Everything is solid in the Declaration from, "We hold these truths to be self-evident" right up to the last words before "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." That's where it goes off the rails.
Still, Jefferson and, presumably, all of the signatories of the Declaration, were entering into a voluntary contract that was valid in their minds, but with the proviso that "when it becomes" such that we can no longer voluntarily be subject to the agreement, we reserve the right to dissolve the bonds and form a new government, thereby preserving our self-ownership. Arguably, Lincoln and the pro-union Northern States rejected that concept--and thus the Declaration itself. At that point, they opened themselves to the possibility of Great Britain asserting the sovereignty of Queen Victoria over themselves.
The Declaration isn’t the problem, though. The Articles were arguably closer to the spirit of the Declaration, but Hamilton and his buddies conspired to kill those and foist the Constitution upon us.
I agree that the articles were closer to the declaration, but the declaration was the break with England, and Lincoln's war with the southern states represented a reversal of the intent of the declaration. It was a denial of the south's right to declare independence from the United States and, by extension, the right of the colonies to have declared independence from England. It was their right, and duty to themselves, to declare independence from England and it is our right, and duty to ourselves, to declare our independence from the United States.
What we do afterward is also our right and duty, whatever we choose to do. It is manifestly obvious that the government of the United States will not let us go peacefully. They will take whatever steps it takes to kill or imprison us. Are we willing to mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor to effect our independence?
"It isn’t the most exciting quote in the word, but for me"
Did you mean world instead of word?
Related to the overall theme of The Freedom Scale I received today an email from the Foundation for Economic Education attacking the standard left/right political spectrum, as you are doing. Most notable were the many direct quotes from all flavors of dictators.
Thank you again, MCL, for caring enough to let me know about typos. Good catch!
I love FEE, and yep, everyone is slowly starting to get that the "Marxist continuum," as I call it in the other book, is, and always was, total garbage.
Another typo? :) You said total garbage. I want to say propaganda. I see the 'Marxist continuum" intentionally fabricated for the purpose of driving the centralization of state power.
Great post! While I'm enjoying reading it in installments and it gives me something to look forward to, I also wish the book was already done and I could go on to the next part and devour it too!
I'm still having some difficulty accepting the premise that self-ownership is not alienble. The law of Moses specifically treats it otherwise in Exodus 21:2-6:
> “When you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for six years; then in the seventh he is to leave as a free man without paying anything. If he arrives alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrives with a wife, his wife is to leave with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children belong to her master, and the man must leave alone.
“But if the slave declares, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not want to leave as a free man,’ his master is to bring him to the judges and then bring him to the door or doorpost. His master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve his master for life”
That last line is most relevant here, "he will serve his master for life." Are you saying that this didn't actually ever happen, because no one would ever do that? Or that if someone did, this person simply "cease[d] being a moral being," had "become a lifeless thing," and had lost his humanity?
It seems like you might say that even in this case such a slave could eventually revoke his consent and leave his master, even though "the Law" says otherwise; is that correct? But the master could claim this was illegal, and a breach of contract which the slave had freely entered into. Can one legitimately consent at one time to enter into a contract in which their consent becomes irrevocable? (Marriage comes to mind, for those who believe divorce is impermissible, barring breach of the covenant through adultery).
"More than once over the years, I have heard aspects of the Bible framed by religious scholars as “upgrades” on a previous condition.
So, for example, references to slavery are to be understood in the following light:
>>The instructions given in the Old Testament on how to handle slaves were an improvement on the conditions that had existed previously. They were not meant as the final word on the matter. Rather, they were intended to move people some distance away from a previous condition, which had been worse.<<
The same has been said for the Lex Talionis: “an eye for an eye” was an improvement upon the pre-Biblical conditions of “your whole damn clan for an eye.”
According to this analysis, such instructions are meant to be transitional. I have heard similar explanations for Biblical descriptions of how to treat women, and probably some others I am forgetting."
I view this in the same light. The Bible, for example, talks about ways that you can beat your slave. I do not believe these were intended to be final moral statements. Rather, they had to have been transitional—to get people to a better place than where they had been.
I do not argue based on what governments say is legal, or from Scripture, or any positive-law tradition. Just natural law, which I am attempting to interpret and understand as logically as I can.
Thanks for explaining where your coming from. I'm a new reader of your Substack so I haven't read too many of your older articles yet. Just a point of clarification: the Bible doesn't talk about ways you can beat your wife; that's the Quran. The Bible actually tells husbands to love their wives.
As for slaves, the Bible did allow for physical punishment of slaves, as well as sons. The Bible also tolerated slavery as an economic system, which was very different from the chattel slavery practiced later in the West, but Christianity planted the seeds that would grow in time to overthrow slavery. I'd like to think this will also be the case in regards to groups calling themselves "governments." Hopefully one day Christian principles may help people see the injustices "governments" perpetrate and institutionalize by their very existence.
