Curt Doolittle

Category: Natural Law and Reciprocity

  • ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN VS ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS (cross posted and slightly edited

    ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN VS ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS

    (cross posted and slightly edited)

    It’s pretty hard to beat non-aggression as an epistemic test. It’s the only intersubjectively verifiable test. We can’t really know anything else for certain. We can very easily see violence and theft.

    But, does that inability to know much else for certain, stop us from developing ETHICAL and MORAL rules?

    LETS LOOK AT ETHICS: The spectrum of Manners, Ethics and Morals.

    1) Manners are immediately visible. Just like aggression.

    2) Ethics are not immediately visible and intersubjectively verifiable. Ethical rules are principles that compensate for the asymmetry of information of both parties. Probability of adherence to ethical rules that compensate for asymmetry of information, is signaled with manners and a contractual property of ALL exchanges.

    3) Morals are not anywhere visible, but are a means of preventing privatization of the commons – involuntary transfer from others. Some are very obvious (having a child our of wedlock and then asking the community to support you), and some are less obvious (promoting a bad idea by arts, writing, speech, or performance: (most advertising).

    So, the failure to establish means of regulating ethics and morals, other than the NAP, is simply a license for unethical and moral action in any and all exchanges. Rothbard’s argument is that the market is sufficient to constrain ethical and moral behavior. But the EVIDENCE is that this isn’t true. It’s VIOLENCE that constrains it. And violence is constrained by the number of people who can be allied to either support unethical and immoral actions, or to support ethical and moral actions. The rothbardian answer to this problem is to resort to courts. But if NAP alone is the ethical and moral rule in exchanges, then, as Rothbard argues in For a New Liberty, there is no means of court resolution of fraud and immorality: theft by other than visible means.

    In other words, rothbard gives us the low trust society, and aristocracy, with a higher constraint than NAP, gives us the high trust society. Rothbard’s ethics are ‘what you can get away with in an exchange, called voluntary, but asymmetrical in knowledge.’ Aristocracy gave us ‘what you can get in a voluntary exchange under warranty that knowledge is symmetric’.

    This is why rothbardian ethics are intolerable to western christians. Demonstrably, at least our version of human beings, find that insufficient.

    Under aristocratic ethics, ALL involuntary transfer is forbidden EXCEPT that which takes place in the market for productive goods and services, fully under warrantee of symmetry of knowledge. And the further difference is, that fraud by asymmetry (omission) is not just a theft from by one party from another, but a theft from ALL PEOPLE who constantly forgo opportunities for fraud by omission – and in doing so create the HIGH TRUST SOCIETY.

    In other words, theft or violence (aggression) is an attack on all the institution of property. Property which has been paid for by constantly paying the high cost of respecting others’ monopoly of control. A control over that which they settled, made or obtained in exchange. An attack on any property then, is an attack on, and theft from all SHAREHOLDERS IN THE INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS. As such all men who respect property rights, as shareholders in paying for that institution, are being stolen from, and as such have standing to enforce, by violence, any offense of property rights by any person, at any time.

    In most human societies, the “OTHERS” are biological extensions of the family. In yet others, adherents to the religion. But under aristocracy the ‘in-group’ members are those who reciprocally grant and defend property rights regardless of family membership, and the “OTHERS” are those who do NOT reciprocally grant property rights, and defend them.

    THAT IS THE MEANING OF ARISTOCRACY: a shareholder in the corporation whose assets are private property rights, and the obligation and right to prosecute and demand restitution on the part of either himself OR THE CORPORATION of ALL members of the contract of private property.

    As such, the contributors to property rights in fact, are owners of the economically productive society, its norms and institutions, and those those that do not equally take responsibility for property rights are the ‘others’: non-family members.

    Under aristocratic egalitarianism, the high trust WITHIN the genetic FAMILY is extended to the CORPORATE family of fellow shareholders. Thus the family is contractual rather than genetic. that is how the ‘high trust society’ unique to northern europeans was made possible.

