Civilizations

What Is The Basis Of Civilization?

IS IT LANGUAGE, SCIENCE, RELIGION, RACE, POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, OR A MIXTURE OF OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES?

Civilizations do not Die a Natural Death, they Fail

The Production of Commons

Civilization consists in the evolutionary institutional production of commons to defeat time at scale

POLITICS: PRODUCTION OF COMMONS

IT ALL BEGINS WITH THE MILITIA:

Our ancestors combined horse wheel and bronze.
They evolved entrepreneurial warfare – for profit.
Entrepreneurial warfare for profit is voluntary, and risky.
Men must be recruited for voluntary warfare (raiding).
And profits must be distributed meritocratically – or one cannot recruit men.
One must give an oath insuring his fellows.
One must hold formation or plan regardless of risk.
One may not defect (show cowardice).
And one must report (testify) truthfully – or all may die
So from this entrepreneurial, contractual, warfare, and one’s control over the proceeds, We developed contractualism: meritocracy, sovereignty, and rule of law of reciprocity

Sovereignty Is Only Possible Under Natural Law.
Natural Law is Only Possible Under Market Law.
Market Law is only Possible Under Common Law.
Common Law is only possible under Testimonial Law.
Testimonial Law is only Possible Under Testimonial Truth.
Testimonial Truth is only Possible Under Physical Law.
Physical Law is Possible only under Determinism.
Determinism is Possible only if the universe demonstrates Regularity.
Regularity is possible to know only if we possess Memory and Reason.
Memory creates the possibility of acting to alter the course of regular events.
Reason creates the possibility of inventing increasingly complex means of acting.
Acting allows us to obtain the difference between our expenditure and capture of energy.
Capturing energy allows us to defeat the dark forces of ignorance, entropy. and time.

Western civilization is not the first, but it is the fastest. In the prehistoric, ancient, and modern worlds, sovereignty expands human ability most rapidly for the simple reason that market rule, limited by natural law, creates both the most incentive to innovate and change, and the least resistance to innovation and change, that are possible at any given moment.

Sovereignty: Sovereignty in exchange for reciprocity.
Via Negativa: limit display word and deed to the reciprocal
Via Positiva: reciprocal insurance of other’s sovereignty

Mindfulness (Harmony): Professional military aristocracy, a Militia of every able bodied man, creates full time military: All men in military earn respect and are given respect for doing their duty; all duty is necessary and valuable for the success of the group in a high risk venture; rank is by demonstrated ability and merit (although often of families), leadership (captains, generals, kings) are chosen by the men who choose who to follow. In other words, every man gets a share of honor, and buys the franchise. This is the source of western harmony, and it is the strongest source of harmony available to man. (And is different from all other peoples).

Social Harmony: Corporatism, or, rather, the ability to create high trust commons, and to specialize in an activity on behalf of the village or town. Westerners didn’t need to invent the corporation – we practiced it as our default social order.

Advantage: Continuous rapid maneuver, innovation, adaptation, of the entire polity; the suppression of the reproduction of the underclasses.

Weakness: Rally Together Only Under Threat.

Vulnerability: Extremely vulnerable to soft threats (immigration, conversion, undermining, commercial overextension consuming commons, military overextension under martial entrepreneurship. ie: too tolerant).

Result: Excellent in military matters but weak in defense against religious cultural and informational harms.

TRANSACTION COST EVOLUTION OF GOVERNMENT

[A]t first humans had to deal with small communities where the threat of ostracism almost equals a death threat, but as those groups grew in distance of relationships, so did the incentives to impose costs upon others in favor of oneself and of one’s family.

The growth of transaction costs led to a demand for an authority in order to provide dispute resolution, from this, people formed governments as a way to suppress local transaction costs and replace it with a global cost (taxation).

The opportunities for rational cooperation created by government resulted in great wealth, a lot of which went into the hands of government. Ideally, suppression of the centralized costs (bureaucratic and political parasitism) would follow, while retaining suppression of the local costs and the commons built under this suppression (particularly, the property definitions themselves).

In reality, a class warfare for the control of government went on, which led to democracy, that in practice results in redistribution of the rents to the lower classes (the majority) in a winner takes all contest. From this point on, dysgenia and demand for authority follow.

P.S.: To any propertarian that reads this, I know about other topics such as the axiomatic vs theoretical knowledge issue, group evolutionary strategies, family structures, the failure of the enlightenment, the great lies, heroism, personality (autistic vs solipsistic and other issues), demonstrated intelligence, and so on, but I do not feel confident enough on those issues to even try writing about them yet.