—“Curt, you’ve been hinting that you think that high trust, low ethnocentrism is not an evolutionary strategy superior in every regard.”— [T]his is an interesting question because like supply-demand curves, no evolutionary strategy is beneficial under all conditions – other than rate of adaptation. Humans are special in our rate of adaptation because not only can we adapt by developing tools, we can adapt by changing our behavior, AND we can adapt merely by selective reproduction for the EXPRESSION of genes, AND we can adapt by selective SUPPRESSION of genes (genetic pacification), rather than merely waiting for mutations. As such we actually only have to modify our behavior, and reproductively select for different goods and pacify other traits as conditions change. So we naturally encounter three overlapping fallacies in study of ourselves: The fallacy of linear progression(instead of supply-demand curves). The fallacy of progress (rather than adaptation). The fallacy of evolutionary direction (rather than evolution has no direction other than a bias for complexity in order to exploit niches). Well, a small, high trust, highly innovative, technically advanced, militarily excellent, aristocratic population that is willing to conquer and rule can compete. Conversely, a small, high trust, highly innovative, technically advanced that is unwilling to maintain military excellence, unwilling to rule, and unwilling to defend its territory from incursion cannot compete. So the reason I’m addressing these issues is the theory of “Peak Human”. Its not necessarily true that intelligence and limited reproduction are more beneficial than rapid reproduction and aggression. Malthus unbound means reproduction and aggression are more competitive than intelligence, innovation, and quality of life. Expensive and pacifist humans are a liability in a world of inexpensive and aggressive humans. More reproductive, less intelligent, more aggressive people will defeat less reproductive, more intelligent, less aggressive people. And it’s happening. Which is obvious when we state it that way. —“I got the impression that you thought the West would eventually be able to detect lying high ethnocentric cultures. Do you no longer feel this way? Because your exchange with him made it seem they’d have to become familial, rather than simply upgrade infringements of trust.”— We can put into a constitution, and therefore into the common law an equivalent of the requirement for mathematical proofs (demonstrations of possibility), and scientific papers (a loose analogy but the best I can do). We can enumerate the steps necessary to propose a political statement (an offer of contract, bound by contract). We can return grammar, rhetoric, and logic to education. We can prosecute offenders, and suppress lying as well as error, bias, and wishful thinking. It might take six to ten years to work its way through the culture, but at some point after ten or more years, people will be so habituated into the demands of truth telling by simple exposure to it, that they’ll spot error, bias, wishful thinking, and deceit easily. I mean, a lot of the most important disciplines do this today already. Law is not strictly constructed, but contracts are very close to programming at this point. Science does a fairly good job of peer review in the top journals – and law is nowhere near as difficult a problem as is physical science, because law (contract) is a justificationary process (known) and physical science is a critical process (unknown). Now, I advocate a return to the traditional family because the absolute nuclear family is no longer useful because we move around too much. It was useful for forcing people to obtain homes, and for delaying child bearing, when they lived near one another. But what’s happened is that our people are becoming unhappy because they’re alone. And (in particular, our women) are more susceptible to ideology if they are alone rather than in families. And our rates of reproduction are better in traditional families with greater mutual economic, emotional, and generational support. For men, the ANF and divorce means early death. Germany has for example, built large family sized apartments in the postwar era while Asia and to some degree, america, are building every smaller apartments – which is terrible for everyone involved. The argument is that ANF families are higher trust than TRAD/STEM families, but that is because of norms not laws. If we have a legal system that enforces truth telling (now that we know how), that means that trust can be created regardless of reproductive family structure. I try to say it this way: that while only northern europeans could EVOLVE high trust, once the technology is know everyone else can APPLY high trust ethics in law. Just like we invent other technologies that different cultures adapt. My fantasy world is a future of high trust societies slowly suppressing low trust societies, just as agrarian societies suppressed banditry and raiding. As far as I can tell this is a logical progression of the incremental suppression of parasitism. Not that it’s a deterministic process, but because it’s a competitive evolutionary strategy just as the suppression of fraud, theft and violence were competitive strategies. —“It’s hard for me to see how regression back to familialism is progress by any perspective. This “propagation of local genes” seems a flawed model, because it’s often not ultimately eugenic.”— Well I think I answered the first part of this question already, but the second part is a common misunderstanding of inbreeding. It’s true that there is a minimum population necessary to prevent the problems of inbreeding. But it’s also true that there is a maximum population before we prevent error-correction. And a maximum population to produce attractive people by pairing off. Large Cities, particularly diverse large cities, are dysgenic as hell. What we see today is very much the reproductive strategy of crows: young people move to the city for opportunity and mating, then move to the suburbs to raise children. —“I have my own Nietzschean critiques of the West, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t continue to pursue their evolutionary strategy of building a superior commons.”— I agree. And that commons will be superior under Truthful Speech, Propertarian ethics, the traditional (extended) family, the elimination of the death tax, and the restoration of nobility (access to the senate) to a family that maintains its military, economic and social status sufficiently to afford to contribute to the commons over three or more generations. Honestly, the forced exit of the martial class from politics since the Vietnam war is a significant part of the problem here. And it’s easy to fix.
Form: Full Essay
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Q&A: Are There Limits To Western Evolutionary Strategy?
—“Curt, you’ve been hinting that you think that high trust, low ethnocentrism is not an evolutionary strategy superior in every regard.”— [T]his is an interesting question because like supply-demand curves, no evolutionary strategy is beneficial under all conditions – other than rate of adaptation. Humans are special in our rate of adaptation because not only can we adapt by developing tools, we can adapt by changing our behavior, AND we can adapt merely by selective reproduction for the EXPRESSION of genes, AND we can adapt by selective SUPPRESSION of genes (genetic pacification), rather than merely waiting for mutations. As such we actually only have to modify our behavior, and reproductively select for different goods and pacify other traits as conditions change. So we naturally encounter three overlapping fallacies in study of ourselves: The fallacy of linear progression(instead of supply-demand curves). The fallacy of progress (rather than adaptation). The fallacy of evolutionary direction (rather than evolution has no direction other than a bias for complexity in order to exploit niches). Well, a small, high trust, highly innovative, technically advanced, militarily excellent, aristocratic population that is willing to conquer and rule can compete. Conversely, a small, high trust, highly innovative, technically advanced that is unwilling to maintain military excellence, unwilling to rule, and unwilling to defend its territory from incursion cannot compete. So the reason I’m addressing these issues is the theory of “Peak Human”. Its not necessarily true that intelligence and limited reproduction are more beneficial than rapid reproduction and aggression. Malthus unbound means reproduction and aggression are more competitive than intelligence, innovation, and quality of life. Expensive and pacifist humans are a liability in a world of inexpensive and aggressive humans. More reproductive, less intelligent, more aggressive people will defeat less reproductive, more intelligent, less aggressive people. And it’s happening. Which is obvious when we state it that way. —“I got the impression that you thought the West would eventually be able to detect lying high ethnocentric cultures. Do you no longer feel this way? Because your exchange with him made it seem they’d have to become familial, rather than simply upgrade infringements of trust.”— We can put into a constitution, and therefore into the common law an equivalent of the requirement for mathematical proofs (demonstrations of possibility), and scientific papers (a loose analogy but the best I can do). We can enumerate the steps necessary to propose a political statement (an offer of contract, bound by contract). We can return grammar, rhetoric, and logic to education. We can prosecute offenders, and suppress lying as well as error, bias, and wishful thinking. It might take six to ten years to work its way through the culture, but at some point after ten or more years, people will be so habituated into the demands of truth telling by simple exposure to it, that they’ll spot error, bias, wishful thinking, and deceit easily. I mean, a lot of the most important disciplines do this today already. Law is not strictly constructed, but contracts are very close to programming at this point. Science does a fairly good job of peer review in the top journals – and law is nowhere near as difficult a problem as is physical science, because law (contract) is a justificationary process (known) and physical science is a critical process (unknown). Now, I advocate a return to the traditional family because the absolute nuclear family is no longer useful because we move around too much. It was useful for forcing people to obtain homes, and for delaying child bearing, when they lived near one another. But what’s happened is that our people are becoming unhappy because they’re alone. And (in particular, our women) are more susceptible to ideology if they are alone rather than in families. And our rates of reproduction are better in traditional families with greater mutual economic, emotional, and generational support. For men, the ANF and divorce means early death. Germany has for example, built large family sized apartments in the postwar era while Asia and to some degree, america, are building every smaller apartments – which is terrible for everyone involved. The argument is that ANF families are higher trust than TRAD/STEM families, but that is because of norms not laws. If we have a legal system that enforces truth telling (now that we know how), that means that trust can be created regardless of reproductive family structure. I try to say it this way: that while only northern europeans could EVOLVE high trust, once the technology is know everyone else can APPLY high trust ethics in law. Just like we invent other technologies that different cultures adapt. My fantasy world is a future of high trust societies slowly suppressing low trust societies, just as agrarian societies suppressed banditry and raiding. As far as I can tell this is a logical progression of the incremental suppression of parasitism. Not that it’s a deterministic process, but because it’s a competitive evolutionary strategy just as the suppression of fraud, theft and violence were competitive strategies. —“It’s hard for me to see how regression back to familialism is progress by any perspective. This “propagation of local genes” seems a flawed model, because it’s often not ultimately eugenic.”— Well I think I answered the first part of this question already, but the second part is a common misunderstanding of inbreeding. It’s true that there is a minimum population necessary to prevent the problems of inbreeding. But it’s also true that there is a maximum population before we prevent error-correction. And a maximum population to produce attractive people by pairing off. Large Cities, particularly diverse large cities, are dysgenic as hell. What we see today is very much the reproductive strategy of crows: young people move to the city for opportunity and mating, then move to the suburbs to raise children. —“I have my own Nietzschean critiques of the West, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t continue to pursue their evolutionary strategy of building a superior commons.”— I agree. And that commons will be superior under Truthful Speech, Propertarian ethics, the traditional (extended) family, the elimination of the death tax, and the restoration of nobility (access to the senate) to a family that maintains its military, economic and social status sufficiently to afford to contribute to the commons over three or more generations. Honestly, the forced exit of the martial class from politics since the Vietnam war is a significant part of the problem here. And it’s easy to fix.
