Curt Doolittle

Category: Natural Law and Reciprocity

  • AND PROPERTY ARE SYNONYMS – LOVE IS AN INCENTIVE, NOT A NECESSARY REQUIREMENT –

    http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=7337MARRIAGE AND PROPERTY ARE SYNONYMS – LOVE IS AN INCENTIVE, NOT A NECESSARY REQUIREMENT – ROMANTIC NOTIONS TO THE CONTRARY

    The are only two things that distinguish marriage from any other arbitrary relationship for the purpose of securing affection, sex, companionship, love, care-taking, cost-reduction-of-cohabitatin, and a division of labor in child rearing.

    1) PROPERTY: When you marry, you form a corporation with shared assets, and a two person board of directors, from which the state must divide assets upon the disbanding of the corporation. Prior to the institution of private property, you could just marry and un-marry by saying so in public. In fact, the western Celts practiced serial marriage this way until the 19th century, and the European jews until the middle ages. In most primitives societies, women were literally property, but in Europe the church granted women property rights back in the 1200’s. So the need to resolve property disputes increased as the complexity and amount of property increased, and the productivity of individuals, and therefore their ability to obtain and use property increased.

    2) KINSHIP: We have evolved laws to avoid conflict by stating that the other shareholder has certain powers (of attorney) to act as Voluntary Kin in periods of duress, and it that takes precedence over other involuntary Kinship ties: blood relatives. In this sense when we marry we sell ourselves to the corporation as an asset.

    THE STATE AS MONOPOLY

    The state is the arbiter of property disputes – that’s what a state is: a territorial monopoly on the use of violence; and in particular for the use of violence in the resolution of disputes. The moment that you enter into a marriage that produces common property, you force the state into your marriage because only the state can resolve conflicts over property.

    Anyone can form a corporation. A ship captain, a priest, or certain state officials. The formation’s not a state matter. It’s just an exchange like any other exchange. But the state must break it. And if the state must break it then it must of necessity develop criteria for doing so in order to apply a decision that meets the standard of consistent “law” rather than arbitrary judicial decision.

    However, there is no reason that the state must be the arbiter or such disputes. There is no reason churches cannot perform divorces, in which the assets divisions have the force of law. Unfortunately this wold produce two canons of law, and leave the state responsible for resolving appeals, so it would simply result in the state centralizing decision making power again.

    THE OPTION TO MAINTAIN PRIVATE PROPERTY

    However, an easier solution is that if when we marry we do NOT create a corporation and place ourselves and all our assets into it, but instead, maintain each individual’s property separately, and specifically state ownership percentages on anything else that is split now or future, then the only legal issue is the power of attorney to act as one another in financial matters, and to act as primary kin in the event one is incapacitated.

    HISTORY

    The civic and political problem is only that our laws developed as monopolies under control of the state – and even then, largely because the church did not perform divorces and the state wished to intercede in the civil space in order to advance the interests of the feminist political movement on the one hand, and react to the reality that women were becoming active in the work force, earning income, and acquiring real property in sufficient numbers that they required legal peerage to protect them from abuse by rent-seeking males.

    So there is no reason that we must have a monopoly of marriage terms. And there is only one reason that the state should be involved in dissolutions: common property. That is, property of the corporation called the marriage being distributed to various parties in the event of a disbandment of the corporation.

    CRITERIA FOR THREE TYPES OF MARRIAGE

    Further, there is no reason marriages cannot consist of multiple forms, regardless of who makes them.

    1) Corporate Property and Power of Kin

    2) Several property and Power of Kin

    3) Corporate Property without power of kin

    Several Property without power of kin is the normal state of human beings. So that’s the definition of not being married. But one can be in a state of marriage as long as one has either the power of kin (genetic assets) or power of common property (material assets).

    ITS ALL ABOUT PROPERTY

    Love and romance have nothing to do with marriage. You may get married BECAUSE of love and romance and all the other factors. But marriage is a change in control of property – including the self – by authorizing non-kin to act as Kin, and to either pool property or not.

    That it is hard to see the binding power of a marriage having any meaning whatsoever without the pooling of assets is enough of a logical constraint that we can define marriage as a property institution, and nothing more.

    That fact may be painful to admit to ourselves. But marriage is a contract over of property rights, with one of the assets being each other. It is, and always will be. ‘Cause nothing else makes much sense. ‘Cause nothing else enforces fidelity like the loss property.

    Humbling. I know.

    ->Comment in response to this post at Talking Philosophy:

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-03 05:07:00 UTC

  • IF PROACTIVE VIOLENCE IS THE SOURCE, CAUSE, AND PERPETUATION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

    IF PROACTIVE VIOLENCE IS THE SOURCE, CAUSE, AND PERPETUATION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

    Then what does that say about violence?

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-02 17:22:00 UTC

  • NEW MORAL PRINCIPLE FOR THE POST INDUSTRIAL ERA? What was the last moral princip

    NEW MORAL PRINCIPLE FOR THE POST INDUSTRIAL ERA?

    What was the last moral principle that humans discovered? Think about that for a bit. Because I have been. And, I think I understand the evolution of NECESSARY moral principles as well or better than anyone.

    And, while I’m not positive (because I haven’t read every word ever written in this world) I think I might have discovered the first new NECESSARY moral principle of the post-agrarian era.

    When I first wrote about it a few years ago, I didn’t think about it as novel. It was just a necessary constraint for suppressing fraud at scale. And I think it transitions an existing MORAL principle to an ETHICAL principle. (In the sense that Moral principles are those where your actions are entirely anonymous, and ethical actions are where your actions are not anonymous but you possess asymmetric knowledge.) So the ethical constraint enforces the moral objective.

    We tend to view norms as sacrosanct. But while instinctual morality remains constant (at least within kin) descriptive morality (morality in practice) varies with the structure of the reproductive unit and the structure of the means of production. Our ‘savage’ ancestors would not practice our moral codes nor we theirs. Mostly because the ‘momentum’ of production that we call ‘scarcity-productivity’ is so much higher now that we can afford to take risks that they couldn’t.

    We are’t so much morally superior by choice as we are superior by advent of technologies of cooperation and production. And those material advantages allow us to treat increasing numbers of people as kin – by raising our standard of violence in pursuit of calories. to the point now where we rarely need violence for material matters, and most violence occurs over mates or status – which in practice may be the same thing.

    At this point in our development, we have forbidden all violence, theft and fraud, and we suppress it well, by forcing all competition into the market for goods and services. HOwever, our ORGANIZATIONS are terribly immoral both in private and public senses. The private are subject to competition so their immorality is just suppressed quickly, and they cannot calcify the way government does, into predatory bureaucracies and survive for long. Whereas the government can devolve in to predatory bureaucracy almost from the formation of a bureaucratic organization.

    To make matters worse, we can privatize almost everything that a government does and cure most of the problem. But we cannot privatize everything, because when we say ‘privatize’ we mean tat we o pen it to competition. But in any competition there are losers, and you cannot build the commons willingly if there is a chance that any given participant will ‘lose’. And that is why, whether my libertarian friends like it or not, some form of ‘government’ will always exist: to produce commons in lieu of competition (loss).

    As such, what can we do to prevent corruption in the commons? What is the one institutional, ethical principle that we could adhere to in order to prevent all the forms of theft of commons that occur in every bureaucracy?

    Humans engage in violence – largely for status and mate seeking reasons. Humans engage in Theft, largely for petty entertainment, or drug use. Humans engage in fraud for many reasons, but usually as a means of income. Humans engage in fraud by omission as a matter of course. And Humans free-ride whenever and wherever possible outside of ascetic protestantism. IN fact, that is what differentiates ascetic protestantism – the prohibition on free riding.

    Where there is an organization that they can seek rents, humans engage in rent seeking (‘limited monopoly’, ‘loyalty fees’, ‘charity’, privatization of gains,socialization of losses) whenever possible.

    Where they are In organizations, humans engage in interpersonal corruption, rent seeking, privatization of gains, and systemic corruption.

    Where they are in control of organizations they engage in systemic theft, systemic fraud, war and conquest.

    Humans have an ethical portfolio with just one, one-note song we call competition in the free market. But they have a symphony of immoral options available to them. So it’s no surprise that when we give people incentives to act to steal, that they do so.

    We are fascinatingly creative creatures really.

    Curt Doolittle

    (c a l c u l a t i o n: maintaining causal relations by prohibiting pooling and laundering.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-02 03:12:00 UTC

  • The Source Of Private Property Is Violence

    [T]he source of property is the organized application of violence to create it. Even on Rothbard’s Crusoe island, the violence that creates the property of the island FOR Crusoe is provided by the barrier of the sea. (That the see is analogous to the ghetto, which is the model of rebellion rothbard was using whether he know it or not, is obvious and ironic.) But Rothbard’s logic is flawed. The correct analogy is that on an infinite flat plain evenly distributed with people, how do you create the institution of private property so that one person’s will and wisdom can concentrate capital for future production and use? By the application of violence to create that institution. Can an individual do it? Not against numbers. No individual is powerful enough. But can a group do it? Yes. A group requires another group to counter it, which produces diminishing returns for those members, who are more incentivized to also obtain property than reverse their claims. An organized group can create private property by the application of violence. The source of private property is the organized application of violence to create it. Arguments that try to justify private property by some other means, moral or utilitarian, are in fact, attempts to buy the right of private property at a deep discount. And nobody’s selling at that price. You have to rase the price pretty high. And violence is a very high price. The source of private property is violence. Private property is a right one gains in exchange for the commitment to others who share the desire for private property, to use violence to preserve private property for one and all. No other method is possible.

  • The Source Of Private Property Is Violence

    [T]he source of property is the organized application of violence to create it. Even on Rothbard’s Crusoe island, the violence that creates the property of the island FOR Crusoe is provided by the barrier of the sea. (That the see is analogous to the ghetto, which is the model of rebellion rothbard was using whether he know it or not, is obvious and ironic.) But Rothbard’s logic is flawed. The correct analogy is that on an infinite flat plain evenly distributed with people, how do you create the institution of private property so that one person’s will and wisdom can concentrate capital for future production and use? By the application of violence to create that institution. Can an individual do it? Not against numbers. No individual is powerful enough. But can a group do it? Yes. A group requires another group to counter it, which produces diminishing returns for those members, who are more incentivized to also obtain property than reverse their claims. An organized group can create private property by the application of violence. The source of private property is the organized application of violence to create it. Arguments that try to justify private property by some other means, moral or utilitarian, are in fact, attempts to buy the right of private property at a deep discount. And nobody’s selling at that price. You have to rase the price pretty high. And violence is a very high price. The source of private property is violence. Private property is a right one gains in exchange for the commitment to others who share the desire for private property, to use violence to preserve private property for one and all. No other method is possible.

  • FUZZY LANGUAGE: ‘RIGHTS’ (Contrary to Searle’s nonsense. More in line with Benth

    FUZZY LANGUAGE: ‘RIGHTS’

    (Contrary to Searle’s nonsense. More in line with Bentham’s nonsense. Minor improvement to Hoppe. )

    You DEMAND contractual RIGHTS in EXCHANGE for entering into a CONTRACT with others for some specific terms – and in the libertarian bias we demand absolute private property rights, and the right of first possession by transformation and homesteading.

    Other people agree to NONE, SOME or ALL of those demands, in exchange for their specific terms. Non-aggressing on some terms, and preserving the opportunity to aggress on others.

    One cannot ‘have rights’ without the presence of others to grant them in exchange.

    i ) One can suggest the world will be better for all if we grant each other certain rights.

    ii ) One can ‘demand rights’ in order for cooperation instead of conflict.

    iii ) One can ‘need and require necessary’ rights from others in order to survive.

    But without the consent of others, one cannot ‘have or possess’ them.

    The majority of the world cultures and subcultures evolved an allocation of each’s portfolio of property rights between the private and the commons on one axis, and between a) normative (habits, manners, ethics and morals), b) real (land, built capital, portable property, and c) artificial (intellectual property, limited monopoly privileges) on the other axis.

    Those DEMANDS do you very little good without the ability to enforce your demands. In the case of private property, the coalition of statists is powerful enough to deny you demands, and force you to adhere to THEIR definition of property rights.

    Might doesn’t make best.

    Might doesn’t make right.

    Might makes whatever property rights you have.

    So you must possess the might to institute the property rights you desire.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-08 08:32:00 UTC

  • I’M NOT SURE MOLINARI IS RIGHT “Private property is redundant. “public property”

    I’M NOT SURE MOLINARI IS RIGHT

    “Private property is redundant. “public property” is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn’t private it’s stolen.”

