Monday, May 16, 2011

A Challenge to Anarchists

[This was originally an e-mail to Billy Beck, which I'm reproducing in a slightly modified version here.  I'll post replies only with permission.]


On the nature of government:

I assert first and foremost that government is not a collective, not a representation of society, not any of the things it is normally asserted as being - I assert instead that government is a tool without moral value of its own, no different from a gun, or a nuclear weapon.  (See this post for more on this)

Like a gun, government can be used either for good or for evil; for offensive purposes, or self defense purposes.  I assert that a government formed on the sole principle of self-defense is a moral government.  To argue this purpose immoral is to argue that self defense itself is evil, or that we have no right to band together for mutual self-interest.  Whether or not government is doomed to expand beyond its moral purposes by historical evidence is, to me, as silly an argument as whether or not anarchy is doomed to spontaneous organization into governmental structure; no government yet has been formed on a moral basis, just as no sustained anarchy has yet arisen.

More, I'm going to assert that specific forms of taxation do in fact have a moral basis as well as a moral purpose - property taxes.  Not the property taxes that exist today, which tax a person on their achievements with that property, but a property tax which serves solely to recognize and ameliorate that our right to property is derived from our conversion of it, and that consequently we have no right to the unconverted resources which we do not use, and which are always going to be a part of any property.  That is, property tax should be proportional to the base value of the land, absent any improvements - the unconverted value of the resources upon which it lays.

They are rent, of a sort, paid not because somebody else has claim to something, but paid because somebody else has -equal- claim to that thing as you.  They are paid as part of a broader - and yes, social (see note one, below) - agreement that expands our domain to go beyond our basic right not to have our property destroyed (by which we may rightfully claim the farm we have tilled and the house we have built) to further protect "property" which remains unconverted and thus for which we have no right whatsoever; it is an agreement that others will not mine beneath us, or build around us.

Wilderness we have staked claim to is not ours by any natural right; the planting of a flag does not invoke ownership.  Thus property taxes allow land to be put to uses without any value of conversion - but do so solely on the basis of one's capacity to conversion, and disproportionate productive capacity on other land.

The second step in this argument would be a discussion of what moral purposes such taxes can be put towards, but that requires resolution of whether or not such an agreement to be moral to begin with, so I'll leave off here without response.


Note 1: There is a somewhat more substantial argument possible here over whether "society" has any right to trade away the miner's right to convert the iron and coal beneath your farm, provided he can do so without harm to your converted property; this is indeed a moral issue.  While writing moral treatise is entertaining, the potential right to unconverted property is something I am already convinced of, and if my reader shares my convictions in the matter of whether one can meaningfully be said to own as-yet unconverted resources, the work involved would be meaningless.  I may write a follow-up post on the subject, however, at a later date.

29 comments:

  1. Challenge? Well, okay then.

    "I assert instead that government is a tool without moral value of its own"

    A government is made of people, it is not just a tool.

    "Like a gun, government can be used either for good or for evil"

    Government has always been instantiated by a system of human relations that are inherently evil.

    Specifically, all government have necessarily required privileging at least one person's wants entire over the wants entire of another.

    "To argue this purpose immoral is to argue that self defense itself is evil, or that we have no right to band together for mutual self-interest."

    If by 'government' you mean banding together for self defence, then no, it isn't evil.

    "but a property tax which serves solely to recognize and ameliorate that our right to property is derived from our conversion of it, and that consequently we have no right to the unconverted resources which we do not use, and which are always going to be a part of any property."

    Begging the question. The statement is absurd to any well-informed anarchist.
    Property is preceded and defined by security. If you secure it, it's yours, with one caveat. To have rightfully secured something, it must not logically imply contradictions to the right of others to secure it.
    Either I agreed to your tax, or I didn't. If I didn't, you're unilaterally imposing it upon me, by breaching my security. If you're allowed to breach my security, I must be allowed to breach yours. In short, to shoot you to stop you taxing me. Since your system implies I can rightfully shoot you, and it would stop you taxing me, why would I not do exactly that?

    If I agreed to it, there's no need for a justification, at all. We just sort of agree.

    Fact is, if your 'government' can't persuade people to pay for it voluntarily, it doesn't deserve to exist. If it can, then it can have prices set by supply and demand, just like everything else.

