I think I figured it out

[hazek]

I had a realization the other day and I want to share it.

First a little context. I'm unbelievably frustrated, frustrated at all the arguing, at all the bickering not just with statists but also between ourselves, frustrated at no visible and tangible change being achieved when it comes to my personal freedom and a life in peace and prosperity. I mean it's a good thing there's Bitcoin otherwise I'd be totally depressed at the world right now. So this is the frame of mind that I'm coming from and when I look for solutions I'm Interested only in those that would ease some of this frustration by actually providing some tangible results.

And if you're honest for a second, aside from our folk activism(you can read what I mean by that here: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/06/patri-friedman/beyond-folk-activism) having a few more people starting to see that the principles we hold dear would actually benefit them and how destructive the status quo principles really are we haven't made any real progress. The state is still as powerful as ever and it's getting more powerful and it appears no scandal no matter how attractions (where are the people in the streets over PRISM?) will hold those psychopaths back.

 

The reason for this post is that I'm here to tell you hat I figured out why. And it's oh so simple. Think about it, if our principles are that much better for a society, why then hasn't the market gravitated towards them yet? Why does the market still support and even encourage the current state of affairs?? Simple. Being a violent thug is massively profitable! Yes. That's all there is to it. Our principles are loosing because they aren't as profitable as being a violent psychopath willing to pull the trigger and destroy lives for their own benefit. Just remember Stef's very successful "The story of your enslavement" video, I mean isn't that the main takeaway? Yes we're slaves, but we're slaves to violent thugs and they enslave us because it's highly beneficial to do so. That's why the market also gravitates towards this violence, there's profit to be made and some people don't mind doing the dirty deed in order to realize this profit.

If I'm right, then the solution to all of our problems is very simple, and it's not peaceful parenting or through logic derived objective morality theories. It's market forces.

How can we make it unprofitable to be a violent thug? That is the question that the correct answer to will solve all of our problems.

 

I have a few ideas already (some of them I've shared already here in another post) but I wont go into that in this post. I just wanted to get this realization off my chest and see what others think about it first.

[cherapple]

The free market runs on negotiation, which is learned in childhood, by being peacefully parented. The more children grow up knowing how to negotiate, the less people will respect or give any legitimacy to the violent thugs who take what they want, rather than negotiate and offer value freely. The root is in parenting.

[Joey M]

 

The free market runs on negotiation, which is learned in childhood, by being peacefully parented. The more children grow up knowing how to negotiate, the less people will respect or give any legitimacy to the violent thugs who take what they want, rather than negotiate and offer value freely. The root is in parenting.

 

I would agree that this is the best way of doing it, but some adults learn how the free market works as well.

[Jose Perez]

I have long thought that things that are broken through force can only be fixed by force, in the light that life cares fuckall about morality. (EDIT: life does care about morality, as do children, and that's our hope, so let's just stress "fuckall" compared to profit and survival)

 

If I'm right, then the solution to all of our problems is very simple, and it's not peaceful parenting or through logic derived objective morality theories. It's market forces.

How can we make it unprofitable to be a violent thug? That is the question that the correct answer to will solve all of our problems.

 

You cannot make it unprofitable to be a violent thug, by the very definition of profit. What you can do is take the necessary steps to demonstrate that free market forces are indeed more powerful, as they are. FDR does a dismal job out of this, for obvious reasons. If this makes sense to you and your idea goes along these lines please contact me privately.

[STer]

As I've gotten into many times on the forum, all my searching ended up leading me to ponerology.and the influence of psychopathy as central issues. Sharing that idea was what really drove me to start posting here in the first place.

Stefan also hits on this, to some degree and with a slightly different angle, in "The Fascists that Surround" you series of videos, for example here where he focuses on sociopaths.

One difference though is that I look at it through the lens of not just "market forces," but evolutionary forces that have always existed and always will exist, as discussed in this section here. And a number of times I've shared that there actually is a resource that focuses on what kind of incentive structure must be in place so that "cooperators" can thrive within a world that will always include some proportion of "exploiters." That book is The Evolution of Cooperation.

Those things, along with the issue of parenting for healthy neurodevelopment, are about as far as I can get in proposing the foundations of any real strategy for improvement.

[_LiveFree_]

I think your mistake, hazek, is with your overall view of change. This is a multi-generational change. In other words, give it 100 years or so. Change that happens quickly is not likely to remain. 

