ARFAQ Spot Check 2: Murder and Aggravated Assault

As time passes, evidence contradicting Sophist Alexander's points accumulates, which necessarily means evidence in favour of reactionary points accumulates. Kindly note this is a prospectively testable prediction.

"lest someone bring up that medical technology has advanced enough to turn many would-be murders into attempted murders – which is true – aggravated assaults, the category of crime that would encompass attempted murders, are less than half of what they were twenty years ago. Kind of hard to square with everything getting worse and more violent all the time."

Twenty years? Oh yeah. "Actually, stopping at 1885 is for losers."

So. What are the facts? (Via an anonymous donor.)

"They found that while the murder rate had changed little from a 1931 baseline figure, assaults had increased. The aggravated assault rate was, by 1997, almost 750% higher than the baseline figure."

Oh good, a twenty year low is still almost eight times higher than going back just a little farther.

Btw, England's homicide rate 1900: 0.96 per 100,000, and America was 1.1. America corrected for race (white only) is now 1.2. Without WWII/Vietnam trauma medicine, American murder (white only) would be, according to these authors, between 2.7 and 5.4.

So, in fact, no it's not hard at all to argue that things are getting worse. Decline advances as progressivism advances.

(Yes the study is 2002, but it's new to me.)

The longest-term trends, going back before the French Terror, are if anything further evidence to the contrary. It merely shows that progressivism is failing to maintain a long-term trend that pre-existed it.

P.S.
On gun control: the Swiss murder rate, where basically every household has a working automatic weapon by law, is 0.6.

Morality 4: Ethitropism, Property, and Cooperation

Abstract:
Nihilism obtains. However, there is a behaviour that approaches morality in the limit, ethitropism.
Ethitropism + property recapitulates all the noncontroversial parts of morality, e.g. English Common Law, strongly suggesting it is the underlying principle and can be used to audit e.g. English Common Law.
Ethitropism is cooperation.



Morality cannot simply be might. If right can be reduced to might, then nihilism obtains. I require morality to alter behaviour patterns, not to be identical to any pattern.

Morality cannot simply be prudence. (Ethitropism is simply prudence.) If morality can be reduced to prudence, then nihilism obtains, because it is never necessary to sacrifice for morality; just the opposite, the immoral person is the one sacrificing. Were this so, intentional punishment (sub specie aeternalis) would be unnecessary, because 'immorality' would automatically punish. Pragmatically, it must sometimes be imprudent to be moral. Pragmatically, intentional punishment is necessary, so the assertion also looks empirically false.  (Ethitropism does have long/short term tension.)

Not being merely accruing benefits, morality is also not merely avoiding costs; morality is not mere cowardice. If morality is cowardice, nihilism obtains.

I've spanned the space of all external reasons to alter behaviour.



This gives us some strong hints about where to look, which is inside. (It helps that many traditions already know this.) A good person is internally motivated to do good, not merely because that causes to happen more often, but because they do not stop being good if external conditions change. E.g. someone who truly was only good out of fear of jail or hell would stop being good if they enter an environment of anarchy or atheism. (Personally think the former deserves my friendship if they want it and the latter does not.)

For short, I call this internal motivation ethitropism and those that lack it anethitropic. The moral and amoral, if your context is tolerant of imprecision. E.g. the anethitropic can still act moral if the surrounding society is ethitropic and thus converts, by intentional punishment, what is moral to what seems prudent.

Problem: helps not at all in defining 'good.' An ethitrope who is mistaken about what is good is as ethically useless as the anethitrope. However, good is valuable and important. The ethitrope, then, prefers to uphold the preferences of others. (Not instead of their own, but in addition to their own, as otherwise we have a contradiction where the ethitrope's defining preference is invalidated by ethitropism.) Hence the importance of the reification of values.

Bonus: anethitropes don't care what is and isn't a valid value, and will never be (directly) affected by these facts, which simplifies the analysis.



The principle that resolves conflicting preferences is property. For what you own, what you value goes.
There is one coherent definition of ownership, which is reasonable expectation of control. This is the minimum definition of property.

If I do not control my property, then I have a contradiction - someone or something else must control my property, thus by symmetry I must be able to control their property but not my own, including their body, through which they exert control over my property, which means I both control and don't control my property.
If I do not expect to control my property, I have a contradiction, as I will not attempt to control it and de facto control will go to someone or something else.
If my expectation is not reasonable, then the definition is infinitely abusable. Rationally, everyone would claim to own everything and we would have a contradiction. The mad frequently claim to control things they don't, and rationalize their failure to control it rather than learning.

