Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • On The Limits Of The Misesian Criticism

      “Mises’s contention came in setting the context for Human Action by explaining why people have had such a hard time accepting the validity of (Austrian) economics as a field of knowledge–it does not fit in with anything else.” – Konrad Love you man, but I want to clean this up a bit. And I hope you will forgive me for using your statements as a jumping off point to articulate this subject a little more clearly than is usual in our field. 2) The first is your statements (a) “put into context” and (b) “human action”. Praxeologically speaking, any statement regarding human action, not stated as human action, is untestable by praxeological analysis. As such, if you can’t say something in operational terms, then it is possible that you are mistaken, or misled, since only such operational language opens any statement to praxeological testing. Mises was trying to refute socialism. He was frustrated because there was not empirical means of demonstrating that it wouldn’t work. So he had to rely on rational deduction. He was attempting to show (as was popper by very different means) how socialism was impossible – particularly, the socialist method of production. Praxeology was his attempt to use the very clear, irrefutable, sympathetic test of the rational incentives of actors given their need to act in real time, to refute the theory that humans would act by the same means without money and prices. Without money and prices, and the incentives that they make possible, humans cannot rationally act. He suggested, and argued poorly, that humans literally could not think, in the same way that we would be radically impaired in our thinking, without the use of numbers, numeric operations, ratios, measurements, and the syllogism. As such, if people cannot cooperate rationally using property, money, prices and time, then in fact, no science of economics is therefore possible. We cannot conduct a science predicated on a unit of measure dependent upon property and prices, if neither property nor prices no voluntary cooperation exist. That is non-logical. We should note that this is an argument, now proven, both logically and by evidence, that the socialist method of production does not work, precisely as Mises predicted, because Calculation and it’s obverse, Incentives, are impossible. But this is a limited criticism. We must understand that the limit of Misesian criticism, is the socialist mode of production. It does not mean that progressive taxation, especially by simply increasing transaction costs at the high end, and redistributing the fees on those costs to consumers, or investing them into infrastructure violate the ability of people to think, plan, and coordinate their actions. The science of economics can in fact exist, if the logical method of measurement that it depends upon: voluntary cooperation using property, money and prices, does exist/ So the Misesian critique of economics as a discipline dependent upon human action is a refutation of the socialist mode of production, but it is not a refutation of the democratic socialist redistributive method of production. (Although I am not sure anyone else has said so this clearly. I haven’t run across it if so. Caplans ‘Why I am not..” is an obscurant, and meaningless argument which he later took the teeth out of himself : there is no difference between economic calculation and incentives. They are mutually dependent concepts. An argument which I forgive him for, and attribute to the folly of his youth. ) 2) The second problem you put forth is that people have a problem understanding Austrian Economics. And I’m afraid that’s just not demonstrably true. (a) the argument from the mainstream economics profession is that the insights of the Austrians have been fully integrated into mainstream economics. (b) The only remaining dispute that separates Austrian economists from mainstream economists today, is the theory of the business cycle, where by continuous distortions of the money supply, while long term neutral in affect on price, are non-neutral on the Sustainable Patters Of Specialization and Trade – largely due to little more than the fact that humans due to the process of youth, maturity, reproduction, decline in learning capacity (or increase in required repetitions), as well as normal aging, mean that not only are prices, and contracts ‘sticky’ but so are human lives and relations. And while we may ameliorate the problems caused by the stickiness of prices,we appear to have very little control over contracts, and the accumulated impact on individuals in the business cycle means that such cycles, the longer that they are perpetuated, force their members to become increasingly sticky, and if more than four years to nine years in duration, that it is no longer possible for individuals to transition at anywhere near the same quality of life. This may in fact be another argument against immigration which only exacerbates this problem severely. The last argument, and the one made by conservative advocates of Austrian economics, is not just the utility of the lost human capital, but the loss of moral capital, and the increase in demand for the state as insurer, now that the individual citizens have been placed at risk by the use of credit and insurance by the state, rathe than allowing the natural, and frequent cycle of PSST to discourage people from over-investing in any given pattern, and instead, developing dynamic risk protection given the constant reordering of such patterns. 3) The point being the one I articulated in my first response to your post: that the Austrian method makes visible the involuntary transfer of property, and the behavior of individuals within patterns of sustainable specialization and trade IF WE MEASURE patterns of sustainable specialization and trade as our category of measurement. (industry networks are the highest level of meaningful aggregation). And investment in trade policy and industrial policy should outweigh any interest in monetary policy. If only because those policies have been in use since the dawn of human cities, and appear to have worked well. Whereas, the use of Keynesian aggregates and monetary policy does not localize distortions and those distortions that are caused by such policy are not measured, or even measurable. Just as Einstein did not invent relativity(actually, constancy), Keynes did not invent his ideas either – he adapted them from Marx, and cut out the references to prevent criticism of what he had accomplished via even greater obscurant language than Marx: the forcible involuntary transfer of wealth and the consequential empowerment of the government as the vehicle for such transfer. All of which was justified as a means of decreasing unemployment. The sacrifice of the west for reduction of unemployment and facilitation of the expansion of the reproduction of the lower classes that had been held in check by private property and manorialism for more than 2500 years. The great weakness of human reason is our inability to disentangle multiple axis of complex relations. Only analysis of the voluntary transfer of property allows us to disentangle heavily loaded propositions and reduce what appears to be many competing and overlapping axes of causality to one simple factor: whether property, which is the necessary device for cooperation, has been voluntarily expropriated or voluntarily exchanged. CLOSING This is probably worth sharing or saving for later reference. Affections Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev  

