Curt Doolittle

Theme: Coercion

  • For Tom Woods: On Thick and Thin

    Tom, Great of you to weigh in on this topic. You’ve also provided Rothbardians with an ‘out’ that I didn’t think of. That the NAP is fullness of libertarianism but not the fullness of life. I’d thought that the only ‘out’ was that rothbardian libertarianism was sufficient for the moral interaction of states, but insufficient for the construction of a polity. THE PROBLEM IS LAW It’s true that aggression is immoral and it’s true that aggression must be illegal. But is it rational for humans to join a voluntary, anarchic polity, if the basis of **LAW** is “non-aggression against intersubjectively verifiable property”, or must the basis of law be either based on something other than aggression, or broader in scope than intersubjectively verifiable property? What is the minimum basis for the law upon which it becomes rational to join a voluntary, anarchic polity? If we have a choice between: (a) a totalitarian capitalist society, like say, China. (b) a contemporary social democracy, like say the States. (c) an anarchic polity in which one CAN bring suit against immoral and unethical actions (say, blackmail, and fraud by omission). (d) an anarchic polity where unethical and immoral actions are expressly licensed by the law, and retribution for immoral and unethical actions is forbidden. 1) Then which of these will which people of which moral biases, choose? 2) How will members of that polity be treated by members of the competing polities? 3) How will the territory and trade representatives of that polity be treated by competing polities? I think that an intellectually honest analysis of those questions produces an obvious, and remarkably consistent answer. That is, that either aggression is the incorrect test of peaceful cooperation, or intersubjectively verifiable property is an insufficient test of the scope of property that must be protected from violation, or more likely both. The current proceeds of anthropology, genetics, and cognitive science, tell us that violations of the evolutionary preference for cooperation, are reducible to ‘free riding’: that is non-contribution. Since in any set of individuals, if we do not require productive contribution, then some are the victims of free riding (parasitism) and others benefit from free riding (parasitism). MORALITY If we analyze the common prohibitions of all moral codes under all family structures, and we remove moral constraints that are purely ritualistic, these moral codes are universally reducible to necessary prohibitions on what we would call ‘property violations’ in an effort to facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation. Moral Prohibition Spectra: 1) Agression: Harm/Oppression, 2) Trust: Subversion/Betrayal/Cheating, 3) Purity: Inobservance of Norms/Behavioral impurity/Pollution All of these are reducible to shareholder rights and obligations. Humans universally demonstrate a greater interest in punishing moral violations than we demonstrate self interest. IN fact, we justify our pre-cognitive moral punishments without even being able to articulate why we hold them. We are wired for morality. We evolved language and punishments violations of these moral intuitions in the form of criminal, ethical, and moral prohibitions: 1. Violence (asymmetry of force) 2. Theft (asymmetry of control) 3. Fraud (false information) 4. Omission (Omitting information) 5. Obscurantism (Obscuring information) 6. Obstruction (Inhibiting someone else’s transaction) 7. Externalization (externalizing costs of any transaction) 8. Free Riding (using externalities for self benefit) 9. Socializing Losses (externalization to commons) 10. Privatizing Gains (appropriation of commons) 11. Rent Seeking (organizational free riding) 12. Corruption ( organized rent seeking) 13. Conspiracy (organized indirect theft) 14. Extortion (Organized direct theft) 15. War (organized violence) PROPERTY We can empirically observe that people treat a broad spectrum of things as their property, and that they intuit violations of that property, and act to defend that property. I. Several (Personal) Property Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.” Physical Body and Several Property: Those things we claim a monopoly of control over. II. Artificial Property Shares in property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (claims for partial ownership) Trademarks and Brands (prohibitions on fraudulent transfers within a geography). III. Kin and Interpersonal (Relationship) Property Mates (access to sex/reproduction) Children (genetic reproduction) Consanguineous Relations (tribal and family ties) IV Status and Class (reputation) Social Status Reputation V. Institutional (Community) Property (i) Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.” (ii)Informal (Normative) Institutions: Our norms: manners, ethics and morals. Informal institutional property is nearly impossible to quantify and price. The costs are subjective and consists of forgone opportunities. (iii)Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws. Formal institutional property is easy to price. costs are visible. And the productivity of the social order is at least marginally measurable. ECONOMICS We can judge economic impacts of high trust societies that practice near total prohibition on criminal, unethical and immoral actions. And we can compare those to low trust societies that suppress fewer unethical and immoral actions. CLOSING So under what reasoning, would it be logical to support the Non Aggression Principle under Intersubjectively verifiable property (NAP/IVP) as the basis for the law, which explicitly licenses unethical and immoral action and prohibits retribution for it? The NAP/IVP has been a detriment to liberty wherever advocates argue that it is a sufficient means of determining moral and legal rules of cooperation. Because it’s not. And we cannot pursue an alternative to the existing high trust society without providing people with an alternative that is morally SUPERIOR to the state. And the NAP/IVP fails that test. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev.

