Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • 1) It doesn’t follow that a one time expense, followed by fees for use is the sa

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/conservatives-and-sewers/?smid=fb-shareFALSE

    1) It doesn’t follow that a one time expense, followed by fees for use is the same as redistribution that creates dependencies. the first requires action, the second does not. THe free-rider problem is different from the progressive-fees problem. Free riding is a negative signal that says free riding is a ‘right’, progressive fees illustrate that this is not a ‘right’, but a ‘charity’. This sends ‘truthful’ signals to both parties. And truthful signals are necessary to prohibit involuntary transfers.

    2) It doesn’t follow that investment in a commons is the same as state-mandated redistribution. If that was true, there wouldn’t be factories, universities, churches and roads.

    3) It doesn’t follow that investment in a universal commons is not conservative. Only that to do so out of charity at a cost, is different than to do so out of opportunity for profit.

    4) it doesn’t follow that taxes must be levied other than fees. (They don’t need to be.)

    5) It doesn’t follow that taxes should be put into a general pool and open to use OTHER than the purpose levied. (they shouldn’t)

    6) It doesn’t follow that the monopolistic state is more efficient than competitive private administration (it’s not)

    7) It doesn’t follow that funding the bureaucracy doesn’t produce externalities that are of intolerable cost. (it does – one of which is forcing us to spend time defending ourselves against other people’s political movements, as they seek to control the predatory state)

    Conservatism is a metaphorical language. Conservatives have one ‘curse word’ with multiple meanings: “Socialism” – state control of property and production and b) “Democratic redistributive socialism” – state ownership of the proceeds from limited private control of property. This ‘curse word’ is a catch-all for ‘those people that use the state to destroy aristocratic individualism and the status signals that I get from individualism regardless of my rank. And this is important. Conservatives do not feel victims because they obtain positive status signals from other conservatives regardless of their economic rank. This is obtainable in human societies only through religious conformity and it’s consequences, or economic conformity and its consequences.

    Conservatives do not object to investment in the commons. Conservatism places higher value on delaying gratification than immediate gratification – the formation of moral capital – which is an inarticulate expression meaning training human beings to enforce a prohibition on involuntary transfers of all kinds.

    Conservatism is the argument that we should not fund the expansionary bureaucratic state that out of deterministic necessity subverts our property rights and therefore our freedom, and therefore our ‘character’ – a euphemism for the prohibition on involuntary transfers of all kinds – because it is our universal prohibition on involuntary transfers both within our families and tribes and without, that is the source of western exceptionalism: the high trust society.

    Our high trust society is unique because we CAN trust others to avoid involuntary transfers, because of the pervasive prohibition on involuntary transfer that we developed under Manorailism by demonstrating fitness needed to obtain land to rent. Partly as a rebellion against the Catholic Church, partly because the church forbid cousin marriage and granted women property rights, in order to break up the tribes and large land holding families. Partly as an ancient indo-european tradition of personal sovereignty in the nobility, which became a status signal, and, thankfully remains a status signal in conservatives.

    Small homogenous polities are redistributive. Large heterogeneous polities are not. This is because trust DECLINES in heterogeneous polities. And trust DECLINES in heterogeneous polities because of the different signals used by different groups, and the fact that signals in-group are ‘cheaper’ (discounted) that signals across groups with differing signals. A strong state in a small homogenous polity that functions as an extended family and therefore with high redistribution, is entirely possible. But by creating a powerful state in a heterogeneous polity, it becomes necessary and useful for people to compete via extra-market means using the state by seeking redistributions and limited monopoly (legal) rights in order to advance their signaling strategy. (Which is what Dr. Krugman does, daily – advance an alternative strategy. A strategy that he does not recognize is from the Ghetto. And would cause a return to the low trust society. And **IS*** right now, causing a return to the low trust society.

    Because the low trust society is natural to man. Thats why it exists everywhere but the aristocratic west.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-16 01:26:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/08/left_s_big_mistake_about_real_wages_and_the_economy.html?fb_ref=sm_fb_share_chunky_bottom

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-14 02:18:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS : LANGUAGE HUMOR You know, I massacre the Russian language

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS : LANGUAGE HUMOR

    You know, I massacre the Russian language daily. It’s a source of laughter for everyone in the company. And of course, the retail staff we’re friendly with in the neighborhood. The people at the bakery just laugh no matter what I say.

    Reminds me of all the silly things small children pronounce as they learn to speak. Christian had a number of them. Avocado as ‘ah-do-DAH-do’ was priceless every time. Partly because he was pretty articulate and these things were rarities. I kept wanting to use his pronunciation myself. It seemed so appropriate for some reason.

