An objective morality of the state.

Political science is moral science.

Let’s say you want a motorcycle, and you go to the store, and you have two options: high quality, high price, or low quality, low price. You want high quality, low price, so you are trapped in a contradiction. The solution is determined by your own personal subjective evaluation of how much you value quality vs. money (opportunity cost).

Now let’s say you purchase the high quality motorcycle. If the difference in price is within a certain margin, your decision is not disastrous -- you wasted a few grand, but you’ll make that back in a month. However, if the high quality motorcycle is so expensive that you go bankrupt, this decision falls outside the margin, and becomes deadly.

On the other hand, let’s say you purchase the cheap motorcycle. If by “low quality” we mean it looks ugly, or it gets poor mileage, your decision falls within the tolerable margin. But if its quality is so poor that it explodes while you ride it, then this decision fell outside the acceptable margin.

There are some decisions which are subjective in the sense that they entirely fall within the margin of tolerance. I like a blue car; you like a red car; our decision in either case falls within the tolerable margin, so it’s subjective. But if I like impregnating women, and you like castrating your testicles, then our preferences are no longer within the tolerable margin: they now fall into the category of objectivity, in that they result in existential consequences. I breed, you do not. My genes persist, yours do not.

We can stand above this whole thing and say that whether or not existence is “good” is a subjective matter, but that is a lie. “Objective” means “with respect to external conditions,” while “subjective” means “with respect to internal, marginal, tolerable preferences.”

When people say, “morality is subjective,” they mean that your morality is as good as mine, and there is no “meta-morality” by which we can determine whose is good or bad. When I say that “morality is objective,” I mean that morals have objective, external, existential consequences, and these aren’t determined by preference, but by material conditions.

Imagine a society in which the rate of murder is 1 per 100,000 people. At this rate, murder is within the tolerable margin. However, if the rate of murder exceeded 10,000 per 100,000, the problem would become existential, and no longer tolerable.

In the case of a low rate of murder, debates over crime are subjective. Do you value a low crime rate, or a high degree of freedom and respect for rule of law? In the former case, you might prefer Bukele; in the latter case, you might prefer Mamdani. Both of these positions are within the margin. However, once the rate of murder reaches a certain threshold, as during war, the difference of opinion exits the realm of the subjective, and enters the realm of the objective, the existential.

To be or not to be: that is the question of objectivity. If I claim that lemonade is better than coffee, that is a subjective opinion, because the objective consequence of either preference falls within the tolerable margin. If I claim that bleach is good to drink, that is objectively wrong, because it fails the existential test.

When a conservative claims that mass immigration is immoral, what they are saying is that, on a long enough time horizon, the consequences of mass immigration are existential. Eventually, white genocide will occur and the country will collapse. When a liberal claims that immigration restriction is immoral, they aren’t quite making the same consequentialist claim, but instead a deontological one.

Deontological claims are themselves consequentialist on a long enough time horizon. Let’s say that societies which tolerate cruelty ultimately fail, while societies which stop cruelty survive. This is difficult to prove directly, but indirectly, we can say that there is an evolutionary advantage conferred by altruism and cooperative behaviors. If humans are insufficiently cooperative and altruistic, then the long-term risk of something like a nuclear war increases exponentially, to the point where human extinction is ensured. Therefore, although mass immigration might cause some marginal side effects, like racial tension or wage competition, the ultimate consequence of violating altruistic norms will be existential (objectively wrong).

The question of objective morality involves looking at the state as a whole. At the level of the individual, morality is entirely subjective. From the individual perspective, it does not matter whether a million people live or die, so long as I do alright for myself. But from the perspective of the state, mass murder is an existential threat, and must be contained.

Plato was insistent upon this point: man as an island has no moral capacity. Morality only enters once there is a state, and morality flows from the state, creates the state, and maintains the state. This “science of morals” as laid out by Plato is objective. Political science and moral science are identical and synonymous.

The fact that we think of politics and morality as separate due to the separation of church and state. This is an 11th century invention of the Gregorian Reformers who sought more independence from the Holy Roman Empire. It is a fiction made up by uppity Papists. In reality, the separation of church and state, or morality and politics, can only be maintained insofar as the “moralities” or “churches” in question fall with a margin of toleration. If the morality or church becomes terroristic, they can no longer be tolerated. They become criminal, and are persecuted.

People mistake “ambiguity” for “subjectivity.” Ambiguity implies that the function between inputs and outputs is fuzzy or difficult to exactly quantify. Is a 25% tax rate better or worse than a 26% tax rate? The question is complex and depends on context: are we fighting a war, or optimizing consumer prices? However, this does not mean that the question is “subjective,” it just means that it falls within a margin of toleration.

On the other hand, if the suggested tax rates are 0%, 100%, or 50%, the answer becomes existential. A state which permits no competition will fail as, without markets, the allocation of resources cannot be efficiently calculated. A state which collects no tax will also fail as, without defense, it is naked to invasion. Anarcho-capitalism does not work because an efficient state is easily conquered by an inefficient state -- see Hong Kong and China. Nuclear weapons are not a solution because only governments have proven capable of producing them. Allowing every billionaire to produce or purchase nuclear weapons would be highly destructive.

Conclusion

It is often said that morality is subjective. This is only true from the position of the individual, but not the position of the state. We imagine ourselves as “free individuals,” but we are not: we are constrained by the state. The state itself is constrained by objective morality. If the state ventures too far outside the tolerable margins of objective morality, it collapses.

There is a tolerable margin of error. We can disagree about things like the murder rate, so long as the rate is small. However, once an issue becomes existential, like the riot on January 6th, at some point, the morality of the state requires an objective response. If the state fails to follow objective morality, the consequence is existential and unambiguous: the state ceases to exist.