Thank you for the correction, and I am very glad you are here.
And yes, planting the seed is different from saying that slavery is morally acceptable in an absolute sense. My assumption has long been that since slavery was a near-universal institution at the time, no one would have listened if Scripture has said, Free all your slaves right now." So the approach was gradual—planting the seed, as you say. These things take time.
Of course, I am under no such constraint, so I can say that slavery is completely wrong under natural law (which, ultimately, is the law of the Creator).
I feel you. I just want to watch bees on flowers! But this is the battle, and battleground, we have been given.
As info, I do also always post these as Notes. So you can always tag someone in the comments of a note if you want to call someone’s attention to something.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) argues tha, a person should not resist living under a slave contract because, although he or she will own nothing, he or she "will be happy. The WEF's counter-inuitive argument that this slave will be happy is supported by a violation of Einstein's well tested "theory of relativity unedr which a WEF historian has travelled into the future at a speed exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum where this mythical historian has observed the happiness of slaves who accepted their slavery.
If it's not agreed to (if "No" is the response) after being offered it in the vernacular. in clear and certain terms, to One capable of fully informed consent (adult), there is no contract. Period.
I have heard People say, "But You have a social contract to..." obey the controlmind... And My thought is always, No I don't. No One ever gave Me the terms in the vernacular. in clear and certain terms, and I agreed. Ever.
Re-reading this, I'm curious where you stand on intellectual property. Even though I'm a content creator, I have serious problems with IP as a concept, because it involves property that's not really property, according to the principle of alienability.
I feel pretty strongly about this issue, actually. Please forgive my upcoming unequivocal response 😁❤️
Property exists as an outgrowth of self-ownership. Self-ownership is dispositive decision-making authority over one's body, life, and being, rooted in one's exclusive, inalienable control of one's own thoughts, actions, and choices. Property is an extension of oneself—of one's mind—out into the world.
Intellectual property is property.
I wrote my other book over the course of 15 years. It is the product of unbelievable amounts of thought, effort, research. I would think about it first thing in the morning and last thing before I went to bed. It. Is. Mine. My work. If someone were to take it, slap their name on it, and sell it as theirs, it is theft, and actionable as such.
I cannot mince words here. This is one of their areas where some libertarians go completely off the rails. Like when the great Murray Rothbard says it's okay for parents to let their own children starve. (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/parents-starve-own-children)
I am definitely a first-principles guy, but this is one of those areas where I understand the Burkean conservative critique of libertarianism's (and other ideologies') focus on principles unmoored from organic knowledge. If we follow an abstract principle, just doing cold philosophical math along the way, sometimes we can go to places that are unintuitive and just plain wrong. And I believe with every fiber of my being that letting your children starve and denying that works of the mind are property fall very much into that category.
I appreciate you've put plenty of rigorous thought behind it.
I frown upon people passing off others' ideas as their own, but I think the shaming that (used to) happen in scholarly circles for plagiarists is the right solution, not a body of IP law.
Is there a problem with treating IP as property in the enforcement of it? Natural human rights are at least possible to enforce by the rights holder at the point of potential violation. And alienable property has discernible boundaries that intellectual property simply doesn't have (how much of my idea is really *my* idea?). Doesn't IP require a pre-ordained monopoly-violence institution -- a government, absolutely evil -- to maintain it? And isn't that the real point of the principles Rothbard is describing, that trying to define inalienable things as "rights" must justify something that's clearly wrong and violent (government)?
IP laws would not require government, in the same way that any/all laws could be handled in a private-law society.
But let's set that aside for the moment…
Where does property come from? Why do you get to own things at all? It's labor and the mind, which ultimately comes back to the mind, since the labor is driven by the choices of your mind. So how can you come to own a statue that you carved from marble from the ideas of your mind, but not a screenplay you wrote from the ideas of your mind?
The notion that it's hard to tell the boundaries of ideas doesn't hold water for me. The statue is based in part on knowledge gleaned by sculptors for 6,000 years or more. It's no more or less derivative than the screenplay, which is also based on knowledge and stories accumulated for all of human history. Everything is derivative to one extent or another.
And why isn't a screenplay just as alienable as anything else? "Here's this story I wrote" *hands over a stack of paper or a flash drive* "Wanna buy it?"
And back to the government/Rothbard. He did not spell out how a private-law society could work as well as Friedman or Hoppe, but he clearly believed one could work. So I don't think he would define away any right because government is required to protect the right, since he did not believe government was required.
Honestly, this whole IP thing totally baffles me. I just don't get how anyone comes to a different conclusion. I know they do, but it baffles me! 🤣🤣😳
I don't think property comes from "labor and the mind." It's labor and materials. The mind portion, to the extent that "mind" is relevant, is already completely contained in the labor portion, in the sense that the labor is intentional action. The labor itself is also materially manifest and may act upon more materials.
