[T]HIS WEEK’s ASPIE POST
Aspies tend to love everyone. The difficulty in empathizing, common rejection, and desire for connection with others makes all successful connections more enjoyable. The hard part to manage comes in three:

1) It’s hard to find relations since listening to others most of their language consists of signals we consider either meaningless, tedious or confusing. So you must learn patience to listen and try to ask about how and why people feel the way they do. Most of us understand spoken emotions. Meanwhile the autistic impulse tries to control you into avoiding exactly what you are trying to accomplish. This is why ssri’s are so effective: they dull the impulse and allow you to practice building the strength of will over the autistic impulse. Social anxiety disorder is controlled by the same means. We must see the autism spectrum as excess in-uterine suppression of the growth of the self. And that we must assist the growth of the self to compensate. We tend to think as engineers today rather than gardeners and foresters. The mind is constructed more like a tree and some artful bonsai may be needed.

2) It is easy to alienate relations via over sharing minutia fascinating to the autistic mind because system-thought provides constant touch stones amidst sensory chaos in socially and emotionally dense environments. So developing self monitoring is necessary and it’s very hard work. Again the problem is severity: some of us are weakly affected and can rely on will. Others more so and require help in training. Others need chemical assistance to suppress the autistic impulse. And some of us lack sufficient self to imagine the very idea of self monitoring – and it is those people that are non functional.

3) Once you mature having not experienced all the “silly” distractions of normal minds, you can gain this sense of superiority that comes with expertise in anything, and you can lose your desire to engage with (boring, dull, stupid) normals. This requires acceptance that only comes with age: normals have different feelings and needs and they usually fail to mature intellectually as far as we do – or rather they stop maturing at much earlier ages. So the only technique I have developed is love. I keep working a problem in my head in order to keep the big black scary machine busy, and I merely enjoy the company of people like a warm bath or sunny day. But what has surprised me is that simple and good people do not engage in as much signaling with false intellectualism. So I prefer the company of common people for my emotional health, and the company of competitive and intellectual people for my mental health.

So how do we socialize? The trick for us is to develop something we can share with others that is interesting. So that we are valuable to the conversation.

My strategy is to seek to help everyone I encounter in some small way. This usually involves getting to know them while looking for some opportunity to assist.

And in that act of inquiry I show interest in others: seeking to understand, not to agree.

That’s my lesson for this week to aspies.

[O]nce you learn propertarianism’s basic principles: acquisition, property en toto, inventory, transaction cost, opportunity cost, cooperation, suppression of free riding, reproductive strategy and group evolutionary strategy, and all speech as negotiation for acquisition, you replace totalitarian Freudian psychology and cosmopolitan sociology with universal amoral, unloaded, rational incentives.

And when you do that you see all psychologism get as a vast language of deception and manipulation for encouraging parasitism and consumption.

Humanity like all other creatures exists in the physical universe, and has evolved the means of estimating the future and acting to change it, capturing the difference for his benefit.

The only ‘shame’ is theft. The only oath, not to steal.

[T]HE SILVER RULE IS THE ORIGIN OF COOPERATION

THEFT
The only ‘shame’ is theft. The only oath, not to lie, cheat, steal or impose harm.

The summary of this ethic is: “Do not unto others as you would not want done unto you.” The anglo saxons were right and the Christians wrong.

MORALITY (RULE OF COOPERATION)
The silver rule is necessary for cooperation. The golden rule buys options on future cooperation – but encourages parasitism.

ACQUIRE
We act upon that which we have acquired without imposition of costs upon that which others have acquired by doing the same.

COOPERATE
We act in concert to voluntarily produce common goods and services.

WARRANTY
We warranty the truthfulness of our speech by due diligence in the cleansing of error, bias, imagination, wishful thinking, and deceit from our speech.

INSURE
We insure one another against the imposition of costs by collective suppression of free riding by collective prosecution of those who impose costs upon others.

INVEST
We invest in the construction of commons for the production of returns, and we deny one another the ability to impose costs upon them.

Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine

[T]HE THEORETICAL HIERARCHY OF ORGANIZATIONAL EVOLUTION
(useful idea)
4 – LAW: Customers, Brand, Channels, and Income Stream, Predictability
3 – THEORY: Innovation (business model), Investment, Possibility
2 – HYPOTHESIS: Talent, Effort, Searching For A Business Model
1 – FREE ASSOCIATION: Idea (Free Association)

All human endeavors follow this principle just as most physical evolutionary organisms follow the “fibonacci, golden ratio, nautilus” sequence.

The evolution of business is no different from the evolution of any other field of knowledge except that time is one’s enemy, competition is brutal, and testing is ever-present and inescapable.

Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine

[M]en have had a much harder time taming women’s irrationality and impulsivity than they have their own.

We kill off troublesome men. We just constrain troublesome women.

We spent tends of thousands of years incrementally suppressing male behavior while merely containing female behavior.

But we turned the ballot box into Pandora’s box and let loose all the evils in the world.

Men have no more place in midwifery and nursery than women have in politics and war.

[A] market for consumer goods and a market for commons both benefit from producers and consumers.

But I am an Aspie. I hate conflict. I don’t shun from it. That would be immoral. But I hate it none the less. I grew up in an environment so horrible that no one would envy it. And my dream world consists of one in which we compete but there is no conflict.

And our current governmental structure, which evolved to suit middle class merchants and agrarians who needed to find a way to allocate scarce resources in order to create necessary commons, is completely inadequate for an era in which the American empire consists of various regions and subcultures put into conflict by constant social engineering – the only purpose of which appears to maintain the bureaucracy and american international military power.

We can make a better world.

Truth, Contract, Market Government, Regionalism.

(important piece) (on the existence of gods)

—“You’re one of my favorite Catholic Atheists”—

[W]ell, thank you.

Although, while a scientist, I am not an atheist. I am just what is called a Naturalist, and not a Supernaturalist. I understand that Gods exist. They exist as numbers exist. If I was an atheist you wouldn’t catch me praying (talking to god) regularly. Which I do. Often. I just have a very esoteric concept of the nature of a god’s existence. And I separate the existence of gods from primitive notions of religion.

I am not sure what the difference is between a supernaturally existential deity, and a worldwide knowledge of socrates, or a regional knowledge of a saint, or a local knowledge of ancestors, and praying to the knowledge of that personality, and those memories, for love, support, advice, and counsel.

For various reasons I am fairly certain prayer ‘works’. I am fairly certain gods ‘work’. I am fairly certain that gods, ritual, and prayer are a competitive advantage. And whether one chooses to explain away all of this scientifically as psychology, or accept it metaphysically, or embody it supernaturally, is merely a function of one’s abilities, biases, and preferences.

As far as I know gods exist as numbers exist, and gods ‘work’ for the same reason numbers work. There are consequences to the existence and use of numbers that transcend human abilities to perceive and conceptualize. If you construct various axioms, the resulting patterns can be rich sources of information – especially when combined with new experiences. If you construct stories of gods, heroes and saints there is no difference. So as far as I know, the study of gods, heroes and saints literally reconstructs them in your mind, and you can ask them questions if you learn how. It is even more useful to do the same with one’s ancestors since you carry not only those ideas but their genes, and the biases and benefits that they passed down to you.

Our ancestors thought in physicality or spirituality because they did not have the concept of INFORMATION that is the model we use today to understand the physical world. And it is INFORMATION that economists, philosophers and behaviorists such as myself use as the model for describing the human world, and not spirituality or physicality.

I have no idea if information in my head, yours, and others, interacts in some quantum fashion. I can’t state it one way or the other. I suspect that if it does it is so subtle that it is only accessible to us in periods of self honesty. But if in fact the information in our heads creates synchronicity when we are subject to similar stimuli then that would produce an equal effect. So either way it is irrelevant. It just works. And group prayer or ritual would construct new axioms and biases and produce similarly synchronous knowledge in all of us.

Now religion – as in a ritualistic group gathering – is something else altogether because the repetition of ritual, the submission to the throng, and the gregariousness we fell to the pack, all of which are present in the church or temple, produces a profound feeling of safety similar to that felt by our animal cousins when running with the herd or pack. It is this feeling we call ‘spiritual’ or ‘submission’: it’s a mild euphoria that spiritualists seek to amplify through practice. And it is one of the most universal and desired feelings of mankind.

