The cause of liberty has lost one of its most energetic, creative, and dedicated students — and I a personal friend — in Jay Snelson (1936–2011). See the attached obituary.
Tribute to Jay Stuart Snelson (1936-2011)
Joyce Brand
Emalie MacCallum
Jay Stuart Snelson put on his cosmic slippers today, December 21, with his wife, Nancy Rhyme, by his side. His intellectual legacy will long survive his life here on earth.
Jay spent half a century lecturing on human liberty.and creating the Optimization Theory and Win-Win Theory. In 2010, he was awarded the Sovereign Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Libertopia conference/festival in Hollywood, California for outstanding work in promoting the ideals of sovereign individuality and voluntary society. He educated tens of thousands of people about the lasting ideas of economist Ludwig von Mises, astrophysicist Andrew J. Galambos, and journalist/educator Robert LeFevre, synthesizing those ideas into his own Win-Win Theory featuring the scientific argument for a voluntaryist, or spontaneous order, society.
His acceptance speech at Libertopia 2010, “Win-Win Theory on Optimizing the Causes of Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom,” included these words, slightly abridged:
“What is missing from the social sciences, I can say in a word, is science. The failure of the social sciences to diminish the scale of war, poverty and servitude is the failure to apply scientific observation to optimize the cause of peace, prosperity and freedom.
“There are two paradigms of social action that govern how we interact with our fellow humans. One is the win-win paradigm that can be precisely defined as follows: ‘For us to gain, they must gain.’ Those who embrace this paradigm as their code of behavior are always looking for opportunities to create win-win exchanges where everybody gains and nobody loses. In sharp contrast, there is a second paradigm that governs how humans interact with their fellows. It is the win-lose paradigm, which says: ‘For us to win, they must lose to force or fraud.’ Who believes this paradigm? Well, no surprise, thugs believe it: robbers, thieves, swindlers. They all believe it’s true. But who else believes it is true? Those who believe in the truth of the win-lose paradigm include most of the two major social classes — namely, those who went to school and those who didn’t. Anyone who believes in the efficacy and rectitude of political confiscation of wealth and freedom in any form whatsoever has embraced the win-lose paradigm as his personal code of social behavior.
“Observation of social action confirms the truth of this generalization. All political institutions, whether monarchy, communism, fascism, socialism, democracy, or republicanism, are founded on the win-lose confiscation of the people’s wealth and freedom at gunpoint.
“All arguments claiming the equity, utility, and morality of the win-lose seizure of wealth and freedom are falsifiable through the power of observational science. All arguments claiming the equity, utility and morality of the win-win creation of wealth and freedom are verifiable through the power of observational science.”
Three YouTube offerings provide a further glimpse into the life and work of this great freedom advocate. One is a commentary by the late John Pugsley on the personal value to him of Jay’s work, the second is a visit with Jay filmed in Jay’s home, and the third is his lecture at the Capitalism & Morality Seminar 2011 in Vancouver with Butler Shaffer, Rick Rule, and Doug Casey, given this year as Jay knew his time was drawing to a close:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhK3aCFazQ4&feature=email
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Duz2a_3gEQ&feature=related
2:50 pm on December 27, 2011
