THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY: THE NECESSITY, VIRTUE AND MORALITY OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE I (we) may not be able to coerce you into accepting freedom – individual monopoly of control over property obtained by voluntary exchange production or homesteading – as a superior form of cooperation to all other forms of cooperation. But you may not coerce me (us) into abandoning freedom as our preferred, committed, required, demanded and threatened form of cooperation. THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY IS VIOLENCE The source of property is the use of violence to create, obtain, and protect it. Only those who performed militial service created private property. Only those who performed militial service obtained private property. Only those who perform militial service will keep private property. A militia is a voluntary alliance of property owners whose common interest is the preservation of private property rights. A militia is not the same as an army, any more than freedom is the same as liberty. You create freedom by using violence. You request or desire liberty from someone else. The purpose of a libertarian government is to create private property through the organized application of violence to create it. And libertarian pacifists and moralists are in fact the reason we are losing it. VIOLENCE IS A VIRTUE. Violence is a virtue not a vice. If all rights are property rights. If property defines morality, then violence to create property is the first moral action upon which all other morality rests. We should encourage the mastery of violence in all men at all times, and the exercise of violence by all men at all times, in the defense of property rights, the highest form of morality that a man can display. Because by acts of violence to preserve property he pays the highest contribution to morality possible. Defense of property does not require words. It requires actions. FREEDOM IS SYNONYMOUS WITH MILITIA The only free people are, and must be, a people whose government is a militia, and whose resolution of disputes over property is decided by judges using the single rule of private property as their criteria for adjudication. A militia is synonymous with enfranchisement. No one else has paid for his or her right of property. They merely free ride on the expenses of others. Therefore, political democracy is synonymous with militial participation. No other meaning is possible. All other attributions are acts of theft by fraud. Militial participation requires no more than the personal use of violence to protect property rights. The use of the militia is to create and preserve property rights. The use of judges is to resolve conflicts without violence. The use of democratic government is not to create laws, but to create physical commons. The use of public intellectuals, is to carry on the public debate over which commons we may choose to invest in, and which not. The use of ‘religion’ and literature is to teach us these necessary and immutable laws of human cooperation so that we never forget them – and by forgetting them lose our freedom. You cannot obtain the right of private property at a discount. It is an extremely costly right to possess. It is an extremely costly right to maintain. Those who attempt to gain freedom – property – at a discount, will obtain an inferior product to those who pay for a better one. And the only currency of freedom -property – is violence. Be armed. Be willing. Be vigilant. And Act. —– Curt Doolittle Kiev, 2013 “Putting violence back into liberty one sentence at a time.”
Theme: Coercion
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THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY: THE NECESSITY, VIRTUE AND MORALITY OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE
THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY: THE NECESSITY, VIRTUE AND MORALITY OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE
I (we) may not be able to coerce you into accepting freedom – individual monopoly on property – as a superior form of cooperation to all other forms of cooperation. But you man not coerce me (us) into abandoning freedom as our preferred, committed, required, demanded and threatened form of cooperation.
The source of property is the use of violence to protect it.
Only those who performed militial service created private property.
Only those who performed militial service obtained private property.
Only those who perform militial service will keep private property.
A militia is a voluntary alliance of property owners whose common interest is the preservation of private property rights. A militia is not the same as an army, any more than freedom is the same as liberty. You create freedom by using violence. You request or desire liberty from someone else.
The purpose of a libertarian government is to create private property through the organized application of violence to create it. And libertarian pacifists and moralists are in fact the reason we are losing it.
You cannot obtain the right of private property at a discount. It is an extremely costly right to possess. It is an extremely costly right to maintain.
VIOLENCE IS A VIRTUE. Violence is a virtue not a vice. If all rights are property rights. If property defines morality, then violence to create property is the first moral action upon which all other morality rests.
We should encourage the mastery of violence in all men at all times, and the exercise of violence by all men at all times, in the defense of property rights, the highest form of morality that a man can display.
Because by acts of violence to preserve property he pays the highest contribution to morality possible.
Defense of property does not require words. I requires actions.
The only free people is and must be a people whose government is a militia, and whose resolution of disputes over property is decided by judges using the single rule of private property as their criteria for adjudication.
The use of the militia is to create property rights. The use of judges is to resolve conflicts without violence. The use of government is not to create laws, but to create physical commons. The use of public intellectuals, is to carry on the public debate over which commons we may choose to invest in, and which not. The use of ‘religion’ and literature is to teach us these necessary and immutable laws of human cooperation so that we never forget them – and by forgetting them lose our freedom.