    "Wilderness we have staked claim to is not ours by any natural right; the planting of a flag does not invoke ownership."

    No, you need a fence, physical or metaphorical. For mineral claims like gold, the flag system was backed by rule of law. The flags were there to make objective which claimant the police, and ultimately the army, should support. Simultaneously, to inform other hopefuls which lands would be disputed, so they don't waste their own time nor anyone else's.

    "Thus property taxes allow land to be put to uses without any value of conversion - but do so solely on the basis of one's capacity to conversion, and disproportionate productive capacity on other land."

    So, this looks like a huge logical leap.
    And I think I've found the contradiction: if I'm not allowed to claim value I haven't converted, why is the government - also made of people - allowed to claim value they haven't converted? In fact, they're supposed to have rights specifically to unconverted value? Not a chance.

    "The second step in this argument would be a discussion of what moral purposes such taxes can be put towards"

    Ockham prefers anarchism. You have to worry about whether the taxes are spent morally. I only have to worry if they're collected morally. Moreover, assuming that they're collected from volunteers implies that the volunteers think it's being spent morally - and likewise implies that if it isn't, they'll stop offering. I don't have to worry about other people's business - it's their responsibility, not mine.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "A government is made of people, it is not just a tool."

    A government is a structure those people create; it is not made of them, for the same government can exist with different people.

    "Government has always been instantiated by a system of human relations that are inherently evil.

    Specifically, all government have necessarily required privileging at least one person's wants entire over the wants entire of another."


    - Anarchy is no different; it privileges your desires for no government above mine for a small government, for example. Such privilege is irrelevant; it is the principles which matter.

    "If by 'government' you mean banding together for self defence, then no, it isn't evil."

    - A banding together for the common defense is the most basic form of government, yes.

    "Begging the question. The statement is absurd to any well-informed anarchist.
    Property is preceded and defined by security. If you secure it, it's yours, with one caveat. To have rightfully secured something, it must not logically imply contradictions to the right of others to secure it."


    - By securing something, you prevent somebody else from securing it; the contradiction is inherent. It demands "First come first serve" as a moral precept; I don't see that it makes a meaningful moral precept except to that one end.

    "Either I agreed to your tax, or I didn't. If I didn't, you're unilaterally imposing it upon me, by breaching my security. If you're allowed to breach my security, I must be allowed to breach yours. In short, to shoot you to stop you taxing me. Since your system implies I can rightfully shoot you, and it would stop you taxing me, why would I not do exactly that?"

    - The government existed first, they preceded you; they've already secured this land. You're free to leave, and not have the tax "imposed" upon you. Using First-Come First-Serve securement as the underpinning principle, those taxes are perfectly acceptable, as they are the terms by which you utilize land they have secured. (Your moral precept permits a weak Social Contract.)

    "Fact is, if your 'government' can't persuade people to pay for it voluntarily, it doesn't deserve to exist. If it can, then it can have prices set by supply and demand, just like everything else."

    - By staying you're volunteering. Or else property rights have no meaning, or else securement isn't the first principle of property.

    "And I think I've found the contradiction: if I'm not allowed to claim value I haven't converted, why is the government - also made of people - allowed to claim value they haven't converted?"

    - Under this system you can pay no property taxes, and somebody else can dig a mine under your house (so long as they do not disturb or damage your house) - there is no logical leap there. The logical leap is the one referenced in the footnote; that society has a right to tell the miners they can't dig under your property to begin with.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Anarchy is no different; it privileges your desires for no government above mine for a small government, for example. Such privilege is irrelevant; it is the principles which matter."

    If you want a government for yourself, I have no problem with it. Indeed I can reconstruct all extant forms of government entirely within contract law.

    If you want a government that relies on me, then we have issues. I won't sign those contracts.

    "you prevent somebody else from securing it; the contradiction is inherent. It demands "First come first serve" as a moral precept; I don't see that it makes a meaningful moral precept except to that one end."

    I think I misspoke. To secure a thing without contradicting the right of someone else to have done so.

    Yes, it sort of is first-come, first serve. Security is hard, it requires investment. You don't invest in security if you think it'll be breached. Deliberately attempting to breach someone else's weakens your own investment, and moreover justifies the attempt.

