http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/23/whole-foods-america-s-temple-of-pseudoscience.htmlWHOLE FOODS AND THE CATHEDRAL: PSEUDOSCIENCE AS RELIGION
Their business plan is to open near colleges, where acolytes of the cathedral gather in great numbers.
(It’s actually fascinating.)
Source date (UTC): 2014-12-12 02:14:00 UTC
[I] would present it (as I do) as a last ditch desperate attempt to reach the enlightenment utopia embodied in both cosmopolitan middle class universalism, and anglo puritanical middle class universalism. But that both movements were failures and had to be, because universalism and equality are merely utilitarian merchant philosophies of self interest made possible by temporary economic advantage….
It is cheaper to believe everyone is your friend rather than your competitor. It’s not only the europeans who have converted the cost of defense to consumption – it’s all of western civilization.
Writing up presentation on Mises, Rand and the 20th Century. In a very un-Rand thing to do, crowd source, what points would you stress? If you‘re at all familiar with me you will know where I‘d go in this, but where would you go?
– Peter Boettke
[I] would present it (as I do) as a last ditch desperate attempt to reach the enlightenment utopia embodied in both cosmopolitan middle class universalism, and anglo puritanical middle class universalism. But that both movements were failures and had to be, because universalism and equality are merely utilitarian merchant philosophies of self interest made possible by temporary economic advantage….
It is cheaper to believe everyone is your friend rather than your competitor. It’s not only the europeans who have converted the cost of defense to consumption – it’s all of western civilization.
Writing up presentation on Mises, Rand and the 20th Century. In a very un-Rand thing to do, crowd source, what points would you stress? If you‘re at all familiar with me you will know where I‘d go in this, but where would you go?
– Peter Boettke
(humor)
[Y]ou know, it’s funny, but Propertarianism is no longer a solo effort. I have a manager, an editor, and multiple advisors, helpful critics, and in some cases, people who are better than I am at USING propertarianism. And it feels a little bit like I’m an engineer on a project trying to create infrastructure.
You *are* creating infrastructure, Curt – for sure! Intellectual and moral infrastructure! — Davin Eastley
(humor)
[Y]ou know, it’s funny, but Propertarianism is no longer a solo effort. I have a manager, an editor, and multiple advisors, helpful critics, and in some cases, people who are better than I am at USING propertarianism. And it feels a little bit like I’m an engineer on a project trying to create infrastructure.
You *are* creating infrastructure, Curt – for sure! Intellectual and moral infrastructure! — Davin Eastley
Regarding: http://kinsella.liberty.me/…/hoppe-on-property-rights-in-p…/ [A]ll property must represent value to its owner or the statement ‘own’ has little sense.
–“a common mistaken belief is that one has a property right in the value, as opposed to the physical integrity of, one’s property.”–
Correctly stated: Others cannot promise you that the value of any property will remain constant. However, likewise, they *CAN* promise you that they will take no criminal (physical), unethical, immoral or conspiratorial action to damage that value or transfer that value to themselves.
–“the basis of many fallacious notions of property rights, such as the idea that there is a right to a reputation because it can have value.”–
This is unclear at best, false under scrutiny. I can, and do value my reputation; and my reputation demonstrably has value to me and to others. But that is not to say that I can control that reputation – it is information. Only that I may act to claim restitution for the use of false statements in the actions of defamation, libel and slander. Just as I cannot claim to control the market price of an asset, but I can act to protect against others damage to it.
–“According to this understanding of private property,”–
That statement contains no truth proposition. It posits a straw man as a means of criticism. This is a marxist technique developed in the art of deceptive argument we call “Critique”. The author posits a straw man as a vehicle for criticism of an opposing position rather than defending one’s proposition as incontrovertibly true. (See Rockwell’s most recent book which promises an hypothesis but never delivers, just consists of chapter after chapter of critique.)
