Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY

Kill bad ideas. Define good ideas.

1 – The Libertarian Spectrum of Arguments (justifications)

2 – Rebranding Liberty by Defining Liberty Correctly

3 – From the low trust private property ethics of the ghetto, to the high trust private property ethics of the aristocratic egalitarians.

4 – Closing: High Trust Has The Numbers to Win

1- THE LIBERTARIAN SPECTRUM OF “JUSTIFICATION”

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THE LIBERTARIAN SPECTRUM BY ABILITY TO CONDUCT AN ARGUMENT

In order of the required depth of understanding. Libertarianism can refer to:

1) A sentiment (a intuitive bias for liberty above all other moral intuitions).

2) A moral conviction that liberty produces material and consequently emotional ‘goods’.

3) A political preference for limited government.

4) A specific institutional model called classical liberal, which additionally requires, that transactions may not cause externalities (external involuntary transfers), and that norms and the commons are forms of property we must pay for through forgone opportunities for self gratification.

5) A political preference for particular choice of political model, such as Classical Liberalism, Small Government, Private government, Anarcho Capitalism, or a distribution of small states with varied sets of political preferences.

6) A specific and rigid philosophical doctrine that states that all exchanges must be voluntary and devoid of fraud theft or violence – which is a lower standard of moral requirement than the classical liberal (and the reason why rothbardian libertarianism failed.)

ANARCHO CAPTIALISM (‘ghetto ethics’)

Anarcho Capitalist Libertarianism is, at least as argued by Rothbard and Hoppe, aside from Marxism, the most analytically rigorous political theory that exists. Unfortunately it contains insufficient moral constraints to obtain the approval of the classical liberal majority, and therefore political power.

PROPERTARIANISM (Aristocratic Egalitarian ethics)

Propertarianism enumerates all high trust private property rights and therefore reflects the classical liberal, aristocratic egalitarian, ethics of the high trust society.

LIBERTY IS GRASPED BY THE MENTAL ABILITY AND DEVOTION OF THE BEHOLDER, EACH OF WHOM VARIES CONSIDERABLY IN ABILTY AND DESIRE – AND AS SUCH LIBERTY CAN EXIST AS A BIAS in a number of forms. (Emotional and sentimental, Moral, Preferential, Institutional, and rigidly analytical)

Narrow camp libertarianism is ineffective. The tent must be big, because the distribution of ability and desire is widely distributed.

2 – REBRANDING LIBERTY BY DEFINING LIBERTY CORRECTLY

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BRANDS FUNCTION AS MEMES THAT CONNECT SYMBOLS WITH EMOTIONAL REACTIONS

Unfortunately, “Brands” (ideological memes) are produced at very high cost. Because of that high cost, it’s no wonder we fight over them rather than try to introduce new ‘brands’ into the ideological marketplace.

ROTHBARD RUINED LIBERTY FOR A GENERATION

Rothbard ruined liberty for a generation in a failed attempt at creating a pseudoscientific justification for an arguably immoral moral code, that preserved ‘cheating’ under the assumption that the market would cure it. (Against the evidence.)

REBRANDING

But, by killing that idea, what remains is probably enough to build upon. At least, that is my approach to the problem. (And it’s working) And that will not require the development of a new brand. Just rebranding of the old. And the entrenched commitment everyone has already made to it.

So, the other strategy, and the more economical one, is to kill the sub brand, to preserve the brand.

PETER’S WORK ON AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS AS AN EXAMPLE

I’m sure Peter’s at least partly aware that his definition of Austrian Economics emerged as the defining description for the internet generation. (although I think we could improve it further with a little work). He redefined it by defining it. (The BHL’s are failing because they have nothing to define.) So Peter is the poster child for demonstrating that it is possible to alter the course of a meme if one does so with a narrow enough argument.

3 – FROM THE LOW TRUST NAP, TO THE HIGH TRUST PROHIBITION ON DISCOUNTS (‘CHEATING’)

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HE NAP IS A TEST, NOT A DEFINITION

“Strict commitment to the NAP is not a necessary requirement of libertarianism” – Matt Zwolinski

THE ORIGINS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY, LOW TRUST AND HIGH TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY.

The source of private property as we know was the organize application of violence to suppress nearly every form of possible discount OTHER than market competition, among an outbred and closely related homogenous population. That North Sea people had a bias toward higher trust is something we can document. That manorialism required husband and wife ‘teams’ in order to obtain land to work, extended this trust. That the church exacerbated this bias by prohibiting inbreeding out to as many as eight generations, and granted women property rights, further fractured the extended family and forced extended trust.

This institution of High-Trust Private Property was unique for unique reasons, and probably cannot be repeated easily. But it was not a natural development or it would have occurred somewhere else other than above the Hanjal line.

NAP AND LOW TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY

The NAP is a BAD TEST because it is ONLY a test of LOW TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY. It is a very visible test suitable for a diverse population with diverse sets of family structures and property rights because of those family structures.