    — Gustave de Molinari.

    (from the libertarian page – by Francesco Principi)

    I’m torn Francesco.

    It looks like private property is a normative ethic (“should”) that produces multiple beneficial out comes, but that as a descriptive ethic (“is”), people act as though they have property interests in all manner of ‘commons’. And they are even resistant to quantification of ownership in any commons by a process of articulating all commons’ as shares. In my work I argue that the distribution of preferences for the allocation of property between private and public commons appears to be a reflection of reproductive strategy. That reproductive strategy is able to be expressed by individuals by a combination of the decline of the family as the productive and reproductive unit, and the ability to vote for preferences in the distribution of property rights between the individual and the commons.

    Elsewhere i’m being teased about this at the moment, but the natural order of human societies appears to be matrilineal with transitory males. The ‘innovation’ that led to productivity in a division of labor, was accidental: from pastoralism which was more productive and competitive than sedentary life, and which created greater conflict over property.

    Property is an innovation, as is paternalism. Both render the world ‘calculable’ and as ‘calculable’ create the possibility of incentives to specialize in a division of knowledge and labor.

    But if women can ally with a minority of males, and vote to reverse 10,000 years of social evolution, by maintaining very limited private property rights necessary to provide survival incentives, but not the rights to the profits from the use of that property, then it appears that they will do so, in order to regain their instinctual reproductive preference.

    Control over breeding between males and females has oscillated before. Males dominated as they do in the other ape species. Alphas terrorize and rape. Humans developed language, gossip and weapons and managed to constrain and kill wayward alphas. This made sex more widely available for males, and put females back in control of reproduction.

    When domestication made it possible for males to provide constant sources of protein at the expense of having to control territory and protect their livestock, grain stores, and irrigation channels, the paternal family was an innovation that altered the reproductive relations and familial organizational structure between men and women once again.

    At present, the combination of information systems and the state apparatus – allow extraction of abstract property (money) by various means, thereby eliminating the male advantage in possessing property for the purpose of selecting a mate – at least in the ‘beta’ or bottom half of society. Humans are returning to serial monogamy, with men unable to accumulate wealth because it is extracted by the child support, alimony, and various redistribution systems.

    Property rights were granted by our european ancestors to those who fought in battle – to protect private property rights. If the meaning of that sinks in, then what we learn is this: private property is an innovation that is the preference of the minority, and it was instituted over the reproductive preferences of the majority. It produced eugenic reproduction, the division of knowledge and labor, reason and science, literature and arts.

    But the source of property is the organized application of violence by a minority against a majority who does not desire it, and should not, because it is against their reproductive and instinctual interests.

    In the west, purely by accident, the battle tactics required expensive equipment, voluntary participation, and heroic behavior. THis resulted in a shortage of men, who, as a minority, could out-fight more numerous competitors. But they constantly needed to increase their numbers, so they extended the franchise of property rights to any of those who would fight to preserve it. having earned it, those members fought to keep it.

    This system of habits and incentives created what we call egalitarian aristocracy. It is unlike political leadership elsewhere, which cold rely on subjugating large numbers of warrior slaves, such as in north africa, the middle east, and the far east.

    Property produces a virtuous cycle when combined with contract, numbers, money, and especially literacy. But it isn’t natural to man. And it’s entirely unnatural to women. And they are, world wide, expressing distaste for it wherever they can vote.

    US Presidential candidates and therefore policy are at present determined by single female voters. They vote as a consistent block: to undermine 10k years of the development of property, and 5k years of european egalitarian property rights.

    Mainstream economists see this as increasing people’s choices, and suiting the Rawlsian ethic. But the external consequences are something quite different: the destruction of the nuclear family, and everything about that social order that we have created for millennia.

    I don’t know pricelessly what will happen over the next two generations, but I suspect that, as in all of history, unmarried men, and poor and unemployed men, who are currently assuming the change in their circumstances is temporary, will produce a generation that has a different perspective, and that different perspective will lead to catastrophic change in the social order, one way or another – Proving that Strauss and Howe were right, perhaps by coincidence.

    Small things in great numbers have vast consequences.

    The source of property is violence.

    Property is unnatural to man.

    Because it is against the interest of women.