  • On The Limits Of The Misesian Criticism

      “Mises’s contention came in setting the context for Human Action by explaining why people have had such a hard time accepting the validity of (Austrian) economics as a field of knowledge–it does not fit in with anything else.” – Konrad Love you man, but I want to clean this up a bit. And I hope you will forgive me for using your statements as a jumping off point to articulate this subject a little more clearly than is usual in our field. 2) The first is your statements (a) “put into context” and (b) “human action”. Praxeologically speaking, any statement regarding human action, not stated as human action, is untestable by praxeological analysis. As such, if you can’t say something in operational terms, then it is possible that you are mistaken, or misled, since only such operational language opens any statement to praxeological testing. Mises was trying to refute socialism. He was frustrated because there was not empirical means of demonstrating that it wouldn’t work. So he had to rely on rational deduction. He was attempting to show (as was popper by very different means) how socialism was impossible – particularly, the socialist method of production. Praxeology was his attempt to use the very clear, irrefutable, sympathetic test of the rational incentives of actors given their need to act in real time, to refute the theory that humans would act by the same means without money and prices. Without money and prices, and the incentives that they make possible, humans cannot rationally act. He suggested, and argued poorly, that humans literally could not think, in the same way that we would be radically impaired in our thinking, without the use of numbers, numeric operations, ratios, measurements, and the syllogism. As such, if people cannot cooperate rationally using property, money, prices and time, then in fact, no science of economics is therefore possible. We cannot conduct a science predicated on a unit of measure dependent upon property and prices, if neither property nor prices no voluntary cooperation exist. That is non-logical. We should note that this is an argument, now proven, both logically and by evidence, that the socialist method of production does not work, precisely as Mises predicted, because Calculation and it’s obverse, Incentives, are impossible. But this is a limited criticism. We must understand that the limit of Misesian criticism, is the socialist mode of production. It does not mean that progressive taxation, especially by simply increasing transaction costs at the high end, and redistributing the fees on those costs to consumers, or investing them into infrastructure violate the ability of people to think, plan, and coordinate their actions. The science of economics can in fact exist, if the logical method of measurement that it depends upon: voluntary cooperation using property, money and prices, does exist/ So the Misesian critique of economics as a discipline dependent upon human action is a refutation of the socialist mode of production, but it is not a refutation of the democratic socialist redistributive method of production. (Although I am not sure anyone else has said so this clearly. I haven’t run across it if so. Caplans ‘Why I am not..” is an obscurant, and meaningless argument which he later took the teeth out of himself : there is no difference between economic calculation and incentives. They are mutually dependent concepts. An argument which I forgive him for, and attribute to the folly of his youth. ) 2) The second problem you put forth is that people have a problem understanding Austrian Economics. And I’m afraid that’s just not demonstrably true. (a) the argument from the mainstream economics profession is that the insights of the Austrians have been fully integrated into mainstream economics. (b) The only remaining dispute that separates Austrian economists from mainstream economists today, is the theory of the business cycle, where by continuous distortions of the money supply, while long term neutral in affect on price, are non-neutral on the Sustainable Patters Of Specialization and Trade – largely due to little more than the fact that humans due to the process of youth, maturity, reproduction, decline in learning capacity (or increase in required repetitions), as well as normal aging, mean that not only are prices, and contracts ‘sticky’ but so are human lives and relations. And while we may ameliorate the problems caused by the stickiness of prices,we appear to have very little control over contracts, and the accumulated impact on individuals in the business cycle means that such cycles, the longer that they are perpetuated, force their members to become increasingly sticky, and if more than four years to nine years in duration, that it is no longer possible for individuals to transition at anywhere near the same quality of life. This may in fact be another argument against immigration which only exacerbates this problem severely. The last argument, and the one made by conservative advocates of Austrian economics, is not just the utility of the lost human capital, but the loss of moral capital, and the increase in demand for the state as insurer, now that the individual citizens have been placed at risk by the use of credit and insurance by the state, rathe than allowing the natural, and frequent cycle of PSST to discourage people from over-investing in any given pattern, and instead, developing dynamic risk protection given the constant reordering of such patterns. 3) The point being the one I articulated in my first response to your post: that the Austrian method makes visible the involuntary transfer of property, and the behavior of individuals within patterns of sustainable specialization and trade IF WE MEASURE patterns of sustainable specialization and trade as our category of measurement. (industry networks are the highest level of meaningful aggregation). And investment in trade policy and industrial policy should outweigh any interest in monetary policy. If only because those policies have been in use since the dawn of human cities, and appear to have worked well. Whereas, the use of Keynesian aggregates and monetary policy does not localize distortions and those distortions that are caused by such policy are not measured, or even measurable. Just as Einstein did not invent relativity(actually, constancy), Keynes did not invent his ideas either – he adapted them from Marx, and cut out the references to prevent criticism of what he had accomplished via even greater obscurant language than Marx: the forcible involuntary transfer of wealth and the consequential empowerment of the government as the vehicle for such transfer. All of which was justified as a means of decreasing unemployment. The sacrifice of the west for reduction of unemployment and facilitation of the expansion of the reproduction of the lower classes that had been held in check by private property and manorialism for more than 2500 years. The great weakness of human reason is our inability to disentangle multiple axis of complex relations. Only analysis of the voluntary transfer of property allows us to disentangle heavily loaded propositions and reduce what appears to be many competing and overlapping axes of causality to one simple factor: whether property, which is the necessary device for cooperation, has been voluntarily expropriated or voluntarily exchanged. CLOSING This is probably worth sharing or saving for later reference. Affections Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev  

