She’s close. McCloskey’s close. It’s actually, that MORAL ARGUMENTS by public intellectuals, changed the in-group instinctual bias AGAINST competition, from an immoral and unethical practice to a moral and ethical virtue because it became clear that despite our instincts, and despite the immorality of competition, it produces a virtuous cycle. THis change in moral codes, despite being contradictory to our instincts, succeeded. For that bias tot work however, requires the nuclear family and the individual to form the productive social unit, rather than the family, extended family, village or tribe. Cities, where people could go to seek opportunities, generated wealth from trade, and the movement of people from the moral structure of the farm, to the new moral structure of the city, allowed increasing numbers of people exit the moral constraints of the extended family, village and tribe and participate as individual economic units in the cities. The reason that this new morality became accepted varied from country to country. But in large part it was made possible by the growing middle class, and a change in policy. In Europe this policy was demonstrated by Ricardo and Smith, and less directly by Hume. The colonies, which were entirely mercantile and lacking nobility, provided a vehicle for creating new forms of ‘nobility’ and therefore purely meritocratic status signals. Governments, eager to increase tax revenue, altered legislation and policy to support this trend (some of it bad, like breaking the common law’s prohibition on pollution). The middle class, who had adopted this new counter-intuitive moral code, slowly accumulated enough political power economically and therefore politically displace the landed aristocracy. In the case of the USA, there never was such an aristocracy and church – at least not one that survived the revolution. In england it merely meant expansion of power of the house of commons. In France it meant the murder of the entire aristocratic class, and the end of french contribution to civilization. In germany it produced. first a reaction to its conquest by napoleon. and second, a reactionary movement, as a defense against future napoleon’s by uniting the german people. Germany found cultural balance in unity where france had failed and unleashed the terrors and where england had bent itself into even more rigid classes to accommodate that rise. This process, (as I argue in my upcoming book), allowed us to force all involuntary transfers in society INTO THE MARKET FOR COMPETITION and out law all other forms of involuntary transfer. THis arrangement was generally limited to the family. But since the family was reduced to the NUCLEAR family in europe, this by definition meant that pretty much all of society except for children was bound by the prohibition against all involuntary transfers except by competition in he market. This is the singular most important advancement in human moral systems since the Silver and Golden Rules were articulated: Do nothing to others you would not want done to you, and if possible, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. [pullquote]There is no name for the moral principle of forcing all involuntary transfers into the market for competition.[/pullquote] We could argue that it is the copper or platinum rule. But that would be trite. And I have no particular instinct for naming it other than, the rule of the moral exclusivity of competition. Anyway. That’s one part of what I’m working on. QUOTE: “According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets and innovations, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. During this time, talk of private property, commerce, and even the bourgeoisie itself radically altered, becoming far more approving and flying in the face of prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn’t grow so dramatically because of economic factors: it grew because rhetoric about markets and free enterprise finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity.”
Author: Curt Doolittle
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Necessity vs Preference In Political and Ethical Theory
[I]t is all well and good to attempt to construct political and ethical philosophy as the family becomes the village, the tribe becomes the city with a division of labor, and the people become the nation with an anonymous market. It is necessary to do so. But preferences must compete with necessities. We may prefer something but it must in practice be possible. We can temporarily distort necessity, as we with fiat money – because we can. We can permanently distort morality by sanctioning competition as virtuous – because we can. But in human history there are many preferences and few necessities. Those tools that compensate for our limited intellectual abilities: our senses, perception, memory, reason, calculation, and planning are the necessities of human existence. We adapt our norms and institutions to those necessities. Not the other way around. We are not wealthier than our cave dwelling ancestors. The only human currency is time. But through the division of knowledge and labor we have increased the purchasing power of our time to levels unimaginable to those who came before us. [R]omantic, egoistic, anthropocentric vanities encourage us to believe we make directional choices in our evolution but we do not. We seize opportunities good and bad. We forgo opportunities good and bad. And we pay or gain the consequences – by trial and error. Then we congratulate ourselves on our wisdom, and justify to ourselves our errors. The future is opaque and kaleidic. At best, we can attempt to improve our suite of tools, and choose those norms and institutions that increase our sense, perception, memory, calculation, planning, and information sharing. So that we constantly narrow the scope of our trial and error, and in doing so, increase the purchasing power of our time in this earth.