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Q: “How Do I Learn Philosophy”
(really good piece) [Q]: “CURT, HOW DO I LEARN PHILOSOPHY?” A: WELL THAT REQUIRES DEFINING PHILOSOPHY AND CHOOSING WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN FROM IT. QUESTION
—“Hey curt, since you mentioned newbies. If an individual was beginning planning a self taught curriculum in philosophy, what would you recommend for sources? And does eastern philosophy like the teachings of the Tao hold any significance in your paradigm?”—
ANSWER First, we need to define Philosophy. Which I think I can successfully do by stating it’s a set of ideas that assist us in forming a framework of understanding, whether by imitation of others – whether real or mythical (virtue), rules of conduct and decision making(deontological), or understanding of the mechanics of the universe(teleological), with which we can use limited human knowledge and reason for the purposes of acting to achieve needs, satisfactions, and fulfillments, by cooperating successfully in a world of others doing the same.THE OPTIONS This hierarchy of philosophies is important: imitation of virtue, dedication to rules, and understanding of cause and effect producing outcomes, place different demands on the individual. -One’s Experience- i – children and primitive cultures rely on virtue (religion) ii – adults in developing cultures rely on rules (law) iii – the wise in mature cultures rely on outcomes (science) This is the usual progression of one’s personal philosophy through life. As children, adults and at our maturity we make use of virtue, rule, and outcome ethics because that is the best we can manage at every stage of our development. This progression also remains useful, and is why wise me resort to “what would jesus do” or “what would such and such a great man do?”. Because that virtuous wisdom is, at times, the only possible means of decision making with sparse information. Just as we fall back upon rules when we are unsure of outcomes. Just as we rely upon our knowledge of outcomes to make decisions when we have accumulated the knowledge and experience to do so. So it is not a matter of choosing virtue, rule, or outcome ethics. It is a matter of acquiring each so that one can apply each in the circumstances where one possesses the information to do so – and conversely: one can judge the ethics of others by the rules they apply in each circumstance. A child who errs by virtue ethics is forgivable. An adult who errs by rules is forgivable. An wise man who errs despite his vast knowledge of a subject is forgivable. Yet the inverse is not true: a wise man who relies upon rules when he is masterful is suspect, an adult who relies upon virtue is suspect. A child who relies upon anything other than virtue is suspect. -One’s Abilities- There is a reason why women and people of lower IQ favor religion, why people in the liberal arts favor philosophy and pseudoscience, and why men and people of higher IQ favor history and science. That is because they possess the means by which to acquire and use those systems of of thought given their experience and ability. Furthermore, the acquisition of virtue, rule and outcome knowledge is costly to the individual. Not all can afford the investment, and not all have access to the literature or teachers from whom they can learn it. We do not expect feral children to demonstrate any of the ethical frameworks, and it is very difficult not to expect a first world child not to posses at least virtue ethics, if not rule ethics, and we attempt (possibly, if not probably, foolishly) to teach our children outcome ethics in the present era. -One’s control over one’s actions in life- Different philosophies whether virtuous, rational, or scientific are more or less use in different circumstances. We can break philosophies into: 1-religions, 2-disciplines 3-rationalisms(philosophies), 4-laws, and 5-sciences. It is very hard to classify any one of the bodies of thought below because all philosophical systems contain attributes of each category. I’ve organized them the best that I can. -Religions- (faith) — Christianity provides a body of myth and ritual with but one purpose: the extension of kinship love to non kin, as a means of generating universal inclusiveness. It is a religion of benevolent pacification cured only by it’s opposite in the martial nobility. Islam provides rules and virtues for people with limited intelligence to observe and daily rituals to enforce them – although this is a false promise since it achieves the opposite. I am uncomfortable commending on Hinduism since I am not sure I really understand it sufficiently (I see it through buddha’s eyes, as needing reformation), and all other ‘religions’ that I know of have been unsuccessful, or are obviously detrimental. Japan’s Shintoism combines both monarchy, ancestor worship and buddhism to produce fealty to family, clan, tribe and nation, as well as self control. For an homogenous people the combination of history, nature worship, and self control is hard to criticize other than the people are often frustrated and emotionally repressed. –Disciplines– (training) —Buddhism provides a means of achieving personal satisfaction for those who live in worlds where they have few resources, few options, little control over their circumstances. It focuses on the self. Combined with Yoga it is extremely attractive to women. Stoicism provides a means of achieving personal happiness for those who live in civilized worlds but who have little control over their environments. Stoicism is the opposite of buddhism in that buddhism achieves satisfaction by escapism and internal discipline, while stoicism achieves satisfaction by means of creating many small successes in daily life, accumulating in your achievement of virtue independent of the opinions of others. Combined with Sport it is extremely attractive to men. I tend to have a favorable view of both buddhism and stoicism. –Rationalisms— (reasoning) —Confucianism provides a means of obtaining satisfaction by conformity to fixed roles in society and providing us with wisdom for operating within those roles. Unfortunately Confucianism is paired with Sun Tzu: the philosophy of deception, and Lao Tzu: the philosophy of the poor within a hierarchical system. Together they advocate submission to authority as a means of avoiding conflict. Ancient Greco-Roman Philosophy – prior to Aristotle is interesting for the breadth of experiment that occurred in seeking a solution. I recommend The Ethics and the Politics. That’s all. Christian Natural Law Philosophy – Aquinas is interesting, but I would recommend skipping him, reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on Natural Law instead. Anglo Empirical (Moral) Philosophy – Locke, Smith and Hume constitute the enlightenment philosophers of necessity. Continental Philosophy – is reactionary in order to compensate for the disorder produced by the errors in anglo empirical philosophy’s assumption of an aristocracy of everyone. So Continental is little more than an attempt to create a rational rather than supernatural justification of existing moral orders. There is plenty of wisdom in that philosophy, and great aspiration to it. Especially Nietzsche, who is the point of demarcation between christian mysticism and naturalistic philosophy. but it is also the source pseudoscience and lies. Cosmopolitan Philosophy (Pseudoscience, Loading, framing and overloading) Marx, Freud, Cantor, Mises, Rothbard. The only cosmopolitan I recommend is Popper and while he is most definitely a cosmopolitan, he adopted Hayek’s information theory. (When I criticize rationalism it is the incremental development of pseudoscience and deceit by justificationism, loading, framing, and overloading that I am trying to reverse with Testimonialism. The anglos philosophers were wrong in their assumptions of man, but right in their method of argument. The continentals were right in their assumptions of man but wrong in their method of argument. The cosmopolitans were dishonest in their articulation of man, and dishonest in their method of argument.) Anglo Ratio-Scientific (Legal) Philosophy – Anglo Common Law, Machiavelli, Jefferson, Pareto, Durkheim, (Popper), Hayek, (Doolittle). Science: The discovery of general rules by repeated observation resulting in accumulated wisdom. Virtue, Rules, Wisdom, where wisdom feeds back to virtue and rules. This is an inter-generational process of empirical refinement. –Laws– (captured rules) —Judaism provides a means for not only exiting their incompetent classes but an entire body of law to master, and overwhelming pressure to remain within the polity which is ensured by the hostility to outsiders and therefore outsider hostility to insiders. Judaism is perhaps the ultimate synthesis of rule based systems and history even if it is a failed system because it lacks the moral content necessary to hold land. It originated with pastoralists and remains a pastorialist (unlanded) doctrine. It lacks intertemporal moral content. That is why the jews cannot hold land. Anglo Constitutionalism expresses philosophy as law and very much under natural law, presumably as logically and scientifically constructed as is possible. Most americans are legalists – the law as religious order. Legalism can be thought of as the struggle to understand the laws of cooperation, just as we understand the laws of the physical universe. All anglo legal theory is an empirical attempt to discover and codify natural law in the absence of human discretion. This is a scientific experiment unique to anglo civilization. It is flawed only by the assumption that it is in the interests of the lower classes to compete meritocratic-ally. The fact is that only with eugenic manorialism or a substitute can such a system function. This is why no other groups use it. They are too weighted down with the lower classes who are incapable of competition and cooperation by moral means. (I tend to view law as the ultimate expression of any philosophy (which as an anglo american I would). But then I am action oriented, from the martial and commercial class, and arguably a member of the lesser aristocracy.) –Science– (investigation) —Aristotelianism (what we call science) is demanding and at times forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, but at least when large numbers of us adopt it, we are able to master reality better than all other philosophies combined. The problem is that it is an aristocratic philosophy because it requires great effort and ability to learn and apply. Which is why we invest so heavily in education: we must. Secondly, science is the study of cause and effect. But scientific analysis implies the ability to act with discretion. At the same time, rule of law exists to prevent discretion, and thereby create rules that prevent others from using discretion to manipulate us. Third, it is contentious open question whether at any scale discretionary action does more harm than good, or whether rule based action prohibits discretion when it may be beneficial. To no small degree this debate between the purpose of social science being the development of rules (conservatism) or the development of discretion (progressivism) is the cause of the political conflict of visions. Hence Sowell’s criticism of the progressive “vision of the anointed’. And it is the source of conflict between the Austrian (do nothing or naturalistic/german), Freshwater (develop rules/anglo) and Saltwater(discretionary/jewish) schools of economics – which is the discipline has evolved into our only social science. RECOMMENDATIONS So when you ask me “Where should I start in philosophy” the above understanding provides us with a framework for answering that question. You can seek to learn virtue, seek to learn wisdom, seek to learn scientific laws. You can seek personal fulfillment independent of the world at the lower end of the spectrum, or you can seek personal fulfillment within the rich competition of the world. Or you can seek comprehension of all – politics – even if you choose to pursue only personal of familial happiness. If you cause no harm by externality then I suppose that I don’t care which you choose. I would recommend that you know the truth first, and then read the ancient texts for insight into the wisdom of each age. But this is mere entertainment. These were old technologies that have been replaced with new technologies. it is sometimes entertaining to study watchmaking in an era of computer science, but it is merely entertainment, not necessary information. I cannot give counsel on that choice. I can give you counsel if you choose law and science. This is partly because I was born naturally analytical and less affected by signals and emotions than most. If you are, as are many women, the opposite, then you may need to choose a different method of achieving happiness. But, if by some chance, if you want to know the truth, regardless of the burden it places upon you then I will recommend that you start here: START WITH THE GOAL 1) The Meditations of Aurelius. Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics. In that order. THEN THE THEORY 1) Popper’s Knowledge and Ignorance and Hayek’s Use of Knowledge in Society. and Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson which will teach you the basic principle of costs in equilibrium. A brief introduction to Popper’s Critical Rationalism online, even if it is the few paragraphs on my site, In which you will be introduced to the darwinian approach to the evolution of knowledge. At which point you will understand that in the physical, social, and cognitive sciences, we speak in terms of information causing changes in state. Which is, as far as I know, the present, if not final, model of all human understanding about any domain. NEXT THE EVOLUTION OF THE LAWS 2) The Magna Carta, The Declaration, Constitution, Bill of rights. The Milsom’s history of the common law. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, and Law, Legislation and Liberty. THEN GO FOR WISDOM : THE SHORT LIST Ricardo Duchesne: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization JP Mallory: In Search of Indo Europeans John Keegan: A History Of Warfare Joseph Campbell : The Hero’s Journey Karen Armstrong : The Great Transformation Bryan Ward-Perkins: The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization William Tucker: Marriage and Civilization Emmanuel Todd: The Explanation of Ideology Emmanuel Todd: The Invention of Europe David Hackett Fischer: Albion‘s Seed: Four British Folkways in America Daniel Hannan: Inventing Freedom Alan MacFarlane : Origins of English Individualism Gregory Clark: A Farewell to Alms Matt Ridley: The Red Queen Dale Petersen: Demonic Males Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow Francis Fukuyama: Trust Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind Stephen Hicks : Explaining Postmodernism Hans Hoppe: Democracy The God That Failed Doolittle: Propertarianism. THE LONGER LIST If you read those works you will be able to both (a) understand testimonialism, propertarianism, and (b) work through the rest of my reading list at www.propertarianism.com/reading-list/ which is, as far as I know, the sum of works worth investment given our current knowledge of the technology of cooperation. And after that it’s just experience and wisdom. And in gaining it, sorting the scarce kernels of wisdom from the vast chaff of human intellectual history. Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine (Tallinn, Estonia)
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Q: “How Do I Learn Philosophy”
(really good piece) [Q]: “CURT, HOW DO I LEARN PHILOSOPHY?” A: WELL THAT REQUIRES DEFINING PHILOSOPHY AND CHOOSING WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN FROM IT. QUESTION
—“Hey curt, since you mentioned newbies. If an individual was beginning planning a self taught curriculum in philosophy, what would you recommend for sources? And does eastern philosophy like the teachings of the Tao hold any significance in your paradigm?”—
ANSWER First, we need to define Philosophy. Which I think I can successfully do by stating it’s a set of ideas that assist us in forming a framework of understanding, whether by imitation of others – whether real or mythical (virtue), rules of conduct and decision making(deontological), or understanding of the mechanics of the universe(teleological), with which we can use limited human knowledge and reason for the purposes of acting to achieve needs, satisfactions, and fulfillments, by cooperating successfully in a world of others doing the same.THE OPTIONS This hierarchy of philosophies is important: imitation of virtue, dedication to rules, and understanding of cause and effect producing outcomes, place different demands on the individual. -One’s Experience- i – children and primitive cultures rely on virtue (religion) ii – adults in developing cultures rely on rules (law) iii – the wise in mature cultures rely on outcomes (science) This is the usual progression of one’s personal philosophy through life. As children, adults and at our maturity we make use of virtue, rule, and outcome ethics because that is the best we can manage at every stage of our development. This progression also remains useful, and is why wise me resort to “what would jesus do” or “what would such and such a great man do?”. Because that virtuous wisdom is, at times, the only possible means of decision making with sparse information. Just as we fall back upon rules when we are unsure of outcomes. Just as we rely upon our knowledge of outcomes to make decisions when we have accumulated the knowledge and experience to do so. So it is not a matter of choosing virtue, rule, or outcome ethics. It is a matter of acquiring each so that one can apply each in the circumstances where one possesses the information to do so – and conversely: one can judge the ethics of others by the rules they apply in each circumstance. A child who errs by virtue ethics is forgivable. An adult who errs by rules is forgivable. An wise man who errs despite his vast knowledge of a subject is forgivable. Yet the inverse is not true: a wise man who relies upon rules when he is masterful is suspect, an adult who relies upon virtue is suspect. A child who relies upon anything other than virtue is suspect. -One’s Abilities- There is a reason why women and people of lower IQ favor religion, why people in the liberal arts favor philosophy and pseudoscience, and why men and people of higher IQ favor history and science. That is because they possess the means by which to acquire and use those systems of of thought given their experience and ability. Furthermore, the acquisition of virtue, rule and outcome knowledge is costly to the individual. Not all can afford the investment, and not all have access to the literature or teachers from whom they can learn it. We do not expect feral children to demonstrate any of the ethical frameworks, and it is very difficult not to expect a first world child not to posses at least virtue ethics, if not rule ethics, and we attempt (possibly, if not probably, foolishly) to teach our children outcome ethics in the present era. -One’s control over one’s actions in life- Different philosophies whether virtuous, rational, or scientific are more or less use in different circumstances. We can break philosophies into: 1-religions, 2-disciplines 3-rationalisms(philosophies), 4-laws, and 5-sciences. It is very hard to classify any one of the bodies of thought below because all philosophical systems contain attributes of each category. I’ve organized them the best that I can. -Religions- (faith) — Christianity provides a body of myth and ritual with but one purpose: the extension of kinship love to non kin, as a means of generating universal inclusiveness. It is a religion of benevolent pacification cured only by it’s opposite in the martial nobility. Islam provides rules and virtues for people with limited intelligence to observe and daily rituals to enforce them – although this is a false promise since it achieves the opposite. I am uncomfortable commending on Hinduism since I am not sure I really understand it sufficiently (I see it through buddha’s eyes, as needing reformation), and all other ‘religions’ that I know of have been unsuccessful, or are obviously detrimental. Japan’s Shintoism combines both monarchy, ancestor worship and buddhism to produce fealty to family, clan, tribe and nation, as well as self control. For an homogenous people the combination of history, nature worship, and self control is hard to criticize other than the people are often frustrated and emotionally repressed. –Disciplines– (training) —Buddhism provides a means of achieving personal satisfaction for those who live in worlds where they have few resources, few options, little control over their circumstances. It focuses on the self. Combined with Yoga it is extremely attractive to women. Stoicism provides a means of achieving personal happiness for those who live in civilized worlds but who have little control over their environments. Stoicism is the opposite of buddhism in that buddhism achieves satisfaction by escapism and internal discipline, while stoicism achieves satisfaction by means of creating many small successes in daily life, accumulating in your achievement of virtue independent of the opinions of others. Combined with Sport it is extremely attractive to men. I tend to have a favorable view of both buddhism and stoicism. –Rationalisms— (reasoning) —Confucianism provides a means of obtaining satisfaction by conformity to fixed roles in society and providing us with wisdom for operating within those roles. Unfortunately Confucianism is paired with Sun Tzu: the philosophy of deception, and Lao Tzu: the philosophy of the poor within a hierarchical system. Together they advocate submission to authority as a means of avoiding conflict. Ancient Greco-Roman Philosophy – prior to Aristotle is interesting for the breadth of experiment that occurred in seeking a solution. I recommend The Ethics and the Politics. That’s all. Christian Natural Law Philosophy – Aquinas is interesting, but I would recommend skipping him, reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on Natural Law instead. Anglo Empirical (Moral) Philosophy – Locke, Smith and Hume constitute the enlightenment philosophers of necessity. Continental Philosophy – is reactionary in order to compensate for the disorder produced by the errors in anglo empirical philosophy’s assumption of an aristocracy of everyone. So Continental is little more than an attempt to create a rational rather than supernatural justification of existing moral orders. There is plenty of wisdom in that philosophy, and great aspiration to it. Especially Nietzsche, who is the point of demarcation between christian mysticism and naturalistic philosophy. but it is also the source pseudoscience and lies. Cosmopolitan Philosophy (Pseudoscience, Loading, framing and overloading) Marx, Freud, Cantor, Mises, Rothbard. The only cosmopolitan I recommend is Popper and while he is most definitely a cosmopolitan, he adopted Hayek’s information theory. (When I criticize rationalism it is the incremental development of pseudoscience and deceit by justificationism, loading, framing, and overloading that I am trying to reverse with Testimonialism. The anglos philosophers were wrong in their assumptions of man, but right in their method of argument. The continentals were right in their assumptions of man but wrong in their method of argument. The cosmopolitans were dishonest in their articulation of man, and dishonest in their method of argument.) Anglo Ratio-Scientific (Legal) Philosophy – Anglo Common Law, Machiavelli, Jefferson, Pareto, Durkheim, (Popper), Hayek, (Doolittle). Science: The discovery of general rules by repeated observation resulting in accumulated wisdom. Virtue, Rules, Wisdom, where wisdom feeds back to virtue and rules. This is an inter-generational process of empirical refinement. –Laws– (captured rules) —Judaism provides a means for not only exiting their incompetent classes but an entire body of law to master, and overwhelming pressure to remain within the polity which is ensured by the hostility to outsiders and therefore outsider hostility to insiders. Judaism is perhaps the ultimate synthesis of rule based systems and history even if it is a failed system because it lacks the moral content necessary to hold land. It originated with pastoralists and remains a pastorialist (unlanded) doctrine. It lacks intertemporal moral content. That is why the jews cannot hold land. Anglo Constitutionalism expresses philosophy as law and very much under natural law, presumably as logically and scientifically constructed as is possible. Most americans are legalists – the law as religious order. Legalism can be thought of as the struggle to understand the laws of cooperation, just as we understand the laws of the physical universe. All anglo legal theory is an empirical attempt to discover and codify natural law in the absence of human discretion. This is a scientific experiment unique to anglo civilization. It is flawed only by the assumption that it is in the interests of the lower classes to compete meritocratic-ally. The fact is that only with eugenic manorialism or a substitute can such a system function. This is why no other groups use it. They are too weighted down with the lower classes who are incapable of competition and cooperation by moral means. (I tend to view law as the ultimate expression of any philosophy (which as an anglo american I would). But then I am action oriented, from the martial and commercial class, and arguably a member of the lesser aristocracy.) –Science– (investigation) —Aristotelianism (what we call science) is demanding and at times forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, but at least when large numbers of us adopt it, we are able to master reality better than all other philosophies combined. The problem is that it is an aristocratic philosophy because it requires great effort and ability to learn and apply. Which is why we invest so heavily in education: we must. Secondly, science is the