In the limit of perfect communication, observation, and rationality, theft and so on is impossible. As time passes, our imperfect world approaches this perfection. If the customer steals from the ice cream merchant more than once, there will soon be no ice cream to steal, as the merchant will realize their expectation of control was not reasonable, and stop producing ice cream. The thief destroys their own livelihood in the long run. (Thus the long/short term tension first appears.) Given that the short term converges on the long term, I can perform the analysis purely on the long term.

Preferences regarding non-property cannot be realized (or else can be converted to property transactions). They cannot possibly be valid as values. Conversely, preferences regarding property will only not be realized if the preference-holder has higher preferences that supercede them.

The modus tollens is also important. If society considers a value valid, it must make or the corresponding property sufficiently secure, or it contradicts itself.

Ethitropism, then, is respecting the property of others. Since ownership is rarely absolute in the short term, it is always possible to find ways to attack property. The ethitrope does not attempt to do so.



It is thus cheap to cooperate with an ethitrope. Making contracts with them is always secure, because they cart around your security internally.
It is thus prudent to be an ethitrope. (Which means nihilism obtains - even internal motivation doesn't create a true ought.) Similarly, it is very rational to ostracize anethitropes. I give up minor gains in the present for the prospect of ongoing future gains.
Because property converged on ideal property, it is similarly prudent for society to promote and approximate ethitropy. Anethitropic societies will make their children poorer, not richer. (Sound familiar?)



It is very unwise for the ethitrope to uphold the values of anyone who will not symmetrically uphold the ethitrope's values in return. Gains from cooperation don't materialize if they won't cooperate.

Thus a full definition of ethitrope is one who upholds the values of those who will uphold their values. I have an amusingly recursive definition: an ethitrope upholds the property of other ethitropes.

The logical reason is that the property of anethitropes cannot reify their values, because their preferences point to violating values.

--

Why exactly is ice cream theft (very closely approximately) wrong? If the customer does not uphold the merchant's valuing of money, it proves the customer does not value value. The value reified, through the customer's ownership of self, is the anti-reification of values, causing all of the customer's other preferences to be ethically irrelevant, even to ethitropes. This is in addition to the fact that if the merchant knew the customer was planning to steal the ice cream, he either would have put in sufficient security to stop it, or simply not made it at all.

Alternatively, the merchant should steal the money as soon as they can, and never make any ice cream. Because the customer has no reified values, it does not violate ethitropy to do so, and there's no other way the merchant is going to get the cash. By deciding to deviate, the customer makes the prudent strategy pre-emptive annihilation. At best, the customer manages to fend off the merchant, but then the merchant will develop better weapons, and not only will the customer get no ice cream, an expensive arms race will ensue. The customer pragmatically destroys their own value, as a result of logically destroying it.

Conversely, the merchant can plan to kill the customer, and keep everything for themselves. But, by doing so, the merchant invalidates the valuation of their own life. It is not (approximately) wrong for the customer to kill the merchant in self-defence.

Fraud is of course merely intellectual (versus physical) aggression.

Ah yes, that terrible weasel-word, aggression. Using this framework, we can define aggression: it is abrogating or attempting to abrogate reasonable security.

Of course now we have a new weasel word, 'reasonable.' There is no way to define reasonable to a hostile audience. It is something for ethitropes to define by contract, which by definition they will always be able to do.

Morality 3: Value Reification

Abstract:
Because values are not external, the internal values assume fully objective status.

--

Agents have preferences. Preferences can be satisfied. Values are a particular kind of preference.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/value
"Consider (someone or something) to be important or beneficial; have a high opinion of:"
Philosophically speaking 'important' or 'beneficial' mean the same thing as 'valuable' so this definition begs the question. 


Can value be physically real? Can we potentially build an importometer? 
Even if the answer seems obvious, philosophy requires us to prove it.
To be physical, it would have to be local: no FTL measurements allowed. Since we can move all agents away from any particular entity, it would have to be agent-independent. To still be physical, the property would have to be necessary to predict the behaviour of the entity. Importance as physically existent has been ruled out to fifteen or so decimal places...but I can do better. 