Combining this experience of mild euphoria with knowledge of gods, heroes and saints produces a form of honesty within the self that we cannot produce by other means. It is this clarity or honesty that gives religions their power. We can, if we pray, or contemplate, use the mythological structure of information, along without our existing knowledge, to find solutions – too seek and obtain answers as ‘insights’. And at worst we can find comfort in the throng. (Which we now overload with consumption until we realize it is meaningless, and that we have been deceived – if not drugged – by commercial information.)

As yet we do not know how to produce the same effect as religion and prayer by any other means. I suspect I know how to do it. The question is whether it is possible to provide sufficient incentive to train enough people to do it to cause a reformation of the methods by which we teach every generation the Christian Discipline of Love into something more modern. I struggle with this problem and it’s probably the hardest problem I’ve tried to solve.

And that’s saying something…..

[I]f you adopt paternalism: that your kin are an extended family, and that you will work with other extended families to cooperate non-parasitically with all other extended families, and that we produce nations not states, then you get this wonderful ability for us to religion, culture, race, class and caste.

We struggle with a certain problem: that while small nations are better for the development of community and mutual insurance, large states are materially valuable for the conduct of war and less so for trade bargaining. But once we have nuclear weapons it is very hard to violate borders without committing suicide. So there appears to be no reason for large states other than aggressive warfare.

And yes, some territory is objectively better than other territory. And some genes are objectively better than other genes. And we start from different levels of development.

But states are as much a barrier to development as they are to improvement precisely because of scale. Scale increases the ability to engage in corruption. With scale we find anonymity. With anonymity we have informational asymmetry. With informational asymmetry we have opportunity for corruption (privatization of commons).

So you know, I’m a CLASSIST, in that i recognize the problem of carrying a large and counterproductive underclass, but I am not a RACIST in that I want all groups to transcend the animal, become fully human, and evolve into what we imagine as gods.
And its possible. We had it right. Unfortunately we blew it. And now we have to fix it.

[P]ROPERTARIAN CLASS STRUCTURES

(draft)(note that education is a commercial class)

Martial Class (suppression of parasitism)
—Kings and Generals
—Knights(professionals), Soldiers
—Judges, and Sherriffs

Commons Class (Construction of Commons)
—Infrastructure Institutions
—Civic Organizations
—Beauty and Maintenance
—Disaster Services

Insurer Class (Insurance)
—Priesthood and Intellectuals
—Insurers, and Insurers of last resort
—Medicine and Nursing
—Mothering and Child Care
—Elder Care
—Poor Care

Commercial Class (organization and execution of production)
—Major Corporate Alliances
—Finance, Banking
—Business and Entrepreneurship
—Distribution and Trade

Producer Classes
—Calculators
——Scientists (discover)
——Engineers (build)
——Programmers (instruct)
——Accountants (measure)
——Project Managers (time)
—Artist Class
…
—Labor Class
…
—Dependent Class (incapable of engaging in goods and service production)
…
—Out of Sight Class (incapable of engaging in commons production)
…
Criminal Class (forcing costs on commons and production)
…

Eli Harman

One of Robert Axelrod’s findings from studying iterated prisoner’s dilemma competitions (“The Evolution of Cooperation”) is that the standard “tit for tat” strategy can be improved upon by adding an element of forgiveness, to break otherwise insoluable and never-ending patterns of recrimination. Clinging steadfastly to vengeance as an aim, when peace and cooperation are within reach, is an example of the sunk cost fallacy.

Quite simply, our parents and grandparents could afford a lot of folly that we cannot, now that they have squandered our inheritance on empty signaling.

—[M]uslims everywhere (or rather i should say most Muslims i have encountered) do not accept the logical and normative distinction that western philosophy effectuates between the truth-value of statements and the origin of those statements. This is the true nexus of the conflict between Islam and the West. It is a real conflict with stunning consequences.—-Ayelam Valentine Agaliba

[P]olitical Philosophy is a lot easier when you just start from the premise that all goods are hypothetical, all bads are not, and that the only means of accumulating the knowledge to determine good from bad is exchange. This eliminates the fallacy that any of us know what is in fact good for all, other than institutions that allow us to choose any possible good but prohibit us from pursuing any known bad are a de facto good by prohibiting bads.

This is contrary to human cognition because we evolved for negotiating cooperation not truth telling. It is contrary to human desire, because we desire consensus. It is contrary to political incentive because it limits political power.

