Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • A Definition of Economics?

    QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?” (good piece)

    —“Hi Curt…I can relate to your comments. Perhaps you mentioned it and I missed it, but what in your definition of “Economics”. Is it sociological? A physical science? Something else?”—Lee Roesner

    [L]ee, Great question. Thanks. I think, that the scope of the term Economics is an interesting question, because we can discuss the etymological, normative, technical, and ‘necessary’ properties of the discipline. And by ‘necessary’, those properties that distinguish the discipline from other fields of inquiry. If we look at the etymology, the term evolved from running the household, then the nation, then an abstract discipline that studies the behavior mankind’s production, distribution and trade, chiefly by studying demonstrated preferences recorded as monetary transactions. If we look at how it is practiced, I think that today it is practiced as a social science, and that accusations of ‘economic imperialism’ in social science are probably justified: that economics has evolved into the dominant social science, and that experimental psychology and cognitive science, together have evolved as the dominant individual science. This appears to be the current state of affairs, where experimental psychology and cognitive science focus on our biases and limits, while economics focuses on the effect of those behaviors in the aggregate. And I think that the people in both disciplines expect to meet in the middle with a theory of mankind. (The problem is, that this merely justifies intervention – how to fool people.) Now, I tend to look at disciplines by necessary properties, and I view economics as the study of institutional (both formal and informal) means by which we facilitate human cooperation in pursuit of prosperity. This is traditionally called political economy. So the problem is that if we study it as how we can manipulate man’s biases, I think that is immoral on objective grounds, because it violates the principle of voluntary exchange (imposition of costs). Whereas if we study it as political economy, then we retain the moral constraint that all exchanges must be voluntary. We don’t try to fool people, we try to create transparency – to reduce friction, not to fool them that risk is lower than it appears. This is why I try to stay on message with the statement “Every forced involuntary transfer is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.” Because I prefer that economics be constructed and performed as an analysis of moral and voluntary cooperation in the western tradition, rather than an immoral and involuntary analysis in the eastern tradition. And also, because I agree with the Austrian theory of the business cycle: that all attempts to cushion the rate of reorganization of the economy, merely exacerbate the problem by funding the existing (exhausted) order. So, I define economics as the study of morality: the study of the means of human cooperation in pursuit of the production of informal and formal institutions that assist us in cooperating. And as such I see law – the capture of normative constraints on involuntary transfer – as a subset of economics. And in practice I see the purpose of economics as little more than the justification of common, polycentric, organically evolved, law. And I see economics as dependent upon experimental psychology, and cognitive science for the study of man’s actions. This is because these disciplines have proven extremely fruitful in exposing the numerous and extensive limitations to human reason. I think this framing of the disciplines and the scope of the terms, is difficult to argue with – honestly that is. Thanks for the great question. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute L’viv, Ukraine.

  • Learning From Debating Moral But Misguided People

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. …. What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber


    [B]ruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. And time intensive.


    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND
    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—


    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).


    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.
    (continued…)
    (…continued)
    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that you cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.


    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.


    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).


    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.


    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.


    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.


    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.

  • Learning From Debating Moral But Misguided People

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. …. What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber


    [B]ruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. And time intensive.


    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND
    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—


    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).


    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.
    (continued…)
    (…continued)
    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that you cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.


    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.


    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).


    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.


    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.


    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.


    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.

  • THE WAR ON TRUTHFUL SPEECH : THE ECONOMICS OF LYING If truth is a group’s your r

    THE WAR ON TRUTHFUL SPEECH : THE ECONOMICS OF LYING

    If truth is a group’s your reproductive strategy, then they should try to destroy western civilization. The underclasses and Non-westerners *should* be trying to destroy western civilization: it’s to their evolutionary advantage to defeat successful competitors.

    Its just logical. It’s in their interest. And they’re doing it.

    Why? Because truth is meritocratic and eugenic, and requires voluntary exchange, while deception is parasitic, dysgenic, and allows escaping from the costs of voluntary exchange.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    L’viv Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-04 09:50:00 UTC

  • Repeating

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2015/01/04/if-you-can-name-a-thing-you-can-kill-a-thing/Worth Repeating

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-04 09:41:00 UTC

  • “What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay.

    What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber

    Bruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. Time intensive.

    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND

    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—

    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).

    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.

    (continued…)

    (…continued)

    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that yo cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.

    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.

    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).

    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.

    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.

    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.

