[W]ell, I can’t quite do that without a whole book. But I think some people are beginning to understand the whole package I’ve put together, and why I’m criticizing feminism, postmodernism, ghetto libertarianism, left libertarianism, and even to some degree, conservatism: because the moral codes of all these groups advocate are predicated on assumptions about the nature of man, our common interests, and our economy, that are a mix of agrarian, industrial, and marxist thought dependent upon assumptions about our equality of reproductive value , equality of reproductive organization, our equality of value in organizing and participating in production, and organizing and participating in the production of norms that facilitate production at low transaction costs. All advancement of productivity and therefore wealth in civilization requires advancement in institutions that assist in creating ‘calculability’: the means by which we cooperate in a division of labor while suppressing the ability for anyone in that division of labor to conduct free riding. [callout]…we must also compensate people outside of the production process for their diligence, labor, and construction of the normative commons that makes an elaborate division of labor in a high trust, low transaction cost society possible.[/callout] Outside of our direct perception, which is very limited, we can only know anything else about the world if it is calculable – and therefore reducible to analogy to experience. Otherwise we cannot sense or perceive it. And we are notoriously bad in our perceptions without instrumentation and calculation to assist us in judging even the most trivial of things. Prices for example are calculable. Our imagination of people’s lives in different parts of the world is not. The evidence that someone is wiling to trade with us, is proof that we have calculated the use of resources and time correctly. Just as their failure to do so tells us we have wasted them – or consumed them as entertainment. Science is a discipline entirely devoted to using instrumentation to sense what we cannot, then reduce it to analogy to experience, where we can use our limited faculties of deduction by employing our various fascinating tools of logic to ensure that what we sense is both internally consistent and externally correspondent. So whether we are talking about science, technology, production, money and accounting, cooperation or law, we are still talking about various forms of instrumentation that assist us in performing calculations on what we are not able to perform without relying upon those tools. Now, because productivity was so important in the past, we assumed that our relative equality of value in production, organizing production, reproduction, organizing reproduction, investigation and discovery, were all the same, and we limited our concept of moral life to attempting to create universal rules and incentives for each of us to follow. But that turns out to not make any sense. Because one must have the incentive to follow rules. And if we are marginally different in what we value, and in what we NEED to value as reproductive organisms; and we very clearly demonstrate that we are different, then the incentives that we have are quite different. And if the incentives are quite different we must construct alternative means, other than a MONOPOLY definition of human morality, that provides the incentives for us to act with common interests, despite the fact that we have uncommon interests. That is the job of institutions. The market allows us to cooperate on means even if we cannot cooperate on ends. But the market assumes that the primary value we each provide is our productivity in the market. (Which was true during the formation of market towns, and when human labor was necessary for production.) However, if we take into consideration, that in fact, only some of us have value in organizing production, only some others have value in participating in production, and still others only have value in organizing the norms such that production is possible, then we are all simply participating in a division of knowledge and labor. And therefore the rewards of production would be earned by those who prefer and are able to engage in production. But we must also compensate people outside of the production process for their diligence, labor, and construction of the normative commons that makes an elaborate division of labor in a high trust, low transaction cost society possible. As such these people who are outside of the production process, but who facilitate the creation of the high trust society by suppressing free riding in all its forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and statist behavior, therefore must be paid for their services (or not paid if they fail to deliver them.) Furthermore, every individual who eschews criminal, immoral, unethical, conspiratorial, (statist) behavior, pays a cost with every opportunity he forgoes. Respect for property rights is costly for each individual. Every time an individual suppresses another’s ability to conduct free riding on others: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial (statist), it is a cost to him. To ask someone to obey these rules which facilitate the voluntary organization of low transaction cost hight trust society, when they are unable to participate in production or the fruits of it, is to ask them to conduct security guard work, and to exert restraint without compensation. Producers are nothing without consumers. Producers must compete for the attention of consumers. The more successful producers gain greater rewards, which in current civilization means little more than greater status signals and associations with others who likewise possess greater status signals, for more successfully satisfying the wants of consumers. This argument is entirely consistent with property rights theory. I will get to the criterion for compensation in one of my next posts.
Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response
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Doolittle's Arguments Wrapped Up In A Bow?
