(interesting) [I] doubt that economics will ever evolve to be predictive, since we would adapt to any prediction. I do not doubt that economics will evolve to be almost universally descriptive. or at least sufficiently so that further inquiry won’t provide additional knowledge about mankind and human behavior. I **DO** believe that we can construct a science of COOPERATION instead of a science of ‘economics’. I think this categorization of cooperation as economic has taken root, and it may be impossible to fix at this point. However, the study of economic activity is the use of easily recorded economic data to capture the demonstrated behavior and preferences of human beings better than any other form of test can possibly do. But the science we are constructing through economics, cognitive science, and experimental psychology, is the the science of COOPERATION. That science, for all intents and purposes has yielded, and will yield, only one fundamental set of principles. And that single fundamental set of principles will undoubtably be categorized as what we USED to call, “POLITICAL ECONOMY”. [B]ecause all human cooperation requires institutions that facilitate organization of invention, production, distribution and consumption by voluntary means, while at the same time prohibiting free riding in all it’s forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial and conquest. As such, the science of cooperation, including:
Form: Mini Essay
-
The Future Of Economics And Cooperative Science
(interesting) [I] doubt that economics will ever evolve to be predictive, since we would adapt to any prediction. I do not doubt that economics will evolve to be almost universally descriptive. or at least sufficiently so that further inquiry won’t provide additional knowledge about mankind and human behavior. I **DO** believe that we can construct a science of COOPERATION instead of a science of ‘economics’. I think this categorization of cooperation as economic has taken root, and it may be impossible to fix at this point. However, the study of economic activity is the use of easily recorded economic data to capture the demonstrated behavior and preferences of human beings better than any other form of test can possibly do. But the science we are constructing through economics, cognitive science, and experimental psychology, is the the science of COOPERATION. That science, for all intents and purposes has yielded, and will yield, only one fundamental set of principles. And that single fundamental set of principles will undoubtably be categorized as what we USED to call, “POLITICAL ECONOMY”. [B]ecause all human cooperation requires institutions that facilitate organization of invention, production, distribution and consumption by voluntary means, while at the same time prohibiting free riding in all it’s forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial and conquest. As such, the science of cooperation, including:
-
WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS LESS SENSITIVE TO THE TRANSACTION COSTS OF IMMORAL AND UNET
WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS LESS SENSITIVE TO THE TRANSACTION COSTS OF IMMORAL AND UNETHICAL ACTIONS?
(the most important bit of philosophy that you will read today)
As intelligence increases morality increases, and concern about morality decreases. The reasons are still being debated, but the general theory is that (a) smarter people can identify dishonesty more easily, and (b) smarter people can rely upon wit and cunning as a competitive advantage so that they have less trouble competing honestly. To which I would like to add (c) that the higher you are in the food chain the more abstract property you are dealing with and therefore the harder it is to steal it.
Libertarians tend to be very bright. But libertarians also test as abnormally insensitive to moral questions. The connection between the two facts is pretty obvious. We libertarians are less concerned with immorality because it’s easy for us to defend against. I don’t take the position that we’re less moral. Only that immorality is less of a challenge for us SO WE DISCOUNT THE TRANSACTION COSTS of immoral activity, whereas everyone else does NOT discount those transaction costs.
This explains why libertarians are more easily fooled by Rothbardian ethics than conservatives (aristocratic egalitarians) and progressives (socialists). The moral economy is less valuable to us than to conservatives and progressives. We discount the cost of immoral and unethical behavior.
But if we want to build a polity – the fact is: we’re wrong. Those transaction costs increase as intelligence and general knowledge decrease. And so it’s just not rational for a body of people to adopt Rothbardian ethics. They aren’t moral ENOUGH for suppression of immoral and unethical behavior, and the high transaction costs imposed upon people who must deal with pervasive immoral and unethical behavior.
Private property is what remains when a polity suppresses all free riding: violence, theft, fraud, cheating, externalizing, privatizing, conspiracy, corruption and extortion. And people will not grant one another private property rights and reduce demand for the state unless suppression of free riding (immoral and unethical behavior) is present FIRST.
