Author: Curt Doolittle

Why is it that every time I spend a day in Bellevue I catch a cold? It’s like a Terrarium for disease vectors.

http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/anti-free-market-straw-men-vs-reality/Charged Topic Warning: No free marketer actually suggests ‘unregulated’ market, or the abscence of law. Instead, this is what they say:

And one more thing that I just see too much of – arguments over definitions. I. A definition is a contract between two or more people on the properties, causal relations and utility of those relations. I.I A term is the name for the set of properties, and causal relations and the utility of those relations. I.II One cannot debate what a term ‘means’ in the abstract. One can only (a) debate the validity of properties, causal relations and utility with others, (b) debate the assumedly normative properties, causal relations and utilities associated with the term and (c) debate what properties, causal relations and utility that someone else attributed to the term. But the properties, causal relations, and utility of an object of consideration are either true or they are not. In general, even most educated people rarely understand such terms that they commonly employ such as ‘true’, ‘freedom’ and ‘law’, or ‘right’, because they cannot express these concepts using non-contradictory, necessary and sufficient properties, causal relations and utility. Instead they rely on either normative, or personally biased usage, as convenient tools for justifying their existing biases. II. There is no other description of the term ‘definition’ that is applicable to the concept of rational debate. Since any non-contractual definition is an appeal to authority that is outside of the contract of debate between the parties. III. One cannot impose a definition. This is a logical fallacy. One can only negotiate it, or describe the properties and causal relations, then debate over the properties and relations, and the utility of those properties and relations. Debating about the ‘meaning’ of a term as normative, is not the same as debating the utility of it’s necessary properties. IV. One cannot QUOTE a definition as a means of appealing to an authority. This is a logical fallacy. You can only use a definition of a term as a means of clarifying your use of that term as a shorthand for the purpose of conveying properties, causal relations and the utility of those properties and causal relations. V. One cannot rely on a normative usage of the term as an appeal to authority. This is a logical fallacy. You can only use this as a starting point for debating on the true and false properties, causal relations, and utility of the properties and relations. Once at the starting point, one must then negotiate over the properties, causal relations and utility of the properties and causal relations. VI. One may defend one’s usage of the term by refering to a normative usage, or a quoted definition as justification for your USAGE of the term. But this does not mean that the properties, causal relations, and utilty of the property and causal relations is true, or even normative. (Evolution for example is assumed to be directional by most people, when in fact, it only favors complexity within a niche, which in turn leads to fragility.) VII. MORAL ARGUMENTS ARE UNIVERSALLY FRAUDULENT ATTEMPTS AT EXTORTION. PERIOD.

And one more thing that I just see too much of – arguments over definitions. I. A definition is a contract between two or more people on the properties, causal relations and utility of those relations. I.I A term is the name for the set of properties, and causal relations and the utility of those relations. I.II One cannot debate what a term ‘means’ in the abstract. One can only (a) debate the validity of properties, causal relations and utility with others, (b) debate the assumedly normative properties, causal relations and utilities associated with the term and (c) debate what properties, causal relations and utility that someone else attributed to the term. But the properties, causal relations, and utility of an object of consideration are either true or they are not. In general, even most educated people rarely understand such terms that they commonly employ such as ‘true’, ‘freedom’ and ‘law’, or ‘right’, because they cannot express these concepts using non-contradictory, necessary and sufficient properties, causal relations and utility. Instead they rely on either normative, or personally biased usage, as convenient tools for justifying their existing biases. II. There is no other description of the term ‘definition’ that is applicable to the concept of rational debate. Since any non-contractual definition is an appeal to authority that is outside of the contract of debate between the parties. III. One cannot impose a definition. This is a logical fallacy. One can only negotiate it, or describe the properties and causal relations, then debate over the properties and relations, and the utility of those properties and relations. Debating about the ‘meaning’ of a term as normative, is not the same as debating the utility of it’s necessary properties. IV. One cannot QUOTE a definition as a means of appealing to an authority. This is a logical fallacy. You can only use a definition of a term as a means of clarifying your use of that term as a shorthand for the purpose of conveying properties, causal relations and the utility of those properties and causal relations. V. One cannot rely on a normative usage of the term as an appeal to authority. This is a logical fallacy. You can only use this as a starting point for debating on the true and false properties, causal relations, and utility of the properties and relations. Once at the starting point, one must then negotiate over the properties, causal relations and utility of the properties and causal relations. VI. One may defend one’s usage of the term by refering to a normative usage, or a quoted definition as justification for your USAGE of the term. But this does not mean that the properties, causal relations, and utilty of the property and causal relations is true, or even normative. (Evolution for example is assumed to be directional by most people, when in fact, it only favors complexity within a niche, which in turn leads to fragility.) VII. MORAL ARGUMENTS ARE UNIVERSALLY FRAUDULENT ATTEMPTS AT EXTORTION. PERIOD.

My rights are protected by my willingess to kill in order to defend them. Legal documents either require that many people are willing to kill to defend them, or that many people are willing to kill to enforce them, or that many people are wiling to kill to change them. Moral arguments by contrast are a form of deceptlon by which the weak attempt to gain advantages without paying the costs for obtaining those advantages. That is the sole purpose of moral argument. By contrast, any right that is possessed by virtue of social contracts, formal or not, is possessed only because of the willingness of people to use violence in order to protect it. The government does not protect my rights. I do. Instead, government is a shareholder system whereby we each obtain the productive efficiency of scale in enforcing our defense of established rights, and therefore obtain them at a discount. But the government has that power only because we relinquish it to them. And we do not pay those costs equally. Some of us have a greater virtue of violence at our disposal than others. We are initially wealthier in violence than other people, so the cost of our privileges is higher. While those who are weaker, obtain a higher benefit than do the stronger. This is looking at the mythology from the opposite perspective. Since in all of history, the minority who has the greatest capacity for violence has established all political orders.

[callout]Moral arguments by contrast are a form of deception by which the weak attempt to gain advantages without paying the costs for obtaining those advantages. That is the sole purpose of moral argument. By contrast, any right that is possessed by virtue of social contracts, formal or not, is possessed only because of the willingness of people to use violence in order to protect it. The government does not protect my rights. I do.[/callout]

The west was built diffrently from the east or middle east, because it was built by a fraternity of warriors. Even with our vast specialization of careers, it is still protected by vi olence. Violence is a virtue. The fact that women are poorer in violence, and that the poor and ignorant are less able to pay the sacrifice nand discipline eeded to use it, is why they rely on moral arguments. THE PROXY FOR VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL CLASS There is no argument among philosophers, and certainly among political economists, that the system of property rights and exchange, regardless of culture, is a proxy for violence. By monopolizing violence, ‘governments’ force people to compete by production rather than violence. This provides people wiht incentives to produce. Production vastly favors discipline. Wealth vastly favors IQ. Productivity has the negative emotional consequence of amplifying the differences between individuals, and rewarding individuals more diversely than under tribal society, and therefore subjects the proletariat to more negative status signals, and making a social class out of the proletariat because of it, that our tribal sentiments and cognitive biases support. THE ECONOMICS OF MORAL ARGUMENTS Moral statements depend on economic circumstances. In pre-agrarian society, murder, plunder and rape are heroic, not prohibited activities. In post-industrial society, some sort of redistribution is at least suggested by human sentiments. “rights” are a MORAL not NECESSARY argument. Rights are POSSIBLE only when there is very limited SCARCITY. Legal RIGHTS are only POSSIBLE when a minority is willing to exercise violence to protect them. We ACKNOWLEDGE the POSSIBILITY of certain rights only because we can AFFORD them at some period in time. There are vast differences between social classes on what ‘rights’ we can afford at one period in time or another. The lower social classes argue for rights. The upper social classes argue for utilities. The lower classes breed. The upper classes don’t. The lower classes envy the productive classes, the upper classes protect their assets. Property, civilization, society, in ALL CASES WITHOUT EXCEPTION were created by the application of violence by a minority Ideas held in ignorance are just evidence of ignorance, and nothing more. Moral arguments are irrational arguments because they do not enumerate their properties. Economic arguments are NECESSARY arguments, not the display of PREFERENCES nor MORAL arguments. The lower classes use resistance movements rather than actions to work against stronger forces. Resistance movements are ‘costs’. They are opportunity costs. They create economic friction. They create cooperative friction. Resistance increases the costs for the middle class, and can overwhelm the ability to export violence by the upper classes. Moral statements on rights made under the threat of the application of either resistance, political violence, or street violence. “MIGHT MAKES RIGHTS” “Might may not make right. But might certainly makes all Rights.”

[callout]”Might may not make right. But might certainly makes all Rights.[/callout]

Hence, my correct statement that my rights consist of my willingness (along with others) to use violence to protect my rights. THE FRAUD OF MORAL ARGUMENTS Violence is a virtue. It is the first virtue. And those who argue otherwise do so out of either ignorance or fraud. Because it is fraud to make a moral argument rather than a necessary and economically necessary argument. Moral arguments are, without exception, arguments made from either ignorance or deception. In most cases they are made from deception, in order to obtain transfer payments in order to accumulate resources at a discount. IN effect most if not all proletariat arguments for transfer payments are threats of organized violence against others. You are welcome to debate this topic with me but I am fairly sure I will prevail. Because unlike you I am not arguing from a network of silly moral deceptions. In moral arguments “follow the money” is a more valuable technique than it is in forensic investigation. Because the world is very clearly separated into people who produce and those who form resistance movements in order to obtain the productive results of others by the reliance on moral arguments the implication of which is violence if their wants for transfer payments are not met. The only good and bad is whether the transfer payments requested by the proletariat threat of violence is Pareto Efficient or not. ie: whether more harm to the economy is done by the transfers (redistribution) than by failing to do so, and over what period of time that harm is created. There is no harm in creating roads because roads increase productivity which is for the good of all. But all redistribution to individuals that is for personal consumption has significant negative consequences. While there is some benefit to Poor Farm’s and Social security, as long as it is a very minimal cost. Creating a dependent class of people by failing to force them to save, is creating an economic hazard. No matter what transfer we talk about the society is exposed to risk by the creation of supposedly risk abating transfer payments. It is very simple really.

Humans unconsciously rely upon these social constructs in order to establish priorities in political decision making:

• The Family
• The Cult
• The Tribe
• The Fraternity

In the west, we rely upon the fraternity. The remnants of our military social order. Democracy works for us because we are a fraternal society FIRST. Democracy DEPENDS upon the fraternal society. The competing sentiments of tribe, cult, and family give rise to the different approaches to the solution of political problems. IT’S THAT SIMPLE.

RE: Harmful illusions bedevil ideas about free markets and imprisonment: professor By Sarah Galer In which yet another left wing professor who hasn’t read Hayek, criticizes him (and advocates like myself) while relying upon ‘silly psychology’ to do so. He rails against ‘free markets’. The author (Sarah Galer) is positing a straw man that does not represent these ideas. (and thereby contributing to ignorance). Besides confirming the conservative hypothesis, she’s simply acting immorally by acting in ignorance. I didn’t mention that it’s the jewish wing of libertarianism that invented the silly ideas of anarchism. My response. No free marketer actually suggests ‘unregulated’ market, or the abscence of law. Instead, this is what they say: 1) Free markets spread peaceful coexistence (smith) 2) Government employees cannot know enough to regulate markets (mises/hayek) 3) Insurance companies are better at regulating the market than government (rothbard/hoppe) 4) That bureaucracies become naturally corrupt and seek rents, and harm markets. (veblen, schumpeter, Sorel, michels, burnham) 5) That rule of law (rule of the COMMON LAW) is superior to regulation of markets than is legislative and regulatory law. (Hayek, Bastiat) 6) Economic calculation (dynamic prices and their role in planning), and the natural incentive for self interest, in a division of knowledge and labor (mises, smith) 7) That regulatory law accumulates to the point of causing market failure 8) That all monopolies are CAUSED by state intervention. These are arguments against the PRETENSE OF KNOWLEDGE, and the PRETENSE OF BENEVOLENCE by the political bureaucracy, in contrast to the POSSESSION OF KNOWLEDGE by private actors with market incentives. Therefore, these are not arguments in support of anarchism, they are arguments to privatization in order to avoid the natural tendencies toward corruption in bureaucracies. Curt Doolittle

Looking at your photos tonight. Miss you man. 🙂

From FP Magazine:

“How Did Obama Lose Karzai?” … “Karzai now appears mistrusting of the West’s long-term commitment to his country. He considers the Americans to be hopelessly fickle, represented by multiple military and civilian envoys who carry contradictory messages, work at cross-purposes, and wage their Washington turf battles in his drawing room, at his expense, while operating on short fuses and even shorter timetables.”

We have a president, who is part of a philosophical wing, dominated by a left coalition, that believes ‘silly things’. Like jimmy carter, obama is a president who believes ‘silly things’. But what silling things? The left’s feminine assumption is that we can all agree – like women in a tribal cave. They assume that there is a consensus to reach. Or that such a consensus would persist. Or that such a consensus is advantagous.

[callout]Only a fool thinks he can fly. But at least he is dangerous only to himself. It is the fool that thinks people can agree, who is dangerous to all of us.[/callout]

Except that to do anything substantive at all, humans must take risks to cooperate in large numbers. Groups require a hierarchy in order to make decisions. People attach utility and status signals to their positions in those hierarchies. They have many investments, both personal and collective, and those investments are in both means and ends. Having taken those risks, people have ‘interests’. Each person has a set of interests. Each group one or more interests. These interests include both means and ends. Means conflict even if ends do not. Humans cannot agree in large numbers. Interests are always in conflict, because even if ends are not, the means and the organizations of humans needed to achieve those ends are not. THe difference between silly people and sane people is in this simple understanding of the limits of human cooperation. Our president, like all leftists, is a man raised on feminine rather than masculine virutues. He values the famlial model, not the political. Families can agree on ends and means. Political groups cannot agree on means, even if they can agree upon ends. And they rarely agree upon ends, because do to so would be to the advantage of some at the expense of others. Marginalism suggests that if we have sacks of flour in store for the winter, every sack we sell has a different value, whth the first having the least, and the last having the most. It explains why water has much use value but little trade value, and diamonds have little use value but high trade value. But marginalism applies to human sentiments as well: humans recalculate their preferences each step you take toward achieving them. Humans seek opportunity. THey seek ‘relishes’. Only a fool thinks he can fly. But at least he is dangerous only to himself. It is the fool that thinks people can agree, who is dangerous to all of us. Curt

(Note: I posted this as a comment on http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ and am copying it here, as a I always do.) Guns are for more than hunting and self defense. They’re also a political symbol, and a political institution. Arms have uses. But the purpose of arms is to maintain the ability to overthrow an oppressive government, and to insure that members of a government take no actions that would sufficiently anger even a small percentage of the people, such that they might raise their arms and use them. Yes guns are cool. Yes they are a status symbol. Yes guns provide one with a sense of security. And yes, they are the material tools by which a people remain free. Even if remaining free is the sentiment of the minority of the population. One is not free if he must rely for his security upon the willingness of others. He is free because he chooses to preserve the existing social order, despite the fact that he has the physical power at his disposal to alter it if necessary.

[callout]There are only three tools by which humans can coerce other human beings: violence, words and payment. Each social class has developed elites that master one of the three tools. And any attempt to deprive us of words, arms or property, is simply an attempt by the elites of one class to deprive members of another class of their political power, and to obtain additional power for their own at a discount. [/callout]

Violence is a virtue: The more of it you have, the more free you are. The more free you make others by possessing it, but using it only to preserve that freedom. Restraint is the most powerful use of violence. If you no longer possess it, you cannot restrain it. It is most powerful if it is a potential. Actions which are not taken are often not measurable. Economists know this. It is the problem of the broken window fallacy, and the principle behind Opportunity Costs. As such, economists should be wary of applying infinite discounts to a property of human behavior, simply because of the difficulty of measuring the cost of that behavior. Property is an institution that is created by the threat of violence. The use of violence to create property, whether it be the several property of the individual or the shareholder property of the collective, is the most massive and constant application of violence that civilizations apply, from the very broadest group, down to each individual. Property is the highest cost institution. It is the hardest to develop. The Iron Law of Oligarchy and it’s manifestation in bureaucracies guarantees that all governments, of all forms, will be corrupt, and self serving. The only counter to the bureaucracy of the state is the promise of violence by it’s citizens. Under republican democracy and social democracy, the bureaucracy is demonstrably more self-serving than under other forms of government, and far less subject to democratic change. Tyrants can be killed. Bureaucracies cannot be. The vast efforts of the West for the past few centuries have been to create the institutions of property elsewhere. And our primary advances in human productivity and cooperation have been the result of the tools to account for, the legal systems to administer, the education to teach children how to use, and the new types of money and credit instruments, finance, banking, capital and markets to facilitate, the ordered use of property. And we have spread those instituions of property, almost always by the force of arms. This has occurred despite movement after movement by one class or another, from the base proletariat to the elitist public intellectual, to deprive us of that violence, so that they may use the violence of the state to remove from us our freedom, and to alter our definitions of property, and therefore appropriate the institutions, the property, or the results of our labors for the benefit of one group or another. Adherence to property definitions, and use of the tools and institutions to manipulate property, are the foundation of learning in every culture. The Justice that is used to resolve conflicts, and the government that is used to create and regulate markets, both sit upon the technology of violence. And governments, if they are over free men, are created and maintained by the fraternity of individuals who are wiling to forgo the institution of violence in order to preserve their definitions of property, their systems of justice, and their institutions of government. Guns, more than any type of arms in history, equalize our capacity for violence. They make us equal in age, health, strength and choice. Each of us possesses violence. It is a natural human potential. The more skilled we are, the more armed we are, the more we possess of it. The greater the store of it, the wealthier are our people. The more secure are our trade routes. The more respectful are our governors. The more free are our citizens. The more prosperous our people. The more choices for happiness are open to each of us. History does not favor the weak — whether as a nation, or as individuals. In the west, our social order, our history, derives from our unique development of cities, which was accomplished through the cooperation of a fraternity of warriors. We should understand that cities are synonymous with markets. Warriors built markets with the threat of violence, and it was done at high cost. Our trade system today is one of high cost. And common americans benefit from that high cost. Even if we are exporting debt and currency to pay for our military system, rather than simply taxing everyone else for our world trade routes. Our fraternity is what makes us unique among other civilizations. Its origin is in our weakness against the stronger, wealthier and more populous east. With smaller numbers, and better technology, our shareholders defended their markets against superior forces. And while in our lifetimes we have been majority for a brief flicker in time. We are a minority again. A minority who protects our markets, our trade, and our institutions and our freedom with a wealth of violence. By our actions-not-taken. Against the constant drum of talkers and scribblers who would take from us our violence and deprive us of our freedom. Today we use the word ‘shareholder’ instead of ‘citizen’ for our voluntary orders. We do so to obfuscate the cost of being a shareholder or a citizen. So that many people may become shareholders without first paying the cost of obtaining one’s share. By respecting the institutions of property, we gain admission to the market. To respect property is to refrain from violence and fraud. There are only three tools by which humans can coerce other human beings: violence, words and payment. Each social class has developed elites that master one of the three tools. And any attempt to deprive us of words, arms or property, is simply an attempt by the elites of one class to deprive members of another class of their political power, and to obtain additional power for their own at a discount. I hope that the meaning of that statement is not too subtle to be clear. Curt Doolittle