(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.
Category: Natural Law and Reciprocity
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Luxury vs Necessity In Ethics: Parlor Games vs Politics
The difference between the structure of my arguments, and the more common of those in moral philosophy, is one that is common in western philosophy. Because western philosophy was created and developed by its aristocratic classes, and those classes that performed sufficiently to afford the luxury of philosophy, and sought enfranchisement. Namely: necessity. Marx, for all his error, does not make this mistake, nor does perhaps our most influential moral philosopher: Adam Smith against whom Marx, like Freud against Nietzsche, Marx is a reactionary. So, the difference in our approaches to philosophy, is that I start with necessity, and then choose preference from the available options. From that position I take the mutually moral and scientific requirements that (a) it is only moral to compel necessities not preferences. (b) the only moral preferential political action is one that others voluntarily comply with. (c) the evidence is that most of our attempts to interfere with social orders, other than increasing participation in them, has proven to be a failure when we attempt to achieve ends, rather than provide means. There are many preferences that we could seek to pursue, the externalities of which are counter productive to the prosperity that decreases the possibility of choices. As such, philosophical discourse on luxuries is interesting. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that what we are discussing is the luxuries that our implementation of necessities has made possible. Discussing luxuries is a nice parlor game. It is like young men fantasizing about which supercar they can buy if they save for the next ten years. But I do not work on philosophy for entertainment. I work on it for the purpose of identifying possible solutions to looming problems: what is necessary for continued expansion of our ability to cooperate in a division of knowledge and labor so vast that we can exist with such wealth?
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Luxury vs Necessity In Ethics: Parlor Games vs Politics
The difference between the structure of my arguments, and the more common of those in moral philosophy, is one that is common in western philosophy. Because western philosophy was created and developed by its aristocratic classes, and those classes that performed sufficiently to afford the luxury of philosophy, and sought enfranchisement. Namely: necessity. Marx, for all his error, does not make this mistake, nor does perhaps our most influential moral philosopher: Adam Smith against whom Marx, like Freud against Nietzsche, Marx is a reactionary. So, the difference in our approaches to philosophy, is that I start with necessity, and then choose preference from the available options. From that position I take the mutually moral and scientific requirements that (a) it is only moral to compel necessities not preferences. (b) the only moral preferential political action is one that others voluntarily comply with. (c) the evidence is that most of our attempts to interfere with social orders, other than increasing participation in them, has proven to be a failure when we attempt to achieve ends, rather than provide means. There are many preferences that we could seek to pursue, the externalities of which are counter productive to the prosperity that decreases the possibility of choices. As such, philosophical discourse on luxuries is interesting. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that what we are discussing is the luxuries that our implementation of necessities has made possible. Discussing luxuries is a nice parlor game. It is like young men fantasizing about which supercar they can buy if they save for the next ten years. But I do not work on philosophy for entertainment. I work on it for the purpose of identifying possible solutions to looming problems: what is necessary for continued expansion of our ability to cooperate in a division of knowledge and labor so vast that we can exist with such wealth?
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Reforming Libertarian Ethics
FAIR WARNING (I dont engage in justification. I try to determine the truth. And so if you manage to get through this little essay, you might not emerge with your high investment in rothbardian libertarianism intact.) PART 1 THE AXIOM OF SELF OWNERSHIP Regarding: “…the self-ownership axiom is the only one of those under consideration that is sound…” Ethical statements cannot be ‘sound’ since that’s an allegorical and untestable statement. The testable term is ‘internally consistent’. However internal consistency (error free construction) doesn’t tell us anything about external correspondence (truth). Instead, ethical statements must adhere to a higher standard of argument than the internally consistent: Ethical arguments must be: a) preferable (to their absence) b) necessary c) sufficient d) possible e) durable (survivable over time) How does the self ownership Axiom survive this test? a) The S.O. axiom Is probably preferable (I can’t imagine a rational creature for whom it wouldn’t be preferable. I think it’s a precondition of autonomous sentience. So I have to stipulate that while I can’t determine the preferences of others, that it is hard for me to understand how it isn’t preferable for any being for whom action in real time is necessary for survival.) b) it may or may not be sufficient; c) it is certainly possible since it’s demonstrably extant; d) it is rationally, praxeologically, and demonstrably durable. Self Ownership and the NAP are very hard to argue with, except with regard to sufficiency. Are Self Ownership, Private Property, and NAP sufficient? They are sufficient for the purposes that Hoppe has put them to: which is the ability solve (almost) all problems of human cooperation while relying on self ownership, private property, and NAP. The questions are: a) whether the these rules are sufficient to obtain sufficient voluntary adoption and adherence such that this libertarian state of affairs are possible? b) is there an alternative axiom or set of axioms that permits the deduction of the various solutions to voluntary cooperation? c) is there a superior alternative axiom or set of axioms that permit the deduction of the various solutions to the problem of liberty (voluntary cooperation). It would be unscientific to suggest that no other argument exists other than {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. (Self ownership, Private Property, Homesteading, Voluntary Exchange and Non Aggression). It is also pretty hard to imagine something more compact with the same explanatory power. Why? Because these three statements: 1) Metaphysics: Self Ownership:(Existence); 2) Epistemology: Private Property with Homesteading and Voluntary Exchange :(Scope); 3) Ethics: NonAggressionPrinciple:(Test); …are pretty narrow requirements for an axiomatic system. In fact, one statement per major domain of philosophy is so compact that it’s pretty hard to argue that it can be improved upon. Instead, it’s actually kind of awe-inspiring that all of the philosophy of human cooperation can be reduced to just these three statements. Even better, technically all five philosophical domains are answered by SO,PP+H+VE,NAP: 4) Politics: Politics is solved by market, anarchy and voluntary insurance organizations. 