[W]ell, I can’t quite do that without a whole book. But I think some people are beginning to understand the whole package I’ve put together, and why I’m criticizing feminism, postmodernism, ghetto libertarianism, left libertarianism, and even to some degree, conservatism: because the moral codes of all these groups advocate are predicated on assumptions about the nature of man, our common interests, and our economy, that are a mix of agrarian, industrial, and marxist thought dependent upon assumptions about our equality of reproductive value , equality of reproductive organization, our equality of value in organizing and participating in production, and organizing and participating in the production of norms that facilitate production at low transaction costs. All advancement of productivity and therefore wealth in civilization requires advancement in institutions that assist in creating ‘calculability’: the means by which we cooperate in a division of labor while suppressing the ability for anyone in that division of labor to conduct free riding. [callout]…we must also compensate people outside of the production process for their diligence, labor, and construction of the normative commons that makes an elaborate division of labor in a high trust, low transaction cost society possible.[/callout] Outside of our direct perception, which is very limited, we can only know anything else about the world if it is calculable – and therefore reducible to analogy to experience. Otherwise we cannot sense or perceive it. And we are notoriously bad in our perceptions without instrumentation and calculation to assist us in judging even the most trivial of things. Prices for example are calculable. Our imagination of people’s lives in different parts of the world is not. The evidence that someone is wiling to trade with us, is proof that we have calculated the use of resources and time correctly. Just as their failure to do so tells us we have wasted them – or consumed them as entertainment. Science is a discipline entirely devoted to using instrumentation to sense what we cannot, then reduce it to analogy to experience, where we can use our limited faculties of deduction by employing our various fascinating tools of logic to ensure that what we sense is both internally consistent and externally correspondent. So whether we are talking about science, technology, production, money and accounting, cooperation or law, we are still talking about various forms of instrumentation that assist us in performing calculations on what we are not able to perform without relying upon those tools. Now, because productivity was so important in the past, we assumed that our relative equality of value in production, organizing production, reproduction, organizing reproduction, investigation and discovery, were all the same, and we limited our concept of moral life to attempting to create universal rules and incentives for each of us to follow. But that turns out to not make any sense. Because one must have the incentive to follow rules. And if we are marginally different in what we value, and in what we NEED to value as reproductive organisms; and we very clearly demonstrate that we are different, then the incentives that we have are quite different. And if the incentives are quite different we must construct alternative means, other than a MONOPOLY definition of human morality, that provides the incentives for us to act with common interests, despite the fact that we have uncommon interests. That is the job of institutions. The market allows us to cooperate on means even if we cannot cooperate on ends. But the market assumes that the primary value we each provide is our productivity in the market. (Which was true during the formation of market towns, and when human labor was necessary for production.) However, if we take into consideration, that in fact, only some of us have value in organizing production, only some others have value in participating in production, and still others only have value in organizing the norms such that production is possible, then we are all simply participating in a division of knowledge and labor. And therefore the rewards of production would be earned by those who prefer and are able to engage in production. But we must also compensate people outside of the production process for their diligence, labor, and construction of the normative commons that makes an elaborate division of labor in a high trust, low transaction cost society possible. As such these people who are outside of the production process, but who facilitate the creation of the high trust society by suppressing free riding in all its forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and statist behavior, therefore must be paid for their services (or not paid if they fail to deliver them.) Furthermore, every individual who eschews criminal, immoral, unethical, conspiratorial, (statist) behavior, pays a cost with every opportunity he forgoes. Respect for property rights is costly for each individual. Every time an individual suppresses another’s ability to conduct free riding on others: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial (statist), it is a cost to him. To ask someone to obey these rules which facilitate the voluntary organization of low transaction cost hight trust society, when they are unable to participate in production or the fruits of it, is to ask them to conduct security guard work, and to exert restraint without compensation. Producers are nothing without consumers. Producers must compete for the attention of consumers. The more successful producers gain greater rewards, which in current civilization means little more than greater status signals and associations with others who likewise possess greater status signals, for more successfully satisfying the wants of consumers. This argument is entirely consistent with property rights theory. I will get to the criterion for compensation in one of my next posts.
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Doolittle’s Arguments Wrapped Up In A Bow?