    Russian language is still full of animal metaphor. My favorite is the nonsense about crazy squirrels distracting the inebriated, which I’ve written about here on FB before. (and I am accused of all the time, because I’m so silly.)

    And, to make matters worse, whenever Veronika says “squirrel”, or phonetically, “SKWER-el” she pronounces it “SKREW-el”.

    Which, reminds me of ‘screws-loose’, which in turn forces me to recall the crazy squirrel story, besides the obvious sexual references at the same time – a jumble of humorously related symbolism in a martini shaker that I suggests a pattern but I can’t sort it out.

    Makes me laugh every time. Every single time. And it doesn’t get old.

    It’s the little things that make life joyous. That’s the heart of conservatism: joy in present goods over future perfections. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-13 15:11:00 UTC

  • Kinsella’s Criticism of Locke, and My Explanation of Locke’s Reasonable Mistake, and What To Do About It.

    [T]hanks to Stephan Kinsella for giving me the opportunity to explain why Locke accidentally created the Labor theory of value. (From a FB post)

    I’m starting to think one of the costliest intellectual mistakes of all human history was Locke’s ridiculous idea that we own the fruits of our labor (or that we own our labor). This labor theory of property has led to all kinds of mischief, not to mention the labor theory of value and communism and hundreds of millions of deaths, plus the horrible IP system which also literally kills people and retards progress and imposes relative impoverishment. PLus, Locke anchored his theory in God-owns-us stuff, instead of rational argument, and he was a racist and pro-slaver. Meh. Lockean homesteading is correct, but not for Locke’s reasons. I’m going to do a long blog post about this.

    He needed to justify the middle class takeover of property from the aristocracy. To put a fork in feudalism. In the church. In the feudal commons. And to do that he had to justify ACTION as the source of property ownership. And he made the obvious logical leap that confused ownership with (a) subjective value, (b) exchange value and (c) market value. Which to us, is absurd, because we work to expose properties of the market in order to illustrate the evils of the middle class and proletarian states. Each of which attempts to reconstruct that aristocratic commons under different administrative ownership – full of sound and fury but changing nothing. But he wasn’t trying to do [what we are – expose the problem of the middle class and proletarian states]. So he didn’t have the need to disentangle the spectrum that we call ‘value’. (a,b and c above.) You’re right that he was imperfect and that there have been consequences to that imperfection. [B]ut to some degree, our emphasis on subjective value alone creates a similar problem. 1) Subjective value is immeasureable. (psychological) 2) Exchange value is incomensurable (barter: visible but incommensurable )) 3) Market value is calculable. (prices: visible, commensurable) I think, that when we libertarians use imprecise language that we make Hume’s mistake. We dont go deep enough and create confusion: political externalities. Just like he did. Because we do not illustrate the problems that the market solves by commensurability. Instead we think subjective value is self evident. And it may be. But it is incomplete. And therefore insufficient to support our claims. This is the same problem we have with Rothbardian ethics and Misesian Praxeology. Theyre incomplete as stated. And if incomplete they cannot be apodeictically certain as we claim. Too deep perhaps. More simply: There is more to value than subjectivity. [Subjectivity is but one point on a spectrum.]

  • “YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE, EXPRESSING ITSELF AS A HUMAN, FOR A LITTLE WHILE” Humans:

    “YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE, EXPRESSING ITSELF AS A HUMAN, FOR A LITTLE WHILE”

    Humans: the universe’s fascinating, and possibly unique experiment.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-11 01:42:00 UTC

  • Liberty Isn’t Inherent. It’s unnatural. We create it with Organized Violence.

    Liberty isnt’ ‘inherent’. Liberty is created by force and held by force. And no people without an armed militia to do so has even had liberty. Property is ‘inherent’ in the sense that it’s necessary, and that the mind is organized to make use of it. But liberty, which is the universal prohibition on the involuntary transfer of property, is a construct made and held by the will to use violence. Liberty is unnatural to man. That’s why it doesn’t exist outside of a few cases in western history. Liberty produces peace because conflict must be resolved in the market. Pacifist libertarianism is not only illogical, and counter to the evidence, but it’s suicidal. Don’t buy into the christian nonsense in libertarian theory. Liberty is a product of the application of violence. It always has been and it always will be.”

