Theme: Incentives

DISAMBIGUATION: COOPERATION
(from the archives)

DEFINITION
Cooperation consists of increases in the production of returns on time by the discovery of a coincidence of wants, and agreement on mutual pursuit of the same ends (rewards), in a division of labor, given the non linear increases in returns (extraordinary) made possible by that division of labor, that is preferable by the parties to alternative uses of their time.

The Evolution of Cooperation:
1) Acquisitiveness: To survive and reproduce, humans must acquire and inventory many categories of resources, and evolved to demonstrate constant acquisitiveness of those resources.

2) Demonstgrated Interests(“property”): The scope of those things they act upon, or choose not to act upon, in anticipation of obtaining as inventory (a store of value), constitute their demonstrated definition of property-en-toto.* (See Butler Schaeffer) “That which and organism defends.”

3) Value: Human emotions evolved to reflect changes in state of demonstrated interests. As such nearly all emotions can be expressed in terms of reactions to property. (imposed costs here, pre-moral, but also pre-cooperation, and only defense and retaliation, not cooperation)

4) Non-Conflict: That which humans act to obtain without imposition upon in-group members they evolved to intuit as their demonstrated interests (property), and demonstrate this intuition by defense of their inventory, and by their punishment of transgressors.

5) Cooperative Production: That which humans act in concert with one another to produce a change in state that is prefereable to other potential changes in state at some point in time.

6) Moral (cooperative) Intuitions(instincts): Moral intuitions reflect prohibitions on free riding by members with whom one cooperates in production and reproduction. (This is where free riding enters.)

7) Distribution of Intuitions by Reproductive Strategy: Moral intuitions vary in intensity to suit one’s reproductive strategy. This intensity and distribution of moral intuition varies between males and females, as well as between classes and between groups.

8) Variation By Family Structure: Moral rules reflect prohibitions on free riding given the structure of the family in relation to the necessary and available structure of production.

9) Resolution of Disputes: Property rights were developed in law as the positive enumeration in contractual form, of those moral rules which any polity (corporation) agrees to enforce with the promise of violence for the purpose of restitution or punishment. Conversely, any possible property rights not expressed, the community (corporation) is unwilling to adjudicate, restore or punish, or has not yet discovered the need to construct.

10) Instrumentation: Property rights are necessary for the instrumental measurement of moral prohibitions because of the unobservability of changes in human emotional states, and our inability to determine truth from falsehood. And as such we require an observable proxy for evidence of changes in state.

11) Family: As a general rule, as the division of knowledge and labor increases, so must the atomicity of property rights, and as a consequence, the size of the family must decline {Consanguineous, Punaluan, Pairing (Serial Marriage), Hetaeristic, Traditional, Stem, Nuclear, Absolute Nuclear}.

12) Transaction Costs: As the division of labor increases, relationships increase in distance from kin, increase in anonymity, decrease common interest, and the incentive to seize opportunities rather than adhere to agreements increases. This decrease creates the problem of trust, which increases costs of insuring any agreement is fulfilled, and decreases the overall number of possible agreements and the number of participants in any structure of production.

13) Trust (ethics in production): As a general rule, for the size of the family to decrease, and division of labor to increase in multi-part complexity then trust must increase, and trust can only increase with expansion of property rights to include prohibitions on unethical actions. Mere ostracization, boycotting and reputation are insufficient to preserve agreements (contracts).

14) Moral Competition (ethics in political production): (morals property rights, cheating) As a general rule, the scope of moral prohibitions expressed as property rights, must increase to limit demand for authority.

15) Demand for Authority: As a general rule, if a delay in the production of property rights evolves, then demand for authority will fill the vacuum with some form of authority to either suppress retaliation (conflict) or to prevent circumstances leading to conflict, or both.

THE REASONS FOR THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION

INGROUP COOPERATION
1) The disproportionately high return on cooperation.
2) The differences in abilities at different ages.
3) The difference in reproductive role and strategy between the genders.
4) The differences in abilities among men.
5) The local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
6) The local structure of the reproduction: family and inheritance rights.
7) The distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
8) The degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
9) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
10) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
11) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.

OUTGROUP COOPERATION
12) The geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production. (note that this is last.)

PROPERTY RIGHT
OBVERSE: A prohibition on the imposition of costs against those categories of property that in-group members are willing to enforce by means of organized violence.
REVERSE: a warranty by peers (right) that they will either enforce restitution for impositions of costs upon certain categories of your property, and/or that they will not retaliate against you for your acts of retaliation or restitution for such impositions.

RESULT?
(i) PROPERTY: that which we demonstrate that we have born costs to acquire without imposing costs upon others with whom we cooperate.
(ii) COOPERATION: constructing an asymmetry of incentives such that we choose to concentrate efforts by dividing labor in order to obtain the disproportionate rewards of doing so versus the alternatives.
(iii) MORALITY: that which we require in order to rationally cooperate.
(iv) RIGHT: Sanction of retaliation in case of abridgment. OBLIGATION: Requirement of performance.
(v) LAW (PROPERTY RIGHT): that which we promise to one another to insure.
—END OF ANALYSIS–