Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • MARK ANDREESSEN ON PIKETTY’S NONSENSE Timothy B. Lee: This relates to another to

    MARK ANDREESSEN ON PIKETTY’S NONSENSE

    Timothy B. Lee: This relates to another topic I wanted to ask about. You’ve had some harsh words for Thomas Piketty, the French economist whose new book is trendy in liberal circles right now. Do you think he’s right that we’re going to see a growing gap between the rich and the poor in the coming years?

    Marc Andreessen:The funny thing about Piketty is that he has a lot more faith in returns on invested capital than any professional investor I’ve ever met. It’s actually very interesting about his book. This is exactly what you’d expect form a French socialist economist. He assumes it’s really easy to put money in the market for 40 years or 80 years or 100 years and have it compound at these amazing rates. He never explains how that’s supposed to happen.

    Every investment manager I know is sweating the opposite problem, which is: what do I do? Where do I get the growth? I can’t get into the public market, so I have to go into the private market. The problem in the private market is there isn’t much growth. Maybe a dozen hedge funds. After that they’re not that good. The returns degrade down to S&P 500 levels.

    Timothy B. Lee: That’s not so bad is it? The S&P 500 has returned 6 or 7 percent real growth for the last few decades.

    Marc Andreessen:Yeah, 6 or 7 percent. But if you look at the last 15 years they’re much less than that. Jeremy Siegel put out his book about how there’s never been a 10-year period where you lose money in the stock market — right at the beginning of a very long period where you lose money for 10-plus years.

    Piketty thinks it’s really easy to compound capital at scale. There’s just a lot of evidence that that’s not true. The shining example of that is: where are all the big companies and the big families?

    If you look at what’s actually happening in the Forbes 400 and the Fortune 500, churn is accelerating. One year it’s some real estate family, and then the next year it’s like, “There’s Larry Page, where did he come from?” Somehow Piketty looks through that to a world where all this change is going to just stop. [He has] this idea that normal is 18th-century feudal France, and we’re going to go back to it.

    He does this other dodge where the 20th century doesn’t conform to his theory, but that’s because of the wars and economic dislocations. And so it’s like the 21st century is predicted to be much more peaceful and calm. I don’t know about you but that’s not what I see happening. I look around the world right now and I see exciting things happening that’s causing a lot of changes.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-29 01:29:00 UTC

  • What Current Prominent Americans Best Exemplify The Term “chickenhawk”?

    Please dont ask us to answer stupid questions.

    https://www.quora.com/What-current-prominent-Americans-best-exemplify-the-term-chickenhawk

  • What Can The Indian Government Do To Protect The Rights Of Indian Laborers In Foreign Countries Especially In The Middle East? Why Has It Not Taken Any Action Till Now?

    Nothing other than trade sanctions, which would only cause those countries to deport the workers. 

    One has no “rights” external to the territory we stand in.  That is a phrase of modern mysticism.  The USA postwar effort to encourage all states to care for their citizens in order to be treated as legitimate is or was a function of US military and Ideological dominance.

    As the postwar consensus fails, and american hegemony declines, and the american mandate for fixed borders and human rights declines, and america can no longer project sufficient power to mandate fixed borders and human tights, neither fixed borders nor human rights will remain. 

    We have seen Russia conquer Ukraine.  Mexico invade the USA through mass immigration. Israel extend its borders. China invade russia through mass immigration.  China conquer the nearby sea and threaten Japan. And ISIS and Iran try to reestablish the caliphate.

    Meanwhile the euro project is failing. Civil wars and and secessionist  movements are spreading.

    So if you cant keep your own country’s economic house in order (and india cant because of corruption – india is too big), and the USA cannot play world policeman, then you will be subject to whatever arbitrary rules exist wherever you are standing.

    https://www.quora.com/What-can-the-Indian-government-do-to-protect-the-rights-of-Indian-laborers-in-foreign-countries-especially-in-the-Middle-East-Why-has-it-not-taken-any-action-till-now

  • What Current Prominent Americans Best Exemplify The Term “chickenhawk”?

    Please dont ask us to answer stupid questions.

    https://www.quora.com/What-current-prominent-Americans-best-exemplify-the-term-chickenhawk

  • What Can The Indian Government Do To Protect The Rights Of Indian Laborers In Foreign Countries Especially In The Middle East? Why Has It Not Taken Any Action Till Now?

    Nothing other than trade sanctions, which would only cause those countries to deport the workers. 