[W]ell, I can’t quite do that without a whole book. But I think some people are beginning to understand the whole package I’ve put together, and why I’m criticizing feminism, postmodernism, ghetto libertarianism, left libertarianism, and even to some degree, conservatism: because the moral codes of all these groups advocate are predicated on assumptions about the nature of man, our common interests, and our economy, that are a mix of agrarian, industrial, and marxist thought dependent upon assumptions about our equality of reproductive value , equality of reproductive organization, our equality of value in organizing and participating in production, and organizing and participating in the production of norms that facilitate production at low transaction costs. All advancement of productivity and therefore wealth in civilization requires advancement in institutions that assist in creating ‘calculability’: the means by which we cooperate in a division of labor while suppressing the ability for anyone in that division of labor to conduct free riding. [callout]…we must also compensate people outside of the production process for their diligence, labor, and construction of the normative commons that makes an elaborate division of labor in a high trust, low transaction cost society possible.[/callout] Outside of our direct perception, which is very limited, we can only know anything else about the world if it is calculable – and therefore reducible to analogy to experience. Otherwise we cannot sense or perceive it. And we are notoriously bad in our perceptions without instrumentation and calculation to assist us in judging even the most trivial of things. Prices for example are calculable. Our imagination of people’s lives in different parts of the world is not. The evidence that someone is wiling to trade with us, is proof that we have calculated the use of resources and time correctly. Just as their failure to do so tells us we have wasted them – or consumed them as entertainment. Science is a discipline entirely devoted to using instrumentation to sense what we cannot, then reduce it to analogy to experience, where we can use our limited faculties of deduction by employing our various fascinating tools of logic to ensure that what we sense is both internally consistent and externally correspondent. So whether we are talking about science, technology, production, money and accounting, cooperation or law, we are still talking about various forms of instrumentation that assist us in performing calculations on what we are not able to perform without relying upon those tools. Now, because productivity was so important in the past, we assumed that our relative equality of value in production, organizing production, reproduction, organizing reproduction, investigation and discovery, were all the same, and we limited our concept of moral life to attempting to create universal rules and incentives for each of us to follow. But that turns out to not make any sense. Because one must have the incentive to follow rules. And if we are marginally different in what we value, and in what we NEED to value as reproductive organisms; and we very clearly demonstrate that we are different, then the incentives that we have are quite different. And if the incentives are quite different we must construct alternative means, other than a MONOPOLY definition of human morality, that provides the incentives for us to act with common interests, despite the fact that we have uncommon interests. That is the job of institutions. The market allows us to cooperate on means even if we cannot cooperate on ends. But the market assumes that the primary value we each provide is our productivity in the market. (Which was true during the formation of market towns, and when human labor was necessary for production.) However, if we take into consideration, that in fact, only some of us have value in organizing production, only some others have value in participating in production, and still others only have value in organizing the norms such that production is possible, then we are all simply participating in a division of knowledge and labor. And therefore the rewards of production would be earned by those who prefer and are able to engage in production. But we must also compensate people outside of the production process for their diligence, labor, and construction of the normative commons that makes an elaborate division of labor in a high trust, low transaction cost society possible. As such these people who are outside of the production process, but who facilitate the creation of the high trust society by suppressing free riding in all its forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and statist behavior, therefore must be paid for their services (or not paid if they fail to deliver them.) Furthermore, every individual who eschews criminal, immoral, unethical, conspiratorial, (statist) behavior, pays a cost with every opportunity he forgoes. Respect for property rights is costly for each individual. Every time an individual suppresses another’s ability to conduct free riding on others: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial (statist), it is a cost to him. To ask someone to obey these rules which facilitate the voluntary organization of low transaction cost hight trust society, when they are unable to participate in production or the fruits of it, is to ask them to conduct security guard work, and to exert restraint without compensation. Producers are nothing without consumers. Producers must compete for the attention of consumers. The more successful producers gain greater rewards, which in current civilization means little more than greater status signals and associations with others who likewise possess greater status signals, for more successfully satisfying the wants of consumers. This argument is entirely consistent with property rights theory. I will get to the criterion for compensation in one of my next posts.