Those who attempt to gain freedom – property – at a discount, will obtain an inferior product to those who pay for a better one. And the only currency of freedom -property – is violence.
—–
Curt Doolittle
Kiev, 2013
“Putting violence back into liberty one sentence at a time.”
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-07 05:34:00 UTC
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POLITICS IS MORE POWERFUL THAN ECONOMICS I do not know why economists fail to gr
POLITICS IS MORE POWERFUL THAN ECONOMICS
I do not know why economists fail to grasp it.
I’m not writing a book on economics. I’m writing a book on morality. Morality is the economy of politics.
Money is just its expression.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-02 17:08:00 UTC
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DID IT ON PURPOSE: THE POWER OF POLITICS I love you Paul. I really do. You’re br
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/pages/books/how-the-economy-was-lost-the-war-of-the-worlds/WE DID IT ON PURPOSE: THE POWER OF POLITICS
I love you Paul. I really do. You’re brilliant. You’re an incredible critic.
But the conservatives figured out that we had to bankrupt the state before it destroyed us. So what did we do? Everything possible to bankrupt it. What will we do once it’s bankrupt?
Gut the state.
And I plan to dance on its entrails.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-02 17:07:00 UTC
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Property Rights And Taxes As Loans
(ironic humor) The exchange of free riding, fraud, theft and violence for property rights functions as an involuntary loan of the opportunity to consume by way of free riding, fraud, theft and violence, on the unproductive. In exchange for which, at some later time, they receive the service of less toil, lower prices and greater variation, and freedom from slavery. Under democracy, the unproductive tax the income of the productive, so that the unproductive receive the same benefit as if they were productive. The problem is that the productive need the unproductive to have money to spend, in order to maintain momentum (velocity) in the economy, from which the productive benefit. So as long as the tax money of the productive is given to consumers, and not the government, and not to competing social interests, it’s a necessary and reasonable exchange of value – instead of a forced loan of free riding, fraud, theft and violence from the unproductive for the purpose of consumption, it’s a forced loan from the productive to the consumer. Now, if the productive could SAVE enough that when they got off the hamster wheel of velocity, that they could maintain their standard of living, I kind of think that this system works in a sort of madcap kind of way. I don’t like it very much. Because the hamster wheel is really risky for entrepreneurs. And I don’t want to suppress the lottery effect. that drives innovation under capitalism. But it might be possible to solve the problem of rewarding entrepreneurship differently from investment and lending. I think, if I work a little bit more at this I can explain it all in moral language that average ‘folk’ can understand. ‘Cause the language of man is morality not empiricism. The world we have made is a hysterically funny place.
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Property Rights And Taxes As Loans
(ironic humor) The exchange of free riding, fraud, theft and violence for property rights functions as an involuntary loan of the opportunity to consume by way of free riding, fraud, theft and violence, on the unproductive. In exchange for which, at some later time, they receive the service of less toil, lower prices and greater variation, and freedom from slavery. Under democracy, the unproductive tax the income of the productive, so that the unproductive receive the same benefit as if they were productive. The problem is that the productive need the unproductive to have money to spend, in order to maintain momentum (velocity) in the economy, from which the productive benefit. So as long as the tax money of the productive is given to consumers, and not the government, and not to competing social interests, it’s a necessary and reasonable exchange of value – instead of a forced loan of free riding, fraud, theft and violence from the unproductive for the purpose of consumption, it’s a forced loan from the productive to the consumer. Now, if the productive could SAVE enough that when they got off the hamster wheel of velocity, that they could maintain their standard of living, I kind of think that this system works in a sort of madcap kind of way. I don’t like it very much. Because the hamster wheel is really risky for entrepreneurs. And I don’t want to suppress the lottery effect. that drives innovation under capitalism. But it might be possible to solve the problem of rewarding entrepreneurship differently from investment and lending. I think, if I work a little bit more at this I can explain it all in moral language that average ‘folk’ can understand. ‘Cause the language of man is morality not empiricism. The world we have made is a hysterically funny place.
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(IRONIC HUMOR) PROPERTY RIGHTS AND TAXES AS LOANS The exchange of free riding, f
(IRONIC HUMOR) PROPERTY RIGHTS AND TAXES AS LOANS
The exchange of free riding, fraud, theft and violence for property rights functions as an involuntary loan of the opportunity to consume by way of free riding, fraud, theft and violence, on the unproductive. In exchange for which, at some later time, they receive the service of less toil, lower prices and greater variation, and freedom from slavery.
Under democracy, the unproductive tax the income of the productive, so that the unproductive receive the same benefit as if they were productive.