> So how can you come to own a statue that you carved from marble from the ideas of your mind, but not a screenplay you wrote from the ideas of your mind?
Because the statue is alienable. The *idea* of the statue is not alienable. Similarly, the physically written screenplay in some medium is alienable, but the *idea* for the screenplay isn't. If someone hacked your computer or otherwise stole some medium from you that contained your conretization of an idea into a screenplay, then that's theft, but not because the *idea* was stolen; because the physical medium, which is alienable, was violated.
Meme culture should've shown us all that ideas don't belong to anyone. I say this as someone who has made original recordings of music and written a book and continues to write weekly articles. Once I express my ideas and the idea then gets to someone else's mind, it's no longer my idea. The idea in someone else's mind is now that person's idea; that person may do with it what he/she pleases, and I have no better/prior claim over what that person does.
I hope all ideas are "stolen," although stolen is merely a metaphor since ideas can't be owned property in a natural-rights sense. In my book, I replaced the standard copyright disclaimer with: "All natural human rights respected. Please support the creators of the artistic and literary works you value."
IP doesn't baffle me. I can see it like any other dispute in which some people stand to benefit from forcibly restricting other people's actions.
What if someone doesn’t steal the actual hard copy of your screenplay, but takes a picture of each page and then recreates it once he is back at home, and then sells it as his own work?
The claiming it as his own work might be plagiarism, and if you can demonstrate you had previously written it, then the shame I was talking about previously could occur.
But if by "selling" the work, you mean mixing his labor and other resources to make it manifest, then he has a claim to *his* efforts and results. This happens more than some might realize. One person comes up with an idea and tries to manifest it, but does a poor job of manifesting it. Someone else encounters it and does some sort of reverse engineering and figures out how to better present it to others. There's no telling how often this happened in the long development of human civilization. I was briefly a software engineer, and engineers share/copy code that's been made public or reverse engineer products back into underlying code quite frequently.
If you're the kind of person who has ideas but is poor at manifesting them, then the economic incentive exists for you to find someone who has the means to produce goods and services but is looking for some better ideas to turn into products.
By the way, my motivation for asking you about this is because I'm considering writing an article that touches on the recent court ruling against Internet Archive on IP grounds. And the same description Rothbard made of alienable and inalienable that you used to argue against the "right" to sell oneself into slavery is, I think, pertinent to IP and whether or not it really is property. It wasn't a gotcha question at all; genuinely curious about your thoughts. Thanks for sharing and for letting me share mine with you 🙂
Council rates, etc. tells me that you are in the UK, right? Or at least another Anglosphere country than the U.S., where I am. Can you tell me more about this, so I can better understand your question?
I understand that councils (in Australia) are not legal. And the rates they charge us are also not legal. And that Australian police are a corporation - hence not legally able to enforce fines. Yet it still seems almost impossible to push back…. Threatened with licence suspension, doctoring your pay and so on…..
Christopher, my response to the slavery topic may be a bit too esoteric but thought you may enjoy what I call the root cause. People can be seen as the ancient artificial intelligence, and slavery is part of our programming. One of the oldest known story of this concept comes from the ancient Summerians, referring to the Annunaki and the Igigi's. In short dna was manipulated for the previous human (pre-Adamite) race, to make a "working" race.
One story that is more known (but less understood) is from chapter two of Genesis, we read YHWH needed people to cultivate the ground. (Genesis 2:5. Now no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. The word for cultivate in Hebrew is abad. This word translates as “worship, labor or serve.” Furthermore, in the NASB (New American Standard Bible) Translation, it states the meaning of abad as “become slaves, burdened, bondage, used, or worshipers.” It is conceivable in concept, that the Adams would be molded a certain way or be given a sense of purpose by its creator, which is to serve, be in bondage to, and worship. Reminiscent to the psychological syndrome of a dictator.
In Africa there was a sibyl called the Lybian Sibal, who knew the fate of her African people. Where slavery was embedded into their DNA more than other people's. What all of this comes down to is genetic engineering. This is backed by science, as found to be the characteristics of the gene called vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2). The only way to stop slavery is to either know how to deactivate it or build the next race of workers with AI.
Did you poss post a note that linked to a videonon odysee @psinergy About Dr Ruby- I was in the middle of it and SS took it away... If you can you resend your note/link?
In the Bible the Israelites decided to ask for a king (1 Samuel 8) and God informs them that the government will exploit them. We all know how things went after they got the king they were asking for.
But what about during the period when they were led by a series of Judges (many of whom were nothing more than momentary military leaders who were used to defeat an enemy army) and a set of moral standards (the priesthood, the 10 commandments, etc)… is this form of government less unacceptable?
In the first century AD, Tacitus made a distinction between auctoritas (leadership by merit, followed by choice) and potestas (rule by force).