    Nonaggression is a part of, but not the fullness of, morality. Virtue and excellence need to be cultivated, too. “I don’t punch people for no reason” isn’t the beginning and end of a decent human life.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • While you cannot intrinsically possess a right, you do intrinsically possess abi

    While you cannot intrinsically possess a right, you do intrinsically possess abilities. One of them that is the most decisive is violence.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-12 22:39:00 UTC

  • I am an anti-statist, and as such a libertarian, not an immoralist and thus a li

    I am an anti-statist, and as such a libertarian, not an immoralist and thus a libertine.

    Block and Rothbard are libertines.

    Just how it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-07 04:13:00 UTC

  • Should The Government Have The Right To Censor Videos Like Collateral Murder? Why Or Why Not?

    I WILL TRY TO DO THIS QUESTION JUSTICE.

    How you frame the question influences answers. I’ll try to give the correct answer by reframing the question slightly as other than yes or no.

    The philosophical question censorship is not whether government should have the ability, but (1) whether members of the military should or can sign a contract for secrecy inclusive of ‘accidents’ within the fog of war, and exclusive of deliberate immoral actions; and whether that contract has been broken by some member of the military or a non-military person, and (2) whether citizens, or heirs, should possess the universal standing to sue for reparations in the event that such actions subject them to harm. Censorship is always a license for bad behavior from governments, that too often specialize in bad behavior.  Restitution in court is a much more effective means of suppressing bad behavior on everyone’s part, citizen and government as well, than censorship which produces so many negative externalities.

    The combination of contract and harm under the law is superior to monopoly discretion on the part of a bureaucrat or politician with conflicting interests.

    https://www.quora.com/Should-the-government-have-the-right-to-censor-videos-like-Collateral-Murder-Why-or-why-not

  • Should The Government Have The Right To Censor Videos Like Collateral Murder? Why Or Why Not?

    I WILL TRY TO DO THIS QUESTION JUSTICE.

    How you frame the question influences answers. I’ll try to give the correct answer by reframing the question slightly as other than yes or no.

    The philosophical question censorship is not whether government should have the ability, but (1) whether members of the military should or can sign a contract for secrecy inclusive of ‘accidents’ within the fog of war, and exclusive of deliberate immoral actions; and whether that contract has been broken by some member of the military or a non-military person, and (2) whether citizens, or heirs, should possess the universal standing to sue for reparations in the event that such actions subject them to harm. Censorship is always a license for bad behavior from governments, that too often specialize in bad behavior.  Restitution in court is a much more effective means of suppressing bad behavior on everyone’s part, citizen and government as well, than censorship which produces so many negative externalities.

    The combination of contract and harm under the law is superior to monopoly discretion on the part of a bureaucrat or politician with conflicting interests.

    https://www.quora.com/Should-the-government-have-the-right-to-censor-videos-like-Collateral-Murder-Why-or-why-not

  • We Require Exchange and 'Calculability', Not Yet Another Arbitrary Moral Argument

    Regarding: New Libertarians: New Promoters of a Welfare State johnmccaskey.com John. [G]ood piece. Although, I’m critical of philosophical pretense in social justice as much as I am in the market. If any judgment is beyond our perception, and any concept of social justice is, then we must, as in all other matters where complexity exceeds our perception, develop some kind of instrumentation and means of calculation such that we can reduce that which we cannot perceive, to some analogy to experience that we can perceive. Moral rules are not sufficient for achieving that kind of instrumentation, or performing that kind of calculation. The problems (of instrumentation and calculation) require formal institutions as a means of calculation. For example, we have the market for cooperating on means even if we disagree on ends. We have the government for forcing cooperation on means and ends by majority rule. We have accounting to assist us in the perception of that which we cannot possibly grasp without it. And we have economics to attempt to measure our success. But we have no such instrumentation and means of calculating “social justice” – or even defining such a thing as social justice. (Which current psychologists and economists suspect is reducible to status seeking, and insurance against risk, and nothing more.) Hayek addresses this thoroughly in TCoL. While we might continue to try to rely upon the methods of the past (philosophy), and attempt to concoct yet another empty incalculable moralism for the purported common good, these results are value judgements and nothing more. They are incalculable. Non Empirical. Unascertainable. [M]ost of the post-enlightenment philosophical effort has considered society a monopoly, in contrast to the pre-enlightenment condition of most urban cities, as federations of minorities denied access to political power, and forced to compete outside of politics, in the market. So the idea of social justice is an artifact of monopoly democracy rather than a federation of disparate interests. This is a fallacy. We have no common goals, only common means of cooperating to achieve disparate goals. However, libertarians rightly argue that the only moral test is that of voluntary exchange free of violent coercion. I argue that this ‘test’ is incorrect, since no in-group human organizations demonstrate that low a level of trust, And instead all groups demonstrate and require higher standards of trust, tah also forbid free riding, deception, cheating, as well as burdening other group members indirectly. However, whether we accept a low trust society and high demand for external authority that low trust societies demonstrate, or a high trust society and the low demand for external authority that high trust societies demonstrate, the underlying argument that the only test of moral action is voluntary exchange. So the effort that political philosophers left, libertarian and right have expended under the universalist assumption of the enlightenment has been to find some justification for moral decision making even if the knowledge to make such decisions is impossible both in the market, and afterward, using the profits created from the market. The question instead, is how to construct institutions with which groups can conduct voluntary exchanges, which are by definition moral. Majority rule does not allow this. Majority rule is sufficient for the selection of priorities in homogenous polities with homogenous interests. The market is the means by which heterogeneous polities cooperate on means despite different interests on ends. But how can we construct an institutional system that allows the construction of commons, and other exchanges between groups and classes, but is not dependent upon a monopoly bureaucracy, majority rule, or representatives open to influence, special interest, and corruption? Because a government of contracts, not laws, would allow the exchange of say, adherence to traditions and norms, or requirements for married families in order to obtain redistribution. This would make government a means of cooperation rather than the source and facilitator of conflict. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev

  • We Require Exchange and ‘Calculability’, Not Yet Another Arbitrary Moral Argument

    Regarding: New Libertarians: New Promoters of a Welfare State johnmccaskey.com John. [G]ood piece. Although, I’m critical of philosophical pretense in social justice as much as I am in the market. If any judgment is beyond our perception, and any concept of social justice is, then we must, as in all other matters where complexity exceeds our perception, develop some kind of instrumentation and means of calculation such that we can reduce that which we cannot perceive, to some analogy to experience that we can perceive. Moral rules are not sufficient for achieving that kind of instrumentation, or performing that kind of calculation. The problems (of instrumentation and calculation) require formal institutions as a means of calculation. For example, we have the market for cooperating on means even if we disagree on ends. We have the government for forcing cooperation on means and ends by majority rule. We have accounting to assist us in the perception of that which we cannot possibly grasp without it. And we have economics to attempt to measure our success. But we have no such instrumentation and means of calculating “social justice” – or even defining such a thing as social justice. (Which current psychologists and economists suspect is reducible to status seeking, and insurance against risk, and nothing more.) Hayek addresses this thoroughly in TCoL. While we might continue to try to rely upon the methods of the past (philosophy), and attempt to concoct yet another empty incalculable moralism for the purported common good, these results are value judgements and nothing more. They are incalculable. Non Empirical. Unascertainable. [M]ost of the post-enlightenment philosophical effort has considered society a monopoly, in contrast to the pre-enlightenment condition of most urban cities, as federations of minorities denied access to political power, and forced to compete outside of politics, in the market. So the idea of social justice is an artifact of monopoly democracy rather than a federation of disparate interests. This is a fallacy. We have no common goals, only common means of cooperating to achieve disparate goals. However, libertarians rightly argue that the only moral test is that of voluntary exchange free of violent coercion. I argue that this ‘test’ is incorrect, since no in-group human organizations demonstrate that low a level of trust, And instead all groups demonstrate and require higher standards of trust, tah also forbid free riding, deception, cheating, as well as burdening other group members indirectly. However, whether we accept a low trust society and high demand for external authority that low trust societies demonstrate, or a high trust society and the low demand for external authority that high trust societies demonstrate, the underlying argument that the only test of moral action is voluntary exchange. So the effort that political philosophers left, libertarian and right have expended under the universalist assumption of the enlightenment has been to find some justification for moral decision making even if the knowledge to make such decisions is impossible both in the market, and afterward, using the profits created from the market. The question instead, is how to construct institutions with which groups can conduct voluntary exchanges, which are by definition moral. Majority rule does not allow this. Majority rule is sufficient for the selection of priorities in homogenous polities with homogenous interests. The market is the means by which heterogeneous polities cooperate on means despite different interests on ends. But how can we construct an institutional system that allows the construction of commons, and other exchanges between groups and classes, but is not dependent upon a monopoly bureaucracy, majority rule, or representatives open to influence, special interest, and corruption? Because a government of contracts, not laws, would allow the exchange of say, adherence to traditions and norms, or requirements for married families in order to obtain redistribution. This would make government a means of cooperation rather than the source and facilitator of conflict. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev

  • Boiling The Revolutionary Frog

    [C]ontrary to popular imagination, the frog does eventually realize that the water is boiling. Apparently, like the frog, humans eventually realize that their tax, regulatory, and legal policy are killing them. But only when its too late. Our civilization is about to boil. And I’m going to add salt to the water. http://english.caixin.com/2014-04-22/100669023.html