Curt Doolittle

Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

  • MASTERCARD AND BITCOIN Hierarchy of business is Amex->Visa->MC->Check-Cashing bu

    MASTERCARD AND BITCOIN

    Hierarchy of business is Amex->Visa->MC->Check-Cashing businesses. With MC having all the ‘low rent’ customers, and check cashing services having the … lowest.

    Now, why not build a MC ‘wallet’ and charge simple transaction costs for BTC’s – just for the convenience of processing the transactions?

    Because they assume that it would eat into their business. But if you thought like a check cashing company you’d understand that people evolve through the credit cycle. And that today’s payday loan and check cashing customer is tomorrow’s credit customer. in fact, this is the optimum business model for them.

    BTC transactions are zero risk for the vendor. It’s merely a transaction processing cost. That transaction processing can still be a profitable ADDITION to the existing business (i’d carry a MC product if it handled BTC). And by and large, people will buy btc with credit.

    I’d like to see people paid in BTC at the low wage end, so that the burden of the financial system is lessened for them. At present it’s an absurd burden – and it’s a trap for them as well, that they cannot easily get out of.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-19 11:32:00 UTC

  • RENT SEEKING AND JAPAN (now, I’m all in favor of rent seeking in an extended fam

    RENT SEEKING AND JAPAN

    (now, I’m all in favor of rent seeking in an extended family – that’s a choice. but I”m not in favor of rents on my family by competing families.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-18 08:45:00 UTC

  • I said, almost ten years ago, that if the dollar collapsed that we could no long

    I said, almost ten years ago, that if the dollar collapsed that we could no longer afford our military and that the standard of living of the average american would decline by 40-50% – and stay there.

    End the empire.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-14 11:59:00 UTC

  • WAS WAY OFF ON THIS ONE. Was dead sure it would start in 2010. I still don’t und

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/china-li-keqiang-wans-investors-bankruptciesI WAS WAY OFF ON THIS ONE.

    Was dead sure it would start in 2010.

    I still don’t understand that economy.

    I understand the demographics (if they’re close to accurate) but not that economy.

    Demographics should have broken it four years ago.

    Be interesting to understand how and why they held out this long.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-14 07:20:00 UTC

  • Improving Hoppe's Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Improving Hoppe’s Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Improving Hoppe's Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Improving Hoppe’s Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Good Economics and Bad Economics / Good Philosophy and Bad Philosophy

    [I] love Hoppe’s speech on good and bad economics. And regardless of my criticism of deductivism (a priorism) when economics is in fact, entirely empirical (not positivist, but empirical), I agree with him that economics doesn’t have ‘flavors’ but instead either makes true, internally consistent, and externally correspondent statements, or it does not. Worse, bad economics create bad behavior and bad economic conditions. Now, philosophy is the same. While the discipline of philosophy attracts people who prefer many different FLAVORS of philosophy, the fact is that philosophy is either GOOD or it is BAD. In the sense that it is either TRUE and correspondent with reality, and encourages us to act in correspondence with reality, or it is FALSE and does not encourage us to act in correspondence with reality. Now since philosophy consists of suites of statements, it’s possible for some philosophies to, as sets produce mixed goods and bads. But it is also possible for philosophies to produce net bads, and net goods. In the end analysis, we will settle on one optimum philosophy. And that philosophy will be ‘the way’ (constructivism, intuitionism) which we now refer to as ‘the scientific method’. Not that it has much to do with science. It just arose from the discipline of science. There is good philosophy (Philosophical Constructivist Realism, and Moral Propertarian Realism) and there is bad philosophy: everything else.

  • Good Economics and Bad Economics / Good Philosophy and Bad Philosophy

    [I] love Hoppe’s speech on good and bad economics. And regardless of my criticism of deductivism (a priorism) when economics is in fact, entirely empirical (not positivist, but empirical), I agree with him that economics doesn’t have ‘flavors’ but instead either makes true, internally consistent, and externally correspondent statements, or it does not. Worse, bad economics create bad behavior and bad economic conditions. Now, philosophy is the same. While the discipline of philosophy attracts people who prefer many different FLAVORS of philosophy, the fact is that philosophy is either GOOD or it is BAD. In the sense that it is either TRUE and correspondent with reality, and encourages us to act in correspondence with reality, or it is FALSE and does not encourage us to act in correspondence with reality. Now since philosophy consists of suites of statements, it’s possible for some philosophies to, as sets produce mixed goods and bads. But it is also possible for philosophies to produce net bads, and net goods. In the end analysis, we will settle on one optimum philosophy. And that philosophy will be ‘the way’ (constructivism, intuitionism) which we now refer to as ‘the scientific method’. Not that it has much to do with science. It just arose from the discipline of science. There is good philosophy (Philosophical Constructivist Realism, and Moral Propertarian Realism) and there is bad philosophy: everything else.