(Edited and Reposted) [T]he intention of the anglo enlightenment was to create an aristocracy of everyone, by granting aristocratic property rights and obligations to everyone. The program succeeded as long as there were members of the non-aristocratic classes, that observed aristocratic traditions. But with first the introduction of the catholic non-aristocratic classes, and then women, and then eastern european jews, and now members of third world socialistic cultures, this model could not survive. It could not survive because meritocracy is not to the advantage of cultures that depend upon systemic free riding both within the family, and between the family and the state. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism of the Dark Enlightenment returns to the intention of the enlightenment with one exception: I seek to limit aristocracy to those that desire it, will act to obtain it, and will act to defend it. There is no reason whatsoever that a society needs an homogenous set of rules, rights and obligations for all members. If certain people want to maintain their socialistic policies between themselves, and others to maintain their aristocratic policies between themselves, then this is adequate as long as neither group makes a claim on the property of the other, and obtains the property of the other only in voluntary exchange. Aristocracy is a high risk way of life, that rewards that high risk, or punishes it. Not all people and all peoples are capable of this way of life. Collective insurance and collective risk is more appropriate to their wants and abilities. It is immoral to ask them to embrace aristocratic life and aristocracy’s requirement for self-insurance. Likewise many of us desire liberty and meritocracy, and the status and wealth that comes from it, even if we must carry the risk of self-insurance against the vicissitudes of life. For ‘the best’ our competitive ability, our wits, our will, our strength, is our insurance against the vicissitudes of life. It is immoral to ask us to pay collective insurance and to limit ourselves to collective risk. [W]e are unequal. We must make use of unequal strategies if each of us is to flourish to the best of his abilities, in the meager time we have on this earth. [A]ristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward. Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine
Category: Politics, Power, and Governance
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The Enlightenment Aristocracy Of Everybody Vs The Dark Enlightenment Aristocracy Of The Willing
(Edited and Reposted) [T]he intention of the anglo enlightenment was to create an aristocracy of everyone, by granting aristocratic property rights and obligations to everyone. The program succeeded as long as there were members of the non-aristocratic classes, that observed aristocratic traditions. But with first the introduction of the catholic non-aristocratic classes, and then women, and then eastern european jews, and now members of third world socialistic cultures, this model could not survive. It could not survive because meritocracy is not to the advantage of cultures that depend upon systemic free riding both within the family, and between the family and the state. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism of the Dark Enlightenment returns to the intention of the enlightenment with one exception: I seek to limit aristocracy to those that desire it, will act to obtain it, and will act to defend it. There is no reason whatsoever that a society needs an homogenous set of rules, rights and obligations for all members. If certain people want to maintain their socialistic policies between themselves, and others to maintain their aristocratic policies between themselves, then this is adequate as long as neither group makes a claim on the property of the other, and obtains the property of the other only in voluntary exchange. Aristocracy is a high risk way of life, that rewards that high risk, or punishes it. Not all people and all peoples are capable of this way of life. Collective insurance and collective risk is more appropriate to their wants and abilities. It is immoral to ask them to embrace aristocratic life and aristocracy’s requirement for self-insurance. Likewise many of us desire liberty and meritocracy, and the status and wealth that comes from it, even if we must carry the risk of self-insurance against the vicissitudes of life. For ‘the best’ our competitive ability, our wits, our will, our strength, is our insurance against the vicissitudes of life. It is immoral to ask us to pay collective insurance and to limit ourselves to collective risk. [W]e are unequal. We must make use of unequal strategies if each of us is to flourish to the best of his abilities, in the meager time we have on this earth. [A]ristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward. Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine
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The Enlightenment Aristocracy Of Everybody Vs The Dark Enlightenment Aristocracy Of The Willing
(important piece) [T]he intention of the anglo enlightenment was to create an aristocracy of everyone, by granting aristocratic property rights and obligations to everyone. The program succeeded as long as there were members of the non-aristocratic classes, that observed aristocratic traditions. But with first the introduction of the catholic non-aristocratic classes, and then women, and then eastern european jews, and now members of third world socialistic cultures, this model could not survive. It could not survive because meritocracy is not to the advantage of cultures that depend upon systemic free riding both within the family, and between the family and the state. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism of the Dark Enlightenment returns to the intention of the enlightenment with one exception: I seek to limit aristocracy to those that desire it, will act to obtain it, and will act to defend it. There is no reason whatsoever that a society needs an homogenous set of rules, rights and obligations for all members. If certain people want to maintian their socialistic policies between themselves, and others to maintain their aristocratic policies between themselves, then this is adequate as long as neither group makes a claim on the property of the other, and obtains the property of the other only in voluntary exchange. Aristocracy is a high risk way of life, that rewards that high risk, or punishes it. Not all people and all peoples are capable of this way of life. Collective insurance and collective risk is more appropriate to their wants and abilities. It is immoral to ask them to embrace aristocratic life and aristocracy’s requirement for self-insurance. Likewise many of us desire liberty and meritocracy, and the status and wealth that comes from it, even if we must carry the risk of self-insurance against the vicissitudes of life. For ‘the best’ our competitive ability, our wits, our will, our strength, is our insurance against the vicissitudes of life. It is immoral to ask us to pay collective insurance and to limit ourselves to collective risk. We are unequal. We must make use of unequal strategies if each of us is to flourish to the best of his abilities, in the meager time we have on this earth. [A]ristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev
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The Enlightenment Aristocracy Of Everybody Vs The Dark Enlightenment Aristocracy Of The Willing
(important piece) [T]he intention of the anglo enlightenment was to create an aristocracy of everyone, by granting aristocratic property rights and obligations to everyone. The program succeeded as long as there were members of the non-aristocratic classes, that observed aristocratic traditions. But with first the introduction of the catholic non-aristocratic classes, and then women, and then eastern european jews, and now members of third world socialistic cultures, this model could not survive. It could not survive because meritocracy is not to the advantage of cultures that depend upon systemic free riding both within the family, and between the family and the state. [A]ristocratic Egalitarianism of the Dark Enlightenment returns to the intention of the enlightenment with one exception: I seek to limit aristocracy to those that desire it, will act to obtain it, and will act to defend it. There is no reason whatsoever that a society needs an homogenous set of rules, rights and obligations for all members. If certain people want to maintian their socialistic policies between themselves, and others to maintain their aristocratic policies between themselves, then this is adequate as long as neither group makes a claim on the property of the other, and obtains the property of the other only in voluntary exchange. Aristocracy is a high risk way of life, that rewards that high risk, or punishes it. Not all people and all peoples are capable of this way of life. Collective insurance and collective risk is more appropriate to their wants and abilities. It is immoral to ask them to embrace aristocratic life and aristocracy’s requirement for self-insurance. Likewise many of us desire liberty and meritocracy, and the status and wealth that comes from it, even if we must carry the risk of self-insurance against the vicissitudes of life. For ‘the best’ our competitive ability, our wits, our will, our strength, is our insurance against the vicissitudes of life. It is immoral to ask us to pay collective insurance and to limit ourselves to collective risk. We are unequal. We must make use of unequal strategies if each of us is to flourish to the best of his abilities, in the meager time we have on this earth. [A]ristocracy is a choice we make, and a burden we carry, in exchange for the freedom to flourish to the best of our abilities. Yet we cannot ask those whose flourishing depends on collective efforts to adopt individual risk and reward. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev
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Reforming Libertarianism Is Pretty Simple Really
—“I think it’s pretty simple: the NAP has proven to be demonstrably insufficient to use as the basis of the common law, because it preserves and licenses immoral and unethical behavior, which impose high transaction costs on in-group members. As such, no such polity is possible, and that is evidenced by the fact that no such polity has ever existed. … Rothbard’s ethics license parasitism, and the high trust society that created liberty requires contribution to production. It’s not complicated. Rothbard was wrong. Its impossible to form a polity on rothbardian ethics. Period.”– [I]n-group ethics necessary for the formation of a voluntary polity require the standard of moral action be based upon a requirement for contribution, which mirrors the human moral instincts for cooperation. if you want an involuntary polity then you can choose any property rights (or lack of) that you want. If you want a high trust polity that organizes voluntarily, and in which production is voluntarily organized, then you must find an institutional means of resolving ethical and moral conflicts as well as criminal conflicts. The only institution that we have yet developed that is capable of providing dispute resolution without the presence of a central authority is independent courts under the common law, with articulated property rights. If property is well defined such that it mirrors ethical and moral prohibitions on free riding in all its forms, all that remains is the voluntary, fully informed, warrantied, productive voluntary exchange free of negative externalities. You may choose a less moral and ethical society. And I am not sure at what point all humans will demand the state, or a sufficient number to form a voluntary polity will prefer anarchy, but I do know that regardless of that point of inflection, this is the means by which to achieve it that we know of. Cheers.
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We Are Morally Blind, Limited In Our Perceptions And Memory, And Severely In Our Reason. The Last Thing We Should Do Is Construct Large Risk-prone Intentionally Managed States.
[I] have to accept the evidence, but I do not like it. I would like very much to believe that we grasp the world as it is. And it appears that, at least with the help of instrumentalism (logic and science), we can grasp the physical world with a high degree of accuracy – at least, sufficiently to make use of it for our purposes. The cooperative world of human beings consists of inconstant relations, we desperately try to reduce to an ideal type, a stereotype, a single simple rule, a universal value. But it is more complex than the physical world that consists of constant relations. For that reason we may be limited to a logic of cooperation and every prohibited from a mathematics of cooperation – except at the highest levels. The data is conclusive: we are far more morally blind than I had expected. Our moral and ethical intuitions are genetically weighted but our moral biases evolve and are emergent – still invariant. Our metaphysical assumptions (assumptions about the way the world functions) are far more unconscious and unalterable than I’d expected. And very, very, very few of us are capable of working hard to modify those assumptions. (The process of which I am at this moment writing about.) [L]ibertarians can speak of morality in it’s logical language: economics. But that is partly because libertarians are both severely affected by moral blindness, less dependent upon others for information and decision making, and less vulnerable to deception. Libertarians not only are blind to morality, but discount it because it’s not useful to them. Our language, common protocol that it is, fools us into a sense of similarity. Progressives are interesting in that the world appears simple to them, and is simple to them computationally, because like any form single-variable calculation, it is in fact much simpler to reason with. But they are also the most morally blind demographic: progressives dysgenically and anti-socially apply their moral simplicity to all matters – like the mother of a serial killer who believes her son is merely misunderstood, and incapable of the crime. That analogy is all one needs to understand the moral blindness of progressives. Conservatives have the worst computational problem. They weigh all of the moral instincts about the same. Which means that they must contend with seven or more different weights and values that must be compared at any given time – something that the single-axis human capacity for reason cannot possibly manage, and abandons to the wind. So conservatives speak in moral language. Partly because it is simply too complicated to speak in any other. And largely because we have only recently understood these underlying intuitions. While Machiavelli, Hume, Pareto, Durkheim and others have attempted to derive the answers, only in the past twenty years with the help of science, anthropology and experimental psychology, have we been able to understand them. We humans speak to justify our genes. That is about all. The very last thing that we should try to engage in, is the politics of anything larger than an extended and homogenous family. The market – in this case, a market of communities (states) – is the only possible means of computing and calculating the future by scientific means.
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We Are Morally Blind, Limited In Our Perceptions And Memory, And Severely In Our Reason. The Last Thing We Should Do Is Construct Large Risk-prone Intentionally Managed States.
[I] have to accept the evidence, but I do not like it. I would like very much to believe that we grasp the world as it is. And it appears that, at least with the help of instrumentalism (logic and science), we can grasp the physical world with a high degree of accuracy – at least, sufficiently to make use of it for our purposes. The cooperative world of human beings consists of inconstant relations, we desperately try to reduce to an ideal type, a stereotype, a single simple rule, a universal value. But it is more complex than the physical world that consists of constant relations. For that reason we may be limited to a logic of cooperation and every prohibited from a mathematics of cooperation – except at the highest levels. The data is conclusive: we are far more morally blind than I had expected. Our moral and ethical intuitions are genetically weighted but our moral biases evolve and are emergent – still invariant. Our metaphysical assumptions (assumptions about the way the world functions) are far more unconscious and unalterable than I’d expected. And very, very, very few of us are capable of working hard to modify those assumptions. (The process of which I am at this moment writing about.) [L]ibertarians can speak of morality in it’s logical language: economics. But that is partly because libertarians are both severely affected by moral blindness, less dependent upon others for information and decision making, and less vulnerable to deception. Libertarians not only are blind to morality, but discount it because it’s not useful to them. Our language, common protocol that it is, fools us into a sense of similarity. Progressives are interesting in that the world appears simple to them, and is simple to them computationally, because like any form single-variable calculation, it is in fact much simpler to reason with. But they are also the most morally blind demographic: progressives dysgenically and anti-socially apply their moral simplicity to all matters – like the mother of a serial killer who believes her son is merely misunderstood, and incapable of the crime. That analogy is all one needs to understand the moral blindness of progressives. Conservatives have the worst computational problem. They weigh all of the moral instincts about the same. Which means that they must contend with seven or more different weights and values that must be compared at any given time – something that the single-axis human capacity for reason cannot possibly manage, and abandons to the wind. So conservatives speak in moral language. Partly because it is simply too complicated to speak in any other. And largely because we have only recently understood these underlying intuitions. While Machiavelli, Hume, Pareto, Durkheim and others have attempted to derive the answers, only in the past twenty years with the help of science, anthropology and experimental psychology, have we been able to understand them. We humans speak to justify our genes. That is about all. The very last thing that we should try to engage in, is the politics of anything larger than an extended and homogenous family. The market – in this case, a market of communities (states) – is the only possible means of computing and calculating the future by scientific means.
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Transnational Insurgencies Have Something In Common : They Win
Pocket Advice —“Although transnational insurgencies comprise highly diverse groups across different conflicts and eras, they still have much in common. For one, such forces are winning: transnational insurgencies have won nearly half of the civil wars in which they have fought, almost twice the success rate of insurgencies overall. Several Israeli prime ministers have acknowledged that Israel’s victory in 1948 relied on the World War II veterans who aided the fledgling state against Arab armies. In other conflicts throughout history, prominent foreign fighters were either instrumental in extending insurgencies or making them costlier to suppress: the Marquis de Lafayette, the French general who fought for the American rebels during the Revolutionary War; the Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi, who supported the Republican uprising in Brazil in the 1830s; and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who formed al Qaeda in Iraq under the U.S. occupation. “— –“The patterns of recruitment for such disparate fighters are broadly similar and, because of that, they all have the same Achilles’ heel…. Insurgent groups … use despair rather than optimism to recruit members. Generally, they tell recruits that they are losing a war of survival and that they face an existential threat.”– –“It might not seem like the most persuasive pitch, particularly for fighters who, if they join, must violate a number of laws and take up arms in an unfamiliar territory. But it works. …. The strategy works best with foreign recruits who share the movement’s ideology, ethnicity, or religion but who, unlike local fighters, do not have immediate communities and families in the line of fire.”– –“Such fighters are often persuadable because of their weak affiliations with their own country and national identity,”– –” In these conflicts, the foreign fighters, driven by the belief that they are fighting a desperate battle to the end, act more aggressively than local insurgents — even when their side is actually winning. It’s no accident that most suicide missions in Afghanistan and Iraq were carried out by foreign fighters rather than local militants. “– –“Some insurgent groups, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, have taken advantage of this dynamic by using foreigners to target civilians when the local combatants will not. “–
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Transnational Insurgencies Have Something In Common : They Win
Pocket Advice —“Although transnational insurgencies comprise highly diverse groups across different conflicts and eras, they still have much in common. For one, such forces are winning: transnational insurgencies have won nearly half of the civil wars in which they have fought, almost twice the success rate of insurgencies overall. Several Israeli prime ministers have acknowledged that Israel’s victory in 1948 relied on the World War II veterans who aided the fledgling state against Arab armies. In other conflicts throughout history, prominent foreign fighters were either instrumental in extending insurgencies or making them costlier to suppress: the Marquis de Lafayette, the French general who fought for the American rebels during the Revolutionary War; the Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi, who supported the Republican uprising in Brazil in the 1830s; and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who formed al Qaeda in Iraq under the U.S. occupation. “— –“The patterns of recruitment for such disparate fighters are broadly similar and, because of that, they all have the same Achilles’ heel…. Insurgent groups … use despair rather than optimism to recruit members. Generally, they tell recruits that they are losing a war of survival and that they face an existential threat.”– –“It might not seem like the most persuasive pitch, particularly for fighters who, if they join, must violate a number of laws and take up arms in an unfamiliar territory. But it works. …. The strategy works best with foreign recruits who share the movement’s ideology, ethnicity, or religion but who, unlike local fighters, do not have immediate communities and families in the line of fire.”– –“Such fighters are often persuadable because of their weak affiliations with their own country and national identity,”– –” In these conflicts, the foreign fighters, driven by the belief that they are fighting a desperate battle to the end, act more aggressively than local insurgents — even when their side is actually winning. It’s no accident that most suicide missions in Afghanistan and Iraq were carried out by foreign fighters rather than local militants. “– –“Some insurgent groups, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, have taken advantage of this dynamic by using foreigners to target civilians when the local combatants will not. “–
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“Doolittle is the Moldbug of Facebook”
[W]ell, I have no idea if that’s meant as a compliment or an insult. Of course, I consider myself part of the Dark Enlightenment (NeoReactionary movement). Mencius uses continental arguments which frustrate the hell out of me, since I’m trying to reform libertarian reasoning and formal institutions by basing it instead on unloaded, objective language of the ratio-scientific method. But that said, it’s a fair association to make, whether compliment or criticism. Just surprised me and made me laugh. Photo: “Doolittle is the Moldbug of Facebook”
COMMENTS Andriy Drozda, Eric Blankenburg, Eric Field and 5 others like this. Michael Pattinson Ha ha ha James Santagata lol Jason Conway My immediate association between Doolittle and Moldbug was the word ‘prolific’. Curt Doolittle Jason… Yeah, I thought the same thing. lol