5) Aesthetics: Aesthetics is satisfied by the fact that we stipulate that liberty is desirable. So, if you’re asking the question, ‘how can we cooperate peacefully and voluntarily?’ and Hoppe has demonstrated that from these simple axioms we can cooperate peacefully and voluntarily, then it isn’t NECESSARY to devise an alternative axiomatic system. (I”m not even sure it’s helpful) It may be accurate to state that we not claim (actually, that **HE** not claim) no other set of statements would be superior (even if it is improbable) . But that is not to say that it is necessary, since he has demonstrated them to be sufficient for the deduction of all the institutions formal and informal for a voluntary system of cooperation. WEAKNESSES? SUFFICIENCY. (Now, lest you assume I am an apologist, I’ll take this a little farther.) “BUT” (and it’s a big but) is the set {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} sufficient for voluntary and therefore preferential adoption of such set, either empirically (historically) or rationally (praxeologically)? And I think that is probably where it fails to sustain scrutiny, because we can demonstrate that the demand for external intervention (the state) does not decrease sufficiently in any population, to permit the rational and praxeologically testable, preferential and demonstrably voluntary, adoption of anarchy, in any population by other than by a tiny minority – at least as it stands. So while {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} may be sufficient for the DEDUCTION of all means of voluntary cooperation, it does not provide sufficient INCENTIVE to reduce demand for external (state) intervention by a sufficient body of the population such that the a self-interested monopoly bureaucracy is not necessary for either: (a) the systematic enforcement, of private property for the prevention of free riding, theft and violence, or; (b) necessary for the systematic violation of private property to compensate for predation, as well as preventing theft and violence. Again, it appears that {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} is sufficient for deduction of the informal and formal institutions of voluntary cooperation, but provides an insufficient incentive for the voluntary adoption of informal and informal institutions of voluntary cooperation. In that case, if the incentives are insufficient, then we have two possible means of constructing anarchy under {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}: (i) involuntary coercion under threat of boycott, ostracization, and/or threat of violence. (ii) improvement of incentives such that anarchy is voluntarily adoptable (praxeologically possible). (iii) A combination of both. So, let us see if either or both solutions are possible or necessary. HISTORY History tells us that liberty only exists where nearly all involuntary transfers of property are prohibited – including those which are not visible or known of. And the few circumstances where all involuntary transfers of property were prohibited was limited to european warriors who granted each other prohibition on involuntary transfer (property rights) in exchange for military service. Property rights were a ‘right’ that was obtained in a contract for voluntary exchange. The incentive to gain access to the privilege of private property was one that was both materially, and reproductively advantageous. These property rights were an artifact of the accumulation of wealth first in simple goods, cattle and horses, later in land and built capital. Fighters who took risks, kept their winnings. Later, all free men kept their property. Later under manorialism and agrarian farming, a married couple was needed for the rental of land. This delayed marriage, and forced the absolute nuclear family that we understand today. When the church sought to break up the large landholders they interfered with inheritance rights, which are the source of the family structure, and consequently, the source of moral code variation, throughout the world. To break up the families they prohibited inbreeding out to as many as eight or even twelve generations, and granted women property rights. The combination of property rights for all, the near elimination of free riding, even by family members (offspring), and the persistence of the militia as a fighting force, created the high trust universal social order we call the protestant ethic. The enlightenment’s intellectual effort was an experiment in both justifying the middle class seizure of political power, and transferring the rights of the upper and ‘middle’ classes (small business owners : ie: farmers) to all land holders. The culmination of this experiment was the near prohibition on involuntary transfers that was embodied in the American Constitution. The aristocracy of everyone who had a stake in the preservation of property rights. (Unfortunately, that experiment has shown that universal enfranchisement, especially the enfranchisement of women, was incompatible with liberty, because participatory government by those whose interest is to seek rents and free riding, is an organized means of disempowering armed property owners, and systematically removing their property rights. Thereby returning us to the consanguineous or serial-marriage family structure in corporate (state) form. LIBERTARIAN ETHICS: NECESSITY. BUT SUFFICIENCY? It’s kind of hard to disagree with libertarian ethics as stated in {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. If only because they’re necessary, and the alternative to disagreeing with libertarian ethics, is demonstrably, a nearly universally undesirable state of affairs involving constant property violations (theft and violence) that make cooperation in a division of labor all but impossible – even among members of a consanguineous community of primitive hunter gatherers it may be beneficial. Lets look at classes of involuntary transfers of property as people demonstrate them: (1) Criminal statements are those that involve violence and theft. (2) Ethical statements are those which prohibit involuntary transfer of property by asymmetry of information between those internal to the action. (3) Moral statements are those which by definition apply to unknown persons external to the action: anonymous involuntary transfers of property. (4) Conspiratorial Statements: Statements of Political Morality (conspiracy) are those which prevent the organized and systemic involuntary transfer of property, whether criminal, ethical, or moral. The NAP only has a mechanism for fairly simple, obvious property violations: criminal violence and theft of class (1) The NAP has no mechanism for any of class (2) or class (3), and arguably sanctions and encourages these involuntary transfers by NOT preventing them. The NAP prevents class (1) PORTIONS of class (4), but it does not prohibit class (2) and (3) portions of class (4). Now, if you are a member of the majority tribe, you will suppress (1) to increase