We all think we are ‘right’. But the only ‘right’ we can know is trade. Just as the only way we know whether we engaged in production or engaged in waste, consumption, or entertainment, is if others trade for what we create.

Information and volition tell us what ‘right and wrong’ do not.

[T]here is very little difference between the negotiated construction of the Pentateuch, or the Bible, and the American Constitution: they were the product of committees constructing the criteria for civil law. This is quite contradictory to the Indo European Tradition in which law EVOLVES.

But these things are constructs of man for the purpose of governing man.

[W]e start with Zoroaster who is the first philosopher.

—“Zoroaster sees the human condition as the mental struggle between aša (truth) and druj (lie). The cardinal concept of aša—which is highly nuanced and only vaguely translatable—is at the foundation of all Zoroastrian doctrine, including that of Ahura Mazda (who is aša), creation (that is aša), existence (that is aša) and as the condition for free will.
The purpose of humankind, like that of all other creation, is to sustain aša. For humankind, this occurs through active participation in life and the exercise of constructive thoughts, words and deeds.
Elements of Zoroastrian philosophy entered the West through their influence on Judaism and Middle Platonism and have been identified as one of the key early events in the development of philosophy.[32] Among the classic Greek philosophers, Heraclitus is often referred to as inspired by Zoroaster’s thinking.[33]
In 2005, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy ranked Zarathustra as first in the chronology of philosophers. Zarathustra’s impact lingers today due in part to the system of rational ethics he founded called Mazda-Yasna. The word Mazda-Yasna is avestan and is translated as “Worship of Wisdom” in English. Zoroastrians later educated the Greeks, who used a similar term, philosophy, or “love of wisdom,” to describe the search for ultimate truth.
Zoroaster emphasized the freedom of the individual to choose right or wrong and individual responsibility for one’s deeds. This personal choice to accept aša or arta (the divine order), and shun druj (ignorance and chaos) is one’s own decision and not a dictate of Ahura Mazda. For Zarathustra, by thinking good thoughts, saying good words, and doing good deeds (e.g. assisting the needy or doing good works) we increase this divine force aša or arta in the world and in ourselves, celebrate the divine order, and we come a step closer on the everlasting road to being one with the Creator. Thus, we are not the slaves or servants of Ahura Mazda, but we can make a personal choice to be his co-workers, thereby refreshing the world and ourselves.”—-

You will note that this is a pretty indo-european, indo-iranian, indo-hindu line of thinking. Yes it is magian. But he has no other method of expressing the ideas as ultimate goods.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIG LIE

There is a very big difference between “You Shall Worship One God”, “There is One Supreme God”, and “Only One God Exists”.

There is a big difference between ‘the creator’s truth’, as the only available means of expression of truthful correspondence (and living a good life by personal action), and the assertion that god exists and we must obey him (authoritarianism).

There is a big difference between the variable oral tradition of mythical gods and the invariable written tradition of supernaturally existential gods.

So how did we get from the search for truth to The Big Lie?

Who invented the Big Lie?

—” Pentateuch was composed in the Persian period (roughly 520–320 BCE), as a result of tensions between the Jewish landowners who had stayed in Judah during the Babylonian captivity and claimed Abraham as the “father” through whom they traced their right to the land, and the returning “Priestly” exiles who based their claim to dominance on Moses and the Exodus tradition.”—

The Big Lie was invented to lay a claim to land.

Moses and Abraham appear to be entirely fictional characters, used to justify the retention of property in Judea.

A big lie repeated often and proudly eventually appears as truth. The cost of chanting pays for the investment in belief.
The big lies worked (voice of god) in the ancient world (babylon and Judah), they worked in the roman empire (christianity), they worked in the modern world (Marx, Boaz, Freud, and to a lesser degree Cantor, Mises, Rothbard).

And reached culmination with Humanism(universalism), Postmodernism(social and verbal construction of reality), Feminism (that man is evil), Democracy(that majority possesses wisdom).

We cure the big lies with truth.

Over and over again.