–“property ownership means the exclusive control of a particular person over specific physical objects and spaces.”– -and- —“property rights invasion means the uninvited physical damage or diminution of things and territories owned by other persons.”–
There is no evidence of this anywhere in the world. Humans demonstrate universally that they consider the following categories of relations their property: physical and mental, kin, allies and useful relations, and private property, corporeal property, common property, and normative property. So to state that any definition of property is other than those demonstrated by man requires that we define some utility – some purpose, for which we select some subset of demonstrated property to be enforced by consent (under law); or even that some subset of demonstrated property is only possible to enforce by consent under law. But we cannot without dishonesty state that the definition of property is other than that which is demonstrated by man to be evidentially categorized as property. As for the entire paragraph:
–“According to this understanding … …complete ignorance of others’ subjective valuations.”–
It is difficult to tell if this is a disingenuous argument, an incomplete argument, or a mistaken argument. Why? Let’s start with what humans demonstrate to be non-parasitic beneficial cooperation: the prevention of imposed costs (what term free-riding) expressed as the requirements for: (a) Productive, (b) Fully informed, (c) Warrantied, (d) Voluntary Exchange free of (e) Negative Externality. In various polities, one or more of these attributes can be violated for the purpose of practical expediency. The less conformity to these properties the lower the trust and slower the economic velocity, and the greater conformity the higher the trust and higher economic velocity. And this is in fact what we see. Now, why do people tolerate competition on price, when competition on price causes losses? Well, they don’t. In fact, it was very hard to break natural ‘price’ cartels, and in many agrarian cultures the trend persists. Humans naturally seem to tolerate competition on quality but not on price. Early market owners understood by practice what we have learned through the study of economics: that competition forces positive incentives to innovate, which rewards all consumers while increasing stress on producers. Just as we have learned that suppression of unethical and immoral activity increases trust. So, now lets look at Hoppe’s argument: he talks about the market effects that we cannot control, and that we had to learn are positive consequences of what we may intuit as unethical and immoral. But he falsely categorizes ALL activity under the EXCEPTION of competition – which produces beneficial externalities, instead of under the RULE of the prevention of free riding – which we evolved as cooperative organisms to prevent negative actions and externalities. He conflates the minor exception with the major rule. So his argument is either dishonest or false: just because we cannot control and do not want to control prices, does not mean that we cannot control and do not want to control criminal, immoral, and unethical actions, particularly those actions which impose costs upon one another. Just as we bear a cost by forgoing opportunities for personal gain by engaging in criminal, unethical, immoral and conspiratorial behavior, and in doing so we construct property rights, we bear the cost of forgoing opportunities for prosecution of competition on prices in order to create the normative incentive, and the consumer economy. As such, price competition is the exception to moral intuition, not the rule from which moral intuition can be deduced. **Period.** Furthermore, since prices are the exception to the prohibition on parasitism necessary for the rational formation of cooperation and the abandonment of violence in exchange for the benefits of trade, then all other non-price, non-production assets retain their prohibition on criminal, ethical, moral, and conspiratorial actions that cause the involuntary imposition of costs; and therefore the use of violence for the purpose of punishment and restoration is categorically ethical, moral, and rational. Because cooperation is not logical or in one’s interest, and violence is useful and necessary preference in order to prevent parasitism. The virtue of suppression of criminal, unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial imposition of costs other than those conducted under the constraints of productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary, exchange, is that individuals are forced exclusively into productive activity rather than parasitism. Whether that parasitism be physical, deceptive, indirect, or conspiratorial. By contrast, Rothbardian ethics, argue for the expressed legalization of unethical, immoral, conspiratorial parasitism, because such moral rules, embodied in law, by logical necessity, legalize and prohibit retaliation for unproductive, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, actions. Quod erat demonstrandum. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev Ukraine December 2014
Regarding: http://kinsella.liberty.me/…/hoppe-on-property-rights-in-p…/ [A]ll property must represent value to its owner or the statement ‘own’ has little sense.
–“a common mistaken belief is that one has a property right in the value, as opposed to the physical integrity of, one’s property.”–
Correctly stated: Others cannot promise you that the value of any property will remain constant. However, likewise, they *CAN* promise you that they will take no criminal (physical), unethical, immoral or conspiratorial action to damage that value or transfer that value to themselves.
–“the basis of many fallacious notions of property rights, such as the idea that there is a right to a reputation because it can have value.”–
This is unclear at best, false under scrutiny. I can, and do value my reputation; and my reputation demonstrably has value to me and to others. But that is not to say that I can control that reputation – it is information. Only that I may act to claim restitution for the use of false statements in the actions of defamation, libel and slander. Just as I cannot claim to control the market price of an asset, but I can act to protect against others damage to it.
