Absolute -
Independent of arbitrary standards of determination.
Action (negative and positive) -
Action, negative: Volitional behavior that is patterned upon opposition to someone else's products or behavior.
Action, positive: Volitional behavior that is initiating the generation of new property. Only positive action can produce something useful.
Authority -
Moral power.
Bureaucracy -
Any legal organization that controls the property of individuals without their consent.
Capital -
Production of property in excess of consumption requirements and also used for further production.
Capitalism -
Capitalism is that societal structure whose mechanism is capable of protecting all forms of private property completely.
Coercion -
Coercion is an attempted, intentional interference with property.
Conservatism -
The tendency to preserve what is established.
According to Galambos, "Conservatives run all countries; they're conserving the state."
Contract -
A voluntary agreement between two or more people who have property which they are desirous of exchanging the use and control thereof.
Control -
The ability to make volitional decisions concerning the disposition of property.
Corollary -
A corollary is the restatement of information you already know into other words for a utilitarian reason.
Crime -
Crime is a successful, intentional interference with the property of another. In other words, it is an act of successful coercion.
Definition -
An assigned meaning that is attributed to a word or a phrase or a concept, from which you never deviate.
Freedom -
Freedom is the societal condition that exists when every individual has full (i.e. 100%) control over his or her own property.
Good -
The subjective evaluation of a preferred action, or a preferred transition from one state to another.
Good, absolute -
A subjective good to at least one person which is not imposed on any other volitional being. The absoluteness is in the fact that, independently of who defines the good, coercion is absent on a universal basis.
Government -
Any person or organization that sells products or services to protect property, to which the owner of the property may voluntarily subscribe.
History -
There are those who create and those who destroy, and all of history is simply interplay between those two opposite directions with respect to property. One direction adds to property, and the other direction subtracts from property; one is positive, the other is negative.
Hypothesis -
An organized connection of various facts which are derived from observation and which provide an attempt at an explanation. A hypothesis is not necessarily a correct explanation; it's just an attempt at an explanation.
Importance, absolute -
The measure of the total amount of property affected.
Impossible -
That which would violate a law of nature.
Injustice -
Injustice is a crime to which no recourse exists, that is a crime for which there has been no restitution of property
Insurance -
A contractual mechanism designed to protect property that is subject to known hazards under unknown circumstances
Intellectual -
A person who arrives at conclusions completely by the use of the Scientific Method.
Justice -
(a) The elimination of injustice, that is the elimination of crime, the elimination of interference with property to which there is no recourse
(b) The natural, rational and moral consequence any act, for example loss of reputation of a person who injures another, and gratitude to a person for an act that benefits another
Knowledge -
The interaction between the observer and the observed.
Law of Logarithmic Stimulation -
More recent experiences will weigh disproportionately on your mind.
Liberal -
Liber = free, al = pertaining to. Therefore "liberal" means pertaining to freedom.
Liberalism -
True liberalism is Capitalism.
Liberty -
Ownership of your actions.
Moral -
Absence of coercion.
Natural Republic -
A contractual society where coercion is inapplicable, and the whole social structure is open to the general use of all on a proprietary, contractual basis.
Observation -
Observation is the ability to get inputs through our five senses.
Occam's Razor -
Named for William of Occam (1285-1349) "Essentials must not be multiplied beyond necessity." Galambos said that translated into modern terminology and applied to physical science, it means: if you have two or more hypotheses which are competing with one another, choose the one with fewer unproven assertions.
Ownership -
The total, permanent and moral control of property until voluntarily transferred by the owner, where possible. Note: ownership of primary property can not be transferred from its creator.
Plunder -
Any increase in happiness acquired by immoral means, that is, by the employment of coercion.
Politics -
Politics and ideology are two entirely different things; one involves coercion and the other involves ideas. While this is not a definition, it is an important distinction.
Postulate -
A postulate is a proposition with a truth content which you did not derive from any earlier set of propositions by logical reasoning, but whose validity you accept as an input into the subject that you are developing.
A successful postulate must contain not only a true proposition, but also a universal application.
Postulate of Volitional Science, First -
All volitional beings live to pursue happiness.
First Corollary: Morally acting volitional beings seek to profit; immorally acting volitional beings seek to plunder.
Second Corollary: All volitional beings live to acquire property.
Postulate of Volitional Science, Second -
All concepts of happiness pursued through moral action are equally valid.
Power -
Control over action.
Profit -
Profit is any increase in happiness acquired by moral means.
Progress -
A change which increases an individual's overall happiness and betters his or her overall condition.
Property -
Property is an individual's life and all non-procreative derivatives of his life, including thoughts and ideas. NOTE: For an expanded definition of property see Chapter 5, text accompanying note 1.
Rational (in volition) -
Something that is both true and valid.
Restitution -
The mechanism, the means, of achieving justice
Revolution -
A turning around or change in attitude about the means for protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Right (in physics) -
Something that is both true and valid.
Right (in volition) -
Something that is both rational and moral.
Science -
Organized knowledge; a search for absolutes in a world of relative observation.
Scientific Method -
The Scientific Method is the full, total substitute and alternative for coercion and, when properly understood and applied, will make it completely unnecessary to have violent, destructive, and socially harmful practices. The Scientific Method consists of:
1. Observation (for gathering data)
2. Hypothesis formulation
3. Extrapolation
4. Observation (for corroboration)
Plus Occam's Razor
State -
A state is any person or organization that claims to protect property by coercing the owner of the property to use and pay for its "services," claiming "legality" as its justification.
Theory -
A corroborated hypothesis.
Traffic Jam -
Alvin Lowi said that a traffic jam is a collision between free enterprise and socialism. Free enterprise produces the automobiles faster than socialism can build roads and road capacity. Alvin Lowi was a colleague of Andrew Galambos in the early days of the Free Enterprise Institute. Galambos quoted this observation about traffic jams with credit to Alvin Lowi.
True Democracy -
True Democracy is the free, unhampered market economy.
Truth -
Truth is that which is observationally known to be corroborable and is common to all observers.
Tyranny -
A condition where crime is universal, or at least so prevalent that there is no recourse
Universal Fallacy -
The universal fallacy is that a non-proprietary administration of property is more efficient, more just, and, in general, better for the individual people of the world than a proprietary administration of property.
Validity -
Logical thought processes.
Volition -
The act of choosing.
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