Anarchy and National Defense

One of the most pressing difficulties for stateless government would seem to be national defense. While police protection can be well internalized, being primarily a service to individuals, businesses, or neighborhoods, defense against foreign enemies yields non-rival and non-excludable benefits to all, and thus would seemingly encounter a severe public-goods problem. But, in associating national defense with a military, I believe that we may be equivocating. If the nation can be made secure without the need for a military, there is no defense problem with anarchy.

I can see two reasons why one nation might invade another: preemption of threat, and ambition for land or resources. The first reason, preemption,1 need concern us little. Preemption is, by nature, against a threat; a nation that does not threaten others need not fear preemptive action against itself. If a nation has too weak an organized military to defend itself, it cannot have enough to pose a threat to another, and need not fear preemption; if it has a strong military, then concerns about its military weakness are unfounded. Therefore, in no case is defense against preemption a unique concern for an anarchal nation.

Thus, we are left with defense against territorial expansion. In this case, the aggressing nation does so with expectation of benefit; an expected cost greater than the expected benefit would suffice to deter the threat, even if it could not avert suffering if the attack were made.1 Furthermore, even conventional national defense does not prevent harms; consider England during WWII. Thus, all increases in the cost of a successful invasion equally serve national defense.

In considering this, I believe that Machiavelli’s argument from Ch. IV of The Prince is relevant: “[H]e who considers both of these states will recognize great difficulties in seizing the state of the Turk, but, once it is conquered, great ease in holding it…. But it is impossible to hold with such tranquillity states constituted like that of France. Hence arose those frequent rebellions against the Romans in Spain, France, and Greece, owing to the many principalities there were in these states, of which, as long as the memory of them endured, the Romans always held an insecure possession;” Although a decentralized state may not erect such a hard outer defense, and thus may be easier to defeat in pitched battle, it leaves no centralized mechanism with which to seize control of the country. Look at the Vichy government of France during WWII: once the military fell, the country on the whole (neglecting isolated private resistance, which would be if anything greater were occupied nation originally anarchist) served the purposes of the conquerors in subduing the country. If a decentralized nation is difficult to govern, how much more one with no institutions of government, with its people accustomed to freedom?

Iraq, too, presents a good example. Hussein’s regime should be the model of those who look to government for national defense: a centralized state lacking democratic hindrances to its warmaking and with a high military budget.2 Yet each time the United States invaded, the demoralized military of Iraq crumbled. Notably, the last time, when we sought to gain control of the government (rather than mere military defeat), a private resistance arose which we have not yet quelled, despite the support of Iraq’s government and much of the population. How much more problematic would be an invasion of a nation with no legitimacy and no domestic support on the side of the conquerors? Thus, it seems to me that far more effective at deterring invasion than a conventional military would be the assurance that an invader would have to suppress the population man by man, without support from the local state. A privately funded military is, I admit, difficult to conceive; but we must remember that a military is but a scarcely sufficient and wholly unnecessary means of achieving national defense, which could be as well or better achieved by other means under anarchy.

Thus, I think that national defense under anarchy would not consist of multi-billion dollar jets and a vast military-industrial complex, but rather the free ownership of weapons and the reluctance of free men to submit to tyrants. Even a committed minority of the population could make invasion prohibitively costly. Such a defense would be far less costly, with respect to both resources and rights. Gone would be the annual 650 billion dollar drain on our nation’s resources. Gone would be the ever-present excuse for violations of our rights that “wartime necessity” demands them. And, of course, if a group of people thought that an aircraft carrier would be a good thing to have, they would be free to fund one–but with their own money, and not, as at present, their neighbors’.

1 Exactly the same justification as for imprisonment of criminals: imprisonment does not seek to alleviate the original wrong, but seeks to alter the costs considered by the prospective criminal in order that he might not commit the crime. That imprisonment does not prevent the crime from occurring if it does occur need not influence our practical analysis of its effectiveness (although from a consideration of justice, I think that imprisonment and such defense as I describe are wholly incommensurate).

