Author: Curt Doolittle

(Posted in the comments section of the NYT) In response to the comments section of one of Paul Krugman’s articles: British Decline I felt that all the people that were commenting were right. They understood the failure of conservative policy. The same way that conservatives understand the failure of liberal policy. But they are working on different axis. Neither to do with one another. Our ideological war has now become a race and class war. New elites are emerging. They are less invested in the previous order. They are messianic. They are driven by the one force that is unstoppable: the loss of status and power, which no group will tolerate, and which whites only tolerated because of the combined guilt of slavery and colonialism, and the attack on men by feminism. The elites widthrew from society, participated in the commercial marketplace, left the arts to immigrants, and abandoned high culture. This was fine until the middle class was threatened. At this point, not only is the middle class threatened but so are the working class whites. Under duress people rely upon the mirror test: people who look like them. They are under duress economically. And they feel that their government, the very government that they surrendered, is against them. The ascendency of europeans and the protestant reformation is being undone. Classical liberalism is being undone. It is being undone for exactly the reasons conservatives stated it would be undone. The inability of conservatives to produce a cult (romanticism) and the abilty of conservatives to produce an economic and political model to compete with socialism and social-democracy, using the tools of monetary policy, and the state, to transfer power and advantage. RE: “Japan has a big asset: a leadership that honestly cares for its people. This caring (amateur sociology, according to professional economist), is due to their tribal unity.” This comment correctly states the issue: that despite hardship and demographic changes, the japanese remain under solidarity.

[callout]Neither side wins. Period. We all lose. A nation is its cult. Economics is not a sufficient means of organizing a polity. Democracy wasn’t the only god that failed. It married secularism. And it’s child is stillborn.[/callout]

This is scientific data, not amateur sociology: The japanese are a homogenous racist society. Economic success by any group will not lead to political disenfranchisement of another group, wherein the dominant group will lose privilege and opportunity, or the competing groups will not eliminate but simply alter the baises of privilege and opportunity. The USA is an empire. People of different races, cultures and religions, do not mix except under very rare circumstances at the margins, largely to do with status economies and the resulting access to mates and opportunities. The human accounting system is status, not money. Because intra-group status is more rewarding than extra-group status. We will not have multi-culturalism when different groups have the ability to obtain political power, and can undermine the majority status system. There was far more multi-culturalism under the great monarchies of europe than today. Simply because commercial excellence was the only status route available to minorities, because the political system was not open to them. Power is not meritocratic. It just is power, and the most important objective of power is to deprive other people of it. And the most important feature of western culture was that it allowed status gain by market activity even if denied access to political office which might alter that dichotomy. The conservative movement was a reaction to a violation of its core principle of long term group cohesion – a necessary component of land holding and trade-route holding – persistence which cannot be maintained through economic means alone. Only tribalism and pure military strength are strong enough to hold trade routes. THe conservative movement since the end of the war was a reaction against the disintegration of the sentiments of group-persistence, due to immigration, post-slavery political problems, feminism and anti-colonialism, as a coalition against the established political order. And instead of obtaining their ‘rights as englishmen’ of property, and market participation, these groups sought political power – political power is not meritocratic. It is just force. This process s playing out, and will play out, as materially important and highly predictive. Our culture will not assimilate and unify. It will not achieve the grand vision. We are demographically adopting the south american model. We will, and are, fragmenting to the point where the government may lose the ability to govern. If we get only two states to make use of nullification that will be the end of our multi-cultural, melting-pot fantasy. And three more years of low employment will almost guarantee it. Good economics is not macro economics. All economics is micro. Because the vast movement of human beings over time is determined by what they cannot sense by quantitative means, and what they can sense by qualitative means: the loss of their status and opportunity due to enforced competition, and competition from people who are no longer asked to integrate and to be ‘american’ and adopt american values, but to oppose those values and retain their culture at any cost, because en-masse, it is a way to obtain political power, rather than participate in the market and become an american by earning status in the market. All your criticisms of the free trade movement are correct. Conservatives were attempting to preserve the cult of american classical liberalism, preserve existing status hierarchies, and force people to conform to that value system – their cult – and therefore force people into the market under the monarchic classical liberal model. THe conservative policies that you are railing against are simply means of undermining the attack on the classical liberal cultural order. Justified as economic nonsense maybe. But pursued for precisely conservative reasons. Neither side wins. Period. We all lose. A nation is its cult. Because economics is not a sufficient means of decision making in a polity. Democracy wasn’t the only god that failed. It married secularism. And it’s child is stillborn.

From The Liberty Defense League, an exceptionally intelligent posting on the weaknesses of anarchism.

Some libertarian friends call for anarchy to prevail. While such a state of affairs may be offering momentary delights, we need to remember that if we stand for nothing, we will fall for anything. Anarchy is government of nothing, and is only a transitional period between different states of order. Order always arises from chaos, and anarchy is often a tool of leftists. I am sure true libertarians are well meaning in upholding individuals’ self-rule in looking to a utopian anarchy, but I believe they are being used, even misled, to merely be creating conditions for another tyranny to prevail. The libertarian anarchists are correct in stating why the current Federal Union of Criminals Unlimited gives us ample reason to secede. But to what goals do we truly aspire?

(My comment posted from the site, copied below for recording purposes.) Exceptionally intelligent article. Thank you. A couple of insights for context.

[callout]The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of Keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. [/callout]

The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. (I realize that this is a mouthful, but it is the correct analysis.) Mises, Hayek, Parsons, Popper, Rothbard, Nozick, fall failed despite great minds, to provide a solution to the semi-rational tools provided by the above listed models. The conservatives from Kirk onward produced sentimental historical references, but no rational philosophical framework. Especially that could compete with the heady religious scripture, rational philosophy, and volume of production of marxism and marxists. They failed because government consist of both the associations you refer to, as well as the institutions that limit the use of free associations to become governments themselves, and therefore have the ability to project their will by edict, rather than the ability to advocate their will upon the desirous. From this viewpoint, the anarchic research program, when approached as a program of research in limiting government (as largely done by Hoppe), has accomplished more than all other freedom-driven intellectual programs. But as a practical political movement it will fail. It wil fail for the reasons you have stated. However, it has contributed greatly to the philosophical debate. We just do not yet know how to change our institutions to make use of the libertarian anarchist framework of privatization in order to balance the use of monetary policy and redistributive sentiments, with freedom. Libertarians figured it out. Most of it. And we should thank them for it. The primary change in the nature of government was that western government ceased attempting to increase economic productivity after the great war, and instead, emphasized expansion and redistribution. And this treat to our freedom was started by the Louisiana Purchase and our fate sealed with the civil war. Liberty is for small homogenous states. And as Federalist 10 states, any time you have a government over people with dissimilar economic and cultural interests, it’s not a government, it’s an empire, and as an empire, it’s oppressive. – a member of the anarcho capitalist research program.

While the devil is in the details, and I have less than zero confidence in this president, he proposed a structural change in the way we ‘purchase’ infrastructure projects, that would effectively privatize the process, rather than continue the current (corrupt) process of relying upon earmarks. From The NYT:

Mr. Obama … called for what the White House is describing as an “infrastructure bank” that would focus on paying for national and regional transportation projects by pooling private money with public investment. He said the bank would eliminate a patchwork system in which transportation projects are financed through Congressional earmarks rather than based on merit.

From The White House

The President proposes to fund a permanent infrastructure bank. This bank would leverage private and state and local capital to invest in projects that are most critical to our economic progress. This marks an important departure from the federal government’s traditional way of spending on infrastructure through earmarks and formula-based grants that are allocated more by geography and politics than demonstrated value. Instead, the Bank will base its investment decisions on clear analytical measures of performance, competing projects against each other to determine which will produce the greatest return for American taxpayers.

Impressive. Now, let’s see it work.

Software That Produces Ads?

September 4th, 2010 

The NYT

“BETC Euro RSCG, part of the Euro RSCG Worldwide division of Havas, has developed software that can produce elementary advertisements. The software is called CAI, pronounced Kay, for Creative Artificial Intelligence.”

(Posted in NYT comments)

In the late eighties I wrote a very complex set of software applications that took data and made legal arguments. It horrified people in the profession, who were, at that time, still addicted to legal pads and lofty self impressions. But we were able to increase a docket (the set of cases a lawyer could manage) from the tens to the thousands. Admittedly, this was procedural law, and not dramatic legal theater. But it was law and argument none the less.

The number of federal judges that have seen, read and processed documents, and adjudicated cases based upon arguments purportedly written by lawyers, but entirely generated by machine, and only given a cursory review, is in the many hundreds, and the cases the tens of thousands.

Ads are not much different. They are commodities. Visual and literary symbolism adds high permutations to those commodities. But that does not mean that they are not formulaic.

Except for perhaps the top half-percent of ads, and except for brand symbols like logos, almost all advertising (impressions that is) relies upon a very limited set of visual compositions.

Any sufficiently mature technology becomes clerical in nature. And 2D ads are a mature and fairly tired technology. It matters more that you can afford to insert it into the consumer’s environment a hundred times, than does the quality of it. And the quality of an ad simply decreases the cost of the number of impressions needed to stick an idea into the consumer’s head.

The reality is the reality: advertising is a commodity and it is rarely interesting, rarely innovative, and almost entirely derivative. And if it wasn’t it wouldn’t work.

Almost all current creative innovation is in the digital arena, simply because it’s a deeper technology that hasn’t been fully explored.

Current attempts at automating 2D ads are not all that impressive. But given a sufficient pool of images, a sufficient pool of phrases and quotes, and a sufficient influx of cultural symbolism, and a simple enough set of requirements, most ads are derivative and permutations rather than informative and persuasive, and as such most ads can be automated.

And given the diverse quality of ads (impressions, not media) the median of the curve of quality of ad would undoubtably shift to the better, given automation.

http://www.puretheoryofmarketing.com

From The Left’s Unlikely Alliance with Islam By Robert Eugene Simmons Jr.

[callout]First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion.[/callout]

Most fair-minded Americans have no problem with people who wish to practice their religion. In addition, most fair-minded Americans know of the difficult pasts of Christianity and Judaism and would demand of Islam what has been demanded of other religions. Americans don’t tolerate inquisitions anymore than they do Sharia courts. Americans realize that religious freedom is inherent in the melting pot that is America, but they also understand that all religions must exist under an umbrella of mutual respect and within the boundaries of common law. Americans would no more accept honor killings than they would accept a Catholic man killing atheists for the sake of his religion. The freedom of religion, in the end, is not a carte blanche to do whatever you wish and then yell “first amendment,” but rather a constraint to prevent the government from imposing a single religion, as Islamic governments do.

I would add, that any religion that seeks dominion over temporal matters (to establish laws) is not a religion, but a political movement masquerading as a religion. And any religion that encourages its people to lie about their convictions, is incompatible with democratic government. Even worse, it’s incompatible with the western way of life. First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion. Islam and Marxism are the same. They are the totalitarianism of equality in ignorance and poverty. (In retrospect, Christianity wasn’t much better when it was brought into the empire. )

A Little History For Context

The term ‘Freedom’, and its near relation ‘Liberty’, have a long heritage.   The babylonian words “ama-gi”, meaning “Return To The Mother”, written in cuneiform, are often cited by Libertarians as the first written use of ‘freedom’. That usage literally refers to giving a slave back to his mother — an analogy to the more precisely stated ‘freeing him from slavery’ – owners gave a slave back to his mother when freeing him.  In practice, the word “ama-gi” was used to grant exceptions from the dictator’s obligations or taxes.  So the term meant freedom from obligations to the government. These special dispensations were used as a reward – freedom from requirements. The most simplistic use of Freedom described the opposite of slavery. It was not an abstraction, but a direct analogy to the deprivation of one’s choices under the threat of violence. Slavery to contemporary ears is a horrid system, but under barbarism it was universal. ( Barbarism refers to those people not members of one’s market  system ) (( DEFINITION of “BARBARIAN”: Those persons who do not pay the set of costs of forgone opportunity, employed within a social order that cooperatively manages a market and territory. )) Most farm labor required a great deal of physical effort — hard work easily avoided with slaves. People often sold themselves into slavery simply because it was a reliable way to be fed and sheltered in a world where starvation and hunger were common. Wars and raids were conducted to obtain slaves – forced laborers. And escape was dangerous in that ancient world – without a tribe to take care of you, starvation was almost guaranteed. Later, ‘Freedom’ was the term used to describe a Free Man. A ‘Citizen’. A ‘non-barbarian’. This means quite literally, in a world consisting largely of either barbarians, competing warrior states, or eastern dictatorships, ‘an investor in the city and market’. As an investor, or rather It is hard for us to to imagine a world of barbarians. It is not so hard to imagine a world filled with conquerors. Today’s barbarians are immigrants who do not conform. And nation states that seek power in order to obtain resources and trade routes. Liberty by contrast, refers, not to constraint of, and control of, individual actions under threat of violence such as under the institution of slavery, but to the more general absence of coercion by a government, of those people who are not slaves, and not barbarians, and therefore citizens.  In particular, in the west, it implies and egalitarian relationship between all those who are responsible for society: refraining from imposing conditions other than those one places on one’s self, or are required in order to maintain the property definitions (( DEFINITION of “PROPERTY DEFINITIONS”: A set of forgone opportunities that require one refrain from using objects of utility, or refrain from seizing or creating opportunities for gain – ie: self enforced self deprivations – usually described as property both individual and shareholder, manners, ethics, morals )) that constitute the social order. ((DEFINITION of “SOCIAL ORDER”: A social order is a collection of property definitions, and the required forgone opportunities required of members of the society in order to allow non-violent cooperation, and the establishment of a division of labor, and peaceful trade and exchange. And if a landed culture, also including the visible material contributions needed to maintain the physical viability of the territory, its built capital, its resources, and most importantly its market – without which escape from poverty is impossible. )) But in response to increases in the complexity of social order due to increases in population and the resulting increases in the division of knowledge and labor, both of the terms of “Freedom” and “Liberty” have been subject to political framing by public intellectuals and politicians, and their followers in the pragmatic public who use the extraordinary and uncommon freedom of speech ‘discount’ under democratic government to redefine these terms.  This redefinition of the Social Order’s Property Definitions, and restatement of the material costs and  the forgone opportunity costs of that system, has effectively constituted a legitimization of fraud, theft and redistribution. This restatement consequently led to a gradual usurpation of the social accounting system of opportunity costs, material costs, that make the market society possible. This distortion and confusion of meaning begs analysis, so that we, as members of a society under a democratic government, can tell the difference between those commonly held properties of freedom and liberty that are necessary and possible, from those that are either forms logically and physically impossible, from those that are intentionally obscure or distorted for the purpose of committing fraud and theft — or both. While frequent increases or decreases in redistribution of the PROFITS from the market are not only justifiable and beneficial, but warranted as a return on on the investment to shareholders (( DEFINITION of “SHAREHOLDER”: Synonym to “CITIZEN”: individuals who contribute forgone opportunity costs expressed as property definitions and thereby pay for the social order. ))  (“Citizens”) as the division of knowledge and labor increases, the redefinition of the accounting system of property definitions, and forgone opportunity costs is simply a complex form of corruption, theft and fraud.  Corruption theft and fraud  made possible by the obscurity of the causal processes employed to create the Social Order, due to the fact that they are evolutionary in origin, unarticulated, expressed almost entirely as sentiments, and understood only as habits, superstitions, traditions, or exploitations, rather than as a system of precise and material accounting and costs, that materially effect economic calculation and human cooperation as the size of the population and the resultant division of knowledge and labor increases.

A Society Is Its Market : The Agrarian Society, Built Capital, Trade, And The Division Of Knowledge And Labor

(UNDONE)

The West And The Fraternal Order Of Market Making Soldiers

The Great Transformations: In Europe, Asia, The Middle East, and Africa Converting From Barbarism To City And Market – Europe Converting From Barbarism To Irrigating The Alluvial Plain – Middle East Converting From Barbarism By Combat – Asia Remaining in Barbarism – Sub Saharan Africa

The Behavioral Properties Of Freedom

The Desire For Freedom Versus Security.

Endless Want And Acquisitiveness, and The Role Of Imitation, Envy  Status, And The Status Economy.

(UNDONE)

Property Is Defined Universally, But  Shareholder Rights Are Open To Corruption

(UNDONE) The Oddity Of The Cognitive Bias In The Consensus And Equality Sentiments (UNDONE) Consensus Is Limited, On Means, and On Ends To Small Numbers Of People With Similar Objectives, Abilities, and Resources (UNDONE)

Freedom And The Status Economy

Almost Universally, Humans Don’t Like Status That Is Not Given as a reward for redistribution. All cultures, all humans, sense and express resentment at ‘excessive returns’ on any type of investment. Under heroic cultural systems, the hero is granted status and access to opportunity in exchange for his efforts on behalf of the group.  As population increases, classes form because enough people exist in each class that they form group status hierarchies, and trade opportunities, and contribute to sustaining the group’s advantages.  In effect, a class becomes an organization or bureaucracy whose members attempt to preserve it’s network of opportunities – it’s binding principles. At this point, exchange between classes must form some sort of trade network, and as this happens, classes, as organizations,  compete against other classes for status.

The Freedom Seeking Minority Versus The Equality Seeking Majority

The Vast Majority of people to not want freedom, because freedom requires responsibility and risk.  When people come to free societies, they either desire the standard of living, or access to opportunity. But they rarely, if ever, desire to contribute to the maintenence of the market order by forgoing opportunities, .  In fact, they desire to gain the most using the least contribution. Likewise, (equality) So the contemporary use of the word freedom is the opposite of the contemporary use of the word equality

Property Is The Human Accounting System And Money And Numbers Increase Our Capacity for Perception, Comparison and Calculation Of Property

(UNDONE) The Economic Function Of Freedom In a division of labor, freedom increases consumption, decreases cost of maintaining the behavior of paying opportunity  costs to create the  market and contribute to property definitions, but most importantly, increases the process of trial and error – the process of entrepreneurship. Increases in trial and error lead to increases in the division of knowledge and labor, and increases in consumer choice, and decreases in prices.

The Limited Use Of Freedom As A Competitive Strategy Between Groups

If we define freedom as freedom from coercion, then there are only so many strategies that work for different groups with different abilities and resources.  Total freedom, which means barbarism,  Religion (resistance), Trade, and Force.

Freedom As Return On Investment In The Market, And The Market Is The Social Order

Freedom obtained in exchange for one’s return on one’s investment of forgone opportunities in the property definitions that constitute the local market. This contribution of forgone opportunity costs, is the cost of entry into the market, and the means by which one has access to the market.  One can only be as free as the granularity of the property definitions. Profits are signals that convey rewards from the market participants that you have been rewarded for fulfilling their wants and desires. Redistribution is a form of return on the market, but only so long as (only so long as what?) Freedom is only relevant in a market society.  Market societies are superior to alternative societies.

The Economy Of Freedom

We are all born free, so to speak, and able to use perception, memory, thought, action, force and violence to get whatever we want, if we choose to. Cooperation is not a necessity, at least for the strong. It is a compromise. It is a trade off. So lets look at the scope of actions human beings can take, and start from there, so that we can understand cooperation and freedom, and the compromises, costs and benefits that cooperation requires of us. Scope Of Individual Human Action If we eliminate the nearly infinite complexity that comes along with cooperation, we are left with only this scope of human actions.

• A.0) Thought
• A.1) Motion
• A.2) Consumption
• A.3) Transformation
• A.4) Violence
• A.5) Mating

The Five Freedoms

Given the possible scope of human actions listed above, there are only five possible non-contradictory freedoms available to human beings. Non-contradictory means that they can be granted to others equally without coercing them.

To grant these rights we only need to refrain from violence. In libertarian philosophy this is the principle of non-violence.

By refraining from violence we enforce cooperation.  In other words, we coerce cooperation by depriving people of their natural ability to use violence.  Furthermore, by depriving people of violence we make them more equal, by redistributing opportunities from the strong to the weak.

All other freedoms or rights, are derivatives of those five listed above. The remaining freedoms people commonly refer to are technologies of coercion for the purpose of cooperation, or of opposition for the purpose of competing with or avoiding the coercion.

To say that they are forms of coercion, is not to demean them. Many coercions are a proxy for violence. Property itself is a coercion.

We defend property. (talk about property and memory here)

there is a limit to cooperatino because of a limit to perception. Imagine for a moment that you could know the wants and desires of all people on the planet at once, and you could also know, all the resources that could be put to use by each person, all the skills that could be put to use by each person, all the tools available to each person, all the relationships that each person has, and the geography that each person has access to. Imagine trying to organize it all. Now, imagine that each person is trying to at least maintain his or her respect, or status. And that all these people are of different ages, and of differentI. Cooperative Organization – The Production Economy

Cooperative freedoms permit the division of knowledge and labor, which decrease everyone’s costs, or the concentration of effort to increase both the likelihood of success, and decrease the individual costs. Many people use subjective analysis, expressing these cost reductions as emotions. But our emotions exist to assist us in identifying cost reductions. Emotions describe changes in state. They inform us. They inform us in particular about changes in the state of our costs. Human aesthetics may be wounded by this fact, but all group emotional sensitivities are to costs and discounts.

• Coercion: Norms under threat of violence.
  Opposition: Violence, Fraud, Theft, Coercion, Physical Restraint, Enslavement
  Cost: Forgone Opportunity costs of Coercion, Fraud, Theft and Violence. The cost of not stealing.
  Perception and Calculation: Property and prices allow us to percieve beyond our senses. To cooperate in large numbers. Property IS calculation.
  • Key Concept:
• P.1) Life, Movement and Action:
• P.2) Property (Exclusive Use. Inventory)
• P.3) Exchange (Trade)
• P.4) Freedom of Cooperation:
• P.5) Freedom Of Assertion

II. Cultural Organization: Manners, Ethics, Morals, Religion  – The Conformity Economy (Inclusion / Ostracization)

Ethics: The Invisible Cost Economy Freedom to attempt to establish a network of norms: restraints on action enforced by inclusion or exclusion in the group. Inclusion in the group reduces risk and increases opportunity.

Manners, Ethics and Morals are terms for different segments of a spectrum for controlling costs of a group. Manners reduce friction and demonstrate predictability, class and quality. Display of good manners means access to more people who may grant one more opportunities. Each use of good manners requires some form of discipline. Each act of discipline is a cost to the individual, and a contribution to the cultural institutions. Each abuse of manners is a lack of discipline and a withdrawal from the cultural institutions. Manners must have a witness who can observe the demonstration of one’s discipline. In a demonstration of manners, there is no asymmetry of information. Each equally can observe the other.

Ethics on the other hand is a study in asymmetry. An action is ethical or not, because of shared lack of knowledge of the future, and asymmetry of knowledge between individuals. If one person has deep knowledge and the other shallow of the same exchange, ethical treatment requires that the person with greater knowledge act as if the other person is possessed of the same knowledge, and each is responsible for protecting the other from harm.

Ethical systems generally occupy some portion of a spectrum from the criminal to the charitable. a) The Criminal Ethic: I take what I can, without consent. a) The Bazaar Ethic: whatever I can get away with in voluntary exchange. b) The Warrior Ethic: whatever will not make the other or unhappy. c) The Christian Ethic: What is equally beneficial for both parties. d) The Charitable Ethic: As long as the other person prospers, I do not care what my outcome is. Then most ethical systems generally consist of intra-group and extra-group criteria, that might not be the same. Within and across family, clan, tribe, culture, religion, race, each culture varies in its adherence to its ethical standards. Furthermore,

Moral systems imply total asymmetry of knowledge. Actions fall under moral criteria whenever the cost of seizing an opportunity for one’s benefit either risks, or places an external cost, and a high cost, on others, and in particular, others with no recourse.

• Coercion:
  Opposition:
  Cost:
  Perception and Calculation:
  
• C.1) Cultural Freedom: (Choice and Opposition)
• C.2) Freedom of Norms (Competition and Choice) Participate in sets of norms, to select norms.
• C.3)
• Religion (Cultural Law And Institutionalized Conformity)

• R.1) Religious Freedom: Freedom to create institutions, rituals, and codes for the purpose of establishing the criteria of inclusion and exclusion (ostracization). Including Freedom to choose to participate in religious factions, and freedom to evade participation in factions. Religions create opportunity monopolies and attempt to disallow competition of forgone opportunity costs. Competing religions are competitions of opportunities and opportunity costs. Evading participation is an attempt to obtain opportunities at a discount.

III. Regulatory Organization: Law(organized violence and coercion)

P.1) Political Freedom (Choice and Opposition): speech, assembly, leadership, concentration of wealth. (The right to cooperate against others who have a similar right) The right of opposition. Political freedom is the freedom to cooperate for GROUP ends, by pooling resources, and establishing an organization, or association for the purpose of advancing those ends.

• L.1) Legislative Freedom:
• L.2) Institutional Freedom:
• L.3) National freedom:

IIII. Credit Organization (Anonymous, Non-Territorial Law)

• CL.1)

VI. Capitalist Freedom

(organizatoins to concentrate real capital) (abstract property definitions)

V. Redistributive Organization

• R.1) Redistributive Freedom

Every day I read around twenty academic papers, a book, and something on the order of 300 blog postings on economics and politics, and a little philosophy. I have my own aggregator on www.roundtable.capitalismv3.com, various news readers, and I use the site Rtable.net for everything related to economics. I have a high tolerance for information, a passion for the subject. And I maintain this pace while running a not insignificant mid-market company of hundreds of people, and maintaining a bi-coastal existence at the same time. I visit a variety of sites, comment on a dozen, copy the comments to a text file, then edit them and put them on my blog, usually expanding them, fixing some of the language and grammar. Because while I read and write a great deal, I write far too fast and often carelessly. I’ve come to this set of conclusions:

These ratios are about the same, depending only upon the number of assumptions, preferences, or errors involved. An eloquent writer can discount by half or more. An analytical writer like myself will use every word and then some. I started working like this twenty years ago. Before the web. Back when there were modems and bulletin boards. I learned early, in newsgroups, and on CompuServe, then on email lists and web forums how to conduct a thorough debate online under hostile circumstances and win. Because of this strategy, I rarely lose. Winning efficiently is accomplished by answering all the possible objections in your post, and leaving no stone unturned. I have literally thousands of these text files going back for decades, as a record of my intellectual development. (( I started out as a classical liberal in the Jeffersonian sense, became increasingly conservative, then libertarian, than anarchist, and now decidedly conservative libertarian. )) But this debating technique is designed to win, not to collaborate. That is because a radical does not collaborate, but fight. Otherwise he would not be a radical. And as a radical, I’m invested in this debate. I see it as a battle for the species. I learned a lot from Mises, Rothbard and Friedman: fight tooth and nail. And I learned what not to do from Hayek: be tepid – he only let Keynesian ideas roam freely, and to our painful detriment. Unfortunately, the comment forum is not the debate forum. It is simply a forum for affirming the sentiments of the article’s author. Debates happen between blogs, not within them. That’s tantamount to stealing thunder. And I too often, quite by accident, steal thunder, or at the very least, only distract from the context. And it’s annoying. My writing, which was much more literary in my youth, has been reformed by two very dominant experiences. The first, is this assertive debating online. The second, and somewhat unfortunate, is formed by the transformation of my thinking from the literary to that of discreet logical sets, by the act of spending years writing software programs. Writing software is somewhere between math and poetry. I have subconsciously merged the two experiences of debate and programming. And despite my attempts to change, I still write, effectively, the literary equivalent of programming code. My writing is structured as a program. And as such does not account for human short term memory. I leave too many associations unstated, because they are obviously deduced from the set of statement that i put to paper, and I am trying, believe it or not, for brevity despite my desire to describe an argument in a sequence of first-concepts. Someone very kind, from another blog, chastised me today. And so I’m going to have to try to change my habitual behavior. I’ll leave my authoritative voice for my blog. And resort to socratic questions in comment sections. And point to my blog where necessary. Old habits die hard. But using a methodology for the wrong application is just plain silly. (Thanks Lauren)

I lost the source of this quote, but thought it captured the sentiment correctly:

The government has been playing “extend-and-pretend” based entirely on the idea that pent up demand in consumers would grow until it busted out and the recovery would be on – fueled by consumers. What has happened is the exact opposite. This is very serious. We are running into 3 years now, and 4 if you look at what commodity speculation did to consumers starting back in early 2007. Remember the prices for wheat and such that were even driving the price of pizza up 30% or more? And then we have such things as “staycations”. And so the concern should be whether or not we have a permanent shift in consumer behaviors. Three or four years is plenty of time to break old habits and establish new ones.

1) People forget. Their forgetting follows a ‘forgetting curve’. Knowledge is perishable. Habits are perishable. Relationships are perishable. Even wants are perishable. 2) People don’t ‘unforget’. They have to learn new techniques, develop new habits, and form new relationships. And it takes time. 3) People school or swarm on opportunities. Demand is created by those people who invent ideas then bait people into swarming on them. Developing swarms, especially large scale swarms takes time. Months, even years, because people have to learn from the person closest to them, how they can participate in the swarm. Then as the swarm grows, they must learn enough to break off from the main body and find and exploit new niche opportunities.

This last swarming behavior is the general problem with the Keynesian approach to aggregate demand. People are infinitely acquisitive as long as their acquisitions increase either their entertainment, security or status. But opportunities are not infinite. And the less knowledge, the fewer resources available for risk, and the fewer relationships they have, the less likely they are to identify and swarm new relationships.

“Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa.” We know: Aid is bad. It creates corruption. It harms the economy. It makes nice happy Christians, and nice happy DSH’s (( Democratic Secular Humanists )) feel good about themselves. But it is terribly harmful for Africans and their civilization. Because I agree with everything she says, I’d like to say something meaningful and supportive, but everything I read in the book is old news. In the Austrian school we’ve been talking about this problem forever. Other than the fact that the author is a successful woman of African origin, this book is a easy read that is very hard to criticize for having uncomfortable motives. Good book. Good cause. Smart woman. But nothing new. What I can say is this: there isn’t any difference between the problem of giving aid to Africa, the Spanish and Portugese import of gold from the new world, and easy credit for american citizens and their expansionist government. It’s all bad.

I try to keep track of the ‘Grand Theories’. And I came across this one last week. I can’t find the book anywhere except online. I read what I could. And found this page by the author that summarizes his theory. Which is, quite simply, “stability and wealth provide the foundation for technological progress.” There doesn’t appear to be anything new here. His thesis is a well understood circumstance of geography, which applies both tho coasts and to rivers. Europe has both. He seems to dismiss culture as a factor. But western culture developed at the fringe of the bronze age and then iron age civilizations. And as a fringe order, especially a fringe order of metalworkers and warriors, they wanted to preserve their freedom from eastern mysticism, decadence and tyranny. It is this culture that led to vast enfranchisement. I don’t see how he explains chinese stagnation. China is primarily coastal. It matured early. It has vast rivers, wealth and bureaucracy. What is it about confucian society that left it stagnant? I could go on, but I don’t feel he has made enough of a case to allow me to draw any conclusions. Hopefully I’ll seek him out on one of my trips to europe. Here is his summary:

Le Secret de l’Occident (“The Secret of the West”) unveils an economic and political theory about scientific & technological progress. The theory gives the reasons why the scientific and industrial revolutions originated in the West, and not in the Middle East, India or China. It succeeds in explaining the European “miracle” in the IInd millenium as well as the Greek “miracle” in Antiquity. It unravels the causes for the declines and rises of India, China and the Middle East across the centuries. 
That theory was brought together, like a jigsaw puzzle, from many pieces of the historical research previously unconnected. To my knowledge, it is the first united scheme able to explain the main booms and slowdowns observed in the scientific and technological evolutions of the main civilizations. Chapter 1 – Debunking Traditional Explanations 
The usual “internalist” explanations for the European originality – religion, culture, genetics, climate, third-world abuse, Greek heritage, pure hazard – are dismissed. None of these elements can pretend to shed light on the long-term European success. 
They basically fail at the two following stumbling blocks: Eastern Europe backwardness and leadership fluctuations among civilizations. 
– Eastern Europe is religiously, culturally, ethnically, climatically very similar to Western Europe. Nonetheless, it has always been lagging backward, for centuries if not more, painfully catching up with Western advances, but never leading the way. 
– During some periods of time, China, India or the Middle East led the way in science and technology. This does not fit well with the idea of an inherent (religious, cultural, ethnical, etc.) superiority of the West. If, on the other side, one admits important changes in those inherent abilities, these remain to explain. 
Greek heritage must be rejected because the Romans, the Muslims, the Indians too could benefit from it. Randomness is not an acceptable answer, it merely amounts to giving up looking for an answer. Chapter 2 – The Economic and Political Theory (European case, 11th to 18th century) 
Chap 2 discloses the theory. For science and technology to advance in a given civilization, two conditions are required: a thriving economy and a stable political division. That is, a rich and stable states system is needed. Western Europe enjoyed growing trade and manufacturing, and was divided between long-lasting competitive kingdoms, during the whole 2nd millenium; this is why it succeeded the way it did. – A wealthy economy fosters scientific and technical progresses in several ways: 
1) it generates a surplus which can be invested in non-immediately profitable activities, as science and arts. 
2) merchants, bankers and entrepreneurs have a strong bent towards accuracy, numbers, (ac-)counting, weighting, timeliness, measurement. When successful, they impose gradually this kind of science-friendly mentality upon their social environment. 
3) merchants, bankers and entrepreneurs have a vested interest in science and technology: they support development in mathematics (accounting arithmetic, higher-degree equations for interest rate calculations, statistics for stock exchange trading and insurances, etc.). In the Middle Ages, they supported the development of accurate clocks for measuring manufacturing and travelling times, of accurate maps for travelling, of astronomy for navigation, and of course of all sorts of new technical devices, since increasing manufacturing productivity and decreasing transport costs brings profit. The mercantile community, when successful, would financially support individuals active in those fields. – Stable political division helps science and technology in several ways: 
1) It generates freedom. No center has a monopoly of power, no government can control everything. Suppressed in a given country, a scientist or a technician can shelter into another one. Same for ideas and techniques. 
2) Competition between states generates a profitable stimulation. Every government want to do better (or at least not worse) than neighbouring countries. Hence governmental support for science academies. 
3) War exercices a continuous pressure towards modernization, it creates a strong government interest for new technical devices and for improving technical knowledge and education. War does not wreak too much havoc in the case of durable states, hence the need for a stable political division. In particular, the smart European scientific professional structure, the institutions that allowed scientists to make a living while doing research – universities, royal academies, private mathematical schools, etc. – could come to life and survive only thanks to the existence of the wealthy and stable Western European states system. In this context, the XVIth-XVIIth century Scientific revolution is interpreted as the outcome of the economic boom and military revolution that Western Europe underwent in the same period 1500-1700. The difference between the two parts of Europe becomes clear here. Western Europe had a favourable economic and political background during the whole 2nd millenium, that is, it enjoyed a rich and durable states system. Eastern Europe suffered from bad economic and political conditions. Eastern Europe’s states were unstable, they underwent fast boundary moves. Moreover, trade was weak, manufacturing rickety. Merchants never thrived half as well as their Western equivalents. Chapters 3, 4, 5 – The Economic and Political Theory (Middle East, India, China) 
Chap 3, 4, 5, demonstrate that the rich states system theory explains quite well the different stages of the scientific evolutions of the Middle-East, India and China. Each time prosperity and stable division are there, scientific knowledge flourishes. In all other cases (political unity, fast-changing boundaries and/or economical doldrums), science recedes. 
Each civilization is studied century after century, period after period, because they do not experience a constant economic and political situation. So, to get a clear picture, one must consider each period separately. 
The book devotes 110 pages to analyze the political and economical histories of the Middle East, India and China in relation to the evolution of science and technology. This is arguably the most original element in the book’s approach, since, generally, authors studying scientific history focus on the West, devoting only a few pages to other civilizations, without distinguishing between the (very) different periods. 
For example, the rich states system theory solves neatly the mysterious ups and downs in Chinese scientific history. The interval from 750 to 1280 was highly productive in scientific and technical progress because China enjoyed a rather stable division and a very dynamic trade and manufacturing. After 1280, political unity set in and science stopped. Chapter 6 – The Coastline Shape Hypothesis 
In chap 6, I find out why only Western Europe benefited from prosperity and stable division during such a long time: the main cause is the shape of its coastline. The Western part of the European continent is the only densely populated area in the Earth boasting as many peninsulas, gulfs, straits, inland seas, while still being for the most part an interconnected land. Such an articulated coastline enhances trade, because sea accessibility makes maritime transportation easier. The sea route is much better than river or land transportation. Before modern times, it was safer, quicker, freer and tremendously cheaper. Moreover, an articulated coastline defines naturally limited core areas within which polities can live their lives without being too much disturbed – Britain, Ireland, Spain, France, Denmark, Sweden, Italy are regions well delimited by the sea. The long-term stable political division stems from that advantage, as the sea is the best possible boundary for a state. 
In mathematical terms, the quality of a coastline is measured by Mandelbrot’s fractal dimension of the coastline. The higher the dimension, the better the shore articulation. I made some measurements on maps and obtained that Europe has a fractal dimension of 1.46, much higher than China (1.26), India (1.14) and the Middle East (1.13), which is significant because this figure can only take values between 1 and 2. 
Eastern Europe does not enjoy as good a shore profile as Western Europe: it is a mainly landlocked area. Vast surfaces are deprived of sea access: the seas are too far-away, they are often closed or ice-blocked seas. Hence, trade could not take off, and no natural boundary protected the regions’s states, which were brittle and short-lived. This is the reason why this region did not perform well in science and technology. Chapter 7 – The Greek Miracle Explained 
Chap 7 shows that the rich states system theory explains the ancient Greek miracle as well. The Greeks formed a lasting states system, enlivened by a brisk trade, both element thriving on the very indented and articulated coastline of the Aegean sea. Only the Southern part of Greece nurtured the miracle, because it had abundant access to the sea. The mostly landlocked Northern part of Greece stayed apart from the scientific adventure. So the Southern/Northern opposition in ancient Greece mirrored the Western/Eastern opposition in modern Europe. 
The miracle lasted until military technological progress overshot the possibilities of the Greek geographical platform. Then, the scene extended to the whole Eastern Mediterranean region, which the Greeks conquered. Huge states formed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia minor, which could follow the competition, but only for a while: the new territories did not have an articulated coastline. The economy slumped down (this was compounded by demographic decline) and a more and more unstable division settled, ruining the Greek world and ending the “miracle”. Chapter 8 – Evolution of the West, 19th and 20th Centuries 
In chap 8, I apply the theory to the 19th and 20th centuries. The states system of Western Europe continued on its course, generating scientific progress at a fast pace, until the first part of the 20th century, when technological progress in the military domain (essentially tanks and airplanes) rendered the European continent too small. At this stage the states system destroyed itself (2nd world war). Greater states were required for the competition to continue. The USA and USSR, luckily, were there. They continued the battle until, again, the military technology (thermonuclear bombs and intercontinental missiles) exceeded the possibilities of the geographical platform. But this time, technology was so powerful that war simply became impossible on Earth between great powers, ushering the nuclear peace in which we live now. Chapter 9 – Present Situation and Near Future 
In chap 9, I develop several contemporary topics, like the Asian boom and the sharp drop of science in Russia. I show that, today as ever, only two forces prop up science: stable division and prosperity: governments, companies and donators are the funders of science. They can assume that role only if the necessary ressources are there, hence if the economy fares well. Also, only the freedom of a multicenter world allows research to go on unfettered (think of cloning, assisted fecundation, and so on). Furthermore, inter-state prestige or trade competitions are a crucial motivation behind that financing. 
As a consequence, one can take scientific progress for granted in the future as long as some region in the world will enjoy prosperity and stable division – this progress shall be a bit weaker, however, with the waning of the military pillar. Epilogue 
Finally, the epilogue generalizes the theory for the space age (that never came). Planet Earth has become too small to stand large conflicts between great powers, but wars with missiles and nuclear bombs could still be waged in the interplanetary medium. I briefly study the quality of our stellar system in that respect. In the same way as not all coastline profiles allow for long-lasting rich states systems, similarly, not all “planetographies” foster such lush combination at the space age level. The result of this investigation is that, unfortunately, our neighbouring planetary environment seems hopelessly forbidding. We are not going to experience in the future another full-fledged “miracle”, like the Greek and the European ones in the past. ========

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