Curt Doolittle

Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

  • MORAL OBLIGATION TO SUPPRESS ROTHBARDIAN PSEUDOSCIENCE (from elsewhere) If you d

    MORAL OBLIGATION TO SUPPRESS ROTHBARDIAN PSEUDOSCIENCE

    (from elsewhere)

    If you don’t claim economics isn’t an empirical science, and that praxeology isn’t a loose statement of operationalism, that apriorisitc reasoning produces apolitically certain premises, that rights ‘exist’ without a consensual contract, that the NAP is sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity, or that rothbardian ethics are either objectively ethical, or capable of producing an anarchic polity, then that’s good enough for me.

    Just doing my job trying to rescue liberty from the lunatic fringe.

    Some things are too serious to leave to crypto-marxists.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-18 09:59:00 UTC

  • TAXES FOR THE COMMONS I have no problem paying for commons – when they’re in fac

    TAXES FOR THE COMMONS

    I have no problem paying for commons – when they’re in fact commons. I have a big problem with paying extortionary rents. And I have an even larger problem with paying for damage to the commons that we have built over millennia. People have no problem paying taxes that they agree with and many problems paying for taxes that they don’t agree with. The solution of course is to let people pay for what they agree with and not for what they don’t agree with. Representatives are for sale. Remove the agent from the principle agent problem. (Conversely I have an equally large problem with free riders on the commons.)

    I think I’m going to put together a web application with a budget model of the US Government and your extant taxes, and we’ll see how people would vote their money.

    That is a wonderful social science experiment. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-15 07:05:00 UTC

  • BOETTKE’S RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BEST ECONOMIC BOOK OF 2014 Leeson, Anarchy Unbound

    BOETTKE’S RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BEST ECONOMIC BOOK OF 2014

    Leeson, Anarchy Unbound,

    Powell, Out of Poverty,

    Skarbek, The Social Order of the Underworld.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-14 15:31:00 UTC

  • Economy: Family Business and State Are Just Matters of Scale

    (h/t Andy Curzon )(edited and revised)

    [I]f we look at Austrian business cycle theory as merely an instance of the cycle of ‘flocking and schooling’ that follows any kind of change in knowledge that as a consequence produces an opportunity, then the century of pseudoscience was just another business process by which to exploit a market opportunity, and it played out as a series of eddies and pools, which are currently in the process of maximum exploitation and collapse.

    And so governments are just temporary corporations exploiting business opportunities. And management(government), employees(bureaucracy), customers(consumers), and investors(citizens) all compete for the maximum returns.

    This matches all political theory throughout history that suggests that people seek opportunities until it is possible to seek rents, and rents expand until the civilization collapses. It also matches the data that without private(shareholder) public(corporation) alliance no city state became economically competitive.

    I disagree with Diamond for example, since I am pretty sure the reason for these collapses is a breakdown of incentives : the information system that allows for the organization of production. I would say that civilizations collapse either due to extreme efficiency followed by shocks (1200 BC), or the equivalent of cancer: damage to the information system that eliminates the relationship between production and consumption.

    But since humans flock and school, then break off in smaller schools, to exploit opportunities, we are pretty good at a sort of fractal exploitation of every possible opportunity until it’s been exhausted.

    I suspect either an expansion of statism in order to extend the status quo, or an upcoming era of increased statist tyranny in the name of order. If not I suspect collapse of the western control of commerce and trade, and an expansive war or system of wars, to fill the vacuum; and an acceleration of civil wars to take advantage of change at home.

    It is better to study businesses than states, because the model is sufficient and the data is better.

  • Economy: Family Business and State Are Just Matters of Scale

    (h/t Andy Curzon )(edited and revised)

    [I]f we look at Austrian business cycle theory as merely an instance of the cycle of ‘flocking and schooling’ that follows any kind of change in knowledge that as a consequence produces an opportunity, then the century of pseudoscience was just another business process by which to exploit a market opportunity, and it played out as a series of eddies and pools, which are currently in the process of maximum exploitation and collapse.

    And so governments are just temporary corporations exploiting business opportunities. And management(government), employees(bureaucracy), customers(consumers), and investors(citizens) all compete for the maximum returns.

    This matches all political theory throughout history that suggests that people seek opportunities until it is possible to seek rents, and rents expand until the civilization collapses. It also matches the data that without private(shareholder) public(corporation) alliance no city state became economically competitive.

    I disagree with Diamond for example, since I am pretty sure the reason for these collapses is a breakdown of incentives : the information system that allows for the organization of production. I would say that civilizations collapse either due to extreme efficiency followed by shocks (1200 BC), or the equivalent of cancer: damage to the information system that eliminates the relationship between production and consumption.

    But since humans flock and school, then break off in smaller schools, to exploit opportunities, we are pretty good at a sort of fractal exploitation of every possible opportunity until it’s been exhausted.