    The title “SIR” meant you had earned the right to carry weapons and enforce property rights. The “right to carry arms’ is identical to ‘the right to private property’. These two are ideas are inseparable. The source of property rights is the organized use of violence to create them.

    The source of property rights is not some, mystical grant of god or nature, or some necessary natural right – since private property is rare if not unique in the world, it cannot be ‘natural’. In fact, private property is UNNATURAL, which is why it is so IMPORTANT. Without it we cannot form the incentives nor perform the calculation necessary to crate a vast division of knowledge an labor in real time. Aristocracy is the system of social order where by we enter a voluntary contract to use violence to institute, and maintain, private property rights. And we struggle to enfranchise as many people in this UNNATURAL system as possible, so that we have the strength of numbers. This system, private property, is so effective, and has such an affect on status, and the ability to reproduce, that everyone wants to join the societies that have it.

    The first problem is, (a) THAT THEY WANT IT FOR FREE. And (b) once property rights are a norm, they feel it’s free, because they don’t have to EARN IT any longer with visible payments, only invisible payment (constraints). So the contract isn’t visible and is abused and taken for granted.

    As such to maintain property rights requires that we perform some ACT of maturity and COGNIZANCE in order to obtain them.

    Cities in the west were not organically created markets, but deliberate islands of PROPERTY RIGHTS crated by the organized application of violence by the nobility. The island of property rights was crafted out of a land populated by free riders who actively SUPPRESSED the desire of any individual to concentrate capital behind his ideas or wants rather than that of the free riders and rent seekers around him.

    Which is why Rothbard had to resort to CRUSOE’S ISLAND. On that island, the ocean forms the walls of the ghetto, beyond which is the aristocratic society. Crusoe’s island is one of the reasons libertarianism has failed to gain adoption. The western ethic is to “Make all men aristocrats”. That is what ‘egalitarian aristocracy’ means. That the fools in the enlightenment though men DESIRED to be aristocrats was a catastrophic error. But the fact that MANY do, is enough to form a high trust society.

    As such, NAP, is “peasant” or “ghetto”, or “gypsy trader” morality. The morality of people who cannot ally to hold land, and develop fixed capital, heavy production systems (metals) and formal institutions of dispute resolution. It not liberty, but the return to partial barbarism.

    Rothbard gave us the ethics of the traveling merchant, the ghetto, and organized crime. Aristocracy gave us the ethics of the extended family warriors, farmers and shopkeepers – the high trust society. The only people to created liberty as a formal and informal institution were aristocrats.

    Just how it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-13 01:49:00 UTC

  • We use both informal and formal institutions, to transform descriptive ethics, t

    We use both informal and formal institutions, to transform descriptive ethics, to prescriptive ethics, to norms.

    We can bend these natural ethics. But we cannot break them.

    Ethics are systems of incentives.

    It is non-rational to expect people to adopt ethical systems that are to their disadvantage.

    And not only is it non-rational, it is counter to praxeology.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-12 07:15:00 UTC

  • QUESTION: Why don’t we call ‘liberty’ what it is? “ARISTOCRACY” “Western Aristoc

    QUESTION:

    Why don’t we call ‘liberty’ what it is? “ARISTOCRACY”

    “Western Aristocratic, Egalitarian, Propertarianism”

    Those who CREATE the institution of property, earn the RIGHT of property.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-11 06:49:00 UTC

  • YOU’VE GOT IT BACKWARDS : ARISTOCRACY Aristocracy CREATES property rights by for

    YOU’VE GOT IT BACKWARDS : ARISTOCRACY

    Aristocracy CREATES property rights by forcibly demanding them of everyone he or she encounters, under the threat that he restricts his use of his WEALTH of VIOLENCE, only upon the condition that all others do so as well.

    It is not that the world desires property rights. Demonstrably that is false. What the world desires is to be taken care of and to consume, as a comfortable slave or farm animal.

    To be human, requires property.

    The only possible form of HUMANISM is ARISTOCRACY that demands by the threat of violence, property rights for all.

