Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • Curt Doolittle shared a photo

    Curt Doolittle shared a photo.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 06:07:00 UTC

  • THE NEW HOLIDAY: FRIDAY THE 13TH : TEMPLARS DAY : BANKING AND LIBERTY (idea) I t

    THE NEW HOLIDAY: FRIDAY THE 13TH : TEMPLARS DAY : BANKING AND LIBERTY

    (idea)

    I think I’m going to celebrate every Friday the 13th as Templar Day! A ‘High Holiday’. 🙂

    Friday, 13 December 2013

    Friday, 13 June 2014

    Friday, 13 February 2015

    Friday, 13 March 2015

    Friday, 13 November 2015

    Friday, 13 May 2016

    Friday, 13 January 2016

    Friday, 13 October 2016

    COMMENT: FREEDOM AND BANKING

    If you have a bank, and you have weapons, you can form a state within a state. The mormons use an unpleasantly ridiculous doctrine to achieve this state within a state. But there is no need for a ridiculous doctrine. History is a sufficient mythology, and credit, and community, a sufficient incentive. People, money, and guns control geography.

    Banks are necessary for us to cooperate anonymously with one another: without understanding what each of us does. Money and credit are information systems, and a bank is a market for cooperation.

    TEMPLAR BANKERS

    “Though initially an Order of poor monks, the official papal sanction made the Knights Templar a charity across Europe. Further resources came in when members joined the Order, as they had to take oaths of poverty, and therefore often donated large amounts of their original cash or property to the Order. Additional revenue came from business dealings. Since the monks themselves were sworn to poverty, but had the strength of a large and trusted international infrastructure behind them, nobles would occasionally use them as a kind of bank or power of attorney. If a noble wished to join the Crusades, this might entail an absence of years from their home. So some nobles would place all of their wealth and businesses under the control of Templars, to safeguard it for them until their return. The Order’s financial power became substantial, and the majority of the Order’s infrastructure was devoted not to combat, but to economic pursuits.

    “By 1150, the Order’s original mission of guarding pilgrims had changed into a mission of guarding their valuables through an innovative way of issuing letters of credit, an early precursor of modern banking. Pilgrims would visit a Templar house in their home country, depositing their deeds and valuables. The Templars would then give them a letter which would describe their holdings. Modern scholars have stated that the letters were encrypted with a cipher alphabet based on a Maltese Cross; however there is some disagreement on this, and it is possible that the code system was introduced later, and not something used by the medieval Templars themselves.[5][6][7] While traveling, the pilgrims could present the letter to other Templars along the way, to “withdraw” funds from their accounts. This kept the pilgrims safe since they were not carrying valuables, and further increased the power of the Templars.

    “The Knights’ involvement in banking grew over time into a new basis for money, as Templars became increasingly involved in banking activities. One indication of their powerful political connections is that the Templars’ involvement in usury did not lead to more controversy within the Order and the church at large. Officially the idea of lending money in return for interest was forbidden by the church, but the Order sidestepped this with clever loopholes, such as a stipulation that the Templars retained the rights to the production of mortgaged property. Or as one Templar researcher put it, “Since they weren’t allowed to charge interest, they charged rent instead.”

    “Their holdings were necessary to support their campaigns; in 1180, a Burgundian noble required 3 square kilometres of estate to support himself as a knight, and by 1260 this had risen to 15.6 km². The Order potentially supported up to 4,000 horses and pack animals at any given time, if provisions of the rule were followed; these horses had extremely high maintenance costs due to the heat in Outremer (Crusader states at the Eastern Mediterranean), and had high mortality rates due to both disease and the Turkish bowmen strategy of aiming at a knight’s horse rather than the knight himself. In addition, the high mortality rates of the knights in the East (regularly ninety percent in battle, not including wounded) resulted in extremely high campaign costs due to the need to recruit and train more knights. In 1244, at the battle of La Forbie, where only thirty-three of 300 knights survived, it is estimated the financial loss was equivalent to one-ninth of the entire Capetian yearly revenue.

    “The Templars’ political connections and awareness of the essentially urban and commercial nature of the Outremer communities led the Order to a position of significant power, both in Europe and the Holy Land.[citation needed] They owned large tracts of land both in Europe and the Middle East, built churches and castles, bought farms and vineyards, were involved in manufacturing and import/export, had their own fleet of ships, and for a time even “owned” the entire island of Cyprus.”

