Curt Doolittle

Theme: Reciprocity

  • PROPERTARIANISM IS A OF LOGIC OF COOPERATION, NOT A PHILOSOPHICAL PREFERENCE. Pr

    PROPERTARIANISM IS A OF LOGIC OF COOPERATION, NOT A PHILOSOPHICAL PREFERENCE.

    Propertarianism can be used to describe, compare, and advocate any political system in rigidly logical, universally commensurable form.

    While one can surely advocate liberty with it, its primary purpose is to suppress error, fallacy and deception.

    Its the logic of cooperation. The logic of ethics and politics.

    Aristocratic Egalitarianism can be argued with it. Which I do every day.

    And AE is the most ethical political model yet developed.

    But propertarianism only allows me to argue in favor of it logically and truthfully – to construct proofs.

    But preference for any given political order is still one if choice.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-05 19:19:00 UTC

  • Utility Does Not Sanction Immorality

    [M]any immoral things are convenient. The reason we refrain from them despite their convenience, is that when we agree to cooperate with others, we agree to avoid exporting costs onto them as individuals, and we agree not to pollute the commons and therefore export costs onto them as a group. There is no difference between polluting a stream, and composing and publishing a theory in non-operational (particularly experiential) language. Both are immoral.

  • Utility Does Not Sanction Immorality

    [M]any immoral things are convenient. The reason we refrain from them despite their convenience, is that when we agree to cooperate with others, we agree to avoid exporting costs onto them as individuals, and we agree not to pollute the commons and therefore export costs onto them as a group. There is no difference between polluting a stream, and composing and publishing a theory in non-operational (particularly experiential) language. Both are immoral.

  • UTILITY DOES NOT SANCTION IMMORALITY Many immoral things are convenient. The rea

    UTILITY DOES NOT SANCTION IMMORALITY

    Many immoral things are convenient. The reason we refrain from them despite their convenience, is that when we agree to cooperate with others, we agree to avoid exporting costs onto them as individuals, and we agree not to pollute the commons and therefore export costs onto them as a group.

    There is no difference between polluting a stream, and composing and publishing a theory in non-operational (particularly experiential) language. Both are immoral.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-02 01:35:00 UTC

  • THE SLIVER RULE REIGNS. THE GOLDEN RULE IS AN INVITATION TO INTERVENTIONISM AND

    THE SLIVER RULE REIGNS. THE GOLDEN RULE IS AN INVITATION TO INTERVENTIONISM AND UTOPIANISM.

    —“The Golden Rule (do to others what you want them to do to you) is an invitation to interventionism, utopianism, and meddling into other people’s affairs, particularly poor nations, as represented by the the NGO clowns at TED conferences trying to “save the world”, and causing more harm with unseen side effects. Remember that Mao, Stalin, Lenin, and were following the positive Golden rule. At the personal level, I may feel good trying to nudge a vegetarian to eat raw kebbeh (Lebanese steak tartare) because I like it myself.

    —

    The Silver rule (do NOT do to others what you don’t want them to do to you) leads to a systematic way to live “doing no harm” and gives rise to a liberating type of ethics: your obligation is to pursue your personal interests provided you do not hurt others probabilistically unless you are yourself exposed, & not transfer risks to others (skin-in-the-game at all times). But, and here is the key, should there be a spillover, it will necessarily be positive. It is therefore convex.(Typical via negativa rules are convex). It separates the “self-interest” in Adam Smith from the “selfish” version. And if you want to help society, just try to benefit WHILE at least harming no one.

    —

    This distinction puts a lot of clarity behind the idea of free markets and morality. You should never have to prove that what you do is GOOD for society (hard to express in words and rationalistic framework), but you can certainly show you are NOT hurting others more than yourself via skin-in-the-game.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-21 12:51:00 UTC

  • Choices: Conflict, Boycott, and Cooperation

    [W]e can fail to agree, and conflict with one another. We can agree to boycott (avoid) one another. Or we can agree to cooperate with one another. In any rational exchange for cooperation and trust, we require the positive assertion of the requirement of production, and the negative assertion of the prohibition on free riding. Cooperation is not rational without this requirement, in both positive and negative forms. In some cases we tolerate intertemporal gains and losses in the expectation that the net outcome will be to our favor. For the weak, cooperation or boycott, are to be agreed upon at all costs, even if parasitic, since the weak are unable to fight. For the strong, conquest, cooperation and boycott are merely a choice between preferences, where cooperation can often provide the greatest return. Power and weakness produce different metaphysical assumptions and logical biases. See Power and Weakness by Robert Kagan http://files.janjires.webnode.cz/200000472-2879a29738/Robert%20Kagan%20-%20Power%20and%20Weakness.pdf