–“According to this understanding of private property,”–
That statement contains no truth proposition. It posits a straw man as a means of criticism. This is a marxist technique developed in the art of deceptive argument we call “Critique”. The author posits a straw man as a vehicle for criticism of an opposing position rather than defending one’s proposition as incontrovertibly true. (See Rockwell’s most recent book which promises an hypothesis but never delivers, just consists of chapter after chapter of critique.)
–“property ownership means the exclusive control of a particular person over specific physical objects and spaces.”– -and- —“property rights invasion means the uninvited physical damage or diminution of things and territories owned by other persons.”–
There is no evidence of this anywhere in the world. Humans demonstrate universally that they consider the following categories of relations their property: physical and mental, kin, allies and useful relations, and private property, corporeal property, common property, and normative property. So to state that any definition of property is other than those demonstrated by man requires that we define some utility – some purpose, for which we select some subset of demonstrated property to be enforced by consent (under law); or even that some subset of demonstrated property is only possible to enforce by consent under law. But we cannot without dishonesty state that the definition of property is other than that which is demonstrated by man to be evidentially categorized as property. As for the entire paragraph:
–“According to this understanding … …complete ignorance of others’ subjective valuations.”–
It is difficult to tell if this is a disingenuous argument, an incomplete argument, or a mistaken argument. Why? Let’s start with what humans demonstrate to be non-parasitic beneficial cooperation: the prevention of imposed costs (what term free-riding) expressed as the requirements for: (a) Productive, (b) Fully informed, (c) Warrantied, (d) Voluntary Exchange free of (e) Negative Externality. In various polities, one or more of these attributes can be violated for the purpose of practical expediency. The less conformity to these properties the lower the trust and slower the economic velocity, and the greater conformity the higher the trust and higher economic velocity. And this is in fact what we see. Now, why do people tolerate competition on price, when competition on price causes losses? Well, they don’t. In fact, it was very hard to break natural ‘price’ cartels, and in many agrarian cultures the trend persists. Humans naturally seem to tolerate competition on quality but not on price. Early market owners understood by practice what we have learned through the study of economics: that competition forces positive incentives to innovate, which rewards all consumers while increasing stress on producers. Just as we have learned that suppression of unethical and immoral activity increases trust. So, now lets look at Hoppe’s argument: he talks about the market effects that we cannot control, and that we had to learn are positive consequences of what we may intuit as unethical and immoral. But he falsely categorizes ALL activity under the EXCEPTION of competition – which produces beneficial externalities, instead of under the RULE of the prevention of free riding – which we evolved as cooperative organisms to prevent negative actions and externalities. He conflates the minor exception with the major rule. So his argument is either dishonest or false: just because we cannot control and do not want to control prices, does not mean that we cannot control and do not want to control criminal, immoral, and unethical actions, particularly those actions which impose costs upon one another. Just as we bear a cost by forgoing opportunities for personal gain by engaging in criminal, unethical, immoral and conspiratorial behavior, and in doing so we construct property rights, we bear the cost of forgoing opportunities for prosecution of competition on prices in order to create the normative incentive, and the consumer economy. As such, price competition is the exception to moral intuition, not the rule from which moral intuition can be deduced. **Period.** Furthermore, since prices are the exception to the prohibition on parasitism necessary for the rational formation of cooperation and the abandonment of violence in exchange for the benefits of trade, then all other non-price, non-production assets retain their prohibition on criminal, ethical, moral, and conspiratorial actions that cause the involuntary imposition of costs; and therefore the use of violence for the purpose of punishment and restoration is categorically ethical, moral, and rational. Because cooperation is not logical or in one’s interest, and violence is useful and necessary preference in order to prevent parasitism. The virtue of suppression of criminal, unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial imposition of costs other than those conducted under the constraints of productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary, exchange, is that individuals are forced exclusively into productive activity rather than parasitism. Whether that parasitism be physical, deceptive, indirect, or conspiratorial. By contrast, Rothbardian ethics, argue for the expressed legalization of unethical, immoral, conspiratorial parasitism, because such moral rules, embodied in law, by logical necessity, legalize and prohibit retaliation for unproductive, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, actions. Quod erat demonstrandum. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev Ukraine December 2014
Guest Post by Michael Phillip
[L]ocke’s argument starts with the notion that we own ourselves. It does not rest on us being the creation of our own labour, but a notion of self-ownership. By “mixing our labour” with things acquired from nature we “create” property by a process of extension of our self-ownership.