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Notes From Hoppe’s Essay: “What Must Be Done”
SUMMARY: INCREMENTALLY PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING. [G]reat analysis. Not sure how strong the solution is. (It isn’t strong at all) I don’t like to criticize the master of our movement. He should have had one of us edit it (Roman Saskiw) because there are too many small problems with it. I don’t like mixing analytical rigour and moralistic language. It doesn’t help us. Not when there isn’t any need for it. We can maintain rational rigour in our movement. That aside, I’ll just say that either of my two main solutions is better. My solution is grander. But it’s likely to work. Partly because it’s grander. Because it has worked so many times in history. Because momentum matters. Because the majority adopt the positions of those they trust. I’ve tried to limit the quotes to the necessary argument, and clarify in brackets what required it.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe. What Must Be Done . Ludwig von Mises Institute. (2013) THE GOAL
[The] ultimate goal … is the demonopolization of protection and justice. Protection, security, defense, law, order, and arbitration in conflicts can and must be supplied competitively— that is, entry into the field of being a judge must be free. – (Kindle Locations 166-168).
THE ARGUMENT
Every monopolist takes advantage of his position. The price of protection will go up, and more importantly, the content of the law, that is the product quality, will be altered to the advantage of the monopolist and at the expense of others. – (Kindle Locations 95-96)
…once there is no longer free entry into the business of property protection, or any other business for that matter, the price of protection will rise, and the quality of protection will fall. The monopolist will become increasingly less of a protector of our property, and increasingly more a protection racket, or even a systematic exploiter of property owners. He will become an aggressor against and a destroyer of the people and their property that he was initially supposed to protect.” (Kindle Locations 74-77)
What happens [under democracy, is that] the territorial protection monopoly [is transformed into] public [from] private property. Instead of a prince who regards [the institutions] as his private property, [an elected official, who has the incentives of] a temporary and interchangeable caretaker is put in charge of the protection racket. The caretaker does not own the protection racket. Instead, he is just allowed to use the current resources for his own advantage. He owns [The right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance,] but he does not own the capital value. This does not eliminate the self-interest-driven tendency toward increased exploitation. To the contrary, it only makes exploitation less rational and less calculating, – (Kindle Locations 122-126).
…because entry into a democratic government is open— everyone can become president— resistance against State property invasions is reduced. This leads to the same result: increasingly under democratic conditions, the worst will rise to the top of the State in free competition. Competition is not always good. Competition in the field of becoming the shrewdest aggressor against private property is nothing to be greeted. – (Kindle Locations 127-130).
Under highly centralized democracy, … the security of private property has almost completely disappeared. The price of protection is enormous, and the quality of justice dispensed has gone downhill constantly. It has deteriorated to the point where the idea of immutable laws of justice, of natural law, has almost entirely disappeared from public consciousness. Law is considered nothing but State-made law— positive law. Law and justice is whatever the State says it is. There is still private property in name, but in practice private property owners have been almost completely expropriated. Rather than protecting people from invaders and invasions of person and property, the State has increasingly disarmed its own people, and stripped them of their most elementary right to self-defense. – (Kindle Locations 142-146).
Instead of protecting us, then, the State has delivered us and our property to the mob and mob instincts. Instead of safeguarding us, it impoverishes us, it destroys our families, local organizations, private foundations, clubs and associations, by drawing all of them increasingly into its own orbit. And as a result of all of this, the State has perverted the public sense of justice and of personal responsibility, and bred and attracted an increasing number of moral and economic monsters and monstrosities. – (Kindle Locations 157-160).
1) First: that the protection of private property and of law, justice, and law enforcement, is essential to any human society. But there is no reason whatsoever why this task must be taken on by one single agency, by a monopolist. [Instead]… it is precisely the case that as soon as you have a monopolist taking on this task, he will [of] necessity destroy justice and render us defenseless against foreign as well as domestic invaders and aggressors. – (Kindle Locations 162-165). 2) …because a monopoly of protection is [a violation of natural, moral, and economic laws, then], any territorial expansion of such a monopoly is [a violation of natural, moral, and economic laws]. … Every [attempt, or suggestion, to increase] political centralization must be on principle grounds rejected [and fought against.]. In turn, every attempt at political decentralization— segregation, separation, secession and so forth— must be supported. – (Kindle Locations 169-170). 3) … [the] democratic protection monopoly … must be rejected as a [violation of natural,] moral and economic [laws]. Majority rule and private property protection are incompatible. The idea of democracy must be ridiculed [,criticized, attacked, and delegitimized as systemic corruption]: it is nothing else but mob rule [ and organized expropriation, justified by majority rule]. – (Kindle Locations 170-172).
THE STRATEGY
1) one must attempt to restrict the right to vote on local taxes, in particular on property taxes and regulations, to property and real estate owners. Only property owners must be permitted to vote, and their vote is not equal, but in accordance with the value of the equity owned, and the amount of taxes paid.- (Kindle Locations 346-348). … all public employees— teachers, judges, policemen— and all welfare recipients, must be excluded from voting on local taxes and local regulation matters. These people are being paid out of taxes and should have no say whatsoever how high these taxes are. … The locations have to be small enough and have to have a good number of decent people.- (Kindle Locations 349-353). … Consequently, local taxes and rates as well as local tax revenue will inevitably decrease. Property values and most local incomes would increase whereas the number and payment of public employees would fall. – (Kindle Locations 353-354).
2) In this government funding crisis which breaks out once the right to vote has been taken away from the mob, as a way out of this crisis, all local government assets must be privatized. An inventory of all public buildings, and on the local level that is not that much— schools, fire, police station, courthouses, roads, and so forth— and then property shares or stock should be distributed to the local private property owners in accordance with the total lifetime amount of taxes— property taxes— that these people have paid. After all, it is theirs, they paid for these things. These shares should be freely tradeable, sold and bought, and with this local government would essentially be abolished. – (Kindle Locations 356-360).
3) Under the realistic assumption that there continues to be a local demand for education and protection and justice, the schools, police stations, and courthouses will be still used for the very same purposes. And many former teachers, policemen and judges would be rehired or resume their former position on their own account as self-employed individuals, except that they would be operated or employed by local “bigshots” or elites who own these things, all of whom are personally known figures.- (Kindle Locations 366-369). … Accordingly judges must be freely financed, and free entry into judgeship positions must be assured. Judges are not elected by vote, but chosen by the effective demand of justice seekers. – (Kindle Locations 373-374).
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FINALLY GETS ON BOARD I guessed china woukd hit the demographic wall in 2010. I
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/opinion/krugman-hitting-chinas-wall.html?hp&_r=0KRUGMAN FINALLY GETS ON BOARD
I guessed china woukd hit the demographic wall in 2010. I was wrong.
But a three year margin of error is good enough.
Who called it first?
Austrians.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-19 13:04:00 UTC
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NECESSITY VS PREFERENCE It is all well and good to attempt to construct politica
NECESSITY VS PREFERENCE
It is all well and good to attempt to construct political and ethical philosophy as the family becomes the village, the tribe becomes the city with a division of labor, and the people become the nation with an anonymous market.
It is necessary to do so.
But preferences must compete with necessities. We may prefer something but it must in practice be possible.
We can temporarily distort necessity, as we with fiat money – because we can. We can permanently distort morality by sanctioning competition as virtuous – because we can.
But in human history there are many preferences and few necessities.
Those tools that compensate for our limited intellectual abilities: our senses, perception, memory, reason, calculation, and planning are the necessities of human existence.
We adapt our norms and institutions to those necessities. Not the other way around.
We are not wealthier than our cave dwelling ancestors. The only human currency is time.
But through the division of knowledge and labor we have increased the purchasing power of our time to levels unimaginable to those who came before us.
Romantic, egoistic, anthropocentric vanities encourage us to believe we make directional choices in our evolution but we do not. We seize opportunities good and bad. We forgo opportunities good and bad. And we pay or gain the consequences – by trial and error.
