Law and Violence

An economist is to an economy what a physicist is to a Large Hadron Collider. The economy is a tool, a set of devices used to measure a set of objects. Now, in one sense the economy is an illusion- a non-existent structure layered above the world but not part of it, similar to math. However, it must be noted, that all things that exist are, by definition, real- and thus have some sort of reality that exists within this world. Although the vast majority of economic activity doesn't actually exist (or to put it in another sense, exists only when measured, and is in fact data about the world above that is retrieved by measuring the parts of the economy that do exist and extrapolating from there.) it is implied within the frame of what does exist.

Most of the physical basis for the economy is built using spontaneous donations of brain based cpu cycles. This is how the economy can perform extremely complicated calculations, and come up with advanced information without breaking the second law of thermodynamics. However, spontaneous events don't normally just happen in succession in a particular direction, by definition. In order to create spontaneous direction, there are two requirements- the first is Brownian motion, easily satisfied using the human brain, an extremely complicated object that essentially functions as a giant magnifying glass that picks up on low level chaotic activity and aligns large scale structured activity with the generated random seed data. The second requirement is a way to insure that travel in one direction is possible, while travel in the other direction is not. For nano particles, a moving magnetic field can achieve this task. For humans, we use law.

So, the physical basis of humans and their brains is easily identified. Since all known methods of intelligence are chaos based, economics should work fine with most alien species as well. However, law is, in general, yet another virtual construct, so must also be broken down into a physical basis.

Law is not government- it can exist in anarchy. Government is a tool designed to organize violence. Imagine an anarchist society wherein it is illegal for women to wear clothes more revealing than burqas. (IE, women seen outside without burqas will be spontaneously stoned.) One day someone decides that the burqa law is stupid- ideally he will simply stop enforcing it, but it may be that his peers will think badly of him if he doesn't participate in the stonings. Due to its lack of free speech, and inability to accept political activism, the majority of this anarchy's people could oppose the law, and yet the law could still stand unquestioned. With a government, it would be possible to support your positions without taking personal risk, through having intermediaries take the risk onto themselves. In a sense, this is the main purpose of government, to act as a figure head, that officially does everything, so that humans can go about their lives without directly taking hostile action against their neighbors. The important facts following from this, are thus- that law is a consequence of human action and/or inaction, and that government is simply a result of underlying forces. Law is not generated through such a simplistic mechanism as the edicts of one person. Rather, a policeman is able to arrest a thief because people have already classified the policeman and the thief into two different groups. If people did not recognize the authenticity of the police force, the entire organization would collapse within a day. In other words, the physical basis of government is the recognition granted it by its people.

Although all governments are, in essence, the same, the particulars vary widely. The main difference from one government to the next, is the level of recognition supplied to the government. If no recognition is given to the government, then law enforcement, and creation, is totally distributed. As such, law avoidance, and elimination, is also totally distributed. Therefore, violence is totally distributed. The distribution of violence has some major ramifications. For instance, the target of violence is known ahead of time if violence is not distributed. If we have a police force, we know that most shoot outs with law enforcement will involve that force. This doesn't give us much advantage in terms of defeating the criminals- however, it means that the criminals will have to use either a focused power surge that overwhelms deploy-able forces (thus avoiding direct combat due to the results of combat being obvious.) or to sufficiently obscure their actions so as to not be detectable, once more avoiding direct combat. If we have a military, a revolution can end when that military is defeated, so entire cities don't actually have to fight it out in bloodbaths in the streets in order to determine a winner. The military is about as hard to defeat as all the people who support it, (after all, it's just a conglomeration of donations from its supporters.) but destroying it doesn't even kill everyone inside of it. Another important angle is that the government supplies people with a tool with which to do violence. Say some super genius hates nuclear power plants- in an anarchy, he would have to go on a rampage in order to leverage his vast fortunes into usable political power. However, in a democracy he can just become a special interests lobby and ban nuclear power plants in a manner that causes no collateral damage. Violence is much more limited if it is only used to accomplish the goals which the source set out to accomplish, so it is best to keep all violent activity organized. Government is designed to accomplish this feat, by creating targets for militaries to attack, political power accessible to the unscrupulous, and incentives to keep criminals focused on their core objective and avoid causing extraneous damage when they partake in crime.

The other end of the governmental spectrum is a fully recognized government, or one in which all activity is government approved. Now, since we already know that all government is violence, and that all benefits of government emerge from the replacement of certain violent activities with other violent activities, we can instantly see that a fully recognized government can only exist in a fully violent society, and the blatant absurdity of this system stands out. Of course, such a society could exist, and even be profitable as part of a larger world that included less recognized governments (imagine an army-state that acted as mercenaries and was paid by the major powers to prevent military invasions of foreign territory. It could be that such a state could act in lieu of the major states' militaries, and by acting as a deterrent, cause the more ruthless nation states to avoid starting an arms race, causing one standing military to exist, rather than requiring the maintenance of several.) However, as a basis for civilization as a whole, violence is not viable.

So how much recognition should we give our governments? The answer is, this scales to how violent we wish to be. And so, it becomes important to actually explore just what violence is- Violence is the set of all activities that decrease the total value of the universe, from the perspective of any existing viewer. Looking at it this way it at first seems impossible to partake in non-violent activities. Technically, it IS impossible to partake in non-violent activity, but we can change degrees of violence- ie we can reduce the overlay between existing activity and violent activity. This can be accomplished in two manners. The first is obvious- achieve desired ends using methods that involve less violence. If it is equally difficult for a person to get his food by raising it himself or by stealing it, society can easily convince him to raise it himself, which causes overall civilization to flourish. The second method is to aggregate activities. For instance, imagine a person who wants bread, and has an infinite supply of fish. He is a master of misdirection and disguise, so from his perspective stealing bread is free. If he is completely selfish we can expect him to steal bread- but if we look at the situation closely we realize that having an infinite supply of fish, he can still act in a completely selfish manner while leaving fish to replace all the bread he steals. Now, he can achieve the same goals, but does so in a much less violent manner.

Most people would quickly claim that they would support a completely non-violent society. Since we already know that this is absurd, the second level we can jump to is a minimally violent society. This makes a lot more sense but introduces an extremely complicated word into the mix- "minimally" doesn't actually mean anything on its own. The best answer is that we want to be violent enough that our values succeed and flourish. We are not willing to allow others to stand in a position of violence to our core principles, and must be violent to the extent necessary to eliminate such groups. Since the world is composed entirely of accidents, inevitabilities, and the things people do, the course of history is fatalistic. As such, it is a natural objective to create a framework through which people can take action, and then discover the results of their actions. In other words, a framework wherein depending on the nature of undiscovered accidents or misunderstood inevitabilities, the probability of victory or defeat will not be hampered, but, regardless of who wins or loses, at the point at which that data becomes accessible, to a maximum extent, all the things that people do should result in support for the winner. Thus the ideal violent activity is the collection of power. As large a percent of violence as possible should be used to become more powerful.

In turn, this means that we need to avoid people committing violence to become more secure, given that the difficulty of the objectives are equivalent. (note that if someone profits from a method of violence in a manner that lacks a nearly equal opportunity cost, it is by nature impossible for society to stop him from using that method. Society is not godlike, it is only capable of creating a minor weight formed from sanction that can be added where chosen. The extreme impact of society emerges based on the fact that the majority of objectives can be approached by a near infinite amount of angles, a multitude of which will be nearly equal in cost.) Security, by its nature, forces results into the present. IE, security causes the accidents and inevitabilities of the future to occur all at once. This means the loser cannot be phased out- he will necessarily have to be blotted out in a bloody war. Therefore, in an ideal society, the members will peaceably coexist regardless of how opposite their viewpoints, and engage each-other on a battlefield composed of geometric effects such as arguments and reproduction, while building up a wealth of capital that can be exploited both by the current generation and by those deep in the future.

However, we are not in an ideal society, and our government must not just account for how violent we wish to be, but also for how violent idiots who can't understand what we're telling them want to be. Although our instincts may make us want to just smash such groups, the fact of the matter is that that would be trying to advance our agenda through becoming more secure. Of course, if they insist on acting in such a manner that we cannot ignore them (for instance, by trying to secure their values by shutting down research into fields that scare them, but that we find necessary.) we must take direct action- but failing that, we need to integrate them into some sort of system. Fortunately, after we step back a bit, we realize that people are, on the whole, very congenial towards focusing on power, and can normally be discouraged from the opposite with relative ease.

This is because of law. The physical basis for law is a set of mental routines within the brain's source code. Namely, the brain includes two important functions- Save and load. The brain saves data about its circumstances and environment, keeping track of its current state and its past state. When the current state falls below any given past state, the brain automatically activates its load routines. The load routines are a set of calculations that describe the inevitabilities required reach the previous state, which are then used so as to take the actions required if those inevitabilities exist. These routines serve as the magnetic field that sits eternally just behind civilization, transferring heat into information. Through such a simple program, as long as sufficient energy in inserted, indefinite amounts of information can be created from the energy. As such, law is a compilation of information that exists due to a incredibly vast sea of calculations using Brownian logic gates, that cannot dissipate, because every time it weakens, we load to a state wherein it was stronger. So why is it that law is always good? The answer is simple- by definition. Law is the sum total of the calculations we performed moving from lower states to higher states.
Due to the benefits conferred in a society wherein people build up large sums of wealth in order to accomplish their purposes, our calculations repeatedly advance such a society, and thus, said society is naturally accepted over time.

In sum, government should expand until it has achieved a maximum amount of conflict resolution and no further. So, that said, what are some practical implications thereof? First off, if there is no conflict, then there is no need for government intervention. This immediately debases all attempts to improve the overall economy through governmental economic activity. It also debases all hostile activity deployed against foreign nations that does not address hostilities existing within those nations. Furthermore, given equal opportunity costs, and giving preference to power, we also know that it is better to become stronger than to prevent foreigners from becoming stronger. This becomes an even easier decision when we realize that hostilities between any two factions gives a relative advantage to all third parties, so if there are any enemies not targeted by your hostilities, you may well be putting yourself in a worse position than you started in, even after a complete and easy victory. It's also unnecessary to ensure that people properly seek their own self interest. This is because people will advance their values naturally, so the very idea of internal conflict is silly. Understand that advancing one's values isn't just about succeeding in life, or becoming rich, or any other such nonsense. All it requires is that your inherent nature align with morality. As an extension, any activity that includes only members that support the activity need not be meddled with. In general, the negative implications of the nature of government, are that governments should not expand violence into fields that would otherwise have been non-violent.

So what are some violent activities that government should be in control of? The most obvious examples are things like regulating the activities of thieves, lobbyists, rapists, lawyers, politicians, and murderers. However, the secret, and most important field of regulation is known as homesteading, which is the act of seizing resources that are not currently owned and causing them to be owned. IE, of turning unclaimed resources into claimed resources. This is very much an inherently violent act. Where once there was oil in the ground that anyone could partake of freely, now there are guns that will shoot you if you seek to make use of the oil. Method A (avoiding violent activities) is not a viable solution to this act of violence (for the obvious reason that simply leaving the oil in the ground is blatantly idiotic.) As such, Method B (combining the violence with an opposite activity that causes the overall action to be non-violent) is the best approach. One important method of achieving Method B is simple- taxes. However, another method is to limit the group of people eligible for the benefits of the homesteading to a set of people who will have the lowest overall levels of violence. In other words, to have a group of people who have expanded rights and entitlements which distributes the country's natural wealth to them- and perhaps a special title to go with these privileges. (This special title being citizen.) However, since the special privileged class is now strictly superior to their unprivileged rivals, it becomes reasonable to ensure that your country is composed with as large a percentage of special privileged class as possible (current experiments indicate a percentage of 100% is the maximum, not including tourists and temporary occupants located for non-resource base related purposes (such as studying in a more centralized college)) In other words, all immigrants seek to undermine our ability to generate power, in order to expand their own power. Since we are better aligned with our values than foreigners, we would prefer that we have a greater portion of this world's available wealth. It is a natural and reasonable violent activity to homestead as much as possible, and to prefer power for ourselves over power held by neighbors. After all, we ARE in a violent conflict over the end nature of life, the universe, and everything- the war may be engaged using economics and literature, but the conflict is very real and the stakes are huge. Securing ourselves against others claiming resources is a malinvestment, but becoming more powerful individually, even if the total power level of humanity is hampered as an opportunity cost, (note that, in reality, security IS good. It's just not how law is promoted, not how economics functions and not what government should focus on. As such increasing our relative power (even if we don't increase our absolute power) is actually a good thing, in so far as other humans are the greatest threats to our values.) is perfectly reasonable.

Another important role of government is this, that at times, a natural end loser of history will become inevitable given that the loser does not take action to prevent this. In general this action will consist of immediate hostilities against another group (note that such hostilities don't have to be riots, or warfare. Much more likely, it will consist of villainization, lobbying and other "acceptable" but no less dangerous, attacks.), generally a group that will, even if it "wins" the conflict, also become an inevitable loser at the end of the conflict, due to the competitive advantage attained by third parties. Thus it is up to government to insure that nature doesn't take its course, and to insure that nobody loses without having a fair capacity to make his arguments and collect resources. In other words, government must insure that all major factions capable of enacting violence on those that the government services are as best as possible, discouraged from doing so. Redistributing resources from the group that will be attacked, to the group that would implement the attack, is not just doing a favor to the faction that the wealth is given to. It also serves the faction that the wealth is taken away from. To understand, imagine a game of Risk. One of the players has conquered all of Asia, and, if ignored he will obviously win. Ordinarily the players on his borders would all instantly attack him, suffering major losses to themselves, but obliterating the Asian player. In turn the player not involved (South America) would have a huge advantage and probably turn out as the winner of the game. As the position stands, the Asian player will definitely lose, and everyone but the South American player is at a major disadvantage. However, if the Asian player is trustworthy and is allowed to talk, he might be able to salvage his position, say by agreeing to engage in unreasonable battles every turn, chosen in such a manner that his strength doesn't grow faster than anyone else and no-one profits or is hurt from his actions in a relative sense. Now the board is rebalanced such that everyone has an about equal shot at winning again. Besides South America, everyone is better off. (Note that the reason we, in a utilitarian sense, desire to stall the final battle, is that wealth naturally expands itself. By their nature, apocalypses are expensive, so when armageddon occurs, we lose all the future capital we would have gotten by investing the wealth that ends up consumed in fire and ice. Needless to say, with higher technology and a more advanced civilization, it will be easier to clean up the seas that have turned to blood, and to replace any moons that end up being devoured.)
An easy way to accomplish this is to make enough resources available that victory is still possible even under most worst case scenarios. That way, no matter how badly off a group is, it has food, knowledge and communications, so it can still build better arguments for its positions, which may in turn allow it to win in the far future, when present environments have shifted, and the keys to wealth production have changed hands.

Finally, I should address some common counter arguments, that actually counter the wrong premises and thus aren't actually related to the argument-

A- The free market is by definition a set of calculations done using unviolent methods. The vast majority (if not all) of big businesses are connected to the government. Microsoft makes its vast fortunes by exploiting copyright laws. (Yes, creating something that only has value because it is standardized, then using the standardization in order to level a tax on all computers used for standard activities is MOST DEFINITELY an exploit. A standard was inevitable from the start, Microsoft only produces wealth in so far as it gives us a high quality standard in an early timeframe. That's not saying that Microsoft doesn't give us anything (Windows 7 is actually a very good product) but that by siphoning too much of the economy to Microsoft, we have malinvested too heavily into creating good operating systems, paying an invisible opportunity cost distributed across all other fields.) The free market has already tried to kill GM several times. Practically all banks receive regular doses of free government cash... the list goes on, but in short, the road to being a big business is almost always through leveraging government support.

B- America's government meddles in medicine MORE than most of the rest of the 1st world. Our spending is slighty above average, our regulations on who can be a doctor, who can run a hospital, etc. is highly above average, and our regulations involving what you can and cannot sell is WAY above average (the FDA is famously one of THE hardest governmental regulatory agencies to get drugs and operational methods through. European countries often have had life saving drugs with no drawbacks for ten years before those drugs are legal in America. In turn, this forces American hospitals to give patients either riskier or more expensive treatment.) The entire debate over whether we should provide socialist or capitalist medical treatment is bogus, much like the rest of the Republican party.

Anarchy

What defines an anarchy? It could be called an environment in which all rights are granted. When people think of such a list of rights, they normally notice immediately such rights as the right to murder or steal, however, these are not actually threats to anarchy and are balanced by the right to self defense and the right to vengeance. The one right that particularly threatens anarchy on a fundamental basis, is the right to form a government, and thus, the right to restrict rights. As such, an environment in which all people have all rights, is, by its nature a low entropy state.

So, how else can one define an anarchy? The other definition that comes up is simpler: any populace lacking a government. It is theoretically possible, that such a populace could be raised with principles designed to protect themselves and their anarchy. Thieves could be dealt with more easily without trials and courts to protect them, and murderers would be kept in line by the heavily armed population. Giant armies would emerge from out of the population to strike down threatening governments whether foreign or domestic. Such a society could generate law without government, and maintain all the trappings of civilization. However, looking at such a society one must realize that it's just a system, albeit a weird one. In such an anarchy, it is possible that anyone who doesn't conform to societal norms will be killed on the spot, or that giant witch hunts will be undertaken by a paranoid populace. IE, an anarchy CAN BE a tyranny. Most governments, (or any other system of organization of a populace.) try to justify themselves with some form of divine righteousness. Once you realize that an anarchy can be tailored to build any societal model, it becomes a system like any other, acceptable only upon the merits of its abilities.

So, given that you make an anarchy, what is different from another government, the same in respects separate from systematical factors? First off, in an anarchy, activities must be popular- basically, passing a "bill" in an anarchy, is equivalent to passing a constitutional amendment in a democracy. Such changes to "law" would have no official ceremony- the nation would just evolve over time. What's most important here is- war. An anarchy would be capable of starting a war, only after a rather extreme event managed to raise extreme support. The nature of this event, is, dynamic, in that it depends on what the populace thinks of as an act of war. In this way, anarchy resembles democracy, but requires generally bigger events than an equivalent democracy. However, just starting a war isn't enough in anarchy. After all, in an anarchy, the army can, literally, just pack up and leave at any time. As such, for an anarchy to engage in war, the war must be popular throughout. This leads to a fork in how an anarchy operates-
In a military anarchy, an army would always exist, and invading and conquering foreign nations would be seen as the norm. Alternatively the anarchy could form a army only when invaded, defending itself from foreigners but rarely fighting frivolously. In-between systems are too complicated, and thus, difficult to manage in an anarchy.

One should not make the mistake that an anarchy would not have leaders. In any system, certain people stand out, and are listened to. While anarchist leaders would not dare judge criminals directly, or issue ultimatums (for fear of a anti-government crowd labeling them a start up government, and executing them on the spot.) national policy would be very dependent on these people. Given that there is no system of turnover, it is likely that these people would be very established, and would wield their power for life (though many would fade in and out of the spotlight in the flow of time.)

To maintain an anarchy, certain factors are necessary, chief amongst them- homogeneity. Amongst multiple cultures, a clash is inevitable, as well as a power struggle. This power struggle is almost certain to include a government. Therefore, either the anarchists must ethnic cleanse the opposition, or the nation ceases to be an anarchy. What is most interesting, is that an anarchy must thence have strict border control, especially assuming its neighbors are all living under, and supporters of, governments. Even anarchist neighbors could be living under a vastly different anarchy, and would therefore, start enforcing vastly different laws. Given that in an anarchy just living in the country makes you a full citizen capable of taking the laws into your own hand, it is imperative that immigration be controlled, lest your country dissipate.

Evolution and Desire

What does a rock desire? What is it thinking? A standard answer to this would be to say "nothing". That it is simply a physical manifestation of the laws governing our environment. However, a rock is, in fact, the end result of incredibly complicated interactions, the very ability to sit still becomes incredible when one looks at quark physics. And yet it is so- that small underlying probabilities on a low level lead to stable realities on upper levels. In this manner rocks are identical to humans- that it is a manifestation of an underlying yearning, that SOMETHING WANTED SOMETHING. To declare anything else requires an arbitrary line, wherein at one point something is alive and thinking but at an arbitrarily similar point it isn't. Like trying to draw lines with RNA on one side and viruses on the other. The very definitions of thought and life only work as properties, similar to heat or velocity. An absolute zero life reality would have to have zero information content.

That said, humans are obviously more alive than rocks are. So are algae and spaghetti. The question then arises as to what delineates higher levels of life from lower levels of life. A standard snap reply would be "intellect". A somewhat more advanced reply would be "morality". Since we are currently just playing games with the English language (which, like math, is not actually the basis of the universe around us, no matter how much we wish it were.) both answers are correct, as is any other answer. However, amongst those correct answers there is one that I would point out as a very interesting angle from which to view the world- "desire". While quarks have hardly any desires and just run around as they please, electrons insist on finding protons. DNA wishes to reproduce, which is far beyond simple magnetism, whilst fungi wish to grow. The definition is fully scalable and works for any interaction. What makes a human more alive than a cow? The fact that the human wants to build houses, share experiences and make inventions, while the cow just wants eat grass and lay down facing power lines. If the cattle just had the desire to improve their environment they could be human. This works for IQ as well- in that a stupid thug merely wants his next fix, whereas if he wanted to carefully annotate the exact actions of a slowly titrated chemical he would in fact BE a brilliant scientist. Note China, who had gunpowder, all the IQ they could ask for, but just didn't WANT to shoot anybody. It was lack of lifeforce, not calculation capacity that held them back. While it might be argued that the Chinese really DID want to shoot people but just didn't think of it, this argument doesn't work, once we realize that monkeys and mocking birds want to imitate the actions of those around them, but do not have any higher desires. The desire to replicate the actions of others is not equivalent to a desire to take independent action.

IE- to be a higher life form, all that is necessary is to desire the correct things. However, by applying previous knowledge of the definitions leading here, desires are not customizable (IE a thug really can't just want to goto college and memorize the periodic table.) and have a physical basis. The more interesting implications don't revolve around how to reach a level of life but in what a higher level of life IS. We note already the line of desire from a quark to a human, but it is important to note the trends inherent in these goals- That a quark, desiring to be in its correct triplet has an infinitely easier objective than any human objective- IE a more obtainable objective. Whilst our objectives are complicated and hard to achieve, a quark can just teleport to its objective. Rocks have a far higher chance of sitting still than DNA does of replicating, and a cow is more likely to eat the grass in front of it than the chance that a human will put a house on that grass. IE, the goals of higher lifeforms are perpetually less realistic than those of lower lifeforms. In fact, they are not only more difficult, but due to growing pattern overlaps, the goals of higher lifeforms steadily become mutually exclusive. Whilst the rocks can live in perfect harmony, humans must always be in conflict, whether through war, or through various advertisements drawing customers away from one product and to another.

If we move on to yet higher lifeforms, we find angels and demons, beings aspiring to ultimate power. (Demons through force-ably integrating all reality with their objective, and angels through convincing all reality to integrate. Either way the end result is the same.) So what happens if one such being achieves its objective and becomes omnipotent? It must then become a god. For that is the driving force of evolution, that once a lifeform has achieved its desire in fullness, the next frame MUST include a higher lifeform. This is because, the universe is information. It is a slide-show OF information. In order to change slides, the information contained MUST change. The next slide IS the difference in information. There are of course two other possibilities, ones that always exist- A- the projector is turned off, and the slide-show ends and B- a new slidereel is loaded, and the show is fundamentally changed.

However, our show is evolution, and our next slide will always contain a higher lifeform. So then, what does a god desire? What does the demon who has slain all opposition now want? What does the angel who has rallied all desire to one point want? The answer relates to the same thing that every form of life has always attempted- to replicate. A god however, being omnipotent, cannot simply create another god. Why? Because, being omnipotent, everything within the universe is simply an extension of himself. Creating an exact copy of himself would merely cause him to become more massive. To create a new god, it becomes necessary to reproduce not only the form, but the core nature that IS a god, IE the quality of understanding that the god has obtained- but this understanding must be formed entirely independently of the god's original experience, lest reproduction falter, and the infant be rendered simply an additional limb. It is therefore a god's duty, nay, nature, to create a new universe. Any lesser desire, and the supposed god is instead just a extremely powerful demon. What lies beyond godhood then? Is evolution an indefinite progression?