The nonlocal thing kills it. It would have to adhere to individual particles. An electron cannot tell if it's part of a diffuse, invisible nebula in space or part of a weapon currently killing someone. But, to be important, it has to be able to tell precisely this kind of difference. Importance cannot physically exist. It is not 'out there' so to speak.


This means that a universe with only one agent, that agent's preferences cannot be wrong. There is nothing to contradict them. (Caveat: time evolution introduces complications. Preferences evolve, and so the agent can be wrong about what their future satisfaction will be. Wisely trading present satisfaction for future is hard.) 
If the agent is a person, and the universe satisfies their preferences, then it is simply better than a universe that doesn't. As per Subjectivity and Objectivity, if a person thinks they are satisfied, they cannot be mistaken. Satisfaction is a positive quale. A more satisfying universe is more positive, i.e. better, than a less satisfying universe.

A better universe is a more valuable universe.

But, surely, not all preferences can be values. 


If there is a second agent, within epsilon of 100% certainty, their preferences will conflict. If we have an ice cream merchant and a customer, the customer would prefer to steal the frozen treat, and the merchant would prefer to steal the cash. (If we define value as simply the sum of satisfaction across agents, we get utilitarianism.) 

While the coherent values can still be reified, the contradicting preferences cannot be straightforwardly converted to values. The only possible way to resolve the conflict is to invalidate one of the preferences; if an objective way of doing so can be found, then those preferences too can be reified into values. 

Morality 2: Psychological Egoism

Psychological egoism is defined to mean agents can only serve their own preferences.

The proof is simple.

A preference is what an agent will decide to pursue, given the option (or if exclusiveness is forced on them). If an agent can pick up a red ball or a blue cube, it will pick up the one it prefers. (Test: go look at the Oxford or Webster dictionary.)

To give to charity is to prefer someone else's material interest over your own. It is not to be selfless. It is to prefer moral or social interest over material interest. It is e.g. to enjoy having someone else buy with the money rather than to enjoying buying with it yourself.

Psychological egoism is a straightforward consequence of the nature of discrete agents with preferences.

Morality 1: Subjectivity and Objectivity

Abstract:
Consciousness is subjectivity. Subjectivity is not objectivity. Since physics is objective, consciousness is not physics.

Definitions:
Existence: interaction. If something exists, I must be able to learn that it exists. Exists is a verb: things that exist exist in some manner, which we call their properties. To learn that something exists it is necessary to learn in what manner it exists.
Objective: epistemically available to the third person. This has symmetry: if it is available to one third person, it will be available to all third persons, at least in principle.
Subjective: epistemically available to the first person. This is exclusive with being objective, as I'll show.

--

Let's cleave the sight of a red ball at its joints.

There's a red ball. The ball scatters photons, which enter the eye, which excites the retina, which sends a signal, which is processed by the visual cortex, which results in the red ball qualia.

There is the idea the visual cortex and the red ball qualia have to be identical, but this is epiphenomenalism. As per Turing, the exact implementation of the cortex is not relevant: silicon, myelin, vacuum tubes, gears and levers, it doesn't matter.

Possibilities:

1. These all produce the same qualia.
2. These produce slightly different qualia.
3. These produce no qualia at all - I am somehow mistaken.

The motivation for 2) is to maintain the identity, so as to reconcile consciousness with physicalism. However, this results in epiphenomenalism, and thus still refutes physicalism. If the cortex is fully objective, we can remove all supposedly-subjective features from it without loss of predictive validity, as per Ockham, and thus we have proven they don't exist, as in 3). Thus 2) is either not meaningfully different from 3) or you must accept epiphenomenalism, which is magic.

Epiphenomenalism is self-contradictory.
1. By definition, the epiphenomenal agent cannot causally affect the brain, only the reverse. (Newton's generalized third violation).
2. The epiphenomenal mind does not exist, as far as the brain is concerned - it is not epistemically available.
The mind cannot teach the brain about epiphenomenalism.
3. The brain cannot learn epiphenomenalism. It can only refute it. Further, it will only occur to the brain at all due to noise - consider all the ideas you have not bothered to analyze because they're not true. The brain sees no explanandum.
4. A epiphenomenal mind cannot speak to other minds about its existence.
4. In contradiction, epiphenomalism is popular and seen to explain something. "Recently, epiphenomenalism has gained popularity with those struggling to reconcile non-reductive physicalism and mental causation."

(Ed: I'm trying the numbers thing but I'm skeptical that it in fact improves clarity.)

