Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

http://propertarianism.com/reading-list/—“What are the most important 10 books to read as an intro to ‘Propertarianism”, allowing 5 as philosophical precursors, and 5 as contemporary commentary or representatives of the ‘tradition”?”—

and —“Question #2….Name 3 to 5 Western philosopher, between the present moment and the pre-Socratics, who best represent a development of “Propertarian” theory.”—

This question assumes too much. I don’t read philosophers pretty much at all. I read historians. Why? Because as Will Durant discovered after writing his history of philosophy, that in all the books of philosophy ‘there are no answers there’. That all we need and can know about man is in history. history is the record of man ‘rolled up for us’. I merely use philosophy, and philosophical language to create a skeleton using established concepts, and then restructure the philosophical categories so that I can merge science, biology, morality, philosophy, and law into a single universal language.

I did this for a few reasons. First, to destroy the left’s new pseudoscientific religion, to destroy the continental philosophers, and in large part to destroy philosophy as a discipline forever, by reducing it to testimonialism (truth telling). In some sense I am an anti-philosophy philosopher trying to end the use of plato’s invention of an elaborate form of lying for all time.

My reading list is on propertarianism.com/reading-list/

That list and much more is available in our Library for you to read. So the cost of your eduation so to speak will be limited to your time.

That all said, I think that the attempt by locke, mises, hayek, and popper to discover the method of social science was a failure, but that hayek and popper correctly identified information rather than some other category of illusion, as the appropriate topic of inquiry in social science, just as it is the model that they use in physical science today. in other words, information serves as the model by which we investicate all phenomenon whether physical, personal, social, political or evolutionary.

So I if you want to understand that subject a bit I might recommend thiese authors:

Locke’s assessment of man

Darwins Opus.

Hayek et al, but primarily ‘Constitution of Liberty’

Popper’s Logic de Forschug

Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations

Mises isn’t worth reading other than to examine his form of argument.

Haidt’s Righteous mind.

plus the Intuitionist debate in mathematics.

and maybe the operationalist debate in physics.

At some very high level you might need to grasp the foundations of mathematics, but that is probably too much.

However, these things are meaningless unless you understand the science and history of man as he exists rather than how philosophers wish and pretend he exists.

—“I’ve noticed that you occasionally admire the Stoics…..is that an individual trajectory; or, is “Propertarianism” closely tied to Stoic logic….by which I mean the logic of Chrysippus?”—

I think of it differently. It’s that as soon as you choose sovereignty as the basis of social and cooperative decidability, the consequences for all thought that follows are loosely ldeterministic. And that, assuming no invasion from eastern mysticism, as soon as you get an Aristotole, you will eventually get the stoics, and once you get the stoics you will get natural law, and once you get natural law you will get empiricism, and once you get empiricism you will eventually get science, and once you get science you will eventually get Testimonialism and Propertarianism.

I am not exactly alone in making the observation that Stoicism and buddhism were the best religions, and of the two of them, stoicism perhaps suits the upper classes capable of taking actions that cause change, and buddhism suits the lower classes unable to take actinos that cause change, but that neither of these things are necessarily religons, even though they can be practiced as such.

—“Nothing I write here is a challenge to “Propertarianism”, but sincere inquiry. Familiar with Rothbard, Hoppe, Mises, so not completely “green”–but see here, in “Propertarianism”, something of an important development, or extension–although, I don’t yet quite have my mind about what it suggests?”—

I think of myself as completing the durkheim->mises->hayek->rothbard->hoppe project of completing social science by reducing all statements to those of property, and prior to property of acquisition, and our emotions as nothing but reactions to changes in state of acquisitions (inventory). When I started out I undestood hoppe had come very close but was making some silly errors (he’s german. he can’t help it. it comes naturally to them.) So in a large part i started out by restating hoppe’s german(rationalist), marxist(pseudoscientifc), kantian(pseudorational), justifiation(excuse making), in ratio-scientific terms. In the end this means that hoppe’s conclusions were correct but his (nonsense) arguments as to why he is correct are irrelevant and actually harmful. Not as harmful as rothbard’s or Mises’ but harmful enough.