[T]he Technologies of Cooperation

1) Tribal Hunter Gatherer -> Steppe/Desert -> Agrarian -> Urban -> (Slum?)
2) Headman -> Chieftain -> King -> President/Prime Minister -> (Judge?)
3) Memory -> Oral Tradition -> Written -> Printing -> Media -> (Digital Records?)
4) Norm -> Religion -> Law -> Credit -> (Digital Reputation?)
5) Spiritualism-> Mythos-> Religion-> Reason -> Pseudoscience -> Science -> Truth
6) Animism-> Polytheism-> Monotheism-> Reason-> PseudoScientism-> Trade.
7) Property -> Barter -> Money -> Interest and Credit -> Fiat Money -> (Baskets?)
8) Property -> Wealth -> Partnerships -> Banks -> Central Banks -> ( stocks?)
9) Pairing-Off -> Counting -> Recording -> Balanced Accounting -> Financialization -> (?)
10) Tribal -> Serial -> Poly -> Paternal -> Traditional -> Nuclear -> (Individual?)

—“Q: I came to be aware [of] Julian Jaynes’ thesis materials. Seems to jive with your theme, Curt. You alluding to a similar theme when referencing the Pentateuch, or the Bible?”—Mark Palmer

[G]reat question Mark. Great Question.

Well, I don’t really agree with how Jaynes is stating it, but I agree that the ‘separateness’ of the mind, and it’s self criticism, is a fairly recent invention in human history. You can see it if you talk to native americans and unexposed south american indians. Their distinction between the dream world and the rational (self critical) world is not bifurcated. It took me a while to understand this. They’re also far less verbally capable. So I suspect that the evolution of language and the evolution of the mind from from intuition are produced by the same evolutionary consequences.

I mean women are definitely unable to control the noise in their heads as well as men are – this is the difference in our operating methods. I’d have a nervous breakdown if I had to be a woman for a day.

Well, I’m trying to make the statement that the both the hebrew and the christian-greek-roman bible were constructed by means very similar to the construction of the constitution.

But why is there such a difference between the content of archaic religion and the content modern of law? Or between the regulation of the roman empire, and the regulation of women, slaves, and the masses of mediterranean poor?

The difference is PROPERTY. The asset of poor people is charity and cooperation. The asset of propertied people is property.
Religion for regulation of norms (opportunity and insurance) and law for regulation of property (physical things).

So what does that mean for our future? I think I have that figured out. But I want to eliminate the artificial distinction between Law(aristocracy), Philosophy(middle class) and Religion(poor).

These technologies all serve the same purpose: regulation of classes.

Curt

[Y]OU SEE THE TEMPLARS HAD A GOOD DEAL: ROOM AND BOARD.

And you see ISIS doing the same.
And we see Ukrainian Volunteers dong the same.
And you saw american revolutionary soldiers doing it.
And you saw european soldiers throughout history do it.

The central problem of raising an army is not weapons, it is merely the money necessary to supply room and board for those men who prefer to fight for change rather than do whatever it is at their disposal.

If you ask men to bring a weapon, they will. But you must be able to feed, shelter, and direct them.

Once you have men and weapons, you have an army, and an army can take whatever it wants or needs. And by the act of merely taking, it disrupts the economy so significantly that little else need be done.

What the Islamists do well is (a) live on few resources, and (b) distribute money effectively through channels, and (c) make use of a vast surplus of men.

Western men are in surplus. Money, Distribution, and Communication are not complicated.

Moral authority. A set of Demands, A plan. Room and Board.

Simple men think in tactics. General think in logistics.

You see, the more advanced an economy, the more fragile it is.

(from elsewhere)

I don’t understand Shaun.

I think people who have been following me for a few years know why I use FB and why I run all these “tests”. Maybe it isn’t obvious any longer. I construct theories. I test them. These theories are designed to help me understand what I don’t. So I will spend a year making some set of arguments until nothing new is coming back..Ad move on to another of the same. I worked my way through the libertarian. I worked through the nrx. i’m working through the alt-right – and I try to understand.

Along the way I need to pick up a few people who can construct arguments. That’s happening.

I am not trying to start a cult.

(i’m trying to create a plan to start a war)”

[E]VOLUTION OF METHODS OF REGULATION

1) RELIGION – threat of ostracization. (culture)
2) LAW – threat of punishment, loss of property or liberty. (state)
3) CREDIT – threat of loss of consumption. (suppliers)
4) SOFTWARE – threat of loss of opportunity. (friends)

Religion records your birth, promises, and deaths.
Law produces a history of your infractions.
Credit records a history of your impulsivity
Software records a history of your non-conformity.