Conclusion: if you have a mind, not just a brain, if you have a thought at any moment, it disproves physicalism. On request I can also show that all forms of dualism reduce to either physicalist monism or full on Cartesian substance dualism.



Let's look at this from another angle.

Thoughts are subjective by identity.

Imagine a beautiful vista, such as a mountain during sunrise.
That you think this image is beautiful is what causes you to think it is beautiful. Identities are tautological; try to imagine a beautiful image that is ugly. Try to imagine a red ball that is a blue cube. This means you cannot be mistaken about thinking the image is beautiful. The Cogito generalizes; not only can you not be mistaken about your existence, you cannot be mistaken about the manner of your existence.

The subjective existence is not only available to the first person, but necessarily known by the first person.

This means you have a subjective existence.
If this existence is merely privileged access to some parts of physical, objective reality, then epiphenomeanlism obtains.
If a thing can be learned about subjectively by one observer and objectively by all other observers, it can also be learned about objectively by the one observer. This means the subjective is unnecessary to fully predict/explain the behaviour of the thing, which means it is causally impotent, which means it is an epiphenomenon. The subject would be unable to tell other observers about its privileged access, only the objective brain, which would have to learn about itself by the usual objective methods, would be able to communicate.

(Let me disprove epiphenomenalism by demonstration: I have subjective thoughts, about which I cannot be mistaken by identity. You're welcome to believe I am lying, if you wish.)

In contradiction, the objective is never necessarily known by the third person; what you think about an objective entity is not identical to that entity. The subjective is fully disjoint with the objective, epistemically speaking. As per my definition of existence, they must also be disjoint in existence.

(Speculation: time evolution allows a subjective event/existence to diamorph into an objective one and vice versa, just as it allows one particle to transform into another. Deep speculation: where the quantum interaction falls on the probability space is determined by a mind, which causes a thought to diamorph into a past physical event. It is a true decision.)

Consciousness, qualia, is the subjective. What 'green' is, rather than what is it caused by or correlated with, is the thought that looks green, that is green because you think it is green.



At present it is impossible to definitively solve the other-minds problem. However, using this framework, it becomes an empirical question. Consciousness is nonelemental, it has internal causation and thus the mind has internal structure, which will affect the statistical distribution of the behaviour of physical objects it is causally linked to. (Speculation: a usefully testable mind could be built out of silicon for something on the order $30 000.)
However, it is possible to solve the self-mind issue, using intentionality. If you have a thought, then cause a portion of physical reality to mimic it, as the thought mimics physics. If you succeed, then...

Re: Re: Steel Anarchism

http://alrenous.blogspot.com/2014/11/steel-anarchism.html

http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/08/10/reply-to-alrenous-on-anarcho-capitalism/

"It may be a good idea to lock your door when you go out, but if you don’t, Rothbardianism will not excuse the man who stole your television set."

Security has to be provided by some person, who will decide what is and is not secured. I imagine a firm because it's more coherent in the wave-interference sense, but the analysis holds for individuals if you keep the feedbacks in mind.
Meta-Rothbardianism: whether it will excuse the thief or not depends on what the security-provider has decided to define as theft. What is excusable or not is defined by prior contract, which is in turn defined by what is prudent to so define.

 "How do you make sure that your defense organization doesn’t loot your property?"

You don't, to first order approximation. That's what primary property owner means.
Consider the feedback: if it were not likely they would do so, it will rapidly become known and you won't sign up with them in the first place.

Further, it would be wise to insist on a clause where the security firm secures propaganda supporting the norm of being a good agent.

"The danger with both of these options is that they can be turned against you."

Nirvana fallacy. It doesn't have to be a good idea, it just has to be better than kratism. 

"If Jim can defend himself or can switch providers, you might well find yourself in a pickle."

He will successfully stiff you on one bill. Henceforth, he will have no security agency, having forfeited his contract, and will only be able to trade with other outlaws. Okay, if he really thinks stiffing you on that one bill is worth it...

"If the criterion for ownership of a resource is the ability to defend it, why would anyone submit to arbitration?"

As a secondary property owner, what counts as a reasonable level of defence will be defined in the security contract. Arbitration is then used for edge cases. For example perhaps there's a revolver deductable, where you're not necessarily expected to walk around armed, but you are if you need to travel into Harlem. As a neighbourhood gentrifies, an arbitrator might find that it was reasonable to wander around unarmed, and thus deserve legal remedies if victimized.