trust and therefore productivity. But if you are an extractive minority tribe without political power, you may in fact prefer to preserve (1) as a means of competing with and draining the majority of resources. We libertarians tend to laud intersubjectively verifiable actions. But again, those actions that are intersubjectively verifiable may be visible, they may be verifiable. But they are trivially primitive in scope because they are limited to merely theft and violence – and only to fraud where it is specifically defended against by written warranty in advance. As such intersubjective verifiability is, like the NAP too simple a test for the suppression of ethical and moral violations that are required for the development of sufficient trust that liberty can exist by voluntary adoption, because the demand for a third party to prevent these transgressions by way of law-making, and institutional formation, is all but eliminated. The NAP is insufficient criteria for the suppression of sufficient involuntary transfers of property to counter the demonstrated universal human disdain for ‘cheating’. This is because private property open to intersubjective verifiability is insufficient a description for the types of property people demonstrate that they TREAT as their property. So it is one thing to state that we can deduce all necessary formal and informal institutions for the support of private property from the {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. It is another to state that we can either deduce sufficient institutions formal and informal, or create sufficient incentives for the voluntary adoption of those institutions, from {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. Just as it is demonstrable both rationally and empirically that socialism is impossible because of the impossibility of twin problems of economic calculation, and the absence of incentives, we also must observe that the set {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} is demonstrably impossible because of the impossibility of suppressing sufficient cheating that people will possess the rational incentives, because planning and organizing are higher risk and more expensive under a low trust ethic, to adopt {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. This is a very damning criticism of the sufficiency of {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. Or correctly stated, it is a just as damning and inescapable criticism of the NAP, as economic calculation and incentives were for the socialist means of production. Once you understand this you will realize that {SO,PP+H+VE} survive, but that {NAP} is as great a logical failure as was the socialist means of production. It is non rational to ask humans to adopt the NAP since it suppresses crime, but not ethical, moral, and arguably, not even conspiratorial, violations of one’s property rights, as people demonstrate their understanding of property rights by their behavior. PART 2: THE RESISTANCE TO LIBERTY: GENDERS, RACES, CLASSES, AND AGES: VOLUNTARY COOPERATION, COMPETITIVENESS AND PROPORTIONALITY. (undone) =================== POST SCRIPT 1 ————– (a) the market cannot suppress sufficient ‘cheating’ that property rights will be willingly given in exchange (respected) by masses of individuals; nor that the demand for third party intervention (government) will be suppressed as a substitute for failure to suppress ‘cheating’. Nor that those who specialize in organizing against the market will forgo their opportunity to exploit this demand for intervention. (b) the source of property rights (and liberty as we know it) was not natural, was the product of a combination of the organized application of violence to both concentrate capital, and to suppress all forms of theft, cheating and free riding; as well as certain rare genetic biases in the west, the fertility and water availability of land, the hostile winters, and forcible destruction of familialism and tribalism by the church, so that it could interfere with inheritance practices and purchase land from the large land holders. (c) Given the diversity of reproductive strategies, and the different capabilities of the classes, private property is undesirable and poses a threat to many of their reproductive abilities. We are no longer equal enough, as we were under agrarianism and animal husbandry, that the marginal difference in our abilities is neutralized by mental and emotional discipline. While most humans can be disciplined and tamed for farm labor, not all humans can be taught to calculate using abstract concepts. As such the division of knowledge and labor provides sufficiently asymmetric rewards that the incentive to conform to property rights is non-rational for most actors. (d) Hoppe correctly deduced that from the institution of private property we can in fact solve all institutional problems necessary for cooperation at scale in a complex division of knowledge and labor. Unfortunately, this state of affairs is undesirable by a majority of the population whose reproductive strategies rely on tactics outside of voluntary cooperation in the market, for success. (e) Private property is contrary the the female reproductive strategy. Nuclear marriage is the optimum compromise between male and female reproductive differences. (f) Therefore it is praxeologically non-rational, and anti-scientific, to suggest that liberty will be willingly adopted without the forcible suppression of the reproductive ability of the lower classes, and the ability of women to return to their natural reproductive bias, by restoring communal property via the state. (g) As such, there are three options available to those of us who desire liberty, that we may employ one or all of: i) forcible application of organize violence to re-obtain our liberty. ii) modification of the ethics of liberty to suppress sufficient means of ‘cheating’ that demand for third party intervention (the state) will be diminished. iii) extension of the hoppeian model of competing private institutions to preserve his solution to the problem of monopoly bureaucracy, yet permit the resolution of reproductive differences between classes which cannot be solved by individual action in the market, and only collective action via organizational proxies. At my present level of skill I believe this is about as simply as I can articulate the idea. Rothbard used the low trust of the ghetto, and it was a failure because, regardless of rothbard’s arguments, any person from a high trust society will reject rothbardian ethics as immoral. Hoppe used the high trust of the homogenous polity to restore the city state, but did not answer the problem of incentives in the absence of the absolute nuclear family. My solution is to acknowledge the heterogeneity of the polity and to attempt to offer ethical and institutional solutions to the problem of cooperation in heterogeneous polities. Because what we are doing demonstrably hasn’t succeeded, and with what we have learnd over the past twenty years about human cognitive and gentic biases, it is non-rational to think that we have provided sufficient incentives for the voluntary adoption of property rights (and in particular, high trust property rights, not the low trust