Curt Doolittle
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-02 15:33:00 UTC
-
LOGIC VS SCIENCE (on praxeology) (getting closer) (attestation theory of truth)
LOGIC VS SCIENCE
(on praxeology) (getting closer) (attestation theory of truth)
So, if the defining property of the discipline of science is observation, and praxeology is purely deductive independent of observation, then how can praxeology honestly be termed a science? It cannot. Praxeology can be defined as a logic, but not a science. Formal Logic and mathematics are branches of logic that produce proofs, but not truths. Truth, to have any universal meaning at all must mean correspondence to reality with increasingly weaker definitions in niche application as we move into various branches of logic.
Yet while truth is constrained by reality, axiomatic systems are not constrained by reality. We may produce theories, and rigid theories at that, but correspondence with reality is never axiomatic – axioms are limited to internal consistency. We are certainly missing a logic of cooperation with which to repair ethics. (I think I have articulated the criterion for that logic as voluntary transfer, symmetrically informed, warrantied, and free of externality.) But, I do not yet understand why we require a logic of action – or if there is any value in such a thing. But regardless of that question, logics are not identical to sciences and sciences not identical to logics, any more than proofs are identical to truths, or axioms identical to theories.
We may pretend for amusement purposes that human actions are, by analogy, functionally axiomatic rather than functionally theories in a given context, but this is a mere pretense. Theoretic systems must retain correspondence with reality, while axiomatic systems are not bound by correspondence with reality. Human actions occur within reality and are bounded by reality. Axiomatic systems are imaginary and are only bounded by imagination. For this reason human actions can only be theoretically constructed as correspondent with reality, just as logical systems can only be axiomatically constructed.
As such axiomatic systems tell us only about the internal consistency of our statements, and theoretical systems tell us only about the external correspondence of our theories – but not the internal consistency of our descriptions of those theories. If we use both tests of internal consistency and tests of external correspondence, and our statements are demonstrably valid proofs, and our theories are demonstrably valid tests, and both proofs and theories are stated operationally, then we can attest to the truth of our theories.
And the only means by which we can subjectively test either axiomatic or theoretic statements is to reduce them to analogies to experience, by stating them in operational sequence – which we call “Constructionism”.
If we cannot test the internal consistency or our arguments and external correspondence of our actions, then we cannot EVER honestly attest that our theories are true to our knowledge and understanding.
This is the only standard of truth for any theory that I know of: attestation. If a theory is both externally correspondent, internally consistent, operationally stated, and falsifiable, then to our current knowledge that theory as stated is true – one can attest to its truth, and not commit unethical attestation. This does not mean that the theory cannot be improved upon. But it means one’s attestation about it is true. And that is the best that we can ever hope for.
There is a great difference between a true theory and a complete theory. At some point any theory must evolve into a tautology, at which point one cannot attest to one’s hypothesis (theory, conjecture). Than is non-sensical. So a theory free of attestation is merely complete – tautological. Identical. Not correspondent dependent upon attestation ‘true’, nor imaginary and proven ‘proof’.)
Getting closer. It should be possible, if difficult, to follow that argument. I bet within six months I can get lightbulbs to come on. Not quite there yet. But very close. This approach reduces all statements to human actions and truth to attestation rather than the platonic.
Source date (UTC): 2014-03-28 15:45:00 UTC
-
PROFOUND PROPERTARIAN INSIGHT Enlightenment Political and economic ethics, wheth
PROFOUND PROPERTARIAN INSIGHT
Enlightenment Political and economic ethics, whether under classical liberal, libertarian, socialist and ‘dishonest socialist (keynesian)’ theory are predicated on the two assumptions (a)that moral and ethical behavior are ‘givens’ that we must agree upon, and that (b) our labors in the act of production are the means by which we earn rewards.
This logic assumes that entry into, and participation in the market (society, the order in which cooperation is possible), is all that one obtains for one’s constant payment of the costs of respecting property and other norms.
However, norms that permit property rights, and norms that permit trust (low transaction costs), and norms that prohibit conspiracy, are as equal in value in creating a polity in which the voluntary organization of production (capitalism) is possible. Respect for property rights, eschewing corruption and conspiracy, and demonstrating honestly, are all costs that the individual must bear. And he must bear them prior to any participation in production.
But if it is not possible for the individual to participate in the market (and it demonstrably is not), then entry into the market is not POSSIBLE, and as such it is non-rational for that individual to pay the very high costs of entry into that market. And therefore demands that they respect for property, honesty, and combat against conspiracy and corruption are simply attempts at theft of their opportunity, time and effort, without compensation.