"in which Alrenous’s rule that it’s yours if and only if you can defend it holds sway; we’ve already got one: the real world. The one with states all over it.

 How did we get states where we should have gotten anarchy?"

If they ever claim to hold something by right of being able to hold it, they will stop being able to hold it. This is one of the facets of the core reason states keep killing themselves and everyone nearby.

Moral legitimacy is a very important force for security and stability. States as they are now cannot be stable as their moral arguments are self-refuting, as can be seen during the frequent contradictions between what they claim to secure on behalf of their subjects and what they in fact secure on behalf of themselves.

All political formulae but one are lies, and thus at constant war with reality. The one left is Exit.

Dark Lockean aside: Exit is the only coherent political formula. Exit is unsustainable and hardly even possible. You're all just fucked.

"Indeed, the Melians found to their sorrow that in the real world “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”"

Weapon technology and communication technology. As weapon technology improves it becomes cheaper and cheaper to inflict more damage on an attacker than they can possibly gain. As communication technology improves, it becomes harder to hide the irrationality of such losses, or for independent foolishness to arise.

If, to kill a phalanx, you need a phalanx of equal size or bigger, then yes this kind of dynamic ensues. If instead you can lob a few bombs at Athens from the comfort of your living room, destroying more than your lifetime earnings with each one, the proposition is far less feasible.
Further, as per Sun Tzu, it was never a good idea to attack in this way, because 1984 has never obtained. Whenever you weaken yourself against one opponent, your rivals gain by comparison, of which there's always been more than two. A war between A and B should always go to bystander, C. This didn't happen basically because this foolishness was repeated so often that eventually one of them got lucky, though the Byzantines spent 800 years or so profiting from exactly this foolishness, without engaging in it themselves.

Nowadays everyone knows instantly whenever one country or another makes a mistake. The feedback makes for great learning.

Also modern weapons make it much harder for someone to declare war and live to brag about it. Or live to run away, even. Puts a damper on enthusiasms for using other people's money to kill strangers.

Game Theorist Fail - Prisoner Dilemma Incomplete

In my experience, you will critically underrate how profound this point is. Unfortunately, as an author I have no idea how to rectify this impression, because as a reader I've never experienced such a rectification.


Game theorists are remarkably bad at game theory. This isn't merely small world fallacies, this is thinking they're done and just not being done.

So, regarding the prisoner's dilemma, (page 47 on my pdf reader)

"The "paradox" is now the following: as soon as the number of rounds N becomes known, the above reasoning completely collapses!  For clearly, neither player can have anything to lose by defecting in the very last round, when the other player no longer has any chance to retaliate. So if both players are rational, then that is exactly what they will do. But if both players know that both of them will defect in round N, then neither one has anything to lose by defecting in round N - 1 either."

(Etc.)

"In 1985, Neyman [99] proposed an ingenious resolution of this paradox. Specifically, he showedthat if the two players have sufficiently small memories"

No. Well, yes, that is true, and humans clearly have finite memories.

The defection strategy is irrational even if the players have infinite memory and are perfectly rational.

If Player One defects on the last step, there is indeed no reason not to defect on every step. Defecting on only the last step isn't an option. The available options are: defect on every step, cooperate on every step. Player One would prefer to cooperate on every step. Ergo, Player One concludes they can't defect on the last step. The only question is whether Player Two is going to conclude they need to defect on every step or cooperate on every step. By definition Player Two would prefer to cooperate. By definition, Player Two knows that Player One knows that Player Two knows the only other stable strategy is defecting on every step.

Player Two will cooperate in every step. Somebody please tell me I'm wrong, that some obscure game theorist has figured this out, not just me. 

"But in real life...!" Yes, perfectly rational perfect information agents don't exist in real life, I know. However, when adding/superposing the imperfections of real life, it is critical to perturb the real ideal, rather than a misunderstanding of the ideal.

Admittedly the feedbacks are a bit mind-bending. Perfect rationality lets you eliminate the feedbacks, though.


Playing a twenty step-game, One and Two get to step 19, having cooperated all the way. The past, now immutable, shouldn't affect their next choice - one can defect.

Zeroth problem, (Yudkowsky is correct here) to get it out of the way: if Player One  concludes they can defect, they know, as Player Two is just as good at game theory as One is, that Player Two will also defect. Again, deviation isn't a real option, only MAD, so they cooperate.