property rights of rothbard). Pretty damning criticism I think. But we need to keep advancing our philosophy until we find an answer. My answer might not be right, but it is likely to be less wrong. Cheers. ————- POST SCRIPT 2 ————- One last simple fact: people demonstrate that they are willing to pay something like twice as much to punish a cheater as they are desirous of personal gain. (at least in-group). This means that decisions of rational actors are morally non-netural, and this further erodes the misesian and rothbardian ordinality of preferences, as well as the value of prices, as well as the argument to indifference in all transactions. Prices are less important than signals and far less important than the suppression of cheating. If you combine this with both differences in reproductive strategies and the different abilities of the classes, then the argument that prices (and economics) are more material than morals falls. People will act morally if you suppress immorality well enough. but since their dislike of immorality is higher than their desire for other satisfactions, you must suppress far more than rothbard’s ghetto ethics if you want the obtain even basic private property rights. And you must suppress nearly all cheating if you want to eliminate the demand for government. As far as we know, this level of suppression of cheating can only be accomplished in a small homogenous outbred polity. (scandinavia). And it is possible that it is a genetic bias (I am not sold on that). (I think I went to far again too fast with that bit… sorry.) ———— POST SCRIPT 3 ———— One more try at the elevator speech. To reduce the demand for intervention, and obtain property right voluntarily, the standard of etics must be far and above those of the NAP. They must extend to all involuntary transfers, of all kinds, under all circumstances. and as far as I can tell, that requires the right of ostracization (exclusion). Hoppe was right so far as he took it. On everything. His generation did not have the science, so they had to rely on deduction alone. We have science. So I use it.
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Reforming Libertarian Ethics
FAIR WARNING (I dont engage in justification. I try to determine the truth. And so if you manage to get through this little essay, you might not emerge with your high investment in rothbardian libertarianism intact.) PART 1 THE AXIOM OF SELF OWNERSHIP Regarding: “…the self-ownership axiom is the only one of those under consideration that is sound…” Ethical statements cannot be ‘sound’ since that’s an allegorical and untestable statement. The testable term is ‘internally consistent’. However internal consistency (error free construction) doesn’t tell us anything about external correspondence (truth). Instead, ethical statements must adhere to a higher standard of argument than the internally consistent: Ethical arguments must be: a) preferable (to their absence) b) necessary c) sufficient d) possible e) durable (survivable over time) How does the self ownership Axiom survive this test? a) The S.O. axiom Is probably preferable (I can’t imagine a rational creature for whom it wouldn’t be preferable. I think it’s a precondition of autonomous sentience. So I have to stipulate that while I can’t determine the preferences of others, that it is hard for me to understand how it isn’t preferable for any being for whom action in real time is necessary for survival.) b) it may or may not be sufficient; c) it is certainly possible since it’s demonstrably extant; d) it is rationally, praxeologically, and demonstrably durable. Self Ownership and the NAP are very hard to argue with, except with regard to sufficiency. Are Self Ownership, Private Property, and NAP sufficient? They are sufficient for the purposes that Hoppe has put them to: which is the ability solve (almost) all problems of human cooperation while relying on self ownership, private property, and NAP. The questions are: a) whether the these rules are sufficient to obtain sufficient voluntary adoption and adherence such that this libertarian state of affairs are possible? b) is there an alternative axiom or set of axioms that permits the deduction of the various solutions to voluntary cooperation? c) is there a superior alternative axiom or set of axioms that permit the deduction of the various solutions to the problem of liberty (voluntary cooperation). It would be unscientific to suggest that no other argument exists other than {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. (Self ownership, Private Property, Homesteading, Voluntary Exchange and Non Aggression). It is also pretty hard to imagine something more compact with the same explanatory power. Why? Because these three statements: 1) Metaphysics: Self Ownership:(Existence); 2) Epistemology: Private Property with Homesteading and Voluntary Exchange :(Scope); 3) Ethics: NonAggressionPrinciple:(Test); …are pretty narrow requirements for an axiomatic system. In fact, one statement per major domain of philosophy is so compact that it’s pretty hard to argue that it can be improved upon. Instead, it’s actually kind of awe-inspiring that all of the philosophy of human cooperation can be reduced to just these three statements. Even better, technically all five philosophical domains are answered by SO,PP+H+VE,NAP: 4) Politics: Politics is solved by market, anarchy and voluntary insurance organizations. 5) Aesthetics: Aesthetics is satisfied by the fact that we stipulate that liberty is desirable. So, if you’re asking the question, ‘how can we cooperate peacefully and voluntarily?’ and Hoppe has demonstrated that from these simple axioms we can cooperate peacefully and voluntarily, then it isn’t NECESSARY to devise an alternative axiomatic system. (I”m not even sure it’s helpful) It may be accurate to state that we not claim (actually, that **HE** not claim) no other set of statements would be superior (even if it is improbable) . But that is not to say that it is necessary, since he has demonstrated them to be sufficient for the deduction of all the institutions formal and informal for a voluntary system of cooperation. WEAKNESSES? SUFFICIENCY. (Now, lest you assume I am an apologist, I’ll take this a little farther.) “BUT” (and it’s a big but) is the set {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} sufficient for voluntary and therefore preferential adoption of such set, either empirically (historically) or rationally (praxeologically)? And I think that is probably where it fails to sustain scrutiny, because we can demonstrate that the demand for external intervention (the state) does not decrease sufficiently in any population, to permit the rational and praxeologically testable, preferential and demonstrably voluntary, adoption of anarchy, in any population by other than by a tiny minority – at least as it stands. So while {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} may be sufficient for the DEDUCTION of all means of voluntary cooperation, it does not provide sufficient INCENTIVE to reduce demand for external (state) intervention by a sufficient body of the population such that the a self-interested monopoly bureaucracy is not necessary for either: (a) the systematic enforcement, of private