Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

ALEJANDRO VEINTIMILLA GETS IT RIGHT: ITS INSTITUTIONS NOT CULTURE

(yes, you can understand Aristocratic Egalitarianism)(reposted for clarity)

–“Hi Curt, I have now read all your blog.”—

That’s evidence that it is possible at least. lol. Smart questions you’ve raised demonstrate that it’s comprehensible too.

—“I can say it is one of the most interesting propositions and analysis I have read in years about this topic.’–

I get that a lot. Lets just hope it’s not madness in the end analysis. Seriously though, I have worked on this very hard for a long time. I am pretty sure it is the reformation that libertarianism needs. Marketing the argument in digestible form however is non-trivial, and reducing it to marketable arguments is the most difficult part of the struggle.

–“Aristocratic egalitarianism” and “High trust society” are concepts I will borrow myself and incorporate them to my rational understanding of my ideology.”—

Good. Yes, Aristocratic Egalitarianism is a replacement for the fallacy of immaculate conception we call natural law. And High trust society is a replacement for the fallacy of aggression as sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of a state.

—-” That said, I still have five questions I will write here. I will start with one I think we can debate on:”—-

OK. I think the all are reducible to a single question, and a single response. But lets go through them all anyway.

Q1A

—“Where does “Aristocratic Egalitarianism” and “High Trust Society” have their roots?”—

The battle tactics of indo european warriors (cattle raiders). Heroism, Independent maneuver, wheel, horse and bronze. Keeping what one takes. Wealth accumulation. imitation. Preservation of individual status. (See Keegan’s History of Warfare, Marija Gimbutas, JP Mallory).

Impacted land allocation (various forms of manorialism) in which married couples could only obtain land to work, delaying marriage. Slowing birth rates. Suppressing birth rates of the underclasses and impulsive. (See Emmanuel Todd).

The church broke tribes and families by prohibiting cousin marriage so that it could more cheaply acquire land. The side effect was outbreeding and extension of trust to all (universalism). This in turn required the rule of common law be constantly improved to settle property disputes.

Chivalry made it possible to join aristocracy without really fighting others. Commerce and chivalry made it possible for merchants to imitate and join the aristocratic classes (middle classes).

We end up with high trust, common law, property rights, outbreeding, and extension of the franchise to all property owners (business people who are heads of families). ie: absolute nuclear families.

Q1B

—“You suggest they can Only appear over the values of an Absolute Nuclear Family society. You give credit to the protestant values and you even use graphs to prove it (so yes, protestant values deserve credit). But I think you may be missing one important step: Why are ANF societies fertile land for Aristocratic Egalitarianism? I believe you don’t describe this process deeply enough.”—

I don’t give any credit to protestanism really. it’s just that the countries that rebelled against the inbred-corrupt, bureacratic church were those with ancient outbred ethics I refer to. So that group is called protestant but protestant ethics are JUSTIFICATIONS of ancient habits, not causes. Philosophy always provides justification. That’s its function.

I give all the credit to heroism. So did earlier historians. We just didn’t have enough evidence to explain why. I think Durant (french catholic) and Toynbee (english protestant) and Spengler (german protestant) all manage to figure it out. We needed to understand the economic relationship between outbreeding, trust, risk and law to understand why heroism (individual accumulation of demonstrated excellence) defeated family and tribe hierarchies to create frictionless production and trade. (or at least I did. I’m not sure anyone else really has done this on the scale I’m talking about. Although some authors certainly come close.

—“Are ANF and protestant values the Only way to High Trust Societies(HTS)? Why?. I believe the reason ANF and protestant values have been a way to HTS in the past is because of the relationship the people in those societies have with “law” or, more explicitly, with their concept of “what law should be” (that tacit intersubjective set of rights that lives “under” the written law).”—

No, they aren’t the only way. Thats the difference between evolving a set of institutions by experimentation, and choosing to implement a set of institutions by deliberate analysis, understanding, and choice. In theory if you can find a king and a set of judges and enough sheriffs to respect the law – hopefully the initial set all from an extended family, then you can implement property rights, rule of law, prohibition on inbreeding, and a requirement for operationalism in public speech.

So, your analysis was correct. IT’s the law that matters. (which is sort of what hayek was trying to say. Hoppe argues it’s property, first and law second but those are two sides of the same coin. Hoppe is just more right than Hayek.

—“Now, that relationship with the law can be achieved not only through protestant values. In fact, I believe that if the people have a correct and intelligent relationship with Reason, they will end up having correct institutions (with or without ANF and protestant values). If they abandon their “magical” (in Carl Jung sense of ‘magical thinking’) relationship with the state, they will end up rationalizing their concept of “what law should be” and will give birth to High Trust Societies.”—

You probably have the smart people disease (bias) of overstating the value and utility of reason, and undervalue the utility of institutions. I’m pretty sure I can prove that reason is an outlier, and that habits, institutions, and norms are much more important than reason. Reason is terribly frail. Property rights and common law are terribly durable.

—“So, if higher intelligence and a reason-oriented society can also give birth to Aristocratic Egalitarianism. Why are protestant values and ANF the “best” way go? I think I can make a case against them as “the best solution” and of course I think it is hard to defend the assessment that they are the “only” way to go.”—

The reason that higher intelligence matters is that we are both better able to identify deception and to explain our ideas in support of cooperation at about 106 and above. For this reason, as we approach 100 IQ in contemporary meaning, morality increases rapidly. Since Pareto’s principle appears everywhere: that 20% of the population controls 80% of the resources, the necessity is to get as many people in the population over 106, and preferably over 122 (at which point creativity really starts to kick in) as possible.

If I had my way I would index IQ against whatever 106 currently is so that we understood that like boiling water, IQ has a meaningful minimum bar for declaring someone fully ‘human’. But since that’s not going to happen I’ll stick with “Smart Fraction Theory”.

To answer this last question, I don’t think that protestant values mean very much. I think, as you suggest, that formal institutions that force informal institutions of high trust are what matter. And I think a minority with a vested durable interest in preserving those formal and informal institutions (a monarch and nobility) is the best way to accomplish doing it.

I have experimented (thought through pretty thoroughly) various means of ending our reliance on the ANF. And that would really require ending all legal concept of ‘family’ while retaining individual property rights at the extreme, and totally prohibiting government from the construction of laws.

The problem is, that for 2/3 of males, and half of females, that situation would provide incentives to do what they are currently doing and expand socialism to culturally and genetically suicidal levels requiring constant third world immigration. I think I have answers to it. But I would prefer answers that had greater universal appeal. And I need to finish working on those answers before advocating them. It’s too controversial.

CLOSING

So you were pretty spot on, except that you missed the fact that I already agreed with you by confusing the source and evolution of those institutions of law and property with the possibility of implementing those institutions of law and property regardless of social convention.

Thanks for the smart questions.

Curt Doolittle

The Philosophy of Aristocracy

The Propertarian Institute.

Kiev Ukraine.