Then we congratulate ourselves on our wisdom, and justify to ourselves our errors.
The future is opaque and kaleidic.
At best, we can attempt to improve our suite of tools, and choose those norms and institutions that increase our sense, perception, memory, calculation, planning, and information sharing.
So that we constantly narrow the scope of our trial and error, and in doing so, increase the purchasing power of out time in this earth.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-19 06:01:00 UTC
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QUESTION: UNIVERSITY RANKINGS We can rank universities by popularity and reputat
QUESTION: UNIVERSITY RANKINGS
We can rank universities by popularity and reputation (meaningless), by input criteria (assets, recruiting, and scope), by mission (arbitrary specialization), and by output criteria (career placement and income of graduates).
We know that universities largely sort, and don’t teach very much outside of each discipline’s basic rules of thumb.
But, I don’t really understand why, given any ranking, there are almost no universities outside the english speaking world in the top ranks, and those that are, are in the Lotharingian arc from England to Zurich.
Now, I suspect this is nothing other than the long term effect of anglo ratio-scientific empiricism, anglo imperialism, the resulting value of the english language, and the persistence of anglo wealth that results from all of the above.
But I would love to know if there is any research on this.
I’ve started with Sowell’s bibliography and worked out from there, but I can’t find an economic historian’s point of view on the matter.
Help appreciated.
Thanks.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-19 04:11:00 UTC
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THE ANSWER TO THE EUROPEAN MIRACLE She’s close. McCloskey’s close. It’s actually
THE ANSWER TO THE EUROPEAN MIRACLE
She’s close. McCloskey’s close.
It’s actually, that MORAL ARGUMENTS by public intellectuals, changed the in-group instinctual bias AGAINST competition, from an immoral and unethical practice to a moral and ethical virtue because it became clear that despite our instincts, and despite the immorality of competition, it produces a virtuous cycle. THis change in moral codes, despite being contradictory to our instincts, succeeded. For that bias tot work however, requires the nuclear family and the individual to form the productive social unit, rather than the family, extended family, village or tribe.
Cities, where people could go to seek opportunities, generated wealth from trade, and the movement of people from the moral structure of the farm, to the new moral structure of the city, allowed increasing numbers of people exit the moral constraints of the extended family, village and tribe and participate as individual economic units in the cities.
The reason that this new morality became accepted varied from country to country. But in large part it was made possible by the growing middle class, and a change in policy. In Europe this policy was demonstrated by Ricardo and Smith, and less directly by hume. The colonies, which were entirely mercantile and lacking nobility, provided a vehicle for creating new forms of ‘nobility’ and therefore purely meritocratic status signals.
Governments, eager to increase tax revenue, altered legislation and policy to support this trend (some of it bad, like breaking the common law’s prohibition on pollution). The middle class, who had adopted this new counter-intuitive moral code, slowly accumulated enough political power economically and therefore politically displace the landed aristocracy. In the case of the USA, there never was such an aristocracy and church – at least not one that survived the revolution. In england it merely meant expansion of power of the house of commons. In France it meant the murder of the entire aristocratic class, and the end of french contribution to civilization. In germany it produced. first a reaction to its conquest by napoleon. and second, a reactionary movement, as a defense against future napoleon’s by uniting the german people. Germany found cultural balance in unity where france had failed and unleashed the terrors and where england had bent itself into even more rigid classes to accommodate that rise.
This process, (as I argue in my upcoming book), allowed us to force all involuntary transfers in society INTO THE MARKET FOR COMPETITION and out law all other forms of involuntary transfer. THis arrangement was generally limited to the family. But since the family was reduced to the NUCLEAR family in europe, this by definition meant that pretty much all of society except for children was bound by the prohibition against all involuntary transfers except by competition in he market.
This is the singular most important advancement in human moral systems since the Silver and Golden Rules were articulated: Do nothing to others you would not want done to you, and if possible, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
There is no name for the moral principle of forcing all involuntary transfers into the market for competition. We could argue that it is the copper or platinum rule. But that would be trite. And I have no particular instinct for naming it other than, the rule of the moral exclusivity of competition.