2 National defense being considerably more difficult in a democracy or under Constitutional government, why do not those who raise the objection to anarchy also raise it against limited government as a whole?

Regarding the works of M. C. Escher

At some point over the past week (I oddly cannot remember any specifics), I encountered two of M. C. Escher’s drawings, and it struck me that he is truly doing nothing more than combining well-formed units into not-well-formed wholes,1 a process that should be very familiar to us in a different context.

In the English language (and, mutatis mutandis, any using a phonography or syllabary, although not a logography), the fundamental unit of writing is a letter. Letters are composited into words; words are composited into sentences (this three-level hierarchy is somewhat arbitrary; in an inflected language, one could say that letters are composited into roots and endings and these into words, while in most languages one could say that words are composited into subjects and predicates and these into sentences. However, three levels are all we need here). One could print letters at random, but the result would make no sense. Thus, we may distinguish a written word (a sequence of letters) as well-formed if it corresponds to a conceptual word and ill-formed otherwise. Any sentence (a sequence of words) that involves one or more ill-formed word is inherently meaningless; among sentences of well-formed words, we may distinguish between well-formed sentences where the sequence of words corresponds to a thought and ill-formed sentences where it does not. Hence:
“Adw” is an ill-formed word
“Adw oin wfe.” is a sequence of ill-formed words
“Cat” is a well-formed word
“The cat sat on the rug.” is a well-formed sentence
“The cat rug sat the.” is an ill-formed sentence

What does this have to do with Escher? Escher is not, strictly speaking, an abstract painter: no aspects of their paintings are well-formed, and thus the lack of proper formation does not seem incongruous (whatever its artistic merits, or lack thereof). Escher, on the other hand, clearly does use well-formed elements; most sufficiently small sections of his paintings correspond very well to what we see in reality. The painting as a whole, however, is not well-formed; while each flight of stairs corresponds to something that might exist in reality, the staircase as a whole could not.2

What causes our reactions to Escher’s paintings to differ from our reactions to ill-formed sentences? I cannot say for certain. But I cannot escape noting that while language deals primarily with the constructed, sight deals primarily with the natural. All writing is directed by the mind with no structural barrier to the production of ill-formed sentences; only the fact that ill-formed sentences do not serve the purposes for which we use language cause their rarity (at least among the mature). Sight, on the other hand, primarily looks upon what actually exists. Only through some hindrance or through some artificial object of sight (artificial here meaning not man-made, but a means of presenting the eye with an image intended to be taken as something other than the physical object beheld) can sight yield an ill-formed image. When the sight is hindered, as by water or a deficiency in the eye, one tends to recognize it quickly (and, moreover, typically all levels of objects perceived are equally ill-formed, e.g. as out of focus for a near-sighted man. Thus, hindrance of the sight tends to produce ill-formed images, not ill-formed composites of well-formed images). In other instances, such as the infamous case of the oar in the water, while the hindrance causes the image as actually received to be false (here thinking of the image before the mind compensates for hindrances), it does not cause an ill-formed image. Only in the case of drawings such as those of Escher does the eye behold without deficiency an ill-formed composition of well-formed objects. Thus, what seems the product simple lack of skill when it occurs in language, a medium to which ill-formed figures are natural, may seem quite tantalizing when met in a medium to which ill-formed figures are foreign.

1 Well-formed: a composition of symbols that possesses meaning, without regard to whether the meaning is true or false (true meaning “corresponding to reality”; a well-formed image corresponds to what could exist in reality, a true to what does exist).

2 Note that here I distinguish between images and diagrams. A well-formed image produces an image in the eye that corresponds to the image formed by a potential reality; a diagram is meant to communicate a concept without such correspondence. Escher’s diagrams must be classified with images because they move the mind to attempt to imagine the object that would produce the corresponding image, even though the attempt cannot succeed.

Concerning the Prosperity of the Wicked

I have seen two objections raised against the combination of God’s goodness and providence: how a good God could create evil, and how a good God could permit the wicked to prosper. The first is easily addressed, so here I shall treat the second which, in fuller form, is that while justice dictates that the good should prosper and the evil suffer, it is observed that in many cases the good suffer (witness Job) and the evil prosper.

Key to this is an understanding of true and apparent prosperity. Certainly, justice demands that the good reap good (“to those who have much, much will be given”). But the good granted in reward ought to be the ultimate good, not an apparent good. Similarly, the punishment inflicted on the wicked ought not to be apparent, but actual.

What, then, is ultimate good? Not wealth, for the true good must last, but here “moths and rust destroy”. The true good must inspire confidence, yet the wealthy fear for their wealth. Not comfort, for the true good must beget no ill, and comfort often breeds complacency. Not even life, for nothing is better than the true good, and yet there are some things more valuable than life. Not power, for power wielded poorly is the greatest evil. Not glory, for glory depends on men, and the reward given to men cannot be given by themselves. Rather, the true good is to behold God. All else is only a contingent good, valuable insofar as it serves the ultimate.

Thus, when we behold the wicked man living in comfort and affluence, we should feel no envy, for he possesses not true goods but phantoms. Rather, we should feel pity, for if those mistaken in how to achieve lesser goals are to be pitied, are not those mistaken regarding the ultimate goal to be pitied far more? But yet their wealth may, in the end, bring good, although not as its possessors intend: for he who relies on wealth but has it not can blame his lack of wealth for his sadness, while he who has wealth but not happiness can better realize his mistake as to means and correct himself: “And all that mine eyes asked I kept not back from them; and lo, the whole is vanity and vexation of spirit, and there is no advantage under the sun!” Similarly, we are not to be troubled by the good man living in poverty, for he to may learn a lesson thereby: he has happiness, having been granted a knowledge of God, may yet not know wherein he has this happiness; his poverty can prove to him its true source, while prosperity might lead him into error: “Lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your god”.

Riches are no true reward, but a lesson through their futility, a lesson needed by the evil, not the good. Therefore, worldly goods better befit the wicked than the good.

“Give me neither poverty nor riches
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you
and say ‘Who is the Lord?’”

Goodness and the Natural Law

While at a low, practical level, tastes are subjective, what is ultimately beneficial for a man is determined neither by choice nor by accident, but is immutably determined by the nature of creation (the concept of “rightly understood interests” to which some praxeologists refer, that people’s interests are not necessarily what they sincerely desire). What is ultimately desirable in this manner is called “good”.1 However, only rarely can action reach such an ultimate good directly; more often, approach to the ultimate good requires many intermediate steps, which may also be called good by imputation from their object.

Furthermore, causes are attached to effects.2 While many actions (voluntary causations) produce proximate effects that are of no intrinsic desirability, the desirability of their ultimate effects depending on external circumstance, certain actions, even though the specific net state change effected may vary with circumstance, are invariant in the desirability of that change; these actions may be termed absolutely good or bad, depending on the nature of their effects.3

Thus arises a natural law for human behaviour: certain actions are contrary to nature and will always bring harm upon the actor.4 This natural law is not extraneous to creation but an integral part of it, a direct consequence of causality and the existence of universally desirable ends.

This natural law must be differentiated from divine law both in nature and in consequence. Natural law is a property of creation, incapable of change without a change to the created order, with its punishments similarly innate to cause and effect. Divine law, on the other hand, is extraneous to creation, revealed directly by God, and with its punishments accomplished in this world by divine intervention (which need not, of course, be immediate). The two are in consonance, for the creator who commands what he has ordained to be harmful in his creation would be truly perverse (or, from the other perspective, who would arrange creation to punish what he commands). The two need not, however, be coextensive; revealed law may command what is not commanded by natural law, but will not command what is forbidden by it.

The clearest application of the natural law is to individual behaviour; once an action has been determined to be contrary to the natural law, it may be avoided with no need to rederive the harm produced. But natural law seems to have found its greatest influence in legal theory; its application there is murkier. Clearly, a legal system not in consonance with natural law cannot, from the definition of natural law, be beneficial; the same also applies to laws. But consonance with natural law does not (at least directly) imply that laws ought to add to the punishments prescribed by the natural law, for it is in no need of assistance in that respect. Instead, it means that the enforcement of the laws must not involve a violation of the natural law by any party. What this specifically means for government I shall address in a later post.

1 “Good” is predicated of actions, objects, and people in analogous ways; strictly speaking, it refers to a gross state. Attributed to an action, “good” means that the action will result in a better state than the present (but not, it must be noted, necessarily better than all possible states of affairs, for which reason what is good in itself may not be good in a specific instance); attributed to an object, that possession of the use of that object would result in a better state; attributed to a person, that the person does what is good. God is good in both of the latter senses; association with him is desirable and he does what is desirable (the latter being a simple deduction from his omnipotence and omniscience).

2 For the purposes of this discussion, I divide effects into proximate effects, which necessarily and immediately arise without dependence on circumstance not assumed by the action, and ultimate effects, the net state change resulting from the action. Between those extremes is a spectrum of mediate effect.

3 This is a specific case of the general principle of action that certain means are inappropriate to achieve certain effects (such as that price controls are an inappropriate means to achieve the reduction of a shortage); to be termed good or bad, an action must be inappropriate not for one specific ultimate effect, but for all bad or good effects, respectively.

4 Natural law is descriptive, like all other laws, but it describes effects, not behaviour. Many people have commented that it is possible to violate natural laws, albeit with penalty, while it is impossible to violate physical laws; this misstates the point. The actual law is the penalty, not the prohibition.

Governance without Government: Introduction

In advocating a much smaller role for the government, I have found one of the greatest points of resistance to be an inability to imagine non-government provision of certain services. Interestingly, however, in the vast majority of cases such provision has existed, at some time. Thus, as a research project for myself, and to condense this information for others, I plan to write a series of articles documenting these private provisions of allegedly public goods.

At present, I plan to address the following topics, based primarily on what I can recall having arisen in conversation; if any of my readers have suggestions for additional topics or superior classification, I would greatly appreciate them.

Protection of rights (and not rights):
Security/police protection
Judicial arbitration
Foreign aid
National defense
Civil rights/child labor
Environment

Charity:
Care for the poor
Care for Orphans
Unemployment/disability compensation
Natural disaster
Education

Infrastructure:
Public transportation
Roads
Lighthouses
Standardization

Economy:
Currency
Monopoly

I need hardly say that I do not believe such examples to be logically necessary; while it is true that without assuming the perfectibility of human nature imperfection of results of the present system does not constitute prima facie proof of the possibility of a better system, the absence of a better system in history does not constitute prima facie evidence against it. Nonetheless, I think that these articles may be of help to some who seek practical confirmation of theoretical conclusions.

The GM/Chrysler Bailout

I have thus far been avoiding writing about current events because I find them depressing. However, I have seen enough absolute nonsense about the GM/Chrysler bailout that I thought that I ought to write something on the subject, focusing on a few little-recognized truths about the situation.

Bankruptcy is healthy for the economy

In an atmosphere of measuring the strength of the economy by the stock market this may sound odd, but bankruptcy does serve a purpose. Not all economic activity is beneficial, as resources are scarce and each activity takes resources away from other activities. We measure the benefit of an activity by what people are willing to pay for its product; its cost in what its actors must pay for its inputs. If the cost of an activity exceeds its benefit, then it would be better if the activity did not happen. This is exactly what happens in the case of bankruptcy: instead of some solitary activity being unprofitable, the entire activity of a company is. While the closure of the company may seem to harm economic output, it actually increases it: we see the closure of the plant; we do not see the activities that the freeing of resources formerly occupied by the now closed company makes possible. In the end, bankruptcy increases economic output by redirecting resources to their most efficient use.

The jobs will come back

Many people seem to think that the job loss would be devastating. In the short run, yes, there would be a job loss. On the other hand, remember the general rule of supply and demand: supply can never exceed demand in equilibrium unless the government intervenes. If the government does intervene, then blame the government, not the lack of a bailout. Absent such intervention, the market will quickly restore the lost job. It must be noted, however, that the wage will fall in the short run to restore equilibrium. But, in the long run, even this disadvantage disappears. Recall what I said above, that losses are a sign that a company is using resources inefficiently. Furthermore, in a free market the wages of worker tend toward their marginal productivity. The more efficiently the capital is being used, the higher the productivity of the workers; therefore, the more efficient the use of resources, the higher the workers’ pay. This makes intuitive sense: the greater output shown above must fall to some consumer; why not the workers who produced it?

The bailout is not free

Looking at what is being written regarding the bailout, one would think that it would be free. It would not. In reality, no government action can create new resources; it can only redirect them from a previous use. By the nature of profit and loss, the profitable activity being taxed is efficient; the unprofitable activity being subsidized is inefficient. Therefore, such a bailout is, prima facie, a redirection of resources to less efficient uses. That is hardly free.

The bailout is not required by any contractual obligations of the manufacturers

Perhaps the most creative argument for the bailout which I have seen is that the companies, if they were to go bankrupt, would be unable to fulfil their contractual obligations in the form of warranties and retirement benefits. And certainly, I sympathize with those involved: I believe that no excuse suffices to  justify reneging on commitments. However, let us not be decieved by the absence of an agent as the question is presented. The question is not “should the obligations be fulfilled?” but “should the obligations be fulfilled by other taxpayers, who never made a commitment?”. Clearly, they should not. I never made the commitment; why should I be forced to pay? As much as I sympathize with those threatened with the breach of contract, I cannot admit a right to them of forcing those not a party to the contract to fulfill its obligations.

Value Scales

I was recently asked if we should not trade between multiple values. Everyone values freedom, but if we can greatly increase our prosperity for only small loss of freedom, should we not do so? This question, I think, betrays a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of values, the ends people seek to achieve in their action. For clarity, we may separate values into intrinsic values, those valued for their own sake, and extrinsic values (also called pragmatic, particularly in LD), those valued for furthering another value. Some values are both, although typically we only pursue them for one reason, and thus they effectively fall into one of the previously enumerated categories.

The most fundamental set of values is that of intrinsic values. Many people with whom I have discussed this subject are of the opinion that our rankings of these intrinsic values are in the form of weights; if we value liberty highly, and prosperity less, we will be willing to sacrifice only a small quantity of liberty for prosperity, but will still be willing to make the trade on at least some terms. But how do we measure quantities of disparate items? Quantity can be compared only if the two quantities share a common unit or if there is some function receiving both as input, the output of which can be compared across different combinations of the input values. But this function is not intrinsic to the values. Thus, the equation is best thought of as a value itself, with the values it involves as contributing values.1 Thus, there is no way in which intrinsic values can be traded, whatever the ratio. Instead, one’s intrinsic values must be ranked sequentially, with one maximizing the first and only pursuing a lower value to the extent compatible with a complete maximization of the first value.

But this explanation of values is incomplete, because we do trade among what we value, albiet only among extrinsic values. Only rarely is an intrinsic value directly attainable by action, more typically requiring considerable foresight and coordination. While theoretically one could compute the proper action by brute force, considering every possibility for the future and every possible course of action, but the enormity of this calculation renders it practically impossible. Thus, people identify values that contribute to their intrinsic values, and pursue these extrinsic values, which are more proximate to action. But these extrinsic values are only valued for their furthering of intrinsic values, and if an intrinsic value were served by only one extrinsic value, it would be impossible to differentiate in action between the two values. Thus, we cannot construct a value scale of extrinsic values as we must of intrinsic values; instead, extrinsic values are subservient to the scale of intrinsic values. Here, trading among values makes sense, for we have a clear standard: maximize the function of the intrinsic value in terms of the extrinsic values. Thus, whenever someone claims to be trading among intrinsic values, these are really extrinsic values, and an intrinsic value appears behind them.

1 Actually, I have been somewhat lenient on those who speak of trading among intrinsic values. The units of values are purely ordinal, and thus to speak of a weight on a value is nonsensical. The concept of a function only makes sense itself if one remembers that function is not necessarily an equation but rather a mapping of input to output, which output may itself be ordinal. Naturally, many of the operations applicable to mathematical equations will be inapplicable to such an ordinal function.

On the Beginning of Time

Did time have a beginning? If time began, then each point in time will be reached given sufficient time. But what if time did not have a beginning, and always existed? Then, every point in time will be preceded by an infinite amount of time. Just as adding to a finite number will never reach infinity, so subtracting from an infinite number will never reach a finite number. We may take the present as a finite reference point; the passage of time, by its very nature, is finite. Thus, if time has no beginning, the amount of time preceding the present is infinite; no passage of time, necessarily finite, could possibly reach the present, a clear absurdity. Therefore, time must have had a beginning.

But we must be very careful about what it means to say that time had a beginning. It does not mean, as we mean when we say that anything else had a beginning, that there was a time when time did not exist, a clear contradiction. But if time had no beginning, something must lie beyond it; if not time, then what? We refer to this meta-time eternity, which at this point we must define by simple negation: eternity is the condition of time not existing. The defining characteristic of time is its passage; thus, in eternity, their must be no passage, no “before” and “after”. But with no before and after, then there can be no change, for change implies a before when one thing is true, and an after when it is not. Thus, eternity is, most simply, changelessnesss, without even the change of growing older.

But some created things, such as souls and angels, are immortal, and thus never cease to exist, and yet in the Apocalypse of John, we read “and time shall be no more”. Nothing created can be eternal, for being created implies change. Thus, we must designate a third status, aeviternity. Aeviternity is, as it were, a created eternity, having a beginning, but no further change.

Thus classification solves, I think, many commonly raised problems. For example, one objection raised against divine creation is that it implies that God at one point did not see fit to create the world, and then did, implying that God changes his mind. But this supposes that God lives within time and that time was not itself part of the creation; in reality, time just is, without being preceded by a different time. Thus, God simply created the earth, just as the Son simply proceeds from the Father, without the procession involving temporal change. The only difference is that that the Son exists in eternity, and thus it is appropriate to use the present tense, while the earth exists in time, and thus it is appropriate to use the past tense. All times the present with respect to God, and thus a change occurring in time implies no change in God.

Thoughts on Translation

As with many issues of language, I believe that multitudinous difficulties of translation categorize well as lexical and syntactical. Lexical difficulties stem from the fact that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between words in sundry languages. The most obvious case is translating between two languages, one of an extensive vocabulary and the other a scarce, but with a functional correspondence of words in the former to those of the latter.1 Translating from the former to the latter, the translator typically faces little interpretive challenge, as only one word in the final language matches a word in the source language. However, if he translates word-for-word in this manner, he fails to convey the original precision. Thus, a conceptually accurate translation must add words, and one stylistically accurate must add ambiguity. The reverse, translating from the poorer to the richer, encounters the opposite problem. A given word in the source language will, in different contexts, translate to a different word in the final. Thus, to maintain the original ambiguity of meaning, he must add words to indicate the ambiguity; to maintain the style, he must act as interpreter of meaning, adding his own opinion of the precise meaning of the original. And this is in an optimal situation, where the correspondence of words is functional in one direction. In real translation, meanings will overlap, so that the translator risks adding ambiguity in some respects and removing it in others. For example, in English words may be vague in exact meaning, and specific in context; in Greek, the converse is true. L&S defines ŒªœåŒ≥ŒøœÇ as “Computation, reckoning, relation, correspondence, proportion, explanation, debate, continuous statement, narrative, verbal expression or utterance, a particular utterance, saying, thing spoken of, subject-matter, speech”. To an English speaker, this seems to be a very broad range of meanings. At the same time, it conveys a fairly specific general meaning, applied in a variety of contexts. In English, we use a different word for each context, but frequently use a word for a variety of meanings within one context for which Greek uses multiple words. English better specifies context; Greek meaning. Thus, word-for-word translation from Greek to English specifies the context more strongly and the meaning less; the converse, the inverse. The only means of circumventing these difficulties is to attempt to force a correspondence, as the scholastics did in creating a technical terminology within Latin to parallel the nuances of Aristotle’s Greek.

Moreover, lexical difficulties may pale in comparison to syntactical. Syntactical difficulties further resolve into conceptual, accentual, and stylistic. Conceptual difficulties are very similar to lexical; certain forms in one language are more precise than comparable forms in another, e.g. the careful distinction in Greek between natural and artificial result, difficult to express except by convention in English. Accentual difficulties arise particularly when translating from a highly inflected language into a weakly; highly inflected languages tend to use word-order to express accent, while weakly syntactical role. Thus, maintaining the original word order introduces odd word orders where the original was natural and even grammatical errors, while transposing words changes emphasis. Going the other way, maintenance of the original word order implies an emphasis not in the original; transposition an interpretation of the intended emphasis. Yet more challenging are stylistic difficulties. Style, more so than any other aspect of a language, is relative to context; what may seem informal and idiomatic, when literally translated, may appear formal and stilted. Thus, preserving the original style may require unidiomatic translation.

1. A function associating each member of the range to one member of the domain, but not necessarily the converse.

Concerning Happiness

What is happiness?

1. It seems that happiness is pleasure, for happiness is the end of all men, and all men pursue pleasure, according to their separate definition.
2. It seems that happiness is wealth, for happiness is an action, and the wealthy man possesses more tools to aid his action.
3. It seems that happiness is the prosperity of good, for all men desire that what they consider good prospers.
4. It seems that happiness is the success of one’s actions, for all men desire that their actions achieve their goal.

On the other hand, many who pursue pleasure and possess wealth are not happy, so happiness is neither of these things. Furthermore, the prosperity of good and the success of one’s actions do not lie wholly within one’s own powers, and so if happiness is either of those, happiness would be a condition. But happiness is an action, as is proven elsewhere. Therefore, happiness is neither the prosperity of good nor the success of one’s actions.

Rather, since happiness is a proper end, it must be the pursuit of good, not of pleasure. And since happiness lies within one’s own power, it must be the pursuit of pleasure only insofar as it lies within one’s power. And since happiness cannot rely on unknowable information regarding the future and conditions external to one’s actions, happiness must be not the pursuit of good with respect to what one knows after the action, but that before. Thus, happiness is the pursuit of good insofar as one is able with respect to information contemporaneous to the action.

Hence:
1. Happiness is the end of all men, but only the prudent choose suitable means toward their end. Thus, happiness is only the pursuit of pleasure for the prudent man.
2. Not all sources and uses of wealth are good. Thus, happiness is only wealth insofar as wealth is acquired and used rightly. Furthermore, some have greater means of acquiring wealth than others, which fact cannot hinder the latter’s ability to pursue happiness. Thus, happiness is in no case wealth absolutely, but rather the right use of opportunities for wealth.
3. All men ought to wish that good prospers, but while to fail to do this would be an inhuman withholding of moral judgement, to bind one’s happiness to that which is not within one’s control is foolish. The expression of contentment of the wise man is not “That which I have loved has prospered”, but rather “I myself have acted justly”.
4. Many actions, well intentioned and well planned, go astray. Thus, were happiness bound to the success of one’s actions, the fool who acted imprudently yet succeeded would have a greater claim to happiness than the prudent man whose well-laid plans went astray for reasons outside his knowledge and control. When the wise man says “I have done well”, he means not that his actions have succeeded, but that, if he faces an identical situation, with the same knowledge, he would act the same.