[G]hetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieval urban ghetto. As a ‘state within a state’ residents of the ghetto can conduct exchange as if they are state actors by relying upon high trust exchange in-group, while using low trust exchange out-group. However, in any polity, each of us cannot act as a ‘state’ by applying low trust with some and high trust with others because the net result is a near universally low trust society for the vast majority. In such an environment demand for the state and its interventions as a proxy for trust remains high, since low trust is by definition the use of cunning and deception to obtain discounts and premiums that the opposite party would not tolerate willingly. In other words, low trust ethics are parasitic, and impose high transaction costs on the population. [T]he underlying point I’m making is the absurdity of using the model of a state within a state to advocate for a stateless society. In that lens the entire rothbardian project is… well, absurdly illogical. Laughable even. Aristocratic egalitarianism (the protestant ethic) suppresses all cheating such that demand for the state is low because transaction costs and conflicts are minimized, while the velocity of production and exchange is high.
Theme: Reciprocity
-
Definition: "Ghetto Ethics"
[G]hetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieval urban ghetto. As a ‘state within a state’ residents of the ghetto can conduct exchange as if they are state actors by relying upon high trust exchange in-group, while using low trust exchange out-group. However, in any polity, each of us cannot act as a ‘state’ by applying low trust with some and high trust with others because the net result is a near universally low trust society for the vast majority. In such an environment demand for the state and its interventions as a proxy for trust remains high, since low trust is by definition the use of cunning and deception to obtain discounts and premiums that the opposite party would not tolerate willingly. In other words, low trust ethics are parasitic, and impose high transaction costs on the population. [T]he underlying point I’m making is the absurdity of using the model of a state within a state to advocate for a stateless society. In that lens the entire rothbardian project is… well, absurdly illogical. Laughable even. Aristocratic egalitarianism (the protestant ethic) suppresses all cheating such that demand for the state is low because transaction costs and conflicts are minimized, while the velocity of production and exchange is high.
-
Definition: “Ghetto Ethics”
[G]hetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieval urban ghetto. As a ‘state within a state’ residents of the ghetto can conduct exchange as if they are state actors by relying upon high trust exchange in-group, while using low trust exchange out-group. However, in any polity, each of us cannot act as a ‘state’ by applying low trust with some and high trust with others because the net result is a near universally low trust society for the vast majority. In such an environment demand for the state and its interventions as a proxy for trust remains high, since low trust is by definition the use of cunning and deception to obtain discounts and premiums that the opposite party would not tolerate willingly. In other words, low trust ethics are parasitic, and impose high transaction costs on the population. [T]he underlying point I’m making is the absurdity of using the model of a state within a state to advocate for a stateless society. In that lens the entire rothbardian project is… well, absurdly illogical. Laughable even. Aristocratic egalitarianism (the protestant ethic) suppresses all cheating such that demand for the state is low because transaction costs and conflicts are minimized, while the velocity of production and exchange is high.
-
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.
-
Equality And Inequality In Propertarianism
We may be unequally valuable to one another in the marketplace. That’s just an empirically obvious fact. We may be unequally capable of mastering and applying skills, interpreting current events, planning successfully for the future, and adhering to those plans. We may be unequally desirable as family members, friends, mates and associates. That too is an obvious fact. But we are EQUALLY VALUABLE and EQUALLY DESIRABLE as universal suppressors of free riding, rent seeking, fraud and crime. Moral theory does not separate our productive, reproductive, associative, and institutional values that each of us brings. Property rights theory does not separate our different values either, because when these ideas were developed we were economically indifferent except in our willingness to work hard and discipline ourselves. Economic reward in our civilization is based almost entirely upon our economic performance. But increasingly, we are unequal in our economic performance – and because labor is, and always has been, of little value, this inequality will only continue to increase. However, we are rewarded unequally for our unequal economic contribution. But that economic contribution, in our society, is predicated on the persistence of the high trust society, whereby we participate in the absolute nuclear family structure, and we are each responsible for the restraint from, prohibition upon, and policing of crime, free riding, rent seeking, corruption and conquest, in all walks of life. As such, it seems irrational that people pay the high cost of not engaging in criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial and conquest behaviors, yet are not rewarded for them. The libertarian argument suggests that respect for these criminal, ethical, moral and political rules merely grants one access to society and market. But that is a hard argument to make. The productive could not produce without the efforts of the unproductive in maintaining the prohibitions. SO why not pay them for it, and not pay them when they fail? This is the basic argument that the Left Libertarians (bleeding heart libertarians) fail to make.