    One has no “rights” external to the territory we stand in.  That is a phrase of modern mysticism.  The USA postwar effort to encourage all states to care for their citizens in order to be treated as legitimate is or was a function of US military and Ideological dominance.

    As the postwar consensus fails, and american hegemony declines, and the american mandate for fixed borders and human rights declines, and america can no longer project sufficient power to mandate fixed borders and human tights, neither fixed borders nor human rights will remain. 

    We have seen Russia conquer Ukraine.  Mexico invade the USA through mass immigration. Israel extend its borders. China invade russia through mass immigration.  China conquer the nearby sea and threaten Japan. And ISIS and Iran try to reestablish the caliphate.

    Meanwhile the euro project is failing. Civil wars and and secessionist  movements are spreading.

    So if you cant keep your own country’s economic house in order (and india cant because of corruption – india is too big), and the USA cannot play world policeman, then you will be subject to whatever arbitrary rules exist wherever you are standing.

    https://www.quora.com/What-can-the-Indian-government-do-to-protect-the-rights-of-Indian-laborers-in-foreign-countries-especially-in-the-Middle-East-Why-has-it-not-taken-any-action-till-now

  • PHILOSOPHY AND IDEOLOGY: TRUTH IS ENOUGH. The Job of Scientists, Philosophers, I

    PHILOSOPHY AND IDEOLOGY: TRUTH IS ENOUGH.

    The Job of Scientists, Philosophers, Ideologists, Activists and Priests.

    I. Science-> II. Philosophy-> III. Ideology -> IV. Religion

    Science is a purely descriptive discipline. Philosophy consists of constructing true statements that assist us in ethical action. ideology consists of inspirations to act to obtain power, and requires only the minimum truth necessary to obtain power. Religion consists of rituals and myths that bind us together pre-cognitively, and in religion, true propositions are unnecessary – and largely undesirable.

    Therefore, truth content of each discipline: science, philosophy, ideology and religion – varies significantly.

    ***Now, if we merely sought discretionary power as do most, then it wouldn’t matter if our arguments were constructed scientifically. But since we are proposing an order that lacks discretionary authority, and where discretionary authority is prohibited, and where economic prosperity is the promised common good, then ideas and actions must correspond with objective reality rather than subjective command, law must be rationally calculable, and truth (correspondence with reality) is required of us. Truth is the only ‘rule’ that we can ‘rule’ by.***

    This does put us at an ideological disadvantage: our messages are harder to convey. We promise no free rides. Offer no eternity. No certainty.

    But that said, for some minority of us, truth, liberty, prosperity, and reality are desirable enough for us to act, and act with the threat of violence, to obtain them.

    Our ideology then, consists of the truth, the promise of liberty and prosperity, the organized application of violence to obtain them, and the moral justification whereby moral men feel that their actions are morally sanctioned.

    Therefore, the job of a philosopher, like myself, is to produce the truth. The job of ideologists, is to provide moral sanction. The job of activists, is to distribute moral sanctions. The job of shamans is to bind us together through shared experience, ritual and myth.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine (writing from L’viv)

    🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-28 04:35:00 UTC

  • I can bring down the house with Nirvana every time. Did tonight. But too much Ja

    I can bring down the house with Nirvana every time. Did tonight. But too much Jack and I can lose my lyrics, even in teen spirit. Damn. And there is no chance that I’ll be able to talk tomorrow after that night of vocal cord benders. The club attracts others who can actually sing, so it was a great night. I love this country. This culture. These people. The women are walking, living, art. The men are men, and don’t need to prove it.

    Now if the bed will just stop spinning…..

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-27 18:12:00 UTC

  • "Curt, What Is Your Stance On IP?"

