Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • EMPLOYMENT TO POPULATION RATIO

    EMPLOYMENT TO POPULATION RATIO

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-01 13:06:00 UTC

  • THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT The purpose of good government is to deny people acces

    THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT

    The purpose of good government is to deny people access to power. To deny people access to violence. To deny people access to fraud. To deny people access to theft. To deny people the ability to abuse ‘norms’. The best government denies people all possible means of pursuing self interest except through the service of each other in the market.

    Now, it is true that there are efforts that are relatively difficult to impossible to undertake without the structure of government, because the privatization of contribution to the commons must be prohibited in all forms of contract. And unlike entirely private goods and private contracts, it is possible to privatize (cheat) from from the public contributions to the commons. But this again, is a negative. Individuals do not need government to conduct these investments. They only need a forum for creating public contracts that bar all members of the citizenry from privatization (theft) of the commons being created by the investment.

    In the end analysis, this means, that the problem of government is the creation of law, and the use of buraucracy rather than contract and private services. Contracts have terms. They expire. They can be fulfilled. They cannot be modified at will by later legislatures. Private firms must survive competition. THey can die off. They cannot become a parasite on investors (the public.)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-01 03:44:00 UTC

  • POLITICAL TRIBALISM IN THE US VS UKRAINE Even in the UK, where I feel more at ho

    POLITICAL TRIBALISM IN THE US VS UKRAINE

    Even in the UK, where I feel more at home than in the states, I don’t feel about the people the same way I do here. I literally want to hug them at random while walking down the street. THey are beautiful, sweet and wonderful. Partly because metaphysically speaking, they naturally think about government the way that we libertarians do: it’s a corrupt enterprise. And given that it’s a corrupt enterprise we must rely upon personal relationships. Personal relationships then, rather than abstract principles, determine the nature and content of communication between people. The degree to which americans are essentially ‘religious’ about social order is only evident to me in this dramatic contrast, where people have zero faith at all in such abstractions. For all american talk about freedom and liberty, we willfully oppress ourselves from both right and left. And while the political class here is openly predatory and self interested in paternal familialism, the american political class is just as predatory and self interested in ideological tribalism. It’s just the same instinct and process devoid of genetic preference, and obscured by ideological abstraction.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-31 07:38:00 UTC

  • EXPERIENCES Life is a collection of them. Every man envies and desires this one.

    EXPERIENCES

    Life is a collection of them.

    Every man envies and desires this one. And having lived it, they should.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-30 20:01:00 UTC

  • INFOGRAPHIC

    http://dmarron.com/2012/10/29/the-partisan-and-ideological-makeup-of-congress/AWESOME INFOGRAPHIC

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-30 15:28:00 UTC

  • SCARCITY IN EVERYTHING “The single most exciting thing you encounter in governme

    SCARCITY IN EVERYTHING

    “The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare.” ~Daniel Patrick Moynihan

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-29 08:05:00 UTC

  • EFFECT IS JUST CHILDHOOD ADVANCEMENT. ADULTS IN THE AGGREGATE ARE STILL GETTING

    http://menghusblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/ability-differentials-between-nations-are-unlikely-to-disappear/FLYNN EFFECT IS JUST CHILDHOOD ADVANCEMENT. ADULTS IN THE AGGREGATE ARE STILL GETTING ‘DUMBER’ BECAUSE OF DIFFERENCES IN BREEDING RATES

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-29 05:54:00 UTC

  • WHY UKRAINIANS DISLIKE RUSSIANS You know, over the past month, I’ve seen about a

    WHY UKRAINIANS DISLIKE RUSSIANS

    You know, over the past month, I’ve seen about a dozen incidents so far of some drunk Russian male douchebag looking for a fight. Last night was typical. The guy tried to leave the restaurant without paying his bill. He had to send a friend to get money for him from an ATM. When he counted out the money on the table, he distracted the waitress and then deftly pocketed some of it again. Then he accused the waitress of stealing from him, when she counted the money and came up short. He claimed injustice and called on his friends. I think three or four of them came as supporters.

