RT @FriedrichHayek: In many discussions one person is deliberatively careful, knowledgeable & possesses sound background judgment – & the o…
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-21 05:30:32 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/358821270483243008
http://mises.org/daily/2404/The-European-Miracle
Source date (UTC): 2013-05-11 15:30:00 UTC
CONSERVATISM AND THE ANIMAL “RIGHTS” MOVEMENT
(chapter excerpt)
Conservative view of man’s relation to nature is heroic:
That nature is ours to modify for our benefit.
That nature is capricious and something we must pacify for our safety.
That the purpose of man’s life is to leave the world better for having lived in it.
This is an heroic view of man that is as ancient as the indo-european peoples.
Meaning:
(a) animals do not have ‘rights’ – this is an absurdity – they are not human. In conservatism (which means “european aristocratic egalitarianism”). Even humans must ‘earn’ rights – which is why we take them away if they misbehave. Animals can’t earn rights. (perhaps dogs to some minor degree.)
(b) that we should care for animals because we desire to, because our world is better to live in if we have them. True. This is the logical reasoning, not ‘rights’.
(c) that disregard for animals that we have normatively chosen to care for, and which are under our control,
(d) that laziness in caring for animals is likely laziness in caring for people. True.
(e) that cruelty to animals is likely cruelty to humans – and therefore you are unfit to live among humans. True.
Unfortunately, this is an argument to NORMS: demonstrating the human character necessary to possess ‘rights’. Conservatives place extremely high value on norms. Progressives do not. The progressive movement is largely an attack on conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) norms. And the progressive movement has managed to, at least in education and other major areas of life, discredit norms. And therefore the progressive movement has lost the ability to market policy that requires adherence to norms. And therefore has, out of necessity, used the specious argument of ‘rights’, because it is the only means of justifying legal action that they have available to them.
Of course, what may not be obvious is that:
(a) it is not possible for animals to possess rights – a right is something that can be reciprocally granted and animals cannot conceive of this (except perhaps for domesticated dogs..)
(b) that the word “right” is an attempt to load, or frame, animals anthropomorphically. in order to misrepresent the normative utility of protecting animals as a resource, as one open to legal rather than normative control. In other words, it’s common marketing fraud.
(c) that caretaking, even anthropomorpized caretaking, provides women with oxcytocin reactions, and that many females are addicted to this reaction. It is not rational. It is drug addiction. It’s just relatively harmless drug addiction. So our political policy is being driven by logically confused drug addicts using a deceptive marketing campaign, not reason. In which case we would simply sell off the management of wild animals to private firms who would specialize in it and figure out how to make it profitable (the way we have with deer hunting in america).
(d) that the female psyche evolved, and cooperation evolved, as a means of controlling alphas by gossip, complaint and excitement, to motivate the non-alpha males to organize against, and punish or kill the alphas, so that the females could control their own breeding rather than be the mere victims of alphas. And that there is a significant correlation between the female members of the animal rights movement and their reproductive status.
(e) That the anti-fur movement is absurd, and counter to the benefit of animals and man. It is a renewable resource. It encourages the protection of the species. It is inexpensive. It is excellent protection against the cold, and it’s beautiful. This same argument applies to hunting. And to wild animals. Because if wild animals were ‘owned’ rather than a ‘commons’ owners would protect them far better than governments do – just like we do with domesticated animals.
This is a fairly damning critique of REASONING USED by the animal rights movement. It is not however a critique of the conservative normative proscription.
The conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) proscription is that if you do not care for animals as if they are the commons that they are, and a commons that we have assumed responsibilty for from nature, that you have not EARNED the right from other humans to administer that commons on their behalf, and therefore they will withdraw your rights, which they reciprocally grant you, because you are unfit to live with rights, among others, who have them.
Conservatives are rational but their moral code is ancient and they speak of it in metaphorical terms not suitable for an era where scientific language has all but replaced metaphor. And this is why I write philosophy – to repair conservatism (aristocratic egalitarianism) by articulating it rationally.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-29 02:57:00 UTC
SNIPPETS FROM A LECTURE
“It was a social experiment.”
“You empowered us. For some of us it worked. For others, you gave them the chance to believe they could be more than they ever could be.”
“They’re disappointed. They had all these ideas about themselves. About what could have been.”
“Some of these people think that if they just follow the manual according to Curt then in three years I’ll be Curt.”
“Part of it’s your fault, you know. You created a religion. And you were the shepherd. And you left them.”