study of cause and effect. But scientific analysis implies the ability to act with discretion. At the same time, rule of law exists to prevent discretion, and thereby create rules that prevent others from using discretion to manipulate us. Third, it is contentious open question whether at any scale discretionary action does more harm than good, or whether rule based action prohibits discretion when it may be beneficial. To no small degree this debate between the purpose of social science being the development of rules (conservatism) or the development of discretion (progressivism) is the cause of the political conflict of visions. Hence Sowell’s criticism of the progressive “vision of the anointed’. And it is the source of conflict between the Austrian (do nothing or naturalistic/german), Freshwater (develop rules/anglo) and Saltwater(discretionary/jewish) schools of economics – which is the discipline has evolved into our only social science. RECOMMENDATIONS So when you ask me “Where should I start in philosophy” the above understanding provides us with a framework for answering that question. You can seek to learn virtue, seek to learn wisdom, seek to learn scientific laws. You can seek personal fulfillment independent of the world at the lower end of the spectrum, or you can seek personal fulfillment within the rich competition of the world. Or you can seek comprehension of all – politics – even if you choose to pursue only personal of familial happiness. If you cause no harm by externality then I suppose that I don’t care which you choose. I would recommend that you know the truth first, and then read the ancient texts for insight into the wisdom of each age. But this is mere entertainment. These were old technologies that have been replaced with new technologies. it is sometimes entertaining to study watchmaking in an era of computer science, but it is merely entertainment, not necessary information. I cannot give counsel on that choice. I can give you counsel if you choose law and science. This is partly because I was born naturally analytical and less affected by signals and emotions than most. If you are, as are many women, the opposite, then you may need to choose a different method of achieving happiness. But, if by some chance, if you want to know the truth, regardless of the burden it places upon you then I will recommend that you start here: START WITH THE GOAL 1) The Meditations of Aurelius. Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics. In that order. THEN THE THEORY 1) Popper’s Knowledge and Ignorance and Hayek’s Use of Knowledge in Society. and Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson which will teach you the basic principle of costs in equilibrium. A brief introduction to Popper’s Critical Rationalism online, even if it is the few paragraphs on my site, In which you will be introduced to the darwinian approach to the evolution of knowledge. At which point you will understand that in the physical, social, and cognitive sciences, we speak in terms of information causing changes in state. Which is, as far as I know, the present, if not final, model of all human understanding about any domain. NEXT THE EVOLUTION OF THE LAWS 2) The Magna Carta, The Declaration, Constitution, Bill of rights. The Milsom’s history of the common law. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, and Law, Legislation and Liberty. THEN GO FOR WISDOM : THE SHORT LIST Ricardo Duchesne: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization JP Mallory: In Search of Indo Europeans John Keegan: A History Of Warfare Joseph Campbell : The Hero’s Journey Karen Armstrong : The Great Transformation Bryan Ward-Perkins: The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization William Tucker: Marriage and Civilization Emmanuel Todd: The Explanation of Ideology Emmanuel Todd: The Invention of Europe David Hackett Fischer: Albion‘s Seed: Four British Folkways in America Daniel Hannan: Inventing Freedom Alan MacFarlane : Origins of English Individualism Gregory Clark: A Farewell to Alms Matt Ridley: The Red Queen Dale Petersen: Demonic Males Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow Francis Fukuyama: Trust Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind Stephen Hicks : Explaining Postmodernism Hans Hoppe: Democracy The God That Failed Doolittle: Propertarianism. THE LONGER LIST If you read those works you will be able to both (a) understand testimonialism, propertarianism, and (b) work through the rest of my reading list at www.propertarianism.com/reading-list/ which is, as far as I know, the sum of works worth investment given our current knowledge of the technology of cooperation. And after that it’s just experience and wisdom. And in gaining it, sorting the scarce kernels of wisdom from the vast chaff of human intellectual history. Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine (Tallinn, Estonia)
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“CURT, HOW DO I LEARN PHILOSOPHY?” A: WELL THAT REQUIRES DEFINING PHILOSOPHY AND
http://www.propertarianism.com/Q: “CURT, HOW DO I LEARN PHILOSOPHY?” A: WELL THAT REQUIRES DEFINING PHILOSOPHY AND CHOOSING WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN FROM IT.
(really good piece)
QUESTION
—“Hey curt, since you mentioned newbies. If an individual was beginning planning a self taught curriculum in philosophy, what would you recommend for sources? And does eastern philosophy like the teachings of the Tao hold any significance in your paradigm?”—
ANSWER
First, we need to define Philosophy. Which I think I can successfully do by stating it’s a set of ideas that assist us in forming a framework of understanding, whether by imitation of others – whether real or mythical (virtue), rules of conduct and decision making(deontological), or understanding of the mechanics of the universe(teleological), with which we can use limited human knowledge and reason for the purposes of acting to achieve needs, satisfactions, and fulfillments, by cooperating successfully in a world of others doing the same.
THE OPTIONS
This hierarchy of philosophies is important: imitation of virtue, dedication to rules, and understanding of cause and effect producing outcomes, place different demands on the individual.
-One’s Experience-
i – children and primitive cultures rely on virtue (religion)
ii – adults in developing cultures rely on rules (law)
iii – the wise in mature cultures rely on outcomes (science)
This is the usual progression of one’s personal philosophy through life. As children, adults and at our maturity we make use of virtue, rule, and outcome ethics because that is the best we can manage at every stage of our development.
This progression also remains useful, and is why wise me resort to “what would jesus do” or “what would such and such a great man do?”. Because that virtuous wisdom is, at times, the only possible means of decision making with sparse information. Just as we fall back upon rules when we are unsure of outcomes. Just as we rely upon our knowledge of outcomes to make decisions when we have accumulated the knowledge and experience to do so.
So it is not a matter of choosing virtue, rule, or outcome ethics. It is a matter of acquiring each so that one can apply each in the circumstances where one possesses the information to do so – and conversely: one can judge the ethics of others by the rules they apply in each circumstance. A child who errs by virtue ethics is forgivable. An adult who errs by rules is forgivable. An wise man who errs despite his vast knowledge of a subject is forgivable. Yet the inverse is not true: a wise man who relies upon rules when he is masterful is suspect, an adult who relies upon virtue is suspect. A child who relies upon anything other than virtue is suspect.
-One’s Abilities-
There is a reason why women and people of lower IQ favor religion, why people in the liberal arts favor philosophy and pseudoscience, and why men and people of higher IQ favor history and science. That is because they possess the means by which to acquire and use those systems of of thought given their experience and ability.
Furthermore, the acquisition of virtue, rule and outcome knowledge is costly to the individual. Not all can afford the investment, and not all have access to the literature or teachers from whom they can learn it. We do not expect feral children to demonstrate any of the ethical frameworks, and it is very difficult not to expect a first world child not to posses at least virtue ethics, if not rule ethics, and we attempt (possibly, if not probably, foolishly) to teach our children outcome ethics in the present era.
-One’s control over one’s actions in life-
Different philosophies whether virtuous, rational, or scientific are more or less use in different circumstances. We can break philosophies into:
1-religions,
2-disciplines
3-rationalisms(philosophies),
4-laws, and
5-sciences.
It is very hard to classify any one of the bodies of thought below because all philosophical systems contain attributes of each category. I’ve organized them the best that I can.
-Religions- (faith) —
Christianity provides a body of myth and ritual with but one purpose: the extension of kinship love to non kin, as a means of generating universal inclusiveness. It is a religion of benevolent pacification cured only by it’s opposite in the martial nobility.
Islam provides rules and virtues for people with limited intelligence to observe and daily rituals to enforce them – although this is a false promise since it achieves the opposite.
I am uncomfortable commending on Hinduism since I am not sure I really understand it sufficiently (I see it through buddha’s eyes, as needing reformation), and all other ‘religions’ that I know of have been unsuccessful, or are obviously detrimental.
Japan’s Shintoism combines both monarchy, ancestor worship and buddhism to produce fealty to family, clan, tribe and nation, as well as self control. For an homogenous people the combination of history, nature worship, and self control is hard to criticize other than the people are often frustrated and emotionally repressed.
–Disciplines– (training) —
Buddhism provides a means of achieving personal satisfaction for those who live in worlds where they have few resources, few options, little control over their circumstances. It focuses on the self. Combined with Yoga it is extremely attractive to women.
Stoicism provides a means of achieving personal happiness for those who live in civilized worlds but who have little control over their environments. Stoicism is the opposite of buddhism in that buddhism achieves satisfaction by escapism and internal discipline, while stoicism achieves satisfaction by means of creating many small successes in daily life, accumulating in your achievement of virtue independent of the opinions of others. Combined with Sport it is extremely attractive to men.
I tend to have a favorable view of both buddhism and stoicism.
–Rationalisms— (reasoning) —
Confucianism provides a means of obtaining satisfaction by conformity to fixed roles in society and providing us with wisdom for operating within those roles. Unfortunately Confucianism is paired with Sun Tzu: the philosophy of deception, and Lao Tzu: the philosophy of the poor within a hierarchical system. Together they advocate submission to authority as a means of avoiding conflict.
Ancient Greco-Roman Philosophy – prior to Aristotle is interesting for the breadth of experiment that occurred in seeking a solution. I recommend The Ethics and the Politics. That’s all.
Christian Natural Law Philosophy – Aquinas is interesting, but I would recommend skipping him, reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on Natural Law instead.
Anglo Empirical (Moral) Philosophy – Locke, Smith and Hume constitute the enlightenment philosophers of necessity.
Continental Philosophy – is reactionary in order to compensate for the disorder produced by the errors in anglo empirical philosophy’s assumption of an aristocracy of everyone. So Continental is little more than an attempt to create a rational rather than supernatural justification of existing moral orders. There is plenty of wisdom in that philosophy, and great aspiration to it. Especially Nietzsche, who is the point of demarcation between christian mysticism and naturalistic philosophy. but it is also the source pseudoscience and lies.
Cosmopolitan Philosophy (Pseudoscience, Loading, framing and overloading) Marx, Freud, Cantor, Mises, Rothbard. The only cosmopolitan I recommend is Popper and while he is most definitely a cosmopolitan, he adopted Hayek’s information theory.
(When I criticize rationalism it is the incremental development of pseudoscience and deceit by justificationism, loading, framing, and overloading that I am trying to reverse with Testimonialism. The anglos philosophers were wrong in their assumptions of man, but right in their method of argument. The continentals were right in their assumptions of man but wrong in their method of argument. The cosmopolitans were dishonest in their articulation of man, and dishonest in their method of argument.)