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Rothbard’s Ethical Ghetto
Rothbardian ethics are just an excuse to suppress the strong’s ability to use violence while maintaining the cunning’s ability to entrap, lie, cheat and steal. Liberty was created at the point of a sharp metal object, by heroic males, as a means of suppressing all forms of cheating on the backs of others. Rothbard’s pretense is simply a means of justifying parasitism on that hard won liberty. There is nothing libertarian about Rothbardian ethics. Its just a complex philosophical lie to justify immoral and unethical theft.
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Rothbard's Ethical Ghetto
Rothbardian ethics are just an excuse to suppress the strong’s ability to use violence while maintaining the cunning’s ability to entrap, lie, cheat and steal. Liberty was created at the point of a sharp metal object, by heroic males, as a means of suppressing all forms of cheating on the backs of others. Rothbard’s pretense is simply a means of justifying parasitism on that hard won liberty. There is nothing libertarian about Rothbardian ethics. Its just a complex philosophical lie to justify immoral and unethical theft.
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Rothbard’s Ethical Ghetto
Rothbardian ethics are just an excuse to suppress the strong’s ability to use violence while maintaining the cunning’s ability to entrap, lie, cheat and steal. Liberty was created at the point of a sharp metal object, by heroic males, as a means of suppressing all forms of cheating on the backs of others. Rothbard’s pretense is simply a means of justifying parasitism on that hard won liberty. There is nothing libertarian about Rothbardian ethics. Its just a complex philosophical lie to justify immoral and unethical theft.
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Rothbard's Ethical Ghetto
Rothbardian ethics are just an excuse to suppress the strong’s ability to use violence while maintaining the cunning’s ability to entrap, lie, cheat and steal. Liberty was created at the point of a sharp metal object, by heroic males, as a means of suppressing all forms of cheating on the backs of others. Rothbard’s pretense is simply a means of justifying parasitism on that hard won liberty. There is nothing libertarian about Rothbardian ethics. Its just a complex philosophical lie to justify immoral and unethical theft.
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Rothbardian Ghetto Ethics As A Parasitic Scam
Rothbard’s ethics are just another a parasitic scam seeking to replace low transaction cost state parasitism, with high transaction cost universal parasitism. Aristocratic Egalitarians (protestants) had it right: universal responsibility for the universal suppression of all involuntary extractions, thereby forcing every living soul to compete in the market for goods and services, where his efforts produce a virtuous cycle. 1) We can describe all involuntary extractions of property as one of the following: Criminal, unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial (statist). Attached is one of my diagrams that illustrates this spectrum. The curve on the right is the DEMONSTRATED demand curve for liberty. Because it represents the REPRODUCTIVE return on forgone opportunities (opportunity costs). 2) All costs are opportunity costs. That definition of property is the human behavioral definition of property, not some artificially constructed definition of property that was created to justify aggression against property by non physical means. (Which is the very purpose of Rothbard’s argument.) If all costs are opportunity costs then it is not possible to make the argument for bribery except as an excuse to justify theft. (and it is an excuse to justify theft, which is why it’s almost universally rejected except by social outcasts.) The human intuitive perception of property, the human normative description of property, and the reproductively and cooperatively NECESSARY and non-arbitrary definition of property, is defined by the requirements for decreasing transaction costs of cooperation. From the most severe and direct (crime) to the most indirect and imperceptible (displacement via outbreeding or immigrating. A fact which is illustrated in the diagram.) 3) As I’ve said. Either the NAP is insufficient, or the definition of property rights is insufficient. I’m able to construct an argument that the NAP is sufficient as long as the definition of property rights is DESCRIPTIVE. But it is not possible to rationally choose an arbitrary description of private property limited to that which is necessary for economic production (private property) and its dependent ethics, and not ALSO leave unanswered the further definitions of property in all its forms that create the trust necessary for rational risk taking in a polity. My original assumption was that first mises made the error because of his obsession with commodity prices, which are a reductio example of property, and that rothbard further expanded that error with his appeal to predatory extractive ghetto ethics, as an group evolutionary theory. And I can forgive both authors for such errors. We cannot expect all men to be wise in all matters. But as time has progressed I’ve understood the damage that has resulted from the emphasis on a FAILED minority strategy (low trust society), to a successful majority strategy (high trust societies) in producing both eugenic reproduction and expanding wealth. 