property for the prevention of free riding, theft and violence, or; (b) necessary for the systematic violation of private property to compensate for predation, as well as preventing theft and violence. Again, it appears that {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} is sufficient for deduction of the informal and formal institutions of voluntary cooperation, but provides an insufficient incentive for the voluntary adoption of informal and informal institutions of voluntary cooperation. In that case, if the incentives are insufficient, then we have two possible means of constructing anarchy under {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}: (i) involuntary coercion under threat of boycott, ostracization, and/or threat of violence. (ii) improvement of incentives such that anarchy is voluntarily adoptable (praxeologically possible). (iii) A combination of both. So, let us see if either or both solutions are possible or necessary. HISTORY History tells us that liberty only exists where nearly all involuntary transfers of property are prohibited – including those which are not visible or known of. And the few circumstances where all involuntary transfers of property were prohibited was limited to european warriors who granted each other prohibition on involuntary transfer (property rights) in exchange for military service. Property rights were a ‘right’ that was obtained in a contract for voluntary exchange. The incentive to gain access to the privilege of private property was one that was both materially, and reproductively advantageous. These property rights were an artifact of the accumulation of wealth first in simple goods, cattle and horses, later in land and built capital. Fighters who took risks, kept their winnings. Later, all free men kept their property. Later under manorialism and agrarian farming, a married couple was needed for the rental of land. This delayed marriage, and forced the absolute nuclear family that we understand today. When the church sought to break up the large landholders they interfered with inheritance rights, which are the source of the family structure, and consequently, the source of moral code variation, throughout the world. To break up the families they prohibited inbreeding out to as many as eight or even twelve generations, and granted women property rights. The combination of property rights for all, the near elimination of free riding, even by family members (offspring), and the persistence of the militia as a fighting force, created the high trust universal social order we call the protestant ethic. The enlightenment’s intellectual effort was an experiment in both justifying the middle class seizure of political power, and transferring the rights of the upper and ‘middle’ classes (small business owners : ie: farmers) to all land holders. The culmination of this experiment was the near prohibition on involuntary transfers that was embodied in the American Constitution. The aristocracy of everyone who had a stake in the preservation of property rights. (Unfortunately, that experiment has shown that universal enfranchisement, especially the enfranchisement of women, was incompatible with liberty, because participatory government by those whose interest is to seek rents and free riding, is an organized means of disempowering armed property owners, and systematically removing their property rights. Thereby returning us to the consanguineous or serial-marriage family structure in corporate (state) form. LIBERTARIAN ETHICS: NECESSITY. BUT SUFFICIENCY? It’s kind of hard to disagree with libertarian ethics as stated in {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. If only because they’re necessary, and the alternative to disagreeing with libertarian ethics, is demonstrably, a nearly universally undesirable state of affairs involving constant property violations (theft and violence) that make cooperation in a division of labor all but impossible – even among members of a consanguineous community of primitive hunter gatherers it may be beneficial. Lets look at classes of involuntary transfers of property as people demonstrate them: (1) Criminal statements are those that involve violence and theft. (2) Ethical statements are those which prohibit involuntary transfer of property by asymmetry of information between those internal to the action. (3) Moral statements are those which by definition apply to unknown persons external to the action: anonymous involuntary transfers of property. (4) Conspiratorial Statements: Statements of Political Morality (conspiracy) are those which prevent the organized and systemic involuntary transfer of property, whether criminal, ethical, or moral. The NAP only has a mechanism for fairly simple, obvious property violations: criminal violence and theft of class (1) The NAP has no mechanism for any of class (2) or class (3), and arguably sanctions and encourages these involuntary transfers by NOT preventing them. The NAP prevents class (1) PORTIONS of class (4), but it does not prohibit class (2) and (3) portions of class (4). Now, if you are a member of the majority tribe, you will suppress (1) to increase trust and therefore productivity. But if you are an extractive minority tribe without political power, you may in fact prefer to preserve (1) as a means of competing with and draining the majority of resources. We libertarians tend to laud intersubjectively verifiable actions. But again, those actions that are intersubjectively verifiable may be visible, they may be verifiable. But they are trivially primitive in scope because they are limited to merely theft and violence – and only to fraud where it is specifically defended against by written warranty in advance. As such intersubjective verifiability is, like the NAP too simple a test for the suppression of ethical and moral violations that are required for the development of sufficient trust that liberty can exist by voluntary adoption, because the demand for a third party to prevent these transgressions by way of law-making, and institutional formation, is all but eliminated. The NAP is insufficient criteria for the suppression of sufficient involuntary transfers of property to counter the demonstrated universal human disdain for ‘cheating’. This is because private property open to intersubjective verifiability is insufficient a description for the types of property people demonstrate that they TREAT as their property. So it is one thing to state that we can deduce all necessary formal and informal institutions for the support of private property from the {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. It is another to state that we can either deduce sufficient institutions formal and informal, or create sufficient incentives for the voluntary adoption of those institutions, from {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. Just as it is demonstrable both rationally and empirically that socialism is impossible because of the impossibility of twin problems of economic calculation, and the absence of incentives, we also must observe that the set {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} is demonstrably impossible because of the impossibility of suppressing sufficient cheating that people