OUCH
Most people can do more than they believe if they will trust themselves to try. They often need permission to try. They need to be trained to be confident. To develop the intuition that the only failure is a failure to experiment – to try.
I’m very proud of the dozen companies that exist today because we created that entrepreneurial confidence in so many, and the experience that an entrepreneurial environment provides.. And the dozens more companies that have been affected by that experience.
It doesn’t occur to me when I’m trying to make something great, that there will be people who fail. And that some of those people will be marked by that failure. It wouldn’t be ‘aristocratic’ of me.
And libertarianism is an aristocratic philosophy.
Source date (UTC): 2013-01-25 15:58:00 UTC
[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:
http://direct.mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=215
Source date (UTC): 2013-01-12 22:28:00 UTC
[T]he human moral sense is not so much egalitarian as that egalitarianism is the outcome of four competing instincts: the desire to constrain alphas, with the desire to be them, with the desire to breed them, with the desire to raise young who perpetuate our genes. We know that humans try to constrain alphas. We know that we had to do so in order to develop cooperation. It is possible that it’s the singular reason we developed cooperation – unlike our ape relatives. Once we suppress violence with the institution of property, alphas demonstrate their superiority with asset accumulation in all its forms. There is a vast difference from constraining an alpha from creating involuntary transfers because of a concentration of capital of some kind, and constraining alphas in order to improve one’s signaling potential. The first is to prevent theft. The second is an act of theft. The institution of property answers everything.
FROM ELSEWHERE: BUILDING A LIBERTARIAN COMPANY
(Saved here for future reference on my timeline.)
As someone who built a sizeable company specifically with the intent of experimenting with libertarian management principles, I can argue that not only does it lead to a high growth company because of transparency and meritocracy, but it’s also a more pleasant place to work because people are empowered – they feel sovereign.
HOWEVER HERE ARE SOME OBSERVATIONS
1) CLASS
libertarianism is a meritocratic, and therefore middle and upper middle class philosophy. If you want to have day laborers, it’s going to be less successful than if you have engineers because the former are less comfortable problem solving than the latter because the former are more open to cheating then the latter (this isn’t necessary that’s just how it works out due to class sorting and peer association).
While we libertarians feel that liberty is the desire of all, it is not. It is the desire of those of us who have an intellectual advantage. The vast majority of people want only enough liberty to choose who directs them. They do not want to master the information necessary to be fully directed.
In that sense, liberty is classically defined as consisting of multiple levels:
1) Freedom of life, property and relationships (liberty)
2) Freedom to form organizations (association)
3) Freedom to choose leadership (corporation)
4) Freedom to ostracize (nationalism)
5) Freedom to convert or expand (imperialism)
We libertarians agree with the first three, conservatives and some conservative libertarians with the first four, and neo-conservatives with all five.
So one cannot easily create a libertarian organization across class lines, unless the majority of control is in the hands of those who wish to preserve that libertarian ordere, and its constant state of variation, meritocracy and competition.
2) EXPOSE EVERYONE TO PRICES AND PROFIT
Libertarianism and meritocracy require all people are exposed to the pricing system and its affects. Prices and profit are truths. Opinions are not. Bureaucracy is a synonym for insulation from the pricing system. Engineering this into many companies is extremely difficult. This is because many administrative disciplines are security rather than merit oriented (accounting for example).
3) ELIMINATE ALL DEDICATED MANAGEMENT
Middle management provides little if any value in almost all organizations. Knowledge exists at the bottom, and the knowledge to concentrate scarce capital at the top. Design your company to have no pure management. Everyone is responsible for profit. If they are not then you do not need them, and should organize your people differently. Usually it is better to compensate someone very dedicated to produce less profit and split time between leadership/mentoring and productivity/profitability. But if they are not themselves materially productive it is just a countdown before they become valueless. This is counter to human behavior because we all seek to avoid work and subsist upon rents. Management that does not either sell something or produce something is rent seeking.
4) REORGANIZE YOUR COMPANY FREQUENTLY – EVERY SIX MONTHS
Try to get your top talent to know more of the business by rotating them through different positions in the company. This will prevent your organization from calcifying in an attempt to be ‘efficient’ at delivering a fixed business model rather than ‘responsive’ and therefore efficient at delivering whatever business model is necessary to satisfy the needs of the market. (Note that it is possible to be a market follower and emphasize efficiency, but libertarianism is an effort to spur innovation. Leave it to liberals to live under the illusion that any commercial model represents a steady state.) Liberty is the source of innovation through competition. But competition creates multiple opportunity for loss.
5) TALENT
Marginally competitive companies possess superior talent in key roles. I devote at least a third of my time to recruiting talent.