    I suspect either an expansion of statism in order to extend the status quo, or an upcoming era of increased statist tyranny in the name of order. If not I suspect collapse of the western control of commerce and trade, and an expansive war or system of wars, to fill the vacuum; and an acceleration of civil wars to take advantage of change at home.

    It is better to study businesses than states, because the model is sufficient and the data is better.

  • You know I couldn’t care less about social justice and equality. I despise the t

    You know I couldn’t care less about social justice and equality. I despise the terms and the feelings that inspire them. But when a young man who is willing and able to work, and work hard, to feed his family cannot find work, and the only reason that he cannot is low trust, no credit, and low economic velocity – that makes me angry.

    I know too many men here who want to work, are willing to work, at ANY work, to feed and house their families, that cannot find it. And they cannot find it while government bureaucrats seek pervasive rents and participate in pervasive corruption.

    And it makes me want to kill every living soul in that government that I can get my hands on.

    We need to bring back the guillotine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-12 04:49:00 UTC

  • ECONOMY, BUSINESS AND STATE (h/t Andy Curzon )(edited and revised) If we look at

    ECONOMY, BUSINESS AND STATE

    (h/t Andy Curzon )(edited and revised)

    If we look at Austrian business cycle theory as merely an instance of the cycle of ‘flocking and schooling’ that follows any kind of change in knowledge that as a consequence produces an opportunity, then the century of pseudoscience was just another business process by which to exploit a market opportunity, and it played out as a series of eddies and pools, which are currently in the process of maximum exploitation and collapse.

    And so governments are just temporary corporations exploiting business opportunities. And management(government), employees(bureaucracy), customers(consumers), and investors(citizens) all compete for the maximum returns.

    This matches all political theory throughout history that suggests that people seek opportunities until it is possible to seek rents, and rents expand until the civilization collapses. It also matches the data that without private(shareholder) public(corporation) alliance no city state became economically competitive.

    I disagree with Diamond for example, since I am pretty sure the reason for these collapses is a breakdown of incentives : the information system that allows for the organization of production. I would say that civilizations collapse either due to extreme efficiency followed by shocks (1200 BC), or the equivalent of cancer: damage to the information system that eliminates the relationship between production and consumption.

    But since humans flock and school, then break off in smaller schools, to exploit opportunities, we are pretty good at a sort of fractal exploitation of every possible opportunity until it’s been exhausted.

    I suspect either an expansion of statism in order to extend the status quo, or an upcoming era of increased statist tyranny in the name of order. If not I suspect collapse of the western control of commerce and trade, and an expansive war or system of wars, to fill the vacuum; and an acceleration of civil wars to take advantage of change at home.

    It is better to study businesses than states, because the model is sufficient and the data is better.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-12 04:20:00 UTC

  • The rate at which free riding accumulates, and therefore the rate at which trust

    The rate at which free riding accumulates, and therefore the rate at which trust erodes, and economic velocity declines, is determined by the time between an innovation in free riding, and its suppression by law.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-11 10:55:00 UTC

  • The Ultimate Question of Economic Science? It’s Eugenia or Dysgenia.

    [P]eter Boettke posted an article by Paul Krugman yesterday which referred to the divisions in economics – with derision.

    And it’s been bothering me all night:

    Progressives, libertarians, and conservatives demonstrate an inter-temporal division of reproductive labor in their moral biases and cognitive biases.

    So why wouldn’t economists follow the same moral, inter-temporal division of labor?

    Well, they do. All humans do.

    Austrians represent the conservative long term: accumulation and competitiveness, and new Keynesian progressives the short term: consumption and reproduction.

    The question is whether consumption/dysgenia or accumulation/eugenia is preferable.

    This is the central proposition. And we avoid answering it just as much as our ancestors avoided the question of the existence of gods.

    Until we answer that question all economic debate is just obscurant deception as a means of avoiding the central question of economics: what is it that we are solving for?

    I can answer that question because western history answered it for us.

  • The Ultimate Question of Economic Science? It’s Eugenia or Dysgenia.

    [P]eter Boettke posted an article by Paul Krugman yesterday which referred to the divisions in economics – with derision.

    And it’s been bothering me all night:

    Progressives, libertarians, and conservatives demonstrate an inter-temporal division of reproductive labor in their moral biases and cognitive biases.

    So why wouldn’t economists follow the same moral, inter-temporal division of labor?

    Well, they do. All humans do.

    Austrians represent the conservative long term: accumulation and competitiveness, and new Keynesian progressives the short term: consumption and reproduction.

    The question is whether consumption/dysgenia or accumulation/eugenia is preferable.

    This is the central proposition. And we avoid answering it just as much as our ancestors avoided the question of the existence of gods.

    Until we answer that question all economic debate is just obscurant deception as a means of avoiding the central question of economics: what is it that we are solving for?

    I can answer that question because western history answered it for us.