Anglo Ratio-Scientific (Legal) Philosophy – Anglo Common Law, Machiavelli, Jefferson, Pareto, Durkheim, (Popper), Hayek, (Doolittle).
Science: The discovery of general rules by repeated observation resulting in accumulated wisdom. Virtue, Rules, Wisdom, where wisdom feeds back to virtue and rules. This is an inter-generational process of empirical refinement.
–Laws– (captured rules) —
Judaism provides a means for not only exiting their incompetent classes but an entire body of law to master, and overwhelming pressure to remain within the polity which is ensured by the hostility to outsiders and therefore outsider hostility to insiders. Judaism is perhaps the ultimate synthesis of rule based systems and history even if it is a failed system because it lacks the moral content necessary to hold land. It originated with pastoralists and remains a pastorialist (unlanded) doctrine. It lacks intertemporal moral content. That is why the jews cannot hold land.
Anglo Constitutionalism expresses philosophy as law and very much under natural law, presumably as logically and scientifically constructed as is possible. Most americans are legalists – the law as religious order. Legalism can be thought of as the struggle to understand the laws of cooperation, just as we understand the laws of the physical universe. All anglo legal theory is an empirical attempt to discover and codify natural law in the absence of human discretion. This is a scientific experiment unique to anglo civilization. It is flawed only by the assumption that it is in the interests of the lower classes to compete meritocratic-ally. The fact is that only with eugenic manorialism or a substitute can such a system function. This is why no other groups use it. They are too weighted down with the lower classes who are incapable of competition and cooperation by moral means.
(I tend to view law as the ultimate expression of any philosophy (which as an anglo american I would). But then I am action oriented, from the martial and commercial class, and arguably a member of the lesser aristocracy.)
–Science– (investigation) —
Aristotelianism (what we call science) is demanding and at times forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, but at least when large numbers of us adopt it, we are able to master reality better than all other philosophies combined. The problem is that it is an aristocratic philosophy because it requires great effort and ability to learn and apply. Which is why we invest so heavily in education: we must.
Secondly, science is the study of cause and effect. But scientific analysis implies the ability to act with discretion. At the same time, rule of law exists to prevent discretion, and thereby create rules that prevent others from using discretion to manipulate us.
Third, it is contentious open question whether at any scale discretionary action does more harm than good, or whether rule based action prohibits discretion when it may be beneficial.
To no small degree this debate between the purpose of social science being the development of rules (conservatism) or the development of discretion (progressivism) is the cause of the political conflict of visions. Hence Sowell’s criticism of the progressive “vision of the anointed’.
And it is the source of conflict between the Austrian (do nothing or naturalistic/german), Freshwater (develop rules/anglo) and Saltwater(discretionary/jewish) schools of economics – which is the discipline has evolved into our only social science.
RECOMMENDATIONS
So when you ask me “Where should I start in philosophy” the above understanding provides us with a framework for answering that question. You can seek to learn virtue, seek to learn wisdom, seek to learn scientific laws.
You can seek personal fulfillment independent of the world at the lower end of the spectrum, or you can seek personal fulfillment within the rich competition of the world. Or you can seek comprehension of all – politics – even if you choose to pursue only personal of familial happiness.
If you cause no harm by externality then I suppose that I don’t care which you choose. I would recommend that you know the truth first, and then read the ancient texts for insight into the wisdom of each age. But this is mere entertainment. These were old technologies that have been replaced with new technologies. it is sometimes entertaining to study watchmaking in an era of computer science, but it is merely entertainment, not necessary information.
I cannot give counsel on that choice. I can give you counsel if you choose law and science. This is partly because I was born naturally analytical and less affected by signals and emotions than most. If you are, as are many women, the opposite, then you may need to choose a different method of achieving happiness.
But, if by some chance, if you want to know the truth, regardless of the burden it places upon you then I will recommend that you start here:
START WITH THE GOAL
1) The Meditations of Aurelius. Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics. In that order.
THEN THE THEORY
1) Popper’s Knowledge and Ignorance and Hayek’s Use of Knowledge in Society. and Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson which will teach you the basic principle of costs in equilibrium. A brief introduction to Popper’s Critical Rationalism online, even if it is the few paragraphs on my site, In which you will be introduced to the darwinian approach to the evolution of knowledge. At which point you will understand that in the physical, social, and cognitive sciences, we speak in terms of information causing changes in state. Which is, as far as I know, the present, if not final, model of all human understanding about any domain.
NEXT THE EVOLUTION OF THE LAWS
2) The Magna Carta, The Declaration, Constitution, Bill of rights. The Milsom’s history of the common law. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, and Law, Legislation and Liberty.
THEN GO FOR WISDOM : THE SHORT LIST
Ricardo Duchesne: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization
JP Mallory: In Search of Indo Europeans
John Keegan: A History Of Warfare
Joseph Campbell : The Hero’s Journey
Karen Armstrong : The Great Transformation
Bryan Ward-Perkins: The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization
William Tucker: Marriage and Civilization
Emmanuel Todd: The Explanation of Ideology
Emmanuel Todd: The Invention of Europe
David Hackett Fischer: Albion‘s Seed: Four British Folkways in America
Daniel Hannan: Inventing Freedom
Alan MacFarlane : Origins of English Individualism
Gregory Clark: A Farewell to Alms
Matt Ridley: The Red Queen
Dale Petersen: Demonic Males
Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Francis Fukuyama: Trust
Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind
Stephen Hicks : Explaining Postmodernism
Hans Hoppe: Democracy The God That Failed
Doolittle: Propertarianism.
THE LONGER LIST
If you read those works you will be able to both (a) understand testimonialism, propertarianism, and (b) work through the rest of my reading list at www.propertarianism.com/reading-list/ which is, as far as I know, the sum of works worth investment given our current knowledge of the technology of cooperation.
And after that it’s just experience and wisdom. And in gaining it, sorting the scarce kernels of wisdom from the vast chaff of human intellectual history.
Curt Doolittle
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine (Tallinn, Estonia)
Source date (UTC): 2015-08-07 06:22:00 UTC
-
Welcome To The Revolution.
(important piece)(pinned)[I] do my work in public, like a medieval street merchant. You get to see the product being made. Including its successes and failures. It’s been an interesting experience for me and those who follow me.
But for new-comers, my work is radical. Trying to follow or understand it is non-trivial. I place a great deal of burden on the audience for knowledge of physical science, economics, law, and philosophy. On my website is a ‘short list’ of books that I try to keep current that should allow someone with a university education in an empirical discipline to gain a basic scientific knowledge necessary to understand propertarianism. But even reading those works will take time. So I’ll try to give you an outline and a starting place:
[showhide type=”pressrelease” more_text=”(Show the rest of the Post…)” less_text=”(Hide Text..)” hidden=”yes”]
[P]ropertarianism is a reformation of truth, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics – and as broad an effort as that any other thinker’s in enlightenment history: Kant’s(rationalism), Marx’s(pseudoscience), and equalled only in recent scope by Heidegger (pseudorationalism) – all of whom were on the opposite end of the spectrum and at best ‘anti-scientific’. Instead, Propertarianism is a continuation of the Locke/Smith/Hume revolution, and a refutation of the Kant/Marx/Heidegger counter-revolution’s introspective revolt using experiential meaning against comparatively autistic science (truth).
And, even if you possess the underlying knowledge, my program is RADICAL, and that means novel, and somewhat hard to learn:
1 – Testimonial truth and Testimonialism (epistemology) are themselves a profound innovation that unifies science, philosophy, morality and law into truth-telling or ‘testimony’ which is the only existentially possible truth available for man to write and speak. Under testimonialism, we warranty we have performed the necessary due diligence to claim we testify truthfully. This due diligence is an extension of the scientific method to include ethics constructed as a rigorous logic: a scientific ethics.
See An Introduction To Testimonial Truth.
2 – Propertarian Ethics (ethics and morality) is an objective amoral language for expression and comparison of ethics that states that only productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, free of externalities of the same criteria are rationally tolerable if we are to preserve the incentive to cooperate, and not to retaliate, and thereby preserve the disproportionate rewards of cooperation. As such the preservation of cooperation is the basis for ethics. And all ethical propositions are decidable.
See An Introduction to Propertarian Ethics.
3 – Propertarian Liberalism (politics) is a radical reformation of classical liberalism that articulates how and why the classical liberal model failed: failing to create new houses for newly enfranchised classes with competing reproductive interests, and the conflation of law with contract – thereby creating a voluntary market for the production of commons between classes with disparate interests and abilities.
Propertarianism invalidates democratic assent, replacing it with legal criticism, meaning that any political contract that is not illegal may pass, and other groups may prohibit it only if it fails the legal prohibition on involuntary transfer – thus eliminating monopoly rule under democracy, and converting the legislative branch to a market for the production of commons.
4 – Propertarian Strict Construction (law) is a reformation of law that completes the now-failed american constitutional program by requiring strict construction equal to that of mathematical proofs, thereby eliminating legal activism, parasitism, and providing universal decidability to matters of law, reducing the court’s function to determination of truth telling, and responsibility for causal relations.
5 – Propertarian Informational Commons (law) is an extension of the prohibition on “Abusus” (pollution or abuse) with which we protect the commons of the air, water, land, infrastructure, parks and monuments from damage, privatization, and consumption. Under universal standing in matters of the commons, activists can use the courts to protect not only air, land, sea, wildlife, but the truthfulness of information.
[P]ropertarianism provides the missing logic of cooperation that has caused the artificial separation between science, philosophy, and law for 2500 years. This has stumped great minds for over two millennia. I am just a lucky man, standing on the shoulders of giants, peering into history, and by accident at the right point in time; and I see the errors of the past only because I am keenly aware of the failure of the 20th century philosophers, the success of operational thinking we call 20th century computer science, and the recent innovations in genetic, biological, cognitive, behavioral sciences since Pinker fired the first volley.
If this problem stumped so many greater minds than mine, it is no wonder that it’s hard for some of you to grasp the scope of the revolution in intellectual history. I understand it.
There will always be passionate activists and those heavily invested in dogma that will hold desperately to their priors and criticize innovations that they do not understand. This is natural human conservatism regardless of which point of the political and moral compass they originate from. And it is very hard to ask passionate people who are heavily invested in comforting justificationary priors to spend a great deal of effort in learning a radical program that requires substantial effort and knowledge to understand and apply. Those people may possess the ability, not possess the ability, have the time and effort, or not have the time and effort, be willing to invest, or not willing to invest.