will possess the rational incentives, because planning and organizing are higher risk and more expensive under a low trust ethic, to adopt {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. This is a very damning criticism of the sufficiency of {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. Or correctly stated, it is a just as damning and inescapable criticism of the NAP, as economic calculation and incentives were for the socialist means of production. Once you understand this you will realize that {SO,PP+H+VE} survive, but that {NAP} is as great a logical failure as was the socialist means of production. It is non rational to ask humans to adopt the NAP since it suppresses crime, but not ethical, moral, and arguably, not even conspiratorial, violations of one’s property rights, as people demonstrate their understanding of property rights by their behavior. PART 2: THE RESISTANCE TO LIBERTY: GENDERS, RACES, CLASSES, AND AGES: VOLUNTARY COOPERATION, COMPETITIVENESS AND PROPORTIONALITY. (undone) =================== POST SCRIPT 1 ————– (a) the market cannot suppress sufficient ‘cheating’ that property rights will be willingly given in exchange (respected) by masses of individuals; nor that the demand for third party intervention (government) will be suppressed as a substitute for failure to suppress ‘cheating’. Nor that those who specialize in organizing against the market will forgo their opportunity to exploit this demand for intervention. (b) the source of property rights (and liberty as we know it) was not natural, was the product of a combination of the organized application of violence to both concentrate capital, and to suppress all forms of theft, cheating and free riding; as well as certain rare genetic biases in the west, the fertility and water availability of land, the hostile winters, and forcible destruction of familialism and tribalism by the church, so that it could interfere with inheritance practices and purchase land from the large land holders. (c) Given the diversity of reproductive strategies, and the different capabilities of the classes, private property is undesirable and poses a threat to many of their reproductive abilities. We are no longer equal enough, as we were under agrarianism and animal husbandry, that the marginal difference in our abilities is neutralized by mental and emotional discipline. While most humans can be disciplined and tamed for farm labor, not all humans can be taught to calculate using abstract concepts. As such the division of knowledge and labor provides sufficiently asymmetric rewards that the incentive to conform to property rights is non-rational for most actors. (d) Hoppe correctly deduced that from the institution of private property we can in fact solve all institutional problems necessary for cooperation at scale in a complex division of knowledge and labor. Unfortunately, this state of affairs is undesirable by a majority of the population whose reproductive strategies rely on tactics outside of voluntary cooperation in the market, for success. (e) Private property is contrary the the female reproductive strategy. Nuclear marriage is the optimum compromise between male and female reproductive differences. (f) Therefore it is praxeologically non-rational, and anti-scientific, to suggest that liberty will be willingly adopted without the forcible suppression of the reproductive ability of the lower classes, and the ability of women to return to their natural reproductive bias, by restoring communal property via the state. (g) As such, there are three options available to those of us who desire liberty, that we may employ one or all of: i) forcible application of organize violence to re-obtain our liberty. ii) modification of the ethics of liberty to suppress sufficient means of ‘cheating’ that demand for third party intervention (the state) will be diminished. iii) extension of the hoppeian model of competing private institutions to preserve his solution to the problem of monopoly bureaucracy, yet permit the resolution of reproductive differences between classes which cannot be solved by individual action in the market, and only collective action via organizational proxies. At my present level of skill I believe this is about as simply as I can articulate the idea. Rothbard used the low trust of the ghetto, and it was a failure because, regardless of rothbard’s arguments, any person from a high trust society will reject rothbardian ethics as immoral. Hoppe used the high trust of the homogenous polity to restore the city state, but did not answer the problem of incentives in the absence of the absolute nuclear family. My solution is to acknowledge the heterogeneity of the polity and to attempt to offer ethical and institutional solutions to the problem of cooperation in heterogeneous polities. Because what we are doing demonstrably hasn’t succeeded, and with what we have learnd over the past twenty years about human cognitive and gentic biases, it is non-rational to think that we have provided sufficient incentives for the voluntary adoption of property rights (and in particular, high trust property rights, not the low trust property rights of rothbard). Pretty damning criticism I think. But we need to keep advancing our philosophy until we find an answer. My answer might not be right, but it is likely to be less wrong. Cheers. ————- POST SCRIPT 2 ————- One last simple fact: people demonstrate that they are willing to pay something like twice as much to punish a cheater as they are desirous of personal gain. (at least in-group). This means that decisions of rational actors are morally non-netural, and this further erodes the misesian and rothbardian ordinality of preferences, as well as the value of prices, as well as the argument to indifference in all transactions. Prices are less important than signals and far less important than the suppression of cheating. If you combine this with both differences in reproductive strategies and the different abilities of the classes, then the argument that prices (and economics) are more material than morals falls. People will act morally if you suppress immorality well enough. but since their dislike of immorality is higher than their desire for other satisfactions, you must suppress far more than rothbard’s ghetto ethics if you want the obtain even basic private property rights. And you must suppress nearly all cheating if you want to eliminate the demand for government. As far as we know, this level of suppression of cheating can only be accomplished in a small homogenous outbred polity. (scandinavia). And it is possible that it is a genetic bias (I am not sold on that). (I think I went to far again too fast with that bit… sorry.) ———— POST SCRIPT 3 ———— One more try at the elevator speech. To reduce the demand for intervention, and obtain property right voluntarily, the standard of etics must be far and above those of the NAP. They must extend to all involuntary transfers, of all kinds, under all circumstances. and as far as I can tell, that requires the right of ostracization (exclusion). Hoppe was right so far as he took it. On everything. His generation did not have the science, so they had to rely on deduction alone. We have science. So I use it.