As such, the alternative is to pay people to respect property rights, demonstrate honesty, eschew corruption and conspiracy, so that they work to enable the voluntary organization of production (capitalism), and function as consumers – to pay people to construct a society, polity, and economy, wherein the dynamic voluntary organization of production is possible.
People who enforce and respect property rights, manners, ethics, morals and norms, do so at a cost. The benefit of capitalism for everyone, is that production can be cheaply (low transaction costs) organized dynamically and voluntarily. However, if we cannot equally participate in the market (as we did under labor and farming) then the only alternative is to pay people for the work of facilitating the dynamic and voluntary organization of production.
Those people, paid as such, will have the same interests as producers: to minimize state consumption of the fruits of productivity.
That logic can be attacked from any number of angles but in the end, the result will be the same. You cannot make an operational argument in favor of property rights and at the same time defeat this argument. (Or you can try a lot, but it won’t work.)
Conversely, telling people that they must pay high costs for rights that they cannot make use of is merely theft by capitalist means.
Source date (UTC): 2014-03-28 12:58:00 UTC
-
BURNING OBSCURANT AND PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY ON THE PYRE OF DECEPTION Most of my at
BURNING OBSCURANT AND PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY ON THE PYRE OF DECEPTION
Most of my attacks on a priorism are tests to see if the delta in utility between ratio-empirical and ‘Real’, and aprioristic-deductive and platonic, is sufficient to compel a change in method, but I am clearly dealing with very habituated people, and not giving them enough of a breadcrumb trail. And worse, I’m leading them into a dark and unfamiliar conceptual forest where they don’t want to follow. What do moral men do, when moral intuition fails them? They can’t do much until they learn enough new tools with which to restate their emotional intuitions in different terms now that the old terms are invalidated.
Even the best people, who tend to be technologists, conflate general rule, theory, and axiom, into a single utilitarian category. Yet again demonstrating the difference between knowledge of use and knowledge of construction.
I suppose I will just keep attacking a priorism as incomplete, and utilitarian, but now also as immoral obscurantism, and part of the continental-kantian and cosmopolitan-hermeneutic forms of deception. Part of the revolt against ratio-scientific.
Although since I’ve already outed Rothbardian ethics as parasitic, and stated that Misesian praxeology was an error, I suppose that adding that a priorism (or any kantian construct) is immoral obscurantism, and part of the continental-cosmopolitan attack on human reason so loathed by Rand is just a continuation of my criticisms.
So libertarianism as constructed, prior to its ratio-scientific expression in Propertarianism, is:
a) parasitic
b) insufficient for the production of a voluntary polity.
c) argumentatively obscurant and immoral
d) fails the test of its claims (deducibility of the scope of economics)
e) inferior to ratio-scientific method for the accumulation of general rules of human behavior.
But with Propertarianism, all of these faults are corrected.
Of course people being as simple as they are, and even the best philosophers fairly weak, it’s probably lost that my attack on a priorism is an attempt to delegitimize on the right and libertarian spectrum, the same as I delegitimize on left-postmodern and socialist programs.
I can’t kill off the obscurantist deceptions of the left without killing off the same techniques on the libertarian corner of the political spectrum. No matter what corner of the political spectrum one advocates, the prohibition on obscurantism that invalidates the arguments of the others, invalidates one’s own as well.
All I have to do with the right is to give them a rational language. Most of what they believe is right in the first place. They just don’t have the ability to talk about it in rational terms – and perhaps once I focus there, I’ll be equally frustrated by their lack of intellectualism and mindless dependence on moral intuition. And perhaps at that point I will have to fight the battle against religion. But I think that religion cohabitates with propertarianism as comfortably as does capitalism.
BUT LIBERTARIANS DON’T GET A FREE PASS. I’m burning continental philosophy, cosmopolitan philosophy, psychological philosophy (classical liberal), and marxist-socialist-postmodern philosophy on the same pyre. And it is a bonfire unlike any before it.
The Ratio-scientific form of argument under Propertarianism (moral realism) is all that remains. Because it is the only moral form of discourse on ethics itself. Everything else is deception, fraud or worse.
Burn, baby, burn.
Source date (UTC): 2014-03-27 08:49:00 UTC
-
RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS Doing something unsolicited for someone who appreciates
RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
Doing something unsolicited for someone who appreciates it immensely is one of those feelings that is hard to exceed in life.