 

Just like the alcoholic overweight porn addict who says he's going to turn his life around by cold turkeying beer and porn, starting an extreme exercise program, and getting a good job to focus his time. Maybe he goes out and gets a good job, stops drinking, and stops porning. Why are his friends and family skeptical? Because they've seen this before and know that in a week he'll be back to boos and asians. 

 

This movement has really only been in high gear for 5 years. We are still very much at the beginning. In fact, what we are doing right now is setting the tone and direction of where we want to move in the future. Therefore, if we stay focused on peaceful parenting, we will have made some serious deposits into the warchest to be withdrawn from in about 25 years. 

The state can only exist through the voluntary participation of the people. When the people withdraw their consent, the state no longer exists. This is like reverse prima nocta. Breed the bastards out! lol

 

And there is no scientific evidence i can show you, but I'd bet 1 person with deep self-knowledge is worth 1000 people who suck the teets of violence. 

[Alan C.]

Violence is profitable only in the short-term and only insofar as it's possible to use the State apparatus to impose the costs of violence upon others.

Societies with institutionalized violence eventually disintegrate. We're currently witnessing several in the process.

[STer]

 

Violence is profitable only in the short-term and only insofar as it's possible to use the State apparatus to impose the costs of violence upon others.

Societies with institutionalized violence eventually disintegrate. We're currently witnessing several in the process.

 

Exploitation has been a profitable strategy for some long before the state existed. In fact, it has been a profitable strategy for species other than humans. The battle between cooperators and exploiters is a fundamental evolutionary one. Viewing it as only existing within the modern civilized setting of the last 10,000 years is to miss hundreds of thousands, if not even millions of years of evolutionary forces involved in this dynamic.

[DoubtingThomas]

 

Exploitation has been a profitable strategy for some long before the state existed. In fact, it has been a profitable strategy for species other than humans. The battle between cooperators and exploiters is a fundamental evolutionary one. Viewing it as only existing within the modern civilized setting of the last 10,000 years is to miss hundreds of thousands, if not even millions of years of evolutionary forces involved in this dynamic.

 

I believe he meant "violence in the context of human society", which precludes taking some agonizingly tedious review of human, mamalian, or animal evolutionary history.

In order to validate the claim that exploitation was a profitable long-term strategy (since Alan used the qualifier short-term, I presume this is what you mean to reply) prior to "civilization," which is an incredibly troublesome claim in and of itself due to the flexible definition of civilization; you would have to provide some pre-historic evidence that this was the case.

While I do know quite a few anthropologists who would be more than happy to provide you just that conjecture, I don't think they would be able to present much more than their baser assumptions based on some pretty tenuous archeological evidence. To the best of my knowledge, nobody could justify such a claim on the time scale you are suggesting.

[STer]

 

 

Exploitation has been a profitable strategy for some long before the state existed. In fact, it has been a profitable strategy for species other than humans. The battle between cooperators and exploiters is a fundamental evolutionary one. Viewing it as only existing within the modern civilized setting of the last 10,000 years is to miss hundreds of thousands, if not even millions of years of evolutionary forces involved in this dynamic.

 

I believe he meant "violence in the context of human society", which precludes taking some agonizingly tedious review of human, mamalian, or animal evolutionary history.

In order to validate the claim that exploitation was a profitable long-term strategy (since Alan used the qualifier short-term, I presume this is what you mean to reply) prior to "civilization," which is an incredibly troublesome claim in and of itself due to the flexible definition of civilization; you would have to provide some pre-historic evidence that this was the case.

While I do know quite a few anthropologists who would be more than happy to provide you just that conjecture, I don't think they would be able to present much more than their baser assumptions based on some pretty tenuous archeological evidence. To the best of my knowledge, nobody could justify such a claim on the time scale you are suggesting.

 

I'm sorry that you find taking the evolutionary view, rather than simply the very narrowly focused view of 10,000 years out of millions of years, "tedious." However, I find it necessary to understand the roots of exploitation since deceptiveness, manipulation and exploitation - and violence used in the service of them - are traits and strategies that we see throughout nature. Where the environment is conducive to them, they persist. Where it is not, they don't. Alan seems to be claiming that the only environment conducive to them is one with a modern state. If this is so then I must ask how they survived all that time to even still be around today. With thousands and thousands of years of human existence before any modern state existed, why didn't those traits completely go extinct instead of remaining latent, ready to escalate in our modern age?

As OP has proposed, I think our task is to understand the conditions in which such traits and strategies become maladaptive and work to move in that direction. Those who want to promote more cooperation and less exploitation would do well to understand how these things evolve since what you are really trying to do is make it so future evolution will select for cooperation. Hence the perfect title of the book The Evolution of Cooperation.