So the only means of demonstrating to them that they should or must invest in learning such a thing, is for those who choose to make that investment for whatever reason, by their arguments and by their numbers, provide evidence that they should do so.
That is where you come in.
[P]ropertarianism is the antidote to Marxism, Pseudoscience, Postmodernism and Deceit. It is the correction and completion of the classical liberal project, which is itself an expansion of the anglo saxon franchise, and in turn an expansion of the european and indo-european project: the heroic society. Where the greatest heroism is the costly burden of truth telling and personal sovereignty.
If there is any end of history, it is not marxist socialism, or democratic secular humanism, but the truthful society made possible by the reformation of classical liberalism to facilitate cooperation between heterogeneous peoples while prohibiting every possible means of parasitism, and demanding productive efforts in order to survive. By prohibiting all parasitism we leave only productive voluntary exchange as a means of survival.
So it may indeed be work to follow me on this journey. But buy doing so you are participating in the greatest revolution since Marxism, and together we are constructing the only means I have found for the restoration and perpetuation of western civilization: the people who speak the truth, and the vast benefits that we westerners bring to mankind by having spoken the truth; despite the terrible difficulty in learning how to speak truthfully, and the enormous cost of truthful speech that each of us pays every day, as the most important tax, so that with truth telling that we have used in both the ancient and modern eras, to drag humanity kicking and screaming against its will, out of illness and disease, malthusian poverty, constant conflict, universal ignorance and crippling mysticism.
Liberty in our lifetimes.
Welcome to the revolution.
Curt Doolittle
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine[/showhide]
-
Welcome To The Revolution.
(important piece)(pinned)[I] do my work in public, like a medieval street merchant. You get to see the product being made. Including its successes and failures. It’s been an interesting experience for me and those who follow me.
But for new-comers, my work is radical. Trying to follow or understand it is non-trivial. I place a great deal of burden on the audience for knowledge of physical science, economics, law, and philosophy. On my website is a ‘short list’ of books that I try to keep current that should allow someone with a university education in an empirical discipline to gain a basic scientific knowledge necessary to understand propertarianism. But even reading those works will take time. So I’ll try to give you an outline and a starting place:
[showhide type=”pressrelease” more_text=”(Show the rest of the Post…)” less_text=”(Hide Text..)” hidden=”yes”]
[P]ropertarianism is a reformation of truth, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics – and as broad an effort as that any other thinker’s in enlightenment history: Kant’s(rationalism), Marx’s(pseudoscience), and equalled only in recent scope by Heidegger (pseudorationalism) – all of whom were on the opposite end of the spectrum and at best ‘anti-scientific’. Instead, Propertarianism is a continuation of the Locke/Smith/Hume revolution, and a refutation of the Kant/Marx/Heidegger counter-revolution’s introspective revolt using experiential meaning against comparatively autistic science (truth).
And, even if you possess the underlying knowledge, my program is RADICAL, and that means novel, and somewhat hard to learn:
1 – Testimonial truth and Testimonialism (epistemology) are themselves a profound innovation that unifies science, philosophy, morality and law into truth-telling or ‘testimony’ which is the only existentially possible truth available for man to write and speak. Under testimonialism, we warranty we have performed the necessary due diligence to claim we testify truthfully. This due diligence is an extension of the scientific method to include ethics constructed as a rigorous logic: a scientific ethics.
See An Introduction To Testimonial Truth.
2 – Propertarian Ethics (ethics and morality) is an objective amoral language for expression and comparison of ethics that states that only productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, free of externalities of the same criteria are rationally tolerable if we are to preserve the incentive to cooperate, and not to retaliate, and thereby preserve the disproportionate rewards of cooperation. As such the preservation of cooperation is the basis for ethics. And all ethical propositions are decidable.
See An Introduction to Propertarian Ethics.
3 – Propertarian Liberalism (politics) is a radical reformation of classical liberalism that articulates how and why the classical liberal model failed: failing to create new houses for newly enfranchised classes with competing reproductive interests, and the conflation of law with contract – thereby creating a voluntary market for the production of commons between classes with disparate interests and abilities.
Propertarianism invalidates democratic assent, replacing it with legal criticism, meaning that any political contract that is not illegal may pass, and other groups may prohibit it only if it fails the legal prohibition on involuntary transfer – thus eliminating monopoly rule under democracy, and converting the legislative branch to a market for the production of commons.
4 – Propertarian Strict Construction (law) is a reformation of law that completes the now-failed american constitutional program by requiring strict construction equal to that of mathematical proofs, thereby eliminating legal activism, parasitism, and providing universal decidability to matters of law, reducing the court’s function to determination of truth telling, and responsibility for causal relations.
5 – Propertarian Informational Commons (law) is an extension of the prohibition on “Abusus” (pollution or abuse) with which we protect the commons of the air, water, land, infrastructure, parks and monuments from damage, privatization, and consumption. Under universal standing in matters of the commons, activists can use the courts to protect not only air, land, sea, wildlife, but the truthfulness of information.
[P]ropertarianism provides the missing logic of cooperation that has caused the artificial separation between science, philosophy, and law for 2500 years. This has stumped great minds for over two millennia. I am just a lucky man, standing on the shoulders of giants, peering into history, and by accident at the right point in time; and I see the errors of the past only because I am keenly aware of the failure of the 20th century philosophers, the success of operational thinking we call 20th century computer science, and the recent innovations in genetic, biological, cognitive, behavioral sciences since Pinker fired the first volley.
If this problem stumped so many greater minds than mine, it is no wonder that it’s hard for some of you to grasp the scope of the revolution in intellectual history. I understand it.
There will always be passionate activists and those heavily invested in dogma that will hold desperately to their priors and criticize innovations that they do not understand. This is natural human conservatism regardless of which point of the political and moral compass they originate from. And it is very hard to ask passionate people who are heavily invested in comforting justificationary priors to spend a great deal of effort in learning a radical program that requires substantial effort and knowledge to understand and apply. Those people may possess the ability, not possess the ability, have the time and effort, or not have the time and effort, be willing to invest, or not willing to invest.
So the only means of demonstrating to them that they should or must invest in learning such a thing, is for those who choose to make that investment for whatever reason, by their arguments and by their numbers, provide evidence that they should do so.
That is where you come in.
[P]ropertarianism is the antidote to Marxism, Pseudoscience, Postmodernism and Deceit. It is the correction and completion of the classical liberal project, which is itself an expansion of the anglo saxon franchise, and in turn an expansion of the european and indo-european project: the heroic society. Where the greatest heroism is the costly burden of truth telling and personal sovereignty.
If there is any end of history, it is not marxist socialism, or democratic secular humanism, but the truthful society made possible by the reformation of classical liberalism to facilitate cooperation between heterogeneous peoples while prohibiting every possible means of parasitism, and demanding productive efforts in order to survive. By prohibiting all parasitism we leave only productive voluntary exchange as a means of survival.
So it may indeed be work to follow me on this journey. But buy doing so you are participating in the greatest revolution since Marxism, and together we are constructing the only means I have found for the restoration and perpetuation of western civilization: the people who speak the truth, and the vast benefits that we westerners bring to mankind by having spoken the truth; despite the terrible difficulty in learning how to speak truthfully, and the enormous cost of truthful speech that each of us pays every day, as the most important tax, so that with truth telling that we have used in both the ancient and modern eras, to drag humanity kicking and screaming against its will, out of illness and disease, malthusian poverty, constant conflict, universal ignorance and crippling mysticism.
Liberty in our lifetimes.
Welcome to the revolution.
