(revised and expanded)(worth repeating) (from 2014)THE PROBLEM IS LAW NOT BELIEF
[I]t’s true that aggression is immoral, and it’s true that for people to rationally cooperate aggression must be illegal. But this is a deceptively incomplete statement, because we all intuit that aggression is a bad thing, but we almost all differ in what one can or cannot aggress against. No one argues that aggression is immoral. Where ‘immoral means’ violates the limits of rational cooperation by imposing costs upon others that produce a disincentive to cooperate and an incentive to retaliate.
But is it rational for humans to join a voluntary, anarchic polity, if the basis of **LAW** is “non-aggression against intersubjectively verifiable property”, or must the basis of law be either based on something other than aggression, or broader in scope than intersubjectively verifiable property?
What is the minimum basis for the law upon which it becomes rational to join a voluntary, anarchic polity?
If we have a choice between:
(a) a Totalitarian InvoluntaryOrder society like communist China, and Russia.
(a) a Totalitarian State Capitalist society, like say, contemporary China and Russia.
(b) a Napoleonic, prior-restraint, contemporary social democracy like Germany.
(c) a Common Law, restitutionary, contemporary social democracy, like say the States.
(d) an Anarchic polity in which one CAN bring suit against immoral and unethical actions (say, blackmail, and fraud by omission).
(e) an Anarchic polity where we cannot bring suit against immoral and unethical actions; and as such, unethical and immoral actions are expressly licensed by the law, and retribution for immoral and unethical actions is forbidden.
Then:
1) Which of these will which people of which moral biases, choose?
2) How will the territory and trade representatives of that polity be treated by competing polities? (They will be boycotted.)
3) How will members of that polity be treated by members of the competing polities? (Answer: They will exterminated.)
I think that an analysis of those questions produces an obvious, and remarkably consistent answer. That is, that eitheraggression is the incorrect test of peaceful cooperation, or intersubjectively verifiable property is an insufficient test of the scope of property that must be protected from violation, or more likely both.
COOPERATION
Cooperation is disproportionately more productive than individual production. We evolved to cooperate when possible. But it is only beneficial if it is mutually productive, rather than asymmetric in result, and parasitic.
The current proceeds of anthropology, genetics, and cognitive science, tell us that violations of the evolutionary preference for cooperation, are reducible to ‘free riding’: that is non-contribution. Since in any set of individuals, if we do not require productive contribution, then some are the victims of free riding (parasitism) and others benefit from free riding (parasitism).
MORALITY
If we analyze the common prohibitions of all moral codes under all family structures, and we remove moral constraints that are purely ritualistic, these moral codes are universally reducible to necessary prohibitions on what we would call ‘property violations’ in an effort to facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation.
Evolutionary, Biological, Intuitionistic, Moral Prohibition Spectrum:
1) Agression: Harm/Oppression,
2) Free Riding: Parasitism
3) Trust: Subversion/Betrayal/Cheating,
4) Purity: Inobservance of Norms/Behavioral impurity/Pollution
All of these prohibitions are reducible to shareholder rights and obligations.
Humans universally demonstrate a greater interest in punishing moral violations than we demonstrate self-interest. In fact, we justify our pre-cognitive moral punishments without even being able to articulate why we hold them. We are wired by evolution for morality.
We evolved language and punishments for violations of these moral intuitions in the form of criminal, ethical, and moral prohibitions:
1. Violence (asymmetry of force)
2. Theft (asymmetry of control)
3. Fraud (false information)
4. Omission (Omitting information)
5. Obscurantism (Obscuring information)
6. Obstruction (Inhibiting someone else’s transaction)
7. Externalization (externalizing costs of any transaction)
8. Free Riding (using externalities for self-benefit)
9. Socializing Losses (externalization to commons)
10. Privatizing Gains (appropriation of commons)
11. Rent Seeking (organizational free riding)
12. Corruption ( organized rent seeking)
13. Conspiracy (organized indirect theft)
14. Extortion (Organized direct theft)
15. Conversion (Religious or normative theft of norms)
16. Immigration. (dilution of norms, institutions, genes)
17. War (organized violence for the purpose of theft)
18. Conquest. (reorganization of all property and relations)
19. Genocide. (extermination of kin and genetic future)
PROPERTY
We can empirically observe that people treat a broad spectrum of things as their property, and that they intuit violations of that property, and act to defend that property. Those things that people seek to acquire, accumulate and preserve are:
I. Self:
Life, Body, Memories, Mind, Attention, Time, and Liberty
II. Status and Class (reputation)
Social Status
Reputation
III. Kin and Interpersonal (Relationship) Property
Mates (access to sex/reproduction)
Children (genetic reproduction)
Consanguineous Relations (tribal and family ties)
IV. Sustainable Patterns of Reproduction, Production, Distribution and Trade
Friends, Associates and Cooperative Relations
Trade Routes
V. Several (Personal) Property
Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”
Physical Body and Several Property: Those things we claim a monopoly of control over.
VI. Shareholder Property
Shares in property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (claims for partial ownership)
VII. Title Property (Weights and Measures)
Trademarks and Brands (prohibitions on fraudulent transfers within a geography).