    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-04 07:04:00 UTC

  • QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?” (from elsewhere) (good

    QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?”

    (from elsewhere) (good piece)

    —“Hi Curt…I can relate to your comments. Perhaps you mentioned it and I missed it, but what in your definition of “Economics”. Is it sociological? A physical science? Something else?”—Lee Roesner

    Lee,

    Great question. Thanks.

    I think, that the scope of the term Economics is an interesting question, because we can discuss the etymological, normative, technical, and ‘necessary’ properties of the discipline. And by ‘necessary’, those properties that distinguish the discipline from other fields of inquiry.

    If we look at the etymology, the term evolved from running the household, then the nation, then an abstract discipline that studies the behavior mankind’s production, distribution and trade, chiefly by studying demonstrated preferences recorded as monetary transactions.

    If we look at how it is practiced, I think that today it is practiced as a social science, and that accusations of ‘economic imperialism’ in social science are probably justified: that economics has evolved into the dominant social science, and that experimental psychology and cognitive science, together have evolved as the dominant individual science. This appears to be the current state of affairs, where experimental psychology and cognitive science focus on our biases and limits, while economics focuses on the effect of those behaviors in the aggregate. And I think that the people in both disciplines expect to meet in the middle with a theory of mankind. (The problem is, that this merely justifies intervention – how to fool people.)

    Now, I tend to look at disciplines by necessary properties, and I view economics as the study of institutional (both formal and informal) means by which we facilitate human cooperation in pursuit of prosperity. This is traditionally called political economy.

    So the problem is that if we study it as how we can manipulate man’s biases, I think that is immoral on objective grounds, because it violates the principle of voluntary exchange (imposition of costs). Whereas if we study it as political economy, then we retain the moral constraint that all exchanges must be voluntary. We don’t try to fool people, we try to create transparency – to reduce friction, not to fool them that risk is lower than it appears.

    This is why I try to stay on message with the statement “Every forced involuntary transfer is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.” Because I prefer that economics be constructed and performed as an analysis of moral and voluntary cooperation in the western tradition, rather than an immoral and involuntary analysis in the eastern tradition. And also, because I agree with the Austrian theory of the business cycle: that all attempts to cushion the rate of reorganization of the economy, merely exacerbate the problem by funding the existing (exhausted) order.

    So, I define economics as the study of morality: the study of the means of human cooperation in pursuit of the production of informal and formal institutions that assist us in cooperating. And as such I see law – the capture of normative constraints on involuntary transfer – as a subset of economics. And in practice I see the purpose of economics as little more than the justification of common, polycentric, organically evolved, law.

    And I see economics as dependent upon experimental psychology, and cognitive science for the study of man’s actions. This is because these disciplines have proven extremely fruitful in exposing the numerous and extensive limitations to human reason.

    I think this framing of the disciplines and the scope of the terms, is difficult to argue with – honestly that is.

    Thanks for the great question.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    L’viv, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-04 06:23:00 UTC

  • A lot more living in the moment over here. It’s an interesting phenomenon: Havin

    A lot more living in the moment over here. It’s an interesting phenomenon:

    Having not enough.

    Having enough.

    Having more than enough.

    When you don’t have enough you must struggle to plan against risk.

    When you have enough, you don’t stress, and invest time in people as entertainment.

    When you have more than enough you don’t stress and invest in status and consumption.

    And for those who organise production under capitalism, signalling is important. And for the upper classes, investing in signals that will evolve into consumer goods under mass production is a necessary good.

    Then we have the envious who desire status that they do not earn. And as such want to reduce the status of others in what is the worst possible redistribution.

    And the we have the dishonest thieves who obtain status not from organising production or creating a Propertarian order, but who gain their status through assisting in the transfer of wrath and status from some to others by involuntary means.

    Like the woman who gains status from acts of charity distributing wealth earned by her father or husband, or the public intellectual or progressive voter who advocates and instructs by vote, the theft from productive to unproductive.

    Where the conservative says that receipt of charity requires demonstrated acts of moral behaviour – an act of exchange for support.

    The progressive privatises while the conservative constructs commons.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-04 04:57:00 UTC

  • of the Mind Read this

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/01/diversity_of_th.htmlDiversity of the Mind

    Read this

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-03 14:08:00 UTC

  • will take them back

    http://online.wsj.com/articles/europes-empty-churches-go-on-sale-1420245359?mod=europe_homeWe will take them back.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-03 09:01:00 UTC