If you get that look of awe, and a handshake or hug in exchange, it’s all the return that’s necessary.
A lot of things people care about (a new, or even ‘newer’ battery for a car, or a set of tires, or a very-used-iPhone to replace an ordinary cell) are things some of us don’t care about at all.
So, if you are searching for hugs and handshakes in exchange for making a major difference in the l lives of others – at little cost and effort, and you don’t see opportunities all around you, then you’re not in an environment where there exists a double-coincidence of wants.
The only people who are ‘not good’ in this world are the self righteous. Make life more hell for them at every opportunity. (Marxists)
Otherwise the vast majority of people in the world are pretty good – often misguided, misinformed, ignorant or superstitious.
Its worth treating them that way.
Source date (UTC): 2014-03-23 13:15:00 UTC
-
CENTRAL OBJECT OF THE ANARCHIC RESEARCH PROGRAM The central objective of the ana
http://propertarianism.com/ideas/THE CENTRAL OBJECT OF THE ANARCHIC RESEARCH PROGRAM
The central objective of the anarcho capitalist research program has been how to eliminate the monopoly bureaucracy and its institutionalize parasitism on the population, yet still produce a prosperous social order.
In libertarian circles we often refer to this simply as “the problem of social order.”
THE CENTRAL THEORY
Like marxism, libertarian philosophy is pretty rigorously thought out. By the time we get to Hoppe, it’s a well articulated theory of politics. So the logical errors in libertarianism tend to be complex, not trivial.
Most criticisms of libertarianism are naive or irrelevant because libertarian claims are technical, articulated in a formal and technical language, and they are not intuitive or normative claims at all. So without knowledge of the libertarian terminology and it’s arguments, is pretty hard to make a legitimate criticism – and that’s why so many criticisms are not legitimate.
DEFINITIONS
“NAP: the non-aggression principle. That one will not aggress against the life and property of others.”
“Property: (n) Your life, your mind, your body, things you have obtained in trade, and things you have converted to first-use (homesteading).”
“Violence: (n) Physical aggression against property.”
“Aggression: (n) hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront.”
So it’s okay to use violence against aggression. ie: any time you and your property are threatened. And to obtain restitution for your lost property.
So, no, the NAP is not a prohibition on violence. It’s a prohibition on the violation of property in which you, yourself, are also your property (that which you must have monopoly of control). Or more accurately, private property functions as an extension of your body and life. (true) and as such violations against your ‘things’ are violations against your body.
WHY PROPERTY THIS SO IMPORTANT
The general theory upon which anarcho capitalism rests, is that a rigid definition of property, and the common law, are sufficient for the formation of a polity. And that monopoly government and its systematic predation due to lack of competition is not necessary. Because the common law is sufficient ‘government’ for an anarchic polity. (This is the legal framework of a migratory herding people, or disasporic traders.)
This differs from a high trust agrarian society where the people must organize to prevent others from displacing them from the land. In a landed society, it is necessary for organizations to have leaders, to prevent free riding by those not willing to fight for that land.
PROSPERITY AS ‘THE COMMON GOOD”
But since trust is an index of productivity, because lack of trust acts as a friction on seizure of opportunity – and particularly on the concentration of capital by future-oriented people – (a form of transaction cost) then high trust is the the greatest social asset a polity can possess in the production of wealth.
Property will evolve from trust. Trust evolves from the prevention of free riding. The prevention of free riding evolves from the need to cooperate.
THE PROBLEM WITH NAP AND PRIVATE PROPERTY: “TRUST”
Private property and a weak state only evolve in high trust societies. But high trust societies are not dependent upon the NAP. They are dependent upon the suppression of free riding. The absolute nuclear family for example, even prohibits free riding by your children.
The NAP doesn’t prohibit unethical and immoral actions, so you can’t initiate violence against, say, a blackmailer, or scam artist, or other person who engages in conspiracy. Its a license for predation. Given the high cost of violence and the low cost of unethical and immoral behavior, it’s non-logical to essentially prohibit violence but not prohibit every kind of cheating possible.
The NAP operates on the assumption that a high trust society already exists, but actually fosters the destruction of the high trust society.
Because high trust societies do not limit ‘property’ wither private or common to the physical.
High trust societies prevent free riding, of which private property crime is merely one component.
That is why it’s non-rational.
