Curt Doolittle

Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

  • YOU CAN”T GET AROUND THE PROBLEM. Rule of Law, or Social Democracy, or National

    YOU CAN”T GET AROUND THE PROBLEM.

    Rule of Law, or Social Democracy, or National Socialism, or World Communism.

    Um. Labor costs are regional and national, while market prices are global. With ‘free trade’, arbitrage means that we seek lower prices and higher consumption at the cost of redistribution of employment from advanced to advancing countries.

    How you interpret that fact is determined by whether you seek to bring everyone on earth to an average at the expense of those who are already prosperous, or whether you seek to maintain income equality within your polity for the purpose of preserving harmony.

    National Rule of Law, not National Socialism. They result in the same thing by use of full accounting under rule of law.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-08-07 15:52:00 UTC

  • AFRICA: INVENTORS ARE NOT GODS. IMHO why do we make investments in authors of in

    AFRICA: INVENTORS ARE NOT GODS.

    IMHO why do we make investments in authors of innovations (gods) rather than techniques (recipes). And why to past rates of discovery and achievement, rather than to current use of techniques? Is it so that we can imitate the characters (gods) by doing nothing, instead of imitate the techniques by doing something?

    My understanding of these things is that while anyone can invent something, they did so because of access to trade routes and the income from creating, defending, taxing, and profiting from them.

    I have spent a bit of time over the past six or eight months trying to learn why Africa, or at least west Africa didn’t achieve an imperial period earlier, and the answer is just that: geographically, west Africa might as well be Australia, and lacking sufficient means of concentrating capital none of the regional emprires were able to amass sufficient wealth (or production) to assert and hold dominance over an area large enough to produce a critical mass of trade until the late modern period – at which time the colonialists arrive.

    I don’t know about the rest of Africa yet, but at least in the west, the region was entering it’s period similar to that of the ‘european franks’ trying to build a military economic, and political order, and westerners compare the region to development of amer-india , which was 7k years behind. It’s not true of west Africa that was simply trying to circumvent the high cost of rather impossible difference from the nexus of world trade in the eastern mediterranean.

    To much focus on the European miracle and not enough focus on the geographic rates of development due to geography. the more I learn the more I understand why the blacksmith is the oldest character in western myth: extraordinary emphasis on mining, smelting, and metalworking. The rest is the military and political order of miners, smelters, metalworkers and cattle raiders for whom farming was a means of serving the animals. And who had a 40% increase in caloric availability due to their adaptation to the drinking of milk. Thats the west’s advantage: accidents. Just as the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Pakistani-Indian, and the Chinese river valleys were accidents.

    Yes, only europeans could have invented European culture’s odd predilections. But anyone can use the products of them – just like anyone can use the products of every other civilization. And if europeans were more inventive, that is wonderful accident of history that everyone can make use of.

    It is, in my opinion, more important to study why some cultures stagnated and fell, than to study why some got to military, economic, and political critical mass first.

    And we know that answer: lack of military discipline, complacency, and the overextension of rents, the over extension of reach, and the education of competitors with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

    That’s because the reason you “get there first” is luck.

    The reason you fall behind or fail is what you do with a military, political, and economically productive civilization once you achieve it.

    I do not understand african self criticism. What I understand is that every culture must go thru the transition of suppressing local corruption so that the velocity of cooperation can increase, and that capital investment is safe from predation. And without capital to fund a strong military, police, and justice such that there are no economic conditions under which ‘defection’ against the people (corruption), is a malincentive against future returns, then it’s quite difficult.

    Africa will do fine. But it will take the same time it has everyone else. At least africans aren’t fighting it like other groups.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-08-07 14:52:00 UTC

  • Eugenicists were right.

    —Eugenicists were right. There is only one route to permanent prosperity and that is the reduction of the unproductive classes. The bottom is 6x more damaging than the top is productive, and in an evenly rotating economy (no major asymmetries of technology) which the world is approaching, the size of the underclasses will determine the level of poverty.— (worth repeating)

  • Eugenicists were right.

    —Eugenicists were right. There is only one route to permanent prosperity and that is the reduction of the unproductive classes. The bottom is 6x more damaging than the top is productive, and in an evenly rotating economy (no major asymmetries of technology) which the world is approaching, the size of the underclasses will determine the level of poverty.— (worth repeating)

  • Why does the SHTA get blamed rather than the creation of the Fed? Why does the F

    Why does the SHTA get blamed rather than the creation of the Fed? Why does the Fed get blamed rather than the industrialization of farming? Why does farming get blamed rather than immigration? Nothing evenly rotates. Everything starts with demographics – not markets or money.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-08-06 18:34:01 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1026536891712253953

    Reply addressees: @Race_Skin @ThomasSowell @PeterSchiff @zerohedge @JohnStossel @mises @LearnLiberty @TrueDilTom @TruthGundlach @realDonaldTrump @DA_Stockman

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1026473515476811776

    IN REPLY TO:

    @Race_Skin

    Why does the stock market get blamed for the #GreatDepression and not the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of the 1930’s?

    @ThomasSowell @PeterSchiff @zerohedge @JohnStossel @mises @LearnLiberty @curtdoolittle @TrueDilTom @TruthGundlach @realDonaldTrump @DA_Stockman

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1026473515476811776

  • Eugenicists were right. There is only one route to permanent prosperity and that

    —Eugenicists were right. There is only one route to permanent prosperity and that is the reduction of the unproductive classes. The bottom is 6x more damaging than the top is productive, and in an evenly rotating economy (no major asymmetries of technology) which the world is approaching, the size of the underclasses will determine the level of poverty.—

    (worth repeating)

    Source date (UTC): 2018-08-06 08:52:00 UTC

  • “Just as a country’s wealth can be measured by how long it can survive democracy

    —“Just as a country’s wealth can be measured by how long it can survive democracy, same applies to socialism. Resource rich countries can survive longest on it, but those that focus on preserving the most important resource – high performing human types – can survive it indefinitely.”— Steve Pender

    Source date (UTC): 2018-08-06 08:47:00 UTC

  • Norway

    —“Norway’s modern manufacturing and welfare system rely on a financial reserve produced by exploitation of natural resources, particularly North Sea oil.”— Look. I have a non-trivial understanding of economics. Norway is the Scandinavian version of Dubai. The Dubai has 4 billion barrels and Norway has 5.5 billion barrels in reserve. Just like Dubai can operate on a resource economy, Norway can. For exactly the same reasons. —“Forty years of oil and gas production has produced values of $1.2 trillion for Norway and the petroleum sector accounts for 22% of Norway’s GDP. The petroleum industry has enabled one of the most extensive welfare systems in the world, with free public health care and generous disability and unemployment benefits. To provide a buffer when the petroleum revenues decrease the Government Pension Fund was established in 1990 and its current value is over $500 billion. The so-called spending rule, made effective in 2001, states that only the real returns of the fund (estimated to be 4% per annum) should be spent in the national budget, thus saving oil wealth for future generations.”— At current rates of consumption Norway has (optimistically) 24 years of oil production left. In other words, one new generation. After that it will dwindle. We can expect Norway to incrementally tighten r Dubai is investing in becoming the arab world’s switzerland, and norway is investing in fulfilling the scandinavian utopia. While dubai’s objective is sustainable, norway’s is not. Norway is not repeatable any more than Dubai is repeatable. And norway will change rapidly in the foreseeable future because of it. That’s the answer. YOU CAN’T DO SOCIALISM (FOR LONG). In the end it destroys everything. Corruption and black markets, Incentives to produce most importantly, prices and calculation and the impossibility of organizing production, and knowledge. Just can’t be done. It can be done in a few industries. But there is no escape from market forces any more than there is from gravity. Eugenicists were right. There is only one route to permanent prosperity and that is the reduction of the unproductive classes. The bottom is 6x more damaging than the top is productive. and in an evenly rotating economy (no major asymmetries of technology) which the world is approaching, the size of the underclasses will determine the level of poverty.

