Curt Doolittle

Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

  • DAVID’S MISUNDERSTANDING OF AI-AGE ECONOMICS @DaveShapi David. Sorry man. Love y

    DAVID’S MISUNDERSTANDING OF AI-AGE ECONOMICS

    @DaveShapi

    David. Sorry man. Love you, but you’ve malinvested in an unlikely determinism because you cannot imagine, despite historical evidence, what could be done if in fact much white collar labor is replaceable. But you have overcommitted at this point and won’t correct because of that malivestment and overcommitment: you’re a normal human.
    We will, like the Athenians and Egyptians reallocate labor from text to action and improve our commons. Eventually we will find new opportunities that favor a different set of status signals and their pursuit by a different category of production.

    RE:

    Source date (UTC): 2026-03-21 02:09:23 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2035176917788500299

  • THE SCOPE OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ATTEMPT TO CONTROL WORLD OIL PRICES AND SUPPLY

    THE SCOPE OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ATTEMPT TO CONTROL WORLD OIL PRICES AND SUPPLY
    The United States employs a multifaceted strategy to exert control over global oil supplies, often framed within broader geopolitical competition, particularly to limit adversaries like China’s access to affordable energy. This includes direct interventions, sanctions, military posture, alliances, and domestic policies. Below is a breakdown of key actions beyond those directly involving Venezuela and Iran (such as recent military interventions and sanctions that have disrupted Chinese imports from these sources).

    Sanctions and Enforcement on Other Oil Producers

    Russia: The US has maintained extensive sanctions on Russian oil exports since the Ukraine conflict, aiming to reduce Moscow’s revenues and limit discounted supplies to China (which has become a major buyer). However, in early 2026, the US temporarily lifted some sanctions on Russian oil to stabilize global markets amid price spikes from the Iran conflict. This selective easing demonstrates US leverage in modulating supply. Additionally, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed new sanctions on major Russian firms like Rosneft and Lukoil in late 2025, further tightening control.
    Pressure on Buyers: The US has demanded that China cease imports of Russian and Iranian oil, using diplomatic and secondary sanctions to enforce compliance. This extends to using newly controlled Venezuelan oil to pressure countries like India to halt purchases of discounted Russian crude and to cut off supplies to Cuba.

    Military and Geopolitical Leverage in Key Regions

    Middle East Dominance: Through US Central Command (CENTCOM), the US maintains a significant military presence (over 30,000 troops, bases in allied countries) in the region, which holds nearly half of global oil reserves. In a conflict scenario, this allows the US to block oil shipments to China via chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz (handling ~20% of global oil flows and most of China’s Middle East imports), Suez Canal, or Bab al-Mandab. This posture preserves options to disrupt ~50% of China’s seaborne oil imports, enhancing US leverage in great-power competition.
    Engagement in Resource-Rich Areas: The US is expanding diplomatic and economic ties in Latin America (e.g., lithium in Chile/Argentina), Africa (to counter Chinese dominance in cobalt/rare earths), and Central Asia (oil/gas infrastructure investments) to diversify supply chains away from China and secure alliances. This indirectly influences oil flows by reducing China’s embedded presence in these regions.

    Domestic and Export Policies

    Boosting US Production and Exports: Under the “energy dominance” agenda in the 2025 National Security Strategy, the US has prioritized saturating global markets with American hydrocarbons (oil and LNG) to deepen alliances, provide energy security to Europe and Asia, and undercut adversaries’ revenues. US crude output averaged ~13.8 million barrels per day in 2025, with 2026 projections holding steady at ~13.5 million b/d, positioning the US as a “swing exporter.” New LNG facilities (e.g., Plaquemines, Golden Pass) are expanding capacity to ~16.3 billion cubic feet per day by 2026, further enhancing export leverage.
    Strategic Petroleum Reserve Management: The US uses its SPR (world’s largest at 714 million barrels capacity) to influence prices, with rebuilds since 2023 providing a buffer for releases during disruptions. President Trump has considered restricting US oil exports to manage domestic supply and curb inflation, prioritizing strategic stockpiling.

    Trade and Regulatory Tools

    Tariffs and Export Controls: Broad tariffs on imports (including energy-related tech) and restrictions on Chinese firms in clean energy/critical materials aim to slow China’s ascent and limit its access to advanced equipment, indirectly affecting global energy dynamics. Ongoing negotiations could adjust tariffs on oil/gas-related goods under sections like 232.
    Supply Chain Reshoring: Massive subsidies and incentives (e.g., via the Inflation Reduction Act remnants) rebuild US manufacturing for batteries, solar, and strategic tech, creating resilient chains outside China and treating industrial capacity as national defense.

    These efforts collectively aim to sustain US influence over ~20% of global oil production (including indirect control via Canada, Guyana, and Venezuela) while countering de-dollarization trends in energy trade. Analysts view this as seeking leverage against China, akin to China’s control over rare earths, by dominating energy supply chains. However, global oversupply projections for 2026 (e.g., 4 million b/d surplus) could temper prices, potentially deferring investments and setting up future shortages.

    Source date (UTC): 2026-03-14 02:58:03 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2032652448813428836

  • (Thoughts via Sr Fellow Francis Zhou) RE: Economic consequences of the AI techno

    (Thoughts via Sr Fellow Francis Zhou)
    RE: Economic consequences of the AI technology:
    – Humans have a tendency to overestimate the effect of a new technology in the short term, and underestimate its effect in the long term. The “crisis” is more likely to playout in slow motion for the next 20 years, til 2048, instead of 2028.
    – In any human organization of sufficient size, it isn’t technology advancement that determines the pace of progress, but one hiring and firing/retirement at a time, especially at the upper echelons. This takes far longer than typically expected, which explains “organizational inertia”.
    – +1 on the difference between vibe coding to create a working prototype, vs operating a SaaS service with scale, reliability, and compliance. For most enterprises, software is a utility. You subscribe to the utility, you don’t aim to own the infrastructure that produces the utility, unless you have to.
    – Moving bits have became cheaper and cheaper first following Moore’s law, then Metacalf’s law, to the point now that some unnamed AI law will make it even cheaper. Moving atoms doesn’t benefit from these laws. So if job security is a concern, go into a career that involves moving atoms. It doesn’t have to be “blue collar” per se, building robots for example, consists of moving atoms. At least until general purpose robotics pair with AGI becomes an affordable reality (I think we are at least a few more decades away from that reality).
    – Capital doesn’t get destroyed outside of war, it just flows to another sector/asset.

    Source date (UTC): 2026-02-26 16:25:31 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2027057450906759671

  • Yet another insight: Gary Stanley Becker really brought what the austirans sough

    Yet another insight: Gary Stanley Becker really brought what the austirans sought into scientific formalism.
    So while I appreciate Hazlitt’s Economics in one lesson, the austrian (at least misesian) attempt at economic operationalism (economics as a social science), in the hayekian (informal capital), the Rothardian (separatist, legal tradition) and Hoppeian (german free cities, property as universal commensurability), the anglo imperial or strong federal, (possibly my work as information as common capital), the culmination is the combination of economic operationalism can be found by unifying them under the beckerian supply demand illustrations which are the only visual means of reduction of economic principles.
    In my understanding we solved social science in four generations.
    That’s not bad.
    Unfortunately, we lose.
    Because economics is not practiced as a means of explanation but as a means of coercion by conflation, inflation, and fictionalization of the discipline, and in particular the fictionalism of mathematical reduction as a means of obscuring and deceiving

    Source date (UTC): 2026-02-09 20:32:38 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2020959044048126114

  • RE: –“Why Modern Economics Is Built on a Lie w/ Bob Murphy”– See: https:// you

    RE: –“Why Modern Economics Is Built on a Lie w/ Bob Murphy”–
    See:
    https://
    youtube.com/watch?v=hYtf9O
    p3poA
    …

    Bob is pretty much always right. I’ll try to clarify:
    a) Economics consist of high causal density.
    b) Economic variables vary constantly in time.
    c) Therefore economics is limited in its reducibility (Reducibility: {operational, algorithmic, mathematic, categorical, identity, naturalism, realism})
    d) Therefore economics is more post-hoc descriptive than ex-ante predictive. (ergo: predictability is a property of reducibility, the lower the reducibility the more limited to descriptive.)
    e) Therefore we can construct general rules of descriptive economics even if we are limited in general rules of predictive economics.
    f) We can discuss economics in the same realm as any other science using operationaism and empiricism as long as we realize that the limit of reducibility is using natural indices (Labels) rather than cardinal (Numbers).
    There is no need to carry such rules further into philosophical rationalism – it devolves into an analysis of language not cause and consequence. This was a mistake of the early 20th. Mises did not realize he had discovered operationalism in physics at the same time that operationalism (under various labels) was discovered in physics and mathematics. But he was captured by rationalism. Philosophy had not yet reached the dead end it had by the 1960s.
    g) So just as euclidean geometry is a system of measurement for human scale, and fails and post-human-scale, economic rationalism is a system of measurement for human scale and fails at post-human scale.
    h) Bob’s narrative of the comparison with geometry vs its limits, or Gödel’s theorem (which is a very limited arithmetic and so overused example) and its limits, is correct. All systems have limits. All systems must only account for closure within its limits.
    The problem austrians face with the apriori is an unnecessary abstraction that does not improve anything that cannot be stated in scientific prose if we understand reducibility and indexability as I’ve stated here.
    So it is better to attempt a formalism in rationalism (set theory) than cardinality, but then it is better to adopt a formalism in operationalism than rationalism. And we can leave the archaic reasoning of our ancestors behind.
    i) All language constitutes a system of measurements. The question is only the precision given the demands of the context we wish to measure.

    Cheers
    Curt Doolittle
    NLI

    cc:
    @BobMurphyEcon

    @RobertBreedlove

    Source date (UTC): 2026-02-09 19:55:52 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2020949790750830901

  • I have faith in people having incentives to fix what is not working because not

    I have faith in people having incentives to fix what is not working because not doing so is terrifying. It has precious little to do with venture capitalists and philanthropists.

    Source date (UTC): 2026-02-03 08:03:42 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2018596240632729874

  • The adjustment in response to vast increases in capability is temporary and usua

    The adjustment in response to vast increases in capability is temporary and usually beneficial despite the stress of the transition.

    Some of my work is in post-consumption economic organization and there is nothing unique about this time or the same that happened in history.

    The stressor is that we must discover what to do next. It’s almost impossible to plan it.

    I’ve done the work on most of it.. Other economists will do the same for other areas.

    But yes the uncertainty isn’t fun and the transition is frightening because we feel out of control.

    Source date (UTC): 2026-02-03 04:16:14 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2018538997505777988

  • False. The don’t have to buy them. They only have to generate demand to rent the

    False. The don’t have to buy them. They only have to generate demand to rent them. And they do.

    And it’s kind of hard to imagine you are willing to comment on the subject yet didn’t find obvious that conclusion – unless you’re posturing or lying outright under motivated reasoning.

    Source date (UTC): 2026-01-30 16:50:49 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2017279344884994309

  • One Year of Impressive Administrative Metrics Here’s a breakdown of commonly cit

    One Year of Impressive Administrative Metrics

    Here’s a breakdown of commonly cited improvements:
    Unemployment Rate
    • Overall unemployment fell from 4.7% (Jan 2017) to a 50-year low of 3.5% (Feb 2020). Record lows for minority groups:
    • African American unemployment hit 5.4% (lowest on record at the time).
    • Hispanic American unemployment reached 3.9% (record low).
    • Women, Asian Americans, and youth also saw historic lows.
    Job Creation
    • Approximately 7 million new jobs added (2017–Feb 2020), with strong private-sector growth.
    • Middle-class family income rose by nearly $6,000 (real median household income).
    • Foreign investment inflows hit record levels (trillions cited in some claims), fueling projects in semiconductors, AI, etc.
    Poverty Rates
    • Poverty rates for African Americans and Hispanic Americans reached record lows.
    • Nearly 7 million people lifted off food stamps.
    Stock Market Performance
    Major indices hit repeated records:
    • Dow Jones crossed 20,000 (2017) and 30,000 (2020). one of the stronger starts for any president historically.
    • S&P 500 and NASDAQ also reached all-time highs, boosting 401(k)s and retirement savings.
    • GDP Growth: Real GDP reportedly rose to 4.3% annualized in Q3 2025 (the fastest pace in two years and above expectations). Sources project or claim even higher momentum heading into 2026,
    Inflation Prices, Cost of LIving
    • Inflation moderated in 2025, approaching or nearing the Fed’s 2% target.
    • Gas prices and some grocery/energy costs reportedly declined (e.g., gas under $3/gallon in claims, grocery costs dropping in earlier optimistic posts).
    • Consumer confidence rebounded in some periods as policies like deregulation and tax relief took effect.
    Wages and Income
    • Real median household income rose to record levels.
    • Blue-collar wage growth outpaced overall averages in some periods.
    Energy Production and Independence
    • U.S. became a net energy exporter for the first time in decades. Crude oil production soared (e.g., record highs in barrels per day).
    • Achieved “energy dominance” through deregulation and increased domestic output.
    Immigration and Border Security
    • Border crossings and illegal encounters dropped dramatically (often cited as 90%+ reductions from prior peaks).
    • Deportations surged (hundreds of thousands to millions in various claims).
    Crime (Huge!!!)
    • Related crime metrics like homicides and violent crime in some cities reportedly declined (e.g., 14-27% drops in supporter posts).
    Criminal Justice Reform
    • The bipartisan First Step Act (2018) led to reduced sentences for thousands of federal inmates, improved prison conditions, and better reentry programs.
    Other Areas
    • Veterans Affairs (VA) reforms (e.g., expanded private care options via the VA MISSION Act).
    • Air quality improved (cleanest on record per some metrics). Income inequality declined slightly in some measures.

    Source date (UTC): 2026-01-25 01:22:04 UTC

    Original post: https://x.com/i/articles/2015233675181621555

  • I sort of have this opinion that if you’re not libertarian when young that you m

    I sort of have this opinion that if you’re not libertarian when young that you might not be so great a conservative when you mature. The reason is that it teaches you economics and gives you a logic of human behavior. Conservatives remain inarticulate prisoners of both their own normativity and historical moral narratives without the ability to speak scientifically about behavior.

    Since I’m a hayekian more so than a misesian or rothbardian (urbanite, ghettos), and since I’m an anglo (island empire) and not a german (continental city states) I tend to think of each of us trying to solve the problem of the state in the context of our three histories.

    And I attribute my libertarianism to a search for a formal logic of economics, social science and law. I found it there but it was wrong. So … in finding what was wrong I discovered what was right.

    Thanks for sharing the journey.
    -hugs
    CD

    Source date (UTC): 2026-01-24 20:04:59 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2015153878539657302