Source date (UTC): 2014-03-18 14:52:00 UTC
-
WHY DO PROPERTY RIGHTS ‘WORK’? Property rights ‘work’ because they establish a m
WHY DO PROPERTY RIGHTS ‘WORK’?
Property rights ‘work’ because they establish a monopoly of control over fragments of the physical world, and without that monopoly of control it’s impossible to both plan their use and possess the incentive to act in accordance with plan.
All creatures demonstrate some concept of possession or property. (See Butler Schaeffer).
Without property rights, a voluntarily organized division of labor is not possible. The degree of the division of labor (atomicity) is determined by the atomicity of property rights. The atomicity of property rights must compete with the reproductive structure of the family. So that is why different family structures use different moral codes – largely dependent upon the method of assigning land in agrarian societies. Our moral code is an agrarian moral code.
The conflict in ethics has been exacerbated by increases in population with conflicting moral codes, and the rapid decline since 1890 in the productivity of unskilled labor.
So while populations are increasing, the number of people engaged in productive work isn’t necessarily doing so. Most people today are filling in ‘holes’ where production has lagged because of communism. But in the developed world, we have more people than we have work for. And without the credit that we can currently easily manufacture, we will contract father.
This trend has no chance of abating. Just the opposite.
So, under this form of production, given this distribution of abilities, given the distribution of family structures, then what is the moral and ethical basis of society?
I have tried to answer this problem. I think I have. But there is no way to be sure other than to test it.
Source date (UTC): 2014-03-18 08:03:00 UTC
-
RUSSIAN TRANSITIONAL FAILURE TO ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM (Anglo Saxon, Friesi
RUSSIAN TRANSITIONAL FAILURE TO ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM
(Anglo Saxon, Friesian Aristocratic Egalitarianism)
I KNOW democracy(political freedom) is just the path to communism and totalitarianism by slower means, and I know political freedom by definition is immoral. I know social democracy is just the secularization of jewish-christianity by empty verbalisms, at the further expense of propertarian aristocracy.
These are not value judgements they are logical necessities given the distribution of human interests and abilities, and the evolutionary strategies of different groups.
I am perfectly happy with a monarchical Russia that denies people access to political power. Just as I am perfectly happy that all other countries deny people political power under any form of private government. What I am not comfortable with is EXPANSION of CORRUPTION, and the expansion of the bureaucracy, and the SPREAD of corruption and bureaucracy.
Now the Russians might be right is that the southern and eastern peoples (the ‘middle world’) are incapable of universalism and high trust. (I believe this may be the case given behavior under immigration.) And that the only possible solution for Russia is to engage in hierarchical government to use their minority population to conquer and oppress the ‘middle people’ (Turkiks, Uralics, Altaics, Mongols, Arabs, and any indo-european muslims) who pose a risk to them. And I even ENCOURAGE that position.
But that does not apply to europeans(slavs, germans, nordics and celts), who have survived for four thousand years by denying the ‘middle people’ access to Europe, despite our smaller numbers.
Russia may yet keep the east at bay if Germany does not return to its traditional role in doing so. I want the USA out of Europe so that Germany has no CHOICE but to abandon the pacifist fallacy and return to its traditional role as keeping the east at bay.
We can see that any civilization touched by the Turkic and Islamic people suffers in ignorance, low trust and poverty. And cannot seem to escape it. It never occurs to us that advanced civilizations with low rates of reproduction do not SURVIVE against reproductive and aggressive civilizations – because he who breeds eventually wins. So the Islamic way of life, despite it’s low trust, violence, ignorance and mysticism, may in fact be the most effective way of conquest, even if it deprives humans of their reach for the stars. History tells us that the Chinese war machine is only bounded by the desert on one side and the ocean on the other. Western colonization was aristotelian, commercial, anglo saxon as well as military.
So a Russia that used violence to first create property rights at the expense of creating a rent seeking class of statists was simply a necessary step in the evolution of a polity towards liberty. Thats what government is FOR: suppressing high transaction costs of free riding in exchange for the low transaction costs of rent seeking. But that interim statism is only helpful if then one suppresses rent seeking in ADDITION to free riding (what libertarians have got wrong by the way).
And without the further transition away from statist brutality, the people are merely prey to be expropriated from.
That is the difference between Friesian-anglo-saxon, propertarian, aristocratic egalitarianism’s total suppression of free riding, and every other political order constructed by man.
Source date (UTC): 2014-03-16 10:30:00 UTC