Rawls's lawless Law of the Peoples.

Suppose I find it unfair that your beautiful wife sleeps with you, not me. I might say 'she should ignore the fact that you are handsome, kind, and are married to her. (Using Rawls's terminology, these are 'wrong reasons' based on 'improper information).  She should not discriminate between you and me and thus should spend an equal amount of time in my bed'. I might think that I would gain by her 'stripping out information' relevant to her choice of bed-mate. The problem is that she might then sleep with everybody. By the time it is my turn, she will be riddled with disease. I haven't actually gained anything. Instead I have destroyed the happiness of a loving couple. There is a good reason why the institution of marriage is widely accepted as involving mutual fidelity. It is considered immoral to lust after another man's wife. 

Why do we have a Justice system? Why bother with having a police force or an Army? The answer is that as a species we have evolved an evolutionarily stable strategy to prevent escalating conflict of various types. John Maynard Smith established this result by the mid-Seventies. Sadly, economists and philosophers ignored it and thus Rawlsian rubbish continued to proliferate,

In their 1976 paper- 'the logic of asymmetric contests'- John Maynard Smith & G.A Parker wrote- 

A theoretical analysis is made of the evolution of behavioural strategies in contest situations. It is assumed that behaviour will evolve so as to maximize individual fitness. If so, a population will evolve an 'evolutionarily stable strategy', or ESS, which can be defined as a strategy such that, if all members of a population adopt it, no 'mutant' strategy can do better. A number of simple models of contest situations are analysed from this point of view. It is concluded that in 'symmetric' contests the ESS is likely to be a 'mixed' strategy; that is, either the population will be genetically polymorphic or individuals will be behaviourally variable. Most real contests are probably asymmetric, either in pay-off to the contestants, or in size or weapons, or in some 'uncorrelated' fashion; i.e. in a fashion which does not substantially bias either the pay-offs or the likely outcome of an escalated contest.

This could be stuff like 'who has possession' or 'who has legal title'.  

An example of an uncorretated asymmetry is that between the 'discoverer' of a resource and a 'late-comer'. It is shown that the ESS in asymmetric contests will usually be to permit the asymmetric cue to settle the contest without escalation.

Uncorrelated asymmetries dictate 'bourgeoise strategies'- e.g. people fight harder for that which they possess or have title to. The other party understands this will happen and moves on in search of easier prey. In any case, even if they grab the property, some one stronger may dispossess them. At any rate, 'public signals' re. uncorrelated asymmetries become the basis of negotiated settlements. 

Escalated contests will, however, occur if information to the contestants about the asymmetry is imperfect.

Thus, Imperial cousins plunged Europe into a total war because of bad information about the asymmetries that actually obtained.  

 Rawls's 'original position'- in which nobody knows their own traits or what they own- strips out signals re. 'uncorrelated asymmetries' which may not be connected to differences in pay-off or threat point but which are robust and can't be 'gamed' and thus represent a unique solution concept. Uniqueness matters because a conflict can be resolved once and for all by establishing who owns what without a subsequent conflict over who has a better claim. Thus, for example, if Clara made a flute it is her flute. It isn't Bob's because he has no toys (since if it were given to Bob, Clara might have no toys and thus it has to be given back to her and so on ad infinitum). Only one person made the flute and thus there is a unique solution as to who owns the flute. This is a 'bourgeois strategy' and because some Lefty Academics think the Bourgeoisie aren't very nice, they want to prevent its implementation. That is why Rawls stripped out the information which makes 'bourgeois strategies' possible. But this would replace cooperative solutions with escalating conflict or else a totalitarian dictatorship.

Rawls's solution is to seek to help the worst off. But the worst off are not a well defined class. Anybody can claim to be, all things considered, the worst off. Moreover the disutility of work is ignored. Since this tends to equal the 'opportunity cost' or 'transfer earnings' of the worker or entrepreneur, this would  just equal the market wage or gross profit. In other words, what Rawls has offered is either the same as the market solution or it is a 'road to serfdom' where everything is allocated by a despotic Central Planner.

The problem is that Social Choice theory can come up with no nomothetic, a priori, Kantian, rule which can yield predictable or unique solutions. In other words, there is no guarantee that if you do the exercise again you will get the same result. Rawls has just made life much less predictable. But this means there will be much less economic activity because of something he himself assumes- viz. risk aversion. Furthermore, there will be a 'concurrency' problem as well as problems of complexity and computability for making the sort of substantive calculations his theory requires (in order to justify any deviation from his foolish rule). 

I may mention that Rawls's 'game' is one where there is no Nash equilibrium. It is actually worse than general anarchy under certain conditions because you may have total war between two or more highly organized coalitions held together by extreme coercion. This would not be 'Nature, red in truth and claw' it would be infinitely worse- e.g. the trenches of the Great War or a fucking nuclear holocaust. 

As the Evolutionary Biologists showed, 'bourgeois strategies' are eusocial. They permit better correlated equilibria and more high trust transactions and networks such that the relative cost of 'tit for tat' or a coercive enforcement mechanism falls steeply. Also there are positive mimetic and other dynamic effects.

In the Law of Peoples, Rawls tried to fuck up International Relations as thoroughly as he had fucked up  Social Choice. Once again stripping out 'uncorrelated asymmetries' he gives us 8 principles

1) Peoples (as organized by their government) are free and independent, and their freedom and independence is to be respected by other peoples."

Where have we heard this before? The answer is this is President Wilson's bullshit. The problem with the notion of 'a People' is that there are disagreements as to who belongs to which 'People' and what territory belongs to them. 

If one bases IR on States- which have a history and may have historical borders mentioned in treaties- then this principle has a unique interpretation based on uncorrelated asymmetries involving time, place, citizenship etc. of all parties involved. It may not be enforceable against a very powerful country or coalition but it is an effective enough 'public signal' and thus promotes a superior Aumann correlated equilibria. 

If you strip out all uncorrelated equilibria, then 'People' becomes anything goes. Putin's claim to Ukrainian territory is as good as Zelensky's. 

Suppose the US had joined the League of Nations and a collective Army had been raised to prevent wars of aggression then perhaps we could have moved from a 'Law of Nation States' to a 'Law of Peoples'. One problem was that the Soviets thought that the proles and only the proles were the People, and their dictatorship should be implemented through the Communist Party.

Be that as it may, it is striking that the Locarno type treaties of the mid Twenties were highly mischievous and made War inevitable. This buried the mischievous notion Rawls revived. 

        2) "Peoples are equal and parties to their own agreements."

Why stop there? Why not say People are equal, smell good, are great in bed and were present at their parent's birth to wish them happy birthday and give them a nice pressie. 

3) "Peoples have the right of self-defense but no right to war."

Under the Locarno treaties, Poland suddenly realized that France would not be able to help them if Germany attacked because of a clause of this sort. This meant Poland would have to do a separate deal with Hitler in 1934 which also meant it would then took a bite out of Czechoslovakia along with Hitler. But that meant Hitler and Stalin could gobble up Poland. True, France, having declared war, could have invaded Germany (it did make a small incursion) but by then it was clear it had already lost. It would be cheaper to surrender- which is what it did.

4) "Peoples are to observe a duty of non-intervention."

But 'Peoples' occupy territory across the borders of sovereign states. Thus either there is non-interference at the level of states, or 'Peoples' can intervene all the like if they claim to have some of their own across a border. 

5_ "Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings."

But, it they are a 'People', then they would interpret those commitments in their own ways. There is some point in having a legal notion of something essentially artificial- e.g. a Corporation or a State- but once you mention the Volk, you open the door for a People to claim 'its place in the Sun' or its 'Manifest Destiny' etc.

6 "Peoples are to honor human rights."

This opens the gate to declaring territory occupied by indigenous people a 'terra nullis' inhabited by humans who aren't a 'People' in Rawls's sense. The cunt has the audacity to speak of 'decency', though his country was founded on genocide and slavery. 

7. Peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions on the conduct of war (assumed to be in self-defense)."

Like what? Don't blow up the world? 'Mutually Assured Destruction' must never be part of nuclear doctrine? How fucking out of touch with reality was Rawls? 

8 "Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime."

If 'unfavorable' is relative, this is a duty to transfer income and wealth from richer to poorer countries. I we also accept Rawls's theory of Justice, why should this not cash out as a global Basic Income Scheme financed by rich countries? Moreover, how do you get rid of 'adverse selection'- where a country does stupid shit so as to qualify for more and more international aid? 

Turning back to European history- we may ask 'could a better type of International Law have prevented the two great Wars and the nuclear balance of terror which succeeded it? Prima facie, yes. We can imagine an International Court taking over the case of the assassination of the Archduke. All countries could have been required to cooperate in prosecuting the Serbian 'Black Hand'. Other irritants- e.g. competition to grab colonies or dismember the Ottoman or Chinese Empires- could have been similarly dealt with. As a matter of fact, there were a number of International Conferences on such issues. But everything depended on Germany seeking to preserve the peace rather than take advantage of what appeared to be a temporary military superiority based on being able to shift troops from East to West and back again using 'railway timetables'. There was also the problem of the unviability of the Tzarist regime and the peculiar politics of the Dual Monarchy. Finally, it must be said, the French failure to create a viable offensive doctrine which was fatal in both Wars. Apparently, this had a lot to do internal political divisions in France. The plain fact is, 'Peoples' can have internecine problems of so extreme a sort that war against an external enemy seems manna from Heaven. In other words, a 'Law of the Peoples' will be worse, not better, than a 'Law of States'. An American like Rawls should have understood this. The Civil War cost three quarters of a million American lives. This was more than America lost in the two World Wars.