Curt Doolittle

Form: Argument

  • Can Atheists Fall In Love? If An Atheist Does Not Believe In God Because They Need Proof, Can They Fall In Love (which Presumably Also Cannot Be Proven)? And If So, How Do They Know?

    THE QUESTION IS A PARLOR TRICK BUT I WILL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE – MORE JUSTICE THAN IT DESERVES. 🙂

    OBSERVABLE TYPES OF LOVE
    As far as we know, humans demonstrate these kinds of love, from the most intense to the least intense.

    1) Erotic love ( sexual attraction with the potential of joining the family)
    2) Familial Love ( members of the family – decreasing with genetic distance)
    3) Friendship Love ( treat as family even though not )
    4) “Christian Love” ( Treat as family for social and economic purposes. More recently referred to as “unconditional love”.  But which, at least, biologically and scientifically, means the extension of ‘familial love’ outside of one’s children.)

    The success of the theistic religions has been to create conditions by which familial trust (love) is extended to non family members.  THis allows social and economic cooperation at scale. It is an interesting ‘trick’. A very useful device. It was very successful at uniting (poor) tribes into larger national and cultural units with similar ethical, moral, and legal codes.  WHile we may argue that the allegorical and magical nature of most religions is logically absurd, it is not necessarily illogical that religion has been demonstrated to be the most successful means by which to aggregate people into common ethical, moral and legal structures.

    THE HIGH TRUST SOCIETY
    The west achieved it’s High Trust Society status by forbidding cousin marriage out to six, eight or even ten generations, and extending property rights to women. By those two acts, over time, in fact, all people within a region were either near genetic relations, or had the possibility of becoming near genetic relations.

    THE FAILURE OF THE RELIGIONS
    This is why the west was more successful than any other culture at extending not just ‘love’ but property rights and economic cooperation to all members of the community.  Other societies may have succeeded in extending interpersonal treatment of others beyond family boundaries, but they were unsuccessful at extending property rights away from the paternal family or the totalitarian state.  Because of this, other ‘religious love’ actually was destructive to the economic, social, legal, and political development of those countries. It prohibited rather than encouraged a division of labor into specialization, and the concentration and coordination of capital into the production of consumer goods..

    THE FAILURE OF SECULAR HUMANISM
    Secular humanism, or Totalitarian Humanism, like it’s ancestors Postmodernism, Scientific Socialism, Socialism, Marxism, Christianity, and Judaism, attempts to regress western civilization’s emphasis on private property and public actions by returning us to totalitarian management of property as a commons, and forcible rather than voluntary charity.

    THE SHORTAGE OF USEFUL ‘RELIGIONS’ (Myths and Rituals)
    Religions can work if they support production and private property as did protestantism.  The problem is that only greek and german hero-worship and perhaps Shinto, other than protestantism, are compatible with the retention of property rights and individualism.  The American Constitution, the English Common Law,

    But then, this is one of the great problems of human history and we barely understand it.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-atheists-fall-in-love-If-an-atheist-does-not-believe-in-God-because-they-need-proof-can-they-fall-in-love-which-presumably-also-cannot-be-proven-And-if-so-how-do-they-know

  • Can Atheists Fall In Love? If An Atheist Does Not Believe In God Because They Need Proof, Can They Fall In Love (which Presumably Also Cannot Be Proven)? And If So, How Do They Know?

    THE QUESTION IS A PARLOR TRICK BUT I WILL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE – MORE JUSTICE THAN IT DESERVES. 🙂

    OBSERVABLE TYPES OF LOVE
    As far as we know, humans demonstrate these kinds of love, from the most intense to the least intense.

    1) Erotic love ( sexual attraction with the potential of joining the family)
    2) Familial Love ( members of the family – decreasing with genetic distance)
    3) Friendship Love ( treat as family even though not )
    4) “Christian Love” ( Treat as family for social and economic purposes. More recently referred to as “unconditional love”.  But which, at least, biologically and scientifically, means the extension of ‘familial love’ outside of one’s children.)

    The success of the theistic religions has been to create conditions by which familial trust (love) is extended to non family members.  THis allows social and economic cooperation at scale. It is an interesting ‘trick’. A very useful device. It was very successful at uniting (poor) tribes into larger national and cultural units with similar ethical, moral, and legal codes.  WHile we may argue that the allegorical and magical nature of most religions is logically absurd, it is not necessarily illogical that religion has been demonstrated to be the most successful means by which to aggregate people into common ethical, moral and legal structures.

    THE HIGH TRUST SOCIETY
    The west achieved it’s High Trust Society status by forbidding cousin marriage out to six, eight or even ten generations, and extending property rights to women. By those two acts, over time, in fact, all people within a region were either near genetic relations, or had the possibility of becoming near genetic relations.