    QUESTION: “Hello Curt. What’s your stance on IP especially taking Kinsella’s arguments into account?” (Derogatory reference to Kinsella’s personality edited out. – Ed.) ANSWER: [I]n the abstract I agree with the principle that easily accessible licenses for limited monopolies are not beneficial for consumers. However, that rational argument may or may not mean much in practice. 1) IP does appear to rapidly affect business willingness to invest. So, just like property rights exclude people from commons to facilitate the willingness to take risks, IP excludes people from opportunities in order to facilitate the willingness of individuals to take risks. So empirically speaking and rationally speaking, these are trade-off questions not matters of truth and falsehood. 2) Humans don’t like free riding and we intuitively dislike direct copying – seeing it as a case of free riding. I think the question is limited to whether you’re fooling someone or not (trademarking). So as long as you’re not violating a trademark, which is a question of ‘weights and measures’, (fraud), then I think it’s hard to argue against copying anything at all. The test is pretty empirically simple – if you can glance at something for two seconds and tell the original from the copy, then it’s not a trademark violation. If you can then it is. It’s a pretty simple test. We have proven it over and over again. 3) For licensed monopolies, I think it is entirely moral to appeal to the ‘people’ asking for a limited monopoly to produce a good that the market cannot reliably produce. This tends kind of thing tends to be limited to very specific goods (health and medicine) or expensive original research in physical sciences, or high risk investments with high benefit to the commons (transportation and infrastructure). All that occurs is that private investment takes risk and reward, with some lottery bonus from the commons, that if they succeed they will recover their costs free of predation from others. Again, this is a purely pragmatic thing. And as long as such things are put out to ‘bid’, so that whomever wins gets the benefit, then I think it’s just a rational choice to get individuals do off book research and development on behalf of the commons in exchange for winning a lottery if they succeed. However I see these licenses as exceptions on the same level as laws, not grants to be easily obtained without serious discretion. 4) My problem with the rothbardian (ghetto) ethic is that it’s advocating free riding on the work of others, and NOT a matter of competition if you did not conduct the research yourself. Competition is not free riding, since you are doing a better job of voluntarily organizing production and satisfying customers. However, benefitting from someone else’s research and development and capturing the rewards for it is simply free riding. Again, I see the Rothbardian ethic as simply an obscurantist set of arguments meant to justify parasitism rather than enforcing the fundamental requirement for rational cooperation: that we all contribute to production without parasitism upon others. Humans punish cheaters. The only way to increase the velocity of production and trade is to increase trust, and the way to increase trust is to suppress all free riding so that every individual is forced to participate in production, rather than engage in parasitism. Rothbardianism is simply a complex, overloaded, obscurant argument meant to justify ghetto parasitism. It is irrational to choose a stateless polity with low trust and persistent retribution over a stateful polity with low trust and high suppression of retribution. This is why people demand the state: to suppress immoral and unethical people such as rothbardians, so that a high trust society can develop. An anarchic or private polity will only be possible to form under a high trust society that prohibits all free riding with the exception of kin. Curt Doolittle PS: I’m sure this will generate nonsense but I’m pretty sure my argument is rock solid. Just how it is. Rothbardians need to get over it.

  • “Curt, What Is Your Stance On IP?”

    QUESTION: “Hello Curt. What’s your stance on IP especially taking Kinsella’s arguments into account?” (Derogatory reference to Kinsella’s personality edited out. – Ed.) ANSWER: [I]n the abstract I agree with the principle that easily accessible licenses for limited monopolies are not beneficial for consumers. However, that rational argument may or may not mean much in practice. 1) IP does appear to rapidly affect business willingness to invest. So, just like property rights exclude people from commons to facilitate the willingness to take risks, IP excludes people from opportunities in order to facilitate the willingness of individuals to take risks. So empirically speaking and rationally speaking, these are trade-off questions not matters of truth and falsehood. 2) Humans don’t like free riding and we intuitively dislike direct copying – seeing it as a case of free riding. I think the question is limited to whether you’re fooling someone or not (trademarking). So as long as you’re not violating a trademark, which is a question of ‘weights and measures’, (fraud), then I think it’s hard to argue against copying anything at all. The test is pretty empirically simple – if you can glance at something for two seconds and tell the original from the copy, then it’s not a trademark violation. If you can then it is. It’s a pretty simple test. We have proven it over and over again. 3) For licensed monopolies, I think it is entirely moral to appeal to the ‘people’ asking for a limited monopoly to produce a good that the market cannot reliably produce. This tends kind of thing tends to be limited to very specific goods (health and medicine) or expensive original research in physical sciences, or high risk investments with high benefit to the commons (transportation and infrastructure). All that occurs is that private investment takes risk and reward, with some lottery bonus from the commons, that if they succeed they will recover their costs free of predation from others. Again, this is a purely pragmatic thing. And as long as such things are put out to ‘bid’, so that whomever wins gets the benefit, then I think it’s just a rational choice to get individuals do off book research and development on behalf of the commons in exchange for winning a lottery if they succeed. However I see these licenses as exceptions on the same level as laws, not grants to be easily obtained without serious discretion. 4) My problem with the rothbardian (ghetto) ethic is that it’s advocating free riding on the work of others, and NOT a matter of competition if you did not conduct the research yourself. Competition is not free riding, since you are doing a better job of voluntarily organizing production and satisfying customers. However, benefitting from someone else’s research and development and capturing the rewards for it is simply free riding. Again, I see the Rothbardian ethic as simply an obscurantist set of arguments meant to justify parasitism rather than enforcing the fundamental requirement for rational cooperation: that we all contribute to production without parasitism upon others. Humans punish cheaters. The only way to increase the velocity of production and trade is to increase trust, and the way to increase trust is to suppress all free riding so that every individual is forced to participate in production, rather than engage in parasitism. Rothbardianism is simply a complex, overloaded, obscurant argument meant to justify ghetto parasitism. It is irrational to choose a stateless polity with low trust and persistent retribution over a stateful polity with low trust and high suppression of retribution. This is why people demand the state: to suppress immoral and unethical people such as rothbardians, so that a high trust society can develop. An anarchic or private polity will only be possible to form under a high trust society that prohibits all free riding with the exception of kin. Curt Doolittle PS: I’m sure this will generate nonsense but I’m pretty sure my argument is rock solid. Just how it is. Rothbardians need to get over it.