[DoubtingThomas]

 

I'm sorry that you find taking the evolutionary view, rather than simply the very narrowly focused view of 10,000 years out of millions of years, "tedious." However, I find it necessary to understand the roots of exploitation since deceptiveness, manipulation and exploitation - and violence used in the service of them - are traits and strategies that we see throughout nature. Where the environment is conducive to them, they persist. Where it is not, they don't. Alan seems to be claiming that the only environment conducive to them is one with a modern state. If this is so then I must ask how they survived all that time to even still be around today. With thousands and thousands of years of human existence before any modern state existed, why didn't those traits completely go extinct instead of remaining latent, ready to escalate in our modern age?

As OP has proposed, I think our task is to understand the conditions in which such traits and strategies become maladaptive and work to move in that direction. Those who want to promote more cooperation and less exploitation would do well to understand how these things evolve since what you are really trying to do is make it so future evolution will select for cooperation. Hence the perfect title of the book The Evolution of Cooperation.

 

If you want to have that discussion then it's incumbent upon you to present some evidence for your pre-historic claims.

The modern state is obviously highly exploitive and, based on the information we do have, that could be compared to previous epochs and state apparatus for which we have records.

My point was to say that pinning your argument on pre-history is not going to be easy and I think you could more easily evidence your position utilizing more recent and plentiful data.

[Alan C.]

I don't deny that humans practiced intraspecies predation for hundreds of thousands of years, but cooperators managed to create capital structures which permit billions of people to live in relative comfort despite the exploiters.

Wealth and abundance are recent phenomena, existing for only a small fraction of 1% of human history. Humans (including exploiters) lived under grinding poverty for most of history. If not for cooperators, humans would still be living that way and you and I probably wouldn't exist.

We're currently seeing parasitism run amok, which is eroding the foundation of the capital structures that sustain civilization.

Exploiters pose a threat to themselves as well as others.

[STer]

 

 

I'm sorry that you find taking the evolutionary view, rather than simply the very narrowly focused view of 10,000 years out of millions of years, "tedious." However, I find it necessary to understand the roots of exploitation since deceptiveness, manipulation and exploitation - and violence used in the service of them - are traits and strategies that we see throughout nature. Where the environment is conducive to them, they persist. Where it is not, they don't. Alan seems to be claiming that the only environment conducive to them is one with a modern state. If this is so then I must ask how they survived all that time to even still be around today. With thousands and thousands of years of human existence before any modern state existed, why didn't those traits completely go extinct instead of remaining latent, ready to escalate in our modern age?

As OP has proposed, I think our task is to understand the conditions in which such traits and strategies become maladaptive and work to move in that direction. Those who want to promote more cooperation and less exploitation would do well to understand how these things evolve since what you are really trying to do is make it so future evolution will select for cooperation. Hence the perfect title of the book The Evolution of Cooperation.

 

If you want to have that discussion then it's incumbent upon you to present some evidence for your pre-historic claim

 

OK I could take many angles on this. But I'll start with an easy one since it is one the FDR community appears to like a lot. The psychohistory angle has been advocated here a great deal. According to that work, primitive cultures were extremely violent. In fact, I have seen this research used many times on FDR, often by Stefan, to back up the claim that we have made much progress. It says that pre-historic cultures had very abusive childrearing practices leading to a lot of violence. Do you agree with the psychohistory work? I'm not even sure I do. But it seems many people here do. So it's an odd paradox that, on one hand, I hear people reference that work a lot to show how violent childrearing was in primitive tribes. And at the same time, when I claim violence predates civilization, I'm called out as if this is wrong and pre-historic cultures were cooperative and peaceful with no threat of exploitation at all.

If that doesn't work for you, let me know and we can try some other angles.

It's rather extraordinary for you to actually claim that manipulation and exploitation didn't exist in humanity until the last 10,000 years. We see these behaviors everywhere in nature. I almost wonder if you're just being provocative by even attempting to make such a claim. But I'll play along.

 

 

The modern state is obviously highly exploitive and, based on the information we do have, that could be compared to previous epochs and state apparatus for which we have records.

My point was to say that pinning your argument on pre-history is not going to be easy and I think you could more easily evidence your position utilizing more recent and plentiful data.

 

I didn't pin my argument on pre-history. I pinned my argument on evolution. Manipulation, exploitation, the use of violence are survival and reproduction strategies. What other purpose do you think they serve? They are ways that organisms use to try to gain advantage. If the envirronment rewards and incentivizes them, then they continue just like anything else selected for evolutionarily. How could it be otherwise?

