Theme: Agency

Curt Doolittle updated his status.

AGENCY (FULL DEFINITION IN CONTEXT)

—“What is the definition of “agency” as the term is used here?”— Daniel Roland

—“The capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices subject to personal or external limitations. By contrast, *structure* refers to those factors that determine or limit an individual and his or her decisions, such as gender, social class, ethnicity, religion, customs, education, economic institutions, government, propaganda, ability, knowledge, ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, and deceit. Meaning that one’s agency is determined by the combination of beneficial institutions, abilities, and knowledge and inhibiting institutions, abilities, and knowledge”—
As an example, God would have perfect agency, because would have perfect knowledge(omniscience), perfect reason, perfect emotions, perfect mindfulness, perfect ability to act (omnipotence), unlimited resources, and no competition, no need to cooperate, and therefore no need for conventions, laws, institutions, or infrastructure.

As humans we have imperfect knowledge, imperfect reason, imperfect mindfulness, imperfect emotions, limited range of actions, limited resources, and we live in a world where we must compete, must cooperate to compete, and to do so require conventions, laws, institutions, and infrastructure.

So, Agency consists of the degree to which one approaches perfect ability to act, when not limited by knowledge, reason, emotions, mindfulness, range of action, available instrumentation, available resources, competition, cooperation, conventions, laws, institutions and infrastructure.

Given we can never have unlimited knowledge, unlimited resources, and we have limited ability to be free of competition, need for cooperation, conventions, laws, institutions, and infrastructure, we can seek largely to improve our knowledge, reason, mindfulness, and assets so that we maximize our agency within the availble limits.

CONVERSELY (VIA NEGATIVA)
Remove sources of lack of fitness, lack of character (virtue), lack of resources, sources of normative and institutional resistance, sources of ignorance, error, bias, and deceit – all the impediments to agency – and agency will result. Then selecting a philosophy – a means of decidability – by which one can obtain one’s ends, and an aesthetic that values one’s passions in accordance with that philosophy.

AGENCY = POTENTIAL ENERGY
by Simon Ström

Agency = potential energy (PE)
Force = applied energy (F)
Event = Impulse (Imp), [force vector + temporal dimension]
Consequence = displacement vector (s)
Action = work (W)
Externalities = Waste heat (h)
W = F * s

SPEAKING IN OPERATIONAL GRAMMAR IS A TEST OF AGENCY
It is very hard to migrate
FROM thinking in terms of:
1 – meaning or experience to your self
2 – empathy for or meaning to others
3 – empathy with others intentions
INTO
4 – nothing but objective statements of incentives, actors, actions, and consequences.

Note:
The degree with which you can do this kind of speech is a direct measure of your own agency.

SOVEREIGNTY = perfect (exceptionless) reciprocity by perfect (exceptionless) reciprocal insurance, in numbers sufficient to deny violations of reciprocity to all possible (exeptionless) extant numbers.

PERFECT RECIPROCITY = limiting one’s actions to productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer of property – in – toto, limited to productive externalities.

PROPERTY IN TOTO = That in which one has expended any resource with intent to obtain an interest, without imposing a cost on that which another has expended a resource with the intent to obtain an interest. Synonym: ‘demonstrated property’

INTEREST: = ergo, leaving only homesteading, transformation, and exchange, as means of obtaining an interest. Synonym: monopoly share (a possession), proportional share (citizenship in a commons), proportional share (private in a common contract), demonstrated share ( a denial of opportunity( such as norms and traditions)

RESOURCE : life, body, effort, time, attention, kin, material possession, material interest (share), organizational interest, normative interest, institutional interest, informational interest. Synonym: “capital”.

YIELDS:
Possession(insured by self defense) > consensual property (insured by reciprocity) > normative property(insured by normative enforcement) > property right (insured by third party enforcement) > natural right(ideal between government and citizens) or human right(ideal between governments). Technically speaking,under rule of law, under natural judge-discovered common law, under perfect reciprocity (sovereignty), natural rights can be brought into existence.

Under these conditions it is possible to create sovereignty in fact, liberty by permission, freedom by utility, and subsidy by preference.

(Good luck getting that degree of precision out of parasitic libertines) 😉

ARISTOCRACY: THE INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION OF AGENCY
Aristocracy: the production of Agency (peers) by the incremental suppression of parasitism, by the use of the common law, leaving no option for survival but market production: the civilization-wide industrialization of the domestication of the animal man, for fun and profit.

WE ONLY ASK COOPERATION OF THOSE WITH AGENCY OR ITS PROMISE
We don’t ask cooperation of beasts
We don’t ask cooperation of domesticated animals.
We don’t ask cooperation of pets
We don’t ask cooperation of children
We don’t ask cooperation of the incapable
We don’t ask cooperation of those without agency.
We ask little cooperation of those who request subsidy.
We ask more cooperation of those who request freedom.
We ask even more cooperation from those who request liberty.
We desire the full cooperation of those who possess agency.
We require and cannot avoid the full cooperation of those who desire sovereignty.

The few rule the many, to transcend mankind.
We can rule and transcend, or be ruled and fail to.
We can possess sovereignty in fact, or something less by permission.
But to possess sovereignty requires we possess agency.
And to possess agency we must possess the ability, the knowledge, the fitness and will…
… the will to fight, kill, slaughter, and destroy.

There is no transcendence, no sovereignty, no agency for the weak, the cowardly, the timid, or the dim. And no liberty, nor freedom, nor subsidy for others if we fail.