Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

  • Individualism is a Privilege Earned

    [I] have a problem with causing suffering as punishment or for personal gratification. I have no problem with torture for the purpose of gathering information – particularly non-destructive torture. I certainly have no problem with killing, and I think we don’t do nearly enough of it. It’s cheap, effective, and provides exceptional incentives.

    Moreover, In individual societies we must limit punishment to the individual. In traditional societies, to the family, to primitive societies to the tribe, to corporeally organized to the state, and to religiously organized societies to all members.
    If you act as your own agent, for your own personal gain, then you have merely committed a crime. If you act on behalf of others you have committed a conspiracy.

    For these reasons we must hold groups accountable for the actions of their members, because actors acting on their behalf are their agents, and only those members possess the knowledge and incentives to contain the actions of their members.
    Individualism is a privilege earned by members of a society for suppression of the actions its members.
    Punish the group for the actions of the individuals and they will contain their group members – that’s what we do.

  • Michael Phillip On The Incentives of Monarchy


    [T]hough subject to normal human failings, the long time horizons of monarchy is one of its distinct advantages. As economist Mancur Olson pointed out that, the longer the time horizon of the ruler, the more their interests tended to converge with those of their subjects. One tends to be somewhat more careful and accommodating the longer you and your children are going to be living with the consequences of your decisions. Of the three major Axis powers, the two monarchies (the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan) found it easier to exit from fighting precisely because they were monarchies; there was someone with sufficient authority to say enough. Nazi Germany had to wait until Hitler was dead (and assassination proved to be a less reliable alternative).

  • Michael Phillip On The Incentives of Monarchy


    [T]hough subject to normal human failings, the long time horizons of monarchy is one of its distinct advantages. As economist Mancur Olson pointed out that, the longer the time horizon of the ruler, the more their interests tended to converge with those of their subjects. One tends to be somewhat more careful and accommodating the longer you and your children are going to be living with the consequences of your decisions. Of the three major Axis powers, the two monarchies (the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan) found it easier to exit from fighting precisely because they were monarchies; there was someone with sufficient authority to say enough. Nazi Germany had to wait until Hitler was dead (and assassination proved to be a less reliable alternative).

  • WHY ARE CONSERVATIVES MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIBERTINES? Because given moral justif

    WHY ARE CONSERVATIVES MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIBERTINES?

    Because given moral justification to correct violations of purity and sanctity a sufficient number of conservatives will use violence to restore order. Only conservatives act for social good alone. Libertines and progressives act only in their self interest. Why? Because libertinism is purely a status seeking effort, and progressivism is both status seeking and dysgenic.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 04:06:00 UTC

  • WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS POLITICALLY IRRELEVANT? Because political systems are const

    WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS POLITICALLY IRRELEVANT?

    Because political systems are constructed by violence. And conservatives are willing to create an order that suppresses consumption in order to construct commons, and progressives are willing to use violence to destruct an order so that they can increase consumption. But libertarians are both small in number and unwilling to use violence.

    Violence raises the costs of non-cooperative action, so that cooperation is preferable to non-cooperative action.

    Libertines always look for discounts (freebies). There aren’t any. Order is expensive.

    For these reasons libertarians will only exist in absurdly wealthy periods of history, made possible by conservatives. Otherwise they will exist only as another rejection-cult, criticizing the fact that they are required to pay costs for norms that do not improve their status – but constrain it.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 04:03:00 UTC

  • WHY DO LIBERTARIANS ALWAYS LOSE? Libertinism. Meaning incorrect attribution of l

    WHY DO LIBERTARIANS ALWAYS LOSE?

    Libertinism. Meaning incorrect attribution of legal, economic, political and military value to costs of high-cost, high-trust norms. Conservatives do not make this mistake – if anything they over-value norms. Libertines discount norms. Progressives never even consider them or find prohibition on their consumption antithetical.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 03:59:00 UTC

  • FOREIGN POLICY UNDER ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM – IT’S NOT COMPLICATED. Y-AXIS

    FOREIGN POLICY UNDER ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM – IT’S NOT COMPLICATED.

    Y-AXIS : Aristocratic Egalitarian Morality – Meaning an increase in the suppression of free riding in order to obtain higher trust, higher economic velocity, and greater liberty, in exchange for reciprocal warranty of the same.

    X-AXIS: Strategic Interest – meaning a decrease in economic, military and moral risk, and an increase in current costs.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-20 03:29:00 UTC

  • Post-puberty libertarianism. Political philosophy for adults. Ethics and moralit

    Post-puberty libertarianism. Political philosophy for adults.

    Ethics and morality for people who can get laid.

    lol


    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-18 03:56:00 UTC

  • MICHAEL PHILLIP ON THE INCENTIVES OF MONARCHY Though subject to normal human fai

    MICHAEL PHILLIP ON THE INCENTIVES OF MONARCHY

    Though subject to normal human failings, the long time horizons of monarchy is one of its distinct advantages. As economist Mancur Olson pointed out that, the longer the time horizon of the ruler, the more their interests tended to converge with those of their subjects. One tends to be somewhat more careful and accommodating the longer you and your children are going to be living with the consequences of your decisions. Of the three major Axis powers, the two monarchies (the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan) found it easier to exit from fighting precisely because they were monarchies; there was someone with sufficient authority to say enough. Nazi Germany had to wait until Hitler was dead (and assassination proved to be a less reliable alternative).


    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-18 02:04:00 UTC

  • WAS THE REVOLUTION COOPTED BY NAZIS? (OMG – Americans are stupid.) –“Taking you

    WAS THE REVOLUTION COOPTED BY NAZIS? (OMG – Americans are stupid.)

    –“Taking you at your word that you are living in Kiev, let me take this opportunity to ask: What do say to the charges that the revolution was instigated by the U.S.? Could it have happened without U. S. support? Was it in fact co-opted by nazis, neo or otherwise?”—

    From Curt Doolittle:

    Well, you can search for me on Google or Facebook, I’m pretty prolific, and I’m readily visible here in Kiev. 🙂

    The people here BEGGED for support from the states and got almost NOTHING. A few of us hammered the news media. But we got nothing. You can’t say that schoolgirls spending lunch money on bandages and trucking in in the cold to tend the young men on the front lines, or housewives and clerical workers showing up by the millions is somehow a CIA plot. (Which if you knew anything about the intelligence community would seem absurd.)

    And it’s absolutely insulting to locals to insinuate that they’re ignorant pawns of some global intrigue rather than artificially and desperately poor for no reason other than leftover Russian (soviet) bureaucrats in one of the most politically corrupt nations on earth. There is no rule of law here. None. Courts and police are bought. Last may I think I paid something on the order of 3K in bribes just to get people to do their jobs – not for any special treatment.

    Most people here look across the border into Poland and see what they COULD have. Most people look to Russia and see murderers who came in the middle of the night to kill relatives and families after Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor: the Ukrainian Holocaust.

    The only difference between Canadians and Ukrainians’ which neighbor they have. Similar sizes and populations and similar (gentle) temperaments.

    I love these people and there is nothing on earth that justifies letting people who wish to be free come under Russian corruption ever again.

    Americans are ignorant, stupid and benevolent sheriffs yes. They fail to grasp what it means to live in a low trust society. The do not grasp that the lower the trust in a society the more necessary authoritarian rule is. That only generations of commercialism will change a low trust polity in to a moderate trust polity – even so corrupt and politically volatile as the Italians and the Romanians. Just as Russians fail to grasp that Americans actually believe they are acting in the moral interest of less advanced peoples. Americans foolishly believe that they yearn for liberty and prosperity, and merely need to be given the opportunity for self government. And look at the damage we have done. Russians cannot believe we do this with american idealism rather than russian pragamatism. That is because our idealism is as foreign to them as it would be to space aliens.

    Yet here in Ukraine we have a white, christian people (many of whom go to church, and yes, that’s important at this stage of development), who have very similar ethics, work habits, history, education, literature and mythology.

    And they want to be free.

    Yet in the coal mines of the east, in the decaying factories of the soviet era, in the desperate partly Russified slums, the idea of getting checks however small from the government from oil revenues is worth living under the rule of gangsters.

    Most of Ukraine would have been happy to divorce and set them free. But Ukrainian’s are unified now, and their view is ‘if we do not stop the enemy in Donbas, then he will be first in kiev and then in L’viv and we will be under the boots of gangsters and tyrants and murderers yet again.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev Ukraine.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-17 14:36:00 UTC