Form: Definition

ON THE EXISTENCE, SCARCITY, OBJECTIVITY OF VIOLENCE

—“The ability to act violently is a resource, yes.”—Richard Elliott

—“I suppose you could call violence a skill and classify it as a human resource”—Joel Harvey

–“Absolutely. An army is a resource of violence.”—Richard Elliott

^Ok. Y’all got there without me.

—“An act is not an object.”– Richard Elliott

This is mistake. An object exists independent of action. An action exists for the duration of the action and its consequences. An idea exists during the experience.

Possible Objects have asset value (potential), Possible Actions have asset value. Possible Reconstructed Experience (Knowledge) has asset value.

We use the term “Human Capital” for a reason: existential potential, potential action, and potential knowledge.

—“Violence, an act of physical force that causes or is intended to cause harm.”— Brian Minsk

This is a mistake.

Violence is merely a resource that can be put to good (suppression of imposition of costs upon the interests of others, thereby driving people into the market for cooperation in order to survive), utility (restitution and punishment), or ill (imposition of costs upon the interests of others.)

—“i’m not sure scarce is the appropriate word to describe a non material thing tbh.”– Joel Harvey

That’s a mistake.

Is knowledge scarce? It is. it’s costly to produce and costly to transfer. Scarcity, lie “speed” is merely a statement of contrast. How fast or how scarce. one thing is faster/slower than another one more scarce/plentiful than another. I’ve tried to address Hoppe’s error on scarcity elsewhere, although you can search for “hoppe error” and find it there.

That one thing is more scarce than another is actually quite difficult to know. We can know costs to obtain. So scarcity of any good, service, or information is a measure of our costs of obtaining it. Ergo, scarcity like value can be misrepresented as universal rather than subjective.