4) What is circular reasoning, is the arbitrary definition of rothbardian private property rights as a means of justifying involuntary extraction via PRIVATE SECTOR PARASITISM, as a means of replacing involuntary extraction via STATE PARASITISM. Rothbard’s ethics, statism and socialism, are parasitic. ROTHBARD’S ETHICS ARE PARASITIC. Only high trust property rights are fully productive and NOT parasitic. ONLY those high trust ethics. ONLY THOSE AND NO OTHER. Northwestern europeans managed to almost exterminate all involuntary extraction and forcing all human action into the market for goods and services. All of it. Forbidding all other means of free riding. Apriorism is an interesting tool for deceiving mediocre minds via overloading. It works in mathematical philosophy for the same reason it works in ethical philosophy: because these reductive arguments rely on aggregation of concepts that obscure the causal properties. So, yes, rothbardianism is a parasitic scam. 5) If we can get past that point we will get to the dispute over whether it is rational for people to exchange pervasive parasitism, pervasive transaction costs in daily life, for limited parasitic rents, corruption and conspiracy via the state. CLOSING All costs are opportunity costs. Humans DEMONSTRATE that they behave this way in all circumstances. And it is rational for them to do so. And irrational for them not to. And Rothbardian ethics are an attempt to trade one parasitic scam for another. Nothing more.
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Rothbardian Ghetto Ethics As A Parasitic Scam
Rothbard’s ethics are just another a parasitic scam seeking to replace low transaction cost state parasitism, with high transaction cost universal parasitism. Aristocratic Egalitarians (protestants) had it right: universal responsibility for the universal suppression of all involuntary extractions, thereby forcing every living soul to compete in the market for goods and services, where his efforts produce a virtuous cycle. 1) We can describe all involuntary extractions of property as one of the following: Criminal, unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial (statist). Attached is one of my diagrams that illustrates this spectrum. The curve on the right is the DEMONSTRATED demand curve for liberty. Because it represents the REPRODUCTIVE return on forgone opportunities (opportunity costs). 2) All costs are opportunity costs. That definition of property is the human behavioral definition of property, not some artificially constructed definition of property that was created to justify aggression against property by non physical means. (Which is the very purpose of Rothbard’s argument.) If all costs are opportunity costs then it is not possible to make the argument for bribery except as an excuse to justify theft. (and it is an excuse to justify theft, which is why it’s almost universally rejected except by social outcasts.) The human intuitive perception of property, the human normative description of property, and the reproductively and cooperatively NECESSARY and non-arbitrary definition of property, is defined by the requirements for decreasing transaction costs of cooperation. From the most severe and direct (crime) to the most indirect and imperceptible (displacement via outbreeding or immigrating. A fact which is illustrated in the diagram.) 3) As I’ve said. Either the NAP is insufficient, or the definition of property rights is insufficient. I’m able to construct an argument that the NAP is sufficient as long as the definition of property rights is DESCRIPTIVE. But it is not possible to rationally choose an arbitrary description of private property limited to that which is necessary for economic production (private property) and its dependent ethics, and not ALSO leave unanswered the further definitions of property in all its forms that create the trust necessary for rational risk taking in a polity. My original assumption was that first mises made the error because of his obsession with commodity prices, which are a reductio example of property, and that rothbard further expanded that error with his appeal to predatory extractive ghetto ethics, as an group evolutionary theory. And I can forgive both authors for such errors. We cannot expect all men to be wise in all matters. But as time has progressed I’ve understood the damage that has resulted from the emphasis on a FAILED minority strategy (low trust society), to a successful majority strategy (high trust societies) in producing both eugenic reproduction and expanding wealth. 4) What is circular reasoning, is the arbitrary definition of rothbardian private property rights as a means of justifying involuntary extraction via PRIVATE SECTOR PARASITISM, as a means of replacing involuntary extraction via STATE PARASITISM. Rothbard’s ethics, statism and socialism, are parasitic. ROTHBARD’S ETHICS ARE PARASITIC. Only high trust property rights are fully productive and NOT parasitic. ONLY those high trust ethics. ONLY THOSE AND NO OTHER. Northwestern europeans managed to almost exterminate all involuntary extraction and forcing all human action into the market for goods and services. All of it. Forbidding all other means of free riding. Apriorism is an interesting tool for deceiving mediocre minds via overloading. It works in mathematical philosophy for the same reason it works in ethical philosophy: because these reductive arguments rely on aggregation of concepts that obscure the causal properties. So, yes, rothbardianism is a parasitic scam. 5) If we can get past that point we will get to the dispute over whether it is rational for people to exchange pervasive parasitism, pervasive transaction costs in daily life, for limited parasitic rents, corruption and conspiracy via the state. CLOSING All costs are opportunity costs. Humans DEMONSTRATE that they behave this way in all circumstances. And it is rational for them to do so. And irrational for them not to. And Rothbardian ethics are an attempt to trade one parasitic scam for another. Nothing more.
