Author: Curt Doolittle

Mr. Galdel, of Time Magazine, asks readers what questions he should put before Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, and implies, without understanding his own cognitive bias, that the liberal belief in our own wisdom and control of our own destiny is unquestionable. http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/11/23/whats-wrong-with-bernanke-and-qe2-ask-nissam-taleb/

Taleb has recently been bashing Bernanke saying he doesn’t know what he is doing because he didn’t see the financial crisis coming. But Taleb has also said that the financial crisis was a Black Swan. But isn’t the definition of a black swan something that people don’t see coming. Yes, we should be ready for unusual events. But don’t think you can criticize someone for not see(ing) something that by definition was unpredictable, or at least very, very unlikely. What say you Taleb?

Mr. Gandel, “not see(ing) something that by definition was unpredictable, or at least very, very unlikely.” That’s the whole point. That statement expresses the entire difference between left and right political philosophies, and between quantitative economists, and the austrian school: namely, that the unforeseen is unpredictable because: 1) The foreseen is unquantifiable (this is the entire issue in economics) 2) the unquantifiable is unpredictable 3) the scale of the impact of unforeseen, unquantifiable, unpredictable events is likewise unquantifiable. Therefore risk is there for not probabilistically measurable by mathematical means. Therefore risk measurement, and quantitative probability as used in financial speculation is FRAUD if committed by those who understand these principles, and ERROR if used by those who do not. Since these ideas are hard to grasp, a few people commit fraud, and a very large number of people commit error. Taleb’s indictment of the Nobel Committee is the most serious because it was their awarding of prizes to econometricians that allowed those who wished to commit FRAUD, to convince a lot of people to commit error, and in doing so create this catastrophe. Taleb’s proposition is that we are applying the mathematics of closed, permutable systems (probability) to the open, innovative, dynamic system of human interaction. In effect this is the warning given by the Austrian school to all political economists: we know how to enable the greatest amount of creative innovation in a marketplace, and in doing so create the greatest competitive advantage and the lowest prices, for the benefit of all. But political systems must aim at enabling that process, not achieving any particular end, while assuming that that innovative process will tolerate infinite manipulation. Taleb’s recommendation in The Black Swan, is that we must build our nations such that we recognize the COMMON-NESS of disruptive, unforeseen events. Therefore we should seek stability, security, and safety, and not expose ourselves to risks. We should never have assumed that such a thing as complex derivatives would provide risk mitigation — regardless of corrupt rating companies and bankers. We should build policy that expects the unforeseen. We should avoid policy that invites fragility from the impact of the unforeseen. This is probably an anathema to Time’s editorial staff. Because Taleb’s premise is core of Conservative political philosophy: take small risks, work through the market, and do not empower politicians to expose us to risks: Maintain strength and capital, both human and material, so that we can survive the inevitable shocks to our system. Of course, if we just read Aesop’s Fables we can learn the single lesson that Aesop attempted to teach us: avoiding the error of hubris – overestimating our knowledge and understanding.

An interesting question from Mises.org:

” What does free speech have to do with copyright law?”