[STer]

 

I don't deny that humans practiced intraspecies predation for hundreds of thousands of years, but cooperators managed to create capital structures which permit billions of people to live in relative comfort despite the exploiters.

Wealth and abundance are recent phenomena, existing for only a small fraction of 1% of human history. Humans (including exploiters) lived under grinding poverty for most of history. If not for cooperators, humans would still be living that way and you and I probably wouldn't exist.

We're currently seeing parasitism run amok, which is eroding the foundation of the capital structures that sustain civilization.

Exploiters pose a threat to themselves as well as others.

 

Well let's not get quite that one-sided about it. Plenty of the people who helped build our relative comfort did so not out of cooperative motives. They were driven to enrich themselves and the help to others was a side benefit. If they could have just legally stolen a bunch of money or gotten away with it, many of them would gladly have preferred to do so. And there is plenty of exploitation that takes place in the course of industry too. So it would be a bit over the top to act like the industrialists and inventors who have brought us greater comfort were all cooperators fighting against the exploiters aiming to take them down. There are cooperators and exploiters on both sides.

Nonetheless, what we agree on is that exploitation is - and will always be - a threat. And so the argument OP made, which I think is a good one, is that the main way to protect ourselves from that threat is to create conditions that make exploitation maladaptive. Do we agree on that?

[DoubtingThomas]

 

OK I could take many angles on this. But I'll start with an easy one since it is one the FDR community appears to like a lot. The psychohistory angle has been advocated here a great deal. According to that work, primitive cultures were extremely violent. In fact, I have seen this research used many times on FDR, often by Stefan, to back up the claim that we have made much progress. It says that pre-historic cultures had very abusive childrearing practices leading to a lot of violence. Do you agree with the psychohistory work? I'm not even sure I do. But it seems many people here do. So it's an odd paradox that, on one hand, I hear people reference that work a lot to show how violent childrearing was in primitive tribes. And at the same time, when I claim violence predates civilization, I'm called out as if this is wrong and pre-historic cultures were cooperative and peaceful with no threat of exploitation at all.

 

I'm not up to date on what i'm supposed to believe as an FDR member, so you'll have to give me a pass on that. I find pre-historic academics to be incredibly bad at providing solid emprical evidence for their sociological claims.

 

If that doesn't work for you, let me know and we can try some other angles.

 

I think I specifically mentioned we should be looking from another, more-recent angle.

 

It's rather extraordinary for you to actually claim that manipulation and exploitation didn't exist in humanity until the last 10,000 years. We see these behaviors everywhere in nature. I almost wonder if you're just being provocative by even attempting to make such a claim. But I'll play along.

 

Not at all. As I said, we could of course, extrapolate from near mamalian ancestory; however, that doesn't make a strong case. If I were to say our modern political paradigm was derrived from chimp behavior patterns, for example, that would simply be a specious claim. I could provide some tenuous analogy to further the argument, but it would be far more productive to find some juxtaposition within the more descriptive resources of history.

 

I didn't pin my argument on pre-history. I pinned my argument on evolution. Manipulation, exploitation, the use of violence are survival and reproduction strategies. What other purpose do you think they serve? They are ways that organisms use to try to gain advantage. If the envirronment rewards and incentivizes them, then they continue just like anything else selected for evolutionarily. How could it be otherwise?

 

By that definition of evolution cooperation is clearly something which would have entirely dissapeared from the animal kingdom. Clearly there are some species more predisposed to the practice of cooperation and others who tend toward exploitation. How did you manage to construe this as an argument that exploitation is the nature of all things by nature? Even between species we have cooperative groups that buck the evolutionary trend you describe.

[hazek]

Two more things occurred to me.

1. Stef agrees with my main argument! I mean, he may have not said it directly, he may not even know he agrees but he does based on his will kill argument. I mean isn't that the main takeaway from that argument? That once being a violent thug yields no more profit no one will be a violent thug, even if everyone has the ability to be one and many likely have the urge to be one? Wouldn't a will kill be precisely an example of a solution to the question I posed in my OP?

2. Peaceful parenting where not only the parents aren't violent towards the child but they also shield it from all the violence that exists today out there in the real world may not just be counter productive but in fact dangerous and even improving the profitability of being a violent thug.