    Without property you are not human. You are only an animal, herded and shepherded like any other.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-08 10:37:00 UTC

  • 1) ON THE PURPOSE OF SCRIPTURAL VERSUS RATIONAL AND RATIO-SCIENTIFIC IDEOLOGIES.

    1) ON THE PURPOSE OF SCRIPTURAL VERSUS RATIONAL AND RATIO-SCIENTIFIC IDEOLOGIES. 2) ON THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY RIGHTS AND LIBERTY.

    (good read)

    (Quotable)

    “I don’t like package deals. That’s mainly the reason I don’t identify with a particular political position. If I end up looking like a libertarian, it’s only because they happen to be where I’m going anyway. I reserve the right to do my own thinking.” – Kenneth Allen Hopf

    COMMENT

    Ideologies can be as rigid as scripture to which you must adhere (totalitarianism), or mere boundary conditions that describe similar sentiments (freedom). They are both means of obtaining political power. The first is a means of coercion into dogma by threat of ostracization. The second a means of affiliation by promise of opportunity.

    However, both scriptural threat and sentimental promise, are predicated on the absence of ratio-scientific knowledge. In the face of evidence of what man REALLY DOES with democracy, what he does with his economy, with his social order, with his freedom, with his laws, then we no longer are faced with an era of IDEOLOGY.

    We are faced with the outcome of the era of ideology. And the outcome of that era is that the SUCCESS of rich democratic countries had nothing to do with their democracy. Democracy is a luxury good that was ALSO made possible wealth.

    THE SOURCE OF THE WEST’S WEALTH AND PROSPERITY

    But that wealth had nothing to do with democracy. It had to do with:

    1) The aristocratic egalitarian ethics of cattle raiding, land holders, bronze, the horse, the wheel, and chariot, who used inferior numbers, and voluntary, organized, cavalry tactics that required high personal and familial investment, as well as voluntary cooperation in tactics for shared risk and gain. The tendency to adopt disruption in the form of new technology, new members, and new leaders – because enfranchisement meant rights to private property and elected leaders rather than community property and static leaders.

    2) Small homogenous countries – first Pagan, but the more protestant and german the better, operating as extended families, with the high trust of extended families.

    3) The prohibition on cousin-marriage out to six or ten generations, and the Absolute Nuclear Family (ANF) as the organizational unit of production AND reproduction.

    4) Common law, individual property rights, and rule of law. money, accounting, interest, credit and banking.

    5) The manorial system that suppressed the fertility of the underclasses, and created the ‘protestant ethic’ in all of society, by requiring conformity to good practice in order to obtain access to rented land, and reproduction.

    6) The evolution of credit backed by ‘the extended family’ represented by the state.

    7) Plagues that suppressed and reversed the fertility of the underclasses, and which forced the upper classes to spread into the work force.

    8) An ’empirical bias’: a preferential bias toward, and continuous development of, technical, scientific, practical solutions. We cannot tell if this bias genetic or not yet but in part, it is beginning to look like a) minority status, b) competitive value of technology to compensate for small numbers, c) balance between verbal and spatial intelligence d) habituation.

    9) The discovery and conquest of the New World and the subsequent trade, at a time when a plague had wiped out vast portions of north american indians.

    10) The weakness of the Ottoman empire, Indian continent and the Chinese empire, from institutional decay. (In China, the failure to develop institutions of ‘calculation’ at scale and reliance on moral rather than empirical arguments. In Arabia, the persistent problem of ignorance, tribalism, low IQ, and inbreeding.) The weakness of the colonies, and the relative disparity in technological, calculative, and social development of the rest of the world meant the easy imposition of trade. And the re-adoption of ratio-scientism as a competitive advantage in the west while the other states had either fought it off intentionally (Islamic Civilization, Chinese Civilization), or who could not for a variety of reasons make use of it (Hindu civilization).

