Curt Doolittle

Theme: Cooperation

  • Improving Hoppe’s Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Improving Hoppe's Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Improving Hoppe’s Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Descriptive High Trust Ethics of Northern Europeans The intra-family system of o

    Descriptive High Trust Ethics of Northern Europeans

    The intra-family system of outbred North Sea Europeans contains these rules:

    0) Private property

    1) Voluntary Exchange

    2) Symmetry and Warranty*

    3) Prohibition on Externality*

    4) Requirement for Value Added*

    5) Prohibition on familial Rents and Free Riding.

    6) Prohibition on Socialization of Losses and Privatization of Gains

    These additional properties forbid the use of ‘cunning’ in exchange itself, and force all cunning in production, and distribution.

    Furthermore in propertarianism, I have added political constraints on contracts (ad laws):

    7) Requirement for operational language (as a prevention for obscurantism. Which means propertarian language must be used for contracts and law)

    8) Requirement for Calculability ( prohibition on pooling and laundering – this is a complex topic.)

    9) The right of exclusion (ostracization).

    These last three topics are the complex matters I have had to wrestle with in Propertarianism. Primarily as a defense against the Continentals, the Culture of Critique, the Postmoderns, and their philosophical heirs. All of whom have adopted the technique of obscurantism from monotheistic religion, and modernized it for advocacy of the state. Unfortunately, the Culture of Critique, Postmodernists, and the Continentals have mastered the art of obscurantism, and as such we must require operational language, and calculability of contracts, as does science, as a means of prohibiting use of obscurant language as means of obtaining discounts (theft).

    High Trust Is A Prohibition On Discounts

    These rules prohibit discounts. The only reason to eschew violence and engage in exchange is if ALL discounts are prohibited from the market, and therefore, by consequence, all improvements are in the construction and distribution of goods, and NOT in the verbal means of selling those goods.

    As Such, All Conflict Is Pressed Into The Market

    Not the market for words, but the market for goods and services. And since the only possible means of competing is innovation in production and distribution, then such societies will innovate in production and distribution faster than all others. So not only do such rules that place a prohibition on both violence, theft, and discounts foster peace and prosperity, it fosters innovation, and trust.

    As Such,

    1. Property is the result of the partial suppression of discounts,

    2) Private property is the result of full suppression of discounts

    3) Trust is the RESULT of total Suppression of Discounts.

    As Such, A Common Law System Can Function

    Where a homogenous set of property rights exist, and *ALL* discounts are violations of property rights, demand for intervention is limited to disputes over property via common law courts. Without homogeneity of property rights, and wherever all discounts are not suppressed, then demand for the State increases, since commensurability of discounts is logically impossible. (This is profound if you grasp it.) In other words, under rothbardian ethics, the common law is not possible. Under aristocratic ethics, it is possible.

    Any Science Requires Means of Commensurability

    As such Propetarianism provides us with the previously unmet promise of praxeology by changing the theory of human behavior from a deductive a priori form of rationalism, to an empirically descriptive science of all human behavior whose units of measure are property, and whose truths and falsehoods are involuntary transfers via discounts.

    Praxeology: (Action, Property, Calculation and Incentives), supplies us with a science of human action, if we treat property as DESCRIPTIVE rather than NORMATIVE.

    1) Reason renders words and concepts commensurable.

    2) Numbers render countable objects commensurable

    3) Measurements render relations commensurable

    4) Physics renders physical causes commensurable.

    5) Money renders goods and services commensurable

    6) Property renders cooperation (ethics, morals, politics) commensurable

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-04 18:23:00 UTC

  • THE FUTURE OF ECONOMICS AND COOPERATIVE SCIENCE (interesting) I doubt that econo

    THE FUTURE OF ECONOMICS AND COOPERATIVE SCIENCE

    (interesting)

    I doubt that economics will ever evolve to be predictive, since we would adapt to any prediction. I do not doubt that economics will evolve to be almost universally descriptive. or at least sufficiently so that further inquiry won’t provide additional knowledge about mankind and human behavior.

    I **DO** believe that we can construct a science of COOPERATION instead of a science of ‘economics’. I think this categorization of cooperation as economic has taken root, and it may be impossible to fix at this point. However, the study of economic activity is the use of easily recorded economic data to capture the demonstrated behavior and preferences of human beings better than any other form of test can possibly do.

    But the science we are constructing through economics, cognitive science, and experimental psychology, is the the science of COOPERATION.

