Theme: Responsibility

A.E.L.

PRINCIPLES

1) Property rights are obtained by entering into a contract for reciprocal insurance of one another’s property by the promise of violence to defend it.

2) Property is that which humans demonstrate as their property: that which they act to obtain by homesteading or voluntary exchange, with

the expectation of possession. (See categories of property below)

3) Voluntary Exchange: Moral and ethical exchanges are defined as voluntary, fully informed, warrantied, exchange, free of negative externality.

4) Morality is objective and is prohibition on the transgression of the property of another : the necessary prohibition on free riding for any cooperative organism. We evolved these instincts, and our extreme intolerance for ‘cheating’ out of necessity, and these instincts remain. (see criminal, unethical, and immoral propositions below)

5) The law must sufficiently mirror known morality at any given time to suppress demand for an authority to suppress immoral actions, or the violence that results from immoral actions. While criminal and ethical standards are universal and objective, moral prohibitions consist of (a) necessary prohibitions on involuntary imposition of costs, (b) ritual and signal costs that members of a polity are use for signaling commitment, and which should not be enforced by law, but can be enforced by ostracization, (c) errors that are not reducible to free riding, and cannot be enforced by law, nor should they be enforced by ostracization.

6) Transaction costs of immoral and unethical behavior increase with a decrease in capacity to defend against them. Therefore it is not rational to expect people to choose a voluntary polity in the absence of a state without sufficient suppression of transaction costs to compete with the costs of the state that does suppress either the immoral and unethical behavior, or the violence that results from immoral and unethical behavior. AS such the moral and ethical standard embodied in the common law, necessary for a polity is determined by the relative transaction costs and opportunities of different polities. Since the highest trust polities demonstrate both the most suppression of unethical and immoral actions, as well as the highest velocity of risk, production and trade, it is an empirical question as to the level of suppression of unethical and immoral action that is required to maintain a competitive polity. But in no case will people rationally choose an unethical polity, and they never have. The opposite is true: unethical polities have been the victims of conquest, oppression and genocide.

CATEGORIES OF PROPERTY

Humans demonstrably act as though there are four categories of property:

I. Several (Personal) Property

– Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”

– Physical Body

– Actions and Time

– Memories, Concepts and Identities: tools that enable us to plan and act. In the consumer economy this includes brands.

– Several Property: Those things we claim a monopoly of control over.

II. Interpersonal (Relationship) Property

Cooperative Property: “relationships with others and tools of relationships upon which we reciprocally depend.”

– Mates (access to sex/reproduction)

– Children (genetic reproduction)

– Familial Relations (security)

– Consanguineous Relations (tribal and family ties)

– Racial property (racial ties)

– Status and Class (reputation)

III. Institutional (Community) Property

Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.”

– Informal (Normative) Institutions: Our norms: manners, ethics and morals. Informal institutional property is nearly impossible to quantify and price. The costs are subjective and consists of forgone opportunities.

– Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws. Formal institutional property is easy to price. costs are visible. And the productivity of the social order is at least marginally measurable.

IV. Artificial Property

Artificial Property: “Can a group issue specific rights to members?”

– Shares in property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (claims for partial ownership)

– Monopoly Property such as intellectual property. (grants of monopoly within a geography)

– Trademarks and Brands (prohibitions on fraudulent transfers within a geography).

FORMS OF INVOLUNTARY TRANSFER

1-Direct Interpersonal

– Murder

– Violence

– Destruction

– Theft

– Theft by Fraud

– Theft by Fraud by omission

2 – Indirect Interpersonal

– Theft by Impediment

– Theft by Externalization

3 – Indirect Social

– Theft by Free riding

– Theft by privatization

– Theft by socialization

4 – Conspiratorial Social

– Theft by Rent seeking

– Theft by Complexity, Rule, Process or Obscurantism

– Theft by Extortion

5 – Conquest

– Murder, Destruction and Theft by War

– Immigration

– Conversion