    “The Templars were already a “state within a state”, were institutionally wealthy, paid no taxes, and had a large standing army which by papal decree could move freely through all European borders. However, this army no longer had a presence in the Holy Land, leaving it with no battlefield. These factors, plus the fact that Philip had inherited an impoverished kingdom from his father and was already deeply in debt to the Templars, were probably what led to his actions. However, recent studies emphasize the political and religious motivations of the french king. It seems that, with the “discovery” and repression of the “Templars’ heresy,” the Capetian monarchy claimed for itself the mystic foundations of the papal theocracy. The Temple case was the last step of a process of appropriating these foundations, which had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII. Being the ultimate defender of the Catholic faith, the Capetian king was invested with a Christlike function that put him above the pope : what was at stake in the Templars’ trial, then, was the establishment of a “royal theocracy”.

    “At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured in locations such as the tower at Chinon, into admitting heresy and other sacrilegious offenses in the Order. then they were put to death.”

    MANY MANY LIBERTARIAN LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 04:29:00 UTC

  • THE MASCULINE SPECTRUM OF TRIBAL ORDERS Adding Orthodox to the spectrum consisti

    THE MASCULINE SPECTRUM OF TRIBAL ORDERS

    Adding Orthodox to the spectrum consisting of:

    Orthodox->Conservative->Libertarian->Anarcho Capitalist yields:

    BIAS MODE MEANS JUSTIFICATION

    Orthodoxy: Rules, External Constraint, ‘Duty’

    Conservative: Reason, Moral Capital (behavioral capital), ‘Harmony’.

    Libertarian: Reason, Economic Capital, ‘Prosperity’

    AnCapitalist: Reason, Personal Capital, ‘Liberty’

    Different visions of the nature of man. Possibly, probably just reflections of class. And if that is true, we can get or use the data to prove it.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 03:39:00 UTC

  • VS ORTHODOXY : “THE IMPORTANCE OF MORAL CAPITAL” (insight) Conservatism relies u

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691037116/ref=tsm_1_fb_lkCONSERVATISM VS ORTHODOXY : “THE IMPORTANCE OF MORAL CAPITAL”

    (insight)

    Conservatism relies upon the use of articulated reason to critique the enlightenment program. Orthodoxy relies upon adherence to rules. The problem is that conservatives fail to understand the uniqueness of western civilizations. Aristocratic civilization is more fragile, because the society based upon the nuclear family is more fragile.

    From Jonathan Haidt:

    “Muller began by distinguishing conservatism from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the view that there exists a “transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society.” Christians who look to the Bible as a guide for legislation, like Muslims who want to live under sharia, are examples of orthodoxy. They want their society to match an externally ordained moral order, so they advocate change, sometimes radical change. This can put them at odds with true conservatives, who see radical change as dangerous.

    “Muller next distinguished conservatism from the counter-Enlightenment. It is true that most resistance to the Enlightenment can be said to have been conservative, by definition (i.e., clerics and aristocrats were trying to conserve the old order). But modern conservatism, Muller asserts, finds its origins within the main currents of Enlightenment thinking, when men such as David Hume and Edmund Burke tried to develop a reasoned, pragmatic, and essentially utilitarian critique of the Enlightenment project. Here’s the line that quite literally floored me:

    –What makes social and political arguments conservative as opposed to orthodox is that the critique of liberal or progressive arguments takes place on the enlightened grounds of the search for human happiness based on the use of reason. —

    “As a lifelong liberal, I had assumed that conservatism = orthodoxy = religion = faith = rejection of science. It followed, therefore, that as an atheist and a scientist, I was obligated to be a liberal. But Muller asserted that modern conservatism is really about creating the best possible society, the one that brings about the greatest happiness given local circumstances. Could it be? Was there a kind of conservatism that could compete against liberalism in the court of social science? Might conservatives have a better formula for how to create a healthy, happy society?

    “…Muller went through a series of claims about human nature and institutions, which he said are the core beliefs of conservatism. Conservatives believe that people are inherently imperfect and are prone to act badly when all constraints and accountability are removed . Our reasoning is flawed and prone to overconfidence, so it’s dangerous to construct theories based on pure reason, unconstrained by intuition and historical experience. Institutions emerge gradually as social facts, which we then respect and even sacralize, but if we strip these institutions of authority and treat them as arbitrary contrivances that exist only for our benefit, we render them less effective. We then expose ourselves to increased anomie and social disorder.