    That science, for all intents and purposes has yielded, and will yield, only one fundamental set of principles. And that single fundamental set of principles will undoubtably be categorized as what we USED to call, “POLITICAL ECONOMY”.

    Because all human cooperation requires institutions that facilitate organization of invention, production, distribution and consumption by voluntary means, while at the same time prohibiting free riding in all it’s forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial and conquest.

    As such, the science of cooperation, including:

    a) The formal logic of human organization (reproduction/family/production)

    b) The formal logic of ethics (voluntary exchange)

    c) The formal logic of cooperation ( law, contract)

    d) The formal logic of institutions. (commons via extra-market exchange)

    The major shifts will be:

    a) the abandonment of universalism and the universalizabiltiy of morals.

    b) abandonment of majoritarianism in favor of government of exchanges.

    c) The adoption of the Austrian theory of the business cycle as preservation of the integrity of monetary information.

    d) The adoption of Propertarian constraints on political argument and action.

    d) The segmentation of economics into the study of policy across specific time spectra.

    e) Abandonment of employment as the objective of policy, and instead the emphasis on the productivity of human capital, and the development of employment into a preference for increasing one’s standard of living.

    f) Abandonment of open immigration.

    g) Adoption of Self Determination as a human right.

    I do not know if we can obtain secession without using violence. However, we can popularize and probably enforce nullification such that secession is not as necessary as it is today.

    (More to come)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-04 11:57:00 UTC

  • THE ALTERNATIVE TO PSEUDOSCIENCE The natural state of man is to adapt his family

    THE ALTERNATIVE TO PSEUDOSCIENCE

    The natural state of man is to adapt his family (reproductive organization), and his rules of cooperation (property rights, norms, rituals and myths) to the continuous changes in the structure of production made possible by his technical advancements.

    There exists no natural state of man, only natural PROPERTIES of man. Two of those properties are the necessity of voluntary cooperation and the problem of free riding that emerges from it.

    Any cooperative organism must solve the problem as it evolves: creating incentives both in favor of production and against free riding and parasitism.

    Expansion of production in a division of knowledge and labor increases the opportunity for free riding and parasitism because of increasing anonymity of the participants the structure of production.

    Expansion of production requires increases in the complexity of the tools of cooperation: those that assist in transforming the imperceptible to analogy to experience, such that increasing complexity is open to calculation; and such that information distribution expands as well.

    Each major advancement in human cooperation has been achieved by increasing the information processing capacity of the population such that not only actions are open to voluntary coordination, but also such that free riding is increasingly suppressed.

    When we invented government we traded pervasive high transaction costs from violence fraud and deception, for systemic free riding and corruption. Thanks to Hoppe we know how to construct some necessary institutions that will make it more difficult to conduct free riding and corruption.

    But the answer ‘no government’ is actually admission of failure. It is still necessary for groups to coordinate their interests in a commons that produces beneficial common goods. Just as it is beneficial for shopping mall owners and market owners to produce investments that are beneficial to both vendors and customers as well as owners. Just as it is beneficial for all of us to construct norms that prohibit all forms of free riding, discounting, cheating and stealing.

    Competing government do not solve the problem of high local transaction costs. So the argument in favor of heterogeneous competing polities works if and only if there is some monarch that profits from all equally and polices all equally. (Which is where ROthbard and Mises got their ideas from: the ghetto.) For people to grand one another property rights voluntarily without a superior state or empire, they will require universally low transaction costs – at least locally. People demonstrate this everywhere and anywhere in history.

    So we are left with a large number of private monarchies as the compromise between the minimum homogeneity required, and the maximum size wherein a polity maintains a commonality of interest.

    At present, large city states with homogenous polities (the nordics) that are able to create reasonable amounts of liberty.. Even heavy redistribution is often tolerable to homogenous polities. Landed heterogeneous polities are notoriously intolerant of redistribution because it’s actually bad for the productive classes.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-25 13:29:00 UTC

  • THE NATURAL STATE OF MAN (callout) (gem) –“The natural state of man is to adapt

    THE NATURAL STATE OF MAN

    (callout) (gem)

    –“The natural state of man is to adapt his family (reproductive organization), and his rules of cooperation (property rights, norms, rituals and myths) to the continuous changes in the structure of production made possible by his technical advancements.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-25 09:04:00 UTC

  • DOMINATION, CHARITY, OR CHEAP STATUS SIGNALS? There is a great difference betwee

    DOMINATION, CHARITY, OR CHEAP STATUS SIGNALS?