  • Untitled

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/24/atheism-richard-dawkins-challenge-beliefs-homelessBrilliant.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-25 19:02:00 UTC

  • THE ORIGINS OF PROPERTY AS THE PROHIBITION OF DISCOUNTS (profound) From Property

    THE ORIGINS OF PROPERTY AS THE PROHIBITION OF DISCOUNTS

    (profound)

    From Property to Private Property, High Trust Private Property, and Anarchic High Trust Private Property.

    1. Community Property is the result of the partial suppression of discounts

    1.1 Violence (asymmetry of force)

    2. Private property is the result of additional suppression of indirect discounts

    Traditional Family, Nuclear Family

    2.1 Theft (asymmetry of control)

    2.2 Fraud (false information)

    3. High Trust Private Property is the RESULT of total Suppression of Personal Discounts.

    Absolute Nuclear Family

    3.1 Free Riding (using externalities for self benefit)

    3.1 Omission (Omitting information)

    3.2 Obscurantism (Obscuring information)

    3.3 Obstruction (Inhibiting someone else’s transaction)

    3.4 Externalization (externalizing costs of any transaction)

    3.5 Socializing Losses (externalization to commons)

    3.6 Privatizing Gains (appropriation of commons)

    4. Anarchic High Trust Private Property is Result of the total suppression of organized discounts

    4.1 Rent Seeking (organizational free riding)

    4.2 Corruption ( organized rent seeking)

    4.3 Conspiracy (organized indirect theft)

    4.4 Extortion (Organized direct theft)

    4.5 War (organized violence)

    (Note: almost there. I am trying to tie property rights to trust (velocity) )

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-25 14:47:00 UTC

  • MERRY LIBERTY CHRISTMAS: WHERE WOULD WE BE WITHOUT – GMU Econ. – GROVE CITY COLL

    MERRY LIBERTY CHRISTMAS: WHERE WOULD WE BE WITHOUT

    – GMU Econ.

    – GROVE CITY COLLEGE

    – PFS

    – HERITAGE

    – CATO

    That’s what I give thanks for this year.

