Volitional Science

I've been trying to get Galambos' postulates, or even my modified ones, to work the way I want, and it's hard!

I decided to introduce a third postulate. (There's no law that says you can only have two postulates.)

The new, third postulate is this:

Volitional beings, in the absence of coercion, prefer moral behavior.

I'll call this the "civilization postulate". More on that later.

It is my view that in Galambos' writings that he cheated by using the word happiness in his first postulate. (I know it seems like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I think getting this right is important.)

Galambos' first postulate is:

All volitional beings live to pursue happiness.

I call this the Motivation postulate.

If you read carefully, you'll see that from various definitions, Galambos' postulate is easily reduced to my rewritten form, namely:

Volitional beings do whatever the hell they want to do.

This last is more in the flavor of a law from the book Systemantics.

My original, improved motivational postulate was:

Volitional beings prefer to make their own choices.

I call this the "generalized motivation" postulate, because I think it provides more useful information in more cases than Galambos' version.

In trying to get Galambos' theory into the simplest, most concise, clear, and correct description possible, I've come across logical reasoning problems, and they all go back to the use of the word "happiness".

Galambos had a corollary to the first postulate, namely:

Volitional beings live to acquire property.

This only works if you accept his definition of property as including ideas (which includes feelings, experiences, etc.).

One thing my wife has told me over and over again, while critiquing my work here, is that Galambos wanted to reconcile the idea that living for the "higher things in life", that is, things with no physical property associated with them, is not really at odds with making tons of money, assuming you do it morally.

The real difference between "good" and "bad" people isn't whether they eschew making money in order to pursue a "higher" calling, but whether they behave morally, be that chasing money, or ideas, or fame, or true love, or blowing up buildings.

Blowing up buildings (or even just breaking the windows), a topic which came to the fore here in Seattle because of Y2K terrorism and the World Trade Organization riots, is not necessarily a bad thing to do. Blowing up or trashing buildings you don't own or have permission to trash is a bad thing. A great book, The Incredible Bread Machine (greatly inspired by Galambos' teachings, I should say), points out that destruction is sometimes a creative act.

[Since I originally wrote this article, the Kingdome was blown up, and it was done very creatively. And almost morally, except the Kingdome was built with public funds and hadn't even been paid for! But that's a big mess I don't want to go into at this time.]

In fact, demolition people make a good living blowing up buildings. Special effects guys for movies make a good living blowing up buildings. Blowing up stuff you don't own or have permission to blow up is bad. It is called terrorism.

At the other end of the scale, imagine a college professor with a low salary, who tells everyone he is living for "intellectual achievement", not monetary achievement. (Galambos uses this example in his book.) He believes he is "better" than, say, Wayne Huizenga, who made billions of dollars creating Waste Management, Blockbuster Entertainment, and Republic Industries. Is the college professor "better" than the guy that picks up your trash? Or a guy who made a ton of money building a big system to pick up your trash?

Neither one is better or worse than the other if that individual lives a moral life. If the college professor, while claiming to adhere to a "higher standard of achievement" is in fact ripping off the hard work of students, then he's plundering scum! If Bill Gates is worth almost $100 billion as I write this, but got there by stealing intellectual property from competitors, then he's plundering scum! (It's an interesting question whether Gates is in fact plundering scum. I should address that in another column, because I am an investor in Microsoft [and you probably are too if you have a mutual fund].)

The reason most people have a visceral negative reaction to the idea that pursuing a lot of money is okay is that they've seen or experienced a lot of examples of plundering by rich people of poor people. What they don't see are the millions of entrepreneurs filling gaps in our economic system that don't plunder anyone! (Another problem is that when you look back at "robber barrons" employing people to do hard work for "low pay" you're comparing to today's standards, which is a horrible thing to do, because we have so many more choices today than existed in "robber barron" days. Likewise for child labor in developing nations. The kinds of child labor we read about sounds bad - but maybe it's not as bad as starving to death. The Incredible Bread Machine has some choice words about life in "robber barron" times.)

Acquiring lots of cash or physical property is very important for some types of people. Creating great new works of art or new intellectual achievements is important for other types of people. Sitting on the beach enjoying the easy life is important for still other types of people.

All of them are acquiring property - either intellectual property or physical property.

What about George Lucas? And Stephen Spielberg? These guys were both lambasted for making popular movies. But what's the motivation? To make tons of money or to make movies that people want to see? Maybe both! Later, after Spielberg had refined his craft to the nth degree making popular movies, he married Kate Capshaw, his moral compass, and started making "important" movies. Do the "important" movies invalidate the fun movies? Hell no! You wouldn't have the later movies without the earlier films. We owe a film like "Saving Private Ryan" to "Jaws" as much as anything else. Spielberg knows how to make a scary war movie - which if you think about it is what a war movie should be - because he made a lot of popular scary movies!

Money is one way of keeping score - but it is only one way. There are lots of other ways of keeping score. Galambos likes to keep score by "importance" - the amount of property influenced or reached by an individual's contributions. (In that regard, maybe "Saving Private Ryan" is more important than "Jaws".) Wayne Huizenga would be pretty high up on the list, because his contributions affect huge numbers of individuals lives each week as they rent videos or have their trash picked up or buy cars! Albert Einstein, who, amazingly, was chosen over various politicians by Time Magazine as person of the century, would be extremely high on the Galombos list as well. So would Newton. So would anyone who has created any kind of lasting intellectual contribution.

The point of this column is that acquiring property is not necessarily a bad goal in life. And not just intellectual property, but physical property or even cash is okay, as long as you don't plunder.

All I need now is a slogan as good as "Property is theft", which is brilliant, and not inconsequentially, true sometimes, hence it's power as a slogan. Here's one that's not good enough: "Property is freedom." Or, how about, "Property is the basis of civilization." Nah. How about, "Ownership rules!" Nah. Well, maybe... that's getting closer.

Hey, how about this one: "Own your future!"