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The N.A.P. Is Insufficient For Suppression Of Demand For The State – In Fact, the NAP Is "Unethical" By Definition
(I wanted to thank Jason Maher for very intelligent comments. But also to respond to criticisms, and perhaps to fill a few gaps.) This post is part of a discussion on Argumentation Ethics. 1) In that thread, my purpose was to illustrate that neither AE, nor performative contradiction, are causal arguments. However, since both correctly assume self ownership is a necessity, then that the single assumption is sufficient to deduce all of the institutional solutions that Hoppe addressed in his work. It’s weak causal argumentative support, but it demonstrates internal consistency. And, in both logic and mathematics, whenever we construct a proof, we require internal consistency. Internal consistency does not determine external correspondence. And external correspondence is the only test of ‘truth’. But his arguments are internally consistent, and that’s something that doesn’t happen very often in ethics. 2) The rest of my post (and most of my work) is designed to articulate the universally DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS demonstrated by man, and to argue how, given such a descriptive ethics, liberty can be achieved as a system of NORMATIVE ETHICS. 3) The reason this construction is necessary is to correct the FAILURE of libertarian arguments to gain political support – or even to constrain the state. Or more simply: if we have better rational and economic arguments, then why do conservatives succeed in resisting the state, but libertarians fail to resist the state? The answer is that humans vote and act, morally, not rationally. (And it’s necessary for them to do so for many reasons, not the least of which is limited cognitive ability in real time, combined with fragmentary knowledge and living in an environment surrounded by others who are engaged in limited theft and violence, but pervasive deception, fraud, obscurantism, free riding, rent seeking and conspiracy. So the purpose of my work is to attempt to correct libertarian ethics such that the failed effort to gain popular support can either be corrected by improvements to libertarian ethics such that they are preferable to a political majority, or to alter the libertarian strategy such that we abandon both the attempt to obtain a political majority (or even an effective resistance), and attempt a separate solution. The various means which I’ve attempted to suggest are too long for this forum. NOW, TO JASON’S INSIGHTFUL COMMENTS –“An interesting conceptual division of methods to nick what belongs to someone else. Mr. Doolittle’s principle argument is the the Non Aggression Principle can only deal with #1 and part of #4, but is completely powerless against #2 and #3. Specifically, he speaks of the NAP lacking a mechanism for dealing with classes 2 and 3, and even encourages them…”– You are correct. Yes. –“”Private property is contrary [to] the female reproductive strategy””– This fact may seem humorous to you but the consequences explain why the introduction of women into the voting pool has driven us consistently toward a redistributive society, despite the fact that none of such would have occurred without the introduction of women in the voting pool. (I can’t vouch for Australia because I don’t know the data, But it’s true in the states and Canada. In Canada, without the French vote, the mix would be as conservative as the united states. Which is why conservative Canadians want Quebec to secede.) The female reproductive strategy is not monogamous, but polyamorous for support and protection, but to capture the better genes she can run across from those multiple encounters. And then to retain the burden of care, but to place the burden of upkeep on the tribe. Wherever monogamous marriage (the nuclear family, or the northern european absolute nuclear family) declines women return to this strategy via proxy of the state. Property rights that accompanied animal husbandry and agrarian settlement, inverted matrilineal reproductive control, and placed reproductive control in the hands of males – something the marxists have argued against since Engels wrote his tome on it. I can go into this at depth but lets just say that the evidence is that women cause the change in property rights policy and that they demonstrate a return to community property in their voting patterns. –“NAP covers externalities easily… complete allocation of private property rights to avoid “tragedy of the commons” and then allowing people to sue for damage to their property.”– –“NAP covers fraud too since it is basically theft through breach of contract.”– –“NAP doesn’t cover asymmetric information to the degree that it simply means two different people have different information. But having different information isn’t a property rights violation and is simply the state of nature. It is impossible and absurd to talk about all people in the world having identical information.”