Curt Doolittle

Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

  • The Threat Of Revolt, The General Strike, And The Myth Of Non-Violence 28 Monday

    The Threat Of Revolt, The General Strike, And The Myth Of Non-Violence
    28
    Monday
    Dec 2009
    Posted by Curt Doolittle in Uncategorized ≈ Leave a comment
    A tactic used by the vocal left is the threat of violence, or revolt if their needs are not met. The tactic of revolt is ancient. This modern version of revolt is a product of The Myth Of The General Strike. (I am referring to Burnham’s treatment) The contemporary version is the Economic Armageddon and Political Upheaval of the classes.

    The opposing argument is the libertarian argument for private property, and private capitalism, and the Randian version of Atlas shrugging.

    Both of these are myths of the general strike.

    The argument, or myth in any of it’s versions, is disingenuous. Workers will eventually relent, be replaced, or the businesses close. Entrepreneurs will be replaced by others. It is the state who would suffer it’s loss of legitimacy in the event of failure. But a new group would take over in government, and life would go on.

    An analysis of history tells us that it is much easier for the minority with wealth to pay another minority to violently oppress the peasantry, and to obtain their compliance going forward with commercial incentives and rewards, than it is for a peasantry to organize a movement of a general strike. In fact, the government conducts all general strikes, because without government suport and threats of government violence on business people, they would largely be irrelevant.

    When a ruling class loses it’s will for violence, the society loses it’s binding mythology. It simply opens it’s ranks for a different group to take over the ruling class, and redefine the existing network-map of property rights, and the dispensation of them. However, provided that the ranks of the elite are open to absorb those ambitous people from all classes, and the elite retain sufficient willingness to use violence, the myth of the revolt is specious. Because people simply need leaders in order to revolt.

    Before an elite allows itself to be displaced, it commits fraud. They verbally ally themselves with ‘the people’.

    All societies determine the scope of private and group property differently.

    (more…)

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 19:50:14 UTC

    Original post: https://gab.com/curtd/posts/102628393880515362

  • AN HISTORIC GAMBLE BY DONALD TRUMP. By Pat Buchannan “Trump seeks to throw out a

    AN HISTORIC GAMBLE BY DONALD TRUMP.
    By Pat Buchannan

    “Trump seeks to throw out a free trade policy that, rooted in 19th-century ideology rather than U.S. national interests, threw open U.S…. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=449659722297590&id=100017606988153

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 18:43:21 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162434688713154560

  • AN HISTORIC GAMBLE BY DONALD TRUMP. By Pat Buchannan “Trump seeks to throw out a

    AN HISTORIC GAMBLE BY DONALD TRUMP.

    By Pat Buchannan

    “Trump seeks to throw out a free trade policy that, rooted in 19th-century ideology rather than U.S. national interests, threw open U.S. markets to the world and produced, over three decades, $12 trillion in trade deficits and a loss of 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs.

    Like the Russian army carting off German factories after World War II, the Great Arsenal of Democracy was looted by its postwar allies and adversaries alike.

    The weapon Trump is using to stop this looting is tariffs, a price of admission into the U.S. market to replace the free passes foreign nations and transnational companies have had to produce abroad and sell into the USA.

    Trump is using tariffs to coerce China to stop cheating on the trade rules we have established and to grant us the same access to her markets as producers in China have to the American market.

    And he is betting his presidency he can pull it off.”

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 14:43:00 UTC

  • (…more) Implicit in your postings (all of them) is a ‘freedom’ that you take f

    (…more)
    Implicit in your postings (all of them) is a ‘freedom’ that you take for granted, yet do not understand. That is that we grant men free speech, in substitution for withholding our violence, so that we may seek the truth, not simply seek to achieve our ends – violence is a much easier tool for achieving ends. And since a state can only dispense violence — it is its only tool — that violence, and the state, are a continuation of that exchange of violence for seeking truth, not seeking ‘to win’. Therefore if you do not debate rationally, men need not withhold their violence against you. And if they do, they simply allow you to steal from the social order.

    In other words, if you are not seeking truth and are name calling, then you are both stealing from the public wishing well by which we all pay for the act of free speech so that we may seek truth — not so that we may get what we want. And if it is just to get what we want, then not only can the weak revolt, and return to violence, but so can the strong. Some of us are possessed of petty interpersonal violence, some of us capable of protest and rabblery, some of us capable of slaughter and civil war. That the weak threaten violence is a humor, since the strong are more capable both of its execution, and of paying a minority handsomely to oppress or kill the discontents.

