Curt Doolittle

Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

  • How Many Of You Are Libertarian?

    You will be surprised by this, but, roughly speaking, a quarter of the population expresses surveyed preferences that are libertarian, a quarter conservative, a quarter liberal, and a quarter anti-libertarian.

    Power could be maintained in the USA with fiscally conservative, and slowly enacted socially liberal policies (which is what happens anyway, after a lot of distraction and infighting.)

    That this roughly reflects the gender distribution in the population, and a fairly even distribution between the genders, would actually make common sense. (It does). 

    What has altered the political landscape, and continues to, is the number of single women and single mothers in the voting pool has increased substantially since 1960.  At present, it’s arguable, that all other things being equal, single women and mothers decide elections. 

    That is one of the reasons that candidates now must be somewhat attractive. Because for single women, and single mothers, the attractiveness of a candidate is a meaningful reason for their vote. If a candidate is both attractive, and well spoken, and supports redistribution and equalitarianism – redistribution outside of the nuclear family, the vote is all but ensured.

    For most poeple who understand these demographic issues, it’s saddening, because american politics, and the politics of all democracies, are just form of  entertainment that is a vast waste of time and energy that is determined by a small number of axis of influence: the homogeneity (good) vs diversity (bad) in a population. The structure of the family unit from individual, to family, to extended family, clan and tribe.  The size of the population (big is bad, small is good.)   In other words, you will get a ‘Denmark’ if you have a small homogenous country of nuclear families, because in the nuclear family both genders have equal reproductive interests.

    I suspect that this is one of the most profound things you can learn – certainly on Quora.

    https://www.quora.com/How-many-of-you-are-libertarian

  • I love this country. Every soul in it. Because they think about the government,

    I love this country. Every soul in it.

    Because they think about the government, exactly like I think of all government.

    Thirty seven flavors of Baskin Robbins Ice Cream? How about 230 flavors of government corruption.

    LOL

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-09 07:32:00 UTC

  • INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRUCTS: BELIEFS, NORMS, and FORMAL INSTITUTIONS 1) A BELIEF is

    INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRUCTS: BELIEFS, NORMS, and FORMAL INSTITUTIONS

    1) A BELIEF is adhered to as a demonstration of PREFERENCE – even if that preference is only the discount value of habits.

    2) AN INFORMAL INSTITUTION: A NORM is adhered to out of PRACTICAL utility – they are observed to obtain benefit, and avoidable at a cost.

    3) A FORMAL INSTITUTION is adhered to out of practical NECESSITY – they are unavoidable if you want to pursue your objectives.

    The differences are not arbitrary. All three systems are institutions. Those institutions differ because of the choice we possess in bearing the costs, and gaining the rewards of adhering to them.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-08 02:21:00 UTC

  • DID YOU NOTICE… That Americans are starting to look like Brits? Traipsing arou

    DID YOU NOTICE…

    That Americans are starting to look like Brits? Traipsing around the world as if the empire still existed, had influence… living off past glory?

    Before we were just wealthy well intentioned hicks.

    Now we’re declining bullying rabble.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-07 13:25:00 UTC

  • WHY CONSERVATIVES RETAIN POWER? Liberals (the political wing of the Postmodernis

    WHY CONSERVATIVES RETAIN POWER?

    Liberals (the political wing of the Postmodernist Religion) rely on counter-factual IMMORAL arguments, while conservatives rely on counter-factual MORAL arguments. Everyone knows everyone’s arguments are counter-factual. The difference is that they vote for morality. Since liberal arguments are immorally counterfactual, the public rejects them.

    The only reason democratic candidates win is the single female, single mother vote, because it is an rent-seeking demographic. Females are rent seekers. It is their reproductive strategy. They can rent seek against husbands, rent seek against tribes, and rent seek against the state. It is far easier to rent seek against the state than rent seek against a husband, because the number of alpha husbands is increasingly limited under commercial capitalism.

    If not for the single mother, single woman vote, we would never have a liberal anything in this country.

    This is the outcome of the feminist revolution and the attack on men and the nuclear family. As a response, the conservatives and libertarians (my side) hired the capitalists (on their own side) against the state – by giving them free reign to undermine the expansionist liberal movement, and the democratic socialist state. It has largely worked. Except that immigration has ruined the demographics anyway. So the liberal strategy has also won. That is why we are at a stalemate until one of these sides conquers the other.

    And demographically, at least on the coasts, white people with the moral code of the nuclear family with high transaction costs in rural areas are going to lose the battle against rent seekers with low transaction costs in the urban centers.

    I suspect the outcome isn’t going to be the idyllic star-trek future we envisioned. I could argue pretty effectively that the only solution is to break up the country into some permutation of the ‘nine nations of north america’, or at least the center vs, the coasts. This would create enormous opportunity, and eradicate the US debt structure.

    But I suspect that such a rational outcome isn’t likely.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-07 08:55:00 UTC

  • THE POSTMODERN RELIGION, AND ITS POLITICAL WING: LIBERALISM The left is a klepto

    THE POSTMODERN RELIGION, AND ITS POLITICAL WING: LIBERALISM

    The left is a kleptocracy, and its religion is postmodernism.

    “In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consistency can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims.

    1) On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.

    2) On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.

    3) Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.

    4) Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.

    5) Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

    There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next. Postmodernists are well aware of the contradictions—especially since their opponents relish pointing them out at every opportunity.

    Consider three more examples, this time of clashes between postmodernist theory and historical fact.

    1) Postmodernists say that the West is deeply racist, but they know very well that the West ended slavery for the first time ever, and that it is only in places where Western ideas have made inroads that racist ideas are on the defensive.

    2) They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without.

    3) They say that Western capitalist countries are cruel to their poorer members, subjugating them and getting rich off them, but they know very well that the poor in the West are far richer than the poor anywhere else, both in terms of material assets and the opportunities to improve their condition.

    In the modern world, Left-wing thought has been one of the major breeding grounds for destruction and nihilism. From the Reign of Terror to Lenin and Stalin, to Mao and Pol Pot, to the up-surge of terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s, the far Left has exhibited repeatedly a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends and exhibited extreme frustration and rage when it has failed.”

    – Excerpted from Hicks, Stephen R. C. Explaining Postmodernism, chapter six.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-07 03:10:00 UTC

  • What Reservations Do You Have About Liberal Principles?

    Liberalism is the political wing of a religion.  That religion is Postmodernism.  Postmodernism was created as a linguistic attack on reason, in order to find a solution to seizing political power, given the failure of socialism in theory and in practice.

    Irrational contradiction is a necessary and pervasive tactic in the postmodern religion. Instead of believing in mystical divinities, this religion attributes false properties to mankind, then advocates belief in natural contradictions, very similar to jewish and christian contradictions, in order to avoid attacks by reason against their arguments.  THere is absolutely NOTHING different between the religion of liberals (Postmodernism) and the religion of social conservatives (christianity) except that postmodernism puts power in the state, and american protestant christianity is an organized opposition to the state. Both of which are fighting for power to control the state, in order to protect their interests.

    EXAMPLES OF LIBERAL (POSTMODERN) IRRATIONALITY

    (from Hicks)

    THE POSTMODERN RELIGION, AND ITS POLITICAL WING: LIBERALISM
    The left is a kleptocracy, and its religion is postmodernism.

    “In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consistency can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims.

    1) On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.

    2) On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.

    3) Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.

    4) Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.

    5) Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

    There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next. Postmodernists are well aware of the contradictions—especially since their opponents relish pointing them out at every opportunity.

    Consider three more examples, this time of clashes between postmodernist theory and historical fact.

    1) Postmodernists say that the West is deeply racist, but they know very well that the West ended slavery for the first time ever, and that it is only in places where Western ideas have made inroads that racist ideas are on the defensive.

    2) They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without.

    3) They say that Western capitalist countries are cruel to their poorer members, subjugating them and getting rich off them, but they know very well that the poor in the West are far richer than the poor anywhere else, both in terms of material assets and the opportunities to improve their condition.

    In the modern world, Left-wing thought has been one of the major breeding grounds for destruction and nihilism. From the Reign of Terror to Lenin and Stalin, to Mao and Pol Pot, to the up-surge of terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s, the far Left has exhibited repeatedly a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends and exhibited extreme frustration and rage when it has failed.”

    – Excerpted from Hicks, Stephen R. C. Explaining Postmodernism, chapter six.

    https://www.quora.com/What-reservations-do-you-have-about-liberal-principles

  • WAR War is the means by which one set of property rights and allocations within

    WAR

    War is the means by which one set of property rights and allocations within a geography is replaced by the application of violence with another set of property rights and allocations.

    I don’t write much about war because it’s emotionally loaded, and I don’t see it as any different from any other form of human activity – it’s just a really expensive activity, a really risky activity, and unfortunately, a necessary and pervasive activity.

    I don’t view war as good or bad. It is either necessary to obtain, restore, or implement, property rights of one set or another. My only concern is whether those rights are higher trust, more individualist or lower trust tyrannical rights.

    (Thanks to Brian Anderson for the reminder.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-06 16:25:00 UTC

  • Values And Principles: Has The Fact That The Us Has Never Apologized To The Innocent People It Has Imprisoned And Tortured Affected Our Society?

    What has affected our society was the world wars, and our loss of self confidence that resulted from it.  Our civilization has spent time, treasure and blood to drag the rest of humanity kicking and screaming out of universal ignorance, mysticism and endemic poverty. And we are still dragging the one primitive civilization remaining, kicking and screaming, out of ignorance and poverty.

    Why havent the communists apologized for murdering 100 Million people in the last century?  Why haven’t the socialists apologized for the suffering they caused? Why hasn’t the rest of the world created ‘Western Civilization Appreciation Day” for saving them from disease, hunger, murder, ignorance and mysticism?

    I don’t know.  But that is what has affected our society. That is its malaise.

    https://www.quora.com/Values-and-Principles-Has-the-fact-that-the-US-has-never-apologized-to-the-innocent-people-it-has-imprisoned-and-tortured-affected-our-society

  • WE TRADE INTERPERSONAL CORRUPTION … We trade interpersonal corruption, which i

    WE TRADE INTERPERSONAL CORRUPTION …

    We trade interpersonal corruption, which is endemic in the rest of the world, for systemic corruption of organizations in the western world.

    I am still struggling a bit to be sure that I understand these processes. But certainly coercion exists equally in these societies. The question is the transfer of transaction costs from individuals to organizations. It is far easier and cheaper for us to interact with one another. But it appears it is equally complicated for the organizations that we belong to (political parties) to resolve high friction differences.

    Economic productivity then, is gained by the process of pressing free riding and rent seeking and that form of involuntary transfer that we call price competition from a property of personal relations, both into the market where it is not visible and it is morally sanctioned, but also, into the political system.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-05 11:16:00 UTC