    ( Maybe I’ll sacrifice a good brie, a few plums, an apple, and some mulled wine. 🙂 )

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-25 08:24:00 UTC

  • On the Reformation of Praxeology

    Praxeological analysis, and Austrian economics, are important because they make visible all transfers, and whether or not they are against the desires of those from whom property is transferred. Aggregate macro economics and Keynesian economics are important because they obscure the transfer of goods against the desires of those from whom property is transferred. But, both of these methods: Aggregate Keynesian and Austrian Micro, are actually moral forms of analysis, more so than they are different sciences. If one subscribes to the proposition that all property is and must be private, then moral decisions are a function of voluntary or involuntary transfer of property. If one subscribes to the proposition that all property is owned communally and we all rent it and gain commissions on its use for the benefit of all (as under democratic socialism) , then the distribution of proceeds from the rentals is more important to the moral code than ownership and right to such proceeds. The collectivist proposition is that all property is owned communally and that we merely lease it from the commons, and gain some portions of our commissions on it. The libertarian proposition is that all property is privately owned, and we voluntarily contribute to commons at our own discretion. Any rational analysis of the evidence of economic inquiry from either the communal or private spectrum will illustrate that both forms of research have largely approached the same answers and discoveries of the increasingly complex properties of economic activity, over time. The difference remains the choice of moral bias determined by the allocation of property rights in a collective body under the same territorial monopoly of property definitions and means of dispute resolution. The scientific method is likewise a moral discipline. It prevents the use of a wide variety of errors and misrepresentations.  This moral discipline will over time, because of the competition of ideas, suppress errors and fraud. Just as the market, over time, will suppress errors and fraud. The simplistic means by which the scientific method succeeds in this moral objective, is the requirement for operational language.  That is, a set of observable actions open to confirmation and falsification. Praxeology, likewise implicitly mandates the moral requirement that we can express any action in observable, empirical form.  It is likewise a requirement for operational language. Both the physical sciences, and praxeological science, place a requirement for operational language on all scientific and economic statements. This requirement for EMPIRICISM is what renders praxeology a moral science. As such: (a) Human moral intuitions, instincts, and norms are universally, a set of prescriptions enumerating the uses and non uses of property. (b) We can only make visible whether any action is moral or not, by operational language: determination of whether any transfer of property was voluntary. (c) The reason that we can perform a test of voluntary transfer is that as human beings we are marginally indifferent, and can through subjective experience, objectively determine whether transfers are rational for the actor. All the logical disciplines are moral disciplines, and all are instrumental methods, and we not only desire, but require these instrumental methods, because we in fact do argue and must argue, and must rely upon these methods, because those methods determine the use of property – firstly the property of our minds, bodies and time. We require property – albeit the distribution of property rights between individuals, families and commons varies greatly depending upon the structure of production and the structure of the family, and the homogeneity or diversity of the  population in all of the above. But regardless of the distribution of normative, or descriptive ownership in property between the collective and the individual, This is the appropriate and defensible argument in favor of praxeology. Mises intuited it. Rothbard artfully defended it. But they had to because they lacked the knowledge that we have today. And instead, unfortunately, they relied upon a priori, deductive certainty. A reliance which doomed praxeology to failure in broader economic circles – by simple virtue of the fact that all of economics cannot be deduced from the axiom of action without empirical support. Very little can be deduced from it. Quite the opposite. But, while we can deduce very little, we can TEST ANY ECONOMIC STATEMENT praxeologically for rationality and voluntary transfer.  As such praxeology is in fact, an empirical science, which we test by sympathy, not a rational one one. They got it wrong. Sorry.  Don’t hang onto whether they were right or not. Revel in the fact that we now have the ability to understand that praxeology is a means of measuring and TESTING all human action for whether or not it is voluntary and rational (moral) or involuntary and non-rational (immoral).

