Curt Doolittle

Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

  • RUSSIA AS SPARTA They have a small population in decline. An enormous porous bor

    RUSSIA AS SPARTA

    They have a small population in decline. An enormous porous border under constant invasion. Vast resources. A backward low trust culture. And a corrupt bureaucracy.

    All they have easily available to them is militarism. Its a smart solution. Its their only solution really.

    As long as they aren’t spreading another pseudoscience (marxism) or conquering their neighbors, its not a problem.

    Instead, it can be an asset.

    Just think of them as Spartans that need to be put to good use.

    They make better combined arms than we do.

    And they have way more beautiful women. Nothing else to do in winter really… 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-04 12:08:00 UTC

  • PITIFUL RETIREMENT AND SINGLE PARENTHOOD IN EXCHANGE FOR GENOCIDE AND CULUTURECI

    PITIFUL RETIREMENT AND SINGLE PARENTHOOD IN EXCHANGE FOR GENOCIDE AND CULUTURECIDE

    We can construct equal property rights adjudicable under the law. We can construct redistribution programs among near kin, nor extend redistribution to non-kin. And we cannot construct equality of outcome. If we do, we will merely be conquered (as we are being) by those that do not practice such equalitarianism. Early retirement is too high a cost of genocide. That is the bargain the left is offering us. Genocide and culturecide in exchange for elder comfort instead of a life of savings and elder consumption. The only growth that is meaningful is the increase in productivity independent of the increase in consumption due to expansion of population.

    You cannot cheat physics in the long run.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-04 10:26:00 UTC

  • RUSSIAN AND CHINESE INCENTIVES TO COOPERATE – LESS THAN THE REST Russia and its

    RUSSIAN AND CHINESE INCENTIVES TO COOPERATE – LESS THAN THE REST

    Russia and its satellites, backward, landlocked, without rivers, could not compete internationally. China, backward, insular, an enormous island, surrounded by sea, desert and mountains, with economically different regions, can be torn apart by international competition.

    Isolated from the rest of the world, China and Russia and its satellites can internally cooperate, if they cannot externally compete.

    The rest of the world has greater incentive to cooperate.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-03 01:54:00 UTC

  • REMINDING MYSELF (AND EVERYONE ELSE) : HOPPE Uniting conservatives and libertari

    REMINDING MYSELF (AND EVERYONE ELSE) : HOPPE

    Uniting conservatives and libertarians once again, and permanently undermining postmodernism requires reforming libertarianism, which in turn seems to require adopting the operationalism of the scientific method as a defense against obscurantism. To reform libertarianism, I have to restate what is currently in that easily criticized, absurdly erroneous continental and cosmopolitan nonsense we call apriorism, and restate it, cleansed of those errors, in ratio-scientific language. The language of science it transparent. Because of that transparency, It is an extremely ethical language. And that is its primary value to our disciplines of ethics, politics and economics.

    But if I do make that restatement of libertarianism in scientific language, and invalidate most of the fallacies in libertarian and austrian arguments, then what does that really mean for libertarianism? What changes? If I invalidate the fallacy of economics as aprioristic rather than empirical, then do Hoppe’s arguments outside of apriorism survive? Of course they do. That economics is an empirical science, and that the current justifications for property rights are fallacious, doesn’t mean that all of hoppe’s arguments based upon property rights do not survive. They do.

    In fact, while an uncomfortable amount of Hans’ work is hero-worship, or promotion of Mises and Rothbard, his own contributions to the criticism of democracy, the necessity of property, the analysis of incentives, and the use of private insurance companies to provide regulation and commons are consistently exceptional. His durability in spite of the failure of Misesian apriorism is a demonstration of the quality of his theories.

    I don’t really see Hoppe addressing Rothbardian ethics so much as property itself. And in all cases I can think of, Hoppe emphasizes the use of institutions to compensate for the limits of rothbardian ethics, rather than justifying rothbardian ethics. (I still have to go over everything or talk to him in person to make sure I understand him on this matter or not.)

    I am pretty sure I have put a permanent death sentence upon rothbardian ethics already – particularly the fallacy of aggression (NAP/IVP). And I am very close to doing the same to misesian apriorism and the fallacy of economics as non-empirical. But the basis of libertarian POLITICAL ECONOMY is constituted in property rights, the (private) common law, an independent judiciary, and the use of competing insurance organizations to provide regulatory services for the commons. And all of those bases survive my criticisms of Rothbardian “ghetto” ethics, and misesian Continental apriorism.

    Even if, as some have argued, Hoppe’s critique of Democracy is a restatement of Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and not an innovation in itself. Even if argumentation ethics fail the test of sufficiency. Even if misesian apriorism is a fallacy. Even if rothbardian ethics and the NAP were more harmful to the pursuit of liberty than beneficial. Hoppe’s contribution to formal institutions would survive. And more importantly, and most importantly, his successful completion of the program of reducing all ethics and politics to statements of the voluntary exchange of property as a rigorous form of argument would survive.

    And it is that particular lesson that I learned from him. And the profundity of that lesson, is one that the world has been missing for two thousand five hundred years. The missing logic of cooperation which we call ‘ethics’, is nearly solved. And by adapting Ostrom’s form to Hoppe’s property, we can finish the formal logic of cooperation. And fulfill the promise that mises intuited, but could not himself solve. He knew too little of logic and mathematics, and we had not yet understood computability at the time. Rothbard was a good historian and a terrible philosopher. Hoppe turns out to have been a pretty important philosopher in the history of ideas.

    That is, if we complete this work based upon his, before someone else does and deprives hans of the credit.

    Credit is due.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-01 11:54:00 UTC

  • DIVERSITY PROVIDES FOR DIVIDE AND RULE WITHOUT EXTERNAL AGENTS by Alex Mark Nieo

    DIVERSITY PROVIDES FOR DIVIDE AND RULE WITHOUT EXTERNAL AGENTS

    by Alex Mark Nieora

    —“Equally it may be said that diversity is easier to govern as diversity necessarily entails fragmented and divided cultures, preferences, nationalities, languages and abilities that may lack an overarching and unifying constant between themselves. Thereby diversity provides in itself the division of divide and rule politics without even necessitating the implementation of external agents of division.”—

    BUT THE FALLACY OF RAWLS REMAINS

    –“However, diversity is also the hallmark and bedrock – the sine qua non really – of liberty and tolerance. So diversity is a challenge. It is a challenge also in regards to tolerating the intolerant. This is a dilemma that was confronted by certain legal philosophers such as John Rawls in his later work The Law of The Peoples, which addresses international politics.

    Previously in A Theory of Justice, he explains the reasons why diversity must be tolerated for not only the greater but the individual good through his concept of the original position.

    In the Law of The Peoples Rawls argues that the legitimacy of a liberal international order is contingent on tolerating decent peoples. Rawls held that decent peoples might have state religions and deny adherents of minority faiths the right to hold positions of power within the state, and might indeed organise political participation via consultation hierarchies rather than elections.

    However, he maintained that no well-ordered peoples may violate human rights or behave in an externally aggressive manner. He held peoples do not have the right to the mutual respect and tolerance possessed by liberal and decent peoples.”—

    “DECENT PEOPLE”

    I’ll define decent in Propertarian terms: those people who have suppressed all free riding from criminal to ethical to moral to conspiratorial. One is more decent than another if one suppresses more free riding than another.

    (I despise Rawls as an obscurantist. Hoppe is right. The only moral question is property.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-30 07:20:00 UTC

  • The Possibility of Thick, Aristocratic, and Thin Libertarianism

    (worth repeating) 1) Thick / Humanist / Psychological / Left libertarianism is a luxury good, and it is neither scientifically or rationally formulated, remaining true to the psychological tradition of classical liberalism. We CAN form a polity under Thick libertarianism, as long as luxuries are voluntarily constructed, requiring voluntary participation, rather than mandated. 2) Aristocratic Egalitarian / Scientific libertarianism is necessary and sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is both rationally and scientifically formulated. We CAN form a polity under aristocratic egalitarianism. 3) Thin / Ghetto / libertine / Brutalist libertarianism is necessary but INSUFFICIENT for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is rationally but not scientifically formulated. And furthermore, would be the target of conquest and oppression by all nearby polities. We CANNOT form a polity under rothbardian, ghetto, libertinism.

  • The Possibility of Thick, Aristocratic, and Thin Libertarianism

    (worth repeating) 1) Thick / Humanist / Psychological / Left libertarianism is a luxury good, and it is neither scientifically or rationally formulated, remaining true to the psychological tradition of classical liberalism. We CAN form a polity under Thick libertarianism, as long as luxuries are voluntarily constructed, requiring voluntary participation, rather than mandated. 2) Aristocratic Egalitarian / Scientific libertarianism is necessary and sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is both rationally and scientifically formulated. We CAN form a polity under aristocratic egalitarianism. 3) Thin / Ghetto / libertine / Brutalist libertarianism is necessary but INSUFFICIENT for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is rationally but not scientifically formulated. And furthermore, would be the target of conquest and oppression by all nearby polities. We CANNOT form a polity under rothbardian, ghetto, libertinism.

  • FUTURE OF AMERICA IS NOW “Egalitarianism leads to democracy; democracy leads to

    http://www.amazon.com/Into-Cannibals-Pot-Lessons-Post-Apartheid-ebook/dp/B00564TFM4/THE FUTURE OF AMERICA IS NOW

    “Egalitarianism leads to democracy; democracy leads to socialism; socialism leads to economic destruction; and democratic socialism in multicultural societies leads to death and democide. This, in shocking detail, is what Ilana Mercer illustrates superbly in her case study of post-apartheid South Africa. America’s political and intellectual ‘elites’ will ignore this book, because it is politically ‘incorrect.’ We can only do so at our own peril.” – HANS-HERMANN HOPPE

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-29 06:28:00 UTC

  • POSSIBILITIES OF THICK, ARISTOCRATIC, AND THIN LIBERTARIANISM (worth repeating)

    POSSIBILITIES OF THICK, ARISTOCRATIC, AND THIN LIBERTARIANISM

    (worth repeating)

    1) Thick / Humanist / Psychological / Left libertarianism is a luxury good, and it is neither scientifically or rationally formulated, remaining true to the psychological tradition of classical liberalism. We CAN form a polity under Thick libertarianism, as long as luxuries are voluntarily constructed, requiring voluntary participation, rather than mandated.

    2) Aristocratic Egalitarian / Scientific libertarianism is necessary and sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is both rationally and scientifically formulated. We CAN form a polity under aristocratic egalitarianism.

    3) Thin / Ghetto / libertine / Brutalist libertarianism is necessary but INSUFFICIENT for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is rationally but not scientifically formulated. And furthermore, would be the target of conquest and oppression by all nearby polities. We CANNOT form a polity under rothbardian, ghetto, libertinism.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-29 05:52:00 UTC

  • LARGE STATES ARE VULNERABLE – NOT TO CONSENSUS BUT TO SINGLE ACTORS. From Eli Ha

    LARGE STATES ARE VULNERABLE – NOT TO CONSENSUS BUT TO SINGLE ACTORS.

    From Eli Harman

    —“Regarding the problems of centralized states. These fall into three categories, problems of knowledge, interest, and power. These can be solved ultimately only by competition, accountability, and division of power. But coercive territorial monopolies may be the most suitable forms for providing public goods and suppressing free-riding locally.”—

    —“Advances in technology favor the offense. And this is why large states will break down and be replaced by small states, because large states won’t be able to defend their territories, populations and economies. A world of large states is fragile. A world of small, competitive states is robust and antifragile.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-28 06:55:00 UTC