Morality
Science absolutely positively can tell you the answer to ethics and morality.
Morality, including the moral instincts, consist in reciprocity within the limits of proportionality, where reciprocity consists of limiting our actions to productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer( trade, consumption, harm, destruction, loss) of demonstrated interests free of imposition of costs upon demonstrated interests of others by externality. That’s morality. It’s got to be or evolution (physics) wouldn’t tolerate our existence as a species.
There is no difference between physics (involuntary change), economics (productive cooperation), and morality (social cooperation), except we have memory so can invest in and borrow from one another across time (. All that varies is the level of immorality tolerated given the stage of development in the current military, political, and economic circumstances.
So yes, science has told us what manners, ethics, morals, consist of. They cannot tell you what those range of actions will be in three years any more than economics can tell you that, because what constitutes reciprocity within the limits of proportionality, varies with the structure of production of polities, commons, goods, services, and information.
So we absolutely positively know what the physical and natural laws consist of – because they’re the same – we can judge borrow from one another or invest in one another and punish one another for violating those investments and borrowings (thefts, parasitism, free riding), and we do so by moral intuition we call “altruistic punishment’ – the payment of high personal costs of punishment of others to preserve the high value of trust in cooperation (borrowing, investing) in one another, because of the impossible-to-replace returns on cooperation – wherever cooperation is reciprocal: productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary, transfers, and free of negative externality.
And good luck refuting that scientific claim – because you will not be able to without violating it. It’s a physical law of conscious, cooperative, species beyond which no conscious cooperative species can survive.
Evil < Immoral < Unethical < Amoral > Ethical > Moral > Good
Define Morality
Disambiguate Morality
Morality = Rules of cooperation
Positive morality
( … )
Negative morality
( … )
Reciprocity
There exists only one universal moral law of sentient beings: Reciprocity. And it has been recorded since the dawn of writing in both via-positiva form as the golden rule, and in via-negativa form as the silver rule.
What Is Reciprocity?
The Silver Rule (Presumption of Inequality)
Via-Negativa:
Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.
In the Negative (Silver Rule, or via-negativa): The requirement to avoid the imposition of costs on that which others have born costs to obtain an interest in, without imposing costs upon that which others have likewise born costs to obtain an interest in.
And;
The Golden Rule (Presumption of Equality)
Via-Positiva:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
In the Positive(Golden Rule, or via-positiva): the requirement that we limit our actions to productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfers, free of the imposition of costs by externality, upon that which others have obtained by the same means.
As determined by;
Either any change, or the total change, in the inventory that all parties both internal and external to the action have born costs to obtain an interest in, without imposition of costs upon others directly or indirectly by externality.
The One Moral Law
The one law of Reciprocity that we call Natural Law, is this:
“The only moral actions are those that consist exclusively of productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer of demonstrated interests, free of imposition of costs by externality upon the demonstrated investments of others.”
So all displays, words, and deeds that are not immoral, are either amoral (not immoral) or moral (productive).
This doesn’t answer the question, what is a good life rather than one that is not immoral. That answer is either Aryan (acheviment, excellence), Pagan (to die a good death), Heathen (to live in harmony with nature) or christian (to do good works of charity).
Reciprocity (Full Version)
The natural law is (+)Sovereignty and (-)Reciprocity, in display word and deed, including reciprocity in speech (truthful speech) regardless of cost to the status(dominance, competence hierarch), within the limits of proportionality (in group defection) within the limits of the utility of cooperation (out groups).
“Within the limits of the utility of cooperation.”
There is no ideal. There are no ideals.
There is only what satisfies demand for infallibility.
Full Version of Reciprocity
Limiting our display word and deed to:
– Fully informed (truthful and complete);
… – Regardless of cost to the status, competence, or dominance hierarchy.
– Productive and;
– Voluntary transfer (or exchange, or imposition of costs upon);
– The Demonstrated interests of Others ;
– Either directly or indirectly (by externality)
– And liable and warrantied, within the limits of restitutability;
… – Within the limit of incentive for in-group defection;
… – Within The Limit of the Utility of future out-group Cooperation;
– Eliminating the incentive of retaliation and retaliation cycles,
– And imposition of costs upon the commons of trust by which others cooperate.
Let’s Explain Each of Those Criteria
( … )
Test of Reciprocity As Morality
Try To Falsify:
(a) Goods and bads refer to caloric income or loss, existential or projected.
(b) Morality refers to reciprocity.
(c) Reciprocity a necessity of the physical universe.
(d) The human biological reward system reacts like all others to gains(reduction of costs) and losses (costs).
(e) Complete Reciprocity requires: productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, free of imposition of costs upon the demonstrated interests of others by externality. However we maintain fairly accurate assessments of one another’s cost benefit to us.