– Individual contracts place an extremely high transaction cost on all exchanges. So if you are one of the owners of an enormous shopping mall, and you rent space for stores to merchants, and you want to maximize your revenue, will you, or will you not, want to decrease transaction costs? People are entirely cognizant of transaction costs. The high trust society eliminates them, by a normative prohibition on all involuntary transfers, not just those transfers that constitute aggression. Further, no society exists that has property rights and liberty as we know it EXCEPT where there has been a near prohibition on all involuntary transfers – because it is the only way to reduce demand for the state: demand for the mall owners so to speak, to reduce transaction costs. We must remember that for humans, loss aversion, and altruistic punishment are MORE ACTIVATING (we are more passionate about them) than self interest. So all our decisions are asymmetrically weighted against risk. So the libertarian errors are those of incorrect attribution of praxeological analysis to transactions. And the reason for that praxeological error is that mises and rothbard both made the error of using commodity purchases and ordinal preferences, where commodity purchases are marginally indifferent except on price, and where human differences are not ordinal but a network, and where that network demonstrates necessary biases against risk and necessary cooperative biases that punish offenders> Think of it this way. If we did not operate by such rules, then transaction costs would be infinite, and we would not exist. It is not possible for humans to function without these prohibitions. It is non logical for libertarians to rely on the NAP, which structurally contains errors that are impossible for humans to cooperate using. I am aware that it is quite unlikely that you will, at first reading, drop your high investment in rothbardian and misesian logic. And I suspect that this one argument is insufficient to convince you. But you will have a very hard time both rationally and empirically circumventing that logic. So it is not that I err, or fail to grasp, or have not made sufficient efforts in this area of inquiry. It is that I am not trying to JUSTIFY liberty, but instead am trying to explain how to obtain it as a preference, because it is not justifiable. and it is not justifiable because while liberty is in our reproductive interests. It is not in the reproductive interests of all. Or even the majority. —“And perhaps more importantly, the NAP is not the only basis for anarchy. David Friedman is one of the most famous living anarchists and he (and I) argue based on consequences, not NAP.”— Well, I never made that statement. I’m making the statement that NAP is insufficient for DESCRIBING what people do. And that the weakness of the NAP explains why we fail to understand why even those people who prefer government out of their lives, demonstrate a demand for government under conditions that the NAP prescribes. The NAP only prohibits crime. It does not prohibit unethical or immoral conduct. To obtain voluntary participation you must forbid both unethical and immoral conduct, otherwise individuals will demand intervention to prohibit it. By having the state, a population trades free riding, theft, unethical and immoral conduct that they cannot avoid for rent seeking and corruption that they can avoid. You cannot eliminate rent seeking and corruption via the state without also retaining the prohibition on unethical and immoral actions suppressed by the state. Its non logical. I am trying to reform libertarianism to repair the errors in Rothbardian ethics in order to explain why we lose. And the NAP is one of the reasons that we lose: because it prohibits criminality but not unethical or immoral behavior. And if the NAP fails to prohibit unethical and immoral behavior, and If we claim to have a lock on ethics, then what is the basis for that claim? If we have a lock on ethics, then why do we fail? Are humans naturally unethical? That would mean that natural law was a false basis for liberty. This is because aggression is not the test of the ethics of property. It is only the test of criminality. Ethical constraint and moral constraint are place higher demands on property rights. Blackmail, as Rothbard argues, is not a violation of the NAP. It is a voluntary exchange. What is it about blackmail that we can say is moral or ethical? It should be clear at this point that the NAP is not a test of ethical or moral behavior, but only of criminal behavior. THE NAP IS LESS OF A REASON FOR A VOLUNTARY SOCIETY The NAP is LESS of a reason to prefer a voluntary society if we merely exchange free riding, rent seeking and corruption via the state, which we can both avoid and which we