    I don’t like it. But that’s how it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-06 14:29:00 UTC

  • The majority does not desire freedom. Is freedom equivalent to private property

    The majority does not desire freedom.

    Is freedom equivalent to private property rights, and are private property rights equivalent to voluntary exchange?

    If so, people desire to consume voluntarily, but demonstrably not to produce voluntarily. Money may be equal in purchasing power regardless of who holds it. But it is not equally productive regardless of who holds it.

    Therefore there is a structural advantage to intelligence, will, and discipline under capitalism. It is a virtuous advantage, thats true. But an advantage.

    Only a minority desire Freedom. Liberty. Property rights. Voluntary exchange.

    To the rest of the world freedom means freedom to consume. Not responsibility for limiting all transfers to voluntary exchange in the market. And it is praxeologically irrational to expect them to.

    This difference between normative libertarian ethics and dscriptive ethics is significant. And denial that the praxeologial incentives for people to organize into groups seeking non productive participation in profits is evidence of the intellectual failure of the framework of thought.

    Our argument is that un the long run we all benefit. And its true. However the majority demonstrate little concern for the long run. In fact social status is largely a function of time preference.

    So, given our numerical inferiority, we can use violence to preserve our rights as did our ancestors. But begging for them by weak argument is a demonstrated failure. 🙂

    Or we can develop solutions for institutions that, like the market, do not require us to cooperate on ends, or even norms.

    We cannot logically agree on morals, ethics, and norms. Not when we no longer reproduce, produce, and vote as families and aggregate our interests, but instead, reproduce, produce, and vote as individual actors, whereupon our differences are not masked by family interest, but expressed as individual interest.

    In particular, the addition of women to the labor and voting pools has led to policy, unlike that of the family, that systemically seeks rents: women vote to marry the state. Not their husbands.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-05 06:15:00 UTC

  • IMPORTANCE OF PUNISHING FREE RIDERS AND RENT SEEKERS Not that we haven’t know th

    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/328/5978/617.abstractTHE IMPORTANCE OF PUNISHING FREE RIDERS AND RENT SEEKERS

    Not that we haven’t know this for centuries, and practiced it for millennia.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-03 09:37:00 UTC

  • Are There Objectively Moral Statements?

    “There is no such thing as objective morality only preferences and demonstrated preferences.” I’m not sure that’s true. [I]n every society, the portfolio of norms consisting of maners (signals of fitness for voluntary transfer), ethics and morals (prohibitions on involuntary transfer), vary considerably. But all of them are signals of fitness, signals of contribution to a commons, and prohibitions on involuntary transfer. Some of these suites of property rights produce superior economic outcomes, and some inferior. That’s true. But they aren’t preferences. Norms are not preferences they are artifacts of the process of evolutionary cooperation according to prejudices (pre-judgements). Given that human beings universally eschew involuntary transfer, in every possible culture and circumstance, and will act twice as hard to punish it as they will for their own interest, its clear that it’s not a purely subjective phenomenon. And in fact it is a necessary phenomenon which genetics must eventually enforce. So while the arrangement of property rights and obligations in any set of norms may vary, the fact that humans observe norms out of prohibition on involuntary transfer is entirely objective. So, moral actions are only a preference in those cases where normative codes, like laws, are general proscriptions, and where for specific circumstances, one’s actions do not create an involuntary transfer. Moral codes may correctly or incorrectly constituted at any given moment (because they are intergenerational habits and must be constantly re-tested by each generation). But as long as they are prohibitions on involuntary transfers, then they are in fact, objective. If members of a group observe a set of norms, and by observing those norms, forgo opportunities for gratification or self interest, then they have in fact paid for those norms. If others do not pay for those norms, and constrain themselves to signaling, then that’s not an involuntary transfer.if however, others choose to sieze opportunities created by the normative sacrifice of others, then that’s theft, plain and simple. This is a quick treatment of one of mankind’s most challenging topics, but hopefully it will at least give you a few ideas. – Curt BTW: ALSO a) an action is a demonstrated preference. b) a preference is a demonstrated bias c) a bias may or may not be subject to cognition d) a habit is not subject to cognition, thats’ the value of them. They’re cheap. e) a normative habit is rarely understood, but almost universally practiced. Which is the reason we even have this conversation in the first place. f) a metaphysical bias is not subject to cognition, it’s almost never understood by anyone in any culture.