    ON CALCULATION

    The importance of calculation was I think, discovered or at least elucidated by Weber. But calculation is important, because it is NECESSARY. Without means of calculation, as the society becomes increasingly complex,

    SCALE AND DYNAMISM – ADAPTATION – EVOLUTION

    The state is often credited with the origin of calculative technologies. But this is to overstate the ‘state’ in its primitive origins in the fertile crescent. However, these small city states had all the properties of western city states, but earlier. THey created their innovation when they were small. They LOST their innovation when they became states and empires.

    THE STATE CALCIFIES – EVERYTHING. PRIVATE PROPERTY DOES THE OPPOSITE. IT MAKES EVERYTHING DYNAMIC, ITERATIVE, ADAPTIVE.

    The state makes fragility. It trades certainty for stagnation.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-03 11:56:00 UTC

  • I don’t know what the difference is between you controlling your body and me con

    I don’t know what the difference is between you controlling your body and me controlling my money. Why is it ok for you to have control over my productivity if I can’t have control over your productivity? I mean, isn’t my productivity the equivalent of your reproductivity?

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-14 16:29:00 UTC

  • MORAL HIERARCHY: 1) I CAN USE THAT IN MY LIFE 2) I CAN HOLD OTHERS ACCOUNTABLE F

    MORAL HIERARCHY:

    1) I CAN USE THAT IN MY LIFE

    2) I CAN HOLD OTHERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THAT

    3) WE SHOULD ALL ACT TO PERPETUATE THAT

    4) WE SHOULD ALL SACRIFICE TO CONTRIBUTE TO THAT

    Which cultures employ which techniques. Why? Family structure.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-12 17:13:00 UTC

  • DEADLY SINS” (important) Propertarianism captures the universal human moral intu

    http://www.propertarianism.com/”PROPERTARIANISM’S DEADLY SINS” (important)

    Propertarianism captures the universal human moral intuition that prohibits involuntary transfer, and then presses all competition into the market for goods and services under the requirements of transparency and warranty so that competition is, while intuitively immoral to many, a system of incentives that produces a virtuous cycle of innovation, production and adaptation.

    All rights in all moral systems are reducible to statements of property rights – assuming we take a descriptive definition of property not a proscriptive one.

    DEADLY SINS

    Murder

    Violence

    Theft

    Fraud

    Omission

    Impedance

    Externalization

    Free-Riding

    Privatization

    Socialization

    Rent-Seeking

    Corruption

    Obfuscation

    Pooling-and-Laundering

    Conspiracy

    Legislation

    Taxation

    Conscription

    War

    Genocide

    Do you want to know why my book is taking so long?

    Because there are a lot of deadly sins.

    http://www.propertarianism.com/

    VIRTUES

    Property,

    symmetry,

    warranty,

    internality,

    operational language,

    “calculability”,

    contract,

    natural law,

    common law,

    voluntary commons.

    Still not done with the second list. I need to find a way to talk about calculability more accessibly.

    PROPERTIES

    Personal (Private, Several)

    Interpersonal

    Normative

    Institutional

    Artificial

    PROPERTARIANISM IS THE RHETORICAL SOLUTION TO POLITICAL DISCOURSE

    It’s what praxeology should have been. It’s what conservatives and libertarians need. It’s what progressives and progressive libertarians should fear. Because it’s true. Its explanatory power is universal, and independent of any moral code. And it is based upon testable empirical science. Humans vehemently reject involuntary transfers of property. They just differ on the distribution of ownership of property. And they differ because of their necessary and inalterable reproductive strategies.

    COMMON GOODS

    There can be no common good unless there are common interests. We can learn from the market that we can cooperate on means even if we have alternate ends. But democracy is a family model, and assumes de facto, that we have common or optimally common ends. When we do not, because reproductive and productive strategies are not longer sufficiently homogenous. Democracy can assist us in establishing priorities from common interests, but it cannot assist us in establishing goals between disparate and conflicting interests – such as those that we have under a division of knowledge and labor as extreme as under industrialism and information economies.