    Well, mostly. If you don't take reasonable security steps, you have no right to expect to own the thing, even if you were there first. E.g. government roads. They don't stop non-citizens from driving on them. If they don't demand I promise to pay for them, and take some reasonable steps to ensure I will, then I don't owe them a damn thing for using them.

    Physical violence results from conflict and uncertainty.

    In practice, you can increase security by having a hard-and-fast rule about who owns what; by securing right directly, rather than concrete property per se. This makes everyone wealthier directly, by allowing more things to be property. (This is a new formulation I just figured out.)

    There will always be some minimum physical security, because of things like weather and career thieves. If it is additionally necessary to individually defend property from state confiscation...generally that's impossible, and it isn't property, and you wouldn't bother securing it if the state were honest about wanting to confiscate it, which would mean they have nothing to confiscate.

    If it were possible to not earn specifically those dollars which get taxed, you wouldn't.

    "The government existed first, they preceded you; they've already secured this land."

    They secured the land by breaching the security of others. Ergo, either they hold the land wrongfully or I can rightfully evade taxes at will.

    More specifically, the principle by which security implies rightful ownership does not allow imposing obligations of any kind, especially on unborn children. They're breaching the right for me to have security. I'm essentially a serf; a dependent, with no rights to any property. (Moldbug was more right about serfdom than he thought.)

    If they want a legitimate right to tax me, they have to get to me sign a contract stating as much. I admit no implicit social contract.

    Any principle that allows the imposition of obligations can be turned around to show that it allows me to impose the obligation to stop.

    By staying I'm not volunteering.

    I cannot reasonably leave anyway, and moreover the problem I have with my government is endemic. It's like suggesting that since my government is going to murder me, I should leave, but all my exit options are also murderous. I have the right not to be murdered, regardless. If I don't, I must have the right to murder them first, and it's only a question of execution.

    -

    Can you run by me again what miners have to do with the government?

    If I haven't secured the ground under my house, doesn't that suggest I wouldn't care anyway, as long as I can't hear the mining?

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you only own what you can secure, the fact that government breached somebody else's security seems irrelevant; clearly the people who built the first fences didn't build fences sufficiently well.

    My minarchy imposes no obligations on you -except- that you may not, for example, mine out the iron ore underneath a property tax payer's house; the protection property taxes in this system provides isn't against your property being taken (your house is yours regardless), but rather against people utilizing resources you want to make a claim to for later purposes.

    Importantly, it also permits people to own unconverted resources - like a forest - and to forbid others from cutting down their trees. The rules apply as much to foresters as to miners.

    In a city environment, this protection might be pretty substantial; if you build a road, you want to ensure you own the unconverted resources around it, to prevent, for example, somebody building a bridge over it which impedes traffic without damaging the property itself. Similarly, it prevents somebody from building above your house, or below it, both of which protections could become important if you later wanted to expand.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Security plus not contradicting the right of someone else to have secured it. Because symmetry; if others don't have the right to secure it, neither can the first person.

    If the government is allowed to intentionally breach security, then anyone else must be allowed to breach theirs. In other words it can't be wrong to murder government agents.

    "My minarchy imposes no obligations on you -except-" So what happens when I don't pay my taxes?


    Impeding traffic on a road does damage the property. The purpose of a road is traffic. Anything which hinders that purpose is damage.


    If you think you want to expand your house, then first live in a civilization that secures rights rather than property per se, then buy the rights to above and below. If someone doesn't want those rights, and it turns out to be a bad decision, it's nobody's responsibility but their own.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Security plus not contradicting the right of someone else to have secured it.

    - Clearly they haven't secured it, if their security can be broken; that's what security means, after all.

    So what happens when I don't pay my taxes?

    - A miner can dig under "your" house for minerals/a forester can cut down trees in "your" forest, so long as they don't disturb any resources you yourself have already converted (or purchased from somebody who converted them for you).

    Impeding traffic on a road does damage the property. The purpose of a road is traffic. Anything which hinders that purpose is damage.

    - And building a house on previously pristine land damages the property which oversaw it; it no longer has a pristine view of the wilderness. What's the limit to damages?

    If you think you want to expand your house, then first live in a civilization that secures rights rather than property per se, then buy the rights to above and below. If someone doesn't want those rights, and it turns out to be a bad decision, it's nobody's responsibility but their own.

    - Buy those rights from whom?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yeah, that's about what I expected to happen. These challenges seem utterly pointless to me.