The problem is that the productive need the unproductive to have money to spend, in order to maintain momentum (velocity) in the economy, from which the productive benefit.
So as long as the tax money of the productive is given to consumers, and not the government, and not to competing social interests, it’s a necessary and reasonable exchange of value – instead of a forced loan of free riding, fraud, theft and violence from the unproductive for the purpose of consumption, it’s a forced loan from the productive to the consumer.
Now, if the productive could SAVE enough that when they got off the hamster wheel of velocity, that they could maintain their standard of living, I kind of think that this system works in a sort of madcap kind of way. I don’t like it very much. Because the hamster wheel is really risky for entrepreneurs. And I don’t want to suppress the lottery effect. that drives innovation under capitalism. But it might be possible to solve the problem of rewarding entrepreneurship differently from investment and lending.
I think, if I work a little bit more at this I can explain it all in moral language that average ‘folk’ can understand. ‘Cause the language of man is morality not empiricism.
The world we have made is a hysterically funny place.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-01 05:18:00 UTC
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The Moral Obligation To Disregard Feelings In Political Discourse
(Silencing the silly people) [P]olitical discourse is not civilized. It is a bloody brutal deceitful affair that is conducted in the pursuit the of power to allocate influence, property and opportunity, using every dishonest, distracting, fraudulent tactic available. Humanities is what it is. And I will let the empirical evidence speak for itself. It is a discourse on norms and morality. Recursive as it may be. It is intuitionist not empirical. Normative not scientific. My point has been a consistent one: we have developed a set of technologies that compensate for the weakness of our perceptions. Debate, reason, measurement, mathematics, science, and economics are fields that only exist to compensate for the limitations of our senses. Our senses are plagued by limitations and by error (cognitive biases). We desire at all times to rely on intuition (memory) rather than thinking (comparison). These are not biases, preferences, opinions. They are empirical facts. They are what they are. Numbers, money, prices, accounting, credit, interest, contract, and rule of law, are technologies just like any other technology that gives us information about the world around us, and compensates for the inability to sense and perceive the world in real time. But that statement alone makes no sense unless we understand also, that the reason we need these things is to coordinate ourselves in a vast network of production none of us could grasp even the simplest part of. The point is that the world is not filled with evil people. It is filled with real human beings who have to survive with fragments of knowledge and resources, but as a collective, we produce the most amazing things, that our ancestors, could not even have imagined could exist. The price for this productivity is that we are in fact, ‘alienated’ by that information: the destruction of our illusion of importance. When the family, extended family, village or tribe was a productive unit, then each persons value was obvious. When all humanity, together, as a collective is the productive unit, then each person’s value is not only not obvious, it is trivialized by the experience. WE don’t like it. We’re alienated by it. We feel alone. And strangely enough we keep consuming to compensate for feeling alone. It’s maddening. So how can we do both? This is the goal of equality. But we cannot have perfect equality for the same reasons that we need numbers: differentiation is necessary for calculation. If I make you feel bad. I am sorry for your feelings. But the stakes are more important than your feelings. Your feelings are a reaction to changes in state. The state of what? your self image? Your perception how the group values you? Your confidence in your grasp and therefore control over the world? What is it that is changing state? Is it Marx’s alienation? It is.
[callout]It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us.[/callout]
If I had to make everyone feel really bad for a while in order to achieve relative equality and preserve productivity at the same time. I would think that was a fairly low cost. At least compared to the 100M dead from the result of communism. We are not equal. Certain people make me feel really dumb. I don’t feel bad because of it. I’m thankful that the world has smarter people than I am in it. Because it’s certainly too much work for me, or anyone else for that matter, to do alone. A world without people smarter than I am really scares me. It would mean that instead of feeling alone at times, I would in fact BE alone for all intents and purposes. I studied fine art and art history in school. At the end of the semester we had a critique. The professors tore us apart. Most people left in tears. It was the most important thing we learned all year. And we all were better for it. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world. (See Surviving as an artist.How to survive an art critique.) On the other hand. It made me, and all the rest of us, pretty numb to criticism. (And americans are, quite clearly, the most narcissistic people on earth.) (See The Culture of Narcissism.Bibiography of American Narcissism. So I am glad that I received that curative process. Although, living here in the east, in the Post-Soviet system, I am very aware how narcissistic americans are. Aware of how I must alter my speech pattern. And I literally cringe whenever I hear an american accent. Americans talk about themselves and how they feel incessantly. [I] have tried to construct this argument as compassionately as possible. But idealism, impossibility, ignorance, deception, and lying are not, in Kantian terms ‘ethical’ means of discourse. The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible.