Did these judges rule through potestas? Or did they lead through auctoritas? Did the judges impose their rule, or did people choose to follow them because of their wisdom?
Most of the “judges” are portrayed as flawed individuals who were snatched up (Gideon is a great example) and used by God to achieve some purpose. Those who were leaders led by merit. Some were cautionary tales rather than leaders… Sampson is probably the best known example.
I am not an Old Testament scholar by a long stretch, but there is a historical record of a period of over 300 years in there where a nation existed without a government. There is enough evidence that supports the bulk of the Old Testament being an accurate historical document regardless of an individual’s religious beliefs, so it might be an interesting case study for minimal government.
Socialism is fine for some sort of intelligent entity that isn’t a human, but the Pilgrims were human, so it obviously wasn’t going to work out for them. For someone to believe Socialism could work requires a remarkable lack of understanding of humanity.
There’s something here perhaps… many leaders have strong sociopathic tendencies. Perhaps their understanding of human nature is skewed to the point that they are unaware that socialism is contrary to human nature.
Possibly. Probably. It doesn’t really matter if the back wheels are pushing the car or the front wheels are pulling it. The important thing is to understand that a functional car has both front and back wheels and you don’t see many functional cars missing either set.
The slave-contract issue reminds me of the argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin: long on fantasy and short on practical application. But as long as we're there, I would challenge your assertion as follows: clearly I can trade some of my labor for compensation. Where, according to your theory, is the limit of how much I can trade? Twenty-three hours a day, but not twenty-four? Six days a week but not seven?
Or is the distinction that as my "owner", I could be ordered to do anything? Again, I would ask, where is the line between "slavery" and "not-slavery"?
Or is the distinction the fact that my obligations would last the rest of my life? Would it then be not-slavery if I'm obligated till my 80th birthday?
You are correct—it is very much an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin question. And obviously it is a bit of intentional cheek on my part to say that the dilemma is "solved." It'll never be solved. We can always say, "Yeah, but…" in response to any answer.
So here is where I hang my hat…
First, we know that no one in their right mind, who is not under duress, would ever choose to agree to a lifetime "contract" in which he is forced to labor for no compensation, under terms completely determined by another, subject to a master's whim, punished for any transgression the master wishes, etc.
That makes the slave-contract dilemma one of those hypothetical edge questions…like, "What if one person has a substance in his body that will save the rest of the human race from a virus? May we kill him and take the substance to save the whole human race?" These are interesting scenarios to discuss, but we do not make determinations about important principles based on the mind-bending edge-questions. A normal person will enter into a reasonable contract, not a slave contract.
What I am arguing is that an actual inescapable slave contract requires one to alienate the inalienable. You are not just giving your labor. You are saying to another, "You own me. I no longer get to consent upon any aspect of my life." Of course you can say that. You can sign a piece of paper consenting to never again be able to consent to anything, ever again." I just do not believe that you can be held to that "contract" if you choose to "break" it. Because you cannot actually get rid of that right to consent. So if you were suddenly to wake up and say, "I'm done with this stupid 'contract'," you would be free to go. You can choose to act as if you have surrendered your consent, but you cannot actually surrender your consent.
If you sign a contract agreeing to sell your car for $100 and you get the money but do not give the car, you can be held to that because your car, and the $100, were both alienable. But your consent is not alienable. You an act as if it is, and behave as such until you die,. But it isn't ACTUALLY alienable.
Again, as you said, angels on the head of a pin! I just think it is a useful way to emphasize the inalienability of self-ownership.
"All involuntary governance is morally impermissible"
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Everything is solid in the Declaration from, "We hold these truths to be self-evident" right up to the last words before "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." That's where it goes off the rails.
This is similar to what I think about the First Amendment. Perhaps it would be better if it simply stated: "Congress shall make no law." Period.
"Congress shall make no law."
Whereupon Congress disappeared in a puff of smoke, taking every other branch, department, agency, ministry, bureaucracy, and apparatus with it.
Still, Jefferson and, presumably, all of the signatories of the Declaration, were entering into a voluntary contract that was valid in their minds, but with the proviso that "when it becomes" such that we can no longer voluntarily be subject to the agreement, we reserve the right to dissolve the bonds and form a new government, thereby preserving our self-ownership. Arguably, Lincoln and the pro-union Northern States rejected that concept--and thus the Declaration itself. At that point, they opened themselves to the possibility of Great Britain asserting the sovereignty of Queen Victoria over themselves.
The Declaration isn’t the problem, though. The Articles were arguably closer to the spirit of the Declaration, but Hamilton and his buddies conspired to kill those and foist the Constitution upon us.
I agree that the articles were closer to the declaration, but the declaration was the break with England, and Lincoln's war with the southern states represented a reversal of the intent of the declaration. It was a denial of the south's right to declare independence from the United States and, by extension, the right of the colonies to have declared independence from England. It was their right, and duty to themselves, to declare independence from England and it is our right, and duty to ourselves, to declare our independence from the United States.