  • On the Reformation of Praxeology

    Praxeological analysis, and Austrian economics, are important because they make visible all transfers, and whether or not they are against the desires of those from whom property is transferred. Aggregate macro economics and Keynesian economics are important because they obscure the transfer of goods against the desires of those from whom property is transferred. But, both of these methods: Aggregate Keynesian and Austrian Micro, are actually moral forms of analysis, more so than they are different sciences. If one subscribes to the proposition that all property is and must be private, then moral decisions are a function of voluntary or involuntary transfer of property. If one subscribes to the proposition that all property is owned communally and we all rent it and gain commissions on its use for the benefit of all (as under democratic socialism) , then the distribution of proceeds from the rentals is more important to the moral code than ownership and right to such proceeds. The collectivist proposition is that all property is owned communally and that we merely lease it from the commons, and gain some portions of our commissions on it. The libertarian proposition is that all property is privately owned, and we voluntarily contribute to commons at our own discretion. Any rational analysis of the evidence of economic inquiry from either the communal or private spectrum will illustrate that both forms of research have largely approached the same answers and discoveries of the increasingly complex properties of economic activity, over time. The difference remains the choice of moral bias determined by the allocation of property rights in a collective body under the same territorial monopoly of property definitions and means of dispute resolution. The scientific method is likewise a moral discipline. It prevents the use of a wide variety of errors and misrepresentations.  This moral discipline will over time, because of the competition of ideas, suppress errors and fraud. Just as the market, over time, will suppress errors and fraud. The simplistic means by which the scientific method succeeds in this moral objective, is the requirement for operational language.  That is, a set of observable actions open to confirmation and falsification. Praxeology, likewise implicitly mandates the moral requirement that we can express any action in observable, empirical form.  It is likewise a requirement for operational language. Both the physical sciences, and praxeological science, place a requirement for operational language on all scientific and economic statements. This requirement for EMPIRICISM is what renders praxeology a moral science. As such: (a) Human moral intuitions, instincts, and norms are universally, a set of prescriptions enumerating the uses and non uses of property. (b) We can only make visible whether any action is moral or not, by operational language: determination of whether any transfer of property was voluntary. (c) The reason that we can perform a test of voluntary transfer is that as human beings we are marginally indifferent, and can through subjective experience, objectively determine whether transfers are rational for the actor. All the logical disciplines are moral disciplines, and all are instrumental methods, and we not only desire, but require these instrumental methods, because we in fact do argue and must argue, and must rely upon these methods, because those methods determine the use of property – firstly the property of our minds, bodies and time. We require property – albeit the distribution of property rights between individuals, families and commons varies greatly depending upon the structure of production and the structure of the family, and the homogeneity or diversity of the  population in all of the above. But regardless of the distribution of normative, or descriptive ownership in property between the collective and the individual, This is the appropriate and defensible argument in favor of praxeology. Mises intuited it. Rothbard artfully defended it. But they had to because they lacked the knowledge that we have today. And instead, unfortunately, they relied upon a priori, deductive certainty. A reliance which doomed praxeology to failure in broader economic circles – by simple virtue of the fact that all of economics cannot be deduced from the axiom of action without empirical support. Very little can be deduced from it. Quite the opposite. But, while we can deduce very little, we can TEST ANY ECONOMIC STATEMENT praxeologically for rationality and voluntary transfer.  As such praxeology is in fact, an empirical science, which we test by sympathy, not a rational one one. They got it wrong. Sorry.  Don’t hang onto whether they were right or not. Revel in the fact that we now have the ability to understand that praxeology is a means of measuring and TESTING all human action for whether or not it is voluntary and rational (moral) or involuntary and non-rational (immoral).

  • Propertarianism : The Formal Logic of Cooperation

    (There we go. Today was a milestone.) Universally descriptive, universally commensurable logic of ethics. We no longer must rely on moral or rational argument in advocacy of moral, ethical or political preference. We can rely on ratio-scientific argument under which illustrates the multitude of thefts, or suppression of thefts, being conducted in any action. Propertarianism, the logic of property, is the formal logic of cooperation.

    • Terminology
    • Grammar
    • Compactness
    • Explanatory power
    • Testability and Falsifiability (via Praxeology)

    Praxeology, when corrected under Propertarianism by the enumeration of all types of property demonstrated by human action, is scientific because it consists in the universal, test of rationality of incentives, by means of sympathetic experience. Private Property as the result of the suppression of discounts. The suppression of discounts leaves the only possible human cooperation as fully informed, warranted, voluntary exchange. And the only possible means of competition, the quality and price of the production of goods and services. Cause. Private property is a consequence of the organized application of violence for the purpose of suppressing all discounts, in all human action, regardless of sphere.

  • Propertarianism : The Formal Logic of Cooperation

    (There we go. Today was a milestone.) Universally descriptive, universally commensurable logic of ethics. We no longer must rely on moral or rational argument in advocacy of moral, ethical or political preference. We can rely on ratio-scientific argument under which illustrates the multitude of thefts, or suppression of thefts, being conducted in any action. Propertarianism, the logic of property, is the formal logic of cooperation.

    • Terminology
    • Grammar
    • Compactness
    • Explanatory power
    • Testability and Falsifiability (via Praxeology)

    Praxeology, when corrected under Propertarianism by the enumeration of all types of property demonstrated by human action, is scientific because it consists in the universal, test of rationality of incentives, by means of sympathetic experience. Private Property as the result of the suppression of discounts. The suppression of discounts leaves the only possible human cooperation as fully informed, warranted, voluntary exchange. And the only possible means of competition, the quality and price of the production of goods and services. Cause. Private property is a consequence of the organized application of violence for the purpose of suppressing all discounts, in all human action, regardless of sphere.

  • TOLD YA. Government hits me for 1.2M. ’cause of an error. Reality? Nada. not. on

    TOLD YA. Government hits me for 1.2M. ’cause of an error. Reality? Nada. not. one. Thin. Dime. Told ya.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-24 16:08:00 UTC