    Things are odd here: in the states if anything like this happened, the staff would quickly call the police or bouncers and move the scene out of view. THe police would document the facts that they could collect, force the idiots to leave the premises and let the courts resolve the conflict. But here, I don’t know why, the argument went on for more than an hour in the restaurant, while patient customers ignored it. The security guards were as patient as saints. The managers were overly deliberative. The Bartender would have happily gotten into a brawl. The waitresses formed a female mob around them (women do everything here.)

    So, aside from being invaded by these people, conquered by them, forced to learn their language – they still have to put up with fight-seeking drunken scumbags on a daily basis. And it’s sad. The people here are so sweet, patient and gentle.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-27 06:23:00 UTC

  • Curt Doolittle shared a photo

    Curt Doolittle shared a photo.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-27 06:09:00 UTC

  • THE THREE PROPERTIES OF ART: 1) NARRATIVE – VALUE JUDGEMENTS (CONCEPTUAL CONTENT

    THE THREE PROPERTIES OF ART:

    1) NARRATIVE – VALUE JUDGEMENTS (CONCEPTUAL CONTENT),

    2) DECORATION – PATTERN AND FERTILITY (AESTHETIC CONTENT),

    3) CRAFT – MASTERY OF MATERIALS (MATERIAL SCIENCE CONTENT)

    Art carries myth, and value judgment. It is a symbolic narrative. Decoration carries patterns. Or it conveys the idea of fertility, plenty, or evidence of human effort or care, which to humans, are the universal symbols for beauty. Craft is an expression of material science: our mastery of the materials themselves.

    These three differences in content demarcate the fine arts from the decorative arts, from craft. “High Art” combines all three dimensions of concept, aesthetic, and craft, for the purpose of creating cultural unity.

    Almost all educated people can use these techniques to evaluate any artistic creation. a) what is the mythical, political, philosophical, narrative content? b) Are patterns (composition) and beauty (presence of resources such as fertility) rendered with sophistication and insight? c) how craftsmanly is the work produced? if you answer these three questions any work can be judged – and the nonsense that you should just ‘feel’ art and fail to understanding it simply a marketing ploy by hucksters.

    Three pressures have devolved our high arts.

    1) The Medium That Is Movies

    Movies are so profitable, seen so widely, distributed so cheaply, naturally narrative, and aesthetically effective that they have absorbed almost the entire artistic production of the nation. All prior arts seem iconic and quaint by comparison.

    But the internationalization of movies has forced the eradication of the western mythological narrative from our scripts. Western heroism is appealing to males everywhere. But western exceptionalism is a curse. This problem is fascinating and threatens the industry because only blockbusters draw large crowds, but the heroic content of movies is limited to either familial sentiments, zombies, or aliens, because we can no longer criticize or demonize the competing heroic symbolism of other cultures given the need to exploit their population as a market.

    2) Economics

    The demand for decorative arts in the home, and craftsmanship (design of household goods) because of the vast numbers of the populace that have joined the consumer (middle) classes, has created demand for inexpensive decorative arts for every social class, each of which has different value judgements. The decrease in prices from industrial production has made it possible for more people to enter the arts, but at the cost of an inability of the market to sufficiently filter out would-be artists incapable of synthesizing art, design, and craft.

    3) The European cultural loss of identity and self confidence.

    The combination of socialism’s pressure for equality rather than excellence, feminism’s pressure to demonize christian white males, and the postwar self hatred of our aristocratic western origins have conspired not only to take power in government but to redefine beauty not as excellence but as rebellion.

    The myths that gave rise to our desire for excellence, greatness, and the high-trust-society, have been driven out of fashion by consumerism, socialism, feminism, and self doubt.

    We have, as a tribe, race, and people, surrendered our myths to the age of skepticism – when all cultures, along with their arts, go to die.

    But that should not prevent the few of us who aspire to excellence from acquiring the skill with which to analyze, interpret, and make judgements about the arts, using the very simple method I have outlined here:

    Narrative and its value judgements.

    Design and it’s aesthetic devices.

    Craft and it’s material devices.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-27 05:47:00 UTC