However, the NAP is a BAD TEST because it does not suppress anywhere NEAR the discounts (thefts and cheating) that the high trust society prohibits by requiring WARRANTY against asymmetry of information; and grants 100% legal ‘standing’ to prohibit all involuntary discounts (thefts) via externality.

So NAP is a MINIMUM PRIMITIVE TEST of LOW TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY, but it is not sufficient to test high trust private property that prohibits every form of ‘cheating’ EXCEPT improvement in production and distribution of goods and services.

HIGH TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY

To create a hight trust society with trust-frictionless trade, one must not only suppress aggression, but all forms of discounts – entirely. This is what the north sea people (or at least the English) managed to do. Largely preserving the in-group behavior of the Friesians, Saxons and Jutes.

SO NO ,THE NAP IS NOT THE PRESCRIPTION FOR LIBERTY…BUT THIS SET OF RULES IS:

The prescription for HIGH TRUST LIBERTY, and HIGHT TRUST PROPERTY RIGHTS, requires the following:

(a) First Use + Monopoly of Use

(b) Non Aggression (prohibition on theft and violence)

(c) Warrantee against asymmetry of information

(d) Universal ‘standing’ against externalization

(e) Calculability And Prohibition on Pooling and Laundering – (which is too complex to go into here. But effectively would prohibit government from laundering the relationship between the source of funds and the use of funds, and terminate the discretionary use of funds, as do shareholder agreements.)

(f) Respect for norms: norms require costs paid into the ‘commons’ in the form of forgone opportunities, and as such norms are themselves a shareholder asset (of the commons).

(g) Right of Ostracization (boycott) against those who fail to respect these ethics in their entirety.

This set of rules constitutes a prohibition on involuntary transfers. What remains is only the competition in the market for the value one adds to goods and services, and a total prohibition on any form of free riding (cheating) whatsoever.

THE SPECTRUM OF ‘CHEATING’

Which of these actions would NAP prohibit and which would NAP NOT prohibit?

–CRIME–

Murder

Violence

Theft

–ETHICS–

Blackmail

Usury

Fraud

Fraud by omission

Fraud by obfuscation

–MORALITY—

Profit without contribution

Profiting from disadvantage

Profiting from suffering

Profit from Interference in the acts of others

Libel, Slander and Defamation

Externalization of costs

Privatization of the commons

Socialization of losses into the commons

Free riding

–POLITICAL MORALITY–

Rent seeking

Corruption

Extortion

Conspiracy

Monopoly (government is technically a monopoly)

–CONQUEST–

Ostracization and Displacement

Conquest through Overbreeding

Conquest through Immigration

Conquest through religious conversion

Conquest through Enslavement

Conquest through war.

Human cooperation requires both the incentive to cooperate AND a prohibition on free riding (“cheating”)

The high trust ethical system of the northern europeans requires the organized use of violence to suppress all cheating and to require truth and value-added action as the only means of obtaining profit.

4 – CLOSING – THIS IS THE ANSWER

Humans intuit their morality they do not choose it. The majority of Americans still intuit the morality of the absolute nuclear family, or at least the Nuclear family, because it was a natural consequence of immigrating to America. As well as a status symbol.

This ethic has rapidly changed as single motherhood has approached the majority proposition.

However, levying criticisms and altruistic punishment for failing to demonstrate compassion at the margins is answerable by the destruction of trust and the restoration of free riding in a polity. Progressivism isn’t progressive. It’s REGRESSIVE.

So, we still have the NUMBERS to make use of, and certainly the wealth, if we give people a rhetorical model that gives voice to their intuitional moral code. Autistic libertarians do not have the numbers. But classical liberals and traditionalists do.

Furthermore this model helps correct the conservative arguments which are purely allegorical and intuitive, because it allows us to use rational language to alter conservative beliefs that are irrelevant (homosexuality is not a choice but an in-utero stress) and defend those that do make sense (norms are property and the high trust society is not possible without it because we cannot possess sufficient commonality of reproductive interest – particularly with single parent homes.

This is a loose answer to our ‘Libertarian Philosophy’ problem. It’s an historical, and empirical not preferential argument.

The problem is that since it arose under subsistence agrarianism, it presumes near equality of productivity except for one’s moral actions. But we now live in a world where ability is also diverse. So that means that suppression of ‘cheating’ is a disadvantage to those who cannot compete, not just those who are un-WILLING to compete.

The benefit of the meritocratic system is that it accelerates reproduction of the upper classes and suppresses reproduction of the lower (which is impolitic). So the only logical solution is to redistribute to those unproductive but conforming people who do control their breeding and to ‘punish’ those unproductive people who do not control their breeding.

This problem is in part solved by a substantial minimum income redistribution, and withdrawing it if one has more than one child, or fails to cohabitate (regardless of with whom) in order to support one’s child.

That is the only solution I’m able to come up with that has a logical basis to it.