What we do afterward is also our right and duty, whatever we choose to do. It is manifestly obvious that the government of the United States will not let us go peacefully. They will take whatever steps it takes to kill or imprison us. Are we willing to mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor to effect our independence?
Quite!
Wonderful Christopher once more you got to the essence!
Well done Christopher!
Minor typo?
"It isn’t the most exciting quote in the word, but for me"
Did you mean world instead of word?
Related to the overall theme of The Freedom Scale I received today an email from the Foundation for Economic Education attacking the standard left/right political spectrum, as you are doing. Most notable were the many direct quotes from all flavors of dictators.
https://fee.org/articles/the-big-problem-with-the-traditional-political-spectrum-children-are-taught-in-schools/
Thank you again, MCL, for caring enough to let me know about typos. Good catch!
I love FEE, and yep, everyone is slowly starting to get that the "Marxist continuum," as I call it in the other book, is, and always was, total garbage.
Cheers!
Another typo? :) You said total garbage. I want to say propaganda. I see the 'Marxist continuum" intentionally fabricated for the purpose of driving the centralization of state power.
Fair enough!! 🤣🔥❤️
Right on!
💪🔥
Great post! While I'm enjoying reading it in installments and it gives me something to look forward to, I also wish the book was already done and I could go on to the next part and devour it too!
I'm still having some difficulty accepting the premise that self-ownership is not alienble. The law of Moses specifically treats it otherwise in Exodus 21:2-6:
> “When you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for six years; then in the seventh he is to leave as a free man without paying anything. If he arrives alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrives with a wife, his wife is to leave with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children belong to her master, and the man must leave alone.
“But if the slave declares, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not want to leave as a free man,’ his master is to bring him to the judges and then bring him to the door or doorpost. His master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve his master for life”
https://ref.ly/Ex21.2-6 via the Logos Bible Android app.
That last line is most relevant here, "he will serve his master for life." Are you saying that this didn't actually ever happen, because no one would ever do that? Or that if someone did, this person simply "cease[d] being a moral being," had "become a lifeless thing," and had lost his humanity?
It seems like you might say that even in this case such a slave could eventually revoke his consent and leave his master, even though "the Law" says otherwise; is that correct? But the master could claim this was illegal, and a breach of contract which the slave had freely entered into. Can one legitimately consent at one time to enter into a contract in which their consent becomes irrevocable? (Marriage comes to mind, for those who believe divorce is impermissible, barring breach of the covenant through adultery).
In this post (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/still-follow-romans-13), I noted this:
"More than once over the years, I have heard aspects of the Bible framed by religious scholars as “upgrades” on a previous condition.
So, for example, references to slavery are to be understood in the following light:
>>The instructions given in the Old Testament on how to handle slaves were an improvement on the conditions that had existed previously. They were not meant as the final word on the matter. Rather, they were intended to move people some distance away from a previous condition, which had been worse.<<
The same has been said for the Lex Talionis: “an eye for an eye” was an improvement upon the pre-Biblical conditions of “your whole damn clan for an eye.”
According to this analysis, such instructions are meant to be transitional. I have heard similar explanations for Biblical descriptions of how to treat women, and probably some others I am forgetting."
I view this in the same light. The Bible, for example, talks about ways that you can beat your slave. I do not believe these were intended to be final moral statements. Rather, they had to have been transitional—to get people to a better place than where they had been.
I do not argue based on what governments say is legal, or from Scripture, or any positive-law tradition. Just natural law, which I am attempting to interpret and understand as logically as I can.
Does that help?
Thanks for explaining where your coming from. I'm a new reader of your Substack so I haven't read too many of your older articles yet. Just a point of clarification: the Bible doesn't talk about ways you can beat your wife; that's the Quran. The Bible actually tells husbands to love their wives.
As for slaves, the Bible did allow for physical punishment of slaves, as well as sons. The Bible also tolerated slavery as an economic system, which was very different from the chattel slavery practiced later in the West, but Christianity planted the seeds that would grow in time to overthrow slavery. I'd like to think this will also be the case in regards to groups calling themselves "governments." Hopefully one day Christian principles may help people see the injustices "governments" perpetrate and institutionalize by their very existence.
Thank you for the correction, and I am very glad you are here.
And yes, planting the seed is different from saying that slavery is morally acceptable in an absolute sense. My assumption has long been that since slavery was a near-universal institution at the time, no one would have listened if Scripture has said, Free all your slaves right now." So the approach was gradual—planting the seed, as you say. These things take time.
Of course, I am under no such constraint, so I can say that slavery is completely wrong under natural law (which, ultimately, is the law of the Creator).
@mod800 Check this guy out
Thanks, Calvin!
Unfortunately, tagging does not work in comments on posts. It just works in Notes.
Cheers dude. Techno fear!
I feel you. I just want to watch bees on flowers! But this is the battle, and battleground, we have been given.
As info, I do also always post these as Notes. So you can always tag someone in the comments of a note if you want to call someone’s attention to something.
https://substack.com/@christophercook/note/c-68344133
The World Economic Forum (WEF) argues tha, a person should not resist living under a slave contract because, although he or she will own nothing, he or she "will be happy. The WEF's counter-inuitive argument that this slave will be happy is supported by a violation of Einstein's well tested "theory of relativity unedr which a WEF historian has travelled into the future at a speed exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum where this mythical historian has observed the happiness of slaves who accepted their slavery.
I am Terry Oldberg
Engineer/Scientist/Public Policy Researcher
Los Altos Hills, California
1-650-518-6636 (mobile)
terry_oldberg@yahoo.com (email)
Indeed sir. The WEF appear to be run by some of the vilest creatures ever to have slithered upon the Earth.
We have natural law on our side.
All the have is wickedness and power.
And there's no escaping natural law/karma/consequence.
If it's not agreed to (if "No" is the response) after being offered it in the vernacular. in clear and certain terms, to One capable of fully informed consent (adult), there is no contract. Period.
I have heard People say, "But You have a social contract to..." obey the controlmind... And My thought is always, No I don't. No One ever gave Me the terms in the vernacular. in clear and certain terms, and I agreed. Ever.
Needless to say, I am an anarchist.
The Rules of Anarchy (8 min): https://odysee.com/@amaterasusolar:8/the-rules-of-anarchy-8-minute-video:8?lid=eeff9e0c80138ce03e22d76bcd5f2f873ff46b72
I think we can establish that consent must be
Explicit
Transparent
Ongoing
Informed
Revocable
Anything else that should go in there?
Looks like You covered it!
Re-reading this, I'm curious where you stand on intellectual property. Even though I'm a content creator, I have serious problems with IP as a concept, because it involves property that's not really property, according to the principle of alienability.
What say you, Christopher?
I feel pretty strongly about this issue, actually. Please forgive my upcoming unequivocal response 😁❤️
Property exists as an outgrowth of self-ownership. Self-ownership is dispositive decision-making authority over one's body, life, and being, rooted in one's exclusive, inalienable control of one's own thoughts, actions, and choices. Property is an extension of oneself—of one's mind—out into the world.
Intellectual property is property.
I wrote my other book over the course of 15 years. It is the product of unbelievable amounts of thought, effort, research. I would think about it first thing in the morning and last thing before I went to bed. It. Is. Mine. My work. If someone were to take it, slap their name on it, and sell it as theirs, it is theft, and actionable as such.
I cannot mince words here. This is one of their areas where some libertarians go completely off the rails. Like when the great Murray Rothbard says it's okay for parents to let their own children starve. (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/parents-starve-own-children)
I am definitely a first-principles guy, but this is one of those areas where I understand the Burkean conservative critique of libertarianism's (and other ideologies') focus on principles unmoored from organic knowledge. If we follow an abstract principle, just doing cold philosophical math along the way, sometimes we can go to places that are unintuitive and just plain wrong. And I believe with every fiber of my being that letting your children starve and denying that works of the mind are property fall very much into that category.
I appreciate you've put plenty of rigorous thought behind it.
I frown upon people passing off others' ideas as their own, but I think the shaming that (used to) happen in scholarly circles for plagiarists is the right solution, not a body of IP law.
Is there a problem with treating IP as property in the enforcement of it? Natural human rights are at least possible to enforce by the rights holder at the point of potential violation. And alienable property has discernible boundaries that intellectual property simply doesn't have (how much of my idea is really *my* idea?). Doesn't IP require a pre-ordained monopoly-violence institution -- a government, absolutely evil -- to maintain it? And isn't that the real point of the principles Rothbard is describing, that trying to define inalienable things as "rights" must justify something that's clearly wrong and violent (government)?
IP laws would not require government, in the same way that any/all laws could be handled in a private-law society.
But let's set that aside for the moment…
Where does property come from? Why do you get to own things at all? It's labor and the mind, which ultimately comes back to the mind, since the labor is driven by the choices of your mind. So how can you come to own a statue that you carved from marble from the ideas of your mind, but not a screenplay you wrote from the ideas of your mind?
The notion that it's hard to tell the boundaries of ideas doesn't hold water for me. The statue is based in part on knowledge gleaned by sculptors for 6,000 years or more. It's no more or less derivative than the screenplay, which is also based on knowledge and stories accumulated for all of human history. Everything is derivative to one extent or another.
And why isn't a screenplay just as alienable as anything else? "Here's this story I wrote" *hands over a stack of paper or a flash drive* "Wanna buy it?"
