Curt Doolittle

Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • Response To Judith Curry On Scientific Storytelling

    Copied here from http://judithcurry.com/2011/03/06/climate-story-telling-angst. On Climate ETC: Judith Curry writes:

    If climate scientists were to use their past accomplishments to bolster their current claims, there would be less controversy, as it’s more difficult to undermine the credibility of established achievements.

    Which is a distracting straw man argument that posits the climate issue as one of communication rather than credibility. I responded with:

    [callout]Why do I know that what I say here will not make a difference? Because researchers in the physical sciences have perverse incentives because of the economic structure of labor in academic research. Therefore, scientists will not change their behavior because it would cause them to pay the cost of that change, and that cost is too high in relation to ALL THEIR OTHER COSTS AND BENEFITS. …. In other words: People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.[/callout]

    I’m an economist. (A political economist. I’m not an econometrician – the kind of people who in economics make the same mistakes as physical scientists – forecasting.) Whether economists are scientists is still open for debate, but we have a similar problem of credibility in our field, even though economics and politics are more naturally interdependent than are the physical sciences and politics. Regarding Past Achievements. If we study both the history of science, the history of political activism, and the history of marketing we end up with a very different conclusion than you state above, and storytelling wont’ cure it: 1) Science is riddled with as many faulty conclusions as successful achievements – in fact, of necessity, far more faulty conclusions than successful achievements. (Everything from the notorious Phlogiston theory, to the Mathusian error, to the 70’s fascination with ‘global cooling’ and the upcoming ice age. Furthermore, Apocalyptic pronouncements are almost universally false if we look at the history of ideas across all fields. The universe is far more equilibrial than we are. Christendom in particular, is anti-apocalyptic because the apocalyptic vision is attached to ancient sentiments.) 2) Far more than 90% of research papers that achieve public attention contain errors in reasoning that invalidate the premise. (Depends upon whose study you look at — but, it’s bad no matter how you look at it.) A random selection of papers from PhD’s and candidates from any number of fields from any university’s library will contain amateurish exaggerated conclusions from insufficient data, and erroneous interpretation. (Reasons? First, because graduate ‘training’ work is publicized, and second, because the short form peer reviewed process for scientific achievement appears to be far less valuable than the long form book process for scientific achievement.) 3) Nearly all research work that reaches the public contains overreaching editorial content that invalidates the research. This is a combination of the desire for attention by researchers and editorial license that seeks attention on the part of publishers. 4) Good science is meticulous. Bad science is not. (I lost a quarter of a million dollars of my own money backing climate science, and the November 09 scandal was the reason for it. The field must take responsibility for the shoddy science.) 5) It certainly seems that economics as a profession is more skeptical of it’s calculations than are the physical sciences, partly because economic variables are so complex that we are afraid to make pronouncements. We realize we can be descriptive of the past but we cannot be PREDICTIVE of the future in economics. The same applies for highly complex systems of all kinds, even the environment – the heuristics of which is not terribly different in intertemporal terms than are social constructs. And, as an economist I can observe that the physical sciences are reversing the accumulated prestige of the field for a single reason: the perverse incentives of the graduate training process in research universities. 6) Movements need to be skeptical of their acolytes. For example, certain musicians who employ the compositional structure of hymns to rock music, must sometimes specifically eschew association with Christian groups because they know it will impact their credibility with the broader audience. The fact that the international communist movement has effectively co-opted the green movement means that the entire research program is now effectively discounted as a political movement. The global warming movement must associate itself with commerce if it is to succeed. And it is not impossible to do so. Moral arguments are UNIVERSALLY masks for wealth transfers. Without exception. Scientists are notoriously ignorant of economics and politics. Where science succeeds, is where it unifies with the pragmatism of commerce. Not where it aligns with religion and politics. In economic terms, science as a profession is discounted in the marketplace because of a record of exaggerated claims and faulty advertising. It isn’t that scientists need to tell better stories. It’s that science needs to produce better work, and be extremely cautious with public pronouncements. Scientism is a religion if it believes it has a lock on forecasting the future, even of simple physical events. So, it’s about credibility. The degree to which the academic scientific community in the west, since the 1970’s has undermined scientific credibility is not understood in the incestuous circle of academia. To counter this effect: Write books that fully articulate an idea, not micro-papers. Falsify your own work. Seek to justify opposing views. Ruthlessly attack others who undermine scientific credibility in the public debate. Reduce the number of graduate students and hide their work unless it is extremely well argued. (this is a contrary incentive) It’s not about achievements. Because the achievements are currently dwarfed by a ocean of contrary-indicators. In fact, if we look at the data, it is not in academia that the great inventions are coming from. In fact, it’s not from the large commercial capital bureaucracies either – they only refine discoveries. Innovation appears to be coming almost entirely from the efforts of individuals. It’s not about storytelling. It’s about doing good science. And right now, climate science is insufficiently articulated for human beings to justify paying the huge cost associated with the apocalyptic visions. Human beings are rational. They just need a rational argument and to understand the costs and benefits in relation to ALL THEIR OTHER COSTS AND BENEFITS. Why do I know that what I say here will not make a difference? Because researchers in the physical sciences have pervers incentives due to the economic structure of labor in academic research, and the failure to separate research from teaching lines of business and faculty in large universities. Therefore, scientists will not change their behavior because it would cause them to pay the cost of that change, and that cost is too high in relation to ALL THEIR OTHER COSTS AND BENEFITS FOR THEM. In other words: People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

  • Topic Warning: No free marketer actually suggests ‘unregulated’ market, or the a

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/anti-free-market-straw-men-vs-reality/Charged Topic Warning: No free marketer actually suggests ‘unregulated’ market, or the abscence of law. Instead, this is what they say:

    Source date (UTC): 2011-03-05 09:23:00 UTC

  • Anti-Free Market Straw Men vs Reality

    RE: Harmful illusions bedevil ideas about free markets and imprisonment: professor By Sarah Galer In which yet another left wing professor who hasn’t read Hayek, criticizes him (and advocates like myself) while relying upon ‘silly psychology’ to do so. He rails against ‘free markets’. The author (Sarah Galer) is positing a straw man that does not represent these ideas. (and thereby contributing to ignorance). Besides confirming the conservative hypothesis, she’s simply acting immorally by acting in ignorance. I didn’t mention that it’s the jewish wing of libertarianism that invented the silly ideas of anarchism. My response. No free marketer actually suggests ‘unregulated’ market, or the abscence of law. Instead, this is what they say: 1) Free markets spread peaceful coexistence (smith) 2) Government employees cannot know enough to regulate markets (mises/hayek) 3) Insurance companies are better at regulating the market than government (rothbard/hoppe) 4) That bureaucracies become naturally corrupt and seek rents, and harm markets. (veblen, schumpeter, Sorel, michels, burnham) 5) That rule of law (rule of the COMMON LAW) is superior to regulation of markets than is legislative and regulatory law. (Hayek, Bastiat) 6) Economic calculation (dynamic prices and their role in planning), and the natural incentive for self interest, in a division of knowledge and labor (mises, smith) 7) That regulatory law accumulates to the point of causing market failure 8) That all monopolies are CAUSED by state intervention. These are arguments against the PRETENSE OF KNOWLEDGE, and the PRETENSE OF BENEVOLENCE by the political bureaucracy, in contrast to the POSSESSION OF KNOWLEDGE by private actors with market incentives. Therefore, these are not arguments in support of anarchism, they are arguments to privatization in order to avoid the natural tendencies toward corruption in bureaucracies. Curt Doolittle

  • The Cult Of Silly People

    From FP Magazine:

    “How Did Obama Lose Karzai?” … “Karzai now appears mistrusting of the West’s long-term commitment to his country. He considers the Americans to be hopelessly fickle, represented by multiple military and civilian envoys who carry contradictory messages, work at cross-purposes, and wage their Washington turf battles in his drawing room, at his expense, while operating on short fuses and even shorter timetables.”

    We have a president, who is part of a philosophical wing, dominated by a left coalition, that believes ‘silly things’. Like jimmy carter, obama is a president who believes ‘silly things’. But what silling things? The left’s feminine assumption is that we can all agree – like women in a tribal cave. They assume that there is a consensus to reach. Or that such a consensus would persist. Or that such a consensus is advantagous.

    [callout]Only a fool thinks he can fly. But at least he is dangerous only to himself. It is the fool that thinks people can agree, who is dangerous to all of us.[/callout]

    Except that to do anything substantive at all, humans must take risks to cooperate in large numbers. Groups require a hierarchy in order to make decisions. People attach utility and status signals to their positions in those hierarchies. They have many investments, both personal and collective, and those investments are in both means and ends. Having taken those risks, people have ‘interests’. Each person has a set of interests. Each group one or more interests. These interests include both means and ends. Means conflict even if ends do not. Humans cannot agree in large numbers. Interests are always in conflict, because even if ends are not, the means and the organizations of humans needed to achieve those ends are not. THe difference between silly people and sane people is in this simple understanding of the limits of human cooperation. Our president, like all leftists, is a man raised on feminine rather than masculine virutues. He values the famlial model, not the political. Families can agree on ends and means. Political groups cannot agree on means, even if they can agree upon ends. And they rarely agree upon ends, because do to so would be to the advantage of some at the expense of others. Marginalism suggests that if we have sacks of flour in store for the winter, every sack we sell has a different value, whth the first having the least, and the last having the most. It explains why water has much use value but little trade value, and diamonds have little use value but high trade value. But marginalism applies to human sentiments as well: humans recalculate their preferences each step you take toward achieving them. Humans seek opportunity. THey seek ‘relishes’. Only a fool thinks he can fly. But at least he is dangerous only to himself. It is the fool that thinks people can agree, who is dangerous to all of us. Curt

  • Response To Posner On Guns

    (Note: I posted this as a comment on http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ and am copying it here, as a I always do.) Guns are for more than hunting and self defense. They’re also a political symbol, and a political institution. Arms have uses. But the purpose of arms is to maintain the ability to overthrow an oppressive government, and to insure that members of a government take no actions that would sufficiently anger even a small percentage of the people, such that they might raise their arms and use them. Yes guns are cool. Yes they are a status symbol. Yes guns provide one with a sense of security. And yes, they are the material tools by which a people remain free. Even if remaining free is the sentiment of the minority of the population. One is not free if he must rely for his security upon the willingness of others. He is free because he chooses to preserve the existing social order, despite the fact that he has the physical power at his disposal to alter it if necessary.

    [callout]There are only three tools by which humans can coerce other human beings: violence, words and payment. Each social class has developed elites that master one of the three tools. And any attempt to deprive us of words, arms or property, is simply an attempt by the elites of one class to deprive members of another class of their political power, and to obtain additional power for their own at a discount. [/callout]

    Violence is a virtue: The more of it you have, the more free you are. The more free you make others by possessing it, but using it only to preserve that freedom. Restraint is the most powerful use of violence. If you no longer possess it, you cannot restrain it. It is most powerful if it is a potential. Actions which are not taken are often not measurable. Economists know this. It is the problem of the broken window fallacy, and the principle behind Opportunity Costs. As such, economists should be wary of applying infinite discounts to a property of human behavior, simply because of the difficulty of measuring the cost of that behavior. Property is an institution that is created by the threat of violence. The use of violence to create property, whether it be the several property of the individual or the shareholder property of the collective, is the most massive and constant application of violence that civilizations apply, from the very broadest group, down to each individual. Property is the highest cost institution. It is the hardest to develop. The Iron Law of Oligarchy and it’s manifestation in bureaucracies guarantees that all governments, of all forms, will be corrupt, and self serving. The only counter to the bureaucracy of the state is the promise of violence by it’s citizens. Under republican democracy and social democracy, the bureaucracy is demonstrably more self-serving than under other forms of government, and far less subject to democratic change. Tyrants can be killed. Bureaucracies cannot be. The vast efforts of the West for the past few centuries have been to create the institutions of property elsewhere. And our primary advances in human productivity and cooperation have been the result of the tools to account for, the legal systems to administer, the education to teach children how to use, and the new types of money and credit instruments, finance, banking, capital and markets to facilitate, the ordered use of property. And we have spread those instituions of property, almost always by the force of arms. This has occurred despite movement after movement by one class or another, from the base proletariat to the elitist public intellectual, to deprive us of that violence, so that they may use the violence of the state to remove from us our freedom, and to alter our definitions of property, and therefore appropriate the institutions, the property, or the results of our labors for the benefit of one group or another. Adherence to property definitions, and use of the tools and institutions to manipulate property, are the foundation of learning in every culture. The Justice that is used to resolve conflicts, and the government that is used to create and regulate markets, both sit upon the technology of violence. And governments, if they are over free men, are created and maintained by the fraternity of individuals who are wiling to forgo the institution of violence in order to preserve their definitions of property, their systems of justice, and their institutions of government. Guns, more than any type of arms in history, equalize our capacity for violence. They make us equal in age, health, strength and choice. Each of us possesses violence. It is a natural human potential. The more skilled we are, the more armed we are, the more we possess of it. The greater the store of it, the wealthier are our people. The more secure are our trade routes. The more respectful are our governors. The more free are our citizens. The more prosperous our people. The more choices for happiness are open to each of us. History does not favor the weak — whether as a nation, or as individuals. In the west, our social order, our history, derives from our unique development of cities, which was accomplished through the cooperation of a fraternity of warriors. We should understand that cities are synonymous with markets. Warriors built markets with the threat of violence, and it was done at high cost. Our trade system today is one of high cost. And common americans benefit from that high cost. Even if we are exporting debt and currency to pay for our military system, rather than simply taxing everyone else for our world trade routes. Our fraternity is what makes us unique among other civilizations. Its origin is in our weakness against the stronger, wealthier and more populous east. With smaller numbers, and better technology, our shareholders defended their markets against superior forces. And while in our lifetimes we have been majority for a brief flicker in time. We are a minority again. A minority who protects our markets, our trade, and our institutions and our freedom with a wealth of violence. By our actions-not-taken. Against the constant drum of talkers and scribblers who would take from us our violence and deprive us of our freedom. Today we use the word ‘shareholder’ instead of ‘citizen’ for our voluntary orders. We do so to obfuscate the cost of being a shareholder or a citizen. So that many people may become shareholders without first paying the cost of obtaining one’s share. By respecting the institutions of property, we gain admission to the market. To respect property is to refrain from violence and fraud. There are only three tools by which humans can coerce other human beings: violence, words and payment. Each social class has developed elites that master one of the three tools. And any attempt to deprive us of words, arms or property, is simply an attempt by the elites of one class to deprive members of another class of their political power, and to obtain additional power for their own at a discount. I hope that the meaning of that statement is not too subtle to be clear. Curt Doolittle

  • Teacher’s Unions: Unaccountable And Arrogant Entitlement Unable To Withstand Scrutiny

    A Perfect Quote: “Thirty years ago, the public saw teachers as underpaid and overworked professionals trying to prepare the next generation for leadership. These days, the teachers unions are doing their best to present an image of arrogant entitlement combined with an inability to withstand scrutiny and accountability. ” – ED MORRISSEY, of Hot Air Teacher’s unions need to be broken and banned. As Do All Government Employee Unions.

  • Answers To Questions On Libertarian Criticism

    I. Curt, what does “Exchange under trade is different from exchange under market.” mean?

      [callout:]All social philosophies, whether marxist or libertarian, which claim universal application of their philosophy to all social classes, are luddite, regressive, anti-market philosophies whose underlying premise is to obtain the benefits of the market economy at a discount by getting the other sects to subsidize their economic advantage.[/callout]

      As such, a market is administered, managed and “governed”. Trade is not, since portable several property does not require institutions other than self defense. ie: libertarianism (at least the jewish wing of libertarianism, not the christian wing of libertarianism) is a luddite philosophy – it is regressive. Protestant upper Middle Class Classical Liberalism which split into two sects, the ‘liberal secular humanist’ or liberal and collective vs the ‘libertarian’ or conservative and individual, does not make the error inserted by the lower class Catholics (social democracy and Jews (marxism and socialism). All social philosophies, whether marxist or libertarian, which claim universal application of their philosophy to all social classes, are luddite, regressive, anti-market philosophies whose underlying premise is to obtain the benefits of the market economy at a discount by getting the other sects to subsidize their economic advantage. I should note that economic democracy, is a class cooperative philosophy rather than a universalist philosophy — as long as national credit is only released by the consent of the house of commons (since all borrowing is at the expense of the citizenry as a whole). II. RE: >> I’ve understood that , rather than three coercive technologies, there are two: force (the tribal chief) & fraud (the witch doctor). I’ve yet to understand your three.

        III. RE: Politics market = city. city = polis. politics = the technology organizing people who are cooperating in markets.

      • Every philosophy is a little bit right and a whole lot wrong

        The left is wrong on it’s face, because of the problems of incentives and economic calculation. The left is wrong on it’s perceptions: the pie isn’t fixed and people are not even closely equal in ability. The left is wrong on it’s sentiments: they are universalist and familial rather than group and political. They are wrong in their anti-sentiments: Care and Fair are only possible if first there is Order, and Group Persistence. The left is wrong on it’s logic: value is subjective, value is marginal, value is not determined by labor in, but by value out – and factor prices are determined by market prices of the end good. THe left is wrong on very purpose of society: it is a market first, and a society second. A society is it’s market and it’s market principles – everything else is an artifact of that market. THe left is wrong on diversity: people are demonstrably more charitable in the absence of diversity. The left is wrong in everything but it’s ambition – individual happiness in the absence of stress for the purpose of a happy family, rather than individual success for the purpose of group competition. The left is right that people at the bottom most likely have a claim on some amount of the profits of the market in which they participate, and that declining prices and increasing standard of living, and public services, and freedom from consumption taxes are to some degree justifiable.

        [callout:More Right Than Wrong]Everyone is a little bit right.Everyone is a whole lot wrong. But libertarians are more right and less wrong than everyone else — assuming that is, that we seek prosperity, safety, health and choice for the maximum number of people at the minimum cost, at the lowest risk.[/callout]

        But the right is wrong on rhetorical debate – the republican model breaks at scale – instead we would need economic democracy. It is wrong on monetary policy. The right is right on all of those things that the left is wrong on. Most importantly it’s right on group persistence, obligatory group identity. They are right on military dominance of the seas and trade, and the trade system, and of the expansion of a monetary empire. They are right on intolerance of extra-market orders. They are right on meritocratic rotation of the elites through market or military acts. The libertarians (the middle) are wrong on many of their principles. They are wrong on immigration. Immigration of an underclass that speaks a different language, and observes a different cult is demonstrably detrimental to a civilization. THey are wrong on free trade. They are wrong on intellectual property. They are wrong on the origins of society and market. They are wrong on forgone opportunity costs. They are wrong on equality – libertarianism is as beneficial to the intelligent, and totalitarianism is to the strong, and communism is to the weak. They are wrong on redistribution – precisely because they are wrong on the origin of markets. THey are wrong on empire and military. They are wrong on private courts. THey are wrong on private police. But the libertarians are right on monetary policy, on economic calculation and incentives, on rule of law, on small government, on privatization, on economic democracy. Everyone is a little bit right. Everyone is a whole lot wrong. But libertarians are more right and less wrong than everyone else — assuming that is, that we seek prosperity, safety, health and choice for the maximum number of people at the minimum cost, at the lowest risk.

      • Marxism For The Dim.

        Radical Islam is just Marxism for even ‘dumber’ people. The IQ in the West? It’s 100. In it’s proletariat? Looks like in the UK it’s 84-85. Among eastern Europeans? It’s 94. In it’s proletariat? Hard to calculate. Perhaps 80? Among muslims? It’s 84. In it’s proletariat? Again, hard to calculate. Perhaps 80, but more likely in the 70’s? People are not equal in intellectual capacity. They cannot possess equal frameworks by which to determine their actions. Religions are good for IQ’s under 100. Rationalism is good for IQ’s over 105. Simple frameworks are for simple people. Islam is a very, simplistic framework. Muslims are very, very, simple people. Islam like Marxism is a framework for peasants: the permanently ignorant and impoverished.

      • Mario Rizzo: Hobbesian War (First Great Thought Of 2011).

        I captured this post in it’s near-entirety from Think Markets. It’s the first succinct and meaningful post of the year that I’ve come across. And I captured it for my own reference, for posterity. Of course, my answer to this problem is the calculative rather than political society. Unfortunately, unless I devote full time to this solution to the Hobbesian problem from within an institution I will never turn Hayek’s analysis into a sufficiently and articulated solution to be meaningfully employed by others. But at least Mario has correctly and simply stated the issue, if not the solution to it. It is not that we need a minimal state. It’s that there is a maximum number of people wherein political discourse is a logical means of achieving ends. Beyond that limited number, like all other aspects of human behavior, we need tools to calculate that which we cannot perceive.

        … There are some simple facts the commentators cannot or will not face. The reason we cannot have a coherent, comprehensive plan to solve the political and economic difficulties of the federal government (and of the state governments) is that people do not have a coherent, comprehensive hierarchy of values beyond the basics of social order. Hayek made this argument in The Road to Serfdom with regard to the problems of comprehensive economic planning. To a large extent, we are now facing this problem in reverse. We have attained the current level and extent of the welfare state as an accretion of special interest legislation and short-sighted but popular redistribution programs. All of this took place over a long period of time with little or no thought to the overall effects, to what kind of society we have been building. But now the threatened fiscal messes at both the federal and state level are requiring some form of “orderly” reduction in the size and scope of government. But, as I opined here in the final days of the Bush Administration, the “reform” of the welfare state will not be orderly. It will be driven by a war among the various interests groups who, as is their habit, do not see the other person’s point of view. But why should they? They got their largesse from the government by being single-minded and self-interested. Bad habits (from the social perspective) are hard to break. The “unreasonableness” of the discussion stems from the fact that there is no underlying objective code of values (or at least not one that can be accessed by the political system). Most players are guilty of avidity and partiality. We all have hard-luck stories to portray to the media. Most people’s minds are too concrete-bound to see the larger, somewhat abstract, picture. The unreasonableness, or so it seems, of our political culture is, to a large extent, a product of the kind of special interest redistributionist society we have built. Some commentators have rationalized the welfare state in terms of notions of distributive justice. But these are the mental spinnings of academics. These ideas have not been the driving political and economic forces that have created our culture. Those forces are derived from an abandonment of the traditional concept of the “common good,” that is, the good of each and all. There is very little beyond the minimal state that is truly in the interests of all of us. Every movement beyond that takes us into the unreasonable territory of the exploitation of one group by another. No wonder discussion is not civil. Whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.