Curt Doolittle
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine[/showhide]
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First Principles of Propertarian Ethics: Non-Parasitism and Therefore Rational Cooperation
(revised and expanded)(worth repeating) [P]ropertarian Ethics: -1 — Time is limited and the only infinite scarcity 0 — Man is a costly form of life in an unpredictable universe. 1 – Man must acquire resources to live within this unpredictable universe. 2 – Man must act to acquire and inventory resources: 3 — Man must defend that which he has acquired and inventoried. (His property is demonstrated by what he defends from loss, and what he retaliates for imposition of costs upon.) 4 – Man demonstrates that he acquires and defends: ……4.1 Life, Time, Rest, Memories, Actions, Social Status, Reputation ……4.2 Mates (access to sex/reproduction), Children (genetics), Familial Relations (security), Non-Familial Relations (utility),Consanguineous property (tribal and family ties) ……4.3 Organizational ties (work), Knowledge ties (skills, crafts), Insurance (community) ……4.4 Several Property: Those things external to our bodies that we claim a monopoly of control over, having obtained them without imposing costs upon others. ……4.5 Shareholder Property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (physical shares in a tradable asset), Commons: Unrecorded and Unquantified Shareholder Property (shares in commons), Artificial Property: (property created by fiat agreement) Intellectual Property. ……4.6 Informal (Normative) Property: Our norms: manners, ethics, morals, myths, and rituals that consist of our social portfolio and which make our social order possible. ……4.7 Formal Institutional Property: Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws. 5 – Man must act cooperatively to disproportionately improve acquisition of resources. (Cooperation is disproportionately more rewarding than any other activity.) 6 – Man must only cooperate where it is beneficial and preferable to non-cooperation. As such all cooperative actions or sets of actions, must result in: ……5.1 Productive (increases property) ……5.2 Fully Informed (without deceit – a form of discounting) ……5.3 Warrantied (promise of non parasitism warranty of restitution) ……5.4 Voluntary Exchange ……5.5 Free of negative externality (imposes no costs on the property of third parties). 7 – Man must act to preserve and extend cooperation to preserve the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Cooperation is itself a disproportionately valuable scarcity) 8 – Man acts to preserve and extend cooperation by the suppression of parasitism that creates the disincentive to cooperate, and therefore decreases the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Man evolved necessary and expensive moral intuitions to preserve cooperation – including expensive forms of punishment of offenders.) 9 – Man engages in parasitism by: ……7.1 violence, ……7.2 theft, ……7.3 extortion, blackmail, racketeering. ……7.3 fraud, fraud by obscurantism, fraud by moralizing, fraud by omission, ……7.4 externality, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses, ……7.5 conspiracy, conversion, immigration, conquest, war and genocide. (Summary: Violence, Theft, Extortion, Fraud, Externality, Conspiracy.) 10 – Man suppresses parasitism by threats of interpersonal violence, promises of interpersonal violence, interpersonal violence, interpersonal ostracization from cooperation, organized ostracization via norms and commerce, when he must by remuneration, and when he can by organized violence in law and war. ……10.1 Man possesses three weapons of influence: violence(imposition of material costs), gossip(imposition of opportunity costs: ostracization-inclusion), and remuneration(transfer of assets: exchange). ……10.2 Man uses all three weapons of influence, usually in concert, and in different degrees: consisting of a ‘chord of coercion’. ……10.3 Some men specialize in one weapon of influence: Warriors, Sheriffs and judges: Violence; priests and public intellectuals: Gossip; Organizers of Production: Remuneration. 11 – The most rapid means by which man can organize the suppression of parasitism is by defining property rights as all demonstrated property, and creating a court of universal standing under the common law, under the rule of law before a jury of his peers – since any innovation in parasitism is suppressed by the creation of a new prohibition with the first suit adjudicated. (Common, organically evolutionary law most rapidly prevents expansion of demonstrated parasitic opportunities.) 12 – A market for goods and services produces consumables, but a market for commons produces non-consumables. Non-consumable goods that provide utility whether those goods be privately constructed (use by private shareholders only) or publicly constructed (use by all citizen-shareholders). Commons (whether physical, normative or institutional) provide a disproportionate return to shareholders by preventing consumption and preserving utility. 13 – Majority rule is a sufficient means of decision making for small homogenous groups who must select priorities to achieve using limited resources. Majority rule is insufficient means of decision making for large heterogeneous groups with conflicting preferences. In heterogeneous groups monopoly rule by majority rule, is merely a vehicle for justifying thefts. Homogenous groups may need to select priorities among desirable ends, but because heterogeneous groups have incompatible ends, heterogeneous groups need means of cooperation on means despite incompatible ends: agreements by which difference can be mitigated through mutually beneficial exchanges. As such the purpose of government is the construction of commons by creating a market for the contractual production of commons. 14 – Moral, and therefore non-parasitic, agreements between parties that are productive, fully informed, voluntary, and warrantied need no assent (approval) from third parties. Instead, all such agreements need only refrain from externalities: the imposition of costs on the property-en-toto of third parties. As such, in any market for the production of commons, assent is not necessary for the construction of exhanges between classes with differing interests. Instead such contracts must only survive criticism: adjudication. As such anyone can sue to invalidate a contract. But no one’s approval is necessary for such contracts. As such the construction of commons requires not ascent. Instead, the prevention of a contract requires dissent that survives adjudication. (summary: dissent and adjudication not assent and confirmation) 15 – division of cognitive labor– moral specialization and therefore moral blindness – exchanges as a means of calculation by trades of cooperation bretween specailists. 16 – the family-regulation of reproduction– 17 – Division of houses by cognitive labor — 13 – A condition of both interpersonal morality both forces all human action necessary for man’s survival into productive participation in the market by denying parasitism, and reduces or eliminates transaction costs (frictions due to risk), which in turn maximizes the potential economic velocity of the group. 14 – A condition of liberty is constructed when all men, including those who participate in the construction of commons – members of the government – are equally bound by the prohibition on parasitism: the common law against parasitism. (Morality is a synonym for non-parasitism. Liberty is a synonym for a moral – meaning non-parasitic – government.) 15 – If one does not engage in parasitism by doing so, the forcible increase of the suppression of others’ free riding is always by definition moral and just. This increases the possibilities of prosperity for all men. (Legal colonialism is moral. Economic colonialism is not.) (Aristocracy is obliged to increase the pool of aristocratic people whenever possible, and affordable.) [T]here is no competitive strategy greater than the suppression of parasitism in all it’s forms. Because all human effort is limited to the market for productive ends, and all market activity is conducted under the lowest possible speculative friction. The optimum group evolutionary strategy is to suppress all parasitism, while constantly driving up it’s intelligence by suppressing the reproduction of its lower classes (non performers). This causes no harm, and produces the greatest and longest term competitive benefit.) If many groups follow this strategy, the largest group with the highest median IQ and aggression (competitive energy) will produce the most innovation. Anti parasitism is eugenic, and parasitism is dysgenic. Some groups cannot compete. So they will continue to act as parasites. (Gypsies). Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine
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First Principles of Propertarian Ethics: Non-Parasitism and Therefore Rational Cooperation
(revised and expanded)(worth repeating) [P]ropertarian Ethics: -1 — Time is limited and the only infinite scarcity 0 — Man is a costly form of life in an unpredictable universe. 1 – Man must acquire resources to live within this unpredictable universe. 2 – Man must act to acquire and inventory resources: 3 — Man must defend that which he has acquired and inventoried. (His property is demonstrated by what he defends from loss, and what he retaliates for imposition of costs upon.) 4 – Man demonstrates that he acquires and defends: ……4.1 Life, Time, Rest, Memories, Actions, Social Status, Reputation ……4.2 Mates (access to sex/reproduction), Children (genetics), Familial Relations (security), Non-Familial Relations (utility),Consanguineous property (tribal and family ties) ……4.3 Organizational ties (work), Knowledge ties (skills, crafts), Insurance (community) ……4.4 Several Property: Those things external to our bodies that we claim a monopoly of control over, having obtained them without imposing costs upon others. ……4.5 Shareholder Property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (physical shares in a tradable asset), Commons: Unrecorded and Unquantified Shareholder Property (shares in commons), Artificial Property: (property created by fiat agreement) Intellectual Property. ……4.6 Informal (Normative) Property: Our norms: manners, ethics, morals, myths, and rituals that consist of our social portfolio and which make our social order possible. ……4.7 Formal Institutional Property: Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws. 5 – Man must act cooperatively to disproportionately improve acquisition of resources. (Cooperation is disproportionately more rewarding than any other activity.) 6 – Man must only cooperate where it is beneficial and preferable to non-cooperation. As such all cooperative actions or sets of actions, must result in: ……5.1 Productive (increases property) ……5.2 Fully Informed (without deceit – a form of discounting) ……5.3 Warrantied (promise of non parasitism warranty of restitution) ……5.4 Voluntary Exchange ……5.5 Free of negative externality (imposes no costs on the property of third parties). 7 – Man must act to preserve and extend cooperation to preserve the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Cooperation is itself a disproportionately valuable scarcity) 8 – Man acts to preserve and extend cooperation by the suppression of parasitism that creates the disincentive to cooperate, and therefore decreases the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Man evolved necessary and expensive moral intuitions to preserve cooperation – including expensive forms of punishment of offenders.) 9 – Man engages in parasitism by: ……7.1 violence, ……7.2 theft, ……7.3 extortion, blackmail, racketeering. ……7.3 fraud, fraud by obscurantism, fraud by moralizing, fraud by omission, ……7.4 externality, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses, ……7.5 conspiracy, conversion, immigration, conquest, war and genocide. (Summary: Violence, Theft, Extortion, Fraud, Externality, Conspiracy.) 10 – Man suppresses parasitism by threats of interpersonal violence, promises of interpersonal violence, interpersonal violence, interpersonal ostracization from cooperation, organized ostracization via norms and commerce, when he must by remuneration, and when he can by organized violence in law and war. ……10.1 Man possesses three weapons of influence: violence(imposition of material costs), gossip(imposition of opportunity costs: ostracization-inclusion), and remuneration(transfer of assets: exchange). ……10.2 Man uses all three weapons of influence, usually in concert, and in different degrees: consisting of a ‘chord of coercion’. ……10.3 Some men specialize in one weapon of influence: Warriors, Sheriffs and judges: Violence; priests and public intellectuals: Gossip; Organizers of Production: Remuneration. 11 – The most rapid means by which man can organize the suppression of parasitism is by defining property rights as all demonstrated property, and creating a court of universal standing under the common law, under the rule of law before a jury of his peers – since any innovation in parasitism is suppressed by the creation of a new prohibition with the first suit adjudicated. (Common, organically evolutionary law most rapidly prevents expansion of demonstrated parasitic opportunities.) 12 – A market for goods and services produces consumables, but a market for commons produces non-consumables. Non-consumable goods that provide utility whether those goods be privately constructed (use by private shareholders only) or publicly constructed (use by all citizen-shareholders). Commons (whether physical, normative or institutional) provide a disproportionate return to shareholders by preventing consumption and preserving utility. 13 – Majority rule is a sufficient means of decision making for small homogenous groups who must select priorities to achieve using limited resources. Majority rule is insufficient means of decision making for large heterogeneous groups with conflicting preferences. In heterogeneous groups monopoly rule by majority rule, is merely a vehicle for justifying thefts. Homogenous groups may need to select priorities among desirable ends, but because heterogeneous groups have incompatible ends, heterogeneous groups need means of cooperation on means despite incompatible ends: agreements by which difference can be mitigated through mutually beneficial exchanges. As such the purpose of government is the construction of commons by creating a market for the contractual production of commons. 14 – Moral, and therefore non-parasitic, agreements between parties that are productive, fully informed, voluntary, and warrantied need no assent (approval) from third parties. Instead, all such agreements need only refrain from externalities: the imposition of costs on the property-en-toto of third parties. As such, in any market for the production of commons, assent is not necessary for the construction of exhanges between classes with differing interests. Instead such contracts must only survive criticism: adjudication. As such anyone can sue to invalidate a contract. But no one’s approval is necessary for such contracts. As such the construction of commons requires not ascent. Instead, the prevention of a contract requires dissent that survives adjudication. (summary: dissent and adjudication not assent and confirmation) 15 – division of cognitive labor– moral specialization and therefore moral blindness – exchanges as a means of calculation by trades of cooperation bretween specailists. 16 – the family-regulation of reproduction– 17 – Division of houses by cognitive labor — 13 – A condition of both interpersonal morality both forces all human action necessary for man’s survival into productive participation in the market by denying parasitism, and reduces or eliminates transaction costs (frictions due to risk), which in turn maximizes the potential economic velocity of the group. 14 – A condition of liberty is constructed when all men, including those who participate in the construction of commons – members of the government – are equally bound by the prohibition on parasitism: the common law against parasitism. (Morality is a synonym for non-parasitism. Liberty is a synonym for a moral – meaning non-parasitic – government.) 15 – If one does not engage in parasitism by doing so, the forcible increase of the suppression of others’ free riding is always by definition moral and just. This increases the possibilities of prosperity for all men. (Legal colonialism is moral. Economic colonialism is not.) (Aristocracy is obliged to increase the pool of aristocratic people whenever possible, and affordable.) [T]here is no competitive strategy greater than the suppression of parasitism in all it’s forms. Because all human effort is limited to the market for productive ends, and all market activity is conducted under the lowest possible speculative friction. The optimum group evolutionary strategy is to suppress all parasitism, while constantly driving up it’s intelligence by suppressing the reproduction of its lower classes (non performers). This causes no harm, and produces the greatest and longest term competitive benefit.) If many groups follow this strategy, the largest group with the highest median IQ and aggression (competitive energy) will produce the most innovation. Anti parasitism is eugenic, and parasitism is dysgenic. Some groups cannot compete. So they will continue to act as parasites. (Gypsies). Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine
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What is the Minimum Basis for the Law Necessary for Sovereignty, Liberty, and Freedom?
