The point of studying morality is to figure out what is and isn't a crime. E.g. the Moldbug position is that everything legal is not a crime and everything illegal is a crime. The Church position is that everything Jehova or Yeshua forbids is a crime, and everything Yeshua or Jehovah allows is not a crime. Socrates was interested in justice, not merely criminal justice, but nevertheless it's the same puzzle.
Universal morality is an oxymoron, but defection and cooperation are real.
Defection is always a crime, and cooperation is always not a crime. If cooperation is illegal, the law is unjust. If the law defends defectors, the law is unjust. It is not only possible, but easy, to define crimes without reference to mortal law.
As I've written before, all forms of defection destroy the wealth they're trying to seize. If you can't reasonably control the creation of your labour, you don't create it in the first place. An unjust society becomes poorer over time until it cannot afford to sustain itself. A just society becomes wealthier and more powerful over time, and the more just it is, the faster this occurs.
Sadly this is technology-dependent. Higher technology can support a more-unjust society, which tends to reward too-unjust societies when they get a technology shock. They then attribute this increase in wealth to their unjust black government. The cancer becomes better-defended instead of worse, and grows until it strangles the host.
As per Socrates, so-called evil is in fact ignorance. Among a rational population, cooperation is self-reinforcing and defection is self-defeating. It is always rational to resist defection, and it's always possible to do more damage to the defector than they would gain from the defection. It's always possible to make defection unprofitable. Likewise, even if the deviant is suitably tricksy or the population is suitably servile, the traitor would gain more total wealth if they cooperated. Defecting on cooperators is plain stupid.
E.g. if someone wants to tax your wheat field, and you can't prevent them from taking it, burn the wheat field so there's nothing for them to take. Ideally, if you can't reasonably wall off the field to prevent the necessity, don't sow wheat in the first place; secure your shit.
Conspecific defection is necessarily parasite behaviour, relying on stealth and trickery. Don't rip your skin off and then complain about infections. Since defection can always be rendered unprofitable, the defector must convince you to forgo defending yourself.
In present Fascist countries securing yourself is downright easy and cheap. Perhaps in past Malthusian countries it was less inexpensive, but the logic suggests that it shouldn't have been. All governments have an element of the consent of the governed, or at least the resignation of the governed. If the citizens do not broadly consent to be subjugated, the government cannot afford to force the issue. Even individual dissidents cannot be brought to heel unless they deliberately antagonize the government or its supine subjects. Defection is stupid and it is implemented by the stupid, blind, and easily tricked.
3 comments:
>all forms of defection destroy the wealth they're trying to seize. If you can't reasonably control the creation of your labour, you don't create it in the first place.
Excellent.
"Hey, can you help me out with harvest like last year?"
Nah bruh I'm busy
"Cool."
Bruh, can I get some of that wheat? I'm hongray
"Nah"
Bruh, who da fuh do you think u are man, I'm hongray. Me and tha boyz comin back for all your shit later
Repeat ad nauseum.
If you lose your wallet to pickpockets every time you go through the NYC subway, you stop taking your wallet on the trip and the pickpockets can't get their drug money anyway. Even if you're really, really dumb, you run out of wallets and then neither of you can afford drugs. Communism is theft is omnicide.
On review that last paragraph would work better earlier. Think I'ma swap it around. (Ed note: I did.)
The only deontology that can't be disproven: cooperate with cooperators, defect on defectors, and leave isolationists alone.
You do need a Pope. Defectors will always try to cast themselves as cooperators. Quis custodiet - in the end, someone needs to be the custodian. Someone has to have the authority to call liars out as defectors.
If they claim you defected first, sure why not the rule is still defect on defectors. This is an argument in favour of defecting on them harder. "You're right, why didn't we take everything the first time around? What was the point of holding back?"
You again need a Pope if the defector claims they're minding their own business. E.g. gays.
The Pope-client relationship must be voluntary to be cooperative. The current Catholic Pope is a gay man, and that's why you need formal and explicit Exit.
>Someone has to have the authority to call liars out as defectors.
I like this a lot but I don't have anything to add. Next article? :P
>The Pope-client relationship must be voluntary to be cooperative
There also has to be an actual reward for co-operation, ie, benefit.
The defecting Pope pretends to give you the same benefit for your cooperation as the old Pope, sitting on his Golden Throne waving his Golden Sceptre at his dirty and hungry people.
Cooperate with me because I am the Pope - oh, that sounds like an appeal to authority argument, very valid.
I would say that even, say, slavery is a voluntary cooperate/cooperate equilibrium (ie, you do the work and I feed/house you), you can always volunteer to defect and face the penalties. Similarly, if the slave master decides not to feed the slaves they die of starvation.
The problem being that humans are incredibly good at seeing when they're getting an unfair deal.
So it's not only cooperation, but fair exchanges. To me this has always been the strength of Moldbugs patchwork, the idea that if people are free to move to the best possible deal, governments offering crap deals will cease to exist.
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