It’s fascinating how this fairly simple set of ideas can exist in the public discourse without understanding the rational foundation upon which the concepts of free speech and copyright are based. a) Books, magazines, movies, plays, music (at least, in theory, music with lyrics), advertising, speeches, lectures, photographs, works of art, are products that market ideas (largely narratives.) Copyright law attempts to protect narratives from theft just as patents protect manufactured goods, from profiteering by copying and redistributing other people’s inventions. b) Any of these ‘narrative product’ may contain political speech.(content) c) Determination of political content is extremely difficult. Harmful or beneficial political content is hard to judge (pornography for example), and therefore the law (as a profession) seeks to avoid having to make those decisions. d) Free speech as a practical constitutional concept rests on two assumptions: d.i – that the admitted harm that comes to society from free speech is offset by the protections we obtain from free speech. d.ii — And to narrow these protections to just those that are overtly political is extremely difficult to the point of practical impossibility. e) Some products are political by definition, and copyright can be used to deny political works to the market, and especially intellectual products that are purely social and political in nature. f) copyrights (like patents) should not allow a product to be held from the market, for the purpose of increasing it’s price. (Granted a monopoly.) So, speech and copyright law are effectively tied-concepts because they are mutually dependent. One cannot have copyright without speech, because all copyright is dependent upon speech. We would have far less speech (content) and experimentation (innovation) without copyrights. The scope of speech that needs protection is untestable, and perhaps unknowable, and it is therefore impossible to regulate by content. The argument from the Anarchist position is that copyrights AS THEY ARE CONSTRUCTED create a host of reasons for abusive government, regardless of the attempts of the creators of copyright law to prevent just such abuses. But the practical, measurable empirical evidence is that copyrights do improve innovation, wihc in turn, improves competitiveness, which in turn, reduces prices. The Hoppian/Rothbardian solution, even if they would not advocate it, would be to privatize copyright protections, so that we are not burdened by abusive government, or the costs of administering other people’s works. Again, the fundamental problem here is that it is very difficult to develop criteria by which one thing is equal to another thing, for the purposes of copyright. It is very difficult and expensive to regulate and jury. THe other is that artificially increasing prices of easily reproduced goods is counter to the premise on which the market is based. I think that the solution, as others have said above, is that reproduction for commercial or self use is different from reproduction for the purpose of distribution and sale. I think personal reproduction, even if it deprives the author of profits is within the speech and copyright objectives. I do not see that there is an argument wherein the authors have the right to prevent you from doing whatever it is once you’ve purchased a commercial product from within the market. I do see that someone concentrating capital for the purpose of profiteering from activity in the market, based upon the innovations of others, without paying a commission for doing so, is simply theft, and is not beneficial. The market political theory requires us to innovate, even if innovation is simply opening up new markets.. I do not see the value in copying. That’s just parasitism. Markets exist and function because of enfranchisement, not parasitism. I do not think that the market philosophy (even in libertarianism) supports parasitism. I know libertarians do not support rent seeking (parasitism) by the use of organs of the state. Why should we tolerate parasitism in absence of the state? Or is it that we care more about the state than we do about the very market society which we hope to entrust with our social order? That is the incongruity in Anarchist thought. Government exists to improve the competitiveness of the market for the purposes of decreasing prices and increasing choices. Without a market, there can be no government. There can be slavery, but no government. We pay for the market by forgone opportunities for violence, for theft. Violence and theft are epistemologically simple tasks. However, markets invite fraud BECAUSE they prohibit violence (retribution for theft). And as far as I can tell, copyright law is simply fraud protection. Others are welcome to debate me on this. But I doubt efforts will result in success.

From: SMALL TRUTHS ABOUT THE MINIMUM WAGE http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2010/11/small-truths-about-the-minimum-wage.html Something troubles me about this debate on the minimum wage. How do we know that employers in at least some sectors, artificially reduce wages by forming a wage-price cartel using state-sponsored price fixing of minimum wages? Wages are, aside from compensation, also a form of data, and employees can rate a company’s status or viability, or ‘greediness’ based on it’s wage rates. Fixing minimum wages distorts this information, and allows owners and managers to exhibit ‘bad behavior’ under the guise of minimum wage laws. Also, in many sectors, ‘labor’ in the sense of physical expenditure, is irrelevant, and other skills are not (literacy, attractiveness, manners). But those valuable skills are not paid for in the form of wages because all related businesses can claim minimum wage barriers, and if they compete at all, do so by trading entirely on environment rather than wages? Doesn’t this subsidize bad businesses? There are plenty of people who will work at certain companies simply in exchange for the environment (at a discount) rather than in sectors where the cartel effect drives down wages (less comfortable environments). In other words, they’re compensated partly with education, partly with environment, partly with lifestyle. Retail clerks, ie: jobs with comfortable social, clean environments that require unskilled, easy labor, seem vulnerable to low wages. But thats the discount the employee accepts for the ability to work in such an environment. Mexican “illegal” construction day labor on the west coast generally costs no less than $14 per hour. And if the buyer wants people who know concrete, it’s as much as $20. Waitresses in popular restaurants can, and often do, earn hundreds of dollars per day – often more than in their ‘day jobs’. Janitorial labor in office buildings costs well above minimum wage, even in our current economy. It appears that a cartel effect is in place, at least in the upper two quintiles. Has anyone studied that distortion? I don’t have a stake in this argument, it’s not my area of expertise, but I’m not entirely confident that the cartel-effect created by the minimum wage (at least in some sectors) is not driving down wages in at least some areas of the economy. And I don’t see any literature that grasps that much of the minimum wage economy is indeed the ‘on-the-job-training in exchange for rate discount’ ecosystem. Or ‘I’m husband shopping with this job”. Or “every other job is real work, and this makes my parents happy”. Or “I’m doing this job that’s easy while I”m in college.” All of these are not meaningful if considered on wages as compensation alone. What might be more interesting is experimenting with minimum wages in certain sectors in order to drive talent and ‘social status’ into them. I don’t think its important for us to subsidize retail and fast food clerks. It’s more important to drive more people back into skilled and semi-skilled labor. For example, (to be a bit crass) if we’re talking about single moms flipping burgers and waiting tables, or performing office work, (and we’re accepting the fact that we aren’t educating men and women on mate selection, and we’re saying that it’s acceptable for women to have children that they can’t support, and therefore that it’s acceptable for them to export their preference for childbearing, and poor choice of husband onto others) then why don’t we simply wage-match people with such problems rather than distort the entire pricing structure? I’m not advocating this but just wondering if there is any work in that field that isn’t riddled with the typical errors so endemic in quantitative probabilism (rather than evidence) preferred in the field. I’m sure there is quite a bit of data out there. I just am not sure that any paper that I’ve read on this topic relies on anything other than errors-of-aggregation, unsupportable probabilism, or questionable a priori logic, all of which run counter to observation. Again, this isn’t my field, but I don’t see the cartel-effect or these other issues addressed in the literature that I’ve spent time on.

In a staff meeting the other day, one of our senior people asked me what the elections mean for the economy, since our business (advertising and marketing) is highly influenced by the direction of the economy. We are a leading indicator of both upward and downward trends. I responded that the question depended upon the time frame one was using. In the short term, the elections mean that a divided government will eliminate social and political tensions so that people will spend more time on meaningful activities at home and work, and that business people will feel less [glossary:REGIME UNCERTAINTY] Regime Uncertainty. That means that the small business side of the economy should improve. That’s about all. The common people assume that the quantity of political rhetoric is equal to the qantity of economic power that a state can exercise, and this is not true. A state as we currently have constructed it, is largely capable of USING economic wealth in the short term, but incapable of creating wealth in the long term. That is the primary change in government over the past hundred and fifty years. We have converted from middle-class wealth creation to lower class wealth distribution in the west, as the consumer economy and democracy put political power in proletariat hands. That trend was acceptable given our extraordinary wealth. But the current trend must reverse itself, and the power of government must switch from an ambition entirely devoted to redistribution, to one more concerned with increasing the intellectual capacity of our less-than-hard-working citizenry.

[callout]A state, as we currently have constructed it, is largely capable of USING economic wealth in the short term, but incapable of creating wealth in the long term. That is the primary change in government over the past hundred and fifty years. We have converted from middle-class wealth creation to lower class wealth distribution in the west, as the consumer economy and democracy put political power in proletariat hands. [/callout]

In the medium term, it means that middle class white people are beginning to act like a minority, as has been predicted for some time now by any number of public intellectuals (Buchanan). It means that our economic recovery will be slow and protracted and vulnerable to shocks, and that it will take a decade or more for the worlds distorted capital structure to realign. It means that unemployment will be persistent and chronic for that period of time. It means that the US will not likely return to previously comforting low unemployment levels. It means uncertainty will prevail. In the long term, in regard to the general economy in the united states, it is not likely that any government intervention on any scale that is politically tolerable, will allow the adjustment to education that is needed to alter our basic competitiveness. It is unlikely that US businesses will produce at 20th century levels, which were only possible because of factors outside of political action: the large land area, the high rate of breeding and immigration, the high transformation of the population into the middle class, the low cost of language and legal transactions due to cultural homogeneity, and the low cost of administration due to the use of the common law. The response to my statements was that they painted a gloomy outlook. I responded that there is a vast difference between objective reality, and the emotional experience that we attach to it. I read something the other day about african meat-packers, living a terrible and dirty life. But that during the day, as they worked, they were joyous, playful, enjoyed their friends and family, and in general described themselves as happy. For human beings, uncertainty, unpredictability, and negative environmental change are impediments to our rather fixed rate of adaptation. But people adjust to their circumstances when they can, and find good in almost everything. Therefore, the objective picture may appear gloomy, but the general sentiment will improve as people adjust to the new circumstances. What will happen is the perception of power, or excellence, which we refer to as ‘status’ will change, worldwide, and continue, as it has since the collapse of the soviet system, to be local and cultural, and less western or ideological. The world’s common people, will continue to return to it’s civilizational biases, and admirations. It’s business leaders and intellectuals will continue to explore each other. Consumers will adopt whatever fashion is relevant to them. But by and large, they will be more interested in their cultures than in western culture. The west will be less of a destination for the highly talented and upwardly mobile. And the western demographic problem (the high land occupation by white christians) will be under pressure, and white christians will increasingly adopt minority postures, just as their political leadership warned they would for the past century and a half. This is the meaningful trend. We will be less wealthy of a civilization relative to others than we have been since the opening of the atlantic trade 500 years ago. Our politics is just the daily expression of our sentiments as these shifts occur.

Researchers have determined that genetics could matter when it comes to some adults’ political leanings. According to scientists at UC San Diego and Harvard University, “ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4.” That and how many friends you had during high school. The study was led by UCSD’s James Fowler and focused on 2,000 subjects from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Scientists matched the subjects’ genetic information with “maps” of their social networks. According to researchers, they determined that people “with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults.” However, the, subjects were only more likely to have leanings to the left if they were also socially active during adolescence. “It is the crucial interaction of two factors — the genetic predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence — that is associated with being more liberal,” according to the study. “These findings suggest that political affiliation is not based solely on the kind of social environment people experience,” said Fowler, who is a professor of political science and medical genetics. The researchers also said their findings held true no matter what the ethnicity, culture, sex or age of the subjects were. Source: Scientists Find ‘Liberal Gene’ | NBC San Diego

Some of the comments were humorous.

“So, we now have scientific proof that liberalism is a birth defect?”   “That explains their total lack of logical thinking, they can’t help themselves. Probably explains why they’re so needy too. Do you think there will ever be a cure?”   “Does this discovery bring us closer to a cure?”

We need both conservatives and liberals. Really. We need people who, out of ignorance or passion want to improve the existing order. We need people who out of understanding and investment, require that improvements to the order be meritocratic, and maintain group persistence, and are not simply attempts at taking power for power’s sake. The western dichotomy between church and state, between liberal and conservative, has been a very powerful combination. Our errors derive largely from the consequence of relying overmuch on our rather primitive rhetorical political process, the consequences of leaving the gold standard and adopting fiat money against conservative sentiments, and the opportunity to behave unwisely amidst the decline of the west, and prior to the rise of the east, and our foolish abandonment of the monarchical system, without understanding it’s strengths. But we need liberals. We just dont need them to have too much power.

From http://dmarron.com/2010/10/31/how-corrupt-is-the-united-states/

“According to a recent study, the United States has more public sector corruption than do many other developed economies.”

“Perception” is only a measure of popularity. It is not a fact of relative corruption. The problem faced by the USA is that it is too large, and our political system is insufficient for a democratic republic of this size and complexity. The vast progress that has been made by human beings has largely been due to the invention of technologies, namely the scientific method, mathematics and in particular probability, but including laws, regulations, accounting, banking and interest – technologies that improve our fairly limited if not entirely incompetent perceptions. Our perceptions are notoriously faulty. So what instead are meaningful measures of corruption. Corruption defined as the privatization of public office for personal benefit? Most people confuse corruption with immorality or incompetence. And those three artifacts of human behavior each have different causes. The vast majority of the references that people actually refer to are the result of natural bureaucratic incompetence when bureaucrats are isolated from the market process of competition. The rest are either the natural side effect of the democratic process which all but requires deception, or the difference between an individual’s perception of the real world, and the actions that are possible under this form of government given the size and diversity of classes, races cultures and economic interests that exist in the polity. As such the rating is nonsensical. It is trivial for Denmark to have lower perceived corruption than the USA. However, it is in fact, far harder to to create lower perceived corruption in the vast bureaucracy of an international empire like the USA. Because perceptible corruption is largely the result of whether you agree or disagree with what you perceive. People in government are rarely evil. They are more likely lazy, ignorant, incompetent, or simply happy to profit from their isolation from the market process and their ability to dodge the delivery of customer service we experience in the rest of our lives.

Last weekend a friend of mine surprised me by confessing to have an interest in philosophy (which surprised me, I thought all he was interested in was traveling and fly-fishing) and recommended a book, Philosophy of Language , by Scott Soames. I am wondering, what do folks here think of Soames and of his book, Philosophy of Language? Epistemology and the philosophy of science are my main philosophical interests, but I have read Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (at Ali’s urging) several years ago (LOVED it!) and am ready for another book on the general subject of philosophy of language and (because another friend of mine recommended it) I was about to purchase Soames’ book, but thought to pass it by y’all first just to make sure (if I can) that it is a good choice. If anyone has a better “one book read” suggestion on the philosophy of language, please let me know.

I’d ask what he means by ‘philosophy’. Soams seems a little advanced for the common reader. I’d recommend Durant’s Story Of Philosophy. Furthermore, I think it’s also assumptive, since the entire anglo-analytical framework is a branch of logic, and is currently under significant attack, as either simply tautologically descriptive, or a as a deductive toolset. And as non-advisory and non-predictive, it’s questionable whether it has ethical content – meaning it’s questionable wither it can be used to determine action on it’s own, or whether it is a branch of logic to assist one in criticizing ethical action oriented statements in the face of a future about which one has insufficient knowledge. The counter proposition is best covered by Brand Blanchard (Yale) in Reason and Analysis, which is one of the best criticisms of the movement. Axis A) The historical Position is covered by Aristotle, Toynbee, Durant, Quigley, Gibbon, Braudel, Spengler, McNeil and, to add some depth Pomeranz, Mokyr, and Armstrong. The historians represent each of their cultural biases (french, english, american and german) but as a set are useful. To some degree weber belongs here to as he compared religions worldwide. Axis B) The ethical position is covered best by Marx and his disciples on the one end of the triangle (the peasantry), or Popper, Hayek, mises, rothbard, and perhaps Sowell and Parsons on the second (the middle class), and aristotle, machiavelli, sorel, michels, burnham, pareto, and weber on the third (nobility). The problem of the social sciences is stated by hume, but originates in the christian scholastics. He calls it induction. But that is an insufficient explanation of the problem which has distracted minds for centuries now. The technical solution to the social sciences was recommended by weber, and unfortunately the tool being used is largely quantitative economics – ie:trade, despite the fact that the status economy, the differences in IQ distribution among the classes, the power struggle between class elites, and the knowledge economy are as important as the monetary and trade economies. Axis C) In understanding ethics and politics it may be useful to understand that equality and the attempt to obtain power by claims for equality are the primary source of distraction in ethics. There are only three coercive technologies available to man, and that they are best exploited by different classes: inclusion/ostracization and access to opportunity and insurance or what we call moral coercion (talking), as practiced by the poorest classes. Remunerative coercion (money) as practiced by the moneyed and merchant classes. And violent coercion (law, violence, contract, and military action) as practiced by the managerial classes. The elites in each class use their own form of coercion and the three hierarchies constantly compete with one another to get their elites into power. This is perhaps the most easily applied means of analyzing human collective behavior. Contemporary philosophy as a discipline, is a tool for making one fit, but not for accomplishing anything alone. However, utility and wisdom in life’s actions are derived from a comparative study of history, wherein we discover what men actually do with the scribblings of philosophers. As Will Durant said after writing his history of philosophy: “I was interested in philosophy, but after my research, realized that there were no answers there. The answers are in history: the record of what men do.” I came to a similar conclusion and found that human sensation, perception, and reason is so limited that we have had to construct a number of terribly complex technologies that allow us to categorize, remember and compare those complexities that our hunter-gatherer biology was insufficient to sense, perceive, compare and calculate on it’s own. These tools include various complex contents of language, the narrative causal explanation, counting numbers, arithmetic, mathematics, accounting, and the iterative research program tools that we call the scientific method. POlitically we have invented various devices: ethics, morals, property, religious scripture, rhetorical debate, logic and it’s branches. Beyond the limits of perception and comparison of rhetoric, debate and politics, where we have exceeded the limits of those tools of consent, we have invented tools of cooperation in the extended order of others that we cannot sense or perceive, but must cooperate with none the less: the means of cooperating with entirely abstract perceptions: money, banking, prices, interest, contract, and abstract rule of law, and abstract property rights and options. We have invented all these technologies, mostly by accident, in order to solve the problems of coordinating our activities in a vast and complex division of knowledge and labor – because we must coordinate in that vast complex division of labor, because w are not wealthier than our cave men ancestors in the only human asset ‘time’ – we are simply vastly more productive, and have made everything vastly less expensive. The extent of that division is so vast that it is incomprehensible to the human mind. We have invented forms of ‘calculation’ (in the wider sense) in all fields of knowledge, and ‘the scientific method’ is little more than an accounting system and accounting principles for different branches of human inquiry such as Law, religious doctrine, physical science, history, and even music and the arts: any venture where the past must be categorized and compared to the current circumstance, so that it may be used to either make choices in, or to forecast the future. Linguistic philosophy is but one tool in that arsenal, and to view it as more than an epistemic device for the analysis and criticism of our accounting method is an act of intellectual egoism or myopia that borders on immoral and unethical. The fundamental problem of human existence is ethics – actions. Ethics is the underlying problem of the social sciences. So far, we have succeeded in our efforts to understand the physical sciences – the act of discovery, more than we have succeeded in our social sciences – the act of invention. To some degree the physical sciences are no longer a ‘problem’ but simply work. The social sciences, or the act of invention, is on the other hand, fraught with difficulty. Largely because we knew only the tools of the much more simplistic physical sciences, and it’s perception extending technology of calculus, and for a century or more have been erroneously attempting to apply the methods of the physical sciences to the social sciences, without the understanding that those tools are far too limited to assist us in the process of cooperation and invention. And the stress created upon our societies by this divergent progress, has left our social orders in conflict as our breeding rates and opportunities expand faster than our wisdom and our tools of sensation, perception, calculation and ethical decision making, as well as our tools of politics and political systems, commerce, contract, property and trade. As such, the question of philosophy has been lost in academic philosophy’s attempt to apply the principles of discovery to the process of invention, largely so that the field may find academic (ie:social status) legitimacy among the new harder physical sciences, rather than be relegated to the ‘arts’. And for that reason, philosophy has been lost for almost a century – in a futile attempt to legitimize itself as a methodology rather than as a practical tool for solving meaningful human problems. And as such it has become either a puzzle (as is much of higher mathematics) a form of self-referential entertainment, or a religion which to hide oneself like brahmins and buddhists, from material reality. All religions often need a reformation. And contemporary philosophy is one of them. (as can be easily discerned by reading a random sampling of papers.) One reason that ethical and political philosophers seek to find absolute statements in philosophical content is best seen in the contrast between western natural law (political), eastern natural law (familial), and everyone else’s ‘law’ which is more doctrinal (tribal). Most philosophical doctrines simply attempt to rationalize cultural preferences. For example, despite all our academic emphasis, it turns out that the german model of social order is better than the anglo-american model of social order, despite losing two wars, the german emphasis on mastery in the working class is the most effective social model – the upper classes take care of themselves. Anglo emphasis on the middle class, and everyone else’s emphasis on the peasantry, turn out to be less effective in maintaining competitive advantage and are driven by social status sentiments rather than reason. Therefore, as an ethical statement, the only measure of a philosophy is the economic status of its adherents. The number of ideas I’ve posited here are too large, perhaps, but it’s only by such positioning that it’s possible to justify the recommendation that no book on philosophy is terribly helpful. While the problem of human social cooperation and individual fulfillment is ancient, and while we have made great progress int eh social sciences, we have been distracted by a significant number of philosophical errors: ie: we have incorrectly either defined the problem, or applied the wrong tools or both. The fundamental problem of philosophy is action, and action requires categorization, calculation, forecast, and cooperation in vast numbers. And most philosophical doctrines attempt to simplify the number of axis in order to fit the limits available to the craft. Because the craft has not made use of tools that will allow it to extend its perception. Language in particular is somewhat interesting because all language constructs are analogies to perception, and as such are limited by perception. Hopefully there is something interesting for you to work with in this posting. Curt PS: again,thanks to all here who have helped me.

The takeover of the administration of state by the middle class in England created a problem for politicians. WIth their new found responsibility, they were not against the king any longer, and now were against each other. Some were cognizant of the risk. Conservatism: Sentiments of freedom from totalitarianism, brotherhood of protection of the city, individual responsibility. group persistence. the unity of church and state. fidelity to one’s word. Objective truth in all statements. Purity. These are sentiments of group persistence. Classical Liberal: institutional Balance of power, the rule of law, enfranchisement of the many, contractually explicit government, the virtuous citizen created by trade and exchange. Libertarian Anarcho Capitalist: privatized institutions of social services, sound money, and the credit society. Hoppian Monarchy: the inter-temporal incentives of monarchy to accumulate social capital. Insurance companies as vehicles for Machiavellian: power maintained by minority willing to keep it by violence. violence is superior to fraud in both practice and logic. Compulsory saving. What separates the west from the less successful cultures, is that the [glossary:aryan] tradition’s philosophy is political rather than interpersonal. The greeks solved the problem of politics. The romans adopted and spread it. The church by contrast teaches empathy. The military state teaches objective truth. Neither compromises. Our version of ying-and-yang is not philosophical and personal, but institutional and political, and people are expected to master both empathy and objective truth. We did not fail to solve the problem of politics as did the other societies. We failed to keep it once we solved it. Monarchy, Senate (lords), Parliament, militarism, and the credit society. A house for each class. Not class warfare, but class cooperation.

Paul Krugman writes:

Soros, Obama, And Me What do we have in common? We’re all small business owners, according to Mitch McConnell. Obama and I make our business income off books — he sells the audacity of hope, Robin and I sell the misery of Econ 101; Soros makes his money off financial destruction directing funds to their most productive use; but we’re all in the same category as the owner of a small factory.

Small business people? Hardly. That writing provides a limited return is not a measure of its level of consumption by a large number of customers, but a measure of how little people are willing to pay for it. The term Mitch is looking for is not “entrepreneur” it is “[glossary:Schumpeterian Intellectuals]”: people who bring about the destruction of capitalism, the market, and the prosperity of national competitiveness by undermining both the sentiment of, and capital structure of entrepreneurship.

[callout]Then, perhaps some of us should put our capital stock of violence to better use, if in our restraint, we are disabused by men who simply take advantage of our creation – the market. It would be the optimum use of our asset.[/callout]

Unfortunately, we don’t have special taxes for Shumpeterian market destroyers like we have special taxes on entrepreneurial market creators. But we can fix that. Perhaps we should level the playing field by heavily taxing political, extra-market goods and services, and lowering taxes on apolitical intra-market goods and services? Wouldn’t that be a switch? I mean, why should the amount of income be the axis of measurement, rather than the service provided to the market? Under that measure we could confiscate all of Soros’ money, recover our losses from the bloated financial sector, and reduce the media to non-profit status, and make political writing an unprofitable exercise. As for putting capital to a better purpose, that’s not yet proven. Soros was not participating in the market for goods and services by creating unemployment and reorganizing that capital for his use. He’s just using remunerative coercion under state protections. And extra-market remunerative coercion at that. A form of coercion made possible only by the restraint of violence by others in order to create the somewhat free market – a restraint he does not himself employ. And while that asymmetry of restraint may not be apparent to your cult of those who are incapable of holding territory and trade routes, or building an durable government, or durable institutions of calculation and cooperation, it is not lost on those of us whose ancestors have done so for a millennia or more. It seems odd to me that so many people fail to grasp just how entertaining and enjoyable civil war is for those people who practice militial restraint – often at high personal [glossary:forgone opportunity cost]. Modern war is a ‘hell’ only for people who fight in the western model. It’s not for warriors, terrorists and raiders. We forget that the reason we cannot conquer the Afghans is in no small part because raiding and killing are actually enjoyable, entertaining, status-enhancing pass times among practitioners. And creating markets and property rights, and philosophy and econometrics, is a poor substitute. Then, perhaps some of us should put our capital stock of violence to better use, if in our restraint, we are disabused by men who simply take advantage of our creation – the market. It would be the optimum use of our asset. Or those who put their financial capital stock, or political capital stock to such extra-market or Schumpeterian Intellectual purposes, could pay the opportunity cost of restraint, so that we do not have put our stock of violence to extra-market uses. So that we can continue to devote our energies to the proxy of entrepreneurship instead of the more enjoyable and rewarding uses of our capital stock of violence. Why should we simply transfer our capital at a discount from a stock of market making violence to a stock of market destroying verbal and political coercive uses, or remunerative extra-market coercive uses. After all, violence is far more coercive. And much more rewarding. 🙂 Cheers See [glossary:three coercive technologies].

The depth of this insult is probalby accessible to only a few people. But I have to say this is one of my favorite little essays of late. – Curt

“The Cult Of Offensive Moderation” Note: I am in the process of creating a plugin for political moderation of debates, without censorship. There is far too much censorship on debate sites and blogs. Especially censorship of in-group language. The sentiment of inclusion in Democratic Secular Humanism (our current religion in the west) is at odds with the change in our word-wide status and economic position as a polity. In-grop sentiments are becoming increasingly important again.

[callout]Solution? Categorize posts in a debate as to whether they are:
1) content free or off topic
2) sentimental expressions
3) mythical, Platonic, or scriptural reasoning
4) Objective rational arguments
5) scientific arguments (using survey data but which are very fragile in the social sciences) and
6) economic arguments (which because of scale and aggregation allow cultural comparison.)
If you could filter conversations by these arguments,the reader could participate in a conversation of his own level of capacity.[/callout]

1) The strategy of moderating sentimental (non rational) expressions will not work, because it leads to regression – increasing sensitivity as a means of ostracizing people to the point where commenting becomes more an act of policing until the board declines. It increase the transaction cost of participation. 2) As someone who runs a large advertising agency that must help companies and groups understand ‘social interaction’, I spend a great deal of time trying to educate editorials that the ONLY thing people find interesting is CONFLICT. Talking head shows are either internally engaging in conflict (crossfire), or externally (oprah/hannity). Conflict leads to ratings and ratings to participation. WIthout conflict, in either a novel, sort story, or a talk show, there isn’t much to hold anyone’s attention. And the more attention that you hold (the more viewpoints included) the more likely one is to have a member of the audience identify with one of the participants, and become involved. 3) People learn by first identifying the SENTIMENTAL statements that they agree with, and then seeing those statements refuted. If you eliminate the religious nuts, or the racists, or the culture-ists, you’re actually killing off the social value as well as the attraction of your medium. Because all people operate by sentiments. They may learn to articulate those sentiments as mythology, as reason, as science, or as economics, but they are still, almost universally, articulating their sentiments – simply with a different degree of precision. 4) Personalities (contributors) cannot be allowed take over the board or its brand and become the show itself. That’s board-hijacking, rather than thread-hijacking. So if you have permanent troublemakers that begin to draw too much attention to themselves then it is better to heavily moderate them. But not because of the content and form of their arguments. You ban them because they dominate the conversation and make their own ‘show’ on your dime. Losing participants is dangerous for any medium. Even bad ones. Sanitizing a board usually ends up with no board at all. 5) Increasing the number of editors so that they split posts into new threads is better than banning or correcting. Remember – people are largely seeking attention for their niche fantasies. Ignoring people is the most effective means of negative reinforcement. 6) Sentiments (unarticulated expression) are the most common form of narrative. They are analogical arguments. Reason (to the degree that few people can actually articulate causal properties of categories), science (directly measurable subsets) and economics (indirectly measured supersets). Religion as we mean it, refers to scriptural command, or external non-human knowledge, in the monotheistic meaning. Polytheism and history are simply differences of degree. It is scripture. 7) it is particularly troubling to eliminate what is called hate-speech or inter-group expression of sentiments. That ‘s because the most important dialog of our age is the change in group sentiments now that the worldwide change in status and power hierarchies has come about because of the worldwide adoption of western economic and material technologies. SOLUTION? Editing and moderating are hard. It is very, very, difficult to ascertain the quality of an argument in the social sciences. We are fairly sure that the entire Marxist religion, masquerading as a political movement, is as irrational as the Islamic political movement masquerading as a religion, are both extremely dangerous to mankind. But since we live in a POLITY, and the member of that polity largely use SENTIMENTS rather than reason in debate, and that their beliefs and debates are highly influential upon the outcome (more than reason by a long shot), and that most people criticizing these sentimental arguments lack causal depth in their own arguments, then the best board, the best discussions, the best social outcome, is determined by keeping an argument on track, rather than censoring it. An alternate solution, (and I have done a little work on this) categorizing posts in a debate as to whether they are 1) content free or off topic 2) sentimental expressions 3) mythical, Platonic, or scriptural reasoning 4) Objective rational arguments 5) scientific arguments (using survey data but which are very fragile in the social sciences) and 6) economic arguments (which because of scale and aggregation allow cultural comparison.) If you could filter conversations by these arguments, you would be able to stack them by methodology, and the reader could participate in a conversation of his own level of capacity. DIFFERENT IDEOLOGIES Although, we should note, that as scripture, you will have a hard time actually arguing against catholic doctrine as it’s based upon natural law: the observation of what men actually do. WHich is, what appears to be, the general sentiment and strategy underlying most semi scientific argument on this board. (Which I admire). If you want to argue using reason, the libertarian methodology will most likely lead you to correct conclusions. However, libertarianism consists of a set of branches, some of which do NOT correspond to reality, including 1) Rothbard’s principle of non-violence which is a silly argument, since the entire problem of social order is non-violence 2) free trade would lead in the end, to as state of affairs not any different from world-governance 3) libertarians have not included the cost-of-forgone-opportunities which is how we pay for the creation of some set of property rights, and therefore, failed to account for the cost of developing social order. As such, it’s a platonic fantasy counter to evidence. Conservatism is the best strategy for preventing social destruction, revolution and un-meritous rotation of elites. It is very skeptical of power – power should be obtained by public service in the market, or in the military in the defense of the market. Any other grab at power is specious. That’s the sentimental origin of the western city-market building shareholder system we call ‘citizenship’. But conservative philosophy has not provided a solution to our vast increase in the division of knowledge and labor. It has not provided us with an updated set of institutions for the contemporary world. And FWIW : Conservatism is largely an unarticulated sentiment that is more complex than left-liberalism, as conservatives rely on at least five axis the most important of which is group persistence, and liberals only one (harm/care). The combination of harm/care simplicity, egalitarian equality, Keynesian macroeconomic policy (statistics, full employment, liquidity) and democratic government, are ideal tools for competing with a sentiment thats primary purpose is to avoid hubris, and protect the group for the long term. In other words, consumption on the left versus capitalization on the right.

[callout]The balance between liberalism (Pareto’s Instinct for Recombination, or Machiavelli’s Foxes) and conservatism (Pareto’s Preservation of Aggregates, or Machiavelli’s Lions) is a necessary conflict between the forces of stability that must allow change, but not disruption, and those that desire change regardless of consequences – because both innovation and stability are valuable to a civilization This debate in sentiments is particularly useful because reason is insufficient for solving this problem, largely because we have failed to make the same progress in induction and the social sciences that we have in deduction and the physical sciences. And partly because the physical sciences are vastly less complex than the more heuristic social science governed by the properties of the human mind.[/callout]

The balance between liberalism (Pareto’s Instinct for Recombination, or Machiavelli’s Foxes) and conservatism (Pareto’s Preservation of Aggregates, or Machiavelli’s Lions) is a necessary conflict between the forces of stability that must allow change, but not disruption, and those that desire change regardless of consequences – because both innovation and stability are valuable to a civilization This debate in sentiments is particularly useful because reason is insufficient for solving this problem, largely because we have failed to make the same progress in induction and the social sciences that we have in deduction and the physical sciences. Partly because the physical sciences are vastly less complex than the more heuristic social science governed by the properties of the human mind. And just so we’re all living in rational reality not committing the error of confusing our own religion with neutral objective science, much of what is argued for on this board by well meaning products of our the past sixty years of western educational system, most often is doctrine of the RELIGION of Democratic Secular Humanism (which is a religion as it is contrary to the facts). Or of egalitarian equality, which is is a property of the Democratic Secular Humanist religion, and is also contrary to the facts. Or the assumption that freedom is the desire of the majority is counter to the facts. That is, as long as we realize that people are racist, culture-ist, class-ist, nationalist, cultist, members of competing civilizations, and they all are, because they all act that way under DURESS, and that it’s advantageous both for elites and for the underclass to be ‘anything-ist’, and that these traits are beneficial to economic man, beneficial to individuals, and an enduring part of the human experience. And if one doesn’t think so, then truth isn’t one’s objective, platonism is. Truth is correspondence with reality.