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If you eliminate free riding in all its forms: violence, theft fraud, omission,
If you eliminate free riding in all its forms: violence, theft fraud, omission, obscurantism, externalization, socialization, privatization, corruption, conspiracy and conquest – then the only action remaining available to man is the voluntary exchange of private property.
Cooperation is only possible if we suppress all free riding. Thats what cooperating means.
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-14 09:43:00 UTC
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DEHUMANIZING – LIKE A VIDEO YOU CAN”T LOOK AWAY FROM? 🙂 (from elsewhere)(edited
DEHUMANIZING – LIKE A VIDEO YOU CAN”T LOOK AWAY FROM? 🙂
(from elsewhere)(edited)
Explaining the Propertarian perspective to an inquirer:
–“The fundamental difference in my perspective is that I reduce almost everything to a particular calculus using a particular grammar, after having observed that humans are, in the large part, acquisitive – even if acquisitive of non material things.
It’s a physical necessity that expensive life forms like ours remain acquisitive of so many things: experiences, knowledge, opportunities, relationships, mates, offspring, insurance, material goods – and particularly anything that we can inventory for later use.
Our emotions are reactions to changes in state of our assets. Our language is a process of aggregation and loading necessary to increasingly compress complexity. And our arguments largely justification and framing for both internal and external social protocol.
And that’s actually humiliating somehow. I find my work a bit like a video you can’t look away from: it’s both fascinating and, well, somewhat like discovering that the earth and man are not centers of the universe. Because in the end, it turns out we’re pretty simple. And most of what we do is social-dance protocol that signals conformity to norms while pursuing our self interest: acquisition.”–
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-12 03:14:00 UTC
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THE PRICE OF MORAL LIFE I don’t see the problem with paying people to have moral
THE PRICE OF MORAL LIFE
I don’t see the problem with paying people to have moral incentives versus by not paying them and providing them with immoral incentives. The difference is that I don’t think they natively deserve anything. I just acknowledge that we all follow our incentives and that for those people who cannot engage in production, they need an incentive to act as if they do. So why not pay them to police the world for criminal, unethical, and immoral conduct and then deprive tehm if that payment if they fail in their duties?
That isn’t a question then of free riding, or allowing them to act immorally. It’s a question of exchange. We need the world free of criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial behavior, and we need it clean, and well maintained in order for those of us who are productive to live in something other than gated communities. So lets pay people to do a lot of very simple work: act morally.
Right now, the underclasses have every motive to act immorally and the state has every incentive to profit from their immorality. So why not force the state to act morally by forcing the underclasses to act morally, by PAYING them to act morally.
I’ll deal with the upper classes later. But I’ve got them covered too.
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-11 13:50:00 UTC
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THE ARISTOCRATIC ETHIC OF VOLUNTARY EXCHANGE. (BHL Part 2) (Draft: I have almost
THE ARISTOCRATIC ETHIC OF VOLUNTARY EXCHANGE. (BHL Part 2)
(Draft: I have almost got this worked out. Not quite. But almost)
If you believe that voluntary exchange is the test of moral action, then it’s only logical that you follow that reasoning through to its logical consequence: that property rights are obtained by exchanging them with one another; and that in order to exchange those rights, voluntarily, one must possess an incentive to do so – or at least, no disincentive not to.
Since property rights describe prohibitions on involuntary transfer of property on a scale from the very basic forms of: murder, violence, destruction and theft, to the more complex forms of theft by fraud, omission, obscurantism, impediment, externalization, free riding, rent seeking, corruption, conspiracy, and conquest – each of us can grant different people different rights as we choose. And we do. We generally grant friends, family and associates greater rights, and others lesser rights, and foes none at all.
The more dependent we are on members outside of the family and close relationships for our economic survival and prosperity, the more valuable is the extension of property rights to others, because those rights reduce transaction costs.
In a world of shop keepers and craftsmen producing complex goods for one another, everyone has equal incentives.
In a world of 50% unemployed poor 40% labor and clerical, 9% professional and executive, and 1% financial, it is very hard to see why the unemployed poor are not wiser to form some means of extraction from those with more. Trade is merely the best form of obtaining what we desire, but it is not the only.
I don’t see much difference between Walter Block’s ghetto ethic justification of blackmail and the Danegeld. None at all. I don’t see any difference between profiting from the tragedy of others, and organizing an extractive state.
That’s because there isn’t any difference.
To demand property rights from someone without compensation is in itself, an act of attempted theft. This is not because the demand violates some abstract concept of the common good. The only common good we know of is increasing cooperation in a division of knowledge and labor while constantly suppressing free riding on others.
Instead, it’s because (a) while in exchange, higher respect for property rights decreases transaction costs because it decreases risk, but also (b) the more divergent are our interests the higher the compensation each party must offer for the observation of property rights by the other. Conversely, the more identical are our interests, the lower the compensation each party must offer for the observation of property rights by the other.