 

With my second realization I'm a bit unclear about what exactly peaceful parenting means, so depending on what it means I may be wrong. I mean does it mean that Stef wont teach his daughter how to defend herself in anyway and to just ignore the violence? Or does it only mean that he will not use violence as a way to communicate with her in their relationship? I'm confused on this point and I really hope it's the later and not the former. Because what I see the former as is a delusion which is extremely unhealthy for a human being. It's like you'd avoid teaching a child that getting hit by a car can kill you and you should therefor watch how you cross the road and reminds me of this:

But even if it is the later, please someone explain to me how is this going to move a society towards more freedom and peace? If his daughter will recognize violence in the real world but wont know enough violence in order to resist, doesn't she become just a tasty meal for those violent thugs that don't mind being violent? I mean unless you expect the entire world to switch to peaceful parenting (and even then some children may be born wanting to be violent) I don't see how creating more harmless peaceful people will disempower the violent thugs of the world, if you ignore violent thugs because violence doesn't make sense to you they can always just kill you, they've done it before... I think some people doing peaceful parenting is going to have the precisely opposite effect and violent thugs will get even more empowered with that many more people out there who will not resist.

[TheRobin]

what do you mean with "resist"?I mean if people could resist violent thugs better, if they were raised violently, then the thugs would have already dissapeared a long time ago.The biggest problem is mostly not b eing able to see the violence and inviting into your home, something which can only happen if one has ended up having to be blind towards such a behaviour as a survival mechanism (often childhood).But if a mugger puts a gun to your head, I don't see how being raised would have much of an influence in terms of being able to defend one's self there. 

[hazek]

Not that you didn't address any of my points but under resist I meant do anything at all (not necessarily employ violence) in order to protect oneself against violent thugs i.e. take action instead of just taking it laying down. For example use Bitcoin or participrate in smart civil disobedience.

[STer]

 

Two more things occurred to me.

1. Stef agrees with my main argument! I mean, he may have not said it directly, he may not even know he agrees but he does based on his will kill argument. I mean isn't that the main takeaway from that argument? That once being a violent thug yields no more profit no one will be a violent thug, even if everyone has the ability to be one and many likely have the urge to be one? Wouldn't a will kill be precisely an example of a solution to the question I posed in my OP?

 

Yes, the "Mutually assured destruction" logic is one way of attempting to accede to the existence of aggression while making the use of it maladaptive. Whether it is effective in the "will kill" context is questionable. I've posted before why I think it probably isn't. But it is an example of the point you're making, that attempting to create conditions rendering exploitation maladaptive is a wise goal.

 

2. Peaceful parenting where not only the parents aren't violent towards the child but they also shield it from all the violence that exists today out there in the real world may not just be counter productive but in fact dangerous and even improving the profitability of being a violent thug.

With my second realization I'm a bit unclear about what exactly peaceful parenting means, so depending on what it means I may be wrong. I mean does it mean that Stef wont teach his daughter how to defend herself in anyway and to just ignore the violence? Or does it only mean that he will not use violence as a way to communicate with her in their relationship? I'm confused on this point and I really hope it's the later and not the former. Because what I see the former as is a delusion which is extremely unhealthy for a human being. It's like you'd avoid teaching a child that getting hit by a car can kill you and you should therefor watch how you cross the road and reminds me of this:

 

That's why in my thread about parenting that promotes healthy neurodevelopment, I alluded to the fact that this also must include preparing children for the threats that they will face in the world. I also mention that I don't even like the term "peaceful parenting" as it is far too vague. Here you show yet another reason why. "Peaceful" is not nearly specific enough of a term for the type of parenting that healthy neurodevelopment requires.

 

But even if it is the later, please someone explain to me how is this going to move a society towards more freedom and peace? If his daughter will recognize violence in the real world but wont know enough violence in order to resist, doesn't she become just a tasty meal for those violent thugs that don't mind being violent? I mean unless you expect the entire world to switch to peaceful parenting (and even then some children may be born wanting to be violent) I don't see how creating more harmless peaceful people will disempower the violent thugs of the world, if you ignore violent thugs because violence doesn't make sense to you they can always just kill you, they've done it before... I think some people doing peaceful parenting is going to have the precisely opposite effect and violent thugs will get even more empowered with that many more people out there who will not resist.

 

I'm quite confident that Stefan does not at all mean that parenting peacefully means never mentioning the existence of harmful people. In fact, I even remember him talking about how he values his daughter's instincts in terms of who she trusts and doesn't trust and so on. I would expect he is likely to prepare her for the reality of the world we live in far more, not less, than the typical parent. By "peaceful" he means not using coercion and force against the child. Sharing the information about how others do that is not itself an example of using coercion and force. Nonetheless, I still think we need to get more specific than "peaceful parenting."