Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • You may not be able to envision a government without politicians and or bureaucr

    You may not be able to envision a government without politicians and or bureaucracy. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be better to live under.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-16 00:50:00 UTC

  • WHACKY FACTOR BY DISCIPLINE My social universe consists of engineers, scientists

    WHACKY FACTOR BY DISCIPLINE

    My social universe consists of engineers, scientists, economists, philosophers, artists, marketers and lawyers. But I have to say that the ‘Crazy Factor’ is almost absent from engineers and negligible among economists, increases rapidly with lawyers, becomes commonplace among marketers, endemic among artists, and nearly universal among philosophers.

    I mean. That’s a completely unscientific observation. But it’s still an observation.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-15 16:11:00 UTC

  • QUESTION FROM QUORA: What is being done to prevent the development of a “cold wa

    QUESTION FROM QUORA: What is being done to prevent the development of a “cold war” between China and the US in the coming years?

    Answer by Curt Doolittle, The Propertarian Institute.

    The USA is attempting to allow China to peacefully rise by use of commercial power rather than military power. Commerce creates consumption which addicts citizens to consumerism, which then makes it difficult for governments to jeopardize without insurrection. That is the only strategy. The USA prefers the world consist of good commercial citizens.

    The fundamental problem though, is that China is a populous and very poor country that also contains conquered and rebellious territories, open to insurrection, and the wealthy coasts can be militarily devastated, and driven to starvation by blockading access to the South China Sea. The Chinese are quite aware of this vulnerability, plus they have a ‘chip’ on their shoulders from both british conquest, the failure of Marxism, and extended poverty, and the impact of those events upon the cultural mythology of Chinese superiority as the center of the world.

    Furthermore, their rise is complicated by the fact that they do not subscribe to the western moral code that currently is enforced by the United States on world trade — a code we take for granted but is antithetical to the Chinese. (We resolve conflicts quickly and rely upon honesty and they wait for opportunity using deception. This difference in ethics pervades both cultures.)

    The USA currently polices the world system of trade (largely the seas) because it took over the British naval bases at the end of the world wars. And petrodollars allow us to fund that policing. We sell dollars to other countries as debt, which they then use to buy oil, and then we inflate away the debt. This is how we ‘tax’ the developed world for our expensive military ‘services’. Services which they object to, but in particular, Europe and Japan do not object to not having to pay for directly themselves (nor could they).

    However, this system of indirect taxation which is breaking down, and the USA can no longer count on those advantages because of demographic reasons, competitive reasons due to internationalization of labor and technology, and monetary reasons due to the use of other currencies as petroleum and reserve currencies.

    General consensus among strategic thinkers is that the USA’s power will decline slowly and that Chinese rise will be moderated at some near point by simple economic pressures. The more radical thinkers suggest that most empires like the USA do not decline slowly, but very rapidly over a period of less than 50 years, and that the standard of living of the average american will be so significantly affected by the loss in purchasing power, that existing political tensions will be drastically exacerbated, sufficiently so that we will have our own problems of insurrection.

    In other words, both countries are more vulnerable to internal pressures due to China’s rise than they are to conflict with one another. The alternative school of thought suggests that when empires succumb to internal conflict, then they exaggerate external threats in order to pressure the citizens to stay united (see Iran for example). So that once the states and china experience internal pressures they will conduct a war over it. I tend to think this is unlikely because the USA’s citizens will have internalized it’s decline by that time.

    As I understand it, that is the current thinking in as short a summary as I can place it.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-15 15:39:00 UTC

  • FROM QUORA: Is Iraq an unofficial “vassal” of Iran?Edit Answer by: Curt Doolittl

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clash_of_Civilizations#Core_state_and_fault_line_conflictsQUESTION FROM QUORA: Is Iraq an unofficial “vassal” of Iran?Edit

    Answer by: Curt Doolittle, The Propertarian Institute.

    All civilizations have a ‘core state’ (see link below) except islam, which last relied upon the Turks as the core state. Iran wants to become the core state of islamic civilization, control middle eastern oil, capture the profits from it, and build a military strong enough to ensure it’s centrality, with those profits. If possible, the strategic route to making this come about is to create an alliance, dependency, or at least lack of opposition with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Pakistan and Iran hold nuclear weapons.

