Category: Natural Law and Reciprocity

PROPERTARIANISM FOR FASHY FRIENDS

by Joel Davis

Some ‘Fashy’ friends asked me to explain Propertarianism.

Essentially, ‘Propertarianism’ is an attempt at unifying the social sciences.

When attempting to reason a political system from this unified science, those of us who, in my opinion, really understand it, all seem to come to the same conclusion: Market Fascism (Meritocratic Aristocracy) provides the only possible, logical and scientific solution.

By Market fascism we mean ‘markets in everything, and intolerance for anything else’.

We also start without the presumption that there is superior value in cooperation at any cost. There isn’t value to cooperation at any cost. So, the first question the philosophy asks is this; “Why shouldn’t I use force against others?”. Why shouldn’t I engage in violence, harm, theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy, invasion, and conquest?

And, to answer this question, we rely upon the obvious rationality. But what determines rationality? Marginal utility (total costs/total benefits). We use force against others when we perceive it to be marginally profitable to do so, as if we didn’t perceive the use of force to provide us with benefits which outweighed the costs of using it, why would we?

And, as all law and therefore government fundamentally consists of the application of force (as laws without force are merely words), either to resolve a conflict, or to enforce a behavior through threat, essentially what we are asking is, “what should the law be?”, or “what form of government should we use if we are to choose to cooperate rather than prey upon one another?”.

By reason (marginal utility) we not only understand why and how governments govern as they do, we may also determine what form of government benefits us the most, and how to achieve it.

The question then becomes, how do we measure the marginal utility of force? The answer is property.

(Hence why we call it “Propertarianism”)

Why?

To first answer that question we must first define ‘property’. We can possess things without the consent of others, by defending them. We can hold property by the consent of others, and together, defend abuses of it. We can create an insurer of our property and grant one another rights to use this insurer to defend and restore abuses of it.

Our property, whether held by possession, norm of property, or property rights defended by an insurer, is something we control the use of. It is the best unit by which we may measure the marginal utility of force because control is by definition the application of force in the successful pursuit of consequences, and why would we pursue consequences unless we desired them? And, why would we desire consequences that we didn’t perceive as net beneficial?

Thus, we appropriate interests in kin, mates, relationships, goods, services, information, institutions, and polities in pursuit of marginal utility.

In light of this, what strategy will we maximize our marginal utility? Game Theory has given us an answer, the answer is reciprocity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

Game Theory demonstrates that if we can negotiate mutually beneficial exchanges with others (cooperate), this is of greater long-term marginal profitability than using force to gain unreciprocated benefits (conflict). The marginal utility of violence only rises higher than the marginal utility of peace when the net cost of peace rises higher than the net cost of violence (when mutually beneficial exchange cannot be negotiated).

Therefore, we desire maximum cooperation within our society and between our society and other societies, to enable our society to gain maximum collective marginal utility, as by cooperating with our society, in return it will therefore be able to provide ourselves and our kin with maximum marginal utility.

However, for cooperation to reach optimum levels, all those who consume greater benefits than they contribute (free-riders) must be forced to reciprocate to preserve the marginal utility of cooperation, if you can get something for free why pay for it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operation_(evolution)

Thus, we shouldn’t use force against people who are marginally beneficial to cooperate with or marginally neutral to leave alone, as the costs of force would outweigh the benefits. However, we should use force against people who are marginally costly (if they are either straight up aggressive, or free-riders).

Therefore, by raising the costs of free-riding and aggression against our kin, we maximize the incentive to either find some way to benefit us or ‘stay out of our way’.

How do we maximize the costs of free-riding and aggression against our kin?

By establishing the most powerful form of sovereignty we can. We can establish the most powerful form of sovereignty that we can through the application of reciprocity to the common law. The common law discovers new means of violating reciprocity with every case it adjudicates. It’s purely empirical. Evolutionary. Unplanned. We can stop every form of parasitism from murder, harm, theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy, and invasion, to conquest.

By establishing sovereignty using the natural law of reciprocity to provide decidability in the common law, we leave people no alternative to survive but self production, and markets in everything.

Therefore, we advocate a Martial Aristocracy which charges the maximum price it can in return for its’ protection (taxation), this maximum is determined by the threshold at which excessive taxation causes the market to diminish more than its’ protection is worth (as if you raise taxes too high, you stifle the economy and the amount of money people have left to pay taxes diminishes).

Thus, we seek the most powerful government possible, and we may achieve this through taxing the freest markets possible as much as possible.