And back to the government/Rothbard. He did not spell out how a private-law society could work as well as Friedman or Hoppe, but he clearly believed one could work. So I don't think he would define away any right because government is required to protect the right, since he did not believe government was required.
Honestly, this whole IP thing totally baffles me. I just don't get how anyone comes to a different conclusion. I know they do, but it baffles me! 🤣🤣😳
I don't think property comes from "labor and the mind." It's labor and materials. The mind portion, to the extent that "mind" is relevant, is already completely contained in the labor portion, in the sense that the labor is intentional action. The labor itself is also materially manifest and may act upon more materials.
> So how can you come to own a statue that you carved from marble from the ideas of your mind, but not a screenplay you wrote from the ideas of your mind?
Because the statue is alienable. The *idea* of the statue is not alienable. Similarly, the physically written screenplay in some medium is alienable, but the *idea* for the screenplay isn't. If someone hacked your computer or otherwise stole some medium from you that contained your conretization of an idea into a screenplay, then that's theft, but not because the *idea* was stolen; because the physical medium, which is alienable, was violated.
Meme culture should've shown us all that ideas don't belong to anyone. I say this as someone who has made original recordings of music and written a book and continues to write weekly articles. Once I express my ideas and the idea then gets to someone else's mind, it's no longer my idea. The idea in someone else's mind is now that person's idea; that person may do with it what he/she pleases, and I have no better/prior claim over what that person does.
I hope all ideas are "stolen," although stolen is merely a metaphor since ideas can't be owned property in a natural-rights sense. In my book, I replaced the standard copyright disclaimer with: "All natural human rights respected. Please support the creators of the artistic and literary works you value."
IP doesn't baffle me. I can see it like any other dispute in which some people stand to benefit from forcibly restricting other people's actions.
What if someone doesn’t steal the actual hard copy of your screenplay, but takes a picture of each page and then recreates it once he is back at home, and then sells it as his own work?
The claiming it as his own work might be plagiarism, and if you can demonstrate you had previously written it, then the shame I was talking about previously could occur.
But if by "selling" the work, you mean mixing his labor and other resources to make it manifest, then he has a claim to *his* efforts and results. This happens more than some might realize. One person comes up with an idea and tries to manifest it, but does a poor job of manifesting it. Someone else encounters it and does some sort of reverse engineering and figures out how to better present it to others. There's no telling how often this happened in the long development of human civilization. I was briefly a software engineer, and engineers share/copy code that's been made public or reverse engineer products back into underlying code quite frequently.
If you're the kind of person who has ideas but is poor at manifesting them, then the economic incentive exists for you to find someone who has the means to produce goods and services but is looking for some better ideas to turn into products.
By the way, my motivation for asking you about this is because I'm considering writing an article that touches on the recent court ruling against Internet Archive on IP grounds. And the same description Rothbard made of alienable and inalienable that you used to argue against the "right" to sell oneself into slavery is, I think, pertinent to IP and whether or not it really is property. It wasn't a gotcha question at all; genuinely curious about your thoughts. Thanks for sharing and for letting me share mine with you 🙂
How do you view mortgages and police and council issued fines? And council rates?
Council rates, etc. tells me that you are in the UK, right? Or at least another Anglosphere country than the U.S., where I am. Can you tell me more about this, so I can better understand your question?
I understand that councils (in Australia) are not legal. And the rates they charge us are also not legal. And that Australian police are a corporation - hence not legally able to enforce fines. Yet it still seems almost impossible to push back…. Threatened with licence suspension, doctoring your pay and so on…..
It’s always hard to push back against those who have the guns and the presumption of legitimacy.
Just say, no. Try to de-tangle.
I think this is ultimately the key. As opposed to trying a “revolution.”
Christopher, my response to the slavery topic may be a bit too esoteric but thought you may enjoy what I call the root cause. People can be seen as the ancient artificial intelligence, and slavery is part of our programming. One of the oldest known story of this concept comes from the ancient Summerians, referring to the Annunaki and the Igigi's. In short dna was manipulated for the previous human (pre-Adamite) race, to make a "working" race.
One story that is more known (but less understood) is from chapter two of Genesis, we read YHWH needed people to cultivate the ground. (Genesis 2:5. Now no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. The word for cultivate in Hebrew is abad. This word translates as “worship, labor or serve.” Furthermore, in the NASB (New American Standard Bible) Translation, it states the meaning of abad as “become slaves, burdened, bondage, used, or worshipers.” It is conceivable in concept, that the Adams would be molded a certain way or be given a sense of purpose by its creator, which is to serve, be in bondage to, and worship. Reminiscent to the psychological syndrome of a dictator.
In Africa there was a sibyl called the Lybian Sibal, who knew the fate of her African people. Where slavery was embedded into their DNA more than other people's. What all of this comes down to is genetic engineering. This is backed by science, as found to be the characteristics of the gene called vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2). The only way to stop slavery is to either know how to deactivate it or build the next race of workers with AI.
Whoa, that is esoteric. But very interesting!
Unsurprisingly, Rothbard nails it.
He was a giant.
Did you poss post a note that linked to a videonon odysee @psinergy About Dr Ruby- I was in the middle of it and SS took it away... If you can you resend your note/link?
I would bet that was https://substack.com/@amaterasusolar. Maybe ask him?
(Perhaps he deleted the comment himself for some reason…)
Thx for reply.
In the Bible the Israelites decided to ask for a king (1 Samuel 8) and God informs them that the government will exploit them. We all know how things went after they got the king they were asking for.
But what about during the period when they were led by a series of Judges (many of whom were nothing more than momentary military leaders who were used to defeat an enemy army) and a set of moral standards (the priesthood, the 10 commandments, etc)… is this form of government less unacceptable?
In the first century AD, Tacitus made a distinction between auctoritas (leadership by merit, followed by choice) and potestas (rule by force).
Did these judges rule through potestas? Or did they lead through auctoritas? Did the judges impose their rule, or did people choose to follow them because of their wisdom?
Most of the “judges” are portrayed as flawed individuals who were snatched up (Gideon is a great example) and used by God to achieve some purpose. Those who were leaders led by merit. Some were cautionary tales rather than leaders… Sampson is probably the best known example.
I am not an Old Testament scholar by a long stretch, but there is a historical record of a period of over 300 years in there where a nation existed without a government. There is enough evidence that supports the bulk of the Old Testament being an accurate historical document regardless of an individual’s religious beliefs, so it might be an interesting case study for minimal government.
That would indeed be a great study to do. We could add it to this: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/building-island-3-historical-examples-anarchism
Also, do you know the whole thing about how the Pilgrims demonstrated that socialism does not work in their very first year here?
Socialism is fine for some sort of intelligent entity that isn’t a human, but the Pilgrims were human, so it obviously wasn’t going to work out for them. For someone to believe Socialism could work requires a remarkable lack of understanding of humanity.
There’s something here perhaps… many leaders have strong sociopathic tendencies. Perhaps their understanding of human nature is skewed to the point that they are unaware that socialism is contrary to human nature.
Perhaps so.
And perhaps power actually attracts the most sociopathic and psychopathic among us.
Possibly. Probably. It doesn’t really matter if the back wheels are pushing the car or the front wheels are pulling it. The important thing is to understand that a functional car has both front and back wheels and you don’t see many functional cars missing either set.
Power and sociopathic people tend to go together.
The slave-contract issue reminds me of the argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin: long on fantasy and short on practical application. But as long as we're there, I would challenge your assertion as follows: clearly I can trade some of my labor for compensation. Where, according to your theory, is the limit of how much I can trade? Twenty-three hours a day, but not twenty-four? Six days a week but not seven?
Or is the distinction that as my "owner", I could be ordered to do anything? Again, I would ask, where is the line between "slavery" and "not-slavery"?
Or is the distinction the fact that my obligations would last the rest of my life? Would it then be not-slavery if I'm obligated till my 80th birthday?
You are correct—it is very much an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin question. And obviously it is a bit of intentional cheek on my part to say that the dilemma is "solved." It'll never be solved. We can always say, "Yeah, but…" in response to any answer.
So here is where I hang my hat…
First, we know that no one in their right mind, who is not under duress, would ever choose to agree to a lifetime "contract" in which he is forced to labor for no compensation, under terms completely determined by another, subject to a master's whim, punished for any transgression the master wishes, etc.
That makes the slave-contract dilemma one of those hypothetical edge questions…like, "What if one person has a substance in his body that will save the rest of the human race from a virus? May we kill him and take the substance to save the whole human race?" These are interesting scenarios to discuss, but we do not make determinations about important principles based on the mind-bending edge-questions. A normal person will enter into a reasonable contract, not a slave contract.
What I am arguing is that an actual inescapable slave contract requires one to alienate the inalienable. You are not just giving your labor. You are saying to another, "You own me. I no longer get to consent upon any aspect of my life." Of course you can say that. You can sign a piece of paper consenting to never again be able to consent to anything, ever again." I just do not believe that you can be held to that "contract" if you choose to "break" it. Because you cannot actually get rid of that right to consent. So if you were suddenly to wake up and say, "I'm done with this stupid 'contract'," you would be free to go. You can choose to act as if you have surrendered your consent, but you cannot actually surrender your consent.
If you sign a contract agreeing to sell your car for $100 and you get the money but do not give the car, you can be held to that because your car, and the $100, were both alienable. But your consent is not alienable. You an act as if it is, and behave as such until you die,. But it isn't ACTUALLY alienable.
Again, as you said, angels on the head of a pin! I just think it is a useful way to emphasize the inalienability of self-ownership.