    That is the Iranian strategic objective.

    Whether or not Iraq is a Vassal of Iran is an improper use of language. Iraq is no longer capable of opposing Iranian strategic initiatives, and is subject to iranian political pressure. So it is perhaps better to categorize Iraq as successfully within the sphere of influence of Iran, and therefore contributing to the potential of Iran to become the Core State of Islamic civilization — against the wishes of the southern states.

    We must understand that this is not an unwise strategic objective for the Iranians. And it is possibly achievable if they can accomplish it without inciting the USA to remove them as a potential power in the region.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-15 14:45:00 UTC

  • FROM QUORA: HOW CAN THE UNITED STATES REMAIN A GLOBAL POWER? By: Curt Doolittle,

    FROM QUORA: HOW CAN THE UNITED STATES REMAIN A GLOBAL POWER?

    By: Curt Doolittle, The Propertarian Institute.

    I am pretty sure that this represents the best overview of the USA’s current circumstances that exists today.

    There are six factors that play into power:

    1) geography,

    2) demographics,

    3) economy,

    4) currency,

    5) technology

    6) military.

    Given these factors, here are the changing conditions affecting the future of US power at the present time.

    1) The United States has a strategic geographic location, is a large country, and has quite a few natural resources. These factors are is enough to ensure relative importance in global affairs.

    2) The USA (along with the germanic countries) is reasonably free of government corruption, and it’s judiciary can be counted on to resolve contracts. Therefore it has commercial investment strengths that are difficult to duplicate. There is no other place to put risk capital anywhere close to that of the USA.

    3) The liquidity provided by the USA stock market creates a ‘lottery’ that encourages high risk ventures, which is why so much commercial experimentation happens in the states. But statistically speaking, it looks very much like wall street in general produces ‘noise’ and little else. With the collapse of demand for complex financial products, and the rising awareness of the nature of the financial system, plus the backlash against the crash in order to increase taxes on the wealthy, this system appears fragile.

    4) The USA has the highest corporate taxes in the world which encourages companies to invest and make money overseas rather than domestically. Combined with the incentive to use overseas labor, these are strong incentives to create jobs elsewhere.

    5) The USA is plagued by an educational system designed for converting farmers to industrial laborers, and the rest of the advanced economies have converted to systems designed to create a more advanced labor force. Meanwhile a lot of cheaper labor has come online, putting pressure on the lower classes (unskilled labor).

    6) The USA benefits from a) status as a reserve currency, b) price stability in oil caused by threat of military intervention, c) status as a petro-currency, and d) the ability (because of these factors) to accumulate significant debt, then inflate it away rapidly. These benefits are all waning due to the USA’s relative decline in world economic power.

    7) USA’s budget is about 1/3 for Social Security and Medicare benefit programs, 1/3 for the military, and 1/3 for the entire rest of the budget. Taxes only cover 2/3 of the budget. 1/3 must be borrowed and inflated away. So, in practice, the USA cannot maintain the military complex necessary for world power unless it maintains an ability to generate debt, and inflate that debt away.

    8) The military infrastructure built up for the cold war is aging, and modern programs to produce innovative technology have been plagued with technical failures and very high costs. The wars in the middle east have ‘consumed’ existing ‘capital equipment”. The USA will have to invest in new technology and equipment in order to maintain and project power. In particular, the surface navy, which the USA relies upon to project its power worldwide, is an extremely vulnerable technology. We also lack the type of equipment to fight urban warfare, which dominates the future of life and warfare. And it is possible that the structure of the army is unsuited for the future of warfare (and the marines are correctly structured.) Western civilization has generally been more successful at war than other cultures despite being poorer and in smaller numbers, because of its reliance on technology, and willingness to rapidly adapt to technology. Technology is expensive. It is coming into question whether we can endure: a) a racially divisive domestic political ’empire’ which is clearly polarizing along racial and cultural lines. b) an aging population that requires high health and support costs. c) an unemployable unskilled class, and unemployably expensive low skilled working class d) a loss of relative economic power needed to pay for power projection, e) our status as a reserve currency, and our status as a petro currency, creating demand for US debt which is used to accumulate dollars which in turn is used for reserves and for the purchase oil. f) a decline in our abilty to issue and inflate debt as a means of paying for our military program that is not covered by taxes.

    9) Given the size of the economy and its geographic location, the USA will continue to hold onto relatively strong world power. It will however, be increasingly unable to project power, and its abilty to pay for programs necessary to modernize and keep pace with changing world powers is waning.

    10) In particular there are two scenarios that are obvious:

    a) if the Iran is successful in creating an Iranian/pakistani/syrian/iraqi block that becomes a nuclear enabled military force that is capable of dictating world oil prices, and therefore capable of demanding the use of any given currency, the USA will not be able to fund its military program, because all ‘profits’ from reserve currency status, and petro-dollar status, will be captured by Iran. (If I could only get Tom Clancy to write a book on that story. Because that’s the story people might desire to understand.)

    b) China is a geographically vulnerable country (with a huge chip on its shoulder due to its loss of position in world history, and its failure with communism.) It would be very, very, easy to starve chinese citizens and foment civil war there by simply controlling the south china seas. The chinese know this and are very concerned about the ‘conquered’ provinces as well as the conflict between rich and poor and south and north. China also has a significant advantage in IQ distribution and literacy that gives its economy an advantage in spite of endemic poverty. The USA does not have this advantage because of a different (lower) IQ and literacy distribution. The “bottom” quintiles of chinese society are much better than the ‘bottom’ quintiles of american society. As impolitic and unpleasant that fact may be.Edit

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-15 14:23:00 UTC

  • TODAY IS CELEBRATE THE FIRST CRUSADE DAY! July 16, 1099 – First Crusade: Christi

    TODAY IS CELEBRATE THE FIRST CRUSADE DAY!

    July 16, 1099 – First Crusade: Christian soldiers take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after the final assault of a difficult siege. The First Crusade was the result of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I’s appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim Turk advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire.

    Happy First Crusade Day! 🙂

    (And people say I have no sense of humor.)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-15 14:08:00 UTC

  • Is Iraq An Unofficial “vassal” Of Iran?

    All civilizations have a ‘core state’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The…)  except islam, which last relied upon the Turks as the core state.  Iran wants to become the core state of islamic civilization, control middle eastern oil, capture the profits from it, and build a military strong enough to ensure it’s centrality, with those profits.  If possible, the strategic route to making this come about is to create an alliance, dependency, or at least lack of opposition with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Pakistan and Iran hold nuclear weapons. 

    That is the Iranian strategic objective.

    Whether or not Iraq is a Vassal of Iran is an improper use of language. Iraq is no longer capable of opposing Iranian strategic initiatives, and is subject to iranian political pressure.  So it is perhaps better to categorize Iraq as successfully within the sphere of influence of Iran, and therefore contributing to the potential of Iran to become the Core State of Islamic civilization — against the wishes of the southern states.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-Iraq-an-unofficial-vassal-of-Iran

  • How Can The United States Remain A/the Global Leader?

    I am pretty sure that this represents the best overview of the USA’s current circumstances that exists today. 

    There are six factors that play into power:
    1) geography,
    2) demographics,
    3) economy,
    4) currency,
    5) technology
    6) military.
    They are all inter-related. Here are the major factors affecting the future of US power at the present time.

    1) The United States has a strategic geographic location, is a large country, and has quite a few natural resources.  These factors are is enough to ensure relative importance in global affairs.

    2) The USA (along with the germanic countries) is reasonably free of government corruption, and it’s judiciary can be counted on to resolve contracts.  Therefore it has commercial investment strengths that are difficult to duplicate. There is no other place to put risk capital anywhere close to that of the USA.

    3) The liquidity provided by the USA stock market creates a ‘lottery’ that encourages high risk ventures, which is why so much commercial experimentation happens in the states. But statistically speaking, it looks very much like wall street in general produces ‘noise’ and little else. With the collapse of demand for complex financial products, and the rising awareness of the nature of the financial system, plus the backlash against the crash in order to increase taxes on the wealthy, this system appears fragile.

    4) The USA has the highest corporate taxes in the world which encourages companies to invest and make money overseas rather than domestically.  Combined with the incentive to use overseas labor, these are strong incentives to create jobs elsewhere.

    5) The USA is plagued by an educational system designed for converting farmers to industrial laborers, and the rest of the advanced economies have converted to systems designed to create a more advanced labor force.  Meanwhile a lot of cheaper labor has come online, putting pressure on the lower classes (unskilled labor).

    6) The USA benefits from a) status as a reserve currency, b) price stability in oil caused by threat of military intervention, c) status as a petro-currency, and d) the ability (because of these factors) to accumulate significant debt, then inflate it away rapidly. These benefits are all waning due to the USA’s relative decline in world economic power.

    7) USA’s budget is about 1/3 for Social Security and Medicare benefit programs, 1/3 for the military, and 1/3 for the entire rest of the budget.  Taxes only cover 2/3 of the budget. 1/3 must be borrowed and inflated away.  So, in practice, the USA cannot maintain the military complex necessary for world power unless it maintains an ability to generate debt, and inflate that debt away.

    8) The military infrastructure built up for the cold war is aging, and modern programs to produce innovative technology have been plagued with technical failures and very high costs. The wars in the middle east have ‘consumed’ existing ‘capital equipment”.  The USA will have to invest in new technology and equipment in order to maintain and project power. In particular, the surface navy, which the USA relies upon to project its power worldwide, is an extremely vulnerable technology. We also lack the type of equipment to fight urban warfare, which dominates the future of life and warfare. And it is possible that the structure of the army is unsuited for the future of warfare (and the marines are correctly structured.)  Western civilization has generally been more successful at war than other cultures despite being poorer and in smaller numbers, because of its reliance on technology, and willingness to rapidly adapt to technology. Technology is expensive.  It is coming into question whether we can endure: a) a racially divisive domestic political ’empire’ which is clearly polarizing  along racial and cultural lines.  b) an aging population that requires high health and support costs.  c) an unemployable unskilled class, and unemployably expensive low skilled working class d) a loss of relative economic power needed to pay for power projection, e) our status as a reserve currency, and our status as a petro  currency, creating demand for US debt which is used to accumulate dollars which in turn is used for reserves and for the purchase oil.  f) a decline in our abilty to issue and inflate debt as a means of paying for our military program that is not covered by taxes.

    9) Given the size of the economy and its geographic location, the USA will continue to hold onto relatively strong world power. It will however, be increasingly unable to project power, and its abilty to pay for programs necessary to modernize and keep pace with changing world powers is waning.

    10) In particular there are two scenarios that are obvious:

    a) if the Iran is successful in creating an Iranian/pakistani/syrian/iraqi block that becomes a nuclear enabled military force that is capable of dictating world oil prices, and therefore capable of demanding the use of any given currency, the USA will not be able to fund its military program, because all ‘profits’ from reserve currency status, and petro-dollar status, will be captured by Iran.  (If I could only get Tom Clancy to write a book on that story. Because that’s the story people might desire to understand.)

    b) China is a geographically vulnerable country (with a huge chip on its shoulder due to its loss of position in world history, and its failure with communism.) It would be very, very, easy to starve chinese citizens and foment civil war there by simply controlling the south china seas.  The chinese know this and are very concerned about the ‘conquered’ provinces as well as the conflict between rich and poor and south and north.  China also has a significant advantage in IQ distribution and literacy that gives its economy an advantage in spite of endemic poverty.  The USA does not have this advantage because of a different (lower) IQ and literacy distribution.  The “bottom” quintiles of chinese society are much better than the ‘bottom’ quintiles of american society.  As impolitic and unpleasant that fact may be.

    https://www.quora.com/How-can-the-United-States-remain-a-the-global-leader

  • CONDI? Really? Please yes. That would make it interesting. I’d vote for her rega

    CONDI?

    Really? Please yes. That would make it interesting.

    I’d vote for her regardless of ticket.

    She’s amazing. And she loves football too. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-12 21:17:00 UTC

  • HOW TO ADD 20% MORE HORSEPOWER TO YOUR SPORTS CAR? (Make sure the tires are at t

    HOW TO ADD 20% MORE HORSEPOWER TO YOUR SPORTS CAR?

    (Make sure the tires are at the right pressure)

    I noticed that the driver’s side front tire was low. Went to the station to add air. And then read the fine print on the fancy tires. And found out that they were 20 pounds under pressure. I didn’t notice. Dealer didn’t notice. But I sure noticed the difference driving.

    (Sigh. Just sometimes…things like this make me feel like an idiot.)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-11 02:44:00 UTC