Curt Doolittle

Category: Natural Law and Reciprocity

  • Property Is Not Created by a Choice, Or by a Belief. But by Action. That Action is The Application of Organized Violence.

    [O]nly humans can act. 1) Any description of a political concept, that is not articulated as action, is an attempt to obscure those actions. THis is the meaning of praxeology. It makes the involuntary transfers visible. If you cannot describe rights in praxeological terms, it’s because you are either unable to articulate thema s action, and therefore fail to understand them, or you are engaging self deception in order to justify your thefts, or you are engaging in the deception of others in order to justify your thefts. 2) Describing property as that which we obtain through voluntary exchange and homesteading, is an epistemic statement: it tells us only how we can KNOW something adheres to the contract for the institution of property, and therefore we have exclusive (a monopoly) of control over its use. It’s an epistemic statement. It still requires the contract in order for others to respect the property of yours. Implicit in any claim for several (individual, private) property, is that the grant is reciprocal. The fact that you don’t articulate this reciprocity is an accident or a contrivance. But if it is reciprocal than it is an act of exchange. It must be.

    [callout]Any attempt to state that rights are acquired other than by organized violence is an attempt to acquire them at a discount. In other words, it is an act of fraud. Any attempt at utilitarian justification then opens us to the utilitarianism of involuntary transfer, and undermines the entire libertarian argument that property rights are absolute.[/callout]

    3) It is entirely possible to state that you are not engaging in a reciprocal contract (an agreement) but in fact,t hat you are stating demands that you will back by violence. And this is, in fact, how the institution of property was created in the west, and eventually extended through enfranchisement to the militia, and then through political and tax enfranchisement to the middle class, and finally through vote-enfranchisement to the proletariat. (Who were advanced to consumers because of industrialization and capitalism.) Unfortunately, thinking that your violence is meaningful as an individual is an absurd proposition, since there is no evidence that individual violence can achieve anything, property included, without allies to enforce egalitarian property ownership by violence. The source of property is violence. But it is organized violence for the purpose of egalitarian (enfranchised) individual ownership of property. 4) the natura, instinctual, and genetic order of man is tribal – the ethics of the extended family. The west invented private property for a sequence of reasons that resulted in the high trust society that made our western exceptionalism possible. But the rest of humanity still engages in racial, tribal and familialism. And the most primitive and sedentary cultures, on matrilineal familialism. It is instinctual. while alpha males desire to crate tribes, and strong tribes. Women instinctively desire both to constrain alphas in order to control mate selection, and desire to place responsibility for the feeding of their children on the tribe – not themselves. These are our competing genetic strategies and they play out in every aspect of life. With women enfranchised into the voting pool, and increasingly abandoning the artificial institution of the nuclear family, they are exercising their instincts to restore the primitive, pre-herding order of human society. This is what we see in western voting patterns. Not a change in the distribution of male philosophical predisposition toward political orders, but an increasing expression of the female reproductive strategy let loose from the agrarian constraint of the nuclear family. 5) Rothbard recreated the mystical jewish religion of the ghetto, ignoring in his example of both the ghetto and Crusoe’s island, that there is a walled fortress of soldiers around the ghetto, and the violence of the ocean around Crusoe’s island. These are convenient defices that obscure, like his property rights, that the source of property is not choice, not will, not a divine right, not a gift from a divinity, not an abstraction. The source of property is the application of organized violence to acquire and hold property rights, such that all who participate in the violence used to obtain and hold those rights, possess that right of sovereignty: property rights. Any attempt to state that rights are acquired other than by organized violence is an attempt to acquire them at a discount. In other words, it is an act of fraud. Any attempt at utilitarian justification then opens us to the utilitarianism of involuntary transfer, and undermines the entire libertarian argument that property rights are absolute. Rothbard did us a favor by inventing propertarianism. Even though it appears that he did not understand what he had done. But we must, absolutely must, free libertarianism from the ghetto, and return it to the aristocracy that created it. Property is not a belief. A moral code, a sentiment, or a feeling. It is an institution created by the organized application of violence. Because property CAN only be created by the organized application of violence. Hoppe has succeeded in creating the institutions necessary for a homogenous polity. But he did not succeed in creating institutions necessary for a heterogeneous polity. Hopefully I’ll succeed. Not quite sure yet. Time will tell.

  • SYMMETRY WARRANTY EXTERNALITY Bring libertarian ethics out of Rothbard’s ghetto

    SYMMETRY

    WARRANTY

    EXTERNALITY

    Bring libertarian ethics out of Rothbard’s ghetto and back to the aristocracy whence it came.

    Voluntary exchange isn’t enough. Its ghetto liberty. Aristocracy requires symmetry warranty, and prohibition on externality.

    Without these three ethical properties, voluntary exchange alone is a license to commit fraud.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-15 19:39:00 UTC

  • ROTHBARDIAN GHETTO ETHICS : THE WALL AND THE OCEAN We libertarians must realize

    ROTHBARDIAN GHETTO ETHICS : THE WALL AND THE OCEAN

    We libertarians must realize the numerous logical errors in the ideological arguments that we use to support our ethics, if we are to include enough of the classical liberals with their aristocratic egalitarian ethics into our movement that we may represent anything more than an irrelevant minority.

    The most common error in libertarian thought is the ghetto ethics of Rothbard. Rothbard could not solve the problem of institutions. So he invented contrivances (and weak ones) to give the appearance of legitimacy to his ethical system. Hoppe succeeded where Rothbard failed. But Rothbard’s arguments persist.

    a) Rothbard’s Ghetto Ethics work only because where there is a ghetto within an existing political system, and no means by which members of the ghetto can replace the exterior political order. It’s all well and good to advocate ghetto ethics in the ghetto. It’s not good, or even rational, to suggest that those ethics could persist without the political exterior to the ghetto. The ghetto is anarchic. Sure. But it’s anarchic because the exterior power will not let a formal monopoly of property rights develop in the ghetto, and the anarch of the ghetto is perceived as a form of punishment for its inhabitants.

    b) Rothbard’s Crusoe Ethics are an example of ghetto ethics. Crusoe ethics sound “all sweet and libertarian” – until you realize that the ocean that surrounds the island provides the violence that separates the island from other humans: instead of the ghetto wall, we have the ocean deeps.

    The only rational model for political systems, that isn’t bent on such a logically faulty contrivance, is quite the opposite: that we are all standing on a continent shared with many other tribes, where each tribe uses slightly different measures of communal and private property. And you, alone, in your tribe, figure out that if you can institute private property, that your tribe will out-compete every other tribe. The question is, how do you create the institution of private property?

    That answer is quite telling: you buy it in a voluntary exchange. That is the only answer that is consistent with the non aggression principle. If you cannot buy it, then you must use violence to implement it. And you must, of certainty, use violence to protect it once you’ve instituted it.

    c) For human beings, instinctively, all property is communal, and privatization is the source of scarcity. It turns out that instinct is wrong, because it prevents the division of knowledge and labor. But we still ‘feel’ that instinct. And for the lower classes, it’s to their advantage to express, and act upon those feelings.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-30 13:14:00 UTC

  • MORAL ARGUMENTS IN DEFENSE OF PROPERTY ARE ACTS OF FRAUD They are attempts to ob

    MORAL ARGUMENTS IN DEFENSE OF PROPERTY ARE ACTS OF FRAUD

    They are attempts to obtain property rights at a discount by misrepresentation.

    The source of property is violence. The violence to create a monopoly on the definition of property rights.

    You only have, and only earn, property rights by the application of, and threat of, violence.

    Violence is a virtue.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-29 03:26:00 UTC

  • ON INSPIRATIONS VERSUS SOLUTIONS : THE STRUCTURE OF PROPERTARIAN ARGUMENTS I gue

    ON INSPIRATIONS VERSUS SOLUTIONS : THE STRUCTURE OF PROPERTARIAN ARGUMENTS

    I guess, one of the things that I am struck by, is the inspirational content – what I view as religious content – in philosophy.

    Now, I understand why it’s there.

    Essayists. Philosophers. Orators. We all make appeals to restructure the current order of things. The causal relations in our minds. The priority of those relations. The priority of our goals. The institutions formal and informal. The laws that enforce informal institutions.

    All oration, all philosophy, is political. It may be internally political like buddhism, or yoga – which avoid the problem of politics entirely, by providing a means of achieving happiness expressly by ignoring it. It may be overtly political like greek rationalism, economic philosophy, or legal philosophy. But all argumentation is political. Because ‘political’ means “the process of discovery or invention, and consensus upon rules of cooperation for the purpose of concentrating capital on mutually desirable ends.”

    The Argumentation Ethic tells us this. But argumentation is insufficient on its own.

    But, you see, the entire premise of philosophical discourse then, is consent on the use of property.

    And, so, what do we do when consent is impossible because of the irresolvable conflict in preferences and priorities? Such as when the reproductive strategy of one group is in conflict with the reproductive strategy of another?

    Our political systems were developed for homogenous communities. Homogenous agrarian communities. Extended families. Interrelated tribes. Majority rule is a means of obtaining consent on priorities, not on oppositions. At present they are merely the means by which one group attempts to dominate the other groups.

    Conversely, the market is the means by which all of us concentrate capital as we wish toward our desired, but often conflicting ends. We cooperate on means, anonymously and daily, despite our different ends. We help each other achieve our different ends, despite our disagreement upon them.

    The majority rule state cannot solve this problem for us. In fact, it is in polar opposition to the state of world affairs – and in particular the mobile work force and the heterogeneous society where both genders, all classes and multiple tribes, cultures and ethics may share the same system of property rights and the same system of laws and credit.

    The absurdity is evident in the assumption that if we have a bigger economy, why it must be put to narrower ends? Why should the majority be allowed to concentrate what has become extraordinary plenty of capital? IN fact, it certainly looks like the bigger a state is the more credit it can generate, but the less wisely it can make use of it without creating conflict by doing so.

    Why is homogeneity of capital concentration a ‘good’? Why, if this means the assault on one groups preferences by another?

    While we libertarians almost universally deplore the concentration of capital in the state, and we see the state only as a means of providing a resolution of conflict, not the provision of services, that does not mean that market is capable of resolving all conflicts. Of concentrating capital behind all desirable ends.

    Yet, there are reasons that we must have the ability to develop contracts together using an institution similar to the state – government. This reason is not because of some illusory ‘market failure’ (which by definition can’t exist). It exists because the market and competition are ‘sanctioned cheating’. Despite the fact that competition within a group is universally considered ‘cheating’ by human beings, we have trained one another to sanction this one form of ‘cheating’ because it results in higher productivity and lower prices at the cost of having to constantly innovate in response to others who care constantly innovating.

    All humans detest involuntary transfer and will punish it. And unfortunately, the male and female, upper and lower classes require property definitions that are in conflict, if not for preferences, but only for reproductive reasons.

    And what government must do, is create contracts where ‘cheating’ – involuntary transfer whether direct or indirect – is not tolerated.

    Or conversely, it is to sanction, and even enforce, other forms of cheating in order to create redistribution. And people hate this. They hate it twice as much as they like the goods that come from our ability to cooperate in government where cheating is not a sanctioned or preferential good. Unfortunately, for progressives (females) who see the universe as a common, and males, who see the universe as private property, (at least when it isn’t to their advantage with females or power to consider it otherwise), no matter what the other side does, it ‘feels’ like cheating.

    SO our problem is not to determine an optimum means of concentrating capital as the majority prefers – which is always at the conquest of another group. It is to concentrate capital behind the preferences of all, while cooperating upon means if not ends. This is what the market does. It is why the market gives us peace prosperity and cooperation.

    I can’t, in propertarianism, advocate a particular preference. The purpose of propertarian reasoning is not to advocate a preference, its to facilitate the pursuit of preferences in order to avoid conflict. And this is the current problem of politics. The current problem of politics is providing for permanently and irreconcilable heterogeneous goals and preferences. That would allow groups to cooperate on means, if not ends, for the purpose of pursuing different and conflicting ends.

    So, this is why my arguments are not inspirationally structured like Continental, or religious, or even classical liberal, or progressive arguments. It’s because I’m not advocating for one-ness. I’m advocating for diversity of the concentration of capital in pursuit of the preferences of all.

    And Im doing that by offering institutions that would assist us in doing so, rather than a ‘way of thinking’ that I hope will become the dominant means of inspiring people to voluntarily accumulate their effort toward a shared objective.

    That’s ideology. What I do is institutional.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-27 16:41:00 UTC

  • OBTAINING PRIVATE PROPERTY AT A DISCOUNT Any attempt to obtain the institution o

    OBTAINING PRIVATE PROPERTY AT A DISCOUNT

    Any attempt to obtain the institution of private property by argument rather than by violence is merely an attempt to obtain private property at a discount.

    I would go so far as that it is an act of fraud: an attempt to obtain the right of private property at a discount by means of argument, while requesting an involuntary transfer of communal property rights by depriving others of their communal property rights so that we may possess private property rights on our own.

    At best we buy those rights with a promise of cheaper goods and more pacifist life from those who would begrudgingly surrender their communal property rights in exchange for private property rights.

    And at best, those who favor communal property will fail to breach their contract and restore communal property rights – a claim on our property – as soon as they can find a way to do so.

    The majority of humans prefer the institution of communal property. They demonstrate that they do. They may demonstrate that they prefer the market for goods and services provided by private property. But they do not prefer the responsibilities they must bear in exchange for private property.

    Private property is the product of violence and the willingness to use violence.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-21 11:29:00 UTC

  • A DEFINITION OF THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY “Liberty is the freedom to do what you wis

    A DEFINITION OF THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY

    “Liberty is the freedom to do what you wish with yourself and the property that you have obtained by voluntary exchange or homesteading, where such use of your body and your property causes no involuntary transfers from others, either indirectly or directly by asymmetry of knowledge, fraud, theft, or violence, except for the single involuntary transfer we sanction in order to create the evolutionary market, and the evolutionary market’s benefits of increasing variety, and declining price: competition.”

    – Curt Doolittle

    This definition of the ethics of liberty is (I think) complete and correct. The Rothbardian definition of property is incomplete and therefore incorrect. It fails to account for the totality of demonstrated human behavioral preference regarding property. And that failure explains the rejection of Rothbardian Ethics as immoral. Rothbard’s error is similar to the reasons that Misesian Praxeology is incomplete and therefore incorrect when it claims apodeictic certainty. Mises failed to account for opportunity costs in praxeology. Possibly because doing so would have undermined his arguments. However, the only thing that changes if we complete Misesian Praxeology and Rothbardian Ethics is that we end up with Aristocratic warrior and the high trust society rather than the ethics of the Ghetto and Bazaar and the low trust society.

    (Reposted from a comment I made elsewhere)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-16 13:13:00 UTC

  • The Complete Definition Of Property: An Excerpt from Propertarianism

    [P]ropertarianism differs from Libertarianism by: 1) First, Propertarianism argues that the principle of involuntary transfer – a prohibition on not only fraud theft and violence — but also involuntary transfer in all its forms, including “cheating”, or privatization of the commons, is the boundary that determines ethical use of property, because it is how humans act in all states of development, regardless of the allocation of property they rely upon in their culture. 2) Second, Propertarianism recognizes that the institution of property is a prescription for the monopoly of use of a resource, including one’s self, but that each time a person respects someone’s property, he bears a cost by doing so. This cost in forgone opportunities is how we pay for the norm of property. 3) Third, Propertarianism extends libertarian ethics by the expansion of the definition of property to describe what people demonstrate that they believe is property, rather than what we hypothesize that it should, could, or might be the optimum definition of property. This leads us to the conclusion that all societies posssess property rights. But they are allocated in superior and inferior ways. And superior and inferior because individual property produces an economically superior outcome, and humans universally demonstrate a preference for economically superior outcomes, because those outcomes grant them greater opportunities for positive experiences. 4) Fourth, propertarianism describes principles and formal institutions that allow voluntary cooperation at scale where cheating would prohibit voluntary cooperation in the market, without those prohibitions on cheating. These principles require calculability, contracts instead of laws, and ‘houses’ whether representative or direct, that facilitate cooperation between classes who have disparate interests. This is the one and only legitimate use of government: to prohibit cheating – indirect involuntary transfer by other than theft, fraud or violence. Oddly enough, in the marketplace, we sanction the ‘cheating’ of competition, thus violating one of the natural ethical principles of human cooperation. But we sanction competition in order to provide incentives for innovation, and reduced prices. It is this pair of ethical problems that government, whether that government be a constitution and free market judges, or a vast totalitarian capitalist state. [L]ibertarians argue that: 1) All human rights can be expressed in terms of property rights — and moreover, that the only rights possible for humans to possess are those that can be expressed as property rights. 2) That an advanced economy is not possible without property rights because humans cannot calculate and plan a better future, nor do they, nor can they, have the incentive to do. 3) Establishing Personal Property as a formal institution will lead to a peaceful social order of moral norms — meaning that norms will evolve that allow people to plan and execute actions independently without the necessity of violence, theft or fraudulent behavior. And in this peaceful environment will experience the comfort of familial relations even in the competitive marketplace. PROPERTARIANISM’S DIFFERENCES [L]ibertarianism as a sentiment is a broad classification of political sensibilities, but what they share in common is a desire for liberty, and a preference for limited governmental interference in that liberty. In philosophical terms, libertarianism is a preference for private property as the best means of organizing a society. In other words, the best allocation of property rights is purely to individuals, rather than purely to a hierarchy, ore purely to a commons, or any mixture in between. Libertarians and Propertarians differ on: 1. Origin: Whether “Markets Evolved” and regulation is a form of theft, or “Markets Were Made” and regulations by shareholders or their representatives are an expression of property rights. In practical terms, this is a derivation of principles 1, 2 and 3 above, since regulation is an attempt to solve the problem of involuntary transfers, fraud due to asymmetry of information, and fraud due to external involuntary transfers. 2. Justification: Whether i) we derive property rights from the practical necessity of creating a division of knowledge, labor and trade — in which sense property is utilitarian. Or ii) whether we derive property rights from an abstract moral commitment to the individual — in which case it is an ideal. Or iii) whether there is some natural or evolutionary law that we should observe. Some might argue all of the above (iiii). 3. Cause: Whether i) the system of ethics that evolves from private property begins with the Rothbardian assumption of the non-aggression principle — from which we can derive private property — as a purely moral abstraction. Or ii) whether, as I have stated, we pay for our property rights by forgoing our opportunity for using violence, theft and fraud. If the latter, then by consequence, people pay for the norm of property – and in fact, pay for ALL norms. And as such, failing to observe norms is a theft from the shareholders of those norms. This approach to forgone opportunity costs more accurately describes the european aristocratic manorial ethic because particular norms are necessary for land holding. As I state elsewhere, the difference between the Rothbardian ethic and this ethical extension of Rothbard and Hoppe, is that the Jewish tradition is diasporic and unlanded. The Christian tradition is a landed tradition, and there are high costs to a social order for holding land. (Aryan is probably more accurate a term, since it predates Christianity, but it’s a tainted term) 4. Institutions: The preferred institutions for enforcing property rights: which political system they prefer. From the anarchic to the private monarchic government, to the classical liberal republican government. Propertarians Differ on which institutions that they prefer. I argue that the set of institutions that each author advocates is determined by the author’s heritage, and therefore the origin of those differences lies in the a) size of te population b) the diversity of the population in ability, identity and norms, c) the need for landholding or not. And that differences between the author’s viewpoints are meaningless, other than perhaps valuable in describing the variety of societies that can be created using the institution of property. Rothbard’s anarchism is just an instantiation of a Jewish diasporic religion. Hoppe’s private government is an instantiation of German Nationalism. And my classical liberalism is an instantiation of English imperialism. These forms of government are all possible to accomodate within the propertarian ethic: a total homogeneity of belief in a religion, a tribal homogeneity of a small territory. Or the multi-tribal demands of a federated alliance. Propertarian ethics inform us as how to structure each political order. The order itself is determined by circumstance and is constant across all human populations. But the Popertarian ethic applies equally to each. 5. Limits: On the limits of property rights (at what points one’s rights begin and end). For example, some would argue that the right to property is infinite regardless of the circumstances of others. Some would argue that property rights are a norm that is subject to limits at the extremes. So, for example, if I have gallons of water in a desert I cannot let the man before me die of thirst. Some would say I must simply give it to him. Others would argue that the man owes for the drink of water at a later date at market price, but that I cannot refuse to give it to him under this condition of duress simply because he currently lacks a means of payment. I support the latter position since it does not violate the principle of property it only presses my assets into a receivable. Otherwise I am profiting from suffering which is an involuntary transfer, not a voluntary exchange. 6. Ethics: The responsibility or lack of responsibility for symmetric knowledge in an exchange. Stated as “In any exchange the seller has an ethical obligation to mitigate fraud from the asymmetry of knowledge.” Classical liberals and Christian authors advocate symmetrical-knowledge ethics. Anarchists and Jewish authors advocate asymmetrical-knowledge ethics. Rothbard and Block are asymmetrical advocates. Most classical liberals lack the knowledge of Rothbardian/Hoppian ethics necessary to articulate their values in Propertarian terms. However, the classical liberals as well as the Hayekians, both advocate symmetrical-knowledge ethics whether they articulate the ideas effectively or not. 7. Warranty: Implied warranty is a derivation of Symmetrical Knowledge Ethics above. Expressed as: “In any exchange the seller must warrant his goods and services to prevent fraud by asymmetry of information.” Classical liberal and Christian authors imply warranty. Anarchist and Jewish authors expressly deny warranty. (I address this elsewhere as the BAZAAR EXCHANGE ETHIC vs the WARRIOR EXCHANGE ETHIC.) 8. Externalities: “No exchange, action or inaction may cause involuntary transfers from others”. Whether or not there is a prohibition against all involuntary external transfers (classical liberal and Christian authors), or a prohibition only against state conduct of involuntary transfers (anarchist and Jewish authors). 9. Exclusion (Ostracization) Whether individuals can aggregate into groups have the right of exclusion. That is, to prohibit individuals from a defined area. While all seem to agree that individuals must have the right of passage in some way, others deny groups from forming a boundary and in effect prohibiting immigration. 10. Scope: The scope of property rights. All societies select a different portfolio of Property Types to which they apply different allocations of control to the individual, the group and the political authority. We know today, that several property rights are necessary for economic calculation and to provide individuals with incentives to serve one another. But that knowledge has not always been available. Societies evolved more than chose those rights. That evolutionary process was chaotic and debilitating for some societies and enabling for others. The scope of property includes the following questions:

    1. Community / Shareholder:While ‘community property’ violates the principle of calculability, and in an advanced, large, mobile society, is impossible to administer without involuntary transfers, and further, is subject to the tragedy of the commons, and bureaucratic appropriation, those problems are solved by issuing quantities of shares, even if they are highly restricted, for currently communal goods.Some libertarians eschew the concept of community property, because they wrongly believe that such a thing implies the existence of a bureaucratic government and/or a corporeal state. But community property can be created through shareholder agreements specific to each instance of it, and numeric shares, even if they are illiquid and subject to dilution, are calculable. And as calculable, the problem of enumerated rights and responsibilities, as well as the ability to price abuses in order to both buy-in to communities, and to enforce restitution upon abuse, is solved. General laws need not be created in such cases. The outcome is also beneficial: immigration and childbirth become solvable cost subject to pricing. And the fact that such prices would be exposed is a significant enough reason for some to advocate this strategy, and for others to fight it.
    2. Norms: Since norms require restraints from action (forgone opportunities), and property itself is a norm paid for by restraints from action (forgone opportunities), then all those who adhere to norms, ‘pay’ for them. Therefore norms within a geography are a form of shareholder property, and violations of norms are involuntary transfers (thefts) from norm-holders to norm-destroyers.
    3. Artificial Property Whether to permit Artificial Property or not. In practical terms, this is a derivation dependent upon “ORIGIN” above. Since if markets were made, then their owners have a property right to create artificial forms of property – (because different portfolios of property types are artificial norms that vary from group to group.)
    4. Types of PropertyThe anarchist libertarians have artificially narrowed the concept of property to suit their desired ends. Property exists in those forms that people ACT as if it exists. If the anarchists choose to suggest otherwise, they refute their own arguments for the Praxeological necessity for the institution of property. Humans demonstrably act as though there are four categories of property:
      I. Several (Personal) Property
      Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”

      1. Physical Body

      2. Actions and Time

      3. Memories, Concepts and Identities: tools that enable us to plan and act. In the consumer economy this includes brands.

      4. Several Property: Those things we claim a monopoly of control over.

      II. Artificial Property

      Artificial Property: “Can a group issue specific rights to members?” This topic is dependent again, upon the ORIGIN question above. If markets are made, then the shareholders of the market may create artificial property of any type that they desire. Including but not limited to:

      1. Shares in property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (claims for partial ownership)

      2. Monopoly Property such as intellectual property. (grants of monopoly within a geography)

      3. Trademarks and Brands (prohibitions on fraudulent transfers within a geography).

      III. Interpersonal (Relationship) Property

      Cooperative Property: “relationships with others and tools of relationships upon which we reciprocally depend.”

      1. Mates (access to sex/reproduction)

      2. Children (genetic reproduction)

      3. Familial Relations (security)

      4. Non-Familial Relations (utility)

      5. Consanguineous Relations (tribal and family ties)

      6. Racial property (racial ties)

      7. Organizational ties (work)

      8. Knowledge ties (skills, crafts)

      9. Status and Class (reputation)

      IV. Institutional (Community) Property

      Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.”
      1. Informal (Normative) Institutions: Our norms: manners, ethics and morals. Informal institutional property is nearly impossible to quantify and price. The costs are subjective and consists of forgone opportunities.
      2. Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws. Formal institutional property is easy to price. costs are visible. And the productivity of the social order is at least marginally measurable.
      3. Land.

  • COMPLETE DEFINITION OF PROPERTY An Excerpt from “Propertarianism” that defines p

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2013/01/15/the-complete-definition-of-property-excerpt-from-propertarianism/A COMPLETE DEFINITION OF PROPERTY

    An Excerpt from “Propertarianism” that defines property descriptively – as people actually use it in various societies. This definition is necessary to repair both Praxeology and Rothbardian Ethics for heterogeneous societies with greater than aristocratic enfranchisement.

    (Knowledgable Libertarians welcome to give thoughtful feedback – thanks.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 08:33:00 UTC

  • Propertarianism As The Solution To The Problem Of Ethics

    VS ROTHBARD: ARISTOCRATIC VERSUS GHETTO ETHICS [T]he aristocratic egalitarian ethic requires all able men capable of bearing arms, deny access to power, to anyone and everyone. I usually refer to this (erroneously) as the warrior ethic, since it originates with the Indo European warrior caste. The ethic of the bazaar or ghetto (incorrectly referred to as the slave ethic), requires only that we fail to engage in trade with those who would seek power. It is a form of ostracization. Rothbard returned to his cultural history to develop his ethics when he could not sovle the problem of institutions. And in doing so, he regressed ethics into that same ghetto by ignoring the aristocratic ethical requirements of a) symmetry of knowledge, b) warranty that provides proof of that symmetry of knowledge, and c) a prohibition on external involuntary transfer.

    [callout] Propertarianism is the solution to the problem of the incompleteness of Misesian and Rothbardian praxeology, and explains the causal property of Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics, rendering it descriptive, not causal.[/callout]

    All three of these ethical constraints are necessary to create the high trust society. Yet they are also insufficient. The fourth constraint appears to require d) outbreeding by forbidding cousin-marriage. Outbreeding creates a universalist ethic, which in the west we call ‘christian love’ but which means treating all humans regardless of family origin with the same ethical constraints as you would the members of your immediate family or even tribe. [T]his is why libertarianism under Rothbard failed to gain the same level of traction that it has gained under Ron Paul. Ron Paul is promoting Aristocratic Egalitarian Ethics (even if he does not know how to articulate such a thing) while Rothbard was promoting the ethics of the Bazzaar and ghetto (even if he did not understand his actions in this context.) Humans are not terribly bright when it comes to rationalism. But we can sense moral patterns and status signals and ‘feel’ positives and negative moral reactions due to those patterns whether or not we can analytically separate and articulate those moral instincts and reactions. Propertarianism allows us to articulate these moral instincts as reducible to different concpets of property rights. Propertariansm makes moral differences commensurable. If you can grasp that idea, you may eventually understand that Propertarianism is the solution to the problem of the incompleteness of Misesian and Rothbardian praxeology, and explains the causal property of Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics, rendering it descriptive, not causal. This explanation then, in turn, provides us with the tools to solve the 2500 year old problem of politics that the greeks, and the english, and the americans failed to solve.