rarely experience, for unethical and immoral behavior which is pervasive in society, and we cannot avoid or fail to experience. Praxeology demands that we attribute rational choice to individuals. It’s non-praxeological to assert that the exchange of pervasive and daily thefts is preferable to infrequent and invisible thefts. If only for the transaction costs to each of us. So no, the NAP is LESS of a reason to prefer a voluntary society. People see the state, rationally, as the lesser evil between pervasive criminality, unethical behavior, and immoral behavior. They willingly trade rent seeking and corruption that they cannot see for criminality, unethical, and immoral behavior. And they are rightly rational to do so. So what is the means by which we eliminate the state’s free riding, rent seeking and corruption, while also prohibiting the criminal, unethical, and immoral? What is the basis for property rights if we must prohibit the criminal, unethical, immoral, AND the CORRUPT? NAP does not tell us this. Our reliance on the argumentative value of the NAP is the reason we fail. The NAP is in fact a RECIPE FOR FAILURE, because it is an unethical and immoral standard for the construction of property rights, norms and the common law. THE NAP IS ONE OF THE REAONS WE FAIL. Without prior promise of constraint of blackmail, we cannot reduce demand for the state. Private Property only developed where unethical and immoral conduct was suppressed at every possible level. The EVIDENCE is that the demand for private property only exists in the suppression of immoral and unethical conduct. Criminality is insufficient. So it’s not RATIONAL to argue that the NAP is sufficient. The trust necessary for private property must exist PRIOR to the demand for private property, and the reduction of demand for the state. Further, it’s not evident (it’s contrary to the evidence) that the market suppresses unethical and immoral behavior. Just the opposite. The expansion of the market INCREASES opportunity for immoral and unethical behavior. Immoral and unethical behavior is cheaper than honest ethical and moral behavior, which imposes costs on the participants. Property rights are a cost. Every time they are respected. Forgoing those opportunities requires trust. The result of forgoing opportunities and TRUST creates property rights. Not the other way around. Private property does not create trust. Once you suppress criminal, unethical and immoral behavior, the only POSSIBLE means of interaction is via private property. We cannot confuse cause and consequence. TRUST FIRST. PROPERTY SECOND. STATE LAST. So, again, trust (willingness to take risks / low transaction cost exchange) requires the suppression of criminal, unethical and immoral behavior. And the trust that appears to be sufficient for demand for private property requires near total suppression of unethical behavior. We must suppress even MORE unethical and rent seeking and corrupt behavior in order to reduce demand for the state. If we are to define property rights as the basis of a moral and peaceful society, then what is the definition of property rights that prohibits not only criminal behavior (the NAP) but also unethical, immoral, as well as free riding, rent seeking, and corruption? I think that it looks like the state would be the natural means of transforming criminal, unethical, immoral behavior into free riding, rent seeking and corruption in an effort to decrease transaction costs. Now, how do we FURTHER suppress free riding, rent seeking and corruption without the state? Privatization. But for privatization we must have a set of property rights that increase suppression of free riding, rent seeking and corruption, without sacrificing the reason for the state: suppression of unethical and immoral behavior. It’s non logical to ask people to yet bear again that which they have rid themselves of, by clear and demonstrated preference, almost universally. People have already demonstrated that they are willing to trade unethical and immoral behavior, for corrupt and rent seeking behavior. And they were rational to do so. You cannot tell them that they are gaining something by simply reverting them to a previous state that they have already rejected. We can only offer them something BETTER. Which is to ALSO prohibit rent seeking and corruption AS WELL as unethical and immoral behavior. So no. The NAP was a terrible mistake for the liberty movement. It was tragic. I understand why they resorted to ghetto ethics, because they didn’t understand where liberty and the high trust society came from. But now that we do (or at least I do) we must base any argument that we deem ethically superior on a set of property rights that is a net gain, not a net loss, for the population. This is very difficult for Rothbardians to swallow, but pride and personal investment in a failed ideology are less important than the achievement of freedom.