    “…As I continued to read the writings of conservative intellectuals, from Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century through Friedrich Hayek and Thomas Sowell in the twentieth, I began to see that they had attained a crucial insight into the sociology of morality that I had never encountered before. They understood the importance of what I’ll call moral capital.”

    Haidt, Jonathan (2012-03-13). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Kindle Locations 5075-5103). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 03:21:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/10/niall-ferguson-paul-krugman-gets-it-wrong-again-and-again-and-again-why-does-anyone-still-listen-to-him/

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-16 20:57:00 UTC

  • THE PROBLEM OF JUSTIFICATION IN PHILOSOPHY There is a pretty interesting play in

    THE PROBLEM OF JUSTIFICATION IN PHILOSOPHY

    There is a pretty interesting play in philosophy between justification and innovation. It certainly seems that most innovations are the byproduct of justification. That is, we seek to justify some objective and we search for means of justifying it, rather than seek what is in fact ‘true’.

    Because, what is ‘true’ in ethics depends upon (a) the allocation of property rights as implied in the norms, (b) the structure of the family and (c) the structure of production.

    I think some people gasp this, but most do not grasp the degree to which some of us practice either justificationism or critical rationalism.

    Mises and Weber, Rothbard and Hoppe, Hayek and historians, have all sought justification. The most interesting recent writer is JC Lester, who came very, very close to the answer of propertarianism, but was so enthralled with trying to justify his methodology, and libertarian bias, he missed the fact that propertarian reasoning makes all moral codes commensurable.

    It’s not that property per se, mandates libertarian moral biases. It’s that the distribution of property rights determines what is moral in any population. Individual property rights benefit the nuclear family, but they do not benefit the extended family structure. For members of the nuclear family, all other members of the society who also exist in, and cater to, the nuclear family, are treated as potential mates, or near relatives. As such, everyone is family. And as such, all in-family morals are applied to all extra-family members of the society. This is what makes the high trust society.

    So private property rights are inseparable from the nuclear family, and a homogenous polity, that can reasonably be expected to act as an extended family. This is why norms are so rigid in high trust cultures, yet require so little enforcement.

    There is nothing in propertarian reasoning specific to libertarianism whatsoever. Propertarianism is an explanatory system for rendering all human behavior commensurable, without linguistic and moral loading.

    Propertarianism is what praxeology would have been if it was complete. Because propertarianism is praxeology completed.

    That said, our ability to stay ahead of Malthusian poverty is predicated on our rate of innovation, and it is not possible to innovate and provide incentives sufficient to organize or participate in production of an innovation without private property rights. Just can’t. It’s just math. The friction is too high. And the future too Kaleidic for individuals to constantly make cooperative decisions on the multitude of possible ends to which we put our time, effort, and scarce property to productive use.

    Libertarian societies will always out-perform communal societies. And in that sense, they are the only societies that can defeat malthus.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-16 10:03:00 UTC

  • THE SEVEN LITTLE LIBERTARIANS 1) The libertarians that think that they can someh

    THE SEVEN LITTLE LIBERTARIANS

    1) The libertarians that think that they can somehow return to the classical liberal tradition, with old world families, women, and single parents in the voting pool.

    2) The libertarians that think that it is possible, if we just try, to convince people that our set of moral priorities and methods is superior then they will somehow see the light.

    3) The libertarians that think that we can incrementally implement policy that will gradually restore some semblance of liberty despite the various incentives that the lefts incrementalism has used to create dependence on the state.

    4) The libertarians that think that we can build a culture within a culture despite the overwhelming incentives for everyone else to prohibit us from doing so.

    5) The libertarians that think that moral outrage accomplish anything other than giving themselves a sense of superiority. When it means the opposite.

    6) The libertarians that advocate separatism as the only means of obtaining our freedom, while letting the others retain their communalism.

    7) The libertarians that want to use every possible tactic to overthrow and delegitimize the state so that they can force a libertarian society into being, out of nothing more than self defense.

    There is an interesting pattern here….

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-16 09:56:00 UTC

  • AND EXCELLENCE? I wish it was true. Cold shower. Reality. Knowledge and Decision

    http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131015132333-272091362-no-diversity-no-excellenceDIVERSITY AND EXCELLENCE?

