Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • WHY ARE CONSERVATIVES HAPPIER? Because the reality of imperfect human nature doe

    WHY ARE CONSERVATIVES HAPPIER?

    Because the reality of imperfect human nature doesn’t trouble them. They don’t want to change the impossible. The universe is not something they struggle with. It’s something to appreciate. They celebrate present goods over future fantasies. They struggle to improve their their family and career, not the lives of others. They break the problem of life into small pieces. Each family doing the yeoman’s labor of creating the smallest tribe possible:the family. And by creating a multitude of those successful small tribes, the greater tribe emerges from the sum of its parts, not the pursuit of an idealistic folly: an attempt to obtain universal homogenous belief in the pursuit of shared feelings, ideas, and goals. The progressive instead, runs on a squirrel cage, attempting to gain consensus from the multitude, never getting there, and feeling frustrated for having failed. Human nature is all but immutable. Our preferences are genetic. They are determined by the difference in mating strategy between the genders and the imprecision of the gender creation process caused by the difference in in-utero concentrations of hormones that enhance or diminish those gender-based emotional biases.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-16 09:56:00 UTC

  • WORD BUDGETS: Writing vs Speaking, and the Male vs Female myth. I can’t quite te

    WORD BUDGETS: Writing vs Speaking, and the Male vs Female myth.

    I can’t quite tell if there is any data to support the commonly quoted difference between men and women’s speaking budgets. It’s one of those things that’s so commonly bandied about that you’d think you could easily find data on it. But you can’t. And what you can, is pretty specious. In fact, it looks pretty much ‘just plain wrong’ when I read it.

    But there is another explanation; it certainly does appear that men and women speak more in different **contexts**.

    One thing we know that helps us understand those contexts, is that men have more friends than women, but women have closer relationships than do men. Men tolerate greater diversity of value judgements in their friends. Women tolerate less diversity of value judgments in their friends. Or perhaps better stated, men and women view the source of loyalty that defines friendship as coming from different behaviors: cooperation in pursuit of opportunities for shared gain, versus care-taking which requires bearing costs on behalf of the other.

    For this reason fear of ostracization is lower in men, and higher in women. Add onto that the men not only feel more comfortable taking risks, but enjoy and seek taking them — albiet the level of risk varies substantially. But conversational risk is very low among men. We think it’s better to hear a bad idea than fail to hear all the ideas. Women are more cautious because they are more sensitive to variation in opinion.

    In my anecdotal experience, in business meetings and debates, men speak far more words than women. In social settings, and in personal conversations, women speak more words than men. Men seem to enjoy participating in competitive conversations. They even artificially create nonsense-conflicts just to have something to debate. (sports teams etc). Women seem to prefer gradual subtle conversations where they can build consensus.

    The result of these different preferences is more of a difference in velocity than anything else. Women tend to ‘get there’ using their conversational style just like men do, but more slowly. Like everything else, men are built for speed. The extraneous is removed by evolution.

    It certainly seems like most woman I’ve been in a relationship with has greater capacity for speech than I do — and I’m pretty talkative. But I suspect that it’s a difference in the content and circumstance not the number of words. I”m not the only man who thinks it’s odd that his mate must revisit her dreams in the morning, and her daily conversations at night.

    But it’s good for a relationship when men learn how to feign interest in these things that we lack the emotional bandwidth to appreciate and comprehend. Listening is an exercise in providing what the other person needs, and what she needs is not comprehension and problem solving – it’s to ensure we’re committed to one another, and for her to organize her emotions by way of speaking them the way men organize our ideas by visualizing them. Chatter after all, is negatively correlated with successful hunting. Communication during hunts and war is visual, not verbal. Besides, that female revisitation of emotions is why women help us with our emotional problems when we have them. They’re more experienced at dealing with them. Our compensation is that mechanical devices and politics are not opaque to our comprehension. But I”m not sure which gender gets the better deal.

    We forget that we all start out female, and that the template for human beings is female, and that males are highly specialized versions of females. Testosterone shuts all that ‘unnecessary’ emotional processing off for males in the womb so that we can worry about doing dangerous things and making tools, and inventing pretty much everything, without about the needs of children or the danger that other women might ostracize us in a time of weakness, when we and our children need communal support to survive.

    Applying that word budget to writing: I”m writing about 8K words a day on average now, with an average low of 5K, an average high of 10K, and a max of 25K on rare occasions.

    I’m not sure what that means. I know that if I dont talk to people all day, I write more, and vice versa. I also know that if I am writing for a competitive argument I write more than if I write in the explanatory neutral voice.

    We are the product of our genes. The universe is fascinating. Life is a miraculous luxury. And every breath of it is worth savoring.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-16 09:44:00 UTC

  • Virtue Of Government Competition

    http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2012%2F04%2F15%2Fbusiness%2Fcompetition-is-good-for-governments-too-economic-view.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26srcQ3DtpQ26smidQ3Dfb-share&OP=195d78d3Q2FXVQ7DQ5CXTkmQ5BekkQ24Q27XQ27CQ20Q27XCQ2FXQ20%28XQ5CQ23Q5BLQ51Q7DQ5BQ5BXmkdQ7EQ7DQ24LQ24LkQ51Q25LQ5BQ25_kkTQ25bkeQ25_kZQ7DeQ51dQ7DQ51Q24Q5BQ25Q24kkQ25Q7DmkQ51kdLmQ25ZLQ7DVysQ24d6The Virtue Of Government Competition

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-15 00:13:00 UTC

  • Stratfor On Iran’s Strategy

    Depending upon your concept of the world: universalist democratic socialist, or hierarchical tribalist, or utilitarian economist, you might see US policy toward Iran in a different light. One thing is for sure: we are accomplishing for militant islam, on behalf of Iran, precisely what the Persians and the radicals have always desired — a restoration of the empire from the mediterranean to the Sino-Hindu border, and a vehicle for concentrating wealth via oil revenues that will surpass both the classical era’s means of concentrating wealth via agriculture, the renaissance era’s means of concentrating wealth through shipping, or the industrial era’s means of concentrating wealth through institutional capitalism and industrial production. We will have an expansionist, anti-rational, totalitarian civilization, operating on non-market principles, with which much of the developed world cannot compete. We will lose the dollar as a reserve currency, and as a Petro-currency, and finish the cycle of credit expansion, finish the Keyenesian economic era, and eradicate the ability of the west to pursue debt-dependent social programs. We will see europe need to remilitarize just when it cannot afford to. We will see the USA split between a hostile and patient china and a hostile and impatient islam, just when the USA is itself split by political, regional and racial discord. You cannot ‘spread democracy’. You can only spread capitalism and consumerism. Democracy is a unique property of the west, because the west is the only civilization to have broken familial and tribal bonds — having forbidden intermarriage for centuries. Democracy will never succeed except among families, tribes, villages and small cities. It is antithetical to human nature. Even capitalism is ‘democratic’. Nations adopt democratic republicanism when the middle class requires access to politics, and when the antiquarian political systems can no longer accomodate the increased number of people with economic interests. Republican democracy is not ideological, it is simply a necessity born of increases in the numbers of economic interests. For these reasons I did, and do, favor war in the middle east on an entirely humanistic, as well as economic, as well as cultural basis: We have spent five hundred years raising humanity out of agrarian ignorance and poverty, through the spread of rationalism, science, technology and the capitalist institutions that make industrial production possible. We must treat Islam as we did the Soviets and the Chinese communists: a militaristic, expansionist form of anti-market regressiveism. A threat to our existing way of life, by a mystical, tribal and familial empire, its culture and religion. Until the last, most primitive civilization has joined the movement, they are a regressive threat to all of humanity. They are the latest luddite movement — yet another variation on Marxism, and nothing more. An attempt by existing power structures, and existing cultural investments, to hold onto antiquity despite the obvious failure of their culture in the contrast to others. And while my libertarian friends do not like battle drums, they too often ignore the fact, that one must defend one’s market from non-market forces. Markets of the peculiar composition in the west, were made by man, by intent, not by accident. The institution of property itself requires defense of not only the property itself, but the institutions of property, and the market itself. Our libertarianism evolved within that set of institutions. And within that set of Institutions it is viable. That does not mean the same principles apply without. Those broader threats pose to high a risk. Ideology is for children living under the convenience of those institutions. Although I would argue that the attempt to contain Germany actually caused the suicide of the west, our attempts to contain the Russians, Chinese and now islam has not been so.

    www.stratfor.com
    For centuries, the dilemma facing Iran (and before it, Persia) has been guaranteeing national survival and autonomy in the face of stronger regional powers like Ottoman Turkey and the Russian Empire. Though always weaker than these larger empires, Iran survived for three reasons: geography, resource…

  • A Heretical Question? Do Women Have Too Much Power?

    GIVENS: Given that women control access to sex and access to reproduction. Given that women have a different mating strategy from men. Given that women determine the outcome of elections. Given that women prefer anti-liberty policies. Given that in the modern economy women are more easily employable than men. (Or rather, that the distribution of women is heavier in the middle, to the disadvantage of men in the lower two quintiles.) Given that women are financially capable of raising children on their own, and are doing so in record numbers. Given that the only sector in which women do not dominate is in the upper quintile of intellectual ability, and therefore the upper incomes in the private sector. Do women not have both in logic and in practice, the power to effectively enslave men by legislative means? Women evolved in order to manipulate one group of men in order to gain control of another group of men. The agrarian order changed that for a short time. Women evolved to seek the best alpha mates that they could obtain, then use sex to gain the resources and cooperation of beta males, once they have their children. Men could cooperate politically because they only differ in ability. But women differ from men in that they do not seek liberty to succeed in order to obtain access to sex and reproduction. Women already control access to sex and reproduction. So can men and women cooperate in a democratic order if it is possible within that political order to conduct involuntary transfers?

  • A Heretical Question? Do Women Have Too Much Power?

    GIVENS: Given that women control access to sex and access to reproduction. Given that women have a different mating strategy from men. Given that women determine the outcome of elections. Given that women prefer anti-liberty policies. Given that in the modern economy women are more easily employable than men. (Or rather, that the distribution of women is heavier in the middle, to the disadvantage of men in the lower two quintiles.) Given that women are financially capable of raising children on their own, and are doing so in record numbers. Given that the only sector in which women do not dominate is in the upper quintile of intellectual ability, and therefore the upper incomes in the private sector. Do women not have both in logic and in practice, the power to effectively enslave men by legislative means? Women evolved in order to manipulate one group of men in order to gain control of another group of men. The agrarian order changed that for a short time. Women evolved to seek the best alpha mates that they could obtain, then use sex to gain the resources and cooperation of beta males, once they have their children. Men could cooperate politically because they only differ in ability. But women differ from men in that they do not seek liberty to succeed in order to obtain access to sex and reproduction. Women already control access to sex and reproduction. So can men and women cooperate in a democratic order if it is possible within that political order to conduct involuntary transfers?

  • Libertarian Strategy

    We can solve for freedom by attempting to gain sufficient converts in order to create a religion – a means of rebellion against institutions. Or we can solve for freedom by attempting to create formal institutions as a means of preventing others from taking our freedom. The first assumes that freedom and its corollary, responsibility, are a majority preference. The second assumes that freedom and responsibility are a minority preference. Freedom as we understand it, is a uniquely western value, and is antithetical to traditional paternalistic and tribal social orders. So pick a religion, or pick a government, or pick both. If you pick a religion the state will defend itself against you. If you pick a government religions will rebel against you. If both, then you lose the balance of powers that places limits on either. So the choice comes down to whether you believe a majority of humans desire freedom and responsibility as individuals, or whether you believe the majority simply desires the benefits of the market economy as members of families, extended families and tribes. It becomes difficult to demonstrate evidence that the majority of people prefer freedom and responsibility. In fact, they seek it for themselves at the expense of others, almost universally.

  • Libertarian Strategy

    We can solve for freedom by attempting to gain sufficient converts in order to create a religion – a means of rebellion against institutions. Or we can solve for freedom by attempting to create formal institutions as a means of preventing others from taking our freedom. The first assumes that freedom and its corollary, responsibility, are a majority preference. The second assumes that freedom and responsibility are a minority preference. Freedom as we understand it, is a uniquely western value, and is antithetical to traditional paternalistic and tribal social orders. So pick a religion, or pick a government, or pick both. If you pick a religion the state will defend itself against you. If you pick a government religions will rebel against you. If both, then you lose the balance of powers that places limits on either. So the choice comes down to whether you believe a majority of humans desire freedom and responsibility as individuals, or whether you believe the majority simply desires the benefits of the market economy as members of families, extended families and tribes. It becomes difficult to demonstrate evidence that the majority of people prefer freedom and responsibility. In fact, they seek it for themselves at the expense of others, almost universally.

  • LIBERTARIAN STRATEGY We can solve for freedom by attempting to gain sufficient c

    LIBERTARIAN STRATEGY

    We can solve for freedom by attempting to gain sufficient converts in order to create a religion – a means of rebellion against institutions. Or we can solve for freedom by attempting to create formal institutions as a means of preventing others from taking our freedom. The first assumes that freedom and its corollary, responsibility, are a majority preference. The second assumes that freedom and responsibility are a minority preference.

    Freedom as we understand it, is a uniquely western value, and is antithetical to traditional paternalistic and tribal social orders.

    So pick a religion, or pick a government, or pick both. If you pick a religion the state will defend itself against you. If you pick a government religions will rebel against you. If both, then you lose the balance of powers that places limits on either.

    So the choice comes down to whether you believe a majority of humans desire freedom and responsibility as individuals, or whether you believe the majority simply desires the benefits of the market economy as members of families, extended families and tribes.

    It becomes difficult to demonstrate evidence that the majority of people prefer freedom and responsibility. In fact, they seek it for themselves at the expense of others, almost universally.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-14 07:44:00 UTC

  • Criticizing Rothbard, Or Criticizing The Abuse Of Rothbard?

    I criticize Rothbard all the time, but always for the same single reason: he did not solve the problem of formal institutions and effectively, he tried to advocate freedom be achieved through informal institutions alone — effectively via a religion. That’s what Confucius did as well. He could not invent politics so he directed the entire civilization to operate as a hierarchical family. But religions are means of rebelling against formal institutions largely by the lower classes, and those rebellions are limited to use by the lower classes. For the middle and upper classes to rebel, they need something to advocate that assists them in cooperation through formal institutions, even if those formal institutions are very limited in scope. And in our terms, limited in scope to the resolution of conflicts. Hoppe solved that problem. He solved the problem of formal institutions. That’s his genius. Hoppe’s weakness is that his English words are structured in turgid German thought, and his writing is not as accessible or organized as are Rothbard’s and Mises’ – nor structured as a social appeal as is Hayek’s work. But Hoppe has found the answer to government that we have been looking for — for two and a half millennia: how to create those cooperative instituions, without at the same time creating bureaucracy. Or, how to create instituions within the market, and subject to the market rather than insulated from it. When we try to advocate Hoppe’s work, we tend to advocate his line of reasoning, rather than the utility of his ideas. I think we do that because we’re paying too much attention to Rothbard’s approach to libertarianism as an informal institution — which again, I’m arguing is counter-factual: the majority do not want freedom, but increased ability to consume. So, both of these argumentative strategies are difficult, because those we wish to convert find fist, that the arguments themselves are ant-social, rather than just thought experiments to help us understand the difference between truth and norm. And second that the arguments are too complex and unnecessary given that the Hoppeian social order is actually quite simple. And any discussion of that social order serves to undermine the presumption behind government: that bureaucracy is a necessary component of achieving social order.

    Curt, … I don’t follow you. what is the problem of “formal institutions,” and how did Rothbard “fail” to solve it, and why is this … something to criticize him about? No one can do evertyhing. What exactly is the probem of “formal instituitons” and what IS the “solution”, in your view? And what has this to do with libertarianism anyway? — SK

    1) Three categories of institutions: a)Technologies: history, numbers, arithmetic, accounting, objective truth, contracts, interest. b) Formal institutions: laws, courts, banking, armies, formal organizations for capital concentration. c) Informal institutions: manners, ethics, morals, norms, traditions, narratives, myths, rituals, public rituals, and religions. 2) Criticize is a bad word I guess, you’re right. a) I think I dont really comprehend how someone can argue for a normative system that is against the expressed political desires of the many, even if only for status reasons, despite the fact that it would serve their economic interests, if not their status seeking interests — or their will to power. So I tend to view rothbard and mises, as did Hayek, as artificially narrowing the scope of the problem for cultural reasons — because of their sentiments. b) The entire argument from Crusoe on down is a useful thought experiment, but one can’t draw conclusions from it without also trying the opposite thought experiment: an island populated with men in which one desires property rights. THe island after all, creates property by definition if one man is on it.. So, the many-man experiment is more insightful. And the Crusoe argument becomes subject to the reductio fallacy. That’s the thought experiment that’s equally as informative. And from that one comparison of thought experiments, we would have to answer the problem of institutions. And I’m pretty sure we run up against the nasty problem of redistribution (or better said: dividends) if we explore that experiment as well. So you’re entirely right. It isn’t up to one man to solve anything. It is however a material problem, if we have created an ideology, rather than a solution. Ideologies are useful for obtaining the power to establish a form of government, even if that form is anarchic. But institutional solutions are necessary: both technical, formal and informal. So I’m criticizing perhaps the abuse of rothbard. He succeeds in creating the INFORMAL institutions. And hoppe the FORMAL institutions. Rothbard created the simple rules that are necessary for infinite application. He just didn’t solve the rest of it. So I’m not so much criticizing him, as much as criticizing a reliance upon the rothbardian rather than hoppeian solution set. 3) What does this have to do with libertarianism? I see libertarian (commercialism), conservative (manorialism), and progressive (socialism) sentiments as cognitive biases that are largely a reflection of mating strategies. (Too deep for this post). And within libertarian sentiments, ‘libertarianism’ is a rothbardian invention. Libertarianism is a rigid concept, as you’ve stated many times. Libertarian sentiments are much wider. And many political solutions can be classified as libertarian in the sense that they serve the sentiment if not adhere to the hard definitions of rothbardian ethics. (— Eds: added text follows –) Further, as I stated in the first posting, hoppe solved the problem of institutions without bureaucracy. (From a FB conversation)