Curt Doolittle

Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

  • What Are The Differences Between The Political Parties In The Usa?

    They represent different sets of alliances.  Mostly those that want to expand the state and those who want to contract it.

    https://www.quora.com/unanswered/What-are-the-differences-between-the-political-parties-in-the-USA

  • 2012 U.s. Elections: Who Is Currently The Front Runner Of The United States Presidential Race?

    Go visit Intrade.com.  Monitor it there. It’s quite accurate. 

    The electorate is polarized with only about 12-15% of people uncommitted to one party or the other.  Elections are determined by these uncommitted people.  These uncommitted people tend to vote based upon what their friends tell them.  Many people do not vote policy they vote likability. Because it is easier to understand than policy is. Obama is still personally likable even if he is an unsuccessful president.  If the economy improves he will likely be reelected, and if it declines again, then not.  Key factors will be the price of oil and the conflict between Iran and Israel, and how well his opponent connects with voters after the convention. 

    If I had to bet money I would say that at present he will win by a very thin margin, if the issue with Iran does not peak, and if there are no surprises.

    https://www.quora.com/2012-U-S-Elections-Who-is-currently-the-front-runner-of-the-United-States-presidential-race

  • What Happened To Occupy Wall Street?

    OWS and The tea party are both likely to be long term phenomena caused by structural changes in the USA, and in the world economy.

    OWS still exists as a movement of sorts, but declined for two reasons:
    1) A failure to develop a platform of specific actions.  Movements need policy objectives and they didn’t propose them.  And leadership never emerged that could drive and negotiate them.
    2) The behavior of the members was deemed unacceptable:  In the 60’s the underclasses were emerging as a numeric force sufficient to create both a political and consumer class. Further, their behavior was a rejection of the war, the postwar strategic nuclear threats, and the rigidity of their parent’s disciplined ‘war’ generation.  These other factors are not in play at this time, so while the movement succeeded in propagating the 1% message, they discredited themselves by what the majority consider ‘uncivic’ behavior.

    https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-Occupy-Wall-Street

  • Is Charity “a Capitalist And Conservative Project”?

    There are plenty of treatments of the subject that discuss the decline of the ‘civic society’ and decline of ‘civic participation’ in society, because the state has destroyed the motivation for, and the ability of people to engage in civic behavior.  The ‘corporatization and bureaucratization’ of charity. The reason is ostensibly that conservatism provides charity in exchagne for adherence to established norms, and progressives reject adherence to established norms, and requrie that charity require no action in exchange.

    So in that sense, yes, it is a conservative project to create a CIVIC, menaing, voluntary, society. And a progressive project to create a STATIST, meaning ‘managed’ society.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-charity-a-capitalist-and-conservative-project

  • What Are The Real Motivations Of Conservatives, Libertarians And Liberals?

    What Are The Real Motivations Of Conservatives, Libertarians And Liberals? http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/05/08/what-is-the-motivation-of-conservatives-libertarians-and-liberals/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-18 16:48:23 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/203527464260079617

  • The Left Right Divide Is Meaningful Because Our Institutions Reinforce it

    The Left Right Divide Is Meaningful Because Our Institutions Reinforce it http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/05/18/the-left-right-divide-is-meaningful-because-our-institutions-reinforce-it/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-18 16:46:33 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/203527002102304769

  • Untitled

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/05/08/what-is-the-motivation-of-conservatives-libertarians-and-liberals/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-18 12:48:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/05/18/the-left-right-divide-is-meaningful-because-our-institutions-reinforce-it/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-18 12:46:00 UTC

  • Libertarianism and Marxism They are both philosophically rigorous. libertarianis

    Libertarianism and Marxism

    They are both philosophically rigorous.

    libertarianism wins on everything except the satisfaction of our psyches.

    Liberalism and conservatism have no such rigor. Conservatism is historical. Liberalism is emotional. Rawls creates a system of justice that assumes away scarcity. Hayek places limits that progressives cannot bear to face.

    But its exasperating that we are able to argue rationally with Marxists despite the gravity of their failure. But cannot convert conservatives. And cannot even have rational conversations of any sort with liberals.

    The only way to solve this problem is empirically and we cannot do that with the data we have today. The best we can do is prove the other side is even more ignorant than we are. And is therefore exposing us to risk by preventing us from reducing our risk, while greatly expanding it.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-17 17:32:00 UTC

  • SMART PEOPLE TALK TO THEMSELVES BUT POLITICS IS THE ART OF THE MUNDANE Talking h

    SMART PEOPLE TALK TO THEMSELVES BUT POLITICS IS THE ART OF THE MUNDANE

    Talking heads and bloggers abound. But we talk mostly to ourselves in order to construct arguments that can be successfully employed by our faction leaders, which can then be articulated by our faction members, in oder to maintain their conviction in support of onslaughts from our competing factions.

    Our political preferences are inherited, and we largely seek to confirm them. And it’s important because only the undecideds determine elections, and we must keep our factions motivated in order to give the undecideds the confidence to vote for our side versus the other.

    But if you attend state and local level political gatherings. And listen to average party discourse, there are one or two important initiatives, but most of the members argue along ideological lines using the tired mantras that we silly scribblers have produced over the past election cycle, if not the past generation, precisely for their use. Human beings can rarely articulate their own feelings and ideas. We give them the tools to do so. And it’s either gratifying or horrifying how procedural the process is, from ideological manufacture of memes, to the tactical employment of them in daily life.

    Average voters are something else altogether different from faction members. They vote ideologically or pragmatically. But they still get their information from near neighbors who have collected and sorted through these memes. And in the end, they seem to vote almost exclusively for who they think will win, or their subjective evaluation of the current state of affairs, versus who’s policy that they agree with.

    And those that we cannot convince with arguments we convince by saturation bombing with advertising in the vague hope to tilt the 15% of people who are not entirely committed to one side or the other. People need a means of choosing from the impossible and incomprehensible and we try to give them one.

    I would much prefer economic democracy, where we used the web to allocate our tax dollars to what we prefer, rather than relied upon politicians and bureaucrats, elected according to ideology, using memes that we produced for the purpose of swaying the 15% of people who simply don’t care one way or another.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-16 16:06:00 UTC