You are always at the mercy of your neighbors. But every time population increases and with it anonymity, we develop a new means of constructing reputations in oder to ensure conformity.

(Fuk. And, I’m working at bringing it about… I’m gonna join the Mr Robot Society. )

(very important concepts) (important piece)

[W]eber was right, in that the evolution of civilization was achieved through improvements in various kinds of ‘calculation’ – a term which will not sufficiently convey the depth of importance or meaning to the uninitiated.

CALCULATION (ability to ‘think’ and plan)

– Perception, Comparison, Decidability, and Memory
We are somewhat aware of the vast leaps in Perception, Comparison, Decidability, and Memory: that arose from Writing, Numbers and Arithmetic, Accounting, Mathematics, Calculus, and Statistics (which are different disciplines).

– Planning (production)
Those of us who learn economics understand the institutions of Money, Prices, Credit, Interest, Banking, Bonds, Stocks, Financial Insurance, and how they assist us in cooperating at vast scales.

– Evolution and Equilibria (discovery)
And some of us are aware of the vast change in human thinking that arose from the concept of evolution (self organizing). This is not limited to biological evolution (information organization in equilibria), but also to economics(information organization in equilibria), but also to the evolution of scientific knowledge (information organization in equilibria) in which knowledge is that which survives from free association, to hypothesis, to theory, and to law;

– Existence (operational naming)
And I think fewer people are aware of the vast change in human thinking that arose from the act of programming (existential necessity), and database development (existential dependency),

– Truth (removal of imagination, error, bias, wishful thinking, and deception)
and very very few of us are aware of my work in Truth (testimonial organization in equilibria) in which Truth is what survives criticism, and testimony a warranty of due diligence, not a warranty of truth itself, and ultimate truth merely the most parsimonious statement possible.

PRODUCTION OF REPRODUCTION
And some of us in familial organizations:
– State Enforced Individual Monetary Union (feminism)
– Nuclear Family, Egalitarian Nuclear
– Extended Family, Stem Family, Authoritarian Family
– Traditional Family, Communitarian Family
– Hetaeristic Monogamy
– Pairing Family, Serial Marriage
– Punaluan Family
– Consanguine Family

PRODUCTION OF ORGANIZATIONS OF PRODUCTION ITSELF
And some of us are aware of the evolution in productive organizations:
– Military Hierarchical (simple production)
– Bureaucratic Hierarchical (capital production)
– Professional (talent production)

PRODUCTION OF ORGANIZATIONS OF PRODUCING COMMONS
Some of us are aware of the vast difference in state organizations:
– Authoritarian Socialist Economy. ( Dysgenic – Minimize Holdings )
– Social Democratic Mixed Economy ( Dysgenic – maximize takings )
– Private Capitalistic Libertarian Economy (Eugenic – maximize holding)

WEAPONS OF INFLUENCE IN ORGANIZATION (reputations)
– Cooperation (ordinary cooperation in the process of production) (personal reputation in memory)
– Religion (normative promise) (demonstrated behavior) ostracization
– Law (criminal reputations) (writing and record keeping) Violence
– Credit (economic reputations) (computers) deprivation of consumption
– ‘Software Reputations’ (the most detailed yet – the internet) ???? (deprivation of relations)

DO YOU SEE THE PATTERN?
We already constitute the equivalent of a hive mind.
The problem for our collective consciousness is in reducing error.
And that error is the product of dysgenia.

(reframe the debate)

WESTERN ‘CONSERVATISM’ = ‘ARISTOCRACY’ = ‘ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM’

[W]e must reframe the debate, swapping the word ‘Conservative’ for ‘Aristocratic’, and ‘progressive’ for ‘Socialistic’.

Aristocratic (paternal meritocratic) Egalitarian (open to all of merit who voluntarily take the oath not to steal.)

(the thrust of this argument is a conflation of good and preference, and my opponent’s presumption that because of that conflation there are no ‘goods’. This may be a bit hard to parse, but there are objective goods.)

[I] think it is that I simply failed to provide sufficient touch stones so that you would draw the conclusions on your own.
In other words the argument I make is a necessary one. And that is why it’s an is.

