ETHICS, AND MORALITY
First Principles of Propertarian Ethics: Non-Parasitism and Therefore Rational Cooperation
MAN
The requirements of man.
1 – Man must acquire resources.
2 – Man must act to acquire resources.
3 – Man must act cooperatively to disproportionately improve the acquisition of resources.
4 – Man must act to preserve and extend cooperation to preserve the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation.
5 – Man must act to preserve and extend cooperation by the suppression of parasitism without which parasitism creates the disincentive to cooperate, and therefore decreases the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation.
6 – Man conducts parasitism by violence, theft, fraud, fraud by obscurantism, fraud by moralizing, fraud by omission, externality, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses, conspiracy, conversion, immigration, conquest, war, and genocide.
7 – 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.
ETHICS
0 — Time is limited and the only infinite scarcity
1 – Man is a costly form of life in an unpredictable universe.
2 – Man must acquire resources to live within this unpredictable universe.
4 – Man must act to acquire and inventory resources:
5 – Man must defend that which he has acquired and inventoried. (His possession is demonstrated by what he defends from loss, and what he retaliates for imposition of costs upon.)
PROPERTY IN TOTO (DEMONSTRATED PROPERTY)
4 – Man demonstrates that he acquires and defends:
……4.1 Survival: Life, Time, Memories, Actions, Rest,
Attention, Social Status, Reputation
……4.2 Relations: Mates (access to sex/reproduction), Children (genetics), Familial Relations (security), Non-Familial Relations (utility), Consanguineous property (tribal and family ties)
……4.3 Associations: 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 Un-quantified 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.
(….add human capital here,….)
5 – Man must act cooperatively to disproportionately improve acquisition of resources. (Cooperation is disproportionately more rewarding than any other activity.)
6 – Man must cooperate only 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 of Categories: 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 exchanges 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.
15 – division of cognitive labor– moral specialization and therefore moral blindness – exchanges as a means of calculation by trades of cooperation between specialists.
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.)
There 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).
The Evolution of Cooperation:
1) Acquisitiveness: To survive and reproduce, humans must acquire and inventory many categories of resources, and evolved to demonstrate constant acquisitiveness of those resources.
2) Property: The scope of those things they act upon, or choose not to act upon, in anticipation of obtaining as inventory (a store of value), constitute their demonstrated definition of property-en-toto.* (See Butler Schaeffer) “That which and organism defends.”
3) Value: Human emotions evolved to reflect changes in state of property-en-toto.* As such nearly all emotions can be expressed in terms of reactions to property. (imposed costs here, pre-moral, but also pre-cooperation, and only defense and retaliation, not cooperation)
4) Non-Imposition:: That which humans act to obtain without imposition upon in-group members they evolved to intuit as their property, and demonstrate this intuition by defense of their inventory, and by their punishment of transgressors.
5) Cooperative Production: That which humans act in concert with one another to produce. (Important take-away is that the purpose of cooperation is material and reproductive production.)
6) Moral (cooperative) Intuitions(instincts): Moral intuitions reflect prohibitions on free riding by members with whom one cooperates in production and reproduction. (This is where free riding enters.)
7) Distribution of Intuitions by Reproductive Strategy: Moral intuitions vary in intensity to suit one’s reproductive strategy. This intensity and distribution of moral intuition varies between males and females, as well as between classes and between groups.
8) Variation By Family Structure: Moral rules reflect prohibitions on free riding given the structure of the family in relation to the necessary and available structure of production.
9) Resolution of Disputes: Property rights were developed in law as the positive enumeration in contractual form, of those moral rules which any polity (corporation) agrees to enforce with the promise of violence for the purpose of restitution or punishment. Conversely, any possible property rights not expressed, the community (corporation) is unwilling to adjudicate, restore or punish, or has not yet discovered the need to construct.
10) Instrumentation: Property rights are necessary for the instrumental measurement of moral prohibitions because of the unobservability of changes in human emotional states, and our inability to determine truth from falsehood. And as such we require an observable proxy for evidence of changes in state.
11) Family: As a general rule, as the division of knowledge and labor increases, so must the atomicity of property rights, and as a consequence, the size of the family must decline {Consanguineous, Punaluan, Pairing (Serial Marriage), Hetaeristic, Traditional, Stem, Nuclear, Absolute Nuclear}.
12) Transaction Costs: As the division of labor increases, relationships increase in distance from kin, increase in anonymity, decrease common interest, and the incentive to seize opportunities rather than adhere to agreements increases. This decrease creates the problem of trust, which increases costs of insuring any agreement is fulfilled, and decreases the overall number of possible agreements and the number of participants in any structure of production.
13) Trust (ethics in production): As a general rule, for the size of the family to decrease, and division of labor to increase in multi-part complexity then trust must increase, and trust can only increase with expansion of property rights to include prohibitions on unethical actions. Mere ostracization, boycotting and reputation are insufficient to preserve agreements (contracts).
14) Moral Competition (ethics in political production): (morals property rights, cheating) As a general rule, the scope of moral prohibitions expressed as property rights, must increase to limit demand for authority.
15) Demand for Authority: As a general rule, if a delay in the production of property rights evolves, then demand for authority will fill the vacuum with some form of authority to either suppress retaliation (conflict) or to prevent circumstances leading to conflict, or both.
Causes of The Evolution of Cooperation
Ingroup Cooperation
1) The disproportionately high return on cooperation.
2) The differences in abilities at different ages.
3) The difference in reproductive role and strategy between the genders.
4) The differences in abilities among men.
5) The local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
6) The local structure of the reproduction: family and inheritance rights.
7) The distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
8) The degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
9) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
10) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
11) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
Outgroup Cooperation
12) The geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production. (note that this is last.)
CATEGORIES OF POSSESSION
0) Non-Property (Bring under total control)
….CONTROL: Total Control
….PURPOSE: Create Property
….YES: Constituo, Transitus, Usus, Fructus, Mancipio, Abusus.
1) Possession
- a) Possession(Demonstrated): That which I have acted to prevent others from consumption or use.
2) Consensual Possession
- a) Property(Consensual): That which you and I agree not to impose costs, use or consume from one another.
3) Normative Possession
- a) Property(Normative): That which by norm all agree not to impose costs, use or consume from one another, and all of which agree to defend from one another.
4) Institutional Possession – “Property”
(UNDONE)
COMMON LIMITS TO PROPERTY RIGHTS
1) Constituo – Homesteading: Convert into property through bearing a cost of transformation.
2) Transitus – Transit: passage through 3d space.
3) Action – Display, Word, Action, Deed
4) Usus – Use: setting up a stall.
5) Fructus – Fruits: (blackberries, wood, profits)
6) Mancipio – Emancipation: (sale, transfer)
7) Abusus – Abuse: (Consumption or Destruction) Opposite of Constituo.
DEFINITIONS OF RIGHTS
Right: a contractual obligation by another party to perform some actions, and refrain from other actions
Negative Right: a contractual obligation by another party to refrain from actions: to forgo opportunities for gains.
Positive Right: a contractual obligation by another party to perform actions: to bear costs, and to forgo opportunity for ‘defection’ (cheating).
Existential Rights: Rights exist only when (a) obtained in contractual exchange, and (b) are enforceable in matters of dispute by a third party ‘insurer’. (throughout most of history the ‘government’ is the insurer of last resort. Rights do not exist then, they must be existentially created by the construction of an insurer (usually government).
Desired Right: A right that you wish to possess if you can find (a) a party to exchange it with you and (b) an enforcer (insurer) of those rights once you negotiated them.
Hierarchy of Rights:
- – **Normative** (norms, manners, ethics, morals),
- – **Contractual: **(from promise to formal document)
- – **Political Right **(political):
…..1. Law proper (discovered),
…..2. Legislation (negotiated),
…..3. Regulation (commanded)
- – Human Rights (inter-state): Human rights were an attempt by western nations in the post-colonial and post-war era to set the terms by which governments would respect the sovereignty(esp. borders) of other governments. In other words, it was an attempt to prevent horrors of primitive and developing countries, contain the horrors of communism, constrain expansionist governments, and set the purpose of government to the improvement of the condition of its citizens.
- – Natural Rights (~scientifically necessary): Those rights necessary for the evolution of voluntary organization of production of goods and services (capitalism) in the absence of parasitism and predation by organizations whether public or private. All natural rights are negative rights, since we can only equally refrain from action, because we are unequally able to act, and unequally can control resources necessary for action.
Human rights are necessary rights – those necessary for human freedom from predation – that any government must seek to produce for its citizens (act as a guarantor) if that government wishes to preserve it’s sovereignty from actions against it by those signatories of the contract for human rights: the insurers of last resort.
RECIPROCATED PROPERTY RIGHTS
All natural (possible and necessary) rights are expressible
as “reciprocated property rights”
All Natural Rights are expressible as property rights that we reciprocally grant one another: rights to non imposition of costs against life, liberty, and property. (Which was the original wording of the US Constitution.) All moral codes are also expressible as property rights, for those actions unknown to affected parties. All ethical codes are expressible as property rights for those actions between parties where knowledge is asymmetrically distributed.
The difference between human rights (political) and natural rights (scientific) is that to mollify the communists and obtain their signatures the articles in the 20’s were added that mandated positive rights. These rights cannot be brought into existence without violating all other rights. This is why they do not and cannot exist.
The only rights we can grant each other are negative, because we can only equally possess the ability to refrain from action.
We create (organize) governments in order to create property rights. To create an insurer of our life(existence), liberty(action), and property(inventory)
Everything else we say about it is some form of colorful deception.
RIGHTS ARE THE OUTCOME OF A MARKET EXCHANGE
So, think of rights not as a naturally-occurring phenomenon that the Rothbardians assert it to be, but the end result of a market exchange between those demanding privileges and those able to supply the defense of those privileges. That is why rights are not absolute (you cannot yell “fire” in a movie theater, cannot use speech to engage in a criminal conspiracy, cannot own certain classes of weapons, etc.) and it is the meeting of the demand for privileges by the citizenry and the supply of defense by the sovereign (with both sides negotiating for their interests and settling on a compromise) that produces the actual rights of appeal for justice. All rights are the outcome of this market exchange.
OBLIGATIONS: NECESSARY FOR MARKETS OF EXCHANGE
Possessing:
1) Violence: Sufficient numbers with sufficient capacity for violence to prohibit the imposition of alternative orders other than Sovereignty in Markets. The Duty of Violence (Defense).
And Choosing:
2) Sovereignty: Reciprocity, Truth, and Duty (Obligation), Markets in Everything: Association, Cooperation, Reproduction, Production of Consumption (Goods, Services, and Information), Production of Commons of Non-Consumption, Polities, and War. The Duty of Reciprocity.
3) Non-Imposition : Productive, Fully informed, Warrantied, Voluntary Transfer(Exchange) of property-in-toto, Free of External Imposition of Costs against Property-in-toto. The Duty of Non-Imposition.
4) Property In Toto: that which one has born a cost in order to obtain an interest in anticipation of current or future returns.
Produces:
5) Markets in Everything: Association, Cooperation, Reproduction, Production of Consumption (Goods, Services, and Information), Production of Commons of Non-Consumption, Polities, and War.