(f) philosophical sophistry leads to undecidability on this subject is due largely to attempts to produce a via-positiva definition of morality – which is only possible for norms – instead of a via negativa definition: we can only know what is universally immoral (negative), what is moral(positive) is whatever is not immoral (negative). This is true for all knowledge, and why science defeated philosophy even in ethics and morality: because we can only know what is false, and trivially true, but anything that is not false and substantive is open to continuous revision.
(g) given the cost of calculation (reason), and given the cost of collecting information (evidence), the human mind wants to reduce costs by reliance on imitation and intuition (repetition of imitation). And therefore we want via-positiva means of determining good choices. So the market demand for via positiva morality exists, but the supply of imitative moral rules is produced by via negativa: what is not immoral.
(h) it is common for people to confuse the good (productive) with the moral(reciprocal). We conflate. It’s natural. But a question is only moral if it relates to others. It is only preferential if you prefer it, it is only good if others prefer it. For a moral condition to exist requires influence upon others by externality.
All those statements are falsifiable, You will not be able to succeed in falsifying them.
The Three Moral Biases
Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory:
1) Disgust: Sanctity/Degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).
2) Opportunity: Liberty/Oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor.
3) Empathy: Care/Harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Morality: Fairness/Cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
4) Loyalty: Loyalty/Betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s “one for all, and all for one.”
5) Hierarchy: Authority/Subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
As Rights to Demonstrated Interests
Of Haidt’s evolutionary origins of moral intuitions, three can be expressed as demonstrated individual interests:
1. Care/harm for others, protecting them from harm. (The asset of life and body.)
2. Proportionality/Cheating, Justice, treating others in proportion to their actions. (The asset of goods.)
3. Liberty/Oppression characterizes judgments in terms of whether subjects are tyrannized. (The asset of time, opportunity.)
And three others can be expressed as demonstrated community interests covering social capital. Which obviously enough, have been, and continue to be, mirrored in corporate shareholder agreements.
4. In-Group Loyalty/In-Group Betrayal to/of your group, family, nation, polity.
5. Respect/Authority/Subversion for tradition and legitimate authority.
6. Purity/Sanctity/Degradation/Disgust, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions.
Note that the male reproductive strategy among chimpanzees as well as humans evolved to kill off males in opposing groups and collect females. And that females evolved to place greater emphasis on children and females than the (fungible) tribe.
As such the distribution of moral intuitions varies in intensity between the feminine (1-3) and the masculine (4-6). This difference in moral intuitions roughly reflects the voting pattern we have seen since the enfranchisement of women into the electorate: an increase in the use of political violence to produce an increase in the female reproductive strategy (individual dysgenic reproduction) and a decrease in the male reproductive strategy (tribal eugenic reproduction).
Which Will Also Show up In Political Biases
Feminine Consumptive (left, consumptive), Ascendant Male Productive (libertarian), and Dominant or Established Male Capitalizing (right, conservative)
But We Are Frequently Immoral
Unfortunately, while the via-negativa version is more accurate and less open to misinterpretation, the via-Positiva is more popular for the simple reason that it is more open to intentional misinterpretation – as a POSITIVE demand for behavior rather than a NEGATIVE demand that we eschew behavior.
And men and women are natural deceivers in pursuit of discounts on their acquisitions. So we see people claim that it is moral to impose costs upon others. We see this false claim in (a) demand for sacrifice rather than limiting demand to non-imposition upon others. (b) demand for positive freedoms that impose costs upon others, rather than negative freedoms that prevent us from imposing costs upon others. (c) demand for ‘human rights’ the last few of which impose costs upon others, rather than Natural Rights, which demand we impose no costs upon others.
And via negativa prohibition on the imposition of costs, is something all can do, while demand for the imposition of costs upon others is not something we can all do, nor can we pay such demands, nor is it clear that by paying such demand we do other than increase the immorality of such demands.
So the one universal moral law of sentient beings is the via-Negativa form of do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you, and the via-Positiva form is open to use by fraudulent pretense.
The Seen and Unseen
Now, enter the seen and unseen: It turns out that the optimum group strategy for any and every polity, is to exhaust opportunity for cooperation as a cost of converting immoral people into moral people – but only on an interpersonal, not political basis. So if we use government charity or professional charities we simply increase immoral behavior in the government, in the charity, and in the polity – because subsidy of immorality always serves to increase immorality (the chief means of immorality is reproduction of children one cannot afford, and entrapping others in the moral hazard of supporting your children, rather than additional children of their own.)
Christian Forgiveness and The Natural Law of Torts
This is the economic strategy of via-positiva Christian forgiveness, and via-negativa of Aristocratic (Militia) Law of Tort. The vast crimes of the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and especially Islam) in creating the Abrahamic Dark Age and the destruction of the great ancient civilizations, aside, the economic reality is that interpersonal responsibility for the conversion of others from immoral to moral actors, and resorting to legal (communal) prosecution when it fails, is the reason for Christianity’s spread of wealth wherever it goes.