That might take a bit but we will get there.

—” I would add my surprise to see you mention at the end that this is all about how things are and not should be.”— Mark

I Think you’re referring to this statement:

—“(g) as far as I know I am explaining what men do (is), not what they should do (should).”—

Which in the context I mean that men do what they must do. what they must do is what they in fact do (“is”). And what they should do is what they must do, and do (“should”). In other words, there is no difference between must, can, is and should. Or better stated, “Man justifies his group evolutionary strategy, whatever it is – he survives.”

—“I see you started out apparently very much talking about good/bad in a thread on political views necessarily based on moral views. So…?”—

So instead I am stating that moral principles necessary for in-group cooperation and are universal necessities (subject to limits), and that despite local variation in the portfolio of norms necessary for the purposes of competition, production, free rider prevention, and rent seeking, that must, can, is, and should are identical propositions.
The only question is cooperation between groups with different portfolios that are incompatible. In compatibility is universally decidable by property rights independent of local variation in the portfolio. And this also is what we see men do in reality.
So objective morality – rules necessary for rational beneficial voluntary cooperation – is universal.

–“good”— Mark

Now what is the difference between “preference” and “good”? Well I can prefer something I can experience myself. We can say that fulfilling a preference feels good. We can also say that something is good even if it isn’t immediately preferable.
So to avoid confusion, lets say that **a preference is an experiential good, and a good is either an non-experiential intertemporal personal benefit, or objectively decidable interpersonal benefit.**

–“starting point”— Mark

So, i start with the first question of “why don’t I kill you and take your stuff”. The first question of ethics.

The answer is then one of short and long run costs versus benefits. As long as one’s opponents promise greater cost than reward, we choose cooperation or boycott – if we can choose boycott.

From there, to the disproportionate rewards of cooperation assuming predation is costly. Or as biological evolution has informed us: we possess the intuitive ability to both imitate, and beyond imitate to empathize, and beyond empathize to cooperate, and beyond cooperation to anticipate demand for cooperation. We evolved it because cooperation is disproportionately rewarding. But when we cooperate we must prevent free riders from undermining the incentive to cooperate – hence the human intuition to punish free riders (cheaters) even at high personal cost.

If a group decides that survival is not ‘good’ (bearing a cost of an intertemporal and directly imperceptible forecast subject to risk) and does not survive then it is not ‘good’ for others to imitate it if they wish to survive. Hence over time, good is defined as what others can imitate in order to survive. So, good is an evolutionary imperative, not a preference. A preference may feel good by analogy but it is not an abstract ‘good’ – a value judgement.
ie: subjective preferences and objective goods are different things. And those goods that are in fact ‘good’ are objectively ascertainable over time independent of subjective preference.

Cheers

[I]’ll add a little context by way of political economy, and say that the world (a)first organized by household and slaves in the agrarian era by kinship relations, then (b) organized militarily and monarchally for the unskilled for the seasonal production cycle with extended relations, (c) then industrially and socialistically for the semi-skilled medium term production cycle of heavy capital and long term medium term relationships between firms, and is (d) currently organizing entrepreneurially and social democratically for the educated ‘discretionary worker’ for short term production cycles, highly distributed capital, and temporary networks of firms wherever it can do so.

But meanwhile (a) labor was never of much value in contrast to organizing production, and is of still declining value (b) marginal difference in firms was created by capital, and is now created by talent and creativity, (c) the duration of organizations (firms) has continued to decline along with the duration of networks of production. (d) Those countries playing catch-up will not sustain their growth because (e) institutions (trust and corruption) prevent them from doing so. So good institutions are less valuable than not having bad institutions. Worse, it appears that (f) good genetic capital is not as important as not having bad genetic capital. As France is illustrating, you can reverse the Flynn effect (benefit from transitioning from many individual rules to few simple general scientific principles of universal applicability).

We are engaged in the third world war at present, and it has no sign of improvement. And neither temporary networks of production nor the governments that facilitate may be able to survive the combination of a third world war, a slowing of growth, and a continued expansion of population of the underclasses for whom gainful labor is decreasingly available.

Not trying to rain on your parade, but the reverse side of the coin is just as frightening as the obverse is inspiring.