First problem: in the past, Player One knew that, if they cooperated for 19 steps, they will want to defect on the last one. Thus Player One knows that Player Two knows that if they cooperate for 19 steps, Player One will want to defect on the last one. If Player Two knows Player One will defect on step 20, Player Two will defect on every step, thus making it impossible to cooperate for the first 19 steps.

In short, Player Two knows everything Player One is thinking, and vice-versa. In all cases, betrayal is not an option. Thus, they will always choose to cooperate.

Real life relevance: higher IQ people commit less crime (objective) and generally deviate less (less objective, but the same dynamic). This is at least partly because higher IQ people more closely approximate perfectly rational agents. They, as Player One, know (or think, because they assume the other guy has the same IQ) that Player Two will realize it if they plan to deviate.

Non-Ancap Fails to Pretend to be Ancap

Which is a good thing, really. The adult can successfully pretend to be a child but the child can't pretend to be an adult. If anyone succeeded at pretending, it would reveal the immaturity of Ancap thought.

David Grant repeatedly asserts that ancaps believe things which no competent ancap believes. 

But then people start rebuilding the old state institutions: the people living in Auburn form a corporation called “the City of Auburn,”

Yes, probably.

and it is located within territory controlled by another corporation—“the state of Alabama”

No, not likely.

So why did we bother abolishing the state?

But the point of ancap is we don't know. The point is to ask Gnon what he thinks about Alabama. Would Alabama reform, were it necessary to convince Alabamans to join it? Is Alabama in fact a net gain, or a net cost, to the residents of Alabama?
If Alabama costs the residents without giving them much in return, what's the point? Who is being served by Alabama's existence?

Let’s suppose that the preppers didn’t swear an oath, or at least didn’t make their kids do it when they grew up.

"Let's suppose Ancapistan isn't Ancapistan. What follows?" It follows that I don't care? "Let's imagine Catholicism with no Pope."  Okay, but like half the point is to have a Pope.

Does reliance on tacit consent transform the Free Town of Ancapistan into the People’s Republic of Prepperville?

We can suppose Catholics would believe exactly what they believe right now if they had no Pope. It's certainly a possible outcome. It's unlikely.
We don't know how a town would evolve if, to impose its norms on someone, they had to first agree to allow those norms to be imposed. This is one reason no good Ancap advocates freeing an entire nation at once. We believe it would be better, but we also believe there are an endless variety of kinks to be worked out.

Is the divide between state and non-state merely that in one you raise your right hand and say some words when you turn 18?

Yes. And why is that? It is because not everyone will say the words.
Further,

the choice of swearing the same oath as the founders or being exiled from the community.

this may be the consequence, or not. The market is smarter than me, it may come up with a better solution. I consider it overwhelmingly likely that someone will think of a better way of doing this. The Amish have to since their culture is so different, even tiny amount of outside contact with former insiders is likely to significantly change them for the worse. With less drastic differences, full ostracism may not be necessary.

Consider foreign university students. Their tuition isn't subsidized and thus they have to pay the government's share too. This makes it 3-4 times as expensive, but it does not prevent them from coming.

In Ancapistan, an outlaw is responsible for their own security and contract enforcement. This is expensive, but not impossible. Certainly many may refuse to deal with them, as the risks outweigh the costs. This doesn't mean they have to be forcibly booted from the town, though that is within the town baron's rights.

The upside of allowing outlaws to stay is it's much easier to convert them. Further, it allows close contact with Gnon's discipline. A bad town will accumulate many outlaws, creating pressure to reform, or, in the worst case, a competing co-geographical municipality.

Ancapistan and Nozickville each control a certain territory by dint of original appropriation, but this isn’t all the land they use.

"What if Ancapistan and Nozickville are bad at anarchy?" Well, then they learn better or suffer Gnon's wrath.

Property is obtained through securing it. If they use resources they have not secured, then they need to be prepared for it to be secured by someone else and thus lose the use of it.

Fortunately, the Ancapistanis and Nozickvillers reach an agreement on hunting rights, stipulating that the forest will be reserved for hunting, that hunters from both towns will be permitted to hunt there, and that the number of deer each town may hunt will be limited in order to maintain the deer population.

Directly contrary to Ancap principles. Collective ownership don't real. This is like two neighbours, instead of agreeing on a single property line, decide to set up a neutral zone they can both use to a limited degree. I dunno about you, but I'm seeing more conflict arise, not less. Why even bother with the complexity? Half the forest is Nozick's, half is Capistan's.

Tragedy of the commons: it is in each town's benefit to hunt as much of the limit as possible before the other town can.

This sounds like a fine exemplum

As above, it isn't.

Now an anarcho-capitalist would here claim that the two parties would not go to war but instead seek arbitration by a third party.

Secure your property. Don't whine if someone uses unsecured resources you wanted. If someone assaults your security, it is an act of war and you're entitled to defend yourself.

Arbitration might be cheaper, but war is more certain.

Peace is not kind of cheaper, like a different brand of soap. Peace is hundreds of times cheaper.  At 100:1, arbitration can be 99% certain to end unfavourably and you still break even.
Further, because of free Exit, if you try going to war over something stupid like that, your soldiers are likely to Exit rather than actually fight for you. Arbitration is looking hardly more certain.

As we're no longer in a democracy, human relationships might actually exist. It isn't just dollar and cents - the mayor/baron is going to personally know some of his soldiers. "Do I want to risk Frank's life over some trees?" Indeed the mayor/baron is going to have to know some of them personally, or he won't be able to get any loyalty - they won't fight for him even for good reasons.

If you can't get slaves to fight for you, fighting happens way less and nobody even contemplates total war.

On the other side, Rothbardia is going to be thinking the same thing. Judges and courts first arose in England from this exact process. The judges had no power, except Gnon's power to mete out punishments to anyone stupid enough to put the issue to the test of arms. Courts thrived, as we can see.

The only other defense by the anarcho-capitalist would be to say that Rothbardia is in the right—property rights cannot be established merely by convention but only by original appropriation

You know, I don't even know what 'original appropriation' means exactly.
While we can hope Ancap ideas about aggression could hold moral authority and thus skew the field of arms, we cannot rely on it. History shows only hard-nosed rationality is stable. You secure your property not because it gives you some moral authority to use it (though it does) but because 'securing' means 'make it unreasonably expensive to take it from you.'

Convention-based property rights are extremely useful for managing resources that are consumed when they are appropriated.

Security.

You own the deer that you kill through original appropriation, but you only own the wild herd through convention.

Fuck convention, get security.
That said, certain conventions indeed make it more expensive, and thus count as a weak kind of security. As household neighbours we build fences because they work better than convention. It only becomes more important at town-scale.

Fetishizing consent is a distraction.

Sophism.

You obtain fifty dollars from me.
I consented: it was a trade or gift.
I did not consent: it was theft, and I'll be asking for that back, using a glock.

Consent is critical. Consent is one of the foundational pillars of civilization. To ignore consent is to ignore property, which is to undermine order. Without order there will be nothing worth considering the consent status of.

Ancap is perhaps simply the realizing that if consent matters in petty issues between individuals, it only matters more and more as the conflicts get bigger and more significant.

either it must accept that its own system can produce conflicts in which both parties have justification or it must deny the validity of convention-based property rights.

If convention counts as security, then no. If not, then of course one rightly ignores convention.

The state is not the only social evil, nor is it always and invariably the worst social evil.

Gnon knows that many social evils are indirectly caused by the state. Perhaps half? I would like to ask him which ones, exactly.

One of the major ones is religious coercion. When the state supports a religion, it corrupts both. Every religion supported by a state has died or is dying. Every state that forced a religion to support it has become a progressive-style theocracy.

The thirty year's war taught people like Dawkins to say 'religion causes war.' Dawkins is an idiot outside biology.
Because children adopt whatever religion is put to them, when the state controls religion, opposing religions face annihilation and will fight commensurately. It is accepting the false legitimacy of religious coercion that causes such total wars.
Though, as always, secure your religion. Don't expect moral legitimacy to do all the work.

 An anarcho-capitalist believes that if the proper forms are filled out and filed correctly, all solvable social problems will solve themselves.

Other way around. The proper forms, in the sense of formalities, are defined by the state of society in which all solvable social problems are solved.

The road from anarcho-capitalism to neoreaction is paved with the realization that the Cathedral and Leftist entryism are even graver threats than the state.

Without a coercive state there is nothing for the Cathedral to seize, nothing for the Leftist to enter. This is one of those problems that Ancapistan doesn't even need to solve, the transition makes it go away on its own.


You may notice that entryist'ed organizations tend to die on the vine. Most recently reddit almost died from such a takeover attempt. It is only with a state, which can force the customers to stay, that entryism is viable.