[callout]The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible. [/callout]
That is, acting morally. It is not moral to respect someone’s feelings if it violates those tenets. It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us. We cannot construct that we know of an alternative to the pricing system as an information and incentive system. We can however, learn from it and construct alternatives by using it, the same way we constructed morality under capitalism by making use of self-interest. However, the basic problem, which is that the system itself is both incomprehensible and uncontrollable is probably forever beyond our grasp. And I suggest that it MUST be. Otherwise, like the Corporatism of current large scale institutionalized banking is, it would be little more than an instrument of tyranny.
-
The Moral Obligation To Disregard Feelings In Political Discourse
(Silencing the silly people) [P]olitical discourse is not civilized. It is a bloody brutal deceitful affair that is conducted in the pursuit the of power to allocate influence, property and opportunity, using every dishonest, distracting, fraudulent tactic available. Humanities is what it is. And I will let the empirical evidence speak for itself. It is a discourse on norms and morality. Recursive as it may be. It is intuitionist not empirical. Normative not scientific. My point has been a consistent one: we have developed a set of technologies that compensate for the weakness of our perceptions. Debate, reason, measurement, mathematics, science, and economics are fields that only exist to compensate for the limitations of our senses. Our senses are plagued by limitations and by error (cognitive biases). We desire at all times to rely on intuition (memory) rather than thinking (comparison). These are not biases, preferences, opinions. They are empirical facts. They are what they are. Numbers, money, prices, accounting, credit, interest, contract, and rule of law, are technologies just like any other technology that gives us information about the world around us, and compensates for the inability to sense and perceive the world in real time. But that statement alone makes no sense unless we understand also, that the reason we need these things is to coordinate ourselves in a vast network of production none of us could grasp even the simplest part of. The point is that the world is not filled with evil people. It is filled with real human beings who have to survive with fragments of knowledge and resources, but as a collective, we produce the most amazing things, that our ancestors, could not even have imagined could exist. The price for this productivity is that we are in fact, ‘alienated’ by that information: the destruction of our illusion of importance. When the family, extended family, village or tribe was a productive unit, then each persons value was obvious. When all humanity, together, as a collective is the productive unit, then each person’s value is not only not obvious, it is trivialized by the experience. WE don’t like it. We’re alienated by it. We feel alone. And strangely enough we keep consuming to compensate for feeling alone. It’s maddening. So how can we do both? This is the goal of equality. But we cannot have perfect equality for the same reasons that we need numbers: differentiation is necessary for calculation. If I make you feel bad. I am sorry for your feelings. But the stakes are more important than your feelings. Your feelings are a reaction to changes in state. The state of what? your self image? Your perception how the group values you? Your confidence in your grasp and therefore control over the world? What is it that is changing state? Is it Marx’s alienation? It is.
[callout]It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us.[/callout]
If I had to make everyone feel really bad for a while in order to achieve relative equality and preserve productivity at the same time. I would think that was a fairly low cost. At least compared to the 100M dead from the result of communism. We are not equal. Certain people make me feel really dumb. I don’t feel bad because of it. I’m thankful that the world has smarter people than I am in it. Because it’s certainly too much work for me, or anyone else for that matter, to do alone. A world without people smarter than I am really scares me. It would mean that instead of feeling alone at times, I would in fact BE alone for all intents and purposes. I studied fine art and art history in school. At the end of the semester we had a critique. The professors tore us apart. Most people left in tears. It was the most important thing we learned all year. And we all were better for it. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world. (See Surviving as an artist.How to survive an art critique.) On the other hand. It made me, and all the rest of us, pretty numb to criticism. (And americans are, quite clearly, the most narcissistic people on earth.) (See The Culture of Narcissism.Bibiography of American Narcissism. So I am glad that I received that curative process. Although, living here in the east, in the Post-Soviet system, I am very aware how narcissistic americans are. Aware of how I must alter my speech pattern. And I literally cringe whenever I hear an american accent. Americans talk about themselves and how they feel incessantly. [I] have tried to construct this argument as compassionately as possible. But idealism, impossibility, ignorance, deception, and lying are not, in Kantian terms ‘ethical’ means of discourse. The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible.
[callout]The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible. [/callout]
That is, acting morally. It is not moral to respect someone’s feelings if it violates those tenets. It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us. We cannot construct that we know of an alternative to the pricing system as an information and incentive system. We can however, learn from it and construct alternatives by using it, the same way we constructed morality under capitalism by making use of self-interest. However, the basic problem, which is that the system itself is both incomprehensible and uncontrollable is probably forever beyond our grasp. And I suggest that it MUST be. Otherwise, like the Corporatism of current large scale institutionalized banking is, it would be little more than an instrument of tyranny.