    There is a great difference between these levels of interest: domination, management, insurance, and charity.

    The world is a pretty charitable place really.

    If a people ASK for charity we should be as charitable as their behavior warrants. But the Japanese for example, pretty much refused our assistance (wrongly). And our assistance in most places (Haiti included) has been more damaging than good. Our attempts to help Africa have almost all been damaging to Africa – and the scholarly review of our failures is not even a matter of dispute any longer.

    Involving ourselves both at the state level and via multitudes of NGO’s that the EVIDENCE shows CLEARLY cause more harm than good; or involving ourselves as the world’s police force – which the evidence suggests causes more harm than good (we have been wrong more than right); or acting as the evangelists of the religion of Universal Secular Christianity that we call “Social Democracy” which the evidence again CLEARLY demonstrates that we cause more harm than good – is just an elaborate way of using our wealth to generate status signals for ourselves at other people’s expense.

    We are not smarter than the rest of the world. We are wealthier. We are wealthier because we have had longer to convert our society to ratio-scientific thought. And we are wealthier because we have the common law (in anglo countries), we used our technological leadership to conquer the two most remote continents (Australia and north america); and because we have influenced Continental law by two major wars of conquest in which we dictated terms. And because we inherited the british empire’s control of the seas built up over 500 years, when it committed suicide in the wars. And because we forced the world onto the petro-dollar standard in order to finance our global war on communism.

    Those are the reasons we are wealthier. And while we have done a lot of good by converting the rest of the world unwillingly to CONSUMER CAPITALISM – which is our greatest contribution – we have also done a lot of harm with our wealth – motivated by good intentions, in practice, out of ignorance.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-24 04:05:00 UTC

  • The Aristocratic Ethic Of Voluntary Exchange. (BHL Part 2)