  • Choices: Conflict, Boycott, and Cooperation

    [W]e can fail to agree, and conflict with one another. We can agree to boycott (avoid) one another. Or we can agree to cooperate with one another. In any rational exchange for cooperation and trust, we require the positive assertion of the requirement of production, and the negative assertion of the prohibition on free riding. Cooperation is not rational without this requirement, in both positive and negative forms. In some cases we tolerate intertemporal gains and losses in the expectation that the net outcome will be to our favor. For the weak, cooperation or boycott, are to be agreed upon at all costs, even if parasitic, since the weak are unable to fight. For the strong, conquest, cooperation and boycott are merely a choice between preferences, where cooperation can often provide the greatest return. Power and weakness produce different metaphysical assumptions and logical biases. See Power and Weakness by Robert Kagan http://files.janjires.webnode.cz/200000472-2879a29738/Robert%20Kagan%20-%20Power%20and%20Weakness.pdf

  • ELI ON THE VIRTUE OF VIOLENCE AND NECESSITY OF AGGRESSION —“What I think I can

    ELI ON THE VIRTUE OF VIOLENCE AND NECESSITY OF AGGRESSION

    —“What I think I can enforce – and benefit from enforcing – is a prohibition against negative sum aggression (involuntary transfers) and a mandate for positive sum aggression (the suppression of free-riding.)

    Even private property is a form of aggression. Fencing off unowned land, formerly free for use by all, and announcing that – henceforth – trespass will be punished by violence, is inherently an aggressive act. Property is a social construct. Using violence to uphold a social construct is aggression.

    This is not an argument against private property, this is an argument for aggression.”— Eli Harman

    Aggression and violence are value neutral. The only question that matters is whether one is constructing property rights – the prohibition on free riding – such that we have the incentive and ability to develop a division of knowledge and labor. That division of labor compresses time, and increases productivity, such that through constant competition we can cooperate for the purpose of constantly decreasing prices – costs to us.

    Aggression and violence in the construction of property rights is not only a virtue it is arguably the highest most productive virtue than man can pursue.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-15 15:07:00 UTC

  • PROPERTY EVOLVED AS A MEANS OF SUPPRESSING FREE RIDING FIRST. (worth repeating)

    PROPERTY EVOLVED AS A MEANS OF SUPPRESSING FREE RIDING FIRST.

    (worth repeating)

    Well, I think the scarcity-as-primary cause of the evolution of property is probably false, and should be replaced by the prohibition on free riding:

    (a) Property evolved for preventing free riding during cooperation (along with mating – we dont’ know which was first – cooperation or pairing off, but it looks like cooperation was first.)

    (b) Language evolved to control mating (pairing off conditional monogamy – mates as property)

    (c) Property matured to facilitate the retention of goods and tools.

    (d) Property matured to facilitate capture of livestock.

    (e) Property matured to facilitate inheritance in families

    (f) Property matured to facilitate the division of labor.

    (g) Property evolved as a means of forming cooperative networks and positive expression of legal rules.

    As far as I can tell, it is the prevention of free riding needed to maintain incentives to produce that was the source of the evolution of property.

    As far as I can tell, it is probably more accurate to say that scarcity forced retention of redistribution within family and tribe, it did not cause the evolution of property.

    The hard problem that only Northern Europeans have solved, is to suppress redistribution in the tribe and family.

    I don’t think this is a meaningful revision of libertarian theory. It’s a correction. But the order of development doesn’t change the importance of property rights for the purpose of incentives, calculation, and dispute resolution.

    But it does reinforce my argument that the purpose of property is the prevention of free riding necessary for cooperation. So that property evolved a positive expression of the negative prohibition. Not as a good in itself in response to scarcity.

    In fact, I am pretty confident that the scarcity argument is a CROSS-GROUP problem not an in-group problem. (Again, this is why ghetto ethics were a failure – wrong problem. In group evolved prior to out-group.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-15 09:58:00 UTC

  • Requirements for Voluntary Cooperation

    (worth repeating)

    [W]e are only ‘voluntarily cooperating’ if we have a choice to cooperate or not. We use the term ‘cooperate’, originating with human voluntary cooperation, and by analogy apply it to other creatures who simulate voluntary cooperation. But, how many of those creatures voluntarily cooperate, and how many of them only appear to, and possess no sentience (volition) at all? What is required of for voluntary cooperation?

    REQUIREMENTS
    – The capacity for shared intent.
    – The capacity to determine if shared intent is beneficial or not.
    – The capacity to choose to invest in that shared intent or not.
    – The capacity to signal consent to shared intent.
    – The capacity to punish defectors / cheaters, whether by refusal of future cooperation, punishment, or death.

    So while it is true that verbal language is not required, signaling is. And that’s enough.

    As far as I know, if you cannot choose, consent, and punish defectors then its not voluntary cooperation.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine