RIGHT: Capitalism: the voluntary organization of production as a the result of the incentives that result from the anarchic evolution of money, prices, exchanges and contracts under the single principle, norm, regulation or law of the voluntary exchange of private property. This process is naturally meritocratic and eugenic and therefore scientific, which is the reason why the marxists despise it. CENTER: Mixed economy: the voluntary organization of production of capitalism, combined with the involuntary confiscation and redistribution of the proceeds of production. It can be dysgenic or eugenic, meritocratic or not, depending upon the amount of confiscation and the use of confiscated proceeds. This is the least worst option in which neither lower nor upper classes can obtain better conditions. (Like marriage).
Author: Curt Doolittle
-
Definitions: Capitalism, Mixed Economy, and Socialism: A Eugenic vs Dysgenic Game
LEFT: Socialism: the involuntary organization of production and the distribution of proceeds independent of the contribution to production. It is dysgenic and non meritocratic, and provides insufficient incentives to produce enough to meet demands. But this prevents the lower classes from being ‘left behind’ which is their central intuitionistic fear. -
Notes on The Contents of Western Religion
(sketch) Christianity consists of Germanic, Mediterranean, Jewish, Egyptian, and Babylonian ideas. If you were to reduce the western ethic to the jeffersonian bible, and natural law, you would have the germanic elements of it. Indo european aristocracy is what separates the west from the rest. Christianity takes much too much credit for the success of Europe which is as much the product of aristocracy (distributed governance) and its dependence upon trade rather than direct organization of production and heavy taxation, as it was the church. The church was weak, and that was a good thing. It provided literacy, administration, status, and licensed the conquest of unbelievers or violators of the church, in a land where the production of outputs was fairly constant, but the rulership readily changed. It is not the church per se that troubles me, but the use of levantine mysticism instead of aristotelianism and stoicism. We mix our philosophers in every civilization: – Chinese use Sun Tzu, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Mao, but call themselves buddhists. – Americans use Aristotle; Jesus, Peter and Paul; Smith, Hume, Jefferson, Hamilton and Paine, but call themselves christians. Socialists use their false prophets: the marxists, but call themselves atheists and scientific. – Germans use Aristotle, Kant… – French use their authors … – Muslims (judaism 2.0) reduce it to two books … It’s hard to dispute the success of Christianity: – (a) the church desperately worked to rebuild western civilization after the fall of the empire – even if it played a part in the destruction of western civilization itself. – (b) wherever christianity goes today, wealth follows (eventually), because of the extension of kin love and trust to non-kin. – (c) christianity somehow imbues us with idealism and this produces great thinkers. – (d) the institutionalization of kinship love, the extension of property rights to all and to women and the prohibition on cousin marriage were profound advances. I reduce post-medieval ‘scientific’ Christianity to a personal philosophy: – sovereignty (non-submission: each man is the master of his fate), – do no harm: respect property (property-en-toto), and; – chivalry (try to help everyone you possibly can), – paternalism (take personal responsibility for the various commons), – piety (humility and self skepticism as a defense against hubris; the love of all life; the requirement that we create beauty; and awe at the universe great and small). and combine that personal philosophy with a political philosophy: – natural law (universal law, necessary for mutual prosperity) – strict construction (not hermenuetic interpretation) – mono-logism (one logic of ethics, and many contractual adaptations) – universalism (if it is indeed true, then it is true for all men) In other words, a political philosophy of cooperation. And I view all other political models as a failure to solve the problem of politics (cooperation in the production of commons). Everything else is merely theatre. Not that theatre is not important. Theater is ritual, and rituals bind. The more expensive the rituals, the greater the binding. This vision of Christianity is a vision of the empowered. The vision of Christianity for the unempowered, and for the weak must be different. We can have multiple religions to achieve this, we can tell multiple narratives, or we can create multiple ‘saints’ (gods and heroes) for people with different needs to pray to, that symbolize different ends. I prefer: – sovereignty to submission; – prayer as request for will and wisdom from a hero whose soul (memory) lives on in all of us; – seasonal rituals celebrating life on earth rather than lives of prophets – worship of life, beauty, joy and friends, to salvation from suffering; – many gods for many different people to one god for all; – fairies, elves, dwarves, trolls, forests to angels and deserts. – the ancient temple to the medieval church; because one-ness, monopoly, and authority are cancers for the human mind and spirit. I am pretty certain of: – Mindfulness: – – buddhism for the feminine (defensive control of the impulsive mind) – – stoicism for the masculine (offensive discipline in furtherance of action) – western myths and fairy tales – truth telling as the most important normative commons we can construct. – grammar, rhetoric, logic, scientific method (testimonialism), economics, history, as producing higher return in current civilization than our current emphasis on abstract calculation which will soon be replaced by machinery. And the trouble in the modern era is: – these are masculine prophets and philosophers. Women in each civilization, not only ours, seek to restore the matrilineal order, parasitism and de-civilization, through the newfound power of the state. The only solution I can come up with is to make use of voluntary exchange between classes and to give women a house from which to negotiate those exchanges, rather than empower them through democracy to destroy civilization. Science is reversing a century and a half of feminist and socialist pseudoscience. But it is happening slowly. Whether too slowly is the open question. (I am still working on religion. so this is just my current thinking) Curt
-
Notes on The Contents of Western Religion
(sketch) Christianity consists of Germanic, Mediterranean, Jewish, Egyptian, and Babylonian ideas. If you were to reduce the western ethic to the jeffersonian bible, and natural law, you would have the germanic elements of it. Indo european aristocracy is what separates the west from the rest. Christianity takes much too much credit for the success of Europe which is as much the product of aristocracy (distributed governance) and its dependence upon trade rather than direct organization of production and heavy taxation, as it was the church. The church was weak, and that was a good thing. It provided literacy, administration, status, and licensed the conquest of unbelievers or violators of the church, in a land where the production of outputs was fairly constant, but the rulership readily changed. It is not the church per se that troubles me, but the use of levantine mysticism instead of aristotelianism and stoicism. We mix our philosophers in every civilization: – Chinese use Sun Tzu, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Mao, but call themselves buddhists. – Americans use Aristotle; Jesus, Peter and Paul; Smith, Hume, Jefferson, Hamilton and Paine, but call themselves christians. Socialists use their false prophets: the marxists, but call themselves atheists and scientific. – Germans use Aristotle, Kant… – French use their authors … – Muslims (judaism 2.0) reduce it to two books … It’s hard to dispute the success of Christianity: – (a) the church desperately worked to rebuild western civilization after the fall of the empire – even if it played a part in the destruction of western civilization itself. – (b) wherever christianity goes today, wealth follows (eventually), because of the extension of kin love and trust to non-kin. – (c) christianity somehow imbues us with idealism and this produces great thinkers. – (d) the institutionalization of kinship love, the extension of property rights to all and to women and the prohibition on cousin marriage were profound advances. I reduce post-medieval ‘scientific’ Christianity to a personal philosophy: – sovereignty (non-submission: each man is the master of his fate), – do no harm: respect property (property-en-toto), and; – chivalry (try to help everyone you possibly can), – paternalism (take personal responsibility for the various commons), – piety (humility and self skepticism as a defense against hubris; the love of all life; the requirement that we create beauty; and awe at the universe great and small). and combine that personal philosophy with a political philosophy: – natural law (universal law, necessary for mutual prosperity) – strict construction (not hermenuetic interpretation) – mono-logism (one logic of ethics, and many contractual adaptations) – universalism (if it is indeed true, then it is true for all men) In other words, a political philosophy of cooperation. And I view all other political models as a failure to solve the problem of politics (cooperation in the production of commons). Everything else is merely theatre. Not that theatre is not important. Theater is ritual, and rituals bind. The more expensive the rituals, the greater the binding. This vision of Christianity is a vision of the empowered. The vision of Christianity for the unempowered, and for the weak must be different. We can have multiple religions to achieve this, we can tell multiple narratives, or we can create multiple ‘saints’ (gods and heroes) for people with different needs to pray to, that symbolize different ends. I prefer: – sovereignty to submission; – prayer as request for will and wisdom from a hero whose soul (memory) lives on in all of us; – seasonal rituals celebrating life on earth rather than lives of prophets – worship of life, beauty, joy and friends, to salvation from suffering; – many gods for many different people to one god for all; – fairies, elves, dwarves, trolls, forests to angels and deserts. – the ancient temple to the medieval church; because one-ness, monopoly, and authority are cancers for the human mind and spirit. I am pretty certain of: – Mindfulness: – – buddhism for the feminine (defensive control of the impulsive mind) – – stoicism for the masculine (offensive discipline in furtherance of action) – western myths and fairy tales – truth telling as the most important normative commons we can construct. – grammar, rhetoric, logic, scientific method (testimonialism), economics, history, as producing higher return in current civilization than our current emphasis on abstract calculation which will soon be replaced by machinery. And the trouble in the modern era is: – these are masculine prophets and philosophers. Women in each civilization, not only ours, seek to restore the matrilineal order, parasitism and de-civilization, through the newfound power of the state. The only solution I can come up with is to make use of voluntary exchange between classes and to give women a house from which to negotiate those exchanges, rather than empower them through democracy to destroy civilization. Science is reversing a century and a half of feminist and socialist pseudoscience. But it is happening slowly. Whether too slowly is the open question. (I am still working on religion. so this is just my current thinking) Curt
-
Propertarianism in Twelve Words
(fun) Guest Post from Carlos Clark
Propertarianism in twelve words. “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” —Cadet Honor Code, West Point
-
Propertarianism in Twelve Words
(fun) Guest Post from Carlos Clark
Propertarianism in twelve words. “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” —Cadet Honor Code, West Point
-
The Third Way (the end of history) Is The Truthful Society – Not Democracy
[I] am not sure how Fukuyama missed it, other than it seems like all throughout his career he seeks to justify his theory of monopoly bureaucracy, and his admiration of Sinic civilization. He investigates the problems of bureaucracy under democracy – the failure to develop an independent professional bureaucracy first, and then democracy, such that patronage jobs are not given out.
But he does not demonstrate that the public intellectual class and private companies would not create problems of the Deep State’s self maximization of self interest, the parasitism of bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy’s attempt to eliminate all competition, and it’s enforced stagnation. To create a high trust society one requires (a) a near universal militia (b) private property rights, independent judiciary (‘priesthood’) and rule of law proper (c) a natural nobility with long term interest in the territory, (d) insurers of last resort operated by professionals. One does not require a monopoly bureaucracy. It is an admission of the failure of a people to develop and maintain rule of law. One requires rule of law, law sufficiently articulated that it is inescapable (decidable), and universal standing such that the people can make use of it to control anyone acting in a public capacity in addition to private capacity. If the basis of law is articulated as the total prohibition on free riding in all its forms, including: violence, theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy, invasion and conquest; and if we defend the informational commons from pollution (“Abusus”), by requiring proof of existence and morality in any claim of common good; and if we construct a market for the construction of commons between the classes; then the end of history is not as Fukuyama claims – the professional bureaucracy. Instead, the professional bureaucracy is yet another example of the failure of a people to develop an answer to the problem of politics, ethics, economics and the social sciences. Chinese failed first to solve the problem of politics. They created the monopoly state first, and never discovered the rule of law. And in doing so, they failed first. The end of history – at least the end of history that we can see today – is the truthful society. And democratic polities of all stripes are yet another failure to construct rule of law applicable to every living soul. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine -
The Third Way (the end of history) Is The Truthful Society – Not Democracy
[I] am not sure how Fukuyama missed it, other than it seems like all throughout his career he seeks to justify his theory of monopoly bureaucracy, and his admiration of Sinic civilization. He investigates the problems of bureaucracy under democracy – the failure to develop an independent professional bureaucracy first, and then democracy, such that patronage jobs are not given out.
But he does not demonstrate that the public intellectual class and private companies would not create problems of the Deep State’s self maximization of self interest, the parasitism of bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy’s attempt to eliminate all competition, and it’s enforced stagnation. To create a high trust society one requires (a) a near universal militia (b) private property rights, independent judiciary (‘priesthood’) and rule of law proper (c) a natural nobility with long term interest in the territory, (d) insurers of last resort operated by professionals. One does not require a monopoly bureaucracy. It is an admission of the failure of a people to develop and maintain rule of law. One requires rule of law, law sufficiently articulated that it is inescapable (decidable), and universal standing such that the people can make use of it to control anyone acting in a public capacity in addition to private capacity. If the basis of law is articulated as the total prohibition on free riding in all its forms, including: violence, theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy, invasion and conquest; and if we defend the informational commons from pollution (“Abusus”), by requiring proof of existence and morality in any claim of common good; and if we construct a market for the construction of commons between the classes; then the end of history is not as Fukuyama claims – the professional bureaucracy. Instead, the professional bureaucracy is yet another example of the failure of a people to develop an answer to the problem of politics, ethics, economics and the social sciences. Chinese failed first to solve the problem of politics. They created the monopoly state first, and never discovered the rule of law. And in doing so, they failed first. The end of history – at least the end of history that we can see today – is the truthful society. And democratic polities of all stripes are yet another failure to construct rule of law applicable to every living soul. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine -
Counter Intuitive Econ Solved By Operational Analysis: The Internet Increases Prices
—Economists have two standard very simple models of product competition: firms can compete on price or compete on quantity.— —“whether firms compete on price or quantity depends more on which of these they must commit to earliest, not which is easier to change at the last minute. Knowing this, once you heard that it would be easier to change prices at the last minute for products sold on internet, you should have predicted that the internet would increase quantity competition and reduce price competition. Which it in fact has. Economics is general and robust enough to predict things like how selling products on the internet changes competition. But you have to use it right.”— https://shar.es/17xxNn
[F]irst, I want to point out that the reason the author is able to make his argument is that he has operationally explained the phenomenon as a sequence of decisions and actions in time. Yet intuitive economics would suggest that price competition would be increased while operational analysis (incentives) would cause competition to be decreased. This simple example illustrates why operationalism is so important to the testing of hypothesis. [S]econd, the author is trying to make a different point, but I want to riff off it to show that firms compete in commodity and non-commodity spaces. And to some degree economists study commodity activity where noise and signal cancel one another out. But that isn’t how companies think about competition, it’s how distributors do. I have taught the following means of competition by firms: 1) Price, 2) Quantity, 3) Profitability or Debt 4) Rents (firms like polities accumulate renters) 5) Adaptation Costs (innovator’s dilemma). 6) Geographic Housing Costs (salary costs) 7) Segmentation (startups start in niches and expand) Why? Decreasing production cycles, increasing distribution of production, the increasing importance of TALENT and innovation service industries. vs capital or credit in manufacturing and distribution companies. In a highly efficient market, one can sacrifice profits for talent while larger organizations accumulate internal rents. This is most frequently the reason Generally speaking, higher profits incentivize more rents. And while prices are sticky, internal rents are much stickier than prices. Generally speaking, adaptation costs vary dramatically from industry to industry: service firms trade out people and production firms trade out people and capital. The difference being that GAP regulation and tax policy obscure the tail of fixed vs human capital, largely because we can finance against the illusion of fixed capital value while we cannot finance against the obvious lack of control over human capital. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine -
Counter Intuitive Econ Solved By Operational Analysis: The Internet Increases Prices
—Economists have two standard very simple models of product competition: firms can compete on price or compete on quantity.— —“whether firms compete on price or quantity depends more on which of these they must commit to earliest, not which is easier to change at the last minute. Knowing this, once you heard that it would be easier to change prices at the last minute for products sold on internet, you should have predicted that the internet would increase quantity competition and reduce price competition. Which it in fact has. Economics is general and robust enough to predict things like how selling products on the internet changes competition. But you have to use it right.”— https://shar.es/17xxNn
[F]irst, I want to point out that the reason the author is able to make his argument is that he has operationally explained the phenomenon as a sequence of decisions and actions in time. Yet intuitive economics would suggest that price competition would be increased while operational analysis (incentives) would cause competition to be decreased. This simple example illustrates why operationalism is so important to the testing of hypothesis. [S]econd, the author is trying to make a different point, but I want to riff off it to show that firms compete in commodity and non-commodity spaces. And to some degree economists study commodity activity where noise and signal cancel one another out. But that isn’t how companies think about competition, it’s how distributors do. I have taught the following means of competition by firms: 1) Price, 2) Quantity, 3) Profitability or Debt 4) Rents (firms like polities accumulate renters) 5) Adaptation Costs (innovator’s dilemma). 6) Geographic Housing Costs (salary costs) 7) Segmentation (startups start in niches and expand) Why? Decreasing production cycles, increasing distribution of production, the increasing importance of TALENT and innovation service industries. vs capital or credit in manufacturing and distribution companies. In a highly efficient market, one can sacrifice profits for talent while larger organizations accumulate internal rents. This is most frequently the reason Generally speaking, higher profits incentivize more rents. And while prices are sticky, internal rents are much stickier than prices. Generally speaking, adaptation costs vary dramatically from industry to industry: service firms trade out people and production firms trade out people and capital. The difference being that GAP regulation and tax policy obscure the tail of fixed vs human capital, largely because we can finance against the illusion of fixed capital value while we cannot finance against the obvious lack of control over human capital. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine -
The Virtue Of Hanging (Frequently)
[U]nfortunately, the whole expansion of the franchised ruined our excellent ancient tradition of watching your words, through liberal use of the duel. Unfortunately, the whole expansion of the franchise ruined our excellent tradition of telling the truth, by the dilution of libel and slander.
Unfortunately the whole post-slavery thing ruined our excellent ancient tradition of genetic pacification thru liberal application of hanging. Unfortunately mass immigration ruined our excellent tradition of genetic pacification through sheriffs, posses, and civic duty of every man to defend the commons. Too many unfortunate things for aristocracy to tolerate. —“A well hanged man rarely reoffends.”—Shaun Moss