Curt Doolittle

Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • Philosophers Merely Have To Product – They Don't Have To Be Perfect, Because They Aren't Prophets

    (cross posted for archival purposes) [H]oppe got libertarianism “right-er” than anyone else. It is nonsensical to criticize a philosopher for getting tangential ideas wrong. I can list any number of mistakes Hans makes but they are not mistakes that are central to his argument, that democratic government proper cannot function without eventually causing more harm than good, and that the solution to this problem is property. My criticism is that his rothbardian definition of property will not produce rational incentives sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity, and that definitions of property, like rules of common law, must evolve with the complexity of the society to reflect all possible ethical and moral constraints such that ALTERNATIVE ethical and moral constraints – of which the state is only one form of error – do not evolve to take the place of missing moral and ethical constraints. (that is why societies have strange moral codes, rules and rituals: they have no method of advancing property rights by rational means. But humans will find a way to fill a moral or ethical vacuum.) All philosophers take an idea and expand it to the point of failure. That is what all philosophers have done. Hoppe came closer than anyone else. [I]t is a libertarian failing to treat our idea-people as prophets rather than philosophers. A philosopher produces ideas. It is not necessary for all Ideas produced by a philosopher to be correct unless you simply want to appeal to authority rather than understanding the philosopher’s arguments. It is only necessary that philosophers produce ideas that like science, increase our understanding and capacity for beneficial action. Hoppe has done that. I am working very hard to ‘clean’ libertarianism of stupid ideas by basing it on science rather than on continental and cosmopolitan rationalism. Science is a superior tool to pure reason. All our ‘flaky’ ideas are the product of insufficient science. But we must forgive the previous generations because the science was not available to them. It’s available to us. Even without science Hoppe got liberty almost entirely right. More right than anyone else. So arguing over tangential issues does not discredit his contributions to liberty. Curt Doolittle

    COMMENTS Eric Field Nice. Dialectical libertarianism is what thick libertarians pay lip service to. Hoppe has definitely advanced the refinement of libertarianism.

  • Libertarians Have A Lot Going For Us

    My criticisms of Mises, Austrianism and Rothbard are fairly technical – and they are rock solid. But we have a lot going for us: The business cycle; objective morality as voluntary, productive, fully informed, exchange free of externalities; the reduction of all rights to property rights adjudicable under common law; hoppeian institutions as replacements for monopoly bureaucracy; and the possibility of a formal logic and grammar of cooperation – are all rock solid concepts. But our ‘antique’ justifications are not rock solid. Actually, they’re embarrassingly bad and we are philosophical and scientific laughing stocks because of them. And that condition prevents us from arguing in favor of our material solutions to political economy and monopoly bureaucracy. In order to defend against postmodernism, socialism, and dishonest socialism, marxism, pseudoscience, and mysticism, I must correct our reasoning as well. Most of which is childishly pseudoscientific. I can fix that. And that’s what I’m doing.

  • Libertarians Have A Lot Going For Us

    My criticisms of Mises, Austrianism and Rothbard are fairly technical – and they are rock solid. But we have a lot going for us: The business cycle; objective morality as voluntary, productive, fully informed, exchange free of externalities; the reduction of all rights to property rights adjudicable under common law; hoppeian institutions as replacements for monopoly bureaucracy; and the possibility of a formal logic and grammar of cooperation – are all rock solid concepts. But our ‘antique’ justifications are not rock solid. Actually, they’re embarrassingly bad and we are philosophical and scientific laughing stocks because of them. And that condition prevents us from arguing in favor of our material solutions to political economy and monopoly bureaucracy. In order to defend against postmodernism, socialism, and dishonest socialism, marxism, pseudoscience, and mysticism, I must correct our reasoning as well. Most of which is childishly pseudoscientific. I can fix that. And that’s what I’m doing.

  • ITS UP TO ROTHBARDIANS TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THEY ARE NOT MORALLY BLIND ADVOCATES

    ITS UP TO ROTHBARDIANS TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THEY ARE NOT MORALLY BLIND ADVOCATES OF A PARASITIC, IMMORAL IDEOLOGY….

    …rejected by all but a dysfunctional minority; and by their profligate advocacy of an unethical, immoral, parasitic, regressive, and therefore politically impossible criteria for a voluntary social order, have impeded and harmed the preservation and expansion of our liberty.

    We cannot look to the ghetto – a state within a state – for institutional, legal, and moral insight. We must look to Aristocracy, the militia, the common law, the absolute nuclear family, and the total suppression of free riding, in all its forms, for our moral, legal and institutional insight. Because only Aristocratic Egalitarians of european history have produced liberty in any form.

    The vast majority of humans do not want liberty. But all wish to enjoy the prosperity that results from the aristocracy’s suppression of free riding, and the increased velocity of production and trade that results from that undesired suppression of free riding.

    The use of organized violence to eliminate free riding by a willing and committed minority, the admission into enfranchisement of those who demonstrate such a commitment, and the desire of, and incentive for, the unenfranchised to participate in the wealth of the market produced by the violent suppression of free riding, is the only means of obtaining liberty. Everything else is merely the pretense of liberty by permission of others, and the free riding upon those who fight to preserve liberty against the pervasive human preference to free ride whenever possible.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev Ukraine.

    Слава Україні Glory to Ukraine

    Слава Європі Glory to Europe

    Слава Свободи Glory to Liberty

    Слава всім нам. Glory to us all.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-27 05:56:00 UTC

  • ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS ARE IMMORAL, PARASITIC AND THE REASON FOR THE FAILURE OF LIBE

    ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS ARE IMMORAL, PARASITIC AND THE REASON FOR THE FAILURE OF LIBERTARIANISM.

    –“First they ignore you.

    Then they ridicule you.

    Then they fight you.

    Then you win.”–

    Aristocratic Egalitarianism requires that one fight for the liberty of those who would also have it. Proficiency at war, both verbal and physical, is a requirement for membership.

    Only Aristocratic Egalitarians are free. Everyone else is merely given freedom by permission, or a free-riding parasite on that aristocracy.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-27 03:31:00 UTC

  • Lee C Waaks reminds me, as have Frank Lovell and Bruce Caithness, quite frequent

    Lee C Waaks reminds me, as have Frank Lovell and Bruce Caithness, quite frequently, that people worth debating – in the sense, that it is a mutually beneficial, exploratory exercise, are rare, and precious. And what makes all those precious people the same, is the persistent assumption of fallibility.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-26 23:17:00 UTC

  • SPINOZA: PHILOSOPHERS SHOULD HAVE A TRADE I’m not a big fan of Spinoza’s ideas,

    SPINOZA: PHILOSOPHERS SHOULD HAVE A TRADE

    I’m not a big fan of Spinoza’s ideas, but am very much a fan both his writing style and his work ethic.

    Spinoza earned his living as a lens-grinder. He wrote his extremely parsimonious book, taking most of his life, from a musty apartment. It’s what, 200 pages long? A brutally concise work of numbered and ordered sentences.

    The first statement that struck me was ‘endeavor to speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people’. I’ve always viewed this as my curse. Which is why I work so hard at it. Because I’m aware of my frame of reference, and my near absence of conceptual empathy.

    The other influential thing that he said, can be roughly translated as “Every man who does not have a trade must eventually become a rogue”. A sentiment I agree with. And have tried to imitate.

    I’ve always tried to earn enough money that I could research and write either part time or full time.

    I don’t like the idea of philosophers trying to earn money from their work. I don’t trust it at all. I can barely respect teaching as a way to pay for writing.

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb reflects this same sentiment when he says: “…as a practitioner, my thinking is rooted in the belief that you cannot go from books to problems, but the reverse, from problems to books.”

    And I practice philosophy the same way. I’m trying to find a solution to the problem of ethics. In particular, the problem of deception in ethics, politics, and economics.

    Learn a trade so that you experience the real world. Identify a problem that exists in the real world. Use the accumulated wisdom of centuries to solve a problem in the real world.

    Otherwise you invent a mystical hammer and go on and endless search for the appropriate nails – which you seem to find all over the place.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-26 07:52:00 UTC

  • MEMETIC VIRUSES It’s interesting to watch one’s ideas and arguments spread, and

    MEMETIC VIRUSES

    It’s interesting to watch one’s ideas and arguments spread, and evolve of their own volition.

    Reforming libertarianism, and restoring liberty to nobility, one paragraph at a time.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-26 04:10:00 UTC

  • “We’re the most powerful nation in the world and Russia is a gas station masquer

    —“We’re the most powerful nation in the world and Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.”—

    Go John. lol

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-24 16:56:00 UTC

  • HOPPE WITHOUT ROTHBARD? How can you support Hoppe while castigating Rothbard? It

    HOPPE WITHOUT ROTHBARD?

    How can you support Hoppe while castigating Rothbard?

    It’s easy. Discount all the Continental and Cosmopolitan justificationary nonsense and you’re left with the solution to formal institutions that can replace monopoly bureaucracy.

    I’m still not sure why all that justificationary nonsense is meaningful or necessary. Because it isn’t. But Hoppe’s solutions are solid.

    Well, you some might argue that Hoppe got his ideas from Keuheldt-Leddihn, I don’t really see that. I see hoppe as the first to successfully use economic language to express ethics and institutions (politics and political economy) in consistent rational terms. And to construct formal institutions using those terms.

    Besides. I think Rothbard was a disingenuous, dishonest bully, and I see hoppe as just the opposite.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-24 14:51:00 UTC