Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • Angry Old White Men? Hardly.

    Claude Fischer is a sociologist at UC Berkeley who published a piece entitled “Angry Old White Men” in which he categorizes the Tea Party movement as a rural movement of old white men. Mark Thoma, a left-leaning economist picked up the article and posted it on his blog The Economist’s View, where he adds: “Rural America senses that he represents a major shift in the political landscape, one that will no longer put the white male farmer at the center of the American political landscape.” As if its a rural cause rather than a white cause. To which others add:

    “What we’ve got here is a real warning sign that something in our society just isn’t working. It’s not just hand-wringing liberals and right-wing Christians anymore; when your educated upper-middle classes start lashing out, you know the regime’s days are numbered.”

    and

    “The hate directed at “white men” by so many members of leftist establishment(s) borders on blood lust. At their deep core is a burning anger that they focus on the “white man” taking delight in belittling, marginalizing, and taunting that demographic. Perhaps the “delicious irony” is that many of these folks proudly flaunt their fake “tolerance” and calls for “peace” while obviously unable to control their desire to stoke division and strife.”

    and this:

    “Did these [old white guys, especially affluent, Protestant ones] give ground or was it an enlightened choice? … My guess is the shift had more to do with U.S. government based public education, by mostly female primary school teachers, which gave children a sense of respect for all. It still took many generations.

    The last of which is actually the structural answer: our schools teach democratic secular humanism in an effort to replace our traditions and cultures with a state religion. We do not have a separation of church and state. We have a state religion and we send most of our children to the theocracy for education. White Protestants lost political power, status and their culture due to “enlightened choice”. There was no material reason why they HAD to lose power. They chose to be ‘Christian’, which was the sentiment needed to unify a fragmented europe. They could just as easily have chosen to keep slavery, to keep control of government, to forbid immigrants political power, to maintain the requirement of protestantism. In other words, they could have done what most civilizations have done. What most civilizations still do. In fact, the entire purpose of nationalism was to give racial groups their own sovereignty after centuries of tribal distribution across monarchic europe. It Wasn’t Political Power, It Was Economic Power Starting with the industrial revolution, the dominance of the HOUSEHOLD lost importance, and there for the dominance of the MALE waned. The decline has been not just among white men, but among men in particular. Women’s entry into the work place has not hurt high performing men, but since women have taken all the lower risk clerical functions in society, and seem to largely be better suited for it, this has moved men toward the edges – into the riskier professions. They Gave Up Power Voluntarily These voluntary abdicators of male political power were Christians. They tried the experiment. It was a heady debate. We have just wrapped class, race and cultural preference in a deep cloak of secular language instead of religious language. But the underlying sentiments and logic are essentially the same. We have a religion of democratic, secular humanism rather than paternal christianity. The difference is that the political myth of the ‘white man’s burden’ of anglo exceptionalism in order to morally justify the empire, has become the myth of democratic secular humanism in order to justify the empire. The Experiment Failed What has happened is that these previously tolerant people believe that the experiment failed. That their conservative sentiments (the belief that humans have immutable behaviors), have returned to precedence over their liberal sentiments (people can aspire to utopian behavior in the right environment) have changed. White Men in particular tolerated man-hating feminism because they felt it was somewhat justified, but that society would ‘settle back’ because people have ‘natural tendencies’. White Men felt that because of slavery and WW2, that they were wrong in their fantasy of exceptionalism – that they had betrayed their christian sentiments, and so they tolerated criticism in the hope that society would settle down. White men today no longer believe those egalitarian myths. WHen you destroy a mythos you don’t destroy just the ‘bad parts’. You destroy the entire system of myths. They no longer believe in their guilt. They now feel equally wronged. The Levant Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan, describes how he and his fellow members of the levant thought that they had solved the problem of heterogeneity, and that they were more civilized than the rest of the world. But it was a myth. That small civilization is now dead and gone, and gone within his lifetime. People continue to murder each other in droves around the world. And while capitalism decreases costs and increases quality of life, and it because of the prosperity, decreases the incentive to devolve into violence, it is not a sufficient tool for altering the human perception of status, nor of the realities of cooperating in groups: tribes remain fixed in their cooperative networks even under capitalism. It’s just FRICTION that is less important because there is less scarcity of opportunity. What Happens Next The question becomes, a) whether white men will cease tolerating their denigration and become activists, – or b) whether they will do what men have in all other collapsed cultures, which is abandon the Fraternal Order, and become like byzantines, Mediterraneans, or africans, and simply pursue non-political localized self interest which will over time, simply erode the legitimacy of the state. There is another option c) which is violence. But that is always a minority position because it is so costly. And if history is a guide we will get all three of these factors. Western Protestant Culture Is An Anomaly The sentiments of white male culture are an anomaly. It is the product of the fraternal order of city-defending soldiers who treat the ‘market’ (which they don’t differentiate from ‘society’) as if they were shareholders. That sentiment is extremely rare. If that sentiment ceases, we will not get the civilization that utopians aspire to. We have a lot of historically similar situations. We might get something random. But history tells us what we will get will not likely be the ‘free society’ that we aspired to. Urbanization Affects Social Institutions By Increasing Anonymity And Decreasing Economic Conformity We are urbanizing, world wide. And we must. There are too many of us to return to farming. We no longer live where we are self sustaining yet produce excess in order to participate in the market for the purpose of getting money with which to buy what we cannot produce. Nearly all of us must participate in the market for our entire livelihood, trading our skills in manipulating someone else’s tools and materials for money so that we can buy ALL of our needs in the market. We live in a world of perceived risk, surrounded by plenty. But urbanization under market-centricity poses difficult problems. The problem of ‘social order’ (conformity to law or convention) occurs when any civilization sufficiently urbanizes. The human social tools of ostracization (economic exclusion) and fraternalism (economic inclusion) do not operate in dense populations where anonymity is common and therefore social ostracization alone cannot block people from opportunities. There is no evidence that these social tools operate in the dense urban environment. There is no evidence that Law or Religion can cause them to operate either. The Shift To A Racial Minority This is the last generation where white men will feel guilty about their position. They feel disempowered. They are soon to be a minority. They dislike being ridiculed and having their status trampled upon, and are rapidly considering it RACISM against them. (Which they believe will give them the right in turn, to be racist.) The question is what will they do. And if history is any indicator, most of them will do nothing but acquiesce. But like any racial group they will likely form a disenfranchised but radical minority who is activist. This is what is occurring today. If the minority gains traction it gains followers from those who perviously acquiesced – people follow a winning team. White men are also developing the sentiment of racial persecution, and with it, the egalitarian christian sentiments, and their historical guilt are waning. When a people are oppressed they revert to self serving behavior and abandon behaivors of social sacrifice. The Forgone Opportunity Economy Society is not paid for by taxes. We pay for bureaucrats and soldiers with taxes. Society, or social order, is paid for by refraining from seizing opportunities. We create property by not stealing. We create comfort and safety with manners. We create prosperity and frictionless trade by non-corruption and ethical behavior. We prevent ourselves from externalizing high costs to others, and often to ourselves by moral behavior. We take on the burden of truth-telling. We define the granularity of property, the rules of the market. Each of us does ten thousand things a day to pay the tax for social order. And that tax system of opportunity costs is what we call ‘culture’. it is the highest cost of human capital a group can invest in. Groups with different systems compete. They get angry with one another because they ‘sense’ theft or fraud, not of money, but of the sacrifices that they made for their group’s benefit. They get angry when their sacrifices (forgone opportunities) are wasted when another race or social class demeans them. In this way, human groups conduct forgone-opportunity-funded warfare, but they largely do it peacefully. This is the racial and cultural economy. Money, Status, Forgone Opportunity, Access to Opportunity, and Access To Mates. Money is the least of them. Political power is simply the means by which to control the economy. Not just the money economy. But the status, opportunity and mating economy. Institutions (self-perpetuating social habits) are the highest cost development for any civilization. The people in the civilization know the costs. They know the opportunities that they spent on building that cost. They know the taxes that they paid. THey know what property is theirs that they earned. And egalitarianism and charity are happily given as long as they are FRACTIONAL and do not allow one group to steal its institutional costs from another. People are not having a simple emotional reaction. They see usurpation of political power as THEFT. They are ACTING like they see it as theft. The Implications For everyone else who is not a white male, it becomes the question how a society can be managed, or how it will operate without those sentiments of fraternalism. We never get what we think we will. The French and Russian revolutions were horrific both in process and outcome. But most if not all civilizations simply decay once they urbanize, and their expansionist class of males surrenders to the sense of impotence, or the luxury of hedonism, by exporting the effort needed to maintain the social order to the bureaucracy. The general assumption is that the democratic process will solve this problem of social integration and power distribution. But there is no evidence in history that such a thing occurs but rarely, and almost exclusively in England. Politics is a market, and people will circumvent the market when it no longer serves them. No Longer A Nation But An Empire The USA, thanks to Teddy Roosevelt and his ilk, is an empire in imitation the european model. Empires consist of factions. Factions are geographic (trade routes), racial (genetic), cultural (normative), and religious (legal). But an empire over whom half the population feels oppressed and stolen from is simply fragile. We are no longer a country contentiously dealing with a problem of integration caused by our need for population to complete the westward expansion of the continent. Instead we are an empire over some number of smaller nations yearning to be free, and a disenfranchised geographic ex-majority that appears to be developing a new sentiment (acquiescence to failure), a political movement (tea party), and a radical movement (militias). At least, that is where this appears to be going, if history is any indicator. And men who no longer see the existing order as beneficial to them may not work to overthrow it, but they will not work to maintain it. And that may be worse. The Difference Between Methods The difference between conservatives and progressives lies in the different assumptions we have of human nature. Progressives are utopians that believe we are free to build whatever world we choose to – they err on the side of people ‘doing good’ which is why progressivism is a movement of the industrial period. Conservatives err on the side of people ‘pursuing self interest’ which is why conservatism is an ancient sentiment, although conservatism as a political movement is a reaction to the english and french revolutions and the rise of socialism and communism. It is a contemporary reaction to progressivism. And like all conservative movements it is a reaction to the perception of theft of one’s assets by political means (even if those assets were unjustly acquired as in mercantilism or predatory banking or slavery). Conservatives believe that human beings have innate sensibilities, biases and preferences that are immutable. And because they are immutable we should develop institutions that take these immutable differences into account. We should expect people to act with racial preferences because people almost always do act with racial preferences. They do so because intra-racial status is more beneficial for the majority than is extra-racial status. And status controls access to mates. Except at the extremes where status can be increased by breaking racial barriers, status determines access to mates, determines access to opportunities, access to networks, in general, access to a better life. The Economics Of Race And The Impact On Politics So the question is, what will happen in a world where we have a white minority whose traditions create the opportunity for democracy and rotation of the elites, and most people have racial preferences, where there is no method of organization urban conformity, but we have a political system that allows democratic rotation of elites? In general, at least in history, people tend to vote in what is called “Bonapartism” or a totalitarian who can forcibly resolve differences. Bonapartism is democratic totalitarianism. Our systemic answer to urbanization was credit. Credit is more useful than laws because with record keeping it produces both positive and negative incentives. We are likely going to continue to build the credit society instead of the religious and legal societies. In fact, law is so technical it is largely immaterial, and most people are both isolated from it and ignorant of it. We actually operate by credit and exchange instead of legal or religious conformity. We live in the credit society. But while credit solves the problem of anonymity and ostracization, it does not solve the problem of tribal and cultural sovereignty, which is a code-phrase for the system of status signals among people with racial and cultural similarities. In a world of economic plenty and cheap debt and fiat money there is an inflationary impact upon status perceptions that like a tide floats all boats and reduces class and race friction. But in a world of unemployment, which may be structural, permanent, and wherein opportunities are more scarce, and therefore racial status more advantageous, and in a society where there is a very large and disenfranchised minority that is government by an activist political system that they see as tyrannical and against their interest, it seems unlikely that people will support that government, that way of life, or even the assumption that the government and way of life are ‘goods’. Race matters. Race matters because ENOUGH people act with racial preferences, and MORE of them act with racial preferences under economic duress, because acting within racial preferences is economically rewarding for the majority of its members. It’s just simple economics.

  • We Won’t Stop Bloggers From Telling Us Otherwise. This Isn’t A Pursuit Of Truth.

    In an essay that has attracted some interest from the blogging community, Kartik Athreya of the Richmond Fed, correctly states that there are political hacks misusing economic arguments. But she misses the point.

    Economics is Hard. Don’t Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise “In the wake of the recent financial crisis, bloggers seem unable to resist commentating routinely about economic events. It may always have been thus, but in recent times, the manifold dimensions of the financial crisis and associated recession have given fillip to something bigger than a cottage industry. Examples include Matt Yglesias, John Stossel, Robert Samuelson, and Robert Reich. In what follows I will argue that it is exceedingly unlikely that these authors have anything interesting to say about economic policy. This sounds mean-spirited, but it’s not meant to be, and I’ll explain why.”

    [callout] Bloggers then, like everyone else, are arguing against error with error. Against sentiment with sentiment. Against bias with bias. Against foolishness with foolishness.[/callout]

    “The question is: can they provide you, the reader, with an internally consistent analysis of a dynamic system subject to random shocks populated by thoughtful actors whose collective actions must be rendered feasible? For many questions, I and my colleagues can, and for those that the profession cannot, the blogging crowd probably can’t either.” “…just below the surface of all the chatter that appears in blogs and op-ed pages, there is a vibrant, highly competitive, and transparent scientific enterprise hard at work. At this point, the public remains largely unaware of this work. In part, it is because few of the economists engaged in serious science spend any of their time connecting to the outer world (Greg Mankiw and Steve Williamson are two counterexamples that essentially prove the rule), leaving that to a group almost defined by its willingness to make exaggerated claims about economics and overrepresent its ability to determine clear answers.”

    [callout]So while I laud your ambitions, it seems, that you have fallen into the same error that you accuse of others: to pretend to possess knowledge that you do not.[/callout]

    In a polity where we have traded traditional moral principles for the abstractions of economic theory as the means of resolving differences between the ambitions of our politicians, and where at the same time, economics is a nascent, and perhaps insufficient body of knowledge to adequately inform both our polity and its leaders, both sides of any debate are required to rely upon the accumulated erroneous judgements and confirmation biases inherent in their constituents. Bloggers then, like everyone else, are arguing against error with error. Against sentiment with sentiment. Against bias with bias. Against foolishness with foolishness. Your analysis assumes that economists can be of much help in the public debate. When in fact, there is also a body of economic philosophy that states that the entire DSEM, as well as equilibrium itself, and the descriptive, probabilistic, non-causal mathematics employed in it, are insufficient methods for representing and forecasting economic interactions. In fact, the great progress of economists over the past fifty years has largely been to supply quantitative proof that confirms the traditional descriptions of the consistency of human error, bias and information asymmetry — a set of errors which only needed exposition because of the false pronouncements of the theorists who created the idealistic models suitable for simplistic mathematical modeling.

    [callout]Economics as we know it is a process of describing the past. Politics is the process of inventing the future. The difference between description and invention is infinite.[/callout]

    In other words, politics has little to do with economics. And all economic science seems to have accomplished, is to trade one set of traditional wisdoms for another set of speculations. And while you refer to economics as ‘scientific’, the political use of economic theory has been anything but scientific. And to a large degree, the immature nature of economic theory combined with the foolishness of political rhetoric, has created as much harm as good. In the comfort and support it gave to communism and socialism alone, the record of economic theory is the record of bloodshed, fraud, deception and heady murder. So while I laud your ambitions, it seems, that you have fallen into the same error that you accuse of others: to pretend to possess knowledge that you do not. The greater economists who do much of the great work, often refrain from the political discourse, largely because they possess sufficient wisdom to know that it is a pointless exercise. Economics as we know it is a process of describing the past. Politics is the process of inventing the future. The difference between description and invention is infinite.

  • The Humble Libertarian And Flat Taxes.

    The humble libertarian makes an argument for flat taxes in order to quell the state’s tendency to foster class warfare.

    with a flat tax, they can’t just pick on the winners anymore. In order to get more revenue, their best tactic would be to incentivize overall growth. Lower trade barriers. Lower the costs of doing business. Encourage real growth.

    Exactly. Flat taxes are superior in a democratic government for two reasons 1) they must be kept small, and the lower half of society will make sure that they are kept small. 2) the government must foster growth in order to increase revenues. Secondly, our rhetoric treats people as if they are in permanent classes, yet we tax income which is highly variable. If we are to tax anything progressively, it should not be income, but balance sheets. Lastly, there is a point at which one’s possession of and use of capital is a distortion of the market (The Silver Debacle, or George Soros’s Abuses). This appears, at least in round numbers, to occur at its lowest, somewhere near 1000 times the median income, and accelerates from there. Above that position, people are no longer participating in the market. They are governing it. (This debate is a bit complicated for a comment on a blog post.) So, if our taxes are to include those that are progressive, they should be against balance sheets, with the purpose of getting as many people into the capitalist class late in life as possible. At least, unless you want private capitalist government rather than a market run by market participants for the benefit of market participants. Large capital concentrations in combination with individual knowledge cannot be applied to ‘the market’ as we understand it, and justify it in the classical liberal sense, as a ‘social good’.

  • Do Not Assume Freedom Is A Desire Of The Majority. Security Is. But But Freedom.

    People do not seek freedom. They seek the security that is provided by the prosperity of the creative class in a free society. But they do not seek freedom. They seek security.

    [callout]the classical liberal fantasy that rhetorical debate can convince a majority to favor freedom over security is simply a conservative utopian fantasy. It will never occur. Ever. Period.[/callout]

    And the classical liberal fantasy that rhetorical debate can convince a majority to favor freedom over security is simply a conservative utopian fantasy. It will never occur. Ever. Period. Once an argument is understood — in that it possesses explanatory power, is non-contradictory, and solves a pertinent practical political problem — one can seek consensus. And as long as that consensus appeals to a majority, then a democratic polity can adopt the policies that support the argument. However, the classical liberal ideal of freedom cannot be supported within a democracy, and no such rational arguments can prevail, for the sole reason that freedom is the desire of the minority – the creative class. And instead, safety is the objective of the majority. And the majority will always pursue safety rather than liberty. If the freedom-desiring minority loses it’s willingness to use violence to preserve it’s freedom, it will possess neither freedom, nor prosperity. And the rest of the civilization will calcify upon being deprived of the mental fertility of its creative, and therefore, most productive classes. This is the history of civilization. Fertility followed by calcification, followed by conquest and poverty. The answer is not violence, nor is the answer argument. The answer is sufficient argument so that the creative classes will apply violence, for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining the political power needed to secure the minority liberty against the predatory majority’s exploitation of the creative class in order to obtain security.

    [callout]We can be free, or we can be exploited, or we can be oppressed or we can be enslaved, or we can be murdered. Choose your position on that spectrum.[/callout]

    We can be free, or we can be exploited, or we can be oppressed or we can be enslaved, or we can be murdered. Choose your position on that spectrum. Because your actions in the use of violence will determine it. Talk is cheap, and demonstrably ineffective.

  • The Economist: Why Are Companies Hoarding Cash? My Answer: Uncertainty.

    THERE is a new question posed to our panel in the Economics by Invitation section:

    Much of the recent increase in private-sector saving comes from businesses. What explains the rise in corporate thrift? How long will it last, and what policies might reduce it?

    As an article in this week’s edition explains, the build-up of cash by the private sector can affect the recovery.

    If cautious firms pile up more savings, the prospects for recovery are poor. Economies will be stuck in the current—and odd—configuration where corporate surpluses fund government deficits. If firms loosen their purse-strings to hire workers and to invest, that will allow governments to scale back their borrowing.

    Economist Xavier Gabaix believes that the fear of another shock down the road is making firms cautious. Hal Varian thinks that firms are not investing because they see no signs of demand picking up anytime soon.

    Firms are not investing because they don’t see much demand for their products now or in the near-term future. And, of course, we end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy. One possible strategy would be to offer a temporary investment tax credit or accelerated depreciation allowance.

    They are hoarding cash be cause of uncertainty. Regime uncertainty. Economic Uncertainty. Even cultural uncertainty. There are so many layers of uncertainty that businesses don’t even know how to advertise. What products to bring to market. What trends can or might emerge if they help them.

    [callout]Big businesses are starting to spend BECAUSE they have cash. But recessions and job recovery are led by SMALL BUSINESS and small business cannot get credit. Credit for small business is speculative. It’s all speculative. And small business owners have nothing to borrow against. Nothing. Any hard asset is now questionable in value.[/callout]

    Big businesses are starting to spend BECAUSE they have cash. But recessions and job recovery are led by SMALL BUSINESS and small business cannot get credit. Credit for small business is speculative. It’s all speculative. And small business owners have nothing to borrow against. Nothing. Any hard asset is now questionable in value. To move the economy, consumers have to show that they’re spending. Companies have to show that they’re taking risks (investing). Any reference to demand is an antiquated method of looking at an economy. There isnt’ a demand problem unless there isn’t an uncertainty problem. Right now there is an uncertainty problem, so there isn’t room for a demand problem. To eliminate uncertainty, and to create jobs, we have to loan to small business despite their weak balance sheets. That’s the problem. In a nutshell. That’s the problem. Some of us are trying to figure out how to fund small businesses. But politically,, it seems impossible.

  • Postcards From Hell: The Reason For Failed States

    Postcards from Hell

    A terrifying photo essay from Foreign Policy on the world’s failed states. Note that with just a few exceptions, the 60 or so states the magazine had determined to be “failed” are located in tropical climates. Someone recently sent me this fascinating video related to the new book by sociologist Philip Zimbardo (of the Stanford prison experiments fame–or infamy, I guess). The theme of Zimbardo’s new book is the way time is perceived among different cultures. Of relevance to the Foreign Policy essay is the idea that populations and cultures in northern climes have adopted a future-oriented timeframe, likely because it’s necessary for their survival. You have to stock food, fortify shelter, and so on to prepare for the winter months or you’re going to starve. Or freeze. Tropical populations have a more present-oriented concept of time. Food is available year round. There’s no winter for which they need to prepare. I’ve read some interesting commentary on how these differing concepts of time might explain why warmer countries have been slower to develop than cooler ones.

    The reasons for the under-development of Tropical States are as as follows: 1) Disease gradients are lower (safer) in the cold and higher (harsher) in the warm. 2) Physical effort is difficult in hot weather, which hampers the creation of built capital. (core body temp also affects iq during exertion) 3) Agrarian cycles in the north encourage cottage industry in winter, farming in spring and fall and war in summer. This creates certain social orders that foster human, built and technical capital accumulation. Compare to the brutal survival farming of the Chinese and their 360 day-a-year discipline of rice farming. 4) Rivers or seas, but rivers in particular provide safe, easy and low cost product transport. The opposite is true: some areas are simply geographically resistant to trade. 5) Unequal distribution of useful plants and animals favors certain regions. As well as agrarian productivity. 6) Access to trade means access to knowledge, and greater availability of resources and technology. This increases the probability of innovation, and the development of ‘virtues’ as we understand our commercial and moral code.

    [callout] The abstract thing we refer to as society, that ‘thing’ that is embodied in the accumulated habits that we call ‘social order’, are the most important and expensive forms of human capital. [/callout]

    7) The abstract thing we refer to as society, that is embodied in the accumulated habits that we call social order, are the most important and expensive forms of human capital. These habits define the unspoken normative goals that define cooperation and coordination. (The set of things that we don’t do: the opportunities we do not sieze. We pay for social institutions by forgoing opportunity, we pay for infrastructure and governance with the results of trade.) These institutions include our different definitions of public and private property, manners, ethics, morals and rituals. These require political institutions that perpetuate them one adopted. 8) General technical knowledge. (how to craft things) General systemic knowledge (how the natural world operates). We often confuse education with practical knowledge and scientific knowledge. ( the Muslim world is full of Islamic studies which do nothing except persist in resisting ignorance. the sub Saharan world is still in the embrace of magical thinking. ). Commerce not education (imitation of practice) is the primary means of knowledge transfer. 9) Concordant technologies. Civilizations need to accumulate a greatdeal of human capital in order to adopt certain technologies before they can adopt others, else these technologies are not disruptive, and do not increase the division of knowledge and labor. Otherwise tyrants simply use it to institutionalize corruption and profiteering. This isn’t any different from children but on a larger scale. If people do not forgo the opportunity to misuse a technology, they will never be able to gain its productive benefits. You don’t give a child a gun. 10) Social orders. The west was built by fraternal orders of city/market joint stockholders, partly because of the high cost of equipment and training. This is the source of our republican sentiments, as well as our tools of argument,reason and science. Other societies have not been so lucky. Now we get to how westerners hurt some cultures: 1) Creating political boundaries across tribes destroys their ability to create human capital because it over stimulates the need for group persistence and impedes the development of common market habits. Thievery and tribal banditry is much easier and cheaper than creating trade and infrastructure. Even today, there is no small sentiment among males that suggests civilization has limited their potential access to mates. 2) Colonialism under England was effective in creating stability. In fact the hallmark of the Anglo model is stability and stability fosters the accumulation of all forms of capital. If you were colonized by someone else, then you will suffer for it. Anglo social technology is as important as the development of Greek science and reason. That technology, unbenknownst to most of us, is the development of abstract principles that allow calculation and coordination. ( this is a very complex topic.). French colonies are a disaster. 3) Economic interference, and in particular the crime of Charity. Ths is a hotly debated problem. But individual and locals assistance by devoted people seems to make a difference, while insertion of capital is extremely harmful to developing economies that must transform from tribal to market economies. Unpleasant realities :

    [callout]IQs are unequally distributed in different races, and in clases within those races. And that all people are racist in that they prefer acting within and in cooperation with people of their race. And this will never change, ever … [/callout]

    And the one factual reality that the vast body of people will fail to accept in the face of universal, overwhelming and scientifically evidence: that iqs are unequally distributed in different races, and in clases within those races. And that all people are racist in that they prefer acting within and in cooperation with people of their race. And this will never change, ever, simply because of the imitative nature of man, his need to learn, and his desire to learn from those he most easily can imitate. And the consequential need for, conceptions of status in order to choose who to imitate.

    [callout]While economic classes are semi randomly plastic, social classes are decidedly inelastic.[/callout]

    When the hard reality is that women are hypergamic (marry up), while men have a wider iq variance than women, it presents men with the need to compete for mate selection. And this system requires a diverse economy of status symbols within each race and class that guarantee the eternal search for demonstrable differences in status in order to pursue both mates and opportunities for alliances.. Racism is permanent as is classism. The dirty secret of the human genome project is that class is genetically determinant. While economic classes are semi randomly plastic, social classes (which are readily evidenced in the postings on this and other blogs) are decidedly inelastic. (spoken as a member of the upper middle class). Furthermore IQs are different in consequence between groups. A white, Jew or east Asian with a sixty iq is perceptibly broken. A sub saharan African is not – he or she just has a higher barrier to the learning of abstractions. In general, To maintain machines requires a 105 IQ. To get a liberal education requires an IQ of 110. To design machines requires an IQ of 122 . To design abstractions requires an IQ above 130. To innovate upon a system of thought requires, it appears, above 140. Everyone else simply uses the tools created by others. It is demonstrably true that the top quintile has more influence on productivity of the society than all the rest combined. Since all societies are run by minority elites (even ours) the composition of elites in government, intelligence in the middle classes, and capable mechanics in the proletariat determine the competitive rates of innovation and change in a society. There are also ways to manufacture ignorance. Some religions are regressive. In fact it could be reasonably argued that many are simply dangerous. The reason one is out gunned out germed and out steeled, so to speak, is a function of a culture’s willingness to adapt disruptive technologies. Luddites perish. Most of the scriptural religions are Luddite systems of thought.

    [callout]… it does not take a genius to run a market economy. As our politicians demonstrate daily.[/callout]

    Despite these iq distribution differences, it does not take a genius to run a market economy. As our pliticians demonstrate daily. What is important is that in any sufficiently large body of people exist sufficient numbers to adopt the rule of law, the intitutions of trade, and some form of capital production. The problem is one of numbers: getting the barbarians and potential corrupt bureaucrats to forgo opportunities for personal gain in order to fund the development of their human capital. The problem of coordinating production in a division of knowledge and labor requires a great deal of sacrifice. It is the is a sufficient set of principles govern the progress and adaptability of cultures. As other readers have commented, colonialism is perhaps the greatest determinant today of the relative state of failed nations. I hope this was helpful in providing food for thought.

  • Invert The Tax System And Give Control To The States?

    The wealthy states export leftism and money to the poorer states. This redistribution is hidden by the ‘money laundering’ that occurs when taxes are pooled then redistributed through the tax and legal bureaucracies.

    [callout]The wealthy states export leftism and money to the poorer states. This redistribution is hidden by the ‘money laundering’ that occurs when taxes are pooled then redistributed through the tax and legal bureaucracies.[/callout]

    The majority of the federal budget gies to redistributive programs. Effectively an over extended intergenerational insurance company relying upon external uncompetitiveness, internal growth, and internal population The problem with turning programs over to the states is the lack of competence in state and local government. Especially the higher incidence of corruption in local government.

    [callout]People do not hate government. They hate the necessary corruption that comes with human behavior in a bureaucracy whenever the limits of the bureaucrat’s knowledge are exceeded, and the necessary contrivances of bureaucrats who are intentionally isolated from the market and the pricing system, become a predatory liability to the freedoms of the citizens under the rubric of efficiency and practicality – a failure of bureaucracies but not private sector business that is entirely at the service if the pricing system.[/callout]

    What troubles the poorer states despite their receipt of cash benefits is priority given to urban density, urban political gains from immigration, debt expansion., bias against lower productive but self supporting non urban groups, and cultural tyranny. The soution is to limit the federal government to non social programns, to return money to the states as you suggest, and to privatize all possible government services, while increasing audits of the private sector companies. People do not hate government. They hate the necessary corruption that comes with human behavior in a bureaucracy whenever the limits of the bureaucrat’s knowledge are exceeded, and the necessary contrivances of bureaucrats who are intentionally isolated from the market and the pricing system, become a predatory liability to the freedoms of the citizens under the rubric of efficiency and practicality – a failure of bureaucracies but not private sector business that is entirely at the service if the pricing system.

  • The Nonsense Alternative Called “Solidarity.” Throwing The Peasants A Bone.

    This bit of ridiculously regressive Luddism was posted on a left leaning blog. It touts “A Solidarity Economy”. Which is a nice name for voluntary organizations that circumvent the pricing system. Yet another example of enduring marxist silliness.

    There is no alternative to free-market capitalism, Margaret Thatcher used to say, and about this, like so many things, she was wrong. … What is the Solidarity Economy? It’s a movement that has brought hope to a world disillusioned by capitalism and too often unaware that economic activity can be conducted with respect for human decency and the planet on which we live. Its five key principles are solidarity, sustainability, equity in all dimensions, participatory democracy and pluralism. … The role of these initiatives is certainly up for debate. Consumer cooperatives are vulnerable to criticism as being somewhat exclusive. Some models of cooperative housing are not particularly sustainable. But the wide variety of Solidarity Economy practices ensures that successful models are emerging, with success based not just on economic viability, but on social and ecological responsibility. … The transformative power of the Solidarity Economy is that it can grow within the current economic system, eventually replacing it with a more human way of providing for society’s needs. …

    You can use meaningless terms yet conveniently rely on a lack of detail to gloss over yet another permutation of communal sentiments. But no matter how many times you rephrase the same tired fantasies, you will not alter the hard reality that will face any participants in this fanciful silly Marxist doctrine: 1) A lack of incentives. 2) a lack of competitiveness 3) human limits to consensus on means and methods 4) human tendency towards bureaucratic corruption 5) the natural slowness of the system. Essentially you would doom everyone involved to perpetual poverty.

    [callout]But make no mistake that such fantastic extra-market lifestyles are luxuries provided BY THE MARKET, not alternatives to it.[/callout]

    These are good models for knitting circles, volunteer organizations, the uncompetitive, and the dull and ignorant, for whom market signals in the form of prices are too abstract to synthesize, and who do not have to manage scarce resources. In other words they are good for small networks within a capitalist system for the purpose of organizing members of a permanent submissive underclass. Any system capable of the current productive diversity must be of necessity incomprehensible. The market exists to handle incomprehensibility. And it functions despite incomprehensibility, anonymity, compassion or care. Within the wealth that is generated by capitalism, it is certainly possible to carry vast numbers of people who consume the benefits of the market without participating in it. But make no mistake that such fantastic extra-market lifestyles are luxuries provided BY THE MARKET, not alternatives to it. But if you want to throw the poor kiddies a bone so that the can lie to themselves that they’re special and principled rather than impotent and subsidized i suppose amidst the political discourse its no more harmless or harmful than any other drivel.

  • Krugman Watch: Paul’s Beginning To Admit Failure And Here Is Why

    In a series of recent posts, Paul Krugman is starting to admit that he’s failing to be able to use his pulpit, position and his credibility to encourage government spending. What I find most interesting is that he argues that proletariat sentiments of inequality (injustice) are the driving social force, while failing to understand that middle and upper middle class sentiments of injustice (inequality) are an equally driving force. Paul:

    [callout]What I find most interesting is that he argues that proletariat sentiments of inequality (injustice) are the driving social force, while failing to understand that middle and upper middle class sentiments of injustice (inequality) are an equally driving force.[/callout]

    I think you are failing in your effort as a public intellectual, that you are aware that you’re failing, and that twenty years from now, it’s going to be clearly evident that you failed to encourage borrowing (debt) and spending (investment) that WOULD have made a difference, and WOULD have assisted us in getting out of this long term stagnation. And you’re failing because you can’t envision HOW to put money to work in the economy, and you can’t do that because of your personal biases and fantasies. But I suspect that you will go to your grave holding desperately to your desperate convictions – convictions held by the fantastical beliefs of a frustrated minority. A minority that has not in two thousand years, been able to obtain and hold onto land, and as such fails to understand peoples that DO hold onto land, and why they are able to hold it. And in particular, why they are wiling to pay very high social costs, in order to hold it. But the social engineering you think that you can accomplish with economic policy runs too counter to human behavior to produce your desired ends. A heterogeneous people will NEVER act as you desire them to. A ‘CREATIVE CLASS’ will never work to produce your desired ends. Because a creative class must take RISKS, and they take risks with people with whom they TRUST. And they trust people with whom they can best how to trust. And they best understand people who are LIKE THEM. The diasporic english, armenian, chinese, hindu and jewish people are the most competitive and innovative, but aside from the english, the rest tend to work intra-race. Even within races, people cooperate within CLASSES. They may work or consume across lines but they do not RISK across lines, and RISK is what generates jobs, and jobs are what generate consumption. Government spending does NOT ‘inform’ risk takers. It actually makes them angry, because they see the state as a competitor that deprives them of opportunity, and a predator that deprives them of choice. More importantly, all productive creativity requires some sort of technological innovation. It is a product of material manipulation of the physical world. Creativity is not in the capitalist class but in the entrepreneurial middle class. Something must be invented before it can be profited from. So some groups are more effective at mobilizing their middle classes than others. The USA had prosperity to share because of external, not internal factors. Anglos had a new continent to sell off, the only form of government capable of distributing the work of it, (And after the Louisiana Purchase, a government invented specifically for it). Aggregate but temporary technological advantage over much of the world. The inexpensive acquisition of british sea ports. The ability to sell ‘dollars’ internationally because of adopting those ports and the ensuing projection of military power. The collapse of or absence of competitors – particularly those under communism. The conversion of vast numbers of laborers and farmers to suburbanites made possible by low cost of energy, energy distribution and manufacture. The use of print, television and radio advertising to stimulate class-advancement incentives in vast numbers of people by the accumulation of basic consumer goods many of which freed women from the need for dedication to household labor and allowed them to enter the work force and increase productivity. These external factors are MORE INFLUENTIAL than monetary policy. Demographic (distribution), Race, Culture and Class factors are MORE important than monetary policy in determining risk-taking, and risk-taking is what creates jobs. These cooperative frictions DECLINE under wealth because of less need for group persistence, and they INCREASE under duress. In fact, we are seeing a national moving pattern that is the ‘flight from diversity’. And we are witnessing the US adoption of the south american model of a defensive white urban elite, an increasingly minority poor suburban ring. And in those cities where this situation cannot form, flight. Because diversity is an economic disadvantage. Cheap labor may not be. Diversity is. And we have known for a very long time that tribes may integrate into the legal and property system, but they do not integrate into the political and cultural system. Any integration is an illusion of our winner-take-all two party system. Minorities and majorities demonstrate group-persistence strategies. They do so because status determines mate selection, access to opportunity as well as serves to provide people with feedback signals, and status is easier to obtain within group than without. This status-economy is MORE important than pricing signals EXCEPT under absurd conditions. The US interwar period is an ABSURD condition. The euro-atlantic expansion is an absurd condition. The western dalliance with integration of cultures is the product of ABSURD conditions.

    [callout]our government, has built an empire rather than a nation. … [Empires] only survive when a minority has political control over the empire, and where that minority allows economic freedom, but specifically prevents political freedom.[/callout]

    Under these conditions of absurdity, our government, has built an empire rather than a nation. Empires are not egalitarian, they simply consolidate trade routes and reduce the friction of trade while increasing the size of the market. They are anything but egalitarian. And they are only beneficent, and they only survive when a minority has political control over the empire, and where that minority allows economic freedom, but specifically prevents political freedom. You are not going to get what you fancy. You’re going to fail as a public intellectual. And you’re going to fail as a public intellectual because of your own class and cultural biases. It’s not that we don’t need spending. It’s that we must invest in production not consumption. And that your underlying desire is really redistribution, and fulfillment of your frustrated cultural and racial ambitions, not increases in production. And you will not get the body of people to borrow and invest unless you abandon those fantasies. But people never do. You won’t. And so you’ll fail. And all your efforts will be wasted.

  • Krugman Watch: Paul Thinks It’s Envy. (What is it with these people?)

    Paul Krugman argues that envy and inequality pop the bubble. He asks “Correlation or Coincidence?” To which I reply: …. or completely unrelated causality. I don’t think you’re making any argument and I think you’re inventing a correlation, and hoping it sticks via the contrivance of sentimental association rather than reason. The cause isn’t income difference. It’s distortion of pricing and demand by irrational access to, and consumption of credit. And no small part of it is the recursive distortion of credit once it enters the system. Then, when Mom and Dad’s seven-eleven clerk talks about real estate investment, the average person starts to see irrational feedback and develops cautious sentiments. This effect undermines confidence, and after enough feedback from their network, mom and dad start retrenching. Shocks, like the spring oil crisis, confirm their sentiments, and the process accelerates. How about another feedback loop: once enough credit has been available that individuals exhaust their inventory of readily comprehensible wants (as determined by their class and peers), they must stop acting to consume until they can identify new status consumables. Something which means expanding beyond the familiar. This is a marginal illustration but an important one. There is a lot of saturation of the middle class’s consumption. They know it. This provides additional feedback on top of the dissociative feedback of the gas-pumping proletariat investor. Instead of this rational behavior due to the presence of overwhelmingly obvious-to-the-consumer information, you are arguing that **envy** by the lowest classes has a greater impact on confidence than does uncertainty due to omnipresent, obvious, sometimes absurd, irrational feedback. And for the lower proletariat, that sentiment is undoubtably persistent, doctrinal, and inherited. But everyone is just demonstrating observation and rational behavior. Or are you arguing that we can tell that there is a distortion of pricing in the economy because the differences between class consumption simply indicate that credit is out of hand? The question is instead, how much of this distortion remains after the bubbles burst? (Some, but losses are disproportionately allocated to those with paper wealth, and unemployment disproportionately allocated to those in least productive industries.) And the problem is, that the proletariat now foots the bill, with long term interest, for the expansionary credit, unless it is recovered through inflation. This is the damning critique, not that of inequality. The cause is not disparity or inequality. It is not envy. It is simple feedback from observations of irrational information. And that feedback occurs because the state has used credit and fostered consumption in lieu of investment that obtains increases in productivity, and the differences in instability are between thse resulting consumer and producer economies, and the rapidity with which they react to shocks. (Consumption is NOT STICKY when compared to production.) Furthemore, your efforts seem to think that there is an endless supply of entrepreneurial innovation availalbe that can yield increases in production. And that isn’t true. It is clear that you wish to ignore the reality of inequality, the reality of the unwillingness for people to redistribute to others who they feel disagree with or undermine their value system, and the reality of social status as a permanent, and *epistemically necessary* component of the system of human cooperation and coordination. Let alone the mating ritual. Envy isn’t the problem. General liquidity used for consumption rather than productivity is the problem. People have cognitive biases. Plenty of them. But they also are not oblivious to social economic and status signals that are irrational, and tell them ‘something just isn’t right here’. The shift to Friedman was the only one available to the conservatives who wished to reverse what they saw (accurately) as a decline in their civilization due to prior policies. That Friedman was partly wrong, as was Keynes partly wrong, is immaterial. Our problem is that we do not know the answer. The philosophers of the thirties failed. And so has everyone else since then. And they have failed largely due to the myth of equality. People simply do not, and will not act that way in a heterogeneous society. They do the opposite. The status economy with its class status demands, and its racial status preferences, and its group persistence preferences will not permit the purely economic homogenous model you fancy. In fact, research shows that people will gladly undergo hardship in order to ‘fund’ their social preferences, and in particular to preserve their status. And so you will never create the levers that you seek to manipulate. We are instead headed toward the south american model of geographically separated classes, and likely races, forming permanent classes in rings around urban centers, and systemic corruption necessary to preserve group solidarity. This demographic movement is already suggested in moving patterns. Be careful what you ask for. (PS: I swear. Left-Jewish egoism is a cultural if not genetic cognitive bias. Unbelievable. Krugman is just as out there as his conservative mirror image Paul Gottfried. )