7) PROCESSES
Processes calcify and compensate for stupidity and ignorance. Processes attempt to be efficient in order to minimize the need for interpersonal problem solving. However, this also means that processes are inhibitors to innovation and collaboration. Therefore all processes in your organization may be overridden if a) increase profitability without negative externalities. b) increase customer customer loyalty. (loyalty is meaningful. satisfaction is not. know the difference. satisfaction is only expressed meaningfully as loyalty.) c) increase the chance of opportunity generation without increasing the cost of opportunity generation. You must instill this culture in people so that the understand. Economics is the study, largely, of externalities, since internal exchanges are trivial, and externalities are complicated.
8) SALES
My experience is that companies under-invest in sales, and over-invest in fear. The people who generate sales are the most valuable people in your company. There are no exceptions. However, people who can generate sales are contextually dependent. Second, the good ones will only come to places where they are adequately rewarded. So when you are small you cannot generally hire talent that is worth what you pay them. Expect a 60-60% failure rate.
9) EVERYONE IS A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER
Every single person you meed is a potential customer. Just like actors and politicians lose their freedom because some paparazzi might catch them at an inopportune moment, an entrepreneur loses the freedom of self expression. (I chose expressly to break this rule because of my intellectual interests, but largely this worked to my advantage as self brand promotion. It turns out that if you will say really controversial things in public and try to defend them, then customers will assume you will give them the same unfiltered advice. It worked for me. In general though, I do not recommend it.)
10) MANAGEMENT STRATEGY
As a CEO, you can act as an investor, accountant, operator, salesman or craftsman. Or some combination. Because of personality differences it is unlikely that you will be even moderately successful at more than two. Know your strengths and hire the people who compensate for your weaknesses, but possess your strengths in some minor capacity. (I am a salesman, investor, and craftsman. I hire people who are operators and accountants to actually run the details of the business. Jack Welsh is different, Steve Jobs was different, Bill Gates is different, and Warren Buffett is different. And the guys who turnaround companies that are in trouble are different still. If you are entrepreneurial you are best off being sales and craftsman, because this means you master your industry and its customers. if you are a talented executive in a larger bureaucracy it is better to be operational and financial.
11) PEER REVIEWS
Conduct stack ranking peer reviews, with written comments at least once per year and exit the bottom ten percent of the company. (I usually was only able to exit the bottom 4% because the community building within the company was so strong that people would fight hard for underperformers if they thought that they could help them improve. This then creates passionate employees out of both the mentors and those people who were given help in succeeding.
12) PITCHING AND DESIGNING
Create some venue where employees suggest new uses for products, or new products, or new services, or pitches for customers. WE were always suprised at how many quiet people from the bottom of the company turned out to be our best idea poeople. It also makes it impossible for others to take credit for someone’s idea.
13) CREATE PARTIES AND AFTER-PARTIES
If you can find an excuse to spend a few hundred dollars taking people to a club, restaurant or entertainment venue where they can play, then do it. Every possible time. Have a big event at least once a year that requires formal dress, and is not in competition with some other holiday, just to celebrate each other. Terminate people who do not participate in social events.
14) HIRE FAMILY AND FRIENDS IF THEY HAVE THE TALENT – NEPOTISM IS THE BEST LOYALTY YOU CAN BUY
Loyalty is the willingness to absorb losses of opportunity for one’s self in order to create opportunity for the group to whom you are a member. Families do this by nature. Never hire ANY family member who cannot perform, or any friend, and never sacrifice your hiring process. But never discount a friend or family. They will work much harder at group cohesion than outsiders.
EXPENSIVE?
If any of this sounds either inefficient or expensive then you should do something other than go into business. People are tribal animals. they calculate all sorts of things with and against one another every day, every hour, every second.
Make sure that they are calculating something that binds them together to create products and services for your company, in the service of customers, that can be delivered to them at a profit. Because profit is our only way of knowing that we have made use of the world’s resources to serve others, in a manner that they demonstrate by their dear actions rather than their cheap words.
CLOSING
I have spent too much time on this post already, but perhaps it will do one person some good. And if so, then I’ve passed it on, and done the moral thing. 🙂
Cheers
Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 05:48:00 UTC
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/07/09/070709crbo_books_menand
Source date (UTC): 2012-10-06 21:39:00 UTC
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/30/040830crat_atlargeANOTHER GEM FROM LOIS MENAND IN THE NEW YORKER
“How to Understand Voters”
Source date (UTC): 2012-10-04 02:51:00 UTC