Curt Doolittle

Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • AS AN IMPROVEMENT ON SOWELL If you’re going to bring up Sowell’s Knowledge and D

    http://cafehayek.com/2011/06/quotation-of-the-day-12.htmlHICKS AS AN IMPROVEMENT ON SOWELL

    If you’re going to bring up Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions, and his Vision of the Anointed, then the less morally loaded version of the argument is Stephen Hicks’ Explaining Postmodernism. It’s both more accessible to a wider audience and a clearer rendition of the argument. http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Postmodernism-Skepticism-Socialism-Rousseau/dp/0983258406

    Hard to improve on Sowell. But Hicks does a good job of adding a dimension to the argument agains the socialist visions of the anointed.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-20 10:53:00 UTC

  • Notes From Hoppe’s Essay: “What Must Be Done”

    SUMMARY: INCREMENTALLY PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING. [G]reat analysis. Not sure how strong the solution is. (It isn’t strong at all) I don’t like to criticize the master of our movement. He should have had one of us edit it (Roman Saskiw) because there are too many small problems with it. I don’t like mixing analytical rigour and moralistic language. It doesn’t help us. Not when there isn’t any need for it. We can maintain rational rigour in our movement. That aside, I’ll just say that either of my two main solutions is better. My solution is grander. But it’s likely to work. Partly because it’s grander. Because it has worked so many times in history. Because momentum matters. Because the majority adopt the positions of those they trust. I’ve tried to limit the quotes to the necessary argument, and clarify in brackets what required it.

    Hans-Hermann Hoppe. What Must Be Done . Ludwig von Mises Institute. (2013) THE GOAL

    [The] ultimate goal … is the demonopolization of protection and justice. Protection, security, defense, law, order, and arbitration in conflicts can and must be supplied competitively— that is, entry into the field of being a judge must be free. – (Kindle Locations 166-168).

    THE ARGUMENT

    Every monopolist takes advantage of his position. The price of protection will go up, and more importantly, the content of the law, that is the product quality, will be altered to the advantage of the monopolist and at the expense of others. – (Kindle Locations 95-96)

    …once there is no longer free entry into the business of property protection, or any other business for that matter, the price of protection will rise, and the quality of protection will fall. The monopolist will become increasingly less of a protector of our property, and increasingly more a protection racket, or even a systematic exploiter of property owners. He will become an aggressor against and a destroyer of the people and their property that he was initially supposed to protect.” (Kindle Locations 74-77)

    What happens [under democracy, is that] the territorial protection monopoly [is transformed into] public [from] private property. Instead of a prince who regards [the institutions] as his private property, [an elected official, who has the incentives of] a temporary and interchangeable caretaker is put in charge of the protection racket. The caretaker does not own the protection racket. Instead, he is just allowed to use the current resources for his own advantage. He owns [The right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance,] but he does not own the capital value. This does not eliminate the self-interest-driven tendency toward increased exploitation. To the contrary, it only makes exploitation less rational and less calculating, – (Kindle Locations 122-126).

    …because entry into a democratic government is open— everyone can become president— resistance against State property invasions is reduced. This leads to the same result: increasingly under democratic conditions, the worst will rise to the top of the State in free competition. Competition is not always good. Competition in the field of becoming the shrewdest aggressor against private property is nothing to be greeted. – (Kindle Locations 127-130).

    Under highly centralized democracy, … the security of private property has almost completely disappeared. The price of protection is enormous, and the quality of justice dispensed has gone downhill constantly. It has deteriorated to the point where the idea of immutable laws of justice, of natural law, has almost entirely disappeared from public consciousness. Law is considered nothing but State-made law— positive law. Law and justice is whatever the State says it is. There is still private property in name, but in practice private property owners have been almost completely expropriated. Rather than protecting people from invaders and invasions of person and property, the State has increasingly disarmed its own people, and stripped them of their most elementary right to self-defense. – (Kindle Locations 142-146).

    Instead of protecting us, then, the State has delivered us and our property to the mob and mob instincts. Instead of safeguarding us, it impoverishes us, it destroys our families, local organizations, private foundations, clubs and associations, by drawing all of them increasingly into its own orbit. And as a result of all of this, the State has perverted the public sense of justice and of personal responsibility, and bred and attracted an increasing number of moral and economic monsters and monstrosities. – (Kindle Locations 157-160).

    1) First: that the protection of private property and of law, justice, and law enforcement, is essential to any human society. But there is no reason whatsoever why this task must be taken on by one single agency, by a monopolist. [Instead]… it is precisely the case that as soon as you have a monopolist taking on this task, he will [of] necessity destroy justice and render us defenseless against foreign as well as domestic invaders and aggressors. – (Kindle Locations 162-165). 2) …because a monopoly of protection is [a violation of natural, moral, and economic laws, then], any territorial expansion of such a monopoly is [a violation of natural, moral, and economic laws]. … Every [attempt, or suggestion, to increase] political centralization must be on principle grounds rejected [and fought against.]. In turn, every attempt at political decentralization— segregation, separation, secession and so forth— must be supported. – (Kindle Locations 169-170). 3) … [the] democratic protection monopoly … must be rejected as a [violation of natural,] moral and economic [laws]. Majority rule and private property protection are incompatible. The idea of democracy must be ridiculed [,criticized, attacked, and delegitimized as systemic corruption]: it is nothing else but mob rule [ and organized expropriation, justified by majority rule]. – (Kindle Locations 170-172).

    THE STRATEGY

    1) one must attempt to restrict the right to vote on local taxes, in particular on property taxes and regulations, to property and real estate owners. Only property owners must be permitted to vote, and their vote is not equal, but in accordance with the value of the equity owned, and the amount of taxes paid.- (Kindle Locations 346-348). … all public employees— teachers, judges, policemen— and all welfare recipients, must be excluded from voting on local taxes and local regulation matters. These people are being paid out of taxes and should have no say whatsoever how high these taxes are. … The locations have to be small enough and have to have a good number of decent people.- (Kindle Locations 349-353). … Consequently, local taxes and rates as well as local tax revenue will inevitably decrease. Property values and most local incomes would increase whereas the number and payment of public employees would fall. – (Kindle Locations 353-354).

    2) In this government funding crisis which breaks out once the right to vote has been taken away from the mob, as a way out of this crisis, all local government assets must be privatized. An inventory of all public buildings, and on the local level that is not that much— schools, fire, police station, courthouses, roads, and so forth— and then property shares or stock should be distributed to the local private property owners in accordance with the total lifetime amount of taxes— property taxes— that these people have paid. After all, it is theirs, they paid for these things. These shares should be freely tradeable, sold and bought, and with this local government would essentially be abolished. – (Kindle Locations 356-360).

    3) Under the realistic assumption that there continues to be a local demand for education and protection and justice, the schools, police stations, and courthouses will be still used for the very same purposes. And many former teachers, policemen and judges would be rehired or resume their former position on their own account as self-employed individuals, except that they would be operated or employed by local “bigshots” or elites who own these things, all of whom are personally known figures.- (Kindle Locations 366-369). … Accordingly judges must be freely financed, and free entry into judgeship positions must be assured. Judges are not elected by vote, but chosen by the effective demand of justice seekers. – (Kindle Locations 373-374).

  • You’ll find David Friedman’s two last posts of interest

    You’ll find David Friedman’s two last posts of interest,

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-17 19:56:00 UTC

  • THE SUCCESS OF POSTMODERNISM. “If you have always believed that everyone should

    THE SUCCESS OF POSTMODERNISM.

    “If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.”

    ~Thomas Sowell

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-15 15:13:00 UTC

  • THE HOLES IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT WILL KILL OFF POSTMODERNISM? (Quote:) “Showing th

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/0983258406/ref=tsm_1_fb_lkFILLING THE HOLES IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT WILL KILL OFF POSTMODERNISM?

    (Quote:)

    “Showing that a [Postmodernism] leads to nihilism is an important part of understanding it, as is showing how a failing and nihilistic movement can still be dangerous.

    “Tracing postmodernism’s roots back to Rousseau, Kant, and Marx explains how all of its elements came to be woven together. Yet identifying postmodernism’s roots and connecting them to contemporary bad consequences does not refute postmodernism. What is still needed is a refutation of those historical premises, and an identification and defense of the alternatives to them.

    “The Enlightenment was based on premises opposite to those of postmodernism, but while the Enlightenment was able to create a magnificent world on the basis of those premises, it articulated and defended them only incompletely. That weakness is the sole source of postmodernism’s power against it.

    “Completing the articulation and defense of those premises is therefore essential to maintaining the forward progress of the Enlightenment vision and shielding it against postmodern strategies.”

    (FROM: Hicks, Stephen R. C. – Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault)

    COMMENT

    This is the last page of Stephen Hicks’ exceptionally accessible work on Postmodernism.

    But for those in the Dark Enlightenment, and for those of us trying to articulate why the western social model produced the high trust society, and how we can preserve that high trust society against both the state and the errors of the enlightenment vision, that task is much harder than it sounds.

    The reason being that we are not as marginally indifferent as the enlightenment philosophers argued. We are not separated by will and resource, but we are separated by ability, necessity, and preference, and that separation is irreconciliable with the institutions that the classical liberals gave us as an inheritance. We are saddled with multiple conflicts, and a rapidly diverging set of cultures, under an imperial bureaucracy, that is so well funded it is impossible to break, but equally impossible to use to cooperate.

    Some of us are trying to develop institutions that will allow heterogeneous peoples with conflicting moral codes to cooperate as peacefully in the production of commons as they do in the market.

    But the Postmodern vision is to empower tyranny in pursuit of a homogenous equalitarian utopia. which for the top and bottom may be attractive. But for the rest it is a net loss in all that we can desire, hope for and imagine.

    SKEPTICISM

    I am skeptical that it is at all possible to repair classical liberal institutions under representative majority rule. That system was invented to secure and hold power. But the question is, who will hold that power, and what will they do with it.

    That is even more frightening than another dark age created by yet another version of an irrational religion.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-13 06:50:00 UTC

  • Internecine Warfare as Evidence of Intellectual Failure

    (EXTRA LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY VS INTRA-LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY AND INTERNECINE WARFARE AS EVIDENCE OF INTELLECTUAL FAILURE) (Re-Posted from elsewhere) [T]om DiLorenzo’s generation along with Rothbard, was trying to illustrate contrasts – to create a revisionist history to support libertarian ideology. Ideology changes VALUES, and motivates passions so that people ACT. All I see from this nonsense is both CATO and BHL trying to whine that they don’t get the attention the ideological libertarians do. Of course, that envy displays greater ignorance of the structure of political movements than does any revisionist history, shoddy or not. Ideology obtains participation. Intellectuals only battle other intellectuals. Reason is insufficient for motivation. Empiricism is insufficient for persuasion. That’s why we have ideology – passions. [G]iven the absolute failure of the classical liberals and the left libertarians to provide alternative solutions to the demonstrated failure of the classical liberal model’s means of preserving freedom – a desire that is a minority desire in the first place – it’s understandable that they retreat into intra-libertarian criticism. I can understand Cato’s position. Their funding stream and interaction with the existing state is something that they have to stick with. I can understand the investment that the Mises group has made in Rothbardianism, despite its demonstrated failure to enfranchise the moral values of classical liberals. But I can’t understand attacks by BHL’s on anything given that they haven’t contributed a SINGLE DAMNED IDEA to the discourse other than ‘we aren’t them’. Well, ‘them’ created an effective ideology that enfranchised a generation of zealots. ‘Them’ did more with one sound-bite speaker named Ron Paul than all the work of scribblers have done in sixty years. So ‘them’ understands ideology – so to speak. And this whole argument is a generation out of date. It’s as though we have to abandon the entire postwar liberty and conservative framework, and wait until the past generation of authors die off before we can advance the cause of liberty. Why? [O]UR GENERATION’S FIGHT IS AGAINST POSTMODERNISM. NOT SOCIALISM. NOT RIGHT LIBERTARIANISM. NOT EVEN SECULAR REDISTRIBUTIVE SOCIALISM. The war is being won by a state religion, articulated as if it’s rational, and functioning as an ideology, despite it’s FALSE CONTENT. SO PLEASE STOP WASTING BREATH ON INTERNECINE ATTENTION-GETTING AND DEVELOP INSTITUTIONAL SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM OF A HETEROGENEOUS SOCIETY UNDER MAJORITY RULE WITHOUT THE EXISTENCE OF POPULAR MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE TO ACT AS A COMPROMISE BETWEEN COMPETING MALE AND FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGIES. The criticism of DiLorenzo as poor scholarship in an article written at the sophistication of a grocery store rag is embarrassing to our entire movement. And it certainly doesn’t advance the BHL cause of trying to get attention by actually contributing something to the debate. It’s absolutely ridiculously childish. “Mee-too-ism”. [S]ome of us are out here on the fringe actually working on something other than ‘ideology’ and ‘belief’, as if we need to replace one secular religion with another, instead of replace both ideology and belief with practical institutional solutions. The very fact that you have to argue in favor of belief, rather than institutions, is an admission of failure. Leave hokey religions to the Postmodernists and the Continentals. They’re better at it anyway. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute www.propertarianism.com Kiev

  • LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY VS INTRA-LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY AND INTERNECINE WARFARE AS EV

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/17/the-rancid-abraham-lincoln-haters-of-the-libertarian-right.htmlEXTRA LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY VS INTRA-LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY AND INTERNECINE WARFARE AS EVIDENCE OF INTELLECTUAL FAILURE

    (Re-Posted from elsewhere)

    Tom DiLorenzo’s generation along with Rothbard, was trying to illustrate contrasts – to create a revisionist history to support libertarian ideology. Ideology changes VALUES, and motivates passions so that people ACT.

    All I see from this nonsense is both CATO and BHL trying to whine that they don’t get the attention the ideological libertarians do.

    Of course, that envy displays greater ignorance of the structure of political movements than does any revisionist history, shoddy or not. Ideology obtains participation. Intellectuals only battle other intellectuals. Reason is insufficient for motivation. Empiricism is insufficient for persuasion. That’s why we have ideology – passions.

    Given the absolute failure of the classical liberals and the left libertarians to provide alternative solutions to the demonstrated failure of the classical liberal model’s means of preserving freedom – a desire that is a minority desire in the first place – it’s understandable that they retreat into intra-libertarian criticism.

    I can understand Cato’s position. Their funding stream and interaction with the existing state is something that they have to stick with.

    I can understand the investment that the Mises group has made in Rothbardianism, despite its demonstrated failure to enfranchise the moral values of classical liberals.

    But I can’t understand attacks by BHL’s on anything given that they haven’t contributed a SINGLE DAMNED IDEA to the discourse other than ‘we aren’t them’.

    Well, ‘them’ created an effective ideology that enfranchised a generation of zealots. ‘Them’ did more with one sound-bite speaker named Ron Paul than all the work of scribblers have done in sixty years.

    So ‘them’ understands ideology – so to speak.

    And this whole argument is a generation out of date. It’s as though we have to abandon the entire postwar liberty and conservative framework, and wait until the past generation of authors die off before we can advance the cause of liberty. Why?

    OUR GENERATION’S FIGHT IS AGAINST POSTMODERNISM. NOT SOCIALISM. NOT RIGHT LIBERTARIANISM. NOT EVEN SECULAR REDISTRIBUTIVE SOCIALISM.

    The war is being won by a state religion, articulated as if it’s rational, and functioning as an ideology, despite it’s FALSE CONTENT.

    SO PLEASE STOP WASTING BREATH ON INTERNECINE ATTENTION-GETTING AND DEVELOP INSTITUTIONAL SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM OF A HETEROGENEOUS SOCIETY UNDER MAJORITY RULE WITHOUT THE EXISTENCE OF POPULAR MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE TO ACT AS A COMPROMISE BETWEEN COMPETING MALE AND FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGIES.

    The criticism of DiLorenzo as poor scholarship in an article written at the sophistication of a grocery store rag is embarrassing to our entire movement. And it certainly doesn’t advance the BHL cause of trying to get attention by actually contributing something to the debate.

    It’s absolutely ridiculously childish. “Mee-too-ism”.

    Some of us are out here on the fringe actually working on something other than ‘ideology’ and ‘belief’, as if we need to replace one secular religion with another, instead of replace both ideology and belief with practical institutional solutions. The very fact that you have to argue in favor of belief, rather than institutions, is an admission of failure.

    Leave hokey religions to the Postmodernists and the Continentals. They’re better at it anyway.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    www.propertarianism.com

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-12 04:39:00 UTC

  • THE EUROPEAN NEW RIGHT IS AN INTELLECTUAL CATASTROPHE I complain the the America

    THE EUROPEAN NEW RIGHT IS AN INTELLECTUAL CATASTROPHE

    I complain the the American right doesn’t do anything at all to innovate. They even resist adopting right-libertarian ideas, in their quest for cultural homogeneity.

    But the European New Right, isn’t any more rational than the Continental philosophers, and those philosophers are even worse than the Anglo Postmodernists.

    WE DONT NEED A NEW RELIGION. The monotheistic religions are a form of tyrannical government. And the christianization of Europe was one of the greatest tragedies in human history.

    We don’t need a new religion. We have one. It’s western history. HIstory is polytheistic. It’s full of role models. We can even accommodate the christians in that pantheon. History is us. It’s rational. History is humanity laid bare for our use and understanding.

    But we can’t teach western history as the superior cultural values that it represents. Diversity fears superiority.

    Libertarians are lost in their silly sidetrack in the judaic ghetto rebellion.

    So, we get our lunch eaten by the religion that IS succeeding: Postmodernism.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-10 12:42:00 UTC

  • GUESS I’M A MADE-MAN NOW: MEMBERSHIP IN THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT My reading list “

    http://freenortherner.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/dark-enlightenment-reading-list/I GUESS I’M A MADE-MAN NOW: MEMBERSHIP IN THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT

    My reading list “The Great Books Of Aristocracy” is included in ‘the list’. 🙂

    Aristocratic Particularism vs Communal Universalism

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-08 13:21:00 UTC

  • THEY DONT MAKE THEM LIKE THEY USED TO “A 98-year-old beggar, a grandfather from

    THEY DONT MAKE THEM LIKE THEY USED TO

    “A 98-year-old beggar, a grandfather from the Bulgarian village of Dobri Bail, shown here wearing homespun clothes and old leather shoes, is often found standing at the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Sofia. Every day he gets up early and runs 10 kilometers from his village to the capital of Bail. In 2010, during the filming of a documentary about the cathedral, a Bulgarian TV journalist made shocking discovery in the archives of the Church – the most generous private donation that the Cathedral had ever received – was 40,000 euros from an old beggar – the grandfather from Dobri Bali.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-07 14:08:00 UTC