Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • BEING SICK IS NOT GOOD FOR ONE’S WRITING I haven’t produced anything substantial

    BEING SICK IS NOT GOOD FOR ONE’S WRITING

    I haven’t produced anything substantial in the past two weeks. Thank god I’m getting closer to getting it under control. I can understand a novelist or a poet still trudging onward, but philosophy is just too steep a hill to climb when your head doesn’t want to cooperate.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-29 10:09:00 UTC

  • What Are The Most In-depth Geopolitical Intelligence Websites?

    The best site, hands down, is STRATFOR. It’s worth the subscription.
    Between STRATFOR, Foreign Policy and the Economist, you’ll get the in-depth understanding.  To go for more granularity you have to pretty much subscribe to the think tanks in each country.  That actually who does most of the talking internationally. Especially between the USA and Asia.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-in-depth-geopolitical-intelligence-websites

  • WE GRANT OUR VIOLENCE TO THE STATE IN EXCHANGE FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS And should th

    WE GRANT OUR VIOLENCE TO THE STATE IN EXCHANGE FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS

    And should the state no longer preserve those rights, we may deem the contract broken, and put our violence to other uses that will obtain us those rights.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-28 15:17:00 UTC

  • Riffing On Scott Sumner: German Membership In The Euro Is Preventing The Advancement Of The Poorer Countries

    The eurozone excludes Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Britain and Switzerland. …Germany is one of the few northern countries that’s actually in the eurozone… And it seems to me that here you have a massive adverse selection problem. Because of Abraham Lincoln, affluent states like Massachusetts can’t suddenly decide they want no part of our fiscal union, and would rather just reap the benefits of our large single market. But Switzerland, Norway can and did make that choice. Britain almost certainly would, and both Sweden and Denmark might as well. In contrast, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia would like nothing more than to join such a union. And all the likely future expansion of the EU is into areas further east, and much poorer than even Greece and Portugal. Places like Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine (a country nearly the size of France) Belarus, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Moldova (the saddest place on Earth—even the name is depressing.) And did I mention Turkey? Indeed why not Russia at some distant point in the future? People often compare Europe to the US. That’s wrong; the eurozone is sort of like the US, although a bit poorer. But Europe as a whole is far poorer than the US, far more corrupt, backward, inefficient, whatever other pejoratives you want to apply. Even America at its worst (say the treatment of ethnic minorities) isn’t as bad as the treatment of gypsies in Eastern Europe. My point was not to predict the future, but rather to provide a warning. Once you start down that road [to creating a united states of europe], there will be constant pressure to go further. Quite likely at some point the northern European taxpayers will rebel, and we won’t end up with a United States of Europe. The policy will collapse. The eurozone really only has two options; a more expansionary monetary policy or a breakup. There’s no point in looking for alternative solutions.

    The argument I consistently make, is that of course Germanic Protestant northern tax payers will rebel. And likewise, so will germanic northern european americans rebel. Which is what they’re doing today. We call it polarization. Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, should leave the eurozone and germany should reissue the Mark. (Belgium is already divided between french and german cultures, and they despise each other as much as the french and english canadians do.) The success of the euro then, will be as a vehicle for poor countries to unite, and possibly (I say with uncharacteristic hope) focus on group improvement, rather than transfers from the north to the south. In fact, the most important and valuable strategy that the United States could adopt for the world today, is to dismantle the empire both domestically and internationally. The anglo people have succeeded in spreading consumer capitalism. We’ve modernized the planet. But it’s one thing to invent and evangelize a technology. It’s another to try to control it. Europe doesn’t need one federation. It needs two or three. Because germanic, latin, and byzantine europe are different cultures if not different civilizations. They always have been. They always will be. And multiculturalism is impossible.

  • WELL THE RULING IS UPHELD. AND I UNDERSTAND THE REASONING. I just don’t like wha

    WELL THE RULING IS UPHELD. AND I UNDERSTAND THE REASONING.

    I just don’t like what it means for health care. Glad I can afford to travel to exotic places for good care. Cause I’m going to need to.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-28 10:37:00 UTC

  • WATCH: NAME CALLING BY SELECTIVELY IGNORING FACTS (Krugman has written a manifes

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/a-manifesto-for-economic-sense/KRUGMAN WATCH: NAME CALLING BY SELECTIVELY IGNORING FACTS

    (Krugman has written a manifesto – a petition – blaming the private sector and demanding government spending, and repeating his claim that we the public don’t understand.)

    As laudable as the effort is, it’s still a half-truth: human beings object to involuntary transfers and ‘cheating’ no matter who is doing it, and which direction it’s going.

    People are not confused. They do not fail to understand. They just place higher priority on preventing moral hazards, involuntary transfers, and all forms of cheating than they do on any upside. People will gladly pay to deny opportunity to, or to punish cheaters. THey are demonstrating that they will pay. The rhetoric is just chaff.

    People do not trust their governments. Heterogeneous populations never do. They do not want to fund expansion of the government or taxes. Every politician I talk to says the same thing: the people are done with taxes. But they are exasperated by their government as well.

    The problem is not that people are confused. The problem is that the polarized political system is supported by equally polarized economists.

    The left economists will not forge a compromise with the middle and right economists and propose a solution that consists of fiscal, monetary, trade, strategic and human capital. The right wants one thing: to end the department of education, and federal control of schools. That will happen anyway over the next decade. Not to trade it right now is foolish. With that one trade they would release all resistance to fiscal policy.

    We have no statesmen. Only politicians and ideologues.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-28 08:52:00 UTC

  • GEM: FROM SCOTT SUMNER: BUT POORER STATES DON’T VOTE TO INCREASE TAXES “There ar

    GEM: FROM SCOTT SUMNER: BUT POORER STATES DON’T VOTE TO INCREASE TAXES

    “There are studies showing places like Mississippi receive massive subsidies from other states. In my view those data are somewhat misleading. If taxpayers in New York pay into Social Security for many years, and then receive benefits when they retire in Florida, it seems a bit misleading to view that as some sort of gift from the state of New York to the state of Florida. Ditto for money spent on things like nuclear weapons silos in North Dakota. Nonetheless, I accept the basic point that poorer states like Mississippi are net receivers of federal money. But Mississippi does not elect Senators who call for higher taxes on the rich with the money going to support poor people in Mississippi.”

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-28 07:08:00 UTC

  • What Is The Justification For Political Authority Enforced By Force?

    I’m going to try to clarify the “Monopoly Of Violence” argument in Propertarian terms:

    All human existence can be reduced to property rights.
    • 0. All human beings object to involuntary transfer of what they worked to obtain, by theft, fraud, or violence, and whether that transfer be direct or indirect.
    • 1. All societies have collections of property rights.
    • 2. These rights exist along a spectrum that consists of individual, shareholder, and collective property rights.
    • 3. Those property rights can be constructive, neutral or destructive. They can be just or unjust. They can be dominated by egalitarianism, expropriation, or meritocracy or a combination thereof.
    • 4. Those rights are met with corresponding obligations we call norms: forgone opportunities, manners, ethics, morals. They are, in large part, prohibitions on involuntary transfers of property.
    • 5. And these obligations are costs. They are the cost of the institution of property. People feel that they ‘own’ their institutions because they ‘pay’ for them.
    • 6. Since any foreign group’s portfolio, upon interaction with the home group’s portfolio, will by definition and necessity cause involuntary transfers from any home group, and the inverse, then groups use violence to both to institute their property rights and obligations and to prevent involuntary transfers both inside and outside of the group.

    Groups have different property rights. Even among libertarians, we disagree upon warranty, symmetry, external costs and the right of exclusion. All groups, regardless of their portfolio, pay for property rights with forgone opportunities for violence, theft, and fraud. And the promise of violence remains whenever violence, theft, and fraud are committed.

    Therefore, people are ‘justified’ in protecting their property. Their property rights themselves are a form of property. They are justified in forming a group that mandates those property rights. They are justified in combating a government that abridges or abrogates those rights.

    You can run on with this reasoning and answer almost all political questions. However, to answer yours, directly, we need to understand that one does not ‘justify’ power. One exercises it to achieve one’s preferences, and either has the power to achieve them or not. Justification is an attempt to achieve one’s preferences at a lower cost, or to lower the cost of maintaining those preferences. But that is all.

    So your question implies a universalism that is not present in political action.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-justification-for-political-authority-enforced-by-force

  • What Should Be The Rank-ordered Budget Priorities Of The U.s. Federal Government?

    (I agree with Stephan Kinsella’s answer to What should be the rank-ordered budget priorities of the U.S. Federal Government?. But I’m going to try to answer the question so that it’s possible to provide some insight.)

    Let’s look at this scientifically.

    I. The federal government, as constructed, has no vehicle for prioritization, or considering prioritization. So the federal government cannot prioritize expenses. Parliamentary government is constructed as a tactical organization with limits on it’s power, not a strategic one that must prioritize its actions. In theory an executive branch should establish such priorities, and does, but it does so in order to establish a legacy for the executive, rather than to cautiously administer the ‘trust fund’ that is the country. Instead, parliamentary organizations are vehicles for interest groups to request special claims which can then be forcibly extracted from others by means of complex involuntary transfers.

    II. We can observe what governments do when they are forced to prioritize, and when we make that observation, we find that all governments do the following:
    • a) prevent insurrection
    • b) protect their jobs
    • c) maintain the capacity for extracting income from citizens.
    • d) maintain the capacity for accumulating debt.
    They then threaten or improve those things voters care about (police, emergency, fire, school and libraries) or things voters need (roads, power, and sewer) which are operational, in while capturing as much revenue as they can for ideological programs, favored special interests, and additional personal income capture.

    III. Given what parliamentary governments actually do as tactical organizations, it’s not rational to discuss what priorities they should follow. We did not construct government in order to achieve priorities. Instead, we should discuss, what a government that followed priorities would look like, and how it would run, and how those decisions would be made.

    IV. If such a government could be constructed, and if it could survive attempts to circumvent it, then I suspect that the following would be the priority scheme that would be ‘best’ if we assume ‘best’ is something other than arbitrary. In the ase below, ‘best’ means, delivering the prosperity necessary for people to have choices, with the minimum cheating, corruption and rent seeking.
    1. Define a set of property rights (all human rights can be articulated as property rights.)
    2. Establish a geography within which those rights apply.
    3. Establish a judiciary for the resolution of differences according to the property rights.
    4. Establish registries for property (titles to anything and everything).
    5. Establish military, police, and other emergency service services to secure those rights.
    6. Establish and maintain commercial infrastructure.
    7. Establish an educational infrastructure.
    8. Given sufficient income produced from establishing commercial and educational infrastructure, allocate gains to the preferences of the people. (monuments, parks, social programs, etc.)

    In periods of duress, work backward from the end of the list to the top, cutting services such that the public is informed as to the importance of those priorities.

    https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-the-rank-ordered-budget-priorities-of-the-U-S-Federal-Government

  • MOVIE DATA Most obvious thing? Everything really

    http://indexity.net/vis/hw/EXPLORE MOVIE DATA

    Most obvious thing? Everything really.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-27 16:57:00 UTC