Source: Facebook

http://www.propertarianism.com/ideas/PROPERTARIANISM : A STATUS REPORT

Most of what’s up on propertarianism.com under the outline, is about a year old. My workflow is, well, … I just test a whole range of ways of saying something, usually on FB, Chats, Forums, – anywhere where I can get a lot of different reactions and objections. Then when I can manage to write about what I’m looking for, I put it on the web site. Periodically I go through and take a subject and update the “Ideas” an “Debate” sections with what I’m most happy with. And then I go to the book and stub it out.

When writing the last draft of my book, I made a tremendous amount of progress in just a few weeks, but then I got stuck on calculation and operationalism. It’s really obvious in the outline that that’s where I ran into trouble. And I just couldn’t get farther along until I solved that problem: how can you construct law across multiple moral codes? How can you prohibit obscurantism in law? How can yo make it impossible to conduct theft by a government? It isn’t the institutional problem that I had difficulty with. It’s the problem of language.

This year, (you can see from the undone’s) I mostly spent on solving the problems operationalism and calculation – the immorality of platonism etc. I’m really happy with that so it’s about time to go back and add that. But it was a lot of work really.

So the spring and summer I spent on mathematical philosophy, intuitionism, constructivism etc.

I did good work in the early fall on family structure and morality.

I did really good work in the late fall on the ethical spectrum.

This winter, (as you can possibly tell), at least since December, I’ve tried to figure out if I should try to work within the libertarian framework to reform it, or I should just drop it and move entirely into the NeoReactionary framework, and simply attack libertarianism from the outside rather than try to reform it.

The reason is that there has to be some benefit to carrying all that libertarian baggage, and the negative association with ‘the fruitcake fringe’. If reforming libertarianism is helpful and is an access to an audience then it’s worth the cost. But if libertarianism is really just a cult that’s going to hurt Aristocratic Egalitarian Ethics, then any attempt to rescue it just damages the overall message.

So I decided to pull out the guns and go on the attack and see. And it’s been pretty interesting. It’s actually sad. Pathetic even.

Conservatives.

Not an intellectual movement. No chance.

The Ron Paul Movement.

They are doing fine and do a better job with morality than the rothbardians. Mostly classical liberal in policy. But they’re another ‘return to what’s worked int he past’ agenda. That’s done. The Absolute nuclear family and monolithic morality is done. No chance at fixing it. Demographics don’t support it. So the only available answers are secession, nullification, revolution, or reformation. I don’t really care which. And I’m trying to answer revolution and reformation. Other people have the others covered. (Tom in particular)

The BHL’s

Um. I’ve abandoned the psychological model of the classical liberals in favor of the ratio-scientific model of the present and I see no hope of reforming these people, or even playing on the same field. They are all moral intuitionists seeking justification and only one (Rod Long) is strong enough to even consult with.

The Red Pill Tribe

“Neo-reaction is where libertarians go when they grow up.”

The problem is I just really don’t like racism. I don’t even like race realism. I don’t like it at all. My view of the world is tribal, and we all are heads of families of different sizes, with different talents and weaknesses (the gullibility of white people for example). I care about these things because I think it’s harmful to create one-size-fits all institutions that don’t assist in the strengths and weaknesses of different tribes. And as far as I can tell, we are all happier if we have at last tacit membership in a tribe, and we need to be taught and raised by means most likely to help us. So I see a heterogeneous polity needing heterogeneous institutions that require heterogeneous moral codes. I see neo-reaction as a return to tribalism. But if it gets into racism I just don’t want much to do with it.

STATE OF THE WEB SITE

What I haven’t done to the web site, and very much needs doing:

– a recent revision to address the production/family/morality axis.

– revised the ethical spectrum to reflect the use of the charts.

– more than outlined Scientific and Ethical Realism – I still think I have a lot of work to do there. This is, to me, more interesting than the political philosophy: that it’s possible to finally settle the matters of truth and epistemology. I really,really enjoyed that work.

– reframed my earlier terminology referring to discounts as the suppression of free riding. Or at least clarify that one tries to take a discount by free riding, and the other tries to prevent your free riding.

– really done the work on connecting morality, economy and trust.

– updated the glossary to reflect the changes in terms and new terms.

– updated the debate section which needs serious work. Some of it I use daily other parts need to be completely rewritten to make more specific use of some of the insights.

– posted the (long) history of aristocratic liberty. I wrote it in 2010 to familiarize myself with the history of freedom and conservatism, but I want to recast it in philosophical rather than just historical terms so that I can draw out the difference between the cultural traditions and methods.

It’s clear where the holes are because I’ve labeled them with (undone).

The book is a lot longer than what’s on the web site, and I’ve covered a lot more individual topics – much like Ethics of Liberty. But I’m trying to keep the central ideas up here on the web site, because I refer to them all the time.

But you can get a lot from it if anyone wants to look.

CURRENT DIRECTION

I’m coming around more and more to the idea dropping the libertarian context altogether because property rights are now so tainted, and they property rights are too weak a framework compared to suppression of free riding.

Also the Aspie-tarian criticism is becoming painfully true. It’s clearer than ever to me that rothbardianism is a cult even if a pseudoscientific cult. And it’s pretty clear that rothbardianism is not only a rational argument, but participants are noticeably anti-scientific. ie: religious.

So, the choice is then between Aristocratic Ratio-Scientific Propertarianism based upon Scientific and Ethical Realism as an ideology of action, or Ghetto Libertarianism Rationalism based upon what? Praxeology and Argumentation? And as a failed ideology of resistance?

Is that really much of a choice?

Off to the races.