The Natural Law Institute

Contractual Commons: Law is Discovered, Contracts and Exchanges are Made.

[W]e can produce a market for un-consumable commons using a government just as we produce a market for consumable private goods. But that law and commons are two different things. But there is no reason whatsoever, that knowing how to construct the common law, government should be capable of producing law. It cannot. Law is discovered, contracts and exchanges are made.
  1. Economic velocity (wealth) is determined by the degree of suppression of parasitism (free riding/imposed costs). This eliminates transaction costs.

  2.  Central power originates to centralize parasitism and increase material costs, by suppressing local parasitism and as a consequence, eliminated local transaction costs. And using those costs to pay for the suppression of local parasitism.  We trade expensive local transaction costs for less expensive costs of suppression.

  3. Once centralized those costs can be incrementally eliminated. But if and only if an institutional means of deciding conflicts can be used to replace personal judgement as a means of deciding conflicts.

  4.  The only means of producing institutional rules to replace personal judgement (provision of ‘decidability’) is in the independent, common, evolutionary law resting upon a prohibition on parasitism/free-riding/imposed costs (negatives), codified as property rights (positives): productive, warrantied, fully informed, voluntary transfer(exchange), free of negative externalities.

  5. Suppression of violence and theft is fairly easy because the actions are existential and the results obvious.  But as we increasingly suppress violence and theft, people resort to fraud, fraud by omission, fraud by suggestion, imposition of costs by externality, corruption, and conspiracy. So suppression of these more complex thefts requires testimony and decidability.

  6. Language evolved to justify (morality), negotiate (deceive), and rally and shame (gossip), and only tangentially and late to describe (truth). Truth as we understand it is an invention and an unnatural one – which is why it is unique to the west, and why it has taken philosophers so long to understand it. However, westerners evolved a military epistemology because they relied upon self-financing warriors voluntarily participating, as well as the jury and truth telling. (The marginal difference in intellectual ability apparently not common – they were all smart enough. and such testimony was in itself ‘training’.)

  7. We cannot expect or demand truthful testimony from people unless they know how to produce it. ie: Education in what I would consider the religion of the west: “the true, the moral and the beautiful”. So I consider this education ‘sacred’ not just utilitarian.

  8. We cannot demand truth and law from people unless it is not against their interests: ie: the only universal political system is Nationalism, because groups can act truthfully internally, truthfully externally, and can use trade negotiations to neutralized competitive differences. And with nationalism, individuals cannot escape paying the cost of transforming their own societies, and themselves, and laying the burden of doing so upon other societies.

  9. Commons are a profound competitive advantage. Territorial, institutional, normative, genetic, physical, and economic (industrial) commons are a profound advantage to any group.

    The west is the most successful producer of commons so it is even more important to the west. So we must provide a means of producing those commons.

    The difference between market for private goods and services (where competition in production is a good incentive) and corporate (public) goods, where we must prevent privatization of gains an socialization of losses, requires that we provide monopoly protection of those goods from consumption.

    But does not require that we provide monopoly contribution to them. Commons require only that the people willing to pay for them, do so. Otherwise there is no demonstrated preference for that commons.

    Insurance is a commons and I will leave that for another time.

    Return on investment (dividends) are the product of commons. I will leave that for another time as well.

    The central point is that we can produce a market for common goods using government just as we do in the market private goods. But that law and commons are two different things. and that there is no reason whatsoever, knowing how to construct the common law, that government should be capable of producing law. it cannot.

    Law is. It cannot be created. Only identified.

Curt Doolittle (ericd)

,

8 responses to “Contractual Commons: Law is Discovered, Contracts and Exchanges are Made.”

    • Well, I suppose we need to expand education in economics Pete. But I think you just gave me the idea for another chapter just in case.

  6. “But does not require that we provide monopoly contribution to them. Commons require only that the people willing to pay for them, do so. Otherwise there is no demonstrated preference for that commons.”

    Could you expand on this? What do you exactly mean?

Leave a Reply