First Principles of Propertarian Ethics: Non-Parasitism and Therefore Rational Cooperation

(revised and expanded)(worth repeating)

[P]ropertarian Ethics:

-1 — Time is limited and the only infinite scarcity

0 — Man is a costly form of life in an unpredictable universe.

1 – Man must acquire resources to live within this unpredictable universe.

2 – Man must act to acquire and inventory resources:

3 — Man must defend that which he has acquired and inventoried. (His property is demonstrated by what he defends from loss, and what he retaliates for imposition of costs upon.)

4 – Man demonstrates that he acquires and defends:
……4.1 Life, Time, Rest, Memories, Actions, Social Status, Reputation

……4.2 Mates (access to sex/reproduction), Children (genetics), Familial Relations (security), Non-Familial Relations (utility),Consanguineous property (tribal and family ties)

……4.3 Organizational ties (work), Knowledge ties (skills, crafts), Insurance (community)

……4.4 Several Property: Those things external to our bodies that we claim a monopoly of control over, having obtained them without imposing costs upon others.

……4.5 Shareholder Property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (physical shares in a tradable asset), Commons: Unrecorded and Unquantified Shareholder Property (shares in commons), Artificial Property: (property created by fiat agreement) Intellectual Property.

……4.6 Informal (Normative) Property: Our norms: manners, ethics, morals, myths, and rituals that consist of our social portfolio and which make our social order possible.

……4.7 Formal Institutional Property: Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws.

5 – Man must act cooperatively to disproportionately improve acquisition of resources. (Cooperation is disproportionately more rewarding than any other activity.)

6 – Man must only cooperate where it is beneficial and preferable to non-cooperation. As such all cooperative actions or sets of actions, must result in:
……5.1 Productive (increases property)
……5.2 Fully Informed (without deceit – a form of discounting)
……5.3 Warrantied (promise of non parasitism warranty of restitution)
……5.4 Voluntary Exchange
……5.5 Free of negative externality (imposes no costs on the property of third parties).

7 – Man must act to preserve and extend cooperation to preserve the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Cooperation is itself a disproportionately valuable scarcity)

8 – Man acts to preserve and extend cooperation by the suppression of parasitism that creates the disincentive to cooperate, and therefore decreases the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Man evolved necessary and expensive moral intuitions to preserve cooperation – including expensive forms of punishment of offenders.)

9 – Man engages in parasitism by:
……7.1 violence,
……7.2 theft,
……7.3 extortion, blackmail, racketeering.
……7.3 fraud, fraud by obscurantism, fraud by moralizing, fraud by omission,
……7.4 externality, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses,
……7.5 conspiracy, conversion, immigration, conquest, war and genocide.

(Summary: Violence, Theft, Extortion, Fraud, Externality, Conspiracy.)

10 – Man suppresses parasitism by threats of interpersonal violence, promises of interpersonal violence, interpersonal violence, interpersonal ostracization from cooperation, organized ostracization via norms and commerce, when he must by remuneration, and when he can by organized violence in law and war.

……10.1 Man possesses three weapons of influence: violence(imposition of material costs), gossip(imposition of opportunity costs: ostracization-inclusion), and remuneration(transfer of assets: exchange).

……10.2 Man uses all three weapons of influence, usually in concert, and in different degrees: consisting of a ‘chord of coercion’.

……10.3 Some men specialize in one weapon of influence: Warriors, Sheriffs and judges: Violence; priests and public intellectuals: Gossip; Organizers of Production: Remuneration.

11 – The most rapid means by which man can organize the suppression of parasitism is by defining property rights as all demonstrated property, and creating a court of universal standing under the common law, under the rule of law before a jury of his peers – since any innovation in parasitism is suppressed by the creation of a new prohibition with the first suit adjudicated. (Common, organically evolutionary law most rapidly prevents expansion of demonstrated parasitic opportunities.)

12 – A market for goods and services produces consumables, but a market for commons produces non-consumables. Non-consumable goods that provide utility whether those goods be privately constructed (use by private shareholders only) or publicly constructed (use by all citizen-shareholders). Commons (whether physical, normative or institutional) provide a disproportionate return to shareholders by preventing consumption and preserving utility.

13 – Majority rule is a sufficient means of decision making for small homogenous groups who must select priorities to achieve using limited resources.  Majority rule is insufficient means of decision making for large heterogeneous groups with conflicting preferences.  In heterogeneous groups monopoly rule by majority rule, is merely a vehicle for justifying thefts.  Homogenous groups may need to select priorities among desirable ends, but because heterogeneous groups have incompatible ends, heterogeneous groups need means of cooperation on means despite incompatible ends: agreements by which difference can be mitigated through mutually beneficial exchanges.  As such the purpose of government is the construction of commons by creating a market for the contractual production of commons.

14 – Moral, and therefore non-parasitic, agreements between parties that are productive, fully informed, voluntary, and warrantied need no assent (approval) from third parties.  Instead, all such agreements need only refrain from externalities: the imposition of costs on the property-en-toto of third parties.  As such, in any market for the production of commons, assent is not necessary for the construction of exhanges between classes with differing interests. Instead such contracts must only survive criticism: adjudication. As such anyone can sue to invalidate a contract.  But no one’s approval is necessary for such contracts.  As such the construction of commons requires not ascent. Instead, the prevention of a contract requires dissent that survives adjudication.

(summary: dissent and adjudication not assent and confirmation)

15 – division of cognitive labor– moral specialization and therefore moral blindness – exchanges as a means of calculation by trades of cooperation bretween specailists.

16 – the family-regulation of reproduction–

17 – Division of houses by cognitive labor —

13 – A condition of both interpersonal morality both forces all human action necessary for man’s survival into productive participation in the market by denying parasitism, and reduces or eliminates transaction costs (frictions due to risk), which in turn maximizes the potential economic velocity of the group.

14 – A condition of liberty is constructed when all men, including those who participate in the construction of commons – members of the government – are equally bound by the prohibition on parasitism: the common law against parasitism. (Morality is a synonym for non-parasitism. Liberty is a synonym for a moral – meaning non-parasitic – government.)

15 – If one does not engage in parasitism by doing so, the forcible increase of the suppression of others’ free riding is always by definition moral and just. This increases the possibilities of prosperity for all men. (Legal colonialism is moral. Economic colonialism is not.) (Aristocracy is obliged to increase the pool of aristocratic people whenever possible, and affordable.)

[T]here is no competitive strategy greater than the suppression of parasitism in all it’s forms. Because all human effort is limited to the market for productive ends, and all market activity is conducted under the lowest possible speculative friction.

The optimum group evolutionary strategy is to suppress all parasitism, while constantly driving up it’s intelligence by suppressing the reproduction of its lower classes (non performers). This causes no harm, and produces the greatest and longest term competitive benefit.)

If many groups follow this strategy, the largest group with the highest median IQ and aggression (competitive energy) will produce the most innovation.  Anti parasitism is eugenic, and parasitism is dysgenic.

Some groups cannot compete. So they will continue to act as parasites. (Gypsies).

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine