Curt Doolittle

Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

  • ARE MONARCHIES BETTER THAN REPUBLICS? Proof of Hoppe’s Thesis in a Paper by UW’s

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1548222WHY ARE MONARCHIES BETTER THAN REPUBLICS?

    Proof of Hoppe’s Thesis in a Paper by UW’s Victor Menaldo.

    MY FAVORITE PARAGRAPH:

    “This paper argues that the [Arab Spring] region’s monarchs have been particularly well-suited to deter political unrest. Through the strategic use of constitutions, formal political institutions, Islamic principles, and informal norms, MENA monarchs have “invented” a political culture that has helped create a stable distributional arrangement and self-enforcing limits on executive authority. A monarchic political culture has promoted cohesion among regime insiders, such as ruling families and other political elites, and bolstered their stake in the regime. Moreover, this unique political culture has provided the region’s monarchs with legitimacy: regime outsiders have benefited from the positive externalities associated with secure property rights for the political elite—sustained economic growth and increased economic opportunities. This has helped monarchs consolidate their authority and foster political stability. Conversely, the region’s non-monarchs have relied on a divide-and-conquer strategy and terrorized potential opponents into submission, gutting their societies of rival institutions and creating layers of militias and secret police.” Victor Menaldo, UW.

    (Where has Victor Menaldo been? In my back yard, and I’ve never heard of him! Now I have to read his other ten papers. Hopefully all tonight!)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-01-09 19:34:00 UTC

  • The Second and Further Questions Of Politics

    The first question of politics is ‘why do I not kill you and take your stuff?’ (Why should we form a cooperative order, versus a dictatorship) The Second question of politics is ‘what are our property definitions, both communal and several?’ (how shall we break the world into actionable bits) The second question of politics, is ‘what are our norms?’ (‘What is our shareholder agreement over the treatment of those property definitions?’) The third question of politics is ‘how do we prevent corruption, fraud, theft and violence against several and communal property?’ (The privatization of public assets and the involuntary transfer of assets, against the terms of our shareholder agreement.) The fourth question of politics is ‘how do we create institutions to resolve conflict over property and norms?’ ( How do we register citizenship, register property ownership, what requirements we place on individual behavior, and what is the manner of our judiciary for the resolution of disputes) The fifth question of politics is ‘how do we suppress the numan desire for corruption?’ The sixth question of politics is ‘How shall we coordinate, choose and administer investments on the behalf of shareholders?’ The seventh question of politics is ‘how do we distribute the surplus from our investments to our shareholders should we have any?’

  • The First Question of Politics

    I’ve said this many times, but given what I’ve read today, I’ll say it again: Per Camus, the first question of philosophy is ‘Why don’t we commit suicide?’ That one question is one of philosophy’s most informative riddles. But I have another riddle that adds just as much insight as Camus’ does to philosophy, into political philosophy: That is: “Why don’t I just kill you and take your stuff?” ((Or “Why don’t I just kill you and prevent you from taking my stuff?”)) If you can answer that question, all those questions that follow become non-neutral. By which I mean, that arguments over property are not those which you can walk away from. Political disputes are not conducted over matters of taste. They are matters of property or we would not debate them.

  • Canada’s to-do list for 2012: No. 1. Become an absolute monarchy | iPolitics

    Canada’s to-do list for 2012: No. 1. Become an absolute monarchy | iPolitics http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/01/01/canadas-to-do-list-for-2012-no-1-become-an-absolute-monarchy/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-01-01 16:37:52 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/153515291186438144

  • Classifying People By State Rather Than Occupation Simply Justifies The State

    Classifying People By State Rather Than Occupation Simply Justifies The State http://www.capitalismv3.com/2011/12/28/classifying-people-by-state-rather-than-occupation-simply-justifies-the-state/

    Source date (UTC): 2011-12-28 13:50:34 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/152023639464755200

  • Classifying People By Their Government Rather Than Occupation Simply Justifies The Expansion Of State Power

    Today, Krugman yet again argues that there is a lack of demand. Yes, there is a lack of demand, I agree. There is a lack of demand because our lower classes are unproductive in comparison to their peers in the world. There is a lack of demand for their labor. Since there is a lack of demand for their labor, there is a lack of money for them to spend. A state is merely one means of classifying people, and it’s a convenient one for statists, whose only purpose is to justify expansion of the state. In a world of relatively free trade, people are citizens of their occupational sector. The American upper classes have moved ahead with the rest of the world economy, and the American lower classes have not. And the reason for that failure is state policy, and in particular, state policy on education. State policy on education is more concerned with achieving political unity between disparate races and cultures than it is in creating productive citizens who can compete in the world market, and therefore create demand. Harrison Bergeron writes for TheTimes.

  • every one of Paul’s foreign policy positions the Republican establishment calls

    http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/27/why-the-establishment-really-fears-ron-paul/”For every one of Paul’s foreign policy positions the Republican establishment calls “nuts,” you can find revered conservative figures, past and present, who have expressed similar positions: The Iraq War was a “mistake” (Bill Buckley, Robert Novak, Jack Kemp); America shouldn’t be the “world’s policeman” (Paul Weyrich, Grover Norquist, Dick Armey); America’s constant intervention overseas causes “blowback” (Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Pat Buchanan).”

    Source date (UTC): 2011-12-27 10:59:00 UTC

  • Honduran Experiments In Creating The Libertarian Paradise

    Over On The Economist, an unnamed author writes that the Hondurans are sponsoring a libertarian experiment:

    , libertarians have a real chance to implement their ideas. In addition to a big special development region, the Honduran government intends to approve two smaller zones. And two libertarian-leaning start-ups have already signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding with the Honduran government to develop them.

    Then references this chart which lists other attempts at libertarian utopias.

    But they only serve to illustrate the futility of these paradises. The biggest problem for any libertarian venture, is that the cost of developing an economy on anything other than LAND that contains human beings who may act as consumers is simply too high for an economy to form. The sea is, so to speak, infertile soil. The cost of prohibiting rent-seeking is equally high. Libertarianism states will be created by the application of violence against those who do not wish to possess freedom, and maintained only by the application of violence against those who would steal freedom. Silly anarchic fantasies to the contrary. Monarchy. Rule of the One-Law Under Common Law. Private government. Freedom. Violence is the source of freedom. Do not surrender your violence without demanding freedom in exchange.

  • BLEEDING HEARTS OR ANARCHISTS? There is a movement called ‘Neo-Classical Liberal

    BLEEDING HEARTS OR ANARCHISTS?

    There is a movement called ‘Neo-Classical Liberalism’, whose members refer to themselves as “bleeding heart libertarians”. This movement combines classical anglo american political institutions and the classical liberal sentiments in favor of freedom and innovation, with libertarian economic and political insights, new institutional economics, and modern macro economics.

    I’m torn between trying to coalesce that movement somewhat or simply attempting to repair Austrian Libertarian theory on it’s own by fixing the hole left in praxeology by the failure to incorporate forgone opportunity costs. — It is really a matter of audiences. But audiences matter.

    The rothbardian movement is doing such a good job of promoting libertarianism – albiet among relative populists. The Hoppeians are infinitesimally small in number. (Hans might not like it but I consider myself a Hoppeian). But the Neo-Classical Liberal program has a chance of selling to the broad conservative audience.

    So my plan is to bring the ‘Propertarian Methodology’ of Rothbard and Hoppe to the Neo-Classical Liberal framework, by adding my work on forgone opportunity costs to the Propertarian body of work. This should solve the problem of explaining the differences between Hayek and Mises, and represent them as a single, unified, spectrum of reasoning differing only in temporal preference.

    Propertarian reasoning is the only fully rational explanation of ethics ever developed. Propertarianism unites ethics, economics and politics with econometrics. Combined with the insights provided by the debate over economic calculation and incentives, Propertarianism allows us to fully describe human activity as rational, but limited by knowledge, and fraught with error.

    I realize this is geek speak. But maybe there are a handful of geeks out there who are vaguely interested. 🙂

    My other goal is to write in short, clear sentences.

    I have less confidence in achieving that goal than in solving the greater philosophical problems that I’ve set my mind to.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-12-16 08:22:00 UTC

  • bravado never ceases to amaze me. It’d take about three days to return iran to t

    http://news.yahoo.com/iran-army-declines-mps-hormuz-exercise-remarks-132115297.htmlIranian bravado never ceases to amaze me.

    It’d take about three days to return iran to the stone age.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-12-13 11:29:00 UTC