-
Equality And Inequality In Propertarianism
We may be unequally valuable to one another in the marketplace. That’s just an empirically obvious fact. We may be unequally capable of mastering and applying skills, interpreting current events, planning successfully for the future, and adhering to those plans. We may be unequally desirable as family members, friends, mates and associates. That too is an obvious fact. But we are EQUALLY VALUABLE and EQUALLY DESIRABLE as universal suppressors of free riding, rent seeking, fraud and crime. Moral theory does not separate our productive, reproductive, associative, and institutional values that each of us brings. Property rights theory does not separate our different values either, because when these ideas were developed we were economically indifferent except in our willingness to work hard and discipline ourselves. Economic reward in our civilization is based almost entirely upon our economic performance. But increasingly, we are unequal in our economic performance – and because labor is, and always has been, of little value, this inequality will only continue to increase. However, we are rewarded unequally for our unequal economic contribution. But that economic contribution, in our society, is predicated on the persistence of the high trust society, whereby we participate in the absolute nuclear family structure, and we are each responsible for the restraint from, prohibition upon, and policing of crime, free riding, rent seeking, corruption and conquest, in all walks of life. As such, it seems irrational that people pay the high cost of not engaging in criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial and conquest behaviors, yet are not rewarded for them. The libertarian argument suggests that respect for these criminal, ethical, moral and political rules merely grants one access to society and market. But that is a hard argument to make. The productive could not produce without the efforts of the unproductive in maintaining the prohibitions. SO why not pay them for it, and not pay them when they fail? This is the basic argument that the Left Libertarians (bleeding heart libertarians) fail to make.
-
The Ethical Spectrum: Criminal, Unethical, Immoral, Conspiritorial
The spectrum describes means by which we act parasitically rather than productively. In a perfect world we only act productively with all parasitism eliminated. (No perfect world is possible I suppose, but it helps illustrate the point.) Human history from from our consanguineous communal (Bonobo-like) pre-history to our current state as individualist, single-parent, autonomous producers insured through a corporation we call the state, required, first and foremost, the continuous expansion of prohibition on free riding (parasitism) in all its forms, thereby pressing each individual human into the market. At some point our productivity increased sufficiently that a few people could specialize in thinking. But today, less than half of the population is actually engaged in productive labor and it’s heading toward a third. So soon, 2/3 of people extant live independent of productive labor. Given that malthusian limits controlled our population for most of history, it’s pretty impressive that so many people can be sustained by the combination of so few, plus fossil fuels of course. Or stated otherwise, 2/3 of the people life a life of luxury. I am not sure, but I cannot find anyone else who has described this system in detail. Very Weberian. SPECIFIC TERMS: By Conquest I mean organized (war) and unorganized conquest (immigration, religious invasion, political invasion). By Conspiratorial I mean organized conspiracies of extraction such as protection rackets including the government. By moral I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) actions we take on third parties. By ethical I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) we take directly on others who are involved with us by non physical action such as lying, cheating, obscuring, fraud, etc. By criminal I mean those extractions that we take against persons and their property by physical action (violence and theft).
-
The Ethical Spectrum: Criminal, Unethical, Immoral, Conspiritorial
The spectrum describes means by which we act parasitically rather than productively. In a perfect world we only act productively with all parasitism eliminated. (No perfect world is possible I suppose, but it helps illustrate the point.) Human history from from our consanguineous communal (Bonobo-like) pre-history to our current state as individualist, single-parent, autonomous producers insured through a corporation we call the state, required, first and foremost, the continuous expansion of prohibition on free riding (parasitism) in all its forms, thereby pressing each individual human into the market. At some point our productivity increased sufficiently that a few people could specialize in thinking. But today, less than half of the population is actually engaged in productive labor and it’s heading toward a third. So soon, 2/3 of people extant live independent of productive labor. Given that malthusian limits controlled our population for most of history, it’s pretty impressive that so many people can be sustained by the combination of so few, plus fossil fuels of course. Or stated otherwise, 2/3 of the people life a life of luxury. I am not sure, but I cannot find anyone else who has described this system in detail. Very Weberian. SPECIFIC TERMS: By Conquest I mean organized (war) and unorganized conquest (immigration, religious invasion, political invasion). By Conspiratorial I mean organized conspiracies of extraction such as protection rackets including the government. By moral I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) actions we take on third parties. By ethical I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) we take directly on others who are involved with us by non physical action such as lying, cheating, obscuring, fraud, etc. By criminal I mean those extractions that we take against persons and their property by physical action (violence and theft).
-
Trust: A Definition
“Your confidence that another will act with a necessary degree of reciprocity (mutually beneficial) for the matter at hand, despite the opportunity to act out of an equal degree of self interest.” This definition addresses the spectrum of low trust exchanges to consanguineous interactions to high trust mutual insurance. Most definitions assume an equality of relations that never actually exists and as such those other definitions always seem wanting. It also explains when we are actually trusting someone, versus asking for a donation. Trust is a matter of reciprocity given the relationship you have to someone else.