    You may be one of those people for whom degradation of our ‘group’s’ competitive ability and therefore status and prosperity is acceptable. And if that is the case, then again, you steal from those who seek to perpetuate our advantage and prosperity, by failure to participate in argument.

    You may be one of those people for whom this is a mask for envy and laziness and simply wants others to take care of you rather than earn for yourself and others.

    You may be one of those people who is willing to consume cultural capital for current ends, and who is willing to steal from the sacrifices that were made by those generations that came before us.

    You may be one of those people that thinks, despite the vast ocean of data, that people are infinitely plastic in their behavior, rather than that humans behave in very clear and established manners across all states, nations, civilizations and times, and therefore are a utopian.

    I don’t know which of these errors you’re making. But I do know that your failure to engage in an argument, is to hide behind an electronic connection as a means of stealing from your fellow man.

    (more…)

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 12:03:39 UTC

    Original post: https://gab.com/curtd/posts/102626559149003354

    Replying to: https://gab.com/curtd/posts/102626555839185831

    IN REPLY TO:

    @curtd

    A NOTE ON ARGUMENT – A SUBSTITUTION FOR VIOLENCE Nov 2009 Paine, We have free speech, logic and rhetoric so that we may make arguments, not a polysyllabic variant of ten year old girls trading insults. I realize that you may resort to these tactics because you are incapable of seeking a truth via argument. I also realize that you post sufficiently in this forum with a small number of other apologists, that you feel justified in your alternate reality, and lack of intellectual rigor. But that does not mean that you are contributing to the dialog, or conducting an argument. Altruism is incalculable (as in unknowable), and does not allow multiple people to cooperate QUANTITATIVELY toward any end requiring risk and action, nor in measuring and understanding outcomes, and it’s result does not produce status differentiation, which is a necessary component of the mating ritual. You are applying the method of the family wherein altruistic actions are perceptible and create an economy of altruistic exchange, rather than the economy wherein such exchanges are imperceptible, and therefore, absent a currency that allows measurement. Calculable ends are not just a matter of preference but of necessity. Status attainment is not just a matter of preference but of necessity. Incentives are not just a matter of preference but of necessity. And the management of the worlds resources in time and space is not a matter of preference but of necessity, since the velocity of that set of exchanges and application in the fulfillment of human needs and wants is just as important as the volume of them. In effect you are simply immature, and are applying the epistemological processes of the family to the extended order of human beings, when numerically, you cannot KNOW about large numbers of people what you can KNOW about a family. Marx was effectively a luddite. And you are as well. We are only similar to one another as farmers and tribal hunter gatherers. But in a vast division of knowledge and labor spread across billions we are increasingly unequal in ability, when ability is judged as the increase in production that decreases prices, and the voluntary coordination of people so that they can act to reduce prices. We can redistribute some of these rewards, as long as the process of doing so is CALCULABLE enough so that status, incentive, and individual calculability are maintained. But we cannot be ‘fair’ as you mean it, because that kind of fairness is not possible to know, comprehend, or calculate. Most often class warriors like yourself simply seek to create a status among their peers by political means that cannot be established by material means. ( more … )

    Original post: https://gab.com/curtd/posts/102626555839185831

  • **THEME: “REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION”** May 6th, 2009 I’ve been looking for

    **THEME: “REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION”**

    May 6th, 2009

    I’ve been looking for a simple theme and I found it today on Kling’s blog:

    “Our last revolution was fueled by taxation without representation — the coming revolution is being fueled by representation without taxation.”

    Followed by a few choice others:

    “As the population size goes to infinity the political significance of any individual goes to zero. In small populations, democracy is a way to make decisions. In a large population, it gives the state the ability to signal it is providing liberty and freedom when in fact it is doing just the opposite.”

    “… they did originally limit the vote to property owners, which takes care of the everybody-votes-themselves-a-share-of-my-stuff problem (an instance of tyranny of the majority). Then we got rid of that restriction (and a lot of worse ones, granted). Now we’re vulnerable to the flaw Tocqueville identified: The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

    “Democracy in all its forms sows the seeds of its own destruction. Regardless of how you attempt to limit it, the majority will always eventually enslave the population, including its own members, by the use of popular vote.”

    “Democracy is just incremental communism.”

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 09:16:00 UTC

  • **DON BOUDREAUX SWINGS AND MISSES THE ENTIRE POINT: SOVEREIGNTY** April 27th, 20

    **DON BOUDREAUX SWINGS AND MISSES THE ENTIRE POINT: SOVEREIGNTY**

    April 27th, 2010

    Over on Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux attacks Arizona’s policy, and in doing so, falls into the abyss of economic tyranny: the justification of economic outcome over freedom and sovereignty.

    By demonizing immigrants, these politicians exploit voters’ misinformation about the economic consequences of the alleged devils.

    My response was:

    Don,

    You’re confusing the priority of people’s perceptions of their economic consequences with the priority of people’s perception of their political and cultural sovereignty, as well as their perception of their associated status. These people [Arizonians] have been wronged. They have been wronged by a loss of sovereignty, and a reduction in cultural dominance, and wronged by an ongoing diminution of their status. And people will act far more passionately to defend their social position than they will to an abstract economic benefit. That was, and is, the entire reason behind nationalism. Or did you forget?

    When the use of economic outcomes becomes the primary criteria that one uses to determine all policy, then the economist makes a fundamental error because he ignores the most important of ‘animal spirits’: status and sovereignty. And then the methods of economics become either a religion, or the error of intellectual myopia, or of intellectual vanity.

    Otherwise, economic policies are the tools of tyranny, and the justification of tyranny.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 09:02:00 UTC

  • **CONSERVATIVES CANNOT ARTICULATE THEIR PROMISE, AND A WARNING IS NOT ENOUGH** A

    **CONSERVATIVES CANNOT ARTICULATE THEIR PROMISE, AND A WARNING IS NOT ENOUGH**

    April 14th, 2010

    The conservative movement lacks skill in articulating it’s position. It does so because it has shifted from the intellectual debate of the 50’s and 60’s to the emotional debate of the post 60’s era. It has, unlike the libertarian movement, failed to provide a vehicle for educating conservatives with POSITIVE statements rather than negative castigations. Conservatives have largely failed to develop a language and ’scripture’ because they do not have a solution other than to return to the nineteenth century classical liberal model.

    That model will never rise again. It only occurred because government was very weak, and the individual entrepreneurial need to expand and populate the continent required both private ambition and private capital. It required the conversion of resources into taxable resources, which would empower the government. Conversion requires business people the way conquest requires soldiers. And therefore commercial society was in control during that period.

    Our current problem is not to convert land into taxable assets. It’s to maintain the international system, and our ability to financially manage the international system. We have been paying for it by trade advantage for some period of time, and then selling dollars for the past forty years. Liberals do not want us to maintain that system but they want the rewards that come from it to be redistributed. Conservatives object to this position. Neither really understands that there is no american exceptionalism except american military exceptionalism.

    Our future problem is that in redistributing the wealth of that military network of trade and banking we have directed too much of the profit to bankers and not enough to the citizenry. Conservatives do not like this privatization of wealth any more than liberals do. But most importantly conservatives do not like being castigated and treated as

    Being conservative simply means taking a gradual approach to social change and particularly with respect to the financial, family and military traditions. It means being skeptical that our visions of the future will come true, and looking at the world as what people ACTUALLY DO not what we WISH they would do.

    We as a nation are notorious for predicting an optimistic future that cannot or has not occurred. The dialog around our prosperity is often inaccurate and self-congratualtory rather than factual. We have transformed our culture of evangelical christianity into one of evangelical democratic secular humanism.

    Conservatives are skeptics. They may speak in antiquated language, because that is their language. They may fail to articulate their position effectively because of that language, but they ACT conservatively, think conservatively, and treat the world conservatively.

    This is why conservatives are, in general, more prosperous – and frankly, happy. And the sacrifices that they make in order to be prosperous are material to them. They remember them. And therefore they resent those sacrifices being ’spent’ by others who do not make the same sacrifices.

    Monetarists and capitalists are not conservatives. They may hide under conservatism. But they are not conservatives. The conservative class is a military, middle and craftsman class and it always has been and always will be. It is the ‘residue’ of the european fraternal order of soldiers at the bottom, and at the top, it’s a ‘residue’ of the middle class movement that revised and adopted civic republicanism during the enlightenment as a way of transferring power from the kings and church to the middle class. it is an alliance of the military and middle class.

    Liberalism (socialism, communism) is a ‘residue’ of a union of the priestly cast and the peasantry. Academia is simply an outgrowth of the church. The peasantry has always allied with the church, and the church has always had power because of it’s support by the peasantry.

    And that said, we do not have a separation of church and state. Our state religion is now democratic secular humanism. We are now a state-run-religion using the myth of division of church and state to oppress (or reform) religions so that we can have a state sponsored church.

    That’s it. That’s the articulated conservative position.

    The republican party collects conservative coalitions. The republican party is not a conservative party. conservatives join the republicans because they have no choice. They see the party as corrupt.

    People are complex and only join parties because of limited choice mandated by our ‘winner takes all’ form of government, which fosters class warfare.

    In fact, all political decisions exist on a spectrum or bell curve. There are a myriad of political decisions to be made. There are a myriad of people with different abilities to understand each political opinion. Each person is interested in a myriad of decisions. Parties are collections of people with opinions. Very skilled people tend to be highly unsatisfied with party choices. Very unskilled people tend to simply support their party of nearest interest. Parties therefore pick platforms that make enough people happy that they can get into power.

    arguing that conservatives want to keep things asa they are, is a silly argument. The objection is simply illogical. The question instead, is whether liberals propose a solution that conservatives can live with, and wether conservatives can propose a solution that liberals can live with.

    If we had listened to the liberals in the last century we would have ended up like either Russia or China. If we had listened to conservatives we would not have had our progressive social changes. It’s the competition of ideas that gives us the choice as a body politic.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 08:43:00 UTC

  • **POSITIONING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES** From September 24, 2009 POLITICAL PHILOSO

    **POSITIONING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES**

    From September 24, 2009

    POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

    Whether you call us Aristotelians, Machiavellians, Nietzscheians, or some other label, is immaterial – save to say that in doing so you attempt to make equal a difference between approaches to politics and economics that is anything but equal.

    Those of us in this school of thought, study what men do and why, what they have done, and why, in it’s entirety, across civilizations and across time, and from that study propose incremental solutions based on that analysis, rather than postulate a utopian model that assumes how men should or could act, if they were something other than human beings with the record of doing what they have done.

    And if you wish to say we have class philosophy I would agree at least to one meaning of that statement. Classes are part of the division of knowledge and labor. And like religion they are very difficult to cross philosophically – even if we can cross them economically. And all philosophies are class philosophies. They must be. Universal philosophies that prescribe solutions for multiple classes, or that attempt to ally a set of classes, ask by doing so, that we allow one class to prosper – and to do so at the expense of another.

    So yes, to use this method of study is Aristotelian, Machiavellian, and Nietzcheian. And yes it is the philosophy of antiquarian nobility, in the sense that it’s authors hail from the Aristotelian tradition, and that as a work of men from Nobility, and a managerial philosophy, and even perhaps a paternal one, it is a Noble class’ philosophy. But it is not a philosophy of the Noble class in the sense that it attempts to favor a noble class at the expense of others. It simply states that there will always be a governing class, or at least a conflict between different classes who are in political control of a society at one time or another, and that regardless of who is in control, the betterment of most is it’s goal – over time, even if that timeliness is a resistance to perceptible material change to some segment of society, and it is for the betterment and perpetuation of the existing social order. And this difference in preference for outcomes is the difference in class philosophies. The reason being that these people see the fragility of political systems, and with knowledge of the impact of non-gradual change, as detrimental to all.

    That being said, this is also the only method of reasoning that can be construed as political science – the rest of the methods are philosophies or religions by analysis of their methods. And any other comparison is a comparison between religion, philosophy and science. Just as any comparison between Aristotelian, Confucian, and Zoroastrian traditions are differences between scientific, philosophical, and religious traditions. These differences are more than tastes. They are materially different approaches to the problem of organizing large numbers of people that arose in the transition to urban life under the technology and economy of farming, and the necessary inequality that resulted from the division of labor, increased production, and specialization that occurred because of that transition.

    And if our method is not a science, at least it is the most scientific of methods we have yet found, without first solving the problem of the social sciences – the problem of induction: which is the process of invention of the unknown. Whereas science, as we mean and use the term, is the name we give to the process and method of DISCOVERY, instead of the process of INVENTION. When what we should strive to do, is use the term science to apply to a process where we examine what is, and how it works, rather than how we, in our ignorance, propose that it should be.

    And we should abandon and refute simplistic utopian strategies knowing what they are: simplistic and utopian. Developing solutions that propose incremental evolution from the analysis of the record of human activity is much more complicated than proposing utopian models – a minor improvement over the spirit worlds or religious myths of our past. And such incremental methods do not promise quick or easy results. However, it is the most scientific, as well as the most likely to succeed, at the lowest possible damage to the set of alliances and habits we use to work together to produce the standard of living that we do possess, rather than the one we might possess if men were not men and did not act as they have, and could by some mystery or magic, adhere to some utopian concept, whose author proposed as a static universe, instead of one where each person in each class, struggled to increase his happiness and status and material well being for himself and his alliances, friends, and family on a daily basis. And where classes and the people in them, rotate and shift, albeit slowly.

    CURRENT TRENDS

    Men will not cease using credit to manage society. It is the only tool that is sufficient to manage a group of people in a complex division of labor. Religion is for slaves and peasants. Violence is for slaves and peasants. Law is for farmers, slaves and peasants and urbanites. But laws, religion and violence require comparatively simple epistemologies: everyone must share them and know them for them to function as socially cohesive strategies. Furthermore, citizens, or group members, can opt out of adherence to them and must be ‘caught’ in doing so, and punished for doing so. Credit performs this function because it is a superior enticement in a complex society, rather than a threat, and it’s also much more granular: effectively making laws on an individual by individual basis and creating a social order out of economic participation without prescribing a static set of behaviors. In other words, credit is the most evolutionary of political systems because it can apply to each individual differently, while providing socially conforming pressures.

    Men will not cease using monetary policy – fiat money. Because monetary policy performs redistribution, as well as mutual insurance for members of the group, or state. We can argue about different economic and political nuances, but if we see these tools as technologies they are needed technologies whose function and methods need constant improvement.

    Therefore, while I am a member of that group of people who study what men have done in the Aristotelian and Machiavellian tradition, and in particular, I am an Austrian (a user of narrative who studies history and behavior), and a libertarian (a person who understands that prosperity comes from freedom, property and trade) and an Anarchist (a person who studies how men act, so that government can be optimized) I am also a Keynesian in the sense that I believe that credit money, like the technologies of real money, accounting, numbers, and writing – and like laws and science and religion and philosophy – is a necessary – not preferential but necessary – part of human existence if we are to live in large numbers and continue our transition from farming society to urban society,

    And I expressly am not a libertarian if that means that I am promoting the development of a banking class that profiteers from privatizing wins and socializing losses. That is no different from a priestly or bureaucratic class, or a thieving peasant class that takes from one group for it’s own use. I am a libertarian in that I do not believe a person in government can be wiser than I am. I do not disavow some form of redistribution either. I simply claim that the way we conduct it today is damaging to society, and empowers a degenerate and devolutionary government, and that a better solution to this problem is achievable, and that I know what that solution is.

    And we are very close to it now. The solution is incremental. It can be implemented. It may not even be that complicated in concept or in implementation. But understanding why such things will work, and abandoning our little class philosophies, each of which seeks to bend government for our class’ benefit at the expense of others, or those that seek to make something from nothing, or those that seek security from the illusion of the state, so that they can live at the expense of others, is no small undertaking. Because we have created a nice little set of cherished myths, the primary purpose of which was to wrest control from land holders, churches and kings, and transfer it to bankers and politicians. And we will need to abandon some of those cherished myths.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 08:39:00 UTC

  • It’s very smart. Look at what russia is doing. We look at the map equatorially,

    It’s very smart. Look at what russia is doing. We look at the map equatorially, but if you look at a polar projection you rapidly understand what’s going on.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 02:58:36 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162196935710785536

    Reply addressees: @WSJ

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162117403867852802

    IN REPLY TO:

    @WSJ

    Trump has asked advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, listened with interest when they discuss its resources and geopolitical importance, and, according to two people familiar with the deliberations, has asked his White House counsel to look into the idea

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162117403867852802

  • Are you denying that they’re being replaced?

    Are you denying that they’re being replaced?

    Source date (UTC): 2019-08-16 02:53:20 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162195611384516608

    Reply addressees: @quesepa @realDonaldTrump

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162176682670751744

    IN REPLY TO:

    Original post on X

    Original tweet unavailable — we could not load the text of the post this reply is addressing on X. That usually means the tweet was deleted, the account is protected, or X does not expose it to the account used for archiving. The Original post link below may still open if you view it in X while signed in.

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162176682670751744