(revised and expanded)(worth repeating) (from 2014)THE PROBLEM IS LAW NOT BELIEF [I]t’s true that aggression is immoral, and it’s true that for people to rationally cooperate aggression must be illegal. But this is a deceptively incomplete statement, because we all intuit that aggression is a bad thing, but we almost all differ in what one can or cannot aggress against. No one argues that aggression is immoral. Where ‘immoral means’ violates the limits of rational cooperation by imposing costs upon others that produce a disincentive to cooperate and an incentive to retaliate. But is it rational for humans to join a voluntary, anarchic polity, if the basis of **LAW** is “non-aggression against intersubjectively verifiable property”, or must the basis of law be either based on something other than aggression, or broader in scope than intersubjectively verifiable property? What is the minimum basis for the law upon which it becomes rational to join a voluntary, anarchic polity? If we have a choice between: (a) a Totalitarian InvoluntaryOrder society like communist China, and Russia. (a) a Totalitarian State Capitalist society, like say, contemporary China and Russia. (b) a Napoleonic, prior-restraint, contemporary social democracy like Germany. (c) a Common Law, restitutionary, contemporary social democracy, like say the States. (d) an Anarchic polity in which one CAN bring suit against immoral and unethical actions (say, blackmail, and fraud by omission). (e) an Anarchic polity where we cannot bring suit against immoral and unethical actions; and as such, unethical and immoral actions are expressly licensed by the law, and retribution for immoral and unethical actions is forbidden. Then: 1) Which of these will which people of which moral biases, choose? 2) How will the territory and trade representatives of that polity be treated by competing polities? (They will be boycotted.) 3) How will members of that polity be treated by members of the competing polities? (Answer: They will exterminated.) I think that an analysis of those questions produces an obvious, and remarkably consistent answer. That is, that eitheraggression is the incorrect test of peaceful cooperation, or intersubjectively verifiable property is an insufficient test of the scope of property that must be protected from violation, or more likely both. COOPERATION Cooperation is disproportionately more productive than individual production. We evolved to cooperate when possible. But it is only beneficial if it is mutually productive, rather than asymmetric in result, and parasitic. The current proceeds of anthropology, genetics, and cognitive science, tell us that violations of the evolutionary preference for cooperation, are reducible to ‘free riding’: that is non-contribution. Since in any set of individuals, if we do not require productive contribution, then some are the victims of free riding (parasitism) and others benefit from free riding (parasitism). MORALITY If we analyze the common prohibitions of all moral codes under all family structures, and we remove moral constraints that are purely ritualistic, these moral codes are universally reducible to necessary prohibitions on what we would call ‘property violations’ in an effort to facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation. Evolutionary, Biological, Intuitionistic, Moral Prohibition Spectrum: 1) Agression: Harm/Oppression, 2) Free Riding: Parasitism 3) Trust: Subversion/Betrayal/Cheating, 4) Purity: Inobservance of Norms/Behavioral impurity/Pollution All of these prohibitions are reducible to shareholder rights and obligations. Humans universally demonstrate a greater interest in punishing moral violations than we demonstrate self-interest. In fact, we justify our pre-cognitive moral punishments without even being able to articulate why we hold them. We are wired by evolution for morality. We evolved language and punishments for violations of these moral intuitions in the form of criminal, ethical, and moral prohibitions: 1. Violence (asymmetry of force) 2. Theft (asymmetry of control) 3. Fraud (false information) 4. Omission (Omitting information) 5. Obscurantism (Obscuring information) 6. Obstruction (Inhibiting someone else’s transaction) 7. Externalization (externalizing costs of any transaction) 8. Free Riding (using externalities for self-benefit) 9. Socializing Losses (externalization to commons) 10. Privatizing Gains (appropriation of commons) 11. Rent Seeking (organizational free riding) 12. Corruption ( organized rent seeking) 13. Conspiracy (organized indirect theft) 14. Extortion (Organized direct theft) 15. Conversion (Religious or normative theft of norms) 16. Immigration. (dilution of norms, institutions, genes) 17. War (organized violence for the purpose of theft) 18. Conquest. (reorganization of all property and relations) 19. Genocide. (extermination of kin and genetic future) PROPERTY We can empirically observe that people treat a broad spectrum of things as their property, and that they intuit violations of that property, and act to defend that property. Those things that people seek to acquire, accumulate and preserve are: I. Self: Life, Body, Memories, Mind, Attention, Time, and Liberty II. Status and Class (reputation) Social Status Reputation III. Kin and Interpersonal (Relationship) Property Mates (access to sex/reproduction) Children (genetic reproduction) Consanguineous Relations (tribal and family ties) IV. Sustainable Patterns of Reproduction, Production, Distribution and Trade Friends, Associates and Cooperative Relations Trade Routes V. Several (Personal) Property Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.” Physical Body and Several Property: Those things we claim a monopoly of control over. VI. Shareholder Property Shares in property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (claims for partial ownership) VII. Title Property (Weights and Measures) Trademarks and Brands (prohibitions on fraudulent transfers within a geography). VIII. Common Property, or “Commons” (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.” (i) Informational commons: public speech, real-time and recorded media. (ii) 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. (iii) Physical Commons: the territory, it’s waterways, parks, buildings, improvements and infrastructure. (iv) 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. (v) Monuments (art and artifacts). Monuments claim territory, demonstrate wealth, and provide one of the longest most invariable normative and economic returns that any culture can construct as a demonstration of conspicuous production (wealth), and as such, conspicuous excellence. (hence why competing monuments represent an invasion. Temples, Churches, Museums, Sculptures being the most obvious examples of cultural claim or conquest. ) SO, THEN, WHAT IS EMPIRICALLY OBSERVABLE OBJECTIVE MORALITY? If we eliminate all prohibitions of parasitism (imposed costs) then what moral actions remain? (i) Productive (non-parasitic, increase in subjective value); (ii) Truthful (Fully Informed); (iii) Warrantied (by oath); (iv) Voluntary Transfer of Property; (v) Free of Imposed Cost by Externality. It is those criteria that define an ethical (interpersonally moral) and moral (externally moral) action. And any action that does not meet those criteria is not ethical and moral. The simple rule of ethical and moral action: “My actions cannot cause another to bear a cost against his property-en-toto.” WHAT MEANS OF SURVIVAL REMAIN IF WE PROHIBIT THE IMPOSITION OF COSTS? (1) Dividends from the construction and maintenance of the voluntary organization of production, distribution, and trade paid for by forgoing opportunities for parasitic consumption (acting ethically and morally). (2) One gains access to opportunity for cooperation and consumption in the market. (3) One gains earnings from the personal production of goods and services in the market for goods and services. (income from profits) (4) Dividends for maintenance of the commons in all its forms. (5) Dividends for the policing (defense) of the commons in all its forms. COMPETITION AND MORALITY () ECONOMICS We can judge economic impacts of high trust societies that practice near total prohibition on criminal, unethical and immoral actions. And we can compare those to low trust societies that suppress fewer unethical and immoral actions. TRUST: ECONOMIC VELOCITY IS DETERMINED BY (LIMITED BY) TRANSACTION COSTS () TIME: ECONOMIC VELOCITY IS DETERMINED BY (LIMITED BY) THE MEANS OF IDENTIFYING NEW LAW (PROHIBITIONS ON PARASITISM) () COMMONS: COMMONS ARE A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE () OBJECTIVITY OF NORMS: GOOD, USELESS AND BAD – JUST LIKE GENES () POLITICS (text) (question) SUFFICIENCY : DEMAND FOR AUTHORITY VS DEMAND FOR LIBERTY () SO, DOES THE NON-AGGRESSION PRINCIPLE HOLD? So under what reasoning, would it be logical to support the Non-Aggression Principle under Intersubjectively Verifiable Property (NAP/IVP) as the basis for the law, which explicitly licenses unethical and immoral action and prohibits retribution against unethical and immoral action? The NAP/IVP has been a detriment to liberty wherever advocates argue that it is a sufficient means of determining moral and legal rules of cooperation. Because it’s not. And we cannot pursue an alternative to the existing high trust society without providing people with an alternative that is morally SUPERIOR to the state. And the NAP/IVP fails that test. CONVERSELY: PROPERTARIANISM’S PROPERTY-EN-TOTO Conversely, imposition against, or aggression against, property-en-toto. Property-en-toto: meaning that which humans demonstrate as their property by acting to acquire it, defending it, and retaliating against impositions of costs upon it. And where they have expended resources, time and effort in the accumulation of that property without imposing costs upon others property that has been accumulated by the same lack of imposition of costs. And where imposition of costs is performed by violence, theft, fraud, fraud by suggestion, fraud by obscurantism, fraud by omission, theft by constructed externality, free-riding, privatizing commons, socializing losses, conspiracy, conversion, immigration, invasion, conquest, and genocide. NON AGGRESSION HOLDS ONLY UNDER ARISTOCRATIC ETHICS AND NOT UNDER ROTHBARDIAN COSMOPOLITAN LOW TRUST GHETTO ETHICS So the non-aggression principle holds under Propertarian ethics, and it fails under Rothbardian ethics. And to state the principle of non-aggression without stating also what cannot be aggressed against, is an act of fraud: fraud by omission and fraud by suggestion. Rothbard was an advocate for fraud. Rothbardian libertinism is a fraudulent claim for the production of a condition of liberty. ANARCHY IS INSUFFICIENT FOR LIBERTY. LIBERTY REQUIRES NOMOCRACY: PROPERTARIAN NOMOCRACY. () Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev.