Axiom About Envy

"We can often be vain of our passions, even the guiltiest ones; but envy is so sneaking and shameful that we never dare confess it"
Francois de la Rochefoucauld

"It is better to be envied than pitied"
Herodotus

"Envy is the basis of democracy"
Bertrand Russell

We perceive the world with nothing but our feelings. My opponents say that I’m concerned with something ephemeral, not material. I believe that material is much more ephemeral than feelings, which never abandon us and can be used to judge whether I’m right or talking nonsense.

Earlier I listed eight statements—eight axioms—about human feelings that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

We have already discussed seven axioms. Today it’s turn of the eighth axiom—about envy.

We don’t sympathize to the success of rich strangers. Not only it doesn’t bring joy, when their powers increase, it even brings sorrow. Conversely, their losses bring joy. Dislike towards the richer and their acquirements, as well as joy of their losses is a performance of envy.

The majority sympathizes to Robin the Hood. He robbed the rich and shared loot with the poor. Politicians make use of sympathy of the majority towards heroic bandits and demonstrate willingness to rob the rich people to share the loot with poorer ones. Such demonstration gives them more votes on elections. The majority of voters does not like rich people; that’s why majority likes politicians who promise to make rich people more generous and force them to share with the poor ones. The faith in democracy lead to universal right of suffrage, which in its turn lead to progressive taxation, labor law, governmental social security, fight with big enterprises (monopolies) and so on.

Envy is much more mean and dangerous feeling than insatiability or egoism. Insatiability and egoism may prompt to seize other’s property despite of will of its owner. But insatiable egoists do not have to destroy the property, kill or cripple its owners, if owners do not resist such seizure too much. Expropriators may even love their victims in certain sense, as farmer loves his cattle that give him milk, wool and meat. But envy makes people enjoy other’s suffering, or makes them suffer because of other’s joy. Envy may prompt the enviers to eliminate the property of those who they envy. It may lead not only to elimination of victim’s property, but also to elimination of victims themselves. This makes envier more dangerous than a robber, whose main target is to seize—not to destroy. Destruction without seizing is a waste of time for robber. Envier enjoys destruction even when he doesn’t take advantage of victim’s property. Unlike insatiability or egoism, envy is always inhered with hatred, enmity.

Envy is a shameful feeling. That’s why it is being disguised or denied. This is how Paul Krugman—a winner of Nobel Prize in economics—disguises and denies his envy:

“The fact is that vast income inequality inevitably brings vast social inequality in its train. And this social inequality isn’t just a matter of envy and insults. It has real, negative consequences for the way people live in this country. It may not matter much that the great majority of Americans can’t afford to stay in the eleven-thousand-dollar-a-night hotel suites popping up in luxury hotels around the world. It matters a great deal that millions of middle-class families buy houses they can’t really afford, taking on more mortgage debt than they can safely handle, because they’re desperate to send their children to a good school—and intensifying inequality means that the desirable school districts are growing fewer in number, and more expensive to live in” (Paul Krugman. The Conscience of a Liberal. The Costs of Inequality).

Insulting comparison with rich people, who are popping up in luxury hotels around the world, prompts Krugman to dissolve justice, dissolve the bounds to declare the “right” of middle-class on someone’s wealth. In order to do so he writes that “the lion’s share of economic growth in America over the past thirty years has gone to a small, wealthy minority, to such an extent that it’s unclear whether the typical family has benefited at all from technological progress and the rising productivity it brings. The lack of clear economic progress for lower- and middle-income families is in itself an important reason to seek a more equal distribution of income” (same as above).

Nietzsche called envy “the privy part of the human soul” (F. Nietzsche. Human, All Too Human. Man alone with himself). No one would confess that he is driven by envy to successful people. This is why projects inspired by envy are called income equalization, antitrust policy or anti-globalization. The list can be extended.

The most dangerous part of envy is that the vast majority of contemporaries mistake envy for justice. This majority is ready to believe any nonsense about rich people only on the ground that they are rich. Absolutely illogical, false “proof” of capitalists “expropriation” of workers works just fine because it’s being nurtured by envy.

All humans are insatiable and egoistic, but envy distorts the picture, endowing only rich men with insatiability and egoism. Left politicians use this distortion, encouraging to rob the rich ones by the means of nationalization or progressive taxation. Successful struggle against left political views is impossible without exposure of envy to the rich, inherent to these views.

Envy and justice are essentially different feelings. To substitute justice with envy is to harm the justice. Envy prompts to confront successful people, while justice prompts to confront wrongdoers, not the rich people. Enviers’ struggle against rich people makes richer those who in charge of this struggle, not the poor ones.

Axiom About Justice

Someone asked, “What about returning good for evil?” Confucius answered, “Why should one return good for evil? Treat evil with justice and return good for good.”

Analects of Confucius, Book 14, chap. 36

Earlier I listed eight statements—eight axioms—about human feelings that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

Each of these axioms cuts away a huge mass of statements as antiscientific ones. And only the statements not contradictory to these axioms can be considered as scientific.

We have already discussed six axioms. Today it’s turn of the seventh axiom—about justice.

A feeling called morality, conscience or justice inheres within our soul. This feeling allows us to judge acts separating them into right, moral, just, fair on one hand and wrong, immoral, unjust, unfair or dishonest on the other. The Harvard biologist Marc Hauser conducted a survey amongst many people of different nationalities, cultures and religions, and found that their descriptions of bounds between moral and immoral are amazingly similar. Moreover, their consensual assurance was much stronger than their ability to distinctly explain the reasons for their views. Their assurance was intuitive. Hauser made a conclusion that this amazingly similar moral choice was made at some very deep, subconscious level.

Our task is to reinforce the intuitive moral choice between right and wrong with logic, with science.

Scarce (and thus valuable) alienable powers, or in other words—property—is a subject of competition between people, who don’t feel love towards each other. Competitors may seize property (or assets) with violence or deceit, or they may mark bounds—borders that divide assets between them and protect valuable unalienable powers. Bounds turn valuable powers into someone’s rights. It is forbidden to use alien rights. It is forbidden to destroy or damage alien rights. If solidarity in protecting the rights is high, then one can be confident that it will be applied to protection of his rights as well. Acts respectful to bounds become right acts; acts disrespectful to bounds become wrong acts; fight against wrongdoers becomes public affair.

Respect towards bounds does not mean their rigidness. Voluntary alteration of bounds in the form of trade or gifts is also respectful towards bounds. Violation of bounds occurs when someone forces their alteration. This is called a wrongdoing or offense. However using force can be right act if it’s applied towards wrongdoer. Wrongdoer gets punished. As such, he can be forced to compensate damage to those who had suffered from his wrongdoing.

Wrongdoing or offense is a dangerous act that almost everyone agrees to ban.

Wrongdoings include following acts:

1. Violence, when people get killed, crippled or tortured, property gets destroyed, damaged or forcefully taken away;
2. Threats, when threatened one obeys without violence, but because of the threat of violence;
3. Deceit, when property is taken away secretly or promise is broken.

However, although dangerous acts look bad, they cannot be banned completely. Absolute ban of dangerous acts leaves no room for fighting wrongdoers, while convincing and moral suasion may not work on them.

It is just to use violence, threats and deceit towards wrongdoers if it’s adequate to their offense. Thus violence, threats and deceit can be right acts, and it is wrong to ban them. Not all dangerous acts should be considered as wrongdoings and banned, but only those of them, which considered wrong.

By defining wrongdoings through wrong dangerous acts we use recursion. Recursion is hard to grasp; many think of any recursion as a vicious circle. But I don’t see any other way to define wrongdoing. Perhaps recursion in definition of offence causes so many troubles with good laws and commandments. “Thou shalt not kill!” But what if there’s no other way to stop the murderer? Is it just to condemn the murderer of murderer?

Recursion in the definition of wrongdoing gets even more complicated, when we discover that there’s another dangerous act that should be banned:

4. Avoiding fight against wrongdoers.

Fight against wrongdoers is a public affair that no one should avoid. Fence sitting is wrong here.

Extreme individualism is wrong. It is everyone’s debt to make his contribution into fight against wrongdoers: with money, personal participation in militia, testimony, etc.

Demand of solidarity, which is appropriate in fight against wrongdoers, is wrong when it’s tried to be stretched on other affairs—social care for example. This wrong demand of wide solidarity, inherent in today’s world, weakens solidarity of right people in their fight against wrongdoers and strengthens the wrongdoers. Helping the poor is just, when it’s driven with love, and it’s wrong when it is being forced. Not the poor ones benefit from such forced struggle with poverty, but those, who are in charge of it.

Axiom About Love

"To live without loving is not really to live"
Molière

We have science to understand nature. But we don’t have science to understand humans. Social “sciences” give mutually exclusive formulas for common wealth. But real science teaches that mutually exclusive statements cannot be true at the same time. Some of them—or maybe all of them—are false. People, who unaware of this rule and tolerate contradictions, can be politicians or clergy, anyone but scientists. Scientists do not tolerate contradictions. Scientists conquer them. Tolerance towards contradictions disqualifies people as scientists.

I believe that science about humans should start with discourse about feelings—about needs and joys, about egoism and love, about justice and envy—by agreement to equally understand these words. Axioms are the best way to achieve the harmony of sense.

Earlier I listed eight statements—eight axioms—about human feelings that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

Each of these axioms cuts away a huge mass of statements as antiscientific ones. And only the statements not contradictory to these axioms can be considered as scientific.

We have already discussed five axioms. Today it’s turn of the sixth axiom—about love: loved ones are only few.

Nature (or God, depending on your taste) created humans egoistic. We don’t even feel directly the needs of other people. We can judge these needs only by acts of those people, including their words. As if the nature told us: “Take care of yourself, others will cope on their own. You’re the only person responsible for your life, don’t shift responsibility to other’s shoulders”. But on the background of indifference and even hostility towards other people, the nature created islands of love, where needs of beloved ones stand on the same level or even higher than your own needs.

Our relationships with own children, grandchildren, spouses, siblings and friends are infused with love. Our relationships with beloved ones are altruistic, unselfish, based on formula “what’s mine is yours”. The joy that our gifts bring to our beloved ones is also our own joy. Gifts—unconditional transfer of property—are external indicators of grantor’s love towards grantee.

Compassion towards poor people is also love.

The poorer the man, the more one’s will to help him, i.e. the bigger one’s love towards him. A poor person, i.e. person with low abilities, suffers from the most urgent needs: hunger, cold or thirst. Thus it is easy to make him happy with just a little: a loaf of bread, a coat or a glass of water. Despite their insatiability and egoism, people compassionate each other and feel joy about others’ joys. A poor person’s enormous joy from just a little spreads on public. That’s why people compassionate and help poor ones, and not the rich ones, who won’t feel joy about little.

Compassion is also used by politicians struggling for votes of electors. All governmental programs demonstrate care about poor and powerless and not about rich and beautiful. Even when it comes to business, government claims to support only the small one, at the very least – medium. Big businesses are almost certainly monopolies, acceptable only when controlled by government.

It is very important to distinguish compassion of private persons from compassion of government. While private people compassionate at their own expense, government people do it at others’ expense, at expense of taxpayers. Government people give away what belongs to others, fascinating naïve voters, who readily vote for those who promise more. Governmental giveaways are quite profitable business. Everyone wants to get some, but not everyone gets. That’s why potential receivers of government resources are ready to share a part of received with those who distribute. Such share is a type of bribe often called kickback.

Love is beautiful feeling, but it cannot embrace a lot of people at the same time.

Axiom About Egoism

In my post about basic concepts of the theory of society I listed eight statements about human feelings—eight axioms—that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

Today it is turn of the axiom about egoism: strangers' needs are not important.

In our behavior we don’t take into account needs of the most of other people—and they number billions. These are alien needs of alien people and we do not rush to satisfy them. We ignore them. They are not actual for us: they don’t prompt us to action. And other people don’t get insulted because of that, since they—in their turn—do not take into account and do not rush to satisfy our needs.

We can immediately feel only our own needs. But it doesn’t mean that needs of all other people are alien to us. What feelings are those that turn the needs of other people into our needs, and who are those people, whose needs can be actual for us?

At first, it is love. Love turns the needs of our beloved ones into our needs, and love turns their joys into our joys.

Secondly, it is debt. Debt turns the needs of our creditors into our needs, and debt turns their joys into our joys.

We spend our scarce powers, including time and money, on ourselves and on those few people, who are not alien to us—our beloved ones and our creditors. We leave other people—billions of them—unattended, since we can’t possibly have enough powers for everyone in need.

Axiom of egoism can be stated differently—through the value of your and others’ powers: own powers are valued more than powers of others. This rule embraces all powers, including property. Own dollar and other’s dollar are completely different dollars. Value of the first one is greater than it is of another. Value of someone else’s dollar tends to zero, when this someone is an alien to you. Value of someone else’s dollar may even be negative in case that it belongs to a competitor, to an enemy.

Altruistic fairytales. Scholars draw rose-colored pictures describing purely non-egoistic people, who act as if there were no alien needs. Many social projects are designed for people unfamiliar with egoism—people, who care about everyone.

Communists and socialists assume that egoism (when each one cares only about his private affairs and doesn’t care about others) is caused by social structure or, in other words, established order. Moreover, the only egoists are exploiters, slave-owners, feudalists or capitalists, but not in any case the exploited ones—slaves, serfs or proletarians. This is why authority of egoistic and parasitic exploiters needs to be overthrown and be given to altruistic exploited workers, free from private affairs and devoted to common good. Liberated from economic exploitation by egoistic capitalists, altruistic workers would bravely direct their efforts towards common wealth. Now that egoistic capitalists do not absorb these efforts, it is surely possible.

Soviet scholars described modern to them and especially future socialist society as a society of altruists, where rare cases of egoism are just relics of the dark past. They said that in socialism “man is to man a friend, comrade, and brother” [Third Programme of The Communist Party of The Soviet Union], while in capitalism “man is wolf to man”. Songs were written: “First think about you Motherland, then about yourself” [Rus. Раньше думай о Родине, а потом о себе—Komsomol Tradition (Rus. Комсомольская традиция). Lyrics by Igor Shaferan]. Addressing to each other people said “comrade”. These traditions turned naïve people away from their private affairs. And these people were successfully exploited by those who never forgot about themselves.

Laws against egoism. Not only communists save the world from egoism. Modern lawmakers do too, however not that radically. It seems to them that egoists working for themselves and not for society become more rich, successful and powerful than altruists, who forget about themselves. This is not fair, so situation needs to be improved by government.

Sellers concerned about profit are more egoistic than retail buyers. That’s why retail customers should be protected from sellers, for instance by consumer protection laws. If it isn’t done, then egoistic sellers will reduce costs decreasing quality of commodities, thriving on defenseless retail customers.

Employers concerned about extorting profit are more egoistic than employees living paycheck to paycheck. That’s why employees should be protected from employers by labor law. If it isn’t done, then egoistic employers would increase working day, decrease wages and ignore occupational safety and health of their workers.

Big entrepreneurs are more egoistic than smaller ones. That’s why small business is an object of governmental care. Amongst big entrepreneurs the monopolists are the most egoistic. That’s why many governments ban monopolies. United States code provides imprisonment for violators of Anti-Trust Law. If small business is not supported and big capital is not restrained, then small enterprises would be swallowed by big capital, which can go all lengths for profit.

Private persons are more egoistic than government people. This idea is the core concept of social, or welfare, or in other words—altruistic state. It is commonly accepted that, privately, people would help each other much less than altruists wanted them to. With no help of government it is much harder for altruist to become a wealthy man because of his reduced attention to himself, unlike for egoist, who is concentrated on his own interests. That’s why politicians organize governmental help, obliging egoists to help altruists more than egoists want to, so that altruist won’t become extinct, won’t die off.

Egoistic altruism of social state. But if altruists vote for politicians, who promise to help them for the account of egoists, then altruism of such “altruists” is quite doubtful. Forcing to help altruist at egoists expense is beyond the frames of altruism. Altruists organizing care for themselves look egoistic. The more so that such help should be forcefully demanded from egoists. It appears that social state is an authority of egoists claiming to be altruists.

Profit of demonstrating altruism. People, including politicians, often demonstrate their altruism, their willingness to solve other people’s problems. Masses admire altruism of others. This is why those who better demonstrate their altruism often win political elections amongst naïve masses. Those who honestly confess to their egoism do not win such elections. Masses do not like open egoists, although difference between open egoists and other people is just that first ones “came out”. It has not been proved that politicians are more altruistic than any other people.

Not encouraged one will not be discouraged. Sober-minded glance at human’s properties, including inherent to people egoism, frees from illusions, which may lead to absolutely non-illusory “bumps on the head”. It becomes as clear as daylight that responsibility for your wealth lays on your own shoulders, and it is strange to get insulted by alien men and women from government, who wouldn’t solve your problem with the same level of insistence as they do solving their own problems.

A thought of personal responsibility for own fate is unpleasant for many people. One may become their enemy if he tells them that their misfortune is their own fault. But one may become their idol if he is able to find external and convincing causes of their misfortune: unfair social structure, uneven income distribution, government inattention to their needs, greediness of rich people, wild capitalism, imperialism, globalism…

Political idols are just the same people and same egoists as everybody. As all other people they primarily care about their own wealth. And once we allow them to collect taxes to care about us, first thing they do is satisfy their needs. Government care about the poor helps the best to those who are in charge of caring.

There is no soul without egoism. Egoism, self-interest is an essential attribute of any soul. Those, who do not have own interests blindly obeying other’s will, do not have soul. It’s not “someone” anymore, it’s “something”. Arm or leg is a very valuable body part, but it is soulless, it doesn’t have its own interests, it just follows the will of its owner. Perhaps without egoistic people around us with their different interests, the world would be much less interesting thing itself. To Lillebror egoistic Karlsson-on-the-Roof was much more attractive than a toy dog.

Axiom About Tastes

Feeling is the most important concept in the science about humans. Feelings can be negative and then called need, poverty or sorrow. Feelings can be positive and then called joy, value or wealth. Earlier I listed eight statements—eight axioms—about human feelings that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

Each of these axioms cuts away a huge mass of statements as antiscientific ones. And only the statements not contradictory to these axioms can be considered as scientific.

We have already discussed first three axioms.

Today it’s turn of the fourth axiom—about tastes, or about difference in evaluation of powers, abilities or resources.

Fruitless quest for objective value. Value is quite often treated as objective measuring unit like mass, size or speed. This reasoning is very much supported by confusion between value and price. Some people try to objectively measure “objective value” and make objective conclusions—i.e. conclusions that do not depend on tastes—about value of powers. According to Marx and other followers of labor theory of value, the value of commodity is a measurable embodied labor, “petrified” in commodity. If measured correctly, then anyone would come to the same result—the same amount of value. The more labor is put into commodity, the more valuable it is. But searches of objective value are false searches, leading to false conclusion, such as idea of unproductiveness of trade, or idea that fair exchange is necessarily equivalent exchange.

Subjective nature of value. Human insatiability inevitably comes to the pinch point of deficit of certain powers. Urgency of the deficit of certain power is the value of this power. As long as there’s no deficit, the power is not perceived as valuable, just as you don’t perceive air or water on the beach as valuable powers.

Value by definition is the joy that power brings. To say “more valuable” is to say “more preferable” or “more joyful”. To say, “A is more valuable than B”, is to say, “A brings more joy that B”. Note that more joy for John doesn’t mean more joy for Bill. From Bill’s point of view things may look opposite. Thus it is not sufficient to say “more valuable” or “more joyful”. We must indicate to whom it is more valuable or to whom it is more joyful. Subjective nature of value means that we must take into account the subject who evaluates.

Incongruence of different people’s values. When rating objects by their mass or volume, everyone would come up with the same result. But it is absolutely not necessarily so when rating powers by their value.

Human needs and joys are subjective. We can only judge them by the acts of those humans. And human behavior tells us that humans rate powers differently. As such, people trade, and since they do it willingly, we can draw a conclusion about different evaluation of property that they exchange. By giving away property A in exchange for property B, one values B more than A. On the contrary—another, by receiving A in exchange for B, values A more than B. The bigger incongruence of ratings, the more people tend to each other to mutually receive something much more valuable from another one in exchange for something less valuable of their own.

Productiveness of trade. Axiom about tastes classifies statements about essential unproductiveness of trade as unscientific ones. Both trading parties can reach profit, because they evaluate property that they exchange differently.

Axiom About Insatiability

As soon as he died, Juan found himself in a gorgeous place, surrounded by all the comfort and beauty he had dreamed of.
A fellow dressed in white approached him and said, “You have the right to have whatever you want; any food, pleasure or amusement.”
Charmed, Juan did everything he dreamed of doing during his life. After many years of pleasures, he sought the fellow in white and asked, “I have already experienced everything I wanted. Now I need to work in order to feel useful.”
“I am sorry,” said the fellow in white, “but that is the only thing I am unable to give you. There is no work here.”
“How terrible,” Juan said annoyed, “I will spend eternity dying of boredom! I’d much rather be in hell!”
The man in white approached him and said in a low voice:
“And where do you think you are?”

Paulo Coelho

In my post about basic concepts of the theory of society I listed eight statements about human feelings—eight axioms—that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

Today it is turn of the axiom about insatiability: it is impossible to overcome all needs. Ilsebill—a fisherman’s wife from fairytale The Fisherman and His Wife by Brothers Grimm—acts quite natural. Her behavior is not fairytale-like, not magical, as well as the one of her husband, whose main wish is to satisfy his insatiable wife so that she wouldn’t yell at him and just let him be.

Unsatisfied needs prompt to act. Satisfying the need brings joy, but you quickly find another concern, another need demanding satisfaction. As soon as you satisfy this another need, the next one occurs. And so on for the rest of your life.

Scarcity. Wishes can be fulfilled only by the means of powers. There are not enough powers to satisfy all of the endless needs. Powers that we feel short on called scarce. They are also called deficit, rare or economic.

Scarcity of alienable powers. All axioms are based on experience. Experience tells us that our insatiability extends not only to unalienable powers—such as life, health, beauty, intellect or skills—but on alienable powers as well, the most popular of which is money. Only valued alienable powers—assets or property—prompt us to communicate: trade, ask, steal or rob. Should we become absolutely satisfied with alienable powers, we would not need anything from other people and stop communicating, keeping ourselves busy only with increasing our unalienable powers, our unalienable wealth—long, lonely and even sexless life.

Karl Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Program proposed a slogan of total communism—very rash from scientific point of view, though attractive for masses: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. However all needs cannot be satisfied.

Scarcity cannot be overcome totally. We can imagine overcoming scarcity of primitive needs. For example, we can imagine surplus in simple food and clothes, simple houses, when everyone gets some. Having a good imagination one can even imagine surplus of all material things, like Harry Harrison did, when described a device called copying machine or duplicator in his series of novels about Stainless Steel Rat. This device could easily copy anything in any amounts.

But even in fantastic world of abundance of familiar things it is impossible to satisfy all needs. One would wish for new, unseen things, which need to be created before copying, and most importantly—for attention of other people. For example John would like Mary to pay attention to him, but not to Bill or any other man. But Bill could also want exceptional Mary’s attention to himself. Such wishes of John and Bill regarding Mary are incompatible. Mary’s favor to one person is a scarce alienable power, an asset that can belong to either John or Bill. But Mary in her own turn may dispose this asset disregarding John or Bill’s wishes. She might choose someone different or not limit herself with only one man at all. She might dispense her favor amongst many men if she has a generous soul.

Scarcity is a consequence of human insatiability, which inevitably faces shortage of some powers—their rarity or scarcity. I should stress that when we talking about scarcity of powers, we always mean alienable powers. It means that human insatiability will inevitably make some of the alienable powers valuable and thus scarce, i.e. turn them into assets or property. In the light of axiom about humanism we should remember that only humans experience scarcity, not collectives. Thus statements that not only people but also the whole nations feel shortage or scarcity of resources should be treated as false statements, as the case of dangerous illusion of collectivism.

In summary, assets—i.e. scarce alienable powers—exist and will exist forever as long as humans exist. In other words, it is impossible to overcome scarcity of all alienable powers.

Axiom About Isolation

In my post about basic concepts of the theory of society I listed eight statements about human feelings—eight axioms—that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

Today it is turn of the axiom about isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts. This axiom is about unreliability of knowledge about feelings of other people, because we can’t know about those feelings directly. We can only get some information about their feelings from their acts—including speech or gestures. And of course they can lie.

Other’s soul is a thing-in-itself. Immanuel Kant referred to inconceivable, impenetrable as thing-in-itself. You can only feel your own soul, your own grieves and joys. Other people’s feelings can be known only through these people’s acts—for instance through what they say about their feelings. It is impossible to immediately, i.e. directly hear the “music” in other’s head, as it is to see other’s dreams.

Special tools or magic spells allowing immediate reading of others’ feelings can only be found in science fiction or fairy tails.

In Herbert Wells’s Men Like Gods the people of fictitious parallel world could communicate without use of words. Instead of speaking to each other they thought to each other. The one who received a thought clothed it in words. Notably that each one could clothe the thought in words most convenient for him, so there was no use in translators.

In the movie What Women Want the main character played my Mel Gibson after electric shock begins to “hear” the thoughts of women, which leads him to a fantastic success amongst them.

In reality we only can reconstruct thoughts of other people judging by their acts. The best way to understand what woman wants is to talk to her.

Immediate—i.e. without medium of acts, particularly speech—perception of other’s soul is as impossible as travelling back in time.

Only your own feelings are best known to you. We can only guess about other people’s feelings. Chances are that these other people may misinform you regarding their feelings. They may for example mislead others about some strong feelings and valued powers calling them sins to put off guard ones who they consider to be their competitors in order to seize such valued powers themselves. After all they may be just kidding.

In 1928 Margaret Mead in her book Coming of Age in Samoa, which then became classics of social anthropology, wrote about promiscuous sexual relations between Samoans. Only in 1983 Derek Freeman proved the failure of this work. American lady was just pranked by young Samoan girl who instigated her boyfriend. She let her believe in ridiculous nonsense about Samoan sexual traditions. But amongst Samoan traditions are pranks, not promiscuity.

The word is a door into other’s soul. Lev Uspensky in his book A Word about Words wrote about impression he had from words about simple conversation.

“It was about sixty years ago. I happened to read Kuprin’s nouvelle titled “Evening guest” in an issue of some magazine… A little scene stuck in my mind forever, although I was very young at that time—not more than ten or twelve years old. Why did it strike me?
A man is sitting in the room, while someone, some “evening guest”, is about to enter from the yard.
“Now he opens the door”, Kuprin writes. “Another instant, and the simplest, yet the most incomprehensible of things will take place. We shall begin to talk. With the aid of sounds of different pitch and intensity, he will express his thoughts in the customary form, while I shall receive those sound vibrations and decipher their meaning; and the other man’s thoughts will become mine…. Oh, how unintelligible to us, how mysterious, how strange are the commonest phenomena of life?”.
Having read these lines I halted in confusion. At first it seemed like author is laughing at me: what had he found so amazing in such a really ordinary thing—conversation between two people? Everybody talks… And it never seemed to me neither strange, nor amazing.
And now? And now I am deep in thought. Indeed: how is that?
Here I sit and think. No matter how much I think, nobody—not even a single person in the world—can know my thoughts: they are mine!
But I have opened my mouth. I began to produce “sounds of different pitch and intensity”, as written in the nouvelle. And suddenly as if everyone besides me had an opportunity to penetrate “inside me”. Now they know my thoughts…” 

Easy understanding of beloved ones. Love makes communication easier. Much less acts are needed to understand one another. Characters of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina—Levin and Kitty—didn’t need words at all. Glances and initial letters of words were enough to confess about their love to each other:

“Here,” he said; and he wrote the initial letters, w, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant, “When you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?” There seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, “Is it what I think?”
“I understand,” she said, flushing a little.
“What is this word?” he said, pointing to the n that stood for never.
“It means never,” she said; “but that’s not true!”
He quickly rubbed out what he had written, have her the chalk, and stood up. She wrote, t, i, c, n, a, d…
…He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant, “Then I could not answer differently.”
He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.
“Only then?”
“Yes,” her smile answered.
“And n…and now?” he asked.
“Well, read this. I’ll tell you what I should like—should like so much!” she wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, a, w, h. This meant, “If you could forget and forgive what happened.”
He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, “I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you.”
She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.
“I understand,” she said in a whisper.
He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and without asking him, “Is it this?” took the chalk and at once answered.
For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He could not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he wrote three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when she read them over his arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, “Yes.”
“You’re playing secrétaire?” said the old prince. “But we must really be getting along if you want to be in time at the theater.”
Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.
In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he would come tomorrow morning.”