    MONOPOLY

    There is no reason for monopoly bureaucracy and monopoly government in a diverse heterogeneous population. In this environment democracy is simply a means of conquest of one or more groups by others.

    It is possible to construct means of achieving the benefits of scale organizations in insurance, investment in the commons, and group bargaining over trade. And to do so without a monopoly.

    Democratic and representative government is an artifact of the age of agrarianism and sail. It’s time for a reformation. We have to adapt government to our new diversity. And that means, small states, and governments that facilitate ANY cooperation, not just those that are approved by the majority. And that approach will make law making impossible, only contract negotiation. Because laws are local phenomenon, and contracts for the commons are not. They are merely cooperation at scale, on goods that cannot be produced by the market because free riding prohibits their construction.

    More later. But that is the essence of Propertarianism in a few thousand words.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-10 07:21:00 UTC

  • ANIMAL RIGHTS If you cannot be trusted with the care of an animal – pet or prope

    ANIMAL RIGHTS

    If you cannot be trusted with the care of an animal – pet or property. Then we cannot trust you with care of the rest of us.

    Simple people use empathy toward animals moral and legal claims, and anthropomorphize all sorts of things instead of using reason.

    But what they intuit in their arationalism is at least functionally correct if not causally correct.

    The seek to protect the victim because it is less aggressive and confrontational than punishing the actor. It is an effective technique but a dishonest one.

    And as such, these people – sensitives – perform a function even though their arguments are arational justifications of their intuitions.

    Unfortunately their arationality creates consequences that are morally, politically and legally damaging to civilization.

    Those of us who because of our lack of fear in confrontation or punishment, have the luxury of honesty, certainly feel compassion for our pets, animals and wildlife. But we correctly understand that not only are the animals a commons that they should respect no matter who cares for them, but that someone sick enough to harm creatures for emotional reasons of any kind, is a danger to all of us. And science has thankfully finally proven why – genetic and birth defect exacerbated by living in families with the same defects.

    Tolerance is not a good thing without accompaniment by training. Without correction it is not tolerance but convenience.

    Animals cannot have rights since they cannot enter into contract. A few pets to some degree can closely imitate that contract (dogs) at the level if a child when dependency forms.

    Humans have contractual obligations with each other not to be cruel to animals. As such it is your contractual duty to the rest of us – your price for our promise not to use violence against you, and to cooperate peaceably with you – that you treat animals as if they are human whenever possible as a ritualistic test of your adherence to contract.

    This contract is a necessary natural law that does not need codification. Natural laws are the minimum rules for peaceful cooperation. They are reducible to statements of property rights. And they are necessary. Human rights are not necessary, they are aspirations once natural rights have been achieved.

    And should you break that contract if natural law, the foolish and weak may shame you and claim animals have rights because they lack the intelligence, wisdom, means and capacity to punish you for violating natural law and demonstrating you are unfit for the contract by which we agree to cooperate, and rescind our use of violence.

    But those of us wise and strong enough will be honest with you.

    And since you have broken the contract of natural law with us, we are no longer forbidden to use violence.

    And we will logically, rationally, wisely, and legally under natural law, punish you sufficiently that you either will not, or cannot, do so again.

    That punishment too, is part of the contract that the strong agree to.

    Curt

    (Propertarianism in application)

    ( also another example of solipsism on one end and autism on the other. )

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-10 04:59:00 UTC

  • “IF I CANNOT HAVE MY MORAL CODE, AND YOU WANT ME TO HAVE YOUR MORAL CODE…” And

    “IF I CANNOT HAVE MY MORAL CODE, AND YOU WANT ME TO HAVE YOUR MORAL CODE…”

    And if morals, ethics and manners (norms) cost me opportunities.

    Then you are just using an excuse to deprive me of my savings in the normative commons, as well as my reproductive strategy, as well as my family structure, as well as my reproductive status, as well as my future opportunities.

    Property rights is the only form of cooperation under diversity.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-09 17:19:00 UTC