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A SHORT ESSAY ON THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO DISREGARD FEELINGS IN POLITICAL DISCOUR
A SHORT ESSAY ON THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO DISREGARD FEELINGS IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE.
(Silencing the silly people)
Political discourse is not civilized. It is a bloody brutal dishonest affair that is conducted in the pursuit of power to allocate influence, property and opportunity, using every dishonest, distracting, fraudulent tactic available. Humanities is what it is. And I will let the empirical evidence speak for itself. It is a discourse on norms and morality. Recursive as it may be. It is intuitionist not empirical. Normative not scientific.
My point has been a consistent one: we have developed a set of technologies that compensate for the weakness of our perceptions. Debate, reason, measurement, mathematics, science, and economics are fields that only exist to compensate for the limitations of our senses. Our senses are plagued by limitations and by error (cognitive biases). We desire at all times to rely on intuition (memory) rather than thinking (comparison). These are not biases, preferences, opinions. They are empirical facts. They are what they are.
Numbers, money, prices, accounting, credit, interest, contract, and rule of law, are technologies just like any other technology that gives us information about the world around us, and compensates for the inability to sense and perceive the world in real time. But that statement alone makes no sense unless we understand also, that the reason we need these things is to coordinate ourselves in a vast network of production none of us could grasp even the simplest part of.
The point is that the world is not filled with evil people. It is filled with real human beings who have to survive with fragments of knowledge and resources, but as a collective, we produce the most amazing things, that our ancestors, could not even have imagined could exist.
The price for this productivity is that we are in fact, ‘alienated’ by that information: the destruction of our illusion of importance. When the family, extended family, village or tribe was a productive unit, then each persons value was obvious. When all humanity, together, as a collective is the productive unit, then each person’s value is not only not obvious, it is trivialized by the experience. WE don’t like it. We’re alienated by it. We feel alone. And strangely enough we keep consuming to compensate for feeling alone. It’s maddening. 🙂
So how can we do both? This is the goal of equality. But we cannot have perfect equality for the same reasons that we need numbers: differentiation is necessary for calculation.
If I make you feel bad. I am sorry for your feelings. But the stakes are more important than your feelings. Your feelings are a reaction to changes in state. The state of what? your self image? Your perception how the group values you? Your confidence in your grasp and therefore control over the world? What is it that is changing state? Is it Marx’s alienation? It is.
If I had to make everyone feel really bad for a while in order to achieve relative equality and preserve productivity at the same time. I would think that was a fairly low cost. At least compared to the 100M dead from the result of communism.
We are not equal. Certain people make me feel really dumb. I don’t feel bad because of it. I’m thankful that the world has smarter people than I am in it. Because it’s certainly too much work for me, or anyone else for that matter, to do alone. A world without people smarter than I am really scares me. It would mean that instead of feeling alone at times, I would in fact BE alone for all intents and purposes.
I studied fine art and art history in school. At the end of the semester we had a critique. The professors tore us apart. Most people left in tears. It was the most important thing we learned all year. And we all were better for it. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world.
http://artandperception.com/2006/11/surviving-as-an-artist.html
http://faso.com/fineartviews/18528/how-to-survive-an-art-critique
On the other hand. It made me, and all the rest of us, pretty numb to criticism. (And americans are, quite clearly, the most narcissistic people on earth.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Narcissism
Bibliographic references: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=3271
So I am glad that I received that curative process. Although, living here in the east, in the Post-Soviet system, I am very aware how narcissistic americans are. Aware of how I must alter my speech pattern. And I literally cringe whenever I hear an american accent. Americans talk about themselves and how they feel incessantly.
I have tried to construct this argument as compassionately as possible. But idealism, impossibility, ignorance, deception, and lying are not, in Kantian terms ‘ethical’ means of discourse. The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible.
That is, acting morally. It is not moral to respect someone’s feelings if it violates those tenets. It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us.
We cannot construct that we know of an alternative to the pricing system as an information and incentive system. We can however, learn from it and construct alternatives by using it, the same way we constructed morality under capitalism by making use of self-interest. However, the basic problem, which is that the system itself is both incomprehensible and uncontrollable is probably forever beyond our grasp. And I suggest that it MUST be. Otherwise, like the Corporatism of current large scale institutionalized banking is, it would be little more than an instrument of tyranny.
Source date (UTC): 2013-08-29 06:31:00 UTC