Anyway. That’s one part of what I’m working on.
QUOTE:
“According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets and innovations, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. During this time, talk of private property, commerce, and even the bourgeoisie itself radically altered, becoming far more approving and flying in the face of prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn’t grow so dramatically because of economic factors: it grew because rhetoric about markets and free enterprise finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity.”
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-18 10:53:00 UTC
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OK. My Klout ranking is back to normal after the May-June focus on the business.
OK. My Klout ranking is back to normal after the May-June focus on the business. I can slow down the posts again, and get back to what I’m paid for rather than what I pay for.
Wait. I pay myself at work too…. (sigh) I can’t win. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-18 10:40:00 UTC
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VIRGINITY AND IQ (For Fun)
VIRGINITY AND IQ
(For Fun)
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10882-005-3686-3
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-18 07:16:00 UTC
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NAIL IN THE POSTMODERNIST COFFIN : BREEDING (Profound) People are mammals. Breed
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2013155a.htmlANOTHER NAIL IN THE POSTMODERNIST COFFIN : BREEDING
(Profound)
People are mammals.
Breeding people is no different from breeding dogs. We inherit our traits. Positive and negative.
Assortive mating (breeding) reinforces traits good and bad and prevents natural regression toward the mean.
Inbreeding (cousin marriage in pakistanis, inbreeding in ashkenazi jews) prevents genetic cure of diseases and defects, and instead replicates those traits. Likewise excessive outbreeding regresses the gene pool toward the mean again.
Assortive mating, intra-class breeding, and natural rotation of elites, produce concentrations of talents while supressing undesirable traits.
Our races are analogous to breeds. Our classes also.
The distribution of traits matters because status signals, selection, and cooperation, as well as genetic preference, are higher in group than out group. This is a near universal human bias. Humans act this way no matter what we do.
The market is society. We are all the same value as customers. We must all have the same value before the law.
But we are not all the same value as coworkers, family members or mates. And we are not the same value to humanity either in contribution or genes.
Humans began speciating upon exit of Africa. We were so successful that the speciation was incomplete. We are merely exaggerated breeds. Under mobile populations, industrialization, and consumer capitalism we have, as have the hindus, begun the process of speciating by class.
This matters because it requires a sufficient percentage of any population to both possess an iq greater than 105 in order for a division of knowledge and labor to form under contractual complexity, and for corruption to diminish sufficiently. It also appears that the Pareto rule is not possible to alter, because the majority of assets must be under the control of this more talented group.
A free society then, in the libertarian sense, can only exist in a population of males where 80% of the resources are in hands of those 20% with iq over 105 and there is no opportunity to overturn the allocation of property rights by political means. (Natural Aristocracy).
Or, egalitarian freedom can exist only where the numerical majority’s iq is over 105. (Enlightenment England, 20th century ashkenazim, east asia), And where that majority has political control, and that majority is prohibited from cousin marriage long enough that private property becomes a normative and trust evolves into the extra familial. It also means states must be small, homogenous nation states.
Freedom then is a ‘perfect storm’. Thats why its unique to the west, and high trust society is unique to the Small Arc from England to Switzerland.
POSITION
this doesn’t mean we return to the past. It does mean that we cannot have any future we choose because it is constrained by these necessities.
It means:
Redistribution as calculated by income, without constraining reproduction forces genetic, legal, and normative regression toward the mean.
Immigration outside of culture and gene pool is limited to that which integrates successfully.
The goal for any society should not be downward reproduction but encouragement and funding of reproduction in the middle and upper middle classes. And improvement in the quality of life of the lower classes as long as they adhere to a one child policy.
Time will take care of the rest.
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2013155a.html
QUOTE:
“Another difference between inbreeding and assortative mating is that the effects of inbreeding are expected to be negative, lowering cognitive ability, whereas the effects of assortative mating affect the high, as well as the low end of the ability distribution, thus increasing genetic bariance, that is, when high-ability parents mate assortatively, their children are more likely to be homozygous for variants for high ability, just as offspring of low-ability parents are more likely to be homozygous for variants for low ability….”
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-18 07:02:00 UTC