Curt Doolittle

Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

  • I know that in the global intellectual pool of people who deeply understand econ

    I know that in the global intellectual pool of people who deeply understand economics, there are those of us who understand the Chinese strategy to destroy the USA, and how successful it will be. I know that there is nothing our government can do to stop it. I know that Russia is counting on it. I know that we are dead. What I don’t understand is just letting it happen rather than managing our decline. Democracy is the evil that prevents it. Russia and china can adapt. We no longer can adapt.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-04-02 16:58:00 UTC

  • COUNTER-SIGNALING NEO-LIBERALISM 😉 (contra free trade)(from econlog) (COMMENT R

    COUNTER-SIGNALING NEO-LIBERALISM 😉

    (contra free trade)(from econlog)

    (COMMENT REJECTED BY ECONLOG – WOW_

    Gentlemen (and the economic academy as a whole)

    1) it is fairly evident that the value of lower prices declined with completion of the transition from agrarianism. In fact, investors, inventors, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and distributors, and merchants, have a very hard time selling anything but marketing and status signal deltas. (See research on phones, phone plans, and software for them). What pent up demand for consumption exists? Other than for signals? In fact, it is quite possible to make an argument that status signal consumption is evidence of hyperconsumption and a misallocation of all forms of capital.(See virtue signaling in Austrialia, Canada, and the UK, and among progressives in the USA. What is the cost of virtue signal spirals? How are they made possible? The answer is non-trivial.)

    2) Cherry-picking consumption without measuring offsetting costs, and declines in intra-generational, inter-generational capital( capital in toto), is not practicing science. It’s practicing pseudoscience.

    3) When was the last time you saw a balance sheet rather than an income statement, and what is the difference in the aggregates illustrated by each?

    4) Why does the myth persist that there is a difference in personal, familial, local, regional, and national economics without stating that difference is limited to monetary not capital in toto constraints?

    So no. There is a limit to comparative advantage (capital consumption). Free trade, like investment in literacy, is a transitional good not a persistent one. Cities create a false efficiency under all but the German postwar model. They are transitional not absolute goods. Measurement of consumption is a transitional good, not a persistent one. Democracy is a transitional good in the presence of windfalls from technology or resources, republicanism superior during status quo, and fascism superior during periods of war.

    A necessary test of pseudoscience is whether limits have been articulated, so that we do not make the error of confusing temporal utility with ‘ideal’ good.

    There are no theories without limit except the theory that there are no theories without limit.

    20th century economics consists of the study of transition from agrarianism, to industrialism, to informational economies.

    What measures are missing? How do we know when the model we used for transition is no longer transitional but purely consumptive of longer term capital?

    (Signals)

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2017-03-30 08:47:00 UTC

  • compassion has nothing to do with either possibility or measurement. Instead, it

    compassion has nothing to do with either possibility or measurement. Instead, it’s intellectual laziness, status seeking, and virtue signaling.

    Regarding regulation. Unless you grasp the scale of the cost of compliance vs the returns on that compliance you are again making judgement out of intellectual laziness, and pseudo-morality rather than the science. While it may be one thing to punish the best dog owners whose dogs are fully trained because of those whose dogs require leashes, it is quite another to impose vast costs and the highest taxes on business and industry. While Foreign Affairs has traditionally been fairly conservative, the article you reference cherrypicks the regulatory nightmare of the EU where business is not growing, vs the remainder of the world where growth is continuing, regulation is non existent and corruption is rife.

    Why is it that ignorant people feel their opinions are anything but the fantastic impulses of the uneducated, uninformed, and unskillled implanted in them by critical theory and the ignorance of organizations and politiies at large scales?

    Source date (UTC): 2017-03-29 05:26:00 UTC

  • I have been meaning to ask what you think about MMT for some time now. So, have

    —I have been meaning to ask what you think about MMT for some time now. So, have you heard of MMT before and what do you think?—

    Curt Doolittle

    What I’ve stated in the previous few posts is pure Keynesianism, however, I used it in the New Keynesian model, directed at growth rather than just employment.

    The criticism we should levy is of Fiat Money that in issuing these stocks (fiat money) the interest is privatized rather than retained as one of the primary income sources of the state.

    This was an intention, in the original design, as fear that the state would destroy the economy as it has in the past if legislation made possible the runaway issuance of currency.

    MMT makes claims I disagree with, and creates hazards I disagree with. In particular, that no government can go bankrupt – which while LEGALLY true – doesn’t mean it’s PRACTICALLY true, as we have seen many sovereign nations with fiat money produce runaway inflation and in the case of venezuela at present, starvation.

    The problem with fiat money is lack of rule of law. In other words, the constitution needs to forbid the state from arbitrary (discretionary) use of money.

    In some sense, one of the principle problems of 21st century economics has been to attempt to discover some ‘target’ (measurement) that would allow us to reduce the issuance of money to rule of law (a formula) and place it into the constitution, thereby removing discretion over its use.

    In some sense, this is an example of the the conversion by the (((socialists))) from rule of law (non-discretionary rule) to majority rule (discretionary rule): it is even harder to trust a government with fiat money than it was when first issued.

    The solution isn’t very difficult. There are no provisions in the constitution against even suggesting certain acts as there were for treason. And it is this certainty of punishment alone that will prevent this kind of behavior in the market for information, legislation and regulation.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-03-26 08:00:00 UTC

  • Q&A: —“Would you mind detailing the hard currency problem? I still can’t get m

    Q&A: —“Would you mind detailing the hard currency problem? I still can’t get my head around why a fixed amount of currency is problematic.”— Bob Moran

    Curt Doolittle

    Lets say that the only currency you have to work with is gold and silver coin. Now, if, as a country, you are a net exporter, you will accumulate coins in exchange for your exports. But if you are a net importer (you’re wealthy) you will low on coins, the cost of coins will increase, and therefore the cost of imported goods will increase, and your economy will stall. Those are two extremes. In the middle, coins circulate and credit circulates, and consumption slows because prices increase, simply because the cost of coins themselves – that are necessary for trade – increases. This continues until some niche markets resort to barter. Now barter is a high risk, because it isn’t liquid like money (coin) is.

    Instead of coin, all governments slowly moved to ‘shares’. Paper money is not money per se (a commodity, or a token exchangeable for a commodity), but a share in the economy of the issuer. And like commercial shares, its dilutable. So when the price of money increases (interest rates), the government issues more shares to maintain a stable price of money (shares), so that there is no artificial shortage of money (money substitute: shares) so that productivity isn’t going to pay for the scarcity of money, and continues to pay for consumption and trade, and the economy continues.

    Governments (federal reserves, central banks, etc) function for the simple purpose of ensuring relative price stability of money, by maintaining a money supply at levels that hold it steady.

    The problem is, governments, once they have this power, spend money they don’t and can’t have, which creates a constant rate of inflation as well. Inflation destroys prices and savings and assets.

    The only way to preserve savings then, is to invest in things that appreciate over time (land, stocks, etc) but in general it is nearly impossible to stay ahead of the rate of inflation. so you must work constantly to prevent your money from evaporating.

    This creates the treadmill that we live under.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-03-25 15:44:00 UTC

  • The State of Mathematical Economics

      Understanding advanced mathematics of economics and physics for ordinary people. The Mengerian revolution, which we call the Marginalist revolution, occurred when the people of the period applied calculus ( the mathematics of “relative motion”) to what had been largely a combination of accounting and algebra. 20th century economics can be seen largely as an attempt to apply the mathematics of relative motion (constant change) from mathematics of constant categories that we use in perfectly constant axiomatic systems, and the relatively constant mathematics of physical systems, to the mathematics of inconstant categories that we find in economics – because things on the market have a multitude of subsequent yet interdependent uses that are determined by ever changing preferences, demands, availability, and shocks. Physics is a much harder problem than axiomatic mathematics. Economics is a much harder problem than mathematical physics, and before we head down this road (which I have been thinking about a long time) Sentience (the next dimension of complexity) is a much harder problem than economics. And there have been questions in the 20th century whether mathematics as we understand it can solve the hard problem of economics. But this is, as usual, a problem of misunderstanding the very simple nature of mathematics as the study of constant relations. Most human use of mathematics consists of the study of trivial constant relations such as quantities of objects, physical measurements. Or changes in state over time. Or relative motion in time. And this constitutes the four dimensions we can conceive of when discussing real world physical phenomenon. So in our simplistic view of mathematics, we think in terms of small numbers of causal relations. But, it does not reflect the number of POSSIBLE causal relations. In other words, we change from the position of observing change in state by things humans can observe and act upon, to a causal density higher than humans can observe and act upon, to a causal density such that every act of measurement distorts what humans can observe and act upon, by distorting the causality. One of our discoveries in mathematical physics, is that as things move along a trajectory, they are affected by high causal density, and change through many different states during that time period. Such that causal density is so high that it is very hard to reduce change in state of many dimensions of constant relations to a trivial value: meaning a measurement or state that we can predict. Instead we fine a range of output constant relations, which we call probabilistic. So that instead of a say, a point as a measurement, we fined a line, or a triangle, or a multi dimensional geometry that the resulting state will fit within. However, we can, with some work identify what we might call sums or aggregates (which are simple sets of relationships) but what higher mathematicians refer to as patterns, ‘symmetries’ or ‘geometries’. And these patterns refer to a set of constant relations in ‘space’ (on a coordinate system of sorts) that seem to emerge regardless of differences in the causes that produce them. These patterns, symmetries, or geometries reflect a set of constant relationships that are the product of inconstant causal operations. And when you refer to a ‘number’, a pattern, a symmetry, or a geometry, or what is called a non-euclidian geometry, we are merely talking about the number of dimensions of constant relations we are talking about, and using ‘space’ as the analogy that the human mind is able to grasp. Unfortunately, mathematics has not ‘reformed’ itself into operational language as have the physical sciences – and remains like the social sciences and philosophy a bastion of archaic language. But we can reduce this archaic language into meaningful operational terms as nothing more than sets of constant relations between measurements, consisting of a dimension per measurement, which we represent as a field (flat), euclidian geometry (possible geometry), or post Euclidian geometry (physically impossible but logically useful) geometry of constant relations. And more importantly, once we can identify these patterns, symmetries, or geometries that arise from complex causal density consisting of seemingly unrelated causal operations, we have found a constant by which to measure that which is causally dense but consequentially constant. So think of the current need for reform in economics to refer to and require a transition from the measurement of numeric (trivial) values, to the analysis of (non-trivial) consequent geometries. These constant states (geometries) constitute the aggregate operations in economies. The unintended but constant consequences of causally dense actions. Think of it like using fingers to make a shadow puppet. If you put a lot of people together between the light and the shadow, you can form the same pattern in the shadow despite very different combinations of fingers, hands, and arms. But because of the limits of the human anatomy, there are certain patterns more likely to emerge than others. Now imagine we do that in three dimensions. Now (if you can) four, and so on. At some point we can’t imagine these things. Because we have moved beyond what is possible to that which is only analogous to the possible: a set of constant relations in multiple dimensions. So economics then can evolve from the study of inputs and outputs without intermediary state which allows prediction, to the study of the consequence of inputs and the range of possible outputs that will likely produce predictability. in other words, it is possible to define constant relations in economics. And of course it is possible to define constant relations in sentience. The same is true for the operations possible by mankind. There are many possible, but there are only so many that produce a condition of natural law: reciprocity. Like I’ve said. Math isn’t complicated if you undrestand that it’s nothing more than saying “this stone represents one of our sheep”. And in doing so produce a constant relation. all we do is increase the quantity of constant relations we must measure. And from them deduce what we do not know, but is necessary because of those constant relations. Math is simple. That’s why it works for just about everything: we can define a correspondence with anything. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev Ukraine

  • The State of Mathematical Economics

      Understanding advanced mathematics of economics and physics for ordinary people. The Mengerian revolution, which we call the Marginalist revolution, occurred when the people of the period applied calculus ( the mathematics of “relative motion”) to what had been largely a combination of accounting and algebra. 20th century economics can be seen largely as an attempt to apply the mathematics of relative motion (constant change) from mathematics of constant categories that we use in perfectly constant axiomatic systems, and the relatively constant mathematics of physical systems, to the mathematics of inconstant categories that we find in economics – because things on the market have a multitude of subsequent yet interdependent uses that are determined by ever changing preferences, demands, availability, and shocks. Physics is a much harder problem than axiomatic mathematics. Economics is a much harder problem than mathematical physics, and before we head down this road (which I have been thinking about a long time) Sentience (the next dimension of complexity) is a much harder problem than economics. And there have been questions in the 20th century whether mathematics as we understand it can solve the hard problem of economics. But this is, as usual, a problem of misunderstanding the very simple nature of mathematics as the study of constant relations. Most human use of mathematics consists of the study of trivial constant relations such as quantities of objects, physical measurements. Or changes in state over time. Or relative motion in time. And this constitutes the four dimensions we can conceive of when discussing real world physical phenomenon. So in our simplistic view of mathematics, we think in terms of small numbers of causal relations. But, it does not reflect the number of POSSIBLE causal relations. In other words, we change from the position of observing change in state by things humans can observe and act upon, to a causal density higher than humans can observe and act upon, to a causal density such that every act of measurement distorts what humans can observe and act upon, by distorting the causality. One of our discoveries in mathematical physics, is that as things move along a trajectory, they are affected by high causal density, and change through many different states during that time period. Such that causal density is so high that it is very hard to reduce change in state of many dimensions of constant relations to a trivial value: meaning a measurement or state that we can predict. Instead we fine a range of output constant relations, which we call probabilistic. So that instead of a say, a point as a measurement, we fined a line, or a triangle, or a multi dimensional geometry that the resulting state will fit within. However, we can, with some work identify what we might call sums or aggregates (which are simple sets of relationships) but what higher mathematicians refer to as patterns, ‘symmetries’ or ‘geometries’. And these patterns refer to a set of constant relations in ‘space’ (on a coordinate system of sorts) that seem to emerge regardless of differences in the causes that produce them. These patterns, symmetries, or geometries reflect a set of constant relationships that are the product of inconstant causal operations. And when you refer to a ‘number’, a pattern, a symmetry, or a geometry, or what is called a non-euclidian geometry, we are merely talking about the number of dimensions of constant relations we are talking about, and using ‘space’ as the analogy that the human mind is able to grasp. Unfortunately, mathematics has not ‘reformed’ itself into operational language as have the physical sciences – and remains like the social sciences and philosophy a bastion of archaic language. But we can reduce this archaic language into meaningful operational terms as nothing more than sets of constant relations between measurements, consisting of a dimension per measurement, which we represent as a field (flat), euclidian geometry (possible geometry), or post Euclidian geometry (physically impossible but logically useful) geometry of constant relations. And more importantly, once we can identify these patterns, symmetries, or geometries that arise from complex causal density consisting of seemingly unrelated causal operations, we have found a constant by which to measure that which is causally dense but consequentially constant. So think of the current need for reform in economics to refer to and require a transition from the measurement of numeric (trivial) values, to the analysis of (non-trivial) consequent geometries. These constant states (geometries) constitute the aggregate operations in economies. The unintended but constant consequences of causally dense actions. Think of it like using fingers to make a shadow puppet. If you put a lot of people together between the light and the shadow, you can form the same pattern in the shadow despite very different combinations of fingers, hands, and arms. But because of the limits of the human anatomy, there are certain patterns more likely to emerge than others. Now imagine we do that in three dimensions. Now (if you can) four, and so on. At some point we can’t imagine these things. Because we have moved beyond what is possible to that which is only analogous to the possible: a set of constant relations in multiple dimensions. So economics then can evolve from the study of inputs and outputs without intermediary state which allows prediction, to the study of the consequence of inputs and the range of possible outputs that will likely produce predictability. in other words, it is possible to define constant relations in economics. And of course it is possible to define constant relations in sentience. The same is true for the operations possible by mankind. There are many possible, but there are only so many that produce a condition of natural law: reciprocity. Like I’ve said. Math isn’t complicated if you undrestand that it’s nothing more than saying “this stone represents one of our sheep”. And in doing so produce a constant relation. all we do is increase the quantity of constant relations we must measure. And from them deduce what we do not know, but is necessary because of those constant relations. Math is simple. That’s why it works for just about everything: we can define a correspondence with anything. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev Ukraine

  • On Unions

    ON UNIONS The unions made common mistakes of overreach. They began with the moral: safety, liability, minimum wages, profit sharing, and replacing with cheaper workers (arbitrage). But then proceeded with overreaches that varied from moral hazard: demands for impossible future claims: continuous increases and pensions; then to the immoral: mandatory membership, mandatory fees, and fostering endemic corruption; then to the violation of natural law: interfering in the political process. It’s a shock to capitalists and free marketers raised on the myth of constant growth made possible under the agrarian and industrial (hydrocarbon) eras, and prohibiting temporal labor arbitrage is perhaps hard for the layman to understand when it occurs across decades of time rather than across national borders, but men are not commodities and their marketability declines rapidly after choice of first opportunity – and seizing all the ‘best’ time at the lowest price under promise of future rewards is merely an act of fraud. So it is all too easy to socialize uncompetitiveness and privatize commons into the hands of investors and capitalists. Most capitalists cannot compete under free trade because profits would be much smaller. Contrary to libertarian dogma, and contrary to anglo bourgeois values, while the puritan/manorial work ethic is an unquestionable good, and while rule of law assisting in capital concentration and formation is an unquestionable good, as a good Propertarian we query ‘But what are the limits of that good? Because there exist no unlimited theories and therefore no unlimited goods.’ And we find that it is possible to socialize losses and privatize gains if we do not perform full accounting. And a full accounting only ends when we have reduced all accounts to ‘time’. Because it is ‘time’ that is the currency we trade.

  • On Unions

    ON UNIONS The unions made common mistakes of overreach. They began with the moral: safety, liability, minimum wages, profit sharing, and replacing with cheaper workers (arbitrage). But then proceeded with overreaches that varied from moral hazard: demands for impossible future claims: continuous increases and pensions; then to the immoral: mandatory membership, mandatory fees, and fostering endemic corruption; then to the violation of natural law: interfering in the political process. It’s a shock to capitalists and free marketers raised on the myth of constant growth made possible under the agrarian and industrial (hydrocarbon) eras, and prohibiting temporal labor arbitrage is perhaps hard for the layman to understand when it occurs across decades of time rather than across national borders, but men are not commodities and their marketability declines rapidly after choice of first opportunity – and seizing all the ‘best’ time at the lowest price under promise of future rewards is merely an act of fraud. So it is all too easy to socialize uncompetitiveness and privatize commons into the hands of investors and capitalists. Most capitalists cannot compete under free trade because profits would be much smaller. Contrary to libertarian dogma, and contrary to anglo bourgeois values, while the puritan/manorial work ethic is an unquestionable good, and while rule of law assisting in capital concentration and formation is an unquestionable good, as a good Propertarian we query ‘But what are the limits of that good? Because there exist no unlimited theories and therefore no unlimited goods.’ And we find that it is possible to socialize losses and privatize gains if we do not perform full accounting. And a full accounting only ends when we have reduced all accounts to ‘time’. Because it is ‘time’ that is the currency we trade.

  • Understanding Accounting and Finance? Get Back To Lender Beware.

    Mar 01, 2017 2:40pm UNDERSTANDING ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE I’ve been told all my life by some asshole or other that I don’t understand accounting or finance. And I always found that humorous. I took the same classes as everyone else. I just learned something very different from them: most of it is used to lie under pseudoscientific pretense caused entirely by the necessity of limiting profitability in order to reduce taxation, complying with government regulation that obscures real costs of doing business, and complying with bank lending requirements that force you to claim regularity to your income that does not exist, forcing you to keep Operational P&L to run a business, Credit P&L to borrow money, Tax P&L to pay taxes, and Investor P&L to estimate upside. But given the archaic and pseudoscientific nature of accounting and finance and that super-pseudoscience we call mainstream macro economics, all of these things are falsehoods that address special cases. The value of a business is one of three things: the current liquidation value in the event of closure, the value of the business as a going concern to a competitor in the market, and the value to some sucker you can find who will pay you more than either of those numbers. What it is expressly NOT is whatever nonsense your bank, or the government says that it is. Every time I hear the value of a company is expressed in market cap I wanna put irons on someone and stick them in a cell. Suckers exist in america in large numbers principally because we just create so many of them, and we hold so few punishments for them, that the legal and financial industry largely seems to exist in order to allow and profit from, sucker- plays. Now sure, you might be lucky and get a Peter Theil or one of the other Paypal Mafia to invest in your company. These are entrepreneurs who happen to have turned to entrepreneurship at scale. They are not engaged in financialization which provides them with gains whether you win or lose. But that is exactly how most of the capitalist class functions. We need to get back to lender beware.