SYNONYMS Altruism(direct), Morality(indirect), Virtue(long term) a) find an example of altruism that is not an example of kin selection. (you won’t) b) find an example of morality that is not an example of investing in future reciprocity (you won’t) c) find an example of virtue that is not an example of bearing a cost (‘banking’). you won’t. It should be fairly obvious after making a few lists of a/b/c that this is the same question at three different scales.
Source: Original Site Post
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Virtuous and Ethical Behavior Is Determined by Cost
Feb 28, 2017 4:14pm (full argument)(read it and weep. lol) —“I can struggle not to cheat on my wife. And still fail. While you can argue it’s better that I at least struggled as opposed to gleefully giving into my hedonism, I still missed the mark concerning virtuous behavior.”— Example of a parlor trick. Here is how to uncover the deception. (it’s a variation on the monty hall problem). In other words a common fraud conducted by suggestion. 1) I have a choice between two options: one that is less costly but produces negative externalities and one that is more costly but produces positive externalities. a) I choose the one that is more costly because of the externalities it produces. (deliberately virtuous/moral) or b) I choose the other that is less costly regardless of the externalities it produces. (immoral) OR 2) I have a choice between one that is less costly but produces positive externalities, and one that is more costly and produces negative externalities. a) I choose the less costly that produces the positive externalities. (coincidentally virtuous) or b) I choose the more costly that produces the negative externalities. (evil/immoral) 1………..DV……I 2………..CV……E Now, we can pretend under the POSITIVE is the full depth of the argument and assume we speak logically. Or we can fully account for the argument, and show that we do not. 3) Two individuals where one has more knowledge than the other. As the person with knowledge, I have the choice of: Virtuous/ethical/moral action with knowledge of the consequences, (ethical) OR I have the choice of unethical/immoral/evil actions with knowledge of the consequences (Unethical) OR I have the choice of taking the appearance of ethical action while producing immoral outcomes. (False Ethical) So in this case we have FALSE POSITIVES. 1……E……U 2……FE….U So the question is, given that an individual can claim he takes ethical action even with unethical designs, and the individual can claim he takes virtuous action, even when it is merely convenience for him (false ethical, and false virtue), the only way to objectively test for virtuous CHARACTER in past and FUTURE is not false virtue or false ethical action, but whether the individual bore a cost in the false virtue, or earned a profit in the false ethical. You see? The fact that an action coincides with the virtuous that DOES cost has no bearing on whether it is virtuous. Any more than an action exporting costs on which you profit is ethical. See? It is the COST and REWARD that tell us whether one acts virtuously and ethically. QED Thus Endeth The Lesson.
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Virtuous and Ethical Behavior Is Determined by Cost
Feb 28, 2017 4:14pm (full argument)(read it and weep. lol) —“I can struggle not to cheat on my wife. And still fail. While you can argue it’s better that I at least struggled as opposed to gleefully giving into my hedonism, I still missed the mark concerning virtuous behavior.”— Example of a parlor trick. Here is how to uncover the deception. (it’s a variation on the monty hall problem). In other words a common fraud conducted by suggestion. 1) I have a choice between two options: one that is less costly but produces negative externalities and one that is more costly but produces positive externalities. a) I choose the one that is more costly because of the externalities it produces. (deliberately virtuous/moral) or b) I choose the other that is less costly regardless of the externalities it produces. (immoral) OR 2) I have a choice between one that is less costly but produces positive externalities, and one that is more costly and produces negative externalities. a) I choose the less costly that produces the positive externalities. (coincidentally virtuous) or b) I choose the more costly that produces the negative externalities. (evil/immoral) 1………..DV……I 2………..CV……E Now, we can pretend under the POSITIVE is the full depth of the argument and assume we speak logically. Or we can fully account for the argument, and show that we do not. 3) Two individuals where one has more knowledge than the other. As the person with knowledge, I have the choice of: Virtuous/ethical/moral action with knowledge of the consequences, (ethical) OR I have the choice of unethical/immoral/evil actions with knowledge of the consequences (Unethical) OR I have the choice of taking the appearance of ethical action while producing immoral outcomes. (False Ethical) So in this case we have FALSE POSITIVES. 1……E……U 2……FE….U So the question is, given that an individual can claim he takes ethical action even with unethical designs, and the individual can claim he takes virtuous action, even when it is merely convenience for him (false ethical, and false virtue), the only way to objectively test for virtuous CHARACTER in past and FUTURE is not false virtue or false ethical action, but whether the individual bore a cost in the false virtue, or earned a profit in the false ethical. You see? The fact that an action coincides with the virtuous that DOES cost has no bearing on whether it is virtuous. Any more than an action exporting costs on which you profit is ethical. See? It is the COST and REWARD that tell us whether one acts virtuously and ethically. QED Thus Endeth The Lesson.
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Property without Magical Thinking
“There is no evidence that objects transform into property, that they are somehow magically infused with an attribute known as ownership. Sure, humans transform inputs into outputs all the time, that’s what we do, and generally we treat things that we have transformed as property. But the truth is that transformed objects are still just objects, and that what makes them property is the fact that we agree to behave in a certain way with them, not that there is an inherent ‘property-ness’ to them. This is why a transformed object (house) may be ‘non-property’ (unowned). The act of transformation does not ‘create’ property, it merely signals that we should behave in a certain way towards it. The Labor Theory of Property is clear, that man ‘mixes his labor with nature’, that somehow an object is infused with something. This is magical thinking. Now, I keep running into people who want to pretend that the words ‘mixing labor with nature’ don’t mean what they say, that this is some metaphor that I’m misunderstanding. This is also part of the Propertarian philosophy: we can’t behave rationally if words don’t mean what they mean. We can’t behave rationally if our fundamental building blocks are metaphors. We require concrete, clear, unmistakable language with which to clearly describe the universe. Nothing less will do, if we are to create systems which are empirical rather than merely rational.” William Butchman
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Property without Magical Thinking
“There is no evidence that objects transform into property, that they are somehow magically infused with an attribute known as ownership. Sure, humans transform inputs into outputs all the time, that’s what we do, and generally we treat things that we have transformed as property. But the truth is that transformed objects are still just objects, and that what makes them property is the fact that we agree to behave in a certain way with them, not that there is an inherent ‘property-ness’ to them. This is why a transformed object (house) may be ‘non-property’ (unowned). The act of transformation does not ‘create’ property, it merely signals that we should behave in a certain way towards it. The Labor Theory of Property is clear, that man ‘mixes his labor with nature’, that somehow an object is infused with something. This is magical thinking. Now, I keep running into people who want to pretend that the words ‘mixing labor with nature’ don’t mean what they say, that this is some metaphor that I’m misunderstanding. This is also part of the Propertarian philosophy: we can’t behave rationally if words don’t mean what they mean. We can’t behave rationally if our fundamental building blocks are metaphors. We require concrete, clear, unmistakable language with which to clearly describe the universe. Nothing less will do, if we are to create systems which are empirical rather than merely rational.” William Butchman
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The Data You Want on the West Vs the Rest
Civilization: Powered by the West, Threatened by the Rest Via William Butchman http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2017/01/09/civilization-powered-by-the-west-threatened-by-the-rest/ As Butch mentioned above, (I just saw this post tonight, on March 1st) I’m increasingly confident that what accounts for the west consistently competing faster than ‘the rest’ is sovereignty, and its requirement for deflationary truth, and everything else results from it. The question is, why does it appear that westerners to have had this rather aristotelian bias “realism” or “military epistemology” even into prehistory? The only explanation that fits consists of a small number of related traits: (a) the lack of clannishness that seems to be a predisposition of near-arctic peoples everywhere in the upper hemisphere, (b) the long term use of metallurgy outside of the authoritarian mysticism necessary to organize irrigation in the river valleys, and (c) the battle tactics of raiders who family-financed bronze, horse, and wheel: beginning with voluntary membership in the ‘venture’, selection of leaders (generals), contractual adherence to promised battle plans even at risk of death, contractual distribution of proceeds from battle, and the merciless demands of military epistemology – a discipline we still practice in basic training today: testimony.
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The Data You Want on the West Vs the Rest
Civilization: Powered by the West, Threatened by the Rest Via William Butchman http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2017/01/09/civilization-powered-by-the-west-threatened-by-the-rest/ As Butch mentioned above, (I just saw this post tonight, on March 1st) I’m increasingly confident that what accounts for the west consistently competing faster than ‘the rest’ is sovereignty, and its requirement for deflationary truth, and everything else results from it. The question is, why does it appear that westerners to have had this rather aristotelian bias “realism” or “military epistemology” even into prehistory? The only explanation that fits consists of a small number of related traits: (a) the lack of clannishness that seems to be a predisposition of near-arctic peoples everywhere in the upper hemisphere, (b) the long term use of metallurgy outside of the authoritarian mysticism necessary to organize irrigation in the river valleys, and (c) the battle tactics of raiders who family-financed bronze, horse, and wheel: beginning with voluntary membership in the ‘venture’, selection of leaders (generals), contractual adherence to promised battle plans even at risk of death, contractual distribution of proceeds from battle, and the merciless demands of military epistemology – a discipline we still practice in basic training today: testimony.
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On Unions
ON UNIONS The unions made common mistakes of overreach. They began with the moral: safety, liability, minimum wages, profit sharing, and replacing with cheaper workers (arbitrage). But then proceeded with overreaches that varied from moral hazard: demands for impossible future claims: continuous increases and pensions; then to the immoral: mandatory membership, mandatory fees, and fostering endemic corruption; then to the violation of natural law: interfering in the political process. It’s a shock to capitalists and free marketers raised on the myth of constant growth made possible under the agrarian and industrial (hydrocarbon) eras, and prohibiting temporal labor arbitrage is perhaps hard for the layman to understand when it occurs across decades of time rather than across national borders, but men are not commodities and their marketability declines rapidly after choice of first opportunity – and seizing all the ‘best’ time at the lowest price under promise of future rewards is merely an act of fraud. So it is all too easy to socialize uncompetitiveness and privatize commons into the hands of investors and capitalists. Most capitalists cannot compete under free trade because profits would be much smaller. Contrary to libertarian dogma, and contrary to anglo bourgeois values, while the puritan/manorial work ethic is an unquestionable good, and while rule of law assisting in capital concentration and formation is an unquestionable good, as a good Propertarian we query ‘But what are the limits of that good? Because there exist no unlimited theories and therefore no unlimited goods.’ And we find that it is possible to socialize losses and privatize gains if we do not perform full accounting. And a full accounting only ends when we have reduced all accounts to ‘time’. Because it is ‘time’ that is the currency we trade.
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On Unions
ON UNIONS The unions made common mistakes of overreach. They began with the moral: safety, liability, minimum wages, profit sharing, and replacing with cheaper workers (arbitrage). But then proceeded with overreaches that varied from moral hazard: demands for impossible future claims: continuous increases and pensions; then to the immoral: mandatory membership, mandatory fees, and fostering endemic corruption; then to the violation of natural law: interfering in the political process. It’s a shock to capitalists and free marketers raised on the myth of constant growth made possible under the agrarian and industrial (hydrocarbon) eras, and prohibiting temporal labor arbitrage is perhaps hard for the layman to understand when it occurs across decades of time rather than across national borders, but men are not commodities and their marketability declines rapidly after choice of first opportunity – and seizing all the ‘best’ time at the lowest price under promise of future rewards is merely an act of fraud. So it is all too easy to socialize uncompetitiveness and privatize commons into the hands of investors and capitalists. Most capitalists cannot compete under free trade because profits would be much smaller. Contrary to libertarian dogma, and contrary to anglo bourgeois values, while the puritan/manorial work ethic is an unquestionable good, and while rule of law assisting in capital concentration and formation is an unquestionable good, as a good Propertarian we query ‘But what are the limits of that good? Because there exist no unlimited theories and therefore no unlimited goods.’ And we find that it is possible to socialize losses and privatize gains if we do not perform full accounting. And a full accounting only ends when we have reduced all accounts to ‘time’. Because it is ‘time’ that is the currency we trade.
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The Distillation of Western Civilization
THE DISTILLATION OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION If you would be sovereign, you must fight. If you would be sovereign and win, you must equally confederate. If you would be sovereign and confederate, you must equally compromise. If you would be sovereign and equally compromise, you must equally forgo opportunities for gain at another’s loss. If you would be sovereign and equally forgo equal opportunities to gain at another’s loss, your actions are limited to those that are productive, fully informed, warrantied, and voluntary, and limited to productive externalities. If you limit your actions to those, then the ONLY possible rule is rule by Common, judge-discovered, Natural Law of Non Imposition of Costs, and therefore, voluntary markets in everything: association, cooperation, reproduction, production, production of commons, production of dispute resolution, production of institutions, productions of monuments, production of war, productions of generations, This is Western Civilization: the choice of Sovereignty once made produces all that we have done. Small things in large numbers have vast consequences. If you would be Sovereign, and reap the benefits of Sovereignty, you must fight – fight to deny others all possible alternatives. If you will not fight you cannot be sovereign. You may beg the Sovereigns for commercial liberty, or physical freedom, or charity, in exchange for compensation. But you may never be in fact sovereign. by William Butchman, Eli Harman, and Curt Doolittle