Volitional Science

It's great to talk about happiness and/or freedom of choice, but the simple fact is that Galambos' moral code is based on the rather severe restriction that you're not allowed to control someone else's property without their permission. Let's forget about Intellectual Property (aka "IP" or "P1" in Galambos-speak) for now and just talk about "stuff" - physical property or "P2".

The "big restriction", AKA the second postulate, is the foundation for freedom. BTW, Galambos defines "profit" as an increase in happiness acquired through moral means, or, in other words, in accordance with the second postulate. In my refined terminology, "profit" is an increase in freedom of choice, acquired through moral means (also defined by my second postulate). As I said, my postulate and Galambos' postulate both mean the same thing (except, of course, mine's better!). As you can see, the "downstream" implications of either point-of-view merge, and the rest of Galambos' theory can be described in terms of the first and second postulates, regardless of whether you use his or mine. The definition of property and the definition of freedom remain the same.

How can the big restriction - "it is immoral to control someone else's property without their permission" - result in more freedom of choice, or, put another way, more freedom?

There are a lot of issues to deal with that I'll skip over. Issues such as how is property (physical property) originally assigned an owner? How do you record who owns something? And of course, the usual questions - how can roads work? How can national defense work? How does money (or the equivalent) work? Who owns the air? Water? The center of the Earth? Etc.

Before we get into solving any of those problems, we need to notice that it is only by allowing an individual volitional being 100% control over their property that a real, free marketplace can come into existence. Obviously, by definition, if the marketplace is not free, then it is coercive.

What's wrong with a coercive marketplace? Most people think it is a good thing, or at least, that a little bit of coerciveness is a good thing.. The prevailing belief at this time is the following: "If you don't threaten people with retribution for doing 'wrong', then their base instincts will take over and they will naturally do the wrong thing. In an effort to create profit, they will actually plunder, taking what little property the poor and unprotected in society own. The strong will overpower the weak and that is extremely unfair."

There is some truth to this statement. Which, like the idea of communism, explains why the idea has such appeal. Certainly everyone has witnessed some kind of plunder in the name of profit. In Galambos' world, of course, you can't profit by plunder, because the definitions are mutually exclusive. But you can appear to profit when in fact you are plundering.

One of the most profound lectures I ever attended was by Robert McKee, who teaches a somewhat famous three-day lecture series on screenwriting. On the second or third day, as he was describing the sources of dramatic tension, he made the very convincing argument that the best dramatic tension comes not from 'good' vs. 'evil' plots but from 'good' vs. 'evil, where evil is masquerading as good.' True evil pretends to be good - to be your friend. The best plunder, of course, looks like profit. I call this "the perfect crime". The perfect crime is a crime that is not recognized as a crime at all. In fact, the victim doesn't even know he's a victim. For a criminal, what could be better?

How do we, as mature, rational volitional beings, tell the difference between plunder and profit?

We need something that I was going to call "the recognition mechanism" (my term, Galambos' concept). Before we can identify episodes of plunder or profit, we must develop a reliable mechanism for telling the difference between the two. Without the recognition mechanism, we can not proceed. Galambos defined a recognition mechanism (although the terminology is mine). The recognition mechanism depends on answering the following question: "Who owns it?"

(A letter in the Bridge to Freedom newsletter [edited by Peter N. Sisco, Vol. 1, No. 6, Page 12] from a student, Mr. Michael Haag, proposed calling this Galambos' Razor. I actually have a need for the term recognition mechanism for something else, so I'll switch to the nicely named Galambos' Razor.)

"Who owns it?" is a question of such fundamental importance that you will see it develop as a theme in many of the following columns I will write.

Let's start with some fairly common and familiar scenarios before I trick you into seeing that our entire system of government ("statism") as we know it today is based on plunder.

Pollution is a common problem today. Let's say I buy some property along the Columbia River and build a big fat stinking factory. It makes some useful chemical (chemical-X) but as a by-product produces huge quantities of sludge. I don't want the sludge around so I dump it into the Columbia River. I make money selling chemical-X. Having money increases the choices I can make so it is profit. Or, put in Galambos' terms, I can spend the money on things I prefer, so it is profit. Same difference. Let's agree that making money is generally considered profitable. (Some people get into trouble when they have money, because they don't know how to hold onto it, or invest it, or even spend it wisely, so they actually end up with fewer choices, but let's skip over that for now.)

Well, maybe it isn't profit. Profit is only "profit" and not "plunder" if it is acquired throught moral means. Before we can decide if I'm plundering we must decide who owns the Columbia River.

Suppose I own it. And the riverbanks and the bridges over it. Well, dumping sludge into my own river is no problem, because I own it. As long as the sludge stays on my property I haven't hurt anyone.

But, get real. I don't own the whole river. Supposedly the United States Government owns it. At least, I think so. Don't get any whacko ideas about "the people" owning it. You can pretend you, as a citizen, "own" the Columbia River, but you don't. Because you have 0% control over it. The only way you can pretend to have control over it is by getting enough votes together to coerce the rest of the so-called owners into going along with what you want. That's a lot of work, and even then, with our representative government, your coercion can be overturned by someone else's coercion.

But I digress. Let's suppose the US Government owns the Columbia River. We can treat the US Government as a volitional being. It's an irrational and incoherent beast, but it makes decisions in its own way, so it's a volitional being. (I define organizations as volitional beings and say that the decisions they make are simply the sum of all the individual decisions the members of that organization make.)

Well, now the situation is simple! If the US Government wants to let me dump sludge into the Columbia River, then I'm not hurting anyone! Since the US Government owns the river, it is up to the US Government to ensure my sludge doesn't impact anyone else's property (say beachfront property at the mouth of the river).

In fact, the US Government, which historically has done a bad job of managing its own property, has allowed people or corporations to dump all kinds of crap into the Columbia River. Now, over the last few decades, as part of its macabre decision making process as a volitional being, the US Government has decided it doesn't want anyone dumping crap into the Columbia River.

Now comes the good part. I own my factory and I'm polluting the river (because the owner of the river said they don't want me to dump sludge into it) and the US Government wants me to stop dumping. For a long time I was profitable because the US Government didn't care too much about pollution. Now it cares. If I continue to pollute their river, I am plundering. No matter how much money I make.

There are three solutions to this problem. One is great, one is good, and one is bad. The bad one is that the US Government hires goons to come to my plant and shut it down. Galambos says defense is moral (i.e., defending your own property is moral). But defense through coercion is not moral - it is plunder. Do two wrongs make a right? I think not. So this solution is bad.

The good solution assumes that I continue to pollute the river. A better solution for the US Government is to proclaim loudly to anyone that will listen that I am stealing from them by polluting their river. Let's say they post it at their web site, USGov.com along with lots of supporting evidence. People visit the USGov.com web site and read what a sap I am. They realize they can't trust me and stop doing business with me.

Does that seem simplistic? Sure it does! I'll explain why it isn't in a moment.

But first: the best solution is innovation. When none of the choices are good enough, the answer is innovation. Innovation can happen on either side. I can innovate and find a way to make chemical-X that doesn't produce sludge. I can find a way to recycle the sludge. I can find someone who wants to buy the sludge because it is useful for them. I can make a deal with the US Government where I dump a certain amount of sludge into the river and then pay them to clean it up. This might work if the US Government ("USGov") figures out they can make a lot of money by letting people use the Columbia River as a sewer and then cleaning it out en masse. This might be profitable for USGov because of economies of scale.

When all of your choices suck, innovate! Innovation - the creation of new ideas - is the source of progress for volitional beings. Not beauracracy, not new laws, not guys running around with guns... none of that!

But suppose I am a pig-headed guy and I don't want to innovate - I just want to plunder and dump my sludge in someone else's river. USGov posts their case against me at their web site. How does a third party know whether to believe them? And how does this hurt me?

The hard way, of course, is to personally investigate the claims. You, for instance, could drive out to my site on the Columbia River and get out your binoculars and try to see if I dumping sludge. Or you could hire a private investigator you trust to do the same thing.

But all of these are inconvenient, so instead, you go to one or more of your favorite credit-ratings agencies and ask them (no doubt for a fee), if it is true that I am plundering son-of-a-bitch. Since the credit-rating agencies are in the information business, their product is information, and it behooves them to sell you accurate information. If they don't, they will not only get bad ratings from the other credit-rating agencies, they will start to lose business. (Isn't that an interesting idea - the credit-rating agencies rating each other - do they smear the other guy or not? [The answer is not, if they want to be credible.])

Okay, so I start to get bad credit, because a number of credit-rating agencies have checked me out and are actively selling information that I am a plundering sort of guy. So what, I say, screw 'em. It's my plant.

Well, if I don't want to innovate, and I don't cave into peer pressure (one of the strongest forces in the universe -- but let's admit it's not going to work on your typical dictator), then USGov must resort to defending themselves. That might mean building a physical wall around me so my sludge can't spread. Or cutting off my electricity by reducing my credit so low the electric company won't sell me electricity. Or whatever.

You're probably thinking that I'm in favor of privatization, which is a popular idea floating about these days. That's because I started to treat the US Government like a private corporation in my story, instead of the statist institution it is presently. But I'm not. Privitization is a bit misguided. (Neither is Galambos in favor it per se.) I'll cover that in part two of this column - the great misapprehension.

(The example, which I made up, is based on the principles in Galambos' course V-50 and some stuff that has leaked from course V-201 [the registry concept]. It's my contribution to bring peer pressure into it as well as to modernize the example by seeming to privatize the US Government. The idea of the perfect crime is also my idea.)