    "Buy those rights from whom?"

    Local security firm.

    ReplyDelete
  8. So the local security firm owns the land for all intents and purposes?

    How is that different from government?

    ReplyDelete
  9. 1. If there's two local firms, you can switch, just like with cellphone carriers.

    2. It's not particularly different from your definition of government, aside from being more flexible.

    ReplyDelete
  10. As I reference loosely here: http://orphanwilde.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-not-anarcho-capitalism.html competing security firms have issues with competing interests.

    Your flexibility doesn't exist; you need dynamic geography to make it work. Which you can achieve on a ship (either ocean or space faring), but which isn't really achievable when your building is rooted to the ground.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Every reason you can imagine for competing security not to work, I can imagine a reason it does. I can also call you out on your assumptions for every time you call me out on mine.

    Just test it. Only, don't do it on a whole country at once. Phase 1 trials.

    It interests me that you feel the need to attack the flexibility. So, if I can prove my system is more flexible, will you change your mind, consider your government unreasonable and anarchy reasonable?

    ReplyDelete
  12. I pointed out a situation in which your flexibility does exist; I'd say this contradicts an internal desire to attack the flexibility.

    If you could demonstrate that your system is feasible, I'd consider your government (or rather your government analogue) reasonable. This would not be the same thing as demonstrating that minarchy is unreasonable, however.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Clearly they haven't secured it, if their security can be broken; that's what security means, after all.

    No, actually.
    Anything man can do, man can undo. If security means that, security doesn't exist.

    What security means is that you can expect the secured thing to stay the way you left it.

    An unsecured wallet, left on a boulder say, won't be there when the original owner gets back. If you see such a wallet, and you take it, all that happens is you take it instead of someone else.

    A chained and boxed wallet, on the other hand, will likely be there when the owner gets back. If you could break into it, and choose not to, likely nobody will break into it. Therefore, you in fact cause a different outcome for the owner if you breach the security.
    That's what 'reasonable' security means.

    If states didn't tax me, nobody would. They're organizations designed specifically for the purpose of breaching other people's security. They work by changing the reasonable into the unreasonable.
    Ergo, if states are legitimate, then if I, through any means whatsoever, counter-breach their security, I must also be acting legitimately. In other words tax evasion isn't wrong; getting caught is wrong. Assassinating government agents isn't wrong, getting caught is wrong. And so on.

    Or you can just realize states are morally illegitimate.
    I'm only morally liable for taxes I've formally promises to deliver. The only reason I don't defend myself against taxes I haven't so promised is because I haven't yet worked out how to.

    It's an interesting problem because of the clearly viable nature of organizations specifically designed to breach security. I've noticed all such organizations rely on political formulae, though, which implies that if a wide-spectrum anti-formula could be developed, all states could potentially be defeated.

    And, fact is, if political formulae can be spread - "might makes right" doesn't work anymore - then a counter-formula can be spread just as easily.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I don't utilize security as the basis of property rights, remember, I use conversion. My security argument is based on my understanding of your approach to property rights.

    What moral merit does a token effort at security have?

    But it seems to me that yes, a government which derived its moral mandate from its security which cannot maintain said security loses its legitimacy. You are acting legitimately in that case because the state lacks legitimacy; you're merely retaliating against an aggressor.

    Similarly, a nominal property owner - somebody who put a fence up, a token security effort - who cannot keep people out of the property, who just goes around assaulting people who largely ignore his claims, is an aggressor.

    Security seems to require the ability to enforce it to be a meaningful source of property rights. Unless there is something I am missing?

    ReplyDelete
  15. What moral merit does a token effort at security have?

    Ideally what's 'reasonable' would be formally written down, and you'd agree to it when you sign the contract. Security would then be neatly divided between adequate and inadequate.

    There may be a right answer as to where that line should go, but it doesn't matter. It just needs to be such that potential violators know when the owner will fight back.

    Security seems to require the ability to enforce it to be a meaningful source of property rights. Unless there is something I am missing?

    Depends what you mean. Something has to stop Russia from just taking it. Top-level security does have to prevent physical appropriation, or it's just a matter of time before it's appropriated.

    However, an anti-political formula can potentially do that without an army. A population that refuses to be ruled could balk a conqueror without actually being able to stop them from nominally taking the territory. Though I'd recommend having a couple nukes to forestall genocide, almost every possible victim group can fight back hard enough to make the attack cost-ineffective. They just have to credibly commit to doing so, and they'll almost never have to.

    The point of reasonable security is that it does have force against most threats. If it had to stop all threats, it would indeed be pointless. The point is to have an objective, non-contradictory rule to determine when a thing has been done illegitimately. Breaking the laws of physics can't be illegitimate, it's just impossible, by comparison.

    ReplyDelete
  16. What contract? You're leaping to a position where security companies already have a moral claims to property which they can lease or sell or contract out - where does their moral claim derive from? What level of security provides that moral claim, and why?

    I'm omitting external points of failure here; pretend for the purposes of this discussion Russia doesn't exist. Or does Russia have to exist to grant moral sanction to property?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Russia goes into the class of endemic threats. If you don't defend against the weather, against opportunistic theft, against animals, and against Russia, it's just a matter of time before the thing is gone. (What else? Vandalism is basically theft...essentially, non-agent decay, animal decay, lone agent actions, and organized agent actions.) Endemic threats aren't eradicable. Everyone already knows they exist. Therefore, anyone not taking steps to prevent a thing from being destroyed by them must not much care whether it is destroyed.

    Actually the security firm provides the moral claim, by providing the security. You say, "I'll make sure to lock my doors," then, "You agree to detain and try anyone who breaks in anyway," in other words rather than securing property directly, you secure the right to that property. You have this security because you paid someone to provide it and it is now their problem, not yours.

    And indeed you can't defend against Russia without paying someone. If you don't even try, then it's hard to say you really cared whether Russia took your stuff.

    Once reasonable precautions have been taken, if Russia tries to take your stuff, it de-legitimizes any and all claims to its own stuff. What's reasonable is debatable, but I think pretty well everyone will settle on something close enough to defence against the endemic threat, precisely because you have to do that regardless of any political formula.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Their moral claim depends on endemic military threats?

    Why couldn't Russia secure the country and provide the same moral claim?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Why couldn't Russia secure a foreign country which had taken reasonable steps to prevent exactly that?

    Because itself can't have perfect security, and claiming moral right to this foreign soil contradicts its right to morally claim its own soil.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Why couldn't Russia do it -first-? Assuming the US government could be made to disappear overnight, the endemic threats would be much better placed to make the security claims before any local agents could arise.

    And why does annexation violate the security right? Seems to me Russia could justfully say, in advance of the invasion, that the security company in question fails to defend against endemic threats, state that it is making a security claim and will henceforth protect the territory against endemic threats, and make a demand that the security company step down for dereliction of duty. If Russia wins, its claims were valid.

    ReplyDelete
  21. "Assuming the US government could be made to disappear overnight, the endemic threats would be much better placed to make the security claims before any local agents could arise."

    Which is one reason it's a bad idea to make governments disappear overnight, even if they're sublimely evil.

    "If Russia wins, its claims were valid."

    It's claims are only valid if someone else would have won if Russia didn't. China, or North Korea.
    If Russia was the only actor who could have done so, then they bear responsibility for having done so.

    (They could declare and then wait until North Korea makes its move, but NK then wouldn't, knowing Russia's just going to take it. This process would deter war in general.)

    Apparently I shouldn't say 'organized agent,' because I'm dealing with them as non-agents. Conquering states are rogue states. At present, that's every state. These states run off 'might makes right' regardless, and so to create any zone of superior ethics requires that they be physically deterred.

    I clearly haven't explained this correctly. I'ma try again.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I am missing something, because I fail to see how your security companies -aren't- conquering agents in this scenario.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Alrighty, let's try this again...

    I think I know the key I'm missing; everyone claims the right to not be shot at. It's pretty hard to breach security without shooting at anybody.
    Also I think I keep getting caught in the recursive loop between morality and security.

    I shouldn't say security creates rights, but rather that it precedes property. If you can't secure things, it doesn't matter what's right and what isn't, because all the stuff will, first, end up in the hands of the endemic threats, and then be destroyed because they can't secure it either.
    Once reasonable security has been achieved, we can starting worrying about who should own what. Without security, stuff is effectively unowned. The first person to secure it allows it to be property, and the natural person to own it is that person.

