Theme: Responsibility

Free Speech?

– We don’t allow ‘free’ violence: extortion, retaliation, punishment, enforcement.

– We don’t allow ‘free’ remuneration: blackmail, bribery,

– So, why should we allow free speech: libel, slander, defamation, violation of privacy?

Instead:

– We allow constructive violence: self-defense, defense of the commons, citizens arrest, deputizing, military service.

– We allow constructive remuneration: payment for goods and services that produce productivity for the commons.

– We allow constructive speech: that one speaks the truth, and that when speaking the truth one defends a commons or individuals from parasitism and predation.

Why?

Becuase the only actions we must tolerate are those that consist of

– Productive

– Fully Informed

– Warrantied

– Voluntary Transfers

– Limited to externalities of the same criteria.

– Or at a minimum, productive externalities (increases in capital).

Where:

– that which we tolerate is defined as those words and deeds that might cause another to retaliate against an imposition of costs by others.

Reversal:

But are not forgone opportunities for reward a cost?

– Of course they are – to one party. But they are not lost opportunities to BOTH parties. And that is what cooperation requires: reciprocal benefit. Unless benefit is reciprocal, productive, fully informed, and warrantied, and limited to externalities of the same, then the action is not a benefit to both parties. Man under threat from torture, blackmail, or defamation, libel and slander, may consent, but it is not voluntary. Why? because he does not have the option to refuse. And no deal in which a man has no option to refuse without harm, can be voluntary. He can refuse and forgo a gain, but he cannot refuse and be subject to harm while at the same time claiming the choice was voluntary.

– It is not rational to grant one the right to unqualified profit or gain – that would allow for parasitism and predation, which renders cooperation irrational and conflict preferable.

– It is rational to grant on qualified right to profit or gain – where the profit results from productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary, transfer limited to externalities of the same.

Libertine ethics are based upon the falsehood of volition rather than the truth of preventing retaliation. Volition does not limit the actions that cause retaliation. Only volition in favor of production that cannot produce retaliation is a logical and demonstrable criteria for preventing retaliation.

The purpose of rule of law is to prevent actions that produce retaliations (costs) leaving only actions that produce production (gains).

The history of the common law consists of the accumulated rules by which we incrementally expand the prohibitions against newly discovered means of circumventing the requirement for productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, limited to externalities of the same.