That is, in practice, what we humans do. In every society we know of. Ever.
THE RATIONAL CHOICE TO COOPERATE
If I grant you respect for property rights, don’t know why I would do that if all I was buying was protection from violence fraud and theft, and not buying trust and therefore protection from blackmail, fraud by omission, fraud by obscurantism, free riding, rent seeking, because corruption, because only the very WEAK would do that, and only out of desperation. (People of the Ghetto) I don’t really understand why I would give up the opportunity to kill, steal, enslave, or otherwise entertain myself with you if I still had to worry about your behavior. Or inversely, why would it be rational for me to grant you property rights if that meant that you could lie, cheat, deceive, engage in corruption and engage in blackmail?
The assumption of humility necessary for us to abandon violence and enter into debate; or the necessary grace we must display in our homogenous polity most of which is an extended family, is, as Hoppe shows in Argumentation, based upon the prior assumption of the grant of property rights.
However, we should not assume that the consequence is the cause: we only grant each other the grace and humility because we have already agreed to put away our violence, deception and coercion.
But for what reason have we all, given our different talents, numbers, and tribal abilities, chosen to grant one another those rights in the first place?
Trust.
Trust reduces transaction costs and the velocity of production. The division of labor saves time an increases velocity. Trust saves time and therefore increases velocity. It is possible to possess a division of labor in a low trust society, but it’s velocity (wealth) will be limited. Whereas, if one increases trust and reduces transaction costs and that group will outcompete all other groups with less trust. We have freed up man from physical labor.
POLITICS: EXTENDING IN-GROUP SUPPRESSION TO OUT-GROUP MEMBERS
The problem of politics, is providing an institutional means by which to accomplish this goal while preserving the low transaction costs of the high trust society. The problem for human’s evolutionary psychology was the balance between free riding and cooperation. The problem we face in our institutions is conducting that balance between free riding and cooperation.
ALL our advances in cooperation: morality, the division of labor, law, money, prices, contracts, interest, accounting – all of them – are extensions of our ability to cooperate in larger numbers while sensing and perceiving free riding.
So if we no longer have common interests in the preservation of property rights against the monopoly state, we must purchase that common interest in the preservation of property rights and diminishing the monopoly state, by paying those who have LESS interest in preserving those rights to police those rights. Depriving those who do not respect or police property of that payment. And forcing restitution, punishing, ostracizing, and if necessary, exterminating those people who persist in violating property rights.
That payment is moral, because it is a voluntary exchange. Asking those with no rational interest in liberty to choose self deprivation rather than engaging in statism is not only irrational, and immoral, but it’s a use of obscurant language to conduct theft by fraud.
We can either break into a multitude of small communities with heterogenous sets of property rights, or we can pay large communities (large markets) to participate in the formation and preservation of property rights. But we must abandon the obscurantist, fraudulent, parasitic lie of Rothbardian ghetto ethics to do it.
The source of liberty is the organized application of violence by a minority willing to pay the high price of suppressing all free riding in all its forms from a population in exchange for property rights. What remains at the end of that suppression is some system of property rights. The highest form of suppression eliminates the need for the state entirely. But it requires we suppress every single means of involuntary extraction from others.
THE EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VALUE OF INDIVIDUALS
In a heterogeneous polity that makes use of natural sources of energy to replace labor, and that uses technology to replace clerical work, the vast majority of people serve only three functions:
1) as consumers;
2) as police of property in all its forms;
3) to provide care of the commons;
4) to provide care and service for others.
The work of production has increasingly fallen to a minority. But the organization of voluntary and dynamic production, and the constitution of liberty, cannot be obtained without paying them for their services, since they no longer have the opportunity to engage in worthwhile production as compensation for their policing of property, care of the commons, and service of others.
If any member of the population chooses to police, care, and serve then they are due dividends from production. Otherwise they are merely slaves.
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-11 04:09:00 UTC
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THE FICTION OF THE MORALITY OF GETTO PROPERTY RIGHTS Lets get this straight OK?
THE FICTION OF THE MORALITY OF GETTO PROPERTY RIGHTS
Lets get this straight OK?
If you agree to not engage in murder, violence, destruction, theft, and fraud, it’s because you’re afraid of not doing so. It’s not because you’re a good person. It’s because you can so easily be caught.
If you agree not to engage in omission, obscurantism, impediment, then you’re doing it for ethical reasons: not stealing from the people you interact with.
If you agree not to engage in externalization, free riding, rent seeking, corruption, conspiracy then you’re doing it for moral reasons: not stealing from your entire polity.
If you agree not to engage in military conquest, overbreeding, immigration without assimilation, or religious conquest, then you’re doing it because you care about not stealing from other polities.
Lets do away with the fiction that respect for life and property is anything more than fear of retaliation. It’s not moral or ethical. It’s just necessary. Living a moral life means not stealing from any one, ever, under any circumstances, no matter how easy it is.
Lets put an end to ghetto ethic, and return our definition of morality to its aristocratic origins: universal suppression of taking from others except in fully informed warrantied voluntary exchange.
Propertarianism is the protestant ethic of the northern european people written in Anglo analytic philosophy: the language of science.
Conservatism when it applies to the protestant ethic may be stated in ARATIONAL terms, but it is, to date, the most scientific system of ethics yet devised. We must prove something works first then adopt it. Not adopt it before it is proven.
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-10 01:58:00 UTC