Author: Curt Doolittle

  • Return on Respect for Property Rights

    [W]hat is the return on an individual’s respect for property rights?

    For him?
    For the polity?
    For man?

    We cannot construct the voluntary organization without widespread respect.

    So then how do we calculate the cost if that adherence?

    Labor has no known value except in exchange. At which point we learn its value.

    But respect for property rights, and active construction and perpetuation of them, always produces value.

    Earlier thinkers assumed that membership and participation in the market was sufficient compensation for respecting property rights.

    But this exchange was possible only because of the possibility of entry.

    In a world of mandatory inclusion, this choice no longer exists.

    In a world of marginally different productivity, where the underclasses no longer can provide useful skills, they are mandatorially included, but necessarily excluded.

    In fact, their only value is in providing instructions in the form of demand, for the organization of production to satisfy their wants and to reward producers.

    But they have nothing to exchange except constructing and maintaining the voluntary organization of production.

    This presents us with a logical contradiction. They are forcibly included but necessarily excluded.

    How do we solve this contradiction?

    Par them for services rendered, and do not pay them if they fail to render services.

    Voluntary exchange.

  • Peace is an Idiot's Obsession

    Peace is an idiot’s obsession.

    [T]he only rational pursuit is the positive expression in property rights of the negative prohibition on free riding. Violence toward that end is always rational and moral. Peace is an undesirable pursuit, since it simply justifies whatever level of immorality is currently extant.

    People who pursue peace for its own sake are, if necessity, immoralists.

  • Peace is an Idiot’s Obsession

    Peace is an idiot’s obsession.

    [T]he only rational pursuit is the positive expression in property rights of the negative prohibition on free riding. Violence toward that end is always rational and moral. Peace is an undesirable pursuit, since it simply justifies whatever level of immorality is currently extant.

    People who pursue peace for its own sake are, if necessity, immoralists.

  • Peace is an Idiot's Obsession

    Peace is an idiot’s obsession.

    [T]he only rational pursuit is the positive expression in property rights of the negative prohibition on free riding. Violence toward that end is always rational and moral. Peace is an undesirable pursuit, since it simply justifies whatever level of immorality is currently extant.

    People who pursue peace for its own sake are, if necessity, immoralists.

  • Peace is an Idiot’s Obsession

    Peace is an idiot’s obsession.

    [T]he only rational pursuit is the positive expression in property rights of the negative prohibition on free riding. Violence toward that end is always rational and moral. Peace is an undesirable pursuit, since it simply justifies whatever level of immorality is currently extant.

    People who pursue peace for its own sake are, if necessity, immoralists.

  • While I’m happy with the videos, and have nearly finished with the powerpoint ov

    While I’m happy with the videos, and have nearly finished with the powerpoint overview, between travel, illness, and working on the product, I haven’t made as much progress this month as I’d wanted. Posting the month’s work to the website made it more obvious – my mind has been occupied elsewhere.

    I feel a little stuck, in that I’m not sure where to go next to understand western vulnerability to deceptions. Is it simply that we had trained ourselves for truth so deeply that we were vulnerable to saturation the way we were vulnerable to the church? Why is it that words have this power over us? Is Macdonald right? Altruism? Is that the cause? No one else displays it but us. So is that our weakness? No one else can create commons. No one else tells the truth. No one else practices altruism toward the commons?

    I don’t even know how to go about answering this question. And I don’t know if I need to. Do I? I have solve pretty much the full suite of problems. Do I just need to work with what I have, and leave the underlying cause for others? I can solve problems of calculation – that is what I have been doing: that which is necessary. But I don’t really think answering the reason for our vulnerability – if its genetic and biologically driven, or normatively and habitually driven. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. The cure is the same both ways. I suppose I could try talking to Hu. But my experience is that the genetics people overplay the hand. From what I see most of our evolution is endocrinological and very little of it visibly more than that.

    I have to give myself a bit more time, but I feel something is just sitting out there waiting for me to grab it, and I can’t quite figure out what.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-26 16:13:00 UTC

  • Aesthetics In Three Dimensions

    THREE AXIS OF AESTHETIC CRITICISM: 1) CRAFT (Materials and Workmanship) 2) DESIGN (Aesthetic appeal and ‘beauty’) 3) CONTENT (Values, associations and narrative) The comparative quality of all art is objectively ascertainable by recursive triangulation.

  • Aesthetics In Three Dimensions

    THREE AXIS OF AESTHETIC CRITICISM: 1) CRAFT (Materials and Workmanship) 2) DESIGN (Aesthetic appeal and ‘beauty’) 3) CONTENT (Values, associations and narrative) The comparative quality of all art is objectively ascertainable by recursive triangulation.

  • Criticism is Truthful, and Critique is Deception

    Critique != Criticism 


    In Criticism the alternative choice must be defended.

    In critique the alternative choice must be obscured.

    The purpose of Criticism is to identify truth. The purpose of Critique is obscurantism: complex deception.

    Critique is deception. Control by deception using  obscurantism.

    We forgo our opportunity for violence in exchange for pursuit of the truth.

    However if the opposition is not equally engaged in the pursuit of the truth, then we need not forgo the honesty of violence just to tolerate acts if deception.

  • Criticism is Truthful, and Critique is Deception

    Critique != Criticism 


    In Criticism the alternative choice must be defended.

    In critique the alternative choice must be obscured.

    The purpose of Criticism is to identify truth. The purpose of Critique is obscurantism: complex deception.

    Critique is deception. Control by deception using  obscurantism.

    We forgo our opportunity for violence in exchange for pursuit of the truth.

    However if the opposition is not equally engaged in the pursuit of the truth, then we need not forgo the honesty of violence just to tolerate acts if deception.