There are a series of problems with this argument. First, if we own ourselves, do we really think that we can therefore sell ourselves, either entire or by amputation and alienation of bits? And, if not, in what sense is this ownership? Is there not something perverse about a concept which implies an acceptable separation of our physical self (in whole or in part) from ourself.
To be property is to be owned by something that is not itself and which can be passed on to others. So, to be property, even of ourself, is to be lessened from what we feel is the proper status of being a moral agent.
A notion of self-dominion makes more sense; we control ourselves and property extends from that control. By taking some unowned thing from nature, we assert control over it; it is the assertion and acceptance of control which creates property.
As ever, slavery provides a limiting case. The institution of slavery contradicts Locke’s notion that we own ourselves. Slavery is morally obnoxious (a violation of self-dominion, and so human autonomy, in the most profound sense) but it does not make slaves any less property. It is the acknowledged assertion of control over the slave that creates slavery, not the labour of the slaveowner (even if it is directed to that end) extending the slaver’s self-ownership to cover the slave.
Do we really think that the process of enslaving is a process of the slaver “mixing their labour” with the slave? Surely not; neither as a description nor as some act of legitimation. No amount of applied labour by the slaver makes slavery legitimate nor is it what makes slaves property.
The process of enslaving is a process of getting acknowledged control over the slave. The more difficulty involved, the more the slaver has to act to do so, but the effort required does not affect any “level” of being property, merely whether it is worth the bother.
Locke’s use of the term ‘labour’ directs attention to the effort and not to what is being effected. (Hence the connection to the labour theory of value, which makes the same error.)
Note: My position is that the necessity of cooperation determines property, not self owenrship. Michael (as usual) is correct. – Curt
Guest Post by Michael Phillip
[L]ocke’s argument starts with the notion that we own ourselves. It does not rest on us being the creation of our own labour, but a notion of self-ownership. By “mixing our labour” with things acquired from nature we “create” property by a process of extension of our self-ownership.
There are a series of problems with this argument. First, if we own ourselves, do we really think that we can therefore sell ourselves, either entire or by amputation and alienation of bits? And, if not, in what sense is this ownership? Is there not something perverse about a concept which implies an acceptable separation of our physical self (in whole or in part) from ourself.
To be property is to be owned by something that is not itself and which can be passed on to others. So, to be property, even of ourself, is to be lessened from what we feel is the proper status of being a moral agent.
A notion of self-dominion makes more sense; we control ourselves and property extends from that control. By taking some unowned thing from nature, we assert control over it; it is the assertion and acceptance of control which creates property.
As ever, slavery provides a limiting case. The institution of slavery contradicts Locke’s notion that we own ourselves. Slavery is morally obnoxious (a violation of self-dominion, and so human autonomy, in the most profound sense) but it does not make slaves any less property. It is the acknowledged assertion of control over the slave that creates slavery, not the labour of the slaveowner (even if it is directed to that end) extending the slaver’s self-ownership to cover the slave.
Do we really think that the process of enslaving is a process of the slaver “mixing their labour” with the slave? Surely not; neither as a description nor as some act of legitimation. No amount of applied labour by the slaver makes slavery legitimate nor is it what makes slaves property.
The process of enslaving is a process of getting acknowledged control over the slave. The more difficulty involved, the more the slaver has to act to do so, but the effort required does not affect any “level” of being property, merely whether it is worth the bother.
Locke’s use of the term ‘labour’ directs attention to the effort and not to what is being effected. (Hence the connection to the labour theory of value, which makes the same error.)
Note: My position is that the necessity of cooperation determines property, not self owenrship. Michael (as usual) is correct. – Curt
Guest Post by Michael Phillip
I don’t think “reverse racism” is a useful or even entirely coherent concept, and I don’t think thought-experiments are a particularly helpful way to think about racism in the first place: in my view, something about the subject demands an “ecological” or “in vivo” rather than thought-experimental approach.
In other words, the topic demands engagement with the living, breathing complexity of real-live experiences of racism, not with thought-experiments that abstract away from them.
I also think that if the topic is racism, as it should be, focusing on black-white relations in the U.S. is overly narrow, and problematically distortive of our thinking.
It doesn’t even capture race relations in the U.S., much less race relations beyond American borders.