VIII. Common Property, or “Commons” (Community Property)
Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.”
(i) Informational commons: public speech, real-time and recorded media.
(ii) Informal (Normative) Institutions: Our norms: manners, ethics and morals. Informal institutional property is nearly impossible to quantify and price. The costs are subjective and consists of forgone opportunities.
(iii) Physical Commons: the territory, it’s waterways, parks, buildings, improvements and infrastructure.
(iv) Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws. Formal institutional property is easy to price. costs are visible. And the productivity of the social order is at least marginally measurable.
(v) Monuments (art and artifacts).
Monuments claim territory, demonstrate wealth, and provide one of the longest most invariable normative and economic returns that any culture can construct as a demonstration of conspicuous production (wealth), and as such, conspicuous excellence. (hence why competing monuments represent an invasion. Temples, Churches, Museums, Sculptures being the most obvious examples of cultural claim or conquest. )
SO, THEN, WHAT IS EMPIRICALLY OBSERVABLE OBJECTIVE MORALITY?
If we eliminate all prohibitions of parasitism (imposed costs) then what moral actions remain?
(i) Productive (non-parasitic, increase in subjective value);
(ii) Truthful (Fully Informed);
(iii) Warrantied (by oath);
(iv) Voluntary Transfer of Property;
(v) Free of Imposed Cost by Externality.
It is those criteria that define an ethical (interpersonally moral) and moral (externally moral) action. And any action that does not meet those criteria is not ethical and moral.
The simple rule of ethical and moral action: “My actions cannot cause another to bear a cost against his property-en-toto.”
WHAT MEANS OF SURVIVAL REMAIN IF WE PROHIBIT THE IMPOSITION OF COSTS?
(1) Dividends from the construction and maintenance of the voluntary organization of production, distribution, and trade paid for by forgoing opportunities for parasitic consumption (acting ethically and morally).
(2) One gains access to opportunity for cooperation and consumption in the market.
(3) One gains earnings from the personal production of goods and services in the market for goods and services. (income from profits)
(4) Dividends for maintenance of the commons in all its forms.
(5) Dividends for the policing (defense) of the commons in all its forms.
COMPETITION AND MORALITY
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ECONOMICS
We can judge economic impacts of high trust societies that practice near total prohibition on criminal, unethical and immoral actions. And we can compare those to low trust societies that suppress fewer unethical and immoral actions.
TRUST: ECONOMIC VELOCITY IS DETERMINED BY (LIMITED BY) TRANSACTION COSTS
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TIME: ECONOMIC VELOCITY IS DETERMINED BY (LIMITED BY) THE MEANS OF IDENTIFYING NEW LAW (PROHIBITIONS ON PARASITISM)
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COMMONS: COMMONS ARE A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
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OBJECTIVITY OF NORMS: GOOD, USELESS AND BAD – JUST LIKE GENES
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POLITICS
(text) (question)
SUFFICIENCY : DEMAND FOR AUTHORITY VS DEMAND FOR LIBERTY
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SO, DOES THE NON-AGGRESSION PRINCIPLE HOLD?
So under what reasoning, would it be logical to support the Non-Aggression Principle under Intersubjectively Verifiable Property (NAP/IVP) as the basis for the law, which explicitly licenses unethical and immoral action and prohibits retribution against unethical and immoral action?
The NAP/IVP has been a detriment to liberty wherever advocates argue that it is a sufficient means of determining moral and legal rules of cooperation. Because it’s not.
And we cannot pursue an alternative to the existing high trust society without providing people with an alternative that is morally SUPERIOR to the state. And the NAP/IVP fails that test.
CONVERSELY: PROPERTARIANISM’S PROPERTY-EN-TOTO
Conversely, imposition against, or aggression against, property-en-toto. Property-en-toto: meaning that which humans demonstrate as their property by acting to acquire it, defending it, and retaliating against impositions of costs upon it.
And where they have expended resources, time and effort in the accumulation of that property without imposing costs upon others property that has been accumulated by the same lack of imposition of costs.
And where imposition of costs is performed by violence, theft, fraud, fraud by suggestion, fraud by obscurantism, fraud by omission, theft by constructed externality, free-riding, privatizing commons, socializing losses, conspiracy, conversion, immigration, invasion, conquest, and genocide.
NON AGGRESSION HOLDS ONLY UNDER ARISTOCRATIC ETHICS AND NOT UNDER ROTHBARDIAN COSMOPOLITAN LOW TRUST GHETTO ETHICS
So the non-aggression principle holds under Propertarian ethics, and it fails under Rothbardian ethics. And to state the principle of non-aggression without stating also what cannot be aggressed against, is an act of fraud: fraud by omission and fraud by suggestion. Rothbard was an advocate for fraud. Rothbardian libertinism is a fraudulent claim for the production of a condition of liberty.
ANARCHY IS INSUFFICIENT FOR LIBERTY. LIBERTY REQUIRES NOMOCRACY: PROPERTARIAN NOMOCRACY.
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Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev.