[T]HE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT IS A CRITICISM. [P]ROPERTARIANISM IS AN EXPLANATION. [A]RISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM IS A SOLUTION.*
Source: Original Site Post
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Sovereignty Begins with Violence, Morality is Made by Violence
—“Right is not the offspring of doctrine, but of power. All laws, commandments, or doctrines as to not doing to another what you do not wish done to you, have no inherent authority whatever, but receive it only from the club, the gallows, and the sword. A man truly free is under no obligation to obey any injunction, human or divine. Obedience is the sign of the degenerate. Disobedience is the stamp of the hero.”—
[I]f we apply our wealth of violence to the suppression of free riding in all its forms, then we create the most productive and meritocratic moral code for any body of people that is possible. But that result is an aristocratic moral code – a meritocratic moral code. Merit is to the disadvantage of the incompetent and degenerate. Christianity is merely a rebellion against aristocracy. But unable to suppress aristocracy, and aristocracy uninterested in suppressing christianity, the west was a product of the dialectic between the christians and the actions, habits and traditions of the aristocracy. Might makes whatever right it’s wielder chooses to. But there is only one optimum moral principle available to man, to which we all adhere to different degrees: upon choosing not to use violence, and instead to cooperate, we create the problem of free riding. To suppress free riding we create moral rules. To enforce moral rules we create authority. By creating moral rules we create free riding by corruption. To enforce moral rules against free riding by corruption we must suppress the state. To suppress the state requires that we use violence to suppress free riding in all its forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and statist. Might makes whatever right we choose. One can choose an objectively moral right: the suppression or free riding. Or one can choose one of the many others – all of which institute some form of free riding.
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Sovereignty Begins with Violence, Morality is Made by Violence
—“Right is not the offspring of doctrine, but of power. All laws, commandments, or doctrines as to not doing to another what you do not wish done to you, have no inherent authority whatever, but receive it only from the club, the gallows, and the sword. A man truly free is under no obligation to obey any injunction, human or divine. Obedience is the sign of the degenerate. Disobedience is the stamp of the hero.”—
[I]f we apply our wealth of violence to the suppression of free riding in all its forms, then we create the most productive and meritocratic moral code for any body of people that is possible. But that result is an aristocratic moral code – a meritocratic moral code. Merit is to the disadvantage of the incompetent and degenerate. Christianity is merely a rebellion against aristocracy. But unable to suppress aristocracy, and aristocracy uninterested in suppressing christianity, the west was a product of the dialectic between the christians and the actions, habits and traditions of the aristocracy. Might makes whatever right it’s wielder chooses to. But there is only one optimum moral principle available to man, to which we all adhere to different degrees: upon choosing not to use violence, and instead to cooperate, we create the problem of free riding. To suppress free riding we create moral rules. To enforce moral rules we create authority. By creating moral rules we create free riding by corruption. To enforce moral rules against free riding by corruption we must suppress the state. To suppress the state requires that we use violence to suppress free riding in all its forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and statist. Might makes whatever right we choose. One can choose an objectively moral right: the suppression or free riding. Or one can choose one of the many others – all of which institute some form of free riding.
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The Current Propertarian Canon (Reading List)
(in suggested reading order)
Note that I do not list the usual works of ‘lament’ about the fall of the west. I assume that we all understand that. But understanding it isn’t a means of countering it. Countering it requires we understand the origins of liberty, the constitution of liberty, and act to restore our liberty. As such I focus on how to construct and reconstruct informal and formal institutions that will do a better job of protecting our liberty than did classical liberalism. However, doing so requires that I dismantle the fallacy of rothbardian ghetto ethics, and german rationalism, and instead, rebuild the case for liberty on science and history.
THE RESTORATION READING 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 William Tucker: Marriage and Civilization Emmanuel Todd: The Explanation of Ideology Emmanuel Todd: The Invention of Europe 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 Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow Francis Fukuyama: Trust Sam Harris : Lying Steven Pinker : The Blank Slate Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind Stephen Hicks : Explaining Postmodernism Hans Hoppe: Democracy The God That Failed Doolittle: Propertarianism. High Trust Ethics Necessary for Anarchy
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The Current Propertarian Canon (Reading List)
(in suggested reading order)
Note that I do not list the usual works of ‘lament’ about the fall of the west. I assume that we all understand that. But understanding it isn’t a means of countering it. Countering it requires we understand the origins of liberty, the constitution of liberty, and act to restore our liberty. As such I focus on how to construct and reconstruct informal and formal institutions that will do a better job of protecting our liberty than did classical liberalism. However, doing so requires that I dismantle the fallacy of rothbardian ghetto ethics, and german rationalism, and instead, rebuild the case for liberty on science and history.
THE RESTORATION READING 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 William Tucker: Marriage and Civilization Emmanuel Todd: The Explanation of Ideology Emmanuel Todd: The Invention of Europe 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 Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow Francis Fukuyama: Trust Sam Harris : Lying Steven Pinker : The Blank Slate Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind Stephen Hicks : Explaining Postmodernism Hans Hoppe: Democracy The God That Failed Doolittle: Propertarianism. High Trust Ethics Necessary for Anarchy
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Aristocratice Egalitarianism vs The Central Libertarian Fallacies
(worth repeating) –Aristocratic Egalitarianism is a replacement for the fallacy of immaculate conception we call natural law. And High trust society is a replacement for the fallacy of aggression as sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of a state. Propertarianism is the explanation why.—
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Aristocratice Egalitarianism vs The Central Libertarian Fallacies
(worth repeating) –Aristocratic Egalitarianism is a replacement for the fallacy of immaculate conception we call natural law. And High trust society is a replacement for the fallacy of aggression as sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of a state. Propertarianism is the explanation why.—
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The Irony Of Praxeological Apriorism
[I]n retrospect, isn’t it ironic that not just a single thinker, but a group of thinkers have tried to construct a logic of rational action, and extend it into a logic of cooperation, and further into a logic of economics, by using a method of philosophical argument that is expressly not constructed of actions – operations? It is ironic. Its Ironic as hell. But when the irony ends we are left with a tragedy. We lost a century. And we may have lost a century of our liberty because of it.
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The Irony Of Praxeological Apriorism
[I]n retrospect, isn’t it ironic that not just a single thinker, but a group of thinkers have tried to construct a logic of rational action, and extend it into a logic of cooperation, and further into a logic of economics, by using a method of philosophical argument that is expressly not constructed of actions – operations? It is ironic. Its Ironic as hell. But when the irony ends we are left with a tragedy. We lost a century. And we may have lost a century of our liberty because of it.
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Property? – It Wasn't Scarcity. 🙂
Curt Doolittle : so you agree with Tucker here? http://youtu.be/83se-G-9SeU?t=23m26s (Jeffrey Tucker AMA Hosted by Mike Shanklin)
[W]ell, I think the scarcity-as-primary cause has been replaced with an evolutionary spectrum. The evidence now appears that: (a) Property evolved for preventing free riding during cooperation (along with mating – we dont’ know which was first – cooperation or pairing off, but it looks like cooperation was first.) (b) Language evolved to control mating (pairing off conditional monogamy – mates as property) (c) Property matured to facilitate the retention of goods and tools. (d) Property matured to facilitate capture of livestock. (e) Property matured to facilitate inheritance in families (f) Property matured to facilitate the division of labor. (g) Property evolved as a means of forming cooperative networks and positive expression of legal rules. As far as I can tell, it is the prevention of free riding needed to maintain incentives to produce that was the source of the evolution of property. As far as I can tell, it is probably more accurate to say that scarcity forced retention of redistribution within family and tribe, it did not cause the evolution of property. The hard problem that only Northern Europeans have solved, is to suppress redistribution in the tribe and family. I won’t address the evolution of shared intentionality and cooperation here. Too may different paths. But either way I think this is the correct evolution. I don’t think this is a meaningful revision of libertarian theory. It’s a correction. But the order of development doesn’t change the importance of property rights for the purpose of incentives, calculation, and dispute resolution. But it does reinforce my argument that the purpose of property is the prevention of free riding necessary for cooperation. So that property evolved a positive expression of the negative prohibition. Not as a good in itself in response to scarcity. In fact, I am pretty confident that the scarcity argument is a CROSS-GROUP problem not an in-group problem. (Again, this is why ghetto ethics were a failure – wrong problem. In group evolved prior to out-group.) [A]ctually, now that I think about it, this is a good example of why crusoe ethics are a mistaken distraction (another ghetto-ethics error) because the evolution of cooperation and property did not occur in the island-as-analogy-to-walled-ghetto, but among an extended family conducting pervasive redistribution.