  • Norway

    —“Norway’s modern manufacturing and welfare system rely on a financial reserve produced by exploitation of natural resources, particularly North Sea oil.”— Look. I have a non-trivial understanding of economics. Norway is the Scandinavian version of Dubai. The Dubai has 4 billion barrels and Norway has 5.5 billion barrels in reserve. Just like Dubai can operate on a resource economy, Norway can. For exactly the same reasons. —“Forty years of oil and gas production has produced values of $1.2 trillion for Norway and the petroleum sector accounts for 22% of Norway’s GDP. The petroleum industry has enabled one of the most extensive welfare systems in the world, with free public health care and generous disability and unemployment benefits. To provide a buffer when the petroleum revenues decrease the Government Pension Fund was established in 1990 and its current value is over $500 billion. The so-called spending rule, made effective in 2001, states that only the real returns of the fund (estimated to be 4% per annum) should be spent in the national budget, thus saving oil wealth for future generations.”— At current rates of consumption Norway has (optimistically) 24 years of oil production left. In other words, one new generation. After that it will dwindle. We can expect Norway to incrementally tighten r Dubai is investing in becoming the arab world’s switzerland, and norway is investing in fulfilling the scandinavian utopia. While dubai’s objective is sustainable, norway’s is not. Norway is not repeatable any more than Dubai is repeatable. And norway will change rapidly in the foreseeable future because of it. That’s the answer. YOU CAN’T DO SOCIALISM (FOR LONG). In the end it destroys everything. Corruption and black markets, Incentives to produce most importantly, prices and calculation and the impossibility of organizing production, and knowledge. Just can’t be done. It can be done in a few industries. But there is no escape from market forces any more than there is from gravity. Eugenicists were right. There is only one route to permanent prosperity and that is the reduction of the unproductive classes. The bottom is 6x more damaging than the top is productive. and in an evenly rotating economy (no major asymmetries of technology) which the world is approaching, the size of the underclasses will determine the level of poverty.

  • NORWAY —“Norway’s modern manufacturing and welfare system rely on a financial

    NORWAY

    —“Norway’s modern manufacturing and welfare system rely on a financial reserve produced by exploitation of natural resources, particularly North Sea oil.”—

    Look. I have a non-trivial understanding of economics. Norway is the Scandinavian version of Dubai. The Dubai has 4 billion barrels and Norway has 5.5 billion barrels in reserve. Just like Dubai can operate on a resource economy, Norway can. For exactly the same reasons.

    —“Forty years of oil and gas production has produced values of $1.2 trillion for Norway and the petroleum sector accounts for 22% of Norway’s GDP. The petroleum industry has enabled one of the most extensive welfare systems in the world, with free public health care and generous disability and unemployment benefits. To provide a buffer when the petroleum revenues decrease the Government Pension Fund was established in 1990 and its current value is over $500 billion. The so-called spending rule, made effective in 2001, states that only the real returns of the fund (estimated to be 4% per annum) should be spent in the national budget, thus saving oil wealth for future generations.”—

    At current rates of consumption Norway has (optimistically) 24 years of oil production left. In other words, one new generation. After that it will dwindle. We can expect Norway to incrementally tighten r

    Dubai is investing in becoming the arab world’s switzerland, and norway is investing in fulfilling the scandinavian utopia. While dubai’s objective is sustainable, norway’s is not.

    Norway is not repeatable any more than Dubai is repeatable. And norway will change rapidly in the foreseeable future because of it.

    That’s the answer.

    YOU CAN’T DO SOCIALISM (FOR LONG).

    In the end it destroys everything. Corruption and black markets, Incentives to produce most importantly, prices and calculation and the impossibility of organizing production, and knowledge. Just can’t be done. It can be done in a few industries. But there is no escape from market forces any more than there is from gravity.

    Eugenicists were right. There is only one route to permanent prosperity and that is the reduction of the unproductive classes. The bottom is 6x more damaging than the top is productive. and in an evenly rotating economy (no major asymmetries of technology) which the world is approaching, the size of the underclasses will determine the level of poverty.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-08-05 21:25:00 UTC