    I wish it was true.

    Cold shower. Reality.

    Knowledge and Decisions:

    The fact is, that diversity comes with high friction outside the upper quintile. All of us in the upper strata of educated people rely less on social peer groups and more on abstract knowledge and personal problem solving than the rest of society does. But the rest of society relies on habits, norms, and peers, within their race, culture, and class, for translating the ideas of the upper quintile into practical and actionable use.

    Politics:

    Diversity promotes political conflict. When any demographic segment reaches ten percent of the population the members tend to seek rents via political or cultural means. And any benefits that come from diversity are actually from either (a) increases in immigration that create opportunity merely by increasing density and (b) the tendency of urban and intellectual centers to concentrate high talent in small geographic areas.

    Academic and State Incentives:

    Academia and government have economic incentives to promote diversity. Academia because it does not measure outputs, and because academia seems to sort and filter but not teach anything of value. So the more that can be put through the system, and merely filtered – at high cost to the individual and society for skeptical results, the better for academic businesses. But moreover, the failure of academia to do more than sort, without measuring output criteria, allows the individual to blame society, or race, or some other factor, rather than his or her having invested in an education that did not in fact educated him or her. But instead, created absurd debts for him or her to pay off, so that academic institutional employees can continue to sell defective products, while blaming the failure of that product on ‘society’.

    Government has the same incentives. To increase dependency upon the state so that members of the state bureaucracy can extract higher incomes from people who earn wages, organize production, and produce innovation.

    The Bubble Is Bursting Right Now.

    The education bubble is bursting. And with it, will go the bubble of diversity. That is what the data tells us. And it’s only logical that without artificially inflated wealth from the temporary technical advantage that the west had over the rest of the world, that a great levelling will continue to take place. And without the lubrication of wealth, those political and cultural frictions will become, as we see in politics today, overwhelming.

    The west requires universal adoption of the nuclear family in order to retain the high trust civil society. Family structure is the source of all differences in moral codes. And the destruction of the nuclear family has been sufficient to destroy the high trust society.

    NOPE

    You can’t have it all. YOu can have redistribution without diversity. Or you can have diversity without redistribution. But you cannot have both at once.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-16 09:47:00 UTC

  • I SAID. POP

    http://reason.com/archives/2013/10/14/why-college-costs-will-soon-plungeLIKE I SAID. POP.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-15 20:01:00 UTC

  • SEA CHANGE We have seen, since 1990, the slow accumulation of scientific evidenc

    SEA CHANGE

    We have seen, since 1990, the slow accumulation of scientific evidence that undermines the progressive fantasy. Overturning environment, equality, diversity, and returning to particularism, tribalism, and breeding.

    A few months ago The left’s intellectual leadership openly started discussing the impossibility of their project. A lament. They cannot overcome the majority moral objection to free riding.

    Since 2000 we have seen the slow development of a reactionary language. And a reactionary philosophy that incrementally gains momentum.

    Since 2010 we have seen the rapid accumulation of mainstream intellectual work, that while immaturely domain specific, follows the trend of overturning the progressive dogma originating in our universities as an alternative to the failure of socialism in economics and marxism in cultural morality, and therefore politics.

    I was one of the early movers in libertarianism, correcting the failure of Rothbardian ethics to find purchase in the public conscience by implementing what we have learned in science over this period as the basis for propertarian ethics. But others seek various forms of justification by multiple yet unsuccessful means.

    We are all participants in this transition. But it is difficult or impossible to know whether we are the greeks looking back at the end of their greatness or the english looking forward to their accidental empire.

    Each academic revels in his own innovation. His horse-blinders help delude him. Obscuring the fact that we all sense the same change but have not yet come to consensus on it:

    The end of the enlightenment project, the end of the marxist project, the end of the progressive project, the end of european dominance, and the end of democracy as a credible political model at scale.

    The end of the dominance of our world view in world affairs. A world view that never was very useful. Our success was science, technology, accounting and credit. Not our political system. Our political system was a temporary luxury made possible by our technological advancement over other societies – most importantly the african, ottoman, and american indian. An advantage we have mitigated by our civil, world war.

    Whether we achieve anything with this knowledge is open to question. History offers encouraging and discouraging examples.

    More later.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-15 16:47:00 UTC