    Either the human species is moral, or it isn't. If it isn't, we're all fucked anyway. If it is, this morality can be used to directly prevent physical security breaches. Humans don't want to see themselves as immoral, and so don't take things, even if they could, to avoid acting like a thief. Basic physical security allows moral rights which allow moral security.

    Conquerors seen as illegitimate have historically not survived. In addition to they army, they usually also require the loyalty (resignation) of the civilians to be cost-effective. So conquerors want legitimacy. Why is conquering inherently illegitimate? Because it contradicts the conqueror's own claim to rights. Having secured against endemic/unavoidable threats, creating the possibility of property, then anyone raising the security bar is deliberately destroying rights in an attempt to gain rights. And it contradicts not just some rights, but all of the conqueror's rights. Conquerors cannot be legitimate in reality, only in perception. However, perception has a tendency to revert to reality. If we deliberately help it revert, conquering rapidly becomes cost-ineffective for everyone.

    Physical security breaches are prevented directly by the individual wanting to retain their own rights, or indirectly by bolstering pro-moral alliances and by hindering anti-moral alliances.
    The former is important precisely because no security is perfect. If everyone believes that taking your stuff isn't wrong, your stuff will slowly erode because you can't guard it all the time.


    Against a Russia that said it had a right to its soil purely through strength of arms, it is possible to show wrongdoing, but pointless. (It amounts to saying it isn't wrong to shoot Russians. They don't think so. They would therefore be contradicting themselves, if they did say that.) They have to be physically defeated or deterred. They are essentially immoral and can't be persuaded. My response would be, "Okay, America, China, England, Australia...Russia will lose their right if we can take their stuff. Let's take their stuff." As long as who gets what is worked out in advance, it will even keep squabbling to a minimum. It's self-defeating even if it isn't wrong. Russia saying it has a right to breach security is ontologically commit to either world domination or surrender, in addition to surrendering all other rights.

    Moral security self-reinforces, allowing it to replace physical security.

    ReplyDelete
  24. So we start with might makes right blanketing the planet. This has to be either physically moved aside, or ideologically moved aside, to create a zone of superior ethics.

    I've noticed it already has been moved aside in perception, but the process was corrupted. A lot of illegitimate things, owned purely by right of conquest, are considered legitimate. Even still, endemic threats exist, and will have to be physically secured against to create any reasonable hope of a proper ethical zone. So an ethical zone would have to be physically carved out, which is fine because anyway the current rule cashes out in practice to might makes right.

    Within that zone, security is achieved. Property is stable. The stabilized property is then recognized as legitimate, regardless of whether it remains stable. (With some caveats.) Because, as before, you want your stuff to be stable, which ontologically commits you to believing others' stuff should be stable. Stability itself can be secured against endemic threats.

    Once done, the ideological bites aggressors in the ass. If they do breach the security, the illegitimacy of that breaching can be used against them. (As long as my derivation is indeed legitimate.)

    ReplyDelete
  25. Conquerors have historically done very well; their empires usually only collapsed after their own deaths. And the most successful had a tendency to eliminate all endemic threats as threats.

    That's not really the issue. The issue is that this morality doesn't really address conflicts of claims of security. Party A says it has secured it, party B says it didn't secure it enough; there's no moral resolution to this quandary. If party C moves in and ruins without obstruction the shit A claims to have secured, clearly B was correct, but the claim can only be morally verified in your system by a failure B is morally forbidden from demonstrating.

    Or, to put it another way, your system makes endemic threats a societal necessity; they're necessary to weed out ineffective security arrangements.

    ReplyDelete
  26. The causation is reversed. Security arrangements are necessary because of endemic threats.

    If you tune them down to zero, then what we have is essentially a perfectly rule-abiding society, and it can decide the rules are whatever the fuck it wants.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Only if you define internal elements of dissent as endemic threats, however.

    ReplyDelete
  28. "but the claim can only be morally verified in your system by a failure B is morally forbidden from demonstrating."

    Having determined that B is morally forbidden from demonstrating it, that IS the moral resolution. People are now respecting each other's property due to moral rules, rather than sheer physical threat.

    All of A, B, C, can predict who legitimately controls A's shit.
    A suffers if A fails to predict who will -actually- control the shit, not B or anyone else.

    So, mission successful.

    ReplyDelete
  29. I was attempting to show why your property basis was recursive; I think you've just recursed again.

    ReplyDelete