While western man evolved individual Sovereignty, the Jury, Thang, and Senate, the independent Empirical Judiciary, the independent common law of torts, using the natural law of reciprocity, that strategy is maximized, by the same personal responsibility for one’s behavior, the domestication of one’s children, domesticating the underclasses, and domesticating the foreigners lacking long traditions in individual Sovereignty, Individual responsibility, Natural Law by Exhaustive Forgiveness but not exhaustive tolerance. And then resorting to the commons to punish those who cannot adapt to that moral standard.
Morals Are Not Relative but Reflect Genetic Distance
We can and do certainly possess different moral biases, and we can and do certainly possess normative moral biases. This is true. But that does not mean that moral differences are not decidable in matters of conflict. We can use moral biases to seek allies. We can trade across moral biases when we have common interests. And we can decide moral between moral biases when we are in conflict. that means that there exist an objectively decidable morality, but that each of us requires reproductive moral allies, uses moral competitors when necessary, and resorts to objective morality in matters of conflict resolution.
There is no such thing as moral relativism. We possess moral biases, both genetic, familial, and normative. We seek allies, trading partners, and judges in matters of conflict. It is entirely possible to judge within families, within norms, within trading partners, and within competitors, by objective, scientific, rational means: natural law of non-imposition. We may not like this but then knowing that such decidability exists at the familial, normative, trade, and competitor ‘distances’ requires us only to understand the criteria at the familial, normative, trade, and competitor distances. We sacrifice for kin and competitors will not bear sacrifice. We need not benefit from kin but we must benefit from trading partners. And so on. The greater the genetic and moral distance the more objective the criteria of decidability. But those differences remain decidable. Why? Because the only by which we can escape retaliation and preserve cooperation is that of the non-imposition of costs upon one another.
Why Does Reciprocity Serve as Natural Law?
Because it is apparently impossible to contradict reciprocity in cooperation (ethics), and as such it provides perfect decidability in all contexts of cooperation at all scales in all times, and under all conditions. That’s what the words moral and ethical mean: “Reciprocity”.
Economics of Life in a Physical Universe
Because We are biased for pro-sociality and morality because it is always and everywhere in our interest to both (a) reduce conflict and enemies, (b) cooperate on production, (c) generate incentives for future cooperation.
There is no caloric efficiency available to life forms like cooperation in a division of labor under reciprocity (non-parasitism) and proportionality (preservation of incentive not to defect)
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.
Morals Reflect Genetic Distance
MORALS ARE NOT RELATIVE, BUT REFLECT GENETIC DISTANCE
We can and do certainly possess different moral biases, and we can and do certainly possess normative moral biases. This is true. But that does not mean that moral differences are not decidable in matters of conflict. We can use moral biases to seek allies. We can trade across moral biases when we have common interests. And we can decide moral between moral biases when we are in conflict. that means that there exist an objectively decidable morality, but that each of us requires reproductive moral allies, uses moral competitors when necessary, and resorts to objective morality in matters of conflict resolution.
There is no such thing as moral relativism. We possess moral biases, both genetic, familial, and normative. We seek allies, trading partners, and judges in matters of conflict. It is entirely possible to judge within families, within norms, within trading partners, and within competitors, by objective, scientific, rational means: natural law of non-imposition. We may not like this but then knowing that such decidability exists at the familial, normative, trade, and competitor ‘distances’ requires us only to understand the criteria at the familial, normative, trade, and competitor distances. We sacrifice for kin and competitors will not bear sacrifice. We need not benefit from kin but we must benefit from trading partners. And so on. The greater the genetic and moral distance the more objective the criteria of decidability. But those differences remain decidable. Why? Because the only by which we can escape retaliation and preserve cooperation is that of the non-imposition of costs upon one another.
Moral Objectivity or Relativity?
[M]orality is as absolute as mathematics. Everything else is not morality but competitive strategy: contractual variations upon objective morality. Just as all law is as absolute as mathematics but all legislation contractual variation (or command).
The conflation of morality with strategy, and law with command is a long-standing problem in rational philosophy.
The law and morality are identical in content. Group Strategy and Group Contract are merely utilitarian.
Cooperation evolved after individual survival. For cooperation to be rational it must be mutually beneficial. For it to be mutually beneficial it must be (in the aggregate) non-parasitic.
We raise our children, demonstrate kin selection with kin, and we cooperate with non-kin, and we compete with those with whom we do not cooperate.
So:
Productive
Fully informed.
Warrantied.
Voluntary Transfer
Free of Negative Externality of the same criteria
equals
beneficial cooperation.
Morality is an absolute. Norms are merely tactics.
Legislation is not necessarily lawful. Norms are not necessarily moral.
