Author: Curt Doolittle

“If instead, our government operated as a bank and insurance company, it would be empirical, calculative and specific rather than rational and deliberative, and general. As such, it would be far less easy to rely upon supposedly moral arguments, that are in effect, universally, without exception, forms of deception or convenient rationalizations and justifications for either theft, class warfare, or corruption.”

http://www.capitalismv3.com/?p=2556Three articles on money #2 : Fiat and Private Money : Privatizing wins and socializing losses.

http://www.capitalismv3.com/?p=2558Three articles about our government and money. #1 “Financial-izing” the Economy out of productivity.

Shaved off the beard. Too much grey: Amanda looks ten years younger than she is, so I have keep myself well preserved, so to speak. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror, and now I have to learn to shave again…. Sigh.

http://mises.org/daily/5211/Conventional-Education-Will-Go-the-Way-of-Farming?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4da8bacf251b69e9%2C0Doug French posted this short article on our education ‘bubble’. I”m trying to figure out if it’s thought provoking. Maybe. I don’t think we’ll save on education in the future. I think that we overspend on irrelevant education, but that we could spend much less on relevant education. Unfortunately, under Democratic Secular Humanism, the university is the church. And good luck getting the church to change it’s doctr

“Weber believed that that Marx’s description of alienation had little to do with capitalism, but was a consequence of industrialism and bureaucracy.”

People don’t hate government per se. They hate bureaucracy whether it’s in the government, in our large businesses, or in our entertainment. Organization is synonymous with Bureaucracy which is synonymous with Oligarchy.

Privatize everything.

All societies in history, without exception, appear to have a ‘referee’ or ‘judge’ — usually an elder male. This topic has been researched to death: Egalitarian tribal warfare societies have some elder male. Chieftain societies tend to concentrate decision making power. Urban societies develop specialists. Advanced civilizations have micro-specialists (judges). Likewise, as they grow, societies also develop specialists for extra-group conflict resolution (warriors), and specialists for in-group conflict resolution (politicians). It is impossible to have a peaceful and prosperous society without conflict resolution because planning and risk taking necessary for production become impossible. If we continue our evolution into industrialization, market economies become so much more productive than any other in history, that shareholders (people who pay the cost of adhering to norms and rules) desire returns on their investment in that society via conformity.

[callout] If instead, our government operated as a bank and insurance company, it would be empirical, calculative and specific rather than rational and deliberative, and general. As such, it would be far less easy to rely upon supposedly moral arguments, that are in effect, universally, without exception, forms of deception or convenient rationalizations and justifications for either theft, class warfare, or corruption.[/callout]

The problem for social scientists, and the citizenry, is not the rational constitution of, and methods used by these different specialists in conflict resolution. The problems are the coordination of their activities, the setting of priorities, and the limits on their privatization of opportunities (corruption), as roles filled by individuals evolve into institutions and then into methodological, self interested bureaucracies. In the private sector we use prices, money and accounting and contracts to coordinate our activities – they are empirical. Instead, the bureaucracies coordinate their activities using laws, regulations and rules – and laws and rules are insufficiently granular and empirical for the size and complexity of our current population sizes and the resulting complexity of our devision of knowledge and labor (instead their moderately rational, which is less precise, and more reliant on interpretation). This is the problem with the rule of law – the formal principle for any law is that it must apply to all people equally in order to protect the citizenry from overreach. It is by definition and necessity a GENERAL rather than SPECIFIC tool. If instead, our government operated as a bank and insurance company, it would be empirical, calculative and specific rather than rational and deliberative, and general. As such, it would be far less easy to rely upon supposedly moral arguments, that are in effect, universally, without exception, forms of deception or convenient rationalizations and justifications for either theft, class warfare, or corruption. This is the hole in our philosophy of government. (It is the hole some of us are trying desperately to fill with a solution.)

Mystical Political Religion and the concept of good and evil was invented by the Persians to separate the persian people from the indians who were, at that time, similar peoples. Mystical religion was invented to cause conflict and political division. All cultures developed religions of some sort. If by religion we mean a body of habituated knowledge consisting of Myths and Rituals – but which in modern terms we call ‘education’. History and Political systems are in effect, Myths and Rituals too. If we look at history, the lower clases make use of and rely on mystical religion for insurance and education, the (admittedly small) middle classes on craft, guild, contract and trade, and the the upper classes on politics and bureaucracy, and the different classes cooperate by sharing those different cooperative strategies. So, even the ancient politicians learned how to use education for political purposes. Thats where we get mystical religion from. (See Nietzsche if you can manage it. Gimbutas, Weber and Armstrong otherwise.)

[callout]History and Political systems are in effect, Myths and Rituals too. If we look at history, the lower clases make use of and rely on mystical religion for insurance and education, the (admittedly small) middle classes on craft, guild, contract and trade, and the the upper classes on politics and bureaucracy, and the different classes cooperate by sharing those different cooperative strategies.[/callout]

Moral principles are, without exception, under analysis, economic principles – and as economic principles they can be rationally articulated, or embedded in a narrative like a fairy tale, so that they may be taught to children who cannot grasp more abstract, rationally articulated ideas. There is no need for religion to achieve moral education. The fact that all religions, even post-buddha buddism, have developed a myth of afterlife is to add the force of violence to mysticism. The fact that we teach mystical religious principles instead of rationally articulated moral principles makes it impossible to create political compromises between religious traditions – which encourages conflict. More importantly, religious traditions are economic strategies – they promote the values of particular social orders. (west=fraternal and technical, middle=tribal and mystical, east=familial and bureaucratic) This difference is why the west developed the industrial revolution twice (greece and england) and no one else ever has. It’s simply a better strategy for experimentation. (See Hayek, Weber and Armstrong)

Selfishness, as defined by Rand, is a play on words in order to hook people’s attention. It is a classic marketing trick. It assists her in marketing her ideas specifically because the word ‘selfish’ has negative connotations. While she uses the word ‘selfishness’ the general idea is used by other writes as any one of: individualism, responsibility, enlightened self interest, or pragmatic self interest. The purpose of the idea of self interest is epistemic: you can’t KNOW enough to work for other people’s interest in a division of knowledge and labor. In a division of knowledge and labor, you can’t KNOW very much. We’re necessarily ignorant. Our view of the world is very limited. It’s simply a proscription for ‘think globally, act locally’. So, self interest, or selfishness is simply a play on words for the purpose of making us look at individual responsibility inversely – as taking care of others by taking care of ourselves, rather than as the duty that we have to one another to take care of ourselves. Rand was trying very hard to market individualism and freedom during a period of socialist expansion, when there was rampant false attribution of success to the soviet model by western sycophantic pseudo intellectuals – the soviet model that had destroyed her family. So she is making a play on words to hook your attention. There is nothing in rand that is not, at least in implication, in Adam Smith or Frederic Bastiat. Hayek tries to remind us that the source of freedom that we know as Classical Liberalism was a product of the English empirical pursuit of science, and the analysis of data that had accumulated by the 18th century, as the middle class grew in size. But that at the same time, the French were pursuing the concept of freedom as a REACTION to the english, by RATIONAL or verbal reasoning, rather than by data – the germanic protestant versus latin catholic approach to life shows up everywhere. These rational arguments are moral arguments. Moral arguments are by definition specious. But they are easier to digest by the common person, and easier to manipulate by politicians. In large part, the language of freedom was distributed by translation that were made from french literature using the french interpretation in rational terms of english empirical principles and reasoning. So the language we use today to discuss freedom has become the rational of the french, rather than the empirical of the english. This french rationalism is where marx obtained the foundation of socialism and communism.

From Mish Shedlock:

“Look at it this way: If we take all of the cuts the Ryan has proposed and all of the cuts the administration has proposed, we are still not there. However, if we add them together, then kill the department of energy and the department of education, and cut still more from the defense budget, we might have a solid chance at balancing the budget in 10-12 years. In other words we need more defense cuts + some of Rand Paul’s ideas + some of Paul Ryan’s ideas + some of Obama’s ideas.”

I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. That’s what it’s going to take. (Wonkish) And as long as we kill the department of education it’s worth it to me. But afterward, we should hang the boomers by the millions for their ignorance and stupidity. (I’m a Jones Generation, along with Gates and Jobs, not a Boomer.)