  • "Curt, What Is Your Stance On IP?"

    QUESTION: “Hello Curt. What’s your stance on IP especially taking Kinsella’s arguments into account?” (Derogatory reference to Kinsella’s personality edited out. – Ed.) ANSWER: [I]n the abstract I agree with the principle that easily accessible licenses for limited monopolies are not beneficial for consumers. However, that rational argument may or may not mean much in practice. 1) IP does appear to rapidly affect business willingness to invest. So, just like property rights exclude people from commons to facilitate the willingness to take risks, IP excludes people from opportunities in order to facilitate the willingness of individuals to take risks. So empirically speaking and rationally speaking, these are trade-off questions not matters of truth and falsehood. 2) Humans don’t like free riding and we intuitively dislike direct copying – seeing it as a case of free riding. I think the question is limited to whether you’re fooling someone or not (trademarking). So as long as you’re not violating a trademark, which is a question of ‘weights and measures’, (fraud), then I think it’s hard to argue against copying anything at all. The test is pretty empirically simple – if you can glance at something for two seconds and tell the original from the copy, then it’s not a trademark violation. If you can then it is. It’s a pretty simple test. We have proven it over and over again. 3) For licensed monopolies, I think it is entirely moral to appeal to the ‘people’ asking for a limited monopoly to produce a good that the market cannot reliably produce. This tends kind of thing tends to be limited to very specific goods (health and medicine) or expensive original research in physical sciences, or high risk investments with high benefit to the commons (transportation and infrastructure). All that occurs is that private investment takes risk and reward, with some lottery bonus from the commons, that if they succeed they will recover their costs free of predation from others. Again, this is a purely pragmatic thing. And as long as such things are put out to ‘bid’, so that whomever wins gets the benefit, then I think it’s just a rational choice to get individuals do off book research and development on behalf of the commons in exchange for winning a lottery if they succeed. However I see these licenses as exceptions on the same level as laws, not grants to be easily obtained without serious discretion. 4) My problem with the rothbardian (ghetto) ethic is that it’s advocating free riding on the work of others, and NOT a matter of competition if you did not conduct the research yourself. Competition is not free riding, since you are doing a better job of voluntarily organizing production and satisfying customers. However, benefitting from someone else’s research and development and capturing the rewards for it is simply free riding. Again, I see the Rothbardian ethic as simply an obscurantist set of arguments meant to justify parasitism rather than enforcing the fundamental requirement for rational cooperation: that we all contribute to production without parasitism upon others. Humans punish cheaters. The only way to increase the velocity of production and trade is to increase trust, and the way to increase trust is to suppress all free riding so that every individual is forced to participate in production, rather than engage in parasitism. Rothbardianism is simply a complex, overloaded, obscurant argument meant to justify ghetto parasitism. It is irrational to choose a stateless polity with low trust and persistent retribution over a stateful polity with low trust and high suppression of retribution. This is why people demand the state: to suppress immoral and unethical people such as rothbardians, so that a high trust society can develop. An anarchic or private polity will only be possible to form under a high trust society that prohibits all free riding with the exception of kin. Curt Doolittle PS: I’m sure this will generate nonsense but I’m pretty sure my argument is rock solid. Just how it is. Rothbardians need to get over it.