  • Propertarian Definition: REVOLUTION

    1) SOCIETY: A society is an organization. It is an organization of people by norms, using exclusion from, and inclusion in, opportunities to gain adherence to norms. 2) GOVERNMENT: A government is an organization. it is an organization of people who make decisions over the use of property using a bureaucracy that operates by rules, and violence to ensure those inside and outside the bureaucracy obey the decisions and rules. 3) MARKET: A market is an organization. It is an organization of people by the use and allocation of resources using the incentives produced by prices, and the promise of deprivation or benefit by adhering to the incentives produced by prices. 4) CORRUPTION: In any bureaucratic organization, some individuals have greater access to rent-seeking (corruption) than other individuals. 5) PARTIAL MONOPOLY RENTS: In any market organization, some individuals have greater access to the bureaucracy and can therefore obtain licenses for rents (partial monopolies). 6) REVOLUTION: A revolution is a replacement of individuals in a GOVERNMENT by a different set of individuals, who allocate property differently to different people, using the same or a different bureaucracy according to the same or different rules. (Revolutions are very expensive and societies rarely recover from them without the passage of generations.) Revolutions occur when one group of individuals outside the government has greater economic power than the individuals inside the government, and seek control over the government to perpetuate and improve their organizations. a) a market is a continuous reordering of society – revolutions are called ‘corrections’. b) a society is a continuous revolution – revolutions are called ‘reformations’. c) Government’s are a process of calcification because of: i) bureaucracies that stagnate rather than contracted private services that adapt, ii) laws that do not expire when irrelevant, rather than contracts that do when fulfilled. iii) Taxes regardless of the effect of the government, rather than commissions because of the productivity of the government. 7) IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY: All groups need decision makers. Decision makers must consolidate power across a network of alliances in order to make decisions. A bureaucracy is necessary to support conformity to the organization. Once the organization is stable, all individuals inside it seek rents, and the organization exists for the purpose of self perpetuation rather than the fulfillment of its charter. NOTE: OH. And remember: all emotions are responses to changes in allocation of property. ***The mind is a property engine.*** Purportedly Moral language is just a way of trying to steal from one another and get away with it. :)”

  • A Propertarian Definition of Ruthless

    “ruth·less /ˈro͞oTHləs/ Adjective Having or showing no pity or compassion for others. feeling or showing no mercy; Synonyms merciless – pitiless – unmerciful – remorseless Propertarian translation: disregard for externalities. Different from ‘cruel’ which is to intentionally cause externalities.”

  • The Self Deception Of The Enlightenment View Of Man

    The so called enlightenment is a mental self deception for the purpose of obtaining signals at a discount and nothing more. The enlightenment view of man was a myth invented to justify the taking if power from the landed nobility. It was that aristocracy that created western excellencies that made us unique in the world, and that we now spend for signaling discounts. Enlightenment principles are genocidal. And we see that in the reproductive data. Liberals don’t breed.

  • On Rent Seeking

    RENT SEEKING In public choice theory as well as in economics, rent-seeking means seeking to increase one’s share of existing wealth without creating new wealth. Simple Version: “Corruption from outside the government inside of inside the government.”

    NOUN 1. the fact or practice of manipulating public policy or economic conditions as a strategy for increasing profits. “cronyism and rent-seeking have become an integral part of the way our biggest companies do business”

    ADJECTIVE 1. engaging in or involving the manipulation of public policy or economic conditions as a strategy for increasing profits. “rent-seeking lobbyists” Rent-seeking results in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth-creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, and potential national decline. [I]n its original sense, rent seeking is the act of gaining partial ownership of land in order to gain control of a part of its production. In government it is the act of gaining privileges, redistribution or partial monopolies. In its broadest sense it is the act of obtaining some sort if claim on the productivity of others rather than producing something ones self, or through voluntary exchange. We all seek rents. We all seek opportunity for benefitting from either the actions of our organizations, the actions of others, or the grant of state state monopolies. Women seek mates as monetary rents and men to ease the burden of childrearing. We all seek rents. We could argue that rent seeking is the primary incentive for cooperation. Because so few of us are productive enough through direct exchange of our efforts. The only rent thats totally moral is interest. Interest is free of involuntary transfer. Interest, in the sense that we rent money to others, contrary to our superstitions, is moral. Now, It is possible to seek rents via interest. Either through usury or through leveraging the state’s fiat money. One can collect interest on production. On can collect interest on consumption. Neither of these things is necessary. Both are voluntary. Neither produce negative externalities. They create whole sequences of positive externalities. But collecting interest on externalities is immoral if it creates externalities that produce involuntary transfers. Rothbards ghetto ethics actually encourage involuntary transfers. Under the false presumption that the market will solve the problem through competition. But Since all things being equal, profit from externalities is greater than the same loan without externalities, just the opposite is true. The market will encourage externalities. Also, ghetto ethics assume that judges will not hold people accountable for those externalities and require restitution of them. But they have and will. Because it is consistent with the ethics of property to do so.