    (Draft: I have almost got this worked out. Not quite. But almost) If you believe that voluntary exchange is the test of moral action, then it’s only logical that you follow that reasoning through to its logical consequence: that property rights are obtained by exchanging them with one another; and that in order to exchange those rights, voluntarily, one must possess an incentive to do so – or at least, no disincentive not to. Since property rights describe prohibitions on involuntary transfer of property on a scale from the very basic forms of: murder, violence, destruction and theft, to the more complex forms of theft by fraud, omission, obscurantism, impediment, externalization, free riding, rent seeking, corruption, conspiracy, and conquest – each of us can grant different people different rights as we choose. And we do. We generally grant friends, family and associates greater rights, and others lesser rights, and foes none at all. The more dependent we are on members outside of the family and close relationships for our economic survival and prosperity, the more valuable is the extension of property rights to others, because those rights reduce transaction costs. In a world of shop keepers and craftsmen producing complex goods for one another, everyone has equal incentives. In a world of 50% unemployed poor 40% labor and clerical, 9% professional and executive, and 1% financial, it is very hard to see why the unemployed poor are not wiser to form some means of extraction from those with more. Trade is merely the best form of obtaining what we desire, but it is not the only. I don’t see much difference between Walter Block’s ghetto ethic justification of blackmail and the Danegeld. None at all. I don’t see any difference between profiting from the tragedy of others, and organizing an extractive state. That’s because there isn’t any difference. To demand property rights from someone without compensation is in itself, an act of attempted theft. This is not because the demand violates some abstract concept of the common good. The only common good we know of is increasing cooperation in a division of knowledge and labor while constantly suppressing free riding on others. Instead, it’s because (a) while in exchange, higher respect for property rights decreases transaction costs because it decreases risk, but also (b) the more divergent are our interests the higher the compensation each party must offer for the observation of property rights by the other. Conversely, the more identical are our interests, the lower the compensation each party must offer for the observation of property rights by the other. That is, in practice, what we humans do. In every society we know of. Ever. THE RATIONAL CHOICE TO COOPERATE If I grant you respect for property rights, don’t know why I would do that if all I was buying was protection from violence fraud and theft, and not buying trust and therefore protection from blackmail, fraud by omission, fraud by obscurantism, free riding, rent seeking, because corruption, because only the very WEAK would do that, and only out of desperation. (People of the Ghetto) I don’t really understand why I would give up the opportunity to kill, steal, enslave, or otherwise entertain myself with you if I still had to worry about your behavior. Or inversely, why would it be rational for me to grant you property rights if that meant that you could lie, cheat, deceive, engage in corruption and engage in blackmail? The assumption of humility necessary for us to abandon violence and enter into debate; or the necessary grace we must display in our homogenous polity most of which is an extended family, is, as Hoppe shows in Argumentation, based upon the prior assumption of the grant of property rights. However, we should not assume that the consequence is the cause: we only grant each other the grace and humility because we have already agreed to put away our violence, deception and coercion. But for what reason have we all, given our different talents, numbers, and tribal abilities, chosen to grant one another those rights in the first place? Trust. Trust reduces transaction costs and the velocity of production. The division of labor saves time an increases velocity. Trust saves time and therefore increases velocity. It is possible to possess a division of labor in a low trust society, but it’s velocity (wealth) will be limited. Whereas, if one increases trust and reduces transaction costs and that group will outcompete all other groups with less trust. We have freed up man from physical labor. POLITICS: EXTENDING IN-GROUP SUPPRESSION TO OUT-GROUP MEMBERS The problem of politics, is providing an institutional means by which to accomplish this goal while preserving the low transaction costs of the high trust society. The problem for human’s evolutionary psychology was the balance between free riding and cooperation. The problem we face in our institutions is conducting that balance between free riding and cooperation. ALL our advances in cooperation: morality, the division of labor, law, money, prices, contracts, interest, accounting – all of them – are extensions of our ability to cooperate in larger numbers while sensing and perceiving free riding. So if we no longer have common interests in the preservation of property rights against the monopoly state, we must purchase that common interest in the preservation of property rights and diminishing the monopoly state, by paying those who have LESS interest in preserving those rights to police those rights. Depriving those who do not respect or police property of that payment. And forcing restitution, punishing, ostracizing, and if necessary, exterminating those people who persist in violating property rights. That payment is moral, because it is a voluntary exchange. Asking those with no rational interest in liberty to choose self deprivation rather than engaging in statism is not only irrational, and immoral, but it’s a use of obscurant language to conduct theft by fraud. We can either break into a multitude of small communities with heterogenous sets of property rights, or we can pay large communities (large markets) to participate in the formation and preservation of property rights. But we must abandon the obscurantist, fraudulent, parasitic lie of Rothbardian ghetto ethics to do it. The source of liberty is the organized application of violence by a minority willing to pay the high price of suppressing all free riding in all its forms from a population in exchange for property rights. What remains at the end of that suppression is some system of property rights. The highest form of suppression eliminates the need for the state entirely. But it requires we suppress every single means of involuntary extraction from others. THE EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VALUE OF INDIVIDUALS In a heterogeneous polity that makes use of natural sources of energy to replace labor, and that uses technology to replace clerical work, the vast majority of people serve only three functions: 1) as consumers; 2) as police of property in all its forms; 3) to provide care of the commons; 4) to provide care and service for others. The work of production has increasingly fallen to a minority. But the organization of voluntary and dynamic production, and the constitution of liberty, cannot be obtained without paying them for their services, since they no longer have the opportunity to engage in worthwhile production as compensation for their policing of property, care of the commons, and service of others. If any member of the population chooses to police, care, and serve then they are due dividends from production. Otherwise they are merely slaves.

  • The Aristocratic Ethic Of Voluntary Exchange. (BHL Part 2)

    (Draft: I have almost got this worked out. Not quite. But almost) If you believe that voluntary exchange is the test of moral action, then it’s only logical that you follow that reasoning through to its logical consequence: that property rights are obtained by exchanging them with one another; and that in order to exchange those rights, voluntarily, one must possess an incentive to do so – or at least, no disincentive not to. Since property rights describe prohibitions on involuntary transfer of property on a scale from the very basic forms of: murder, violence, destruction and theft, to the more complex forms of theft by fraud, omission, obscurantism, impediment, externalization, free riding, rent seeking, corruption, conspiracy, and conquest – each of us can grant different people different rights as we choose. And we do. We generally grant friends, family and associates greater rights, and others lesser rights, and foes none at all. The more dependent we are on members outside of the family and close relationships for our economic survival and prosperity, the more valuable is the extension of property rights to others, because those rights reduce transaction costs. In a world of shop keepers and craftsmen producing complex goods for one another, everyone has equal incentives. In a world of 50% unemployed poor 40% labor and clerical, 9% professional and executive, and 1% financial, it is very hard to see why the unemployed poor are not wiser to form some means of extraction from those with more. Trade is merely the best form of obtaining what we desire, but it is not the only. I don’t see much difference between Walter Block’s ghetto ethic justification of blackmail and the Danegeld. None at all. I don’t see any difference between profiting from the tragedy of others, and organizing an extractive state. That’s because there isn’t any difference. To demand property rights from someone without compensation is in itself, an act of attempted theft. This is not because the demand violates some abstract concept of the common good. The only common good we know of is increasing cooperation in a division of knowledge and labor while constantly suppressing free riding on others. Instead, it’s because (a) while in exchange, higher respect for property rights decreases transaction costs because it decreases risk, but also (b) the more divergent are our interests the higher the compensation each party must offer for the observation of property rights by the other. Conversely, the more identical are our interests, the lower the compensation each party must offer for the observation of property rights by the other. That is, in practice, what we humans do. In every society we know of. Ever. THE RATIONAL CHOICE TO COOPERATE If I grant you respect for property rights, don’t know why I would do that if all I was buying was protection from violence fraud and theft, and not buying trust and therefore protection from blackmail, fraud by omission, fraud by obscurantism, free riding, rent seeking, because corruption, because only the very WEAK would do that, and only out of desperation. (People of the Ghetto) I don’t really understand why I would give up the opportunity to kill, steal, enslave, or otherwise entertain myself with you if I still had to worry about your behavior. Or inversely, why would it be rational for me to grant you property rights if that meant that you could lie, cheat, deceive, engage in corruption and engage in blackmail? The assumption of humility necessary for us to abandon violence and enter into debate; or the necessary grace we must display in our homogenous polity most of which is an extended family, is, as Hoppe shows in Argumentation, based upon the prior assumption of the grant of property rights. However, we should not assume that the consequence is the cause: we only grant each other the grace and humility because we have already agreed to put away our violence, deception and coercion. But for what reason have we all, given our different talents, numbers, and tribal abilities, chosen to grant one another those rights in the first place? Trust. Trust reduces transaction costs and the velocity of production. The division of labor saves time an increases velocity. Trust saves time and therefore increases velocity. It is possible to possess a division of labor in a low trust society, but it’s velocity (wealth) will be limited. Whereas, if one increases trust and reduces transaction costs and that group will outcompete all other groups with less trust. We have freed up man from physical labor. POLITICS: EXTENDING IN-GROUP SUPPRESSION TO OUT-GROUP MEMBERS The problem of politics, is providing an institutional means by which to accomplish this goal while preserving the low transaction costs of the high trust society. The problem for human’s evolutionary psychology was the balance between free riding and cooperation. The problem we face in our institutions is conducting that balance between free riding and cooperation. ALL our advances in cooperation: morality, the division of labor, law, money, prices, contracts, interest, accounting – all of them – are extensions of our ability to cooperate in larger numbers while sensing and perceiving free riding. So if we no longer have common interests in the preservation of property rights against the monopoly state, we must purchase that common interest in the preservation of property rights and diminishing the monopoly state, by paying those who have LESS interest in preserving those rights to police those rights. Depriving those who do not respect or police property of that payment. And forcing restitution, punishing, ostracizing, and if necessary, exterminating those people who persist in violating property rights. That payment is moral, because it is a voluntary exchange. Asking those with no rational interest in liberty to choose self deprivation rather than engaging in statism is not only irrational, and immoral, but it’s a use of obscurant language to conduct theft by fraud. We can either break into a multitude of small communities with heterogenous sets of property rights, or we can pay large communities (large markets) to participate in the formation and preservation of property rights. But we must abandon the obscurantist, fraudulent, parasitic lie of Rothbardian ghetto ethics to do it. The source of liberty is the organized application of violence by a minority willing to pay the high price of suppressing all free riding in all its forms from a population in exchange for property rights. What remains at the end of that suppression is some system of property rights. The highest form of suppression eliminates the need for the state entirely. But it requires we suppress every single means of involuntary extraction from others. THE EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VALUE OF INDIVIDUALS In a heterogeneous polity that makes use of natural sources of energy to replace labor, and that uses technology to replace clerical work, the vast majority of people serve only three functions: 1) as consumers; 2) as police of property in all its forms; 3) to provide care of the commons; 4) to provide care and service for others. The work of production has increasingly fallen to a minority. But the organization of voluntary and dynamic production, and the constitution of liberty, cannot be obtained without paying them for their services, since they no longer have the opportunity to engage in worthwhile production as compensation for their policing of property, care of the commons, and service of others. If any member of the population chooses to police, care, and serve then they are due dividends from production. Otherwise they are merely slaves.