As such, we can measure whether some cultures are more moral than others, by measuring the degree of suppression of parasitism (free riding) that is suppressed by law and norm.
So not only is morality absolute, but the relative moral content of different cultures is absolute.
That this difference determines economic velocity, and economic velocity affords us greater morality (if we choose it) is the more interesting area of inquiry.
MORALITY
If we analyze the common prohibitions of all moral codes under all family structures, and we remove moral constraints that are purely ritualistic, these moral codes are universally reducible to necessary prohibitions on what we would call ‘property violations’ in an effort to facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation.
Evolutionary, Biological, Intuitionistic, Moral Prohibition Spectrum:
1) Agression: Harm/Oppression,
2) Free Riding: Parasitism
3) Trust: Subversion/Betrayal/Cheating,
4) Purity: Inobservance of Norms/Behavioral impurity/Pollution
All of these prohibitions are reducible to shareholder rights and obligations.
Humans universally demonstrate a greater interest in punishing moral violations than we demonstrate self-interest. In fact, we justify our pre-cognitive moral punishments without even being able to articulate why we hold them. We are wired by evolution for morality.
We evolved language and punishments for violations of these moral intuitions in the form of criminal, ethical, and moral prohibitions:
1. Violence (asymmetry of force)
2. Theft (asymmetry of control)
3. Fraud (false information)
4. Omission (Omitting information)
5. Obscurantism (Obscuring information)
6. Obstruction (Inhibiting someone else’s transaction)
7. Externalization (externalizing costs of any transaction)
8. Free Riding (using externalities for self-benefit)
9. Socializing Losses (externalization to commons)
10. Privatizing Gains (appropriation of commons)
11. Rent Seeking (organizational free riding)
12. Corruption ( organized rent seeking)
13. Conspiracy (organized indirect theft)
14. Extortion (Organized direct theft)
15. Conversion (Religious or normative theft of norms)
16. Immigration. (dilution of norms, institutions, genes)
17. War (organized violence for the purpose of theft)
18. Conquest. (reorganization of all property and relations)
19. Genocide. (extermination of kin and genetic future)
PROPERTY
We can empirically observe that people treat a broad spectrum of things as their property, and that they intuit violations of that property, and act to defend that property. Those things that people seek to acquire, accumulate and preserve are:
I. Self:
Life, Body, Memories, Mind, Attention, Time, and Liberty
II. Status and Class (reputation)
Social Status
Reputation
III. Kin and Interpersonal (Relationship) Property
Mates (access to sex/reproduction)
Children (genetic reproduction)
Consanguineous Relations (tribal and family ties)
IV. Sustainable Patterns of Reproduction, Production, Distribution and Trade
Friends, Associates and Cooperative Relations
Trade Routes
V. Several (Personal) Property
Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”
Physical Body and Several Property: Those things we claim a monopoly of control over.
VI. Shareholder Property
Shares in property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (claims for partial ownership)
VII. Title Property (Weights and Measures)
Trademarks and Brands (prohibitions on fraudulent transfers within a geography).
VIII. Common Property, or “Commons” (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.”
(i) Informational commons: public speech, real-time and recorded media.
(ii) 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.
(iii) Physical Commons: the territory, it’s waterways, parks, buildings, improvements and infrastructure.
(iv) 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.
(v) Monuments (art and artifacts).
Monuments claim territory, demonstrate wealth, and provide one of the longest most invariable normative and economic returns that any culture can construct as a demonstration of conspicuous production (wealth), and as such, conspicuous excellence. (hence why competing monuments represent an invasion. Temples, Churches, Museums, Sculptures being the most obvious examples of cultural claim or conquest. )
SO, THEN, WHAT IS EMPIRICALLY OBSERVABLE OBJECTIVE MORALITY?
If we eliminate all prohibitions of parasitism (imposed costs) then what moral actions remain?
(i) Productive (non-parasitic, increase in subjective value);
(ii) Truthful (Fully Informed);
(iii) Warrantied (by oath);
(iv) Voluntary Transfer of Property;
(v) Free of Imposed Cost by Externality.
It is those criteria that define an ethical (interpersonally moral) and moral (externally moral) action. And any action that does not meet those criteria is not ethical and moral.
The simple rule of ethical and moral action: “My actions cannot cause another to bear a cost against his property-en-toto.”
WHAT MEANS OF SURVIVAL REMAIN IF WE PROHIBIT THE IMPOSITION OF COSTS?
(1) Dividends from the construction and maintenance of the voluntary organization of production, distribution, and trade paid for by forgoing opportunities for parasitic consumption (acting ethically and morally).
(2) One gains access to opportunity for cooperation and consumption in the market.
(3) One gains earnings from the personal production of goods and services in the market for goods and services. (income from profits)
(4) Dividends for maintenance of the commons in all its forms.
(5) Dividends for the policing (defense) of the commons in all its forms.