical solutions to problems that CAN be solved without violating the system of ethics and norms that creates the high trust society. They simply cannot understand their own ideas well enough to know where they apply, where they do not, and where alternative solutions can be found that accomplish a goal through preferred ends. This is the legitimate criticism of Conservatism: that conservative philosophers have, until we P came about, failed to find a solution to the problem of articulating conservatism.
[callout] [Because their language is allegorical, Conservatism does not contain the causal density needed to articulate conservative ideas. And as such] … conservatives cannot find practical solutions to problems that CAN be solved without violating the system of ethics and norms that creates the high trust society. [/callout]
People who follow my work know that this is precisely the problem I’m trying to solve: to articulate Conservatism (Anglo Aristocratic Egalitarianism) in rational terms. Which means Propertarian terms. Because only Propertarianism provides a rational means of discussing political systems and institutions. I have now spent a significant portion of my adult life on this problem and I finally understand how absolutely difficult that problem was to solve. As an example, I’ll use Krugman’s Straw Man Of The Day to illustrate why its hard for conservatives to defend themselves, by attacking a simple, usual meaningless jibe – but one that conservatives can’t easily defend against.
Conservatives and Sewers I see that some commenters on my traffic externalities post are speculating what Republicans would say about sewers if they didn’t already exist. Well, we don’t know about Republicans, but we do know what The Economist said, in 1848, about proposals for a London sewer system: Suffering and evil are nature’s admonitions; they cannot be got rid of; and the impatient efforts of benevolence to banish them from the world by legislation, before benevolence has learned their object and their end, have always been more productive of evil than good. Sewers are socialism! It wasn’t until the Great Stink made the Houses of Parliament uninhabitable that the sewer system was created.
Now, we’re going to acknowledge that as usual, a conservative protestant Englishman doesn’t understand his own traditions well enough to articulate them. He can sense that something is wrong, with the circumstance, but not articulate what that is, nor how to find an alternative solution to the problem. And that’s understandable. I’m not sure without both Bastiat and Hayek, that we would understand them either. Without Rothbard and Hoppe, I wouldn’t know how to find solutions. However, that doesn’t mean that conservatives and libertarians can’t intuit that ‘something is wrong here’, even if they cannot articulate it. So, aside from the fact that Dr Krugman is a political propagandist, lets look at his logic, and articulate the conservative criticism of it: 1) It doesn’t follow that a one-time expense, followed by fees for usage is the same as redistribution that creates dependencies. Fees require action and therefore ‘ownership’ in the management of the [glossary:commons], the redistribution does not require action. The free-rider problem is different from the progressive-fees problem. Free riding is a negative [glossary:signal] that says free riding is a ‘right’, while progressive fees illustrate that this is not a ‘right’, but a ‘charity’. This sends ‘truthful’ signals to both parties. And truthful signals are necessary to retain the universal cultural prohibition on [glossary:involuntary transfer]s. 2) It doesn’t follow that investment in a commons is the same as state-mandated redistribution. If that was true, there wouldn’t have been factories, universities, churches and roads without a state. But there are. 3) It doesn’t follow that investment in a universal commons (infrastructure) is contrary to conservative dogma. Only that to do so out of charity at a cost, with nothing in exchange, is different from doing so out of opportunity for profit, or out of necessity for the correction of harm. (It doesn’t) 4) it doesn’t follow that taxes must be levied other than fees. (They don’t need to be.) 5) It doesn’t follow that taxes should be put into a general pool and open to use OTHER than the purpose levied. (they shouldn’t – that’s involuntary transfer – and fraud.) 6) It doesn’t follow that the monopolistic state is more efficient than competitive private administration. (It’s not. Ever.) The advantage that government provides is its ability to prohibit privatization of investments in the commons, and therefore make a commons possible. It is not that commons cannot be created without government. It is that the range of commons that can be created without privatization of them is very limited, and therefore very expensive. Since privatization of a common investment is a form of theft. The left is a kelptocracy. It is theft rather than exchange. That is the difference between the left’s vision of society and the right’s vision of society. THe right requires exchange, the left takes by theft. If conservatives understood this one idea, they would use it all the time and win arguments most of the time. Seeking exchange means that solutions are possible. Conservatism without solutions is simply a blocking agent. 7) It doesn’t follow that funding the bureaucracy won’t produce externalities that are of intolerable cost. (it does – one of which is forcing us to spend time defending ourselves against other people’s political movements, as they seek to control the predatory state) These criticisms are possible using Propertarian ethics. In fact, I often argue, that any ethical system OTHER than Propertarianism, is an attempt to obscure the transfers occurring in politics. And therefore arguing by means other than propertarianism (particularly using empathic appeals, and moral statements) is an act of fraud for the purpose of committing theft. CONSERVATISM TRADES STATUS SIGNALS FOR REDISTRIBUTION [C]onservatism is expressed in metaphorical language. And in that language, Conservatives have one ‘curse word’ with multiple meanings: “Socialism” – state control of property and production and b) “Democratic redistributive socialism” – state ownership of the proceeds from limited private control of property. This ‘curse word’ is a catch-all for ‘those people that use the state to destroy aristocratic individualism and the status signals that each of us gets from individualism regardless of our rank. And this is important. Conservatives do not feel victims, because they obtain positive status signals from other conservatives regardless of their economic rank. This status obtainable in human societies only through religious conformity and it’s consequences, or economic conformity and its consequences. Conservatives do not object to investment in the commons. Conservatism places higher value on delaying gratification than immediate gratification – the formation of moral capital – which is an inarticulate expression meaning training human beings to enforce a prohibition on involuntary transfers of all kinds. Conservatism includes the argument that we should not fund the expansionary bureaucratic state that out of deterministic necessity subverts our property rights and therefore our freedom, and therefore our ‘character’ – a euphemism for the prohibition on involuntary transfers of all kinds – because it is our universal prohibition on involuntary transfers both within our families and tribes and without, that is the source of western exceptionalism: the high trust society. Our high trust society is unique because we CAN trust others to avoid involuntary transfers, because of the pervasive prohibition on involuntary transfer that we developed under Manorailism by demonstrating fitness needed to obtain land to rent. Partly as a rebellion against the Catholic Church, partly because the church forbid cousin marriage and granted women property rights, in order to break up the tribes and large land holding families. Partly as an ancient indo-european tradition of personal sovereignty in the nobility, which became a status signal, and, thankfully remains a status signal in conservatives. Small homogenous polities are redistributive. Large heterogeneous polities are not. This is because trust DECLINES in heterogeneous polities. And trust DECLINES in heterogeneous polities because of the different signals used by different groups, and the fact that signals in-group are ‘cheaper’ (discounted) that signals across groups with differing signals. A strong state in a small homogenous polity that functions as an extended family and therefore with high redistribution, is entirely possible. But by creating a powerful state in a heterogeneous polity, it becomes necessary and useful for people to compete via extra-market means using the state by seeking redistributions and limited monopoly (legal) rights in order to advance their signaling strategy. (Which is what Dr. Krugman does, daily – advance an alternative strategy. A strategy that he does not recognize is from the Ghetto. And would cause a return to the low trust society. And **IS*** right now, causing a return to the low trust society. Because the low trust society is natural to man. That’s why it exists everywhere but the aristocratic west.
KEEPING PERSONAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ON THE SAME PAGE
‘Curt, Why do you write both personal and philosophical posts on the same facebook account?’
The answer is that we humans interpret things we dont understand through the lenses available to us, and the first lens we use is to judge the author. Because we seek out his intent, so that we can extrapolate his bias. Rather than spend the effort trying to understand his work.
I discovered quite early on, that people constructed a vision of me based upon my philosophical and political writing that was the polar opposite of my personality.
So, first, my work is truly inseparable from my life. And second, I find that the fact that I’m more than a bit silly, ‘humanizes’ the interpretation of my work, and intellectualizes people’s interpretation of me as a person.
Now, I’m not two months, almost three months late kicking off the Propertarian Institute (the software we’re building is a pretty difficult distraction).
And when that happens, I’ll separate the two streams of thought and post to my page and site FROM the Propertarian site. When it’s a good thing. But I have to let the editor have control of that. So FB for sketches and Propertarianism and the PI site for more thoughtful work.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-16 05:33:00 UTC
I LOVE THAT FACEBOOK KILLED TIMELINE
And returned to the previous ledger format. It’s much more readable.
Now if we could just ‘badge’ our home page with our interests, they would have some interesting data to go by, and we could use facebook as advocacy and identity. But no. Sigh. We just have the Cover Image.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-16 05:21:00 UTC