    THE FAILURE OF THE RELIGIONS
    This is why the west was more successful than any other culture at extending not just ‘love’ but property rights and economic cooperation to all members of the community.  Other societies may have succeeded in extending interpersonal treatment of others beyond family boundaries, but they were unsuccessful at extending property rights away from the paternal family or the totalitarian state.  Because of this, other ‘religious love’ actually was destructive to the economic, social, legal, and political development of those countries. It prohibited rather than encouraged a division of labor into specialization, and the concentration and coordination of capital into the production of consumer goods..

    THE FAILURE OF SECULAR HUMANISM
    Secular humanism, or Totalitarian Humanism, like it’s ancestors Postmodernism, Scientific Socialism, Socialism, Marxism, Christianity, and Judaism, attempts to regress western civilization’s emphasis on private property and public actions by returning us to totalitarian management of property as a commons, and forcible rather than voluntary charity.

    THE SHORTAGE OF USEFUL ‘RELIGIONS’ (Myths and Rituals)
    Religions can work if they support production and private property as did protestantism.  The problem is that only greek and german hero-worship and perhaps Shinto, other than protestantism, are compatible with the retention of property rights and individualism.  The American Constitution, the English Common Law,

    But then, this is one of the great problems of human history and we barely understand it.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-atheists-fall-in-love-If-an-atheist-does-not-believe-in-God-because-they-need-proof-can-they-fall-in-love-which-presumably-also-cannot-be-proven-And-if-so-how-do-they-know

  • CONCLUSION: BEARING PERSONAL ARMS IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF FREEDOM The origin of pr

    CONCLUSION: BEARING PERSONAL ARMS IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF FREEDOM

    The origin of private property rights was as the reward for enfranchisement, and enfranchisement the reward for owning and carrying, and using arms in defense of both private and common property.

    No other civilization developed and held peerage – interpersonal property rights. None. And None other held them.

    Aristocratic Egalitarianism is the cultural difference between western civilization and the rest. It is why we have the common law. And we have the common law because of property rights. And we have property rights because ‘citizenship’ meant bearing arms. And nobility meant the right to bear them.

    We can ‘lend’ our violence to the government if we wish, to act on our behalf. A division of labor is good for all of us.

    But when the government ceases to use our violence on our behalf, and instead uses it to violate our hard won, hard kept rights, then we may recall our loan of violence. And we may only do that if we are armed.

    Violence is a virtue. It is the highest virtue. It is the origin of freedom. It is the only origin of freedom.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-01 02:48:00 UTC

  • IF I AM CORRECT, THEN ETHICAL INTUITIONISM IS CORRECT But they authors just didn

    IF I AM CORRECT, THEN ETHICAL INTUITIONISM IS CORRECT

    But they authors just didn’t have Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe to help them. (I did.)

    What Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe didn’t have, was the past twenty years of scientific research to rely upon.

    And the diverse set of ethical intuitions are not diverse at all.

    He he he he… It’s awesome.

    “All rights are reducible to property rights.” True. “All moral and ethical intuitions are reducible to property rights” is true also. The first is a legal statement. The second is a biological one.

    Libertarians figure it out. Not all of it. But they did it.

    I just put the cherry on the topping.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-14 15:43:00 UTC

  • NON AGGRESSION PRINCIPLE IS NECESSARY BUT INSUFFICIENT (Re-Posted from elsewhere

    http://www.propertarianism.com/defining-propertarianism/THE NON AGGRESSION PRINCIPLE IS NECESSARY BUT INSUFFICIENT

    (Re-Posted from elsewhere for archival purposes.)

    THE NAP IS AN EPISTEMIC TEST

    The NAP is an EPISTEMOLOGICAL TEST. It lets us know what actions are ethical or unethical, moral or immoral, constructive or destructive of a peaceful social order.

    The NAP states only that you do not INITIATE violence -aggression – against others or their property. It does not mean that we do not DEFEND ourselves or property if we or our property is subject to involuntary transfer or damage.

    INSUFFICIENCY

    We do not argue that the NAP is a SUFFICIENT informal institution for a social order. And it does not address formal institutions at all, only limits them. But it is SUFFICIENT test of ethics and morality for political statements in ANY social order. It is sufficient test of ethics and morality necessary for the development of a division of knowledge and labor. And the prosperity that results from a division of knowledge and labor is a universal demonstrated preference of all polities.

    PROPERTY AS A SPECTRUM

    The question that the NAP does not answer, is the definition of property and it’s distribution between the individual and the commons. That is because libertarian ethics does not allow for informal commons, only explicitly stated shareholder agreements as the vehicle for commons, and private property as the only form of property morally extant.

    So the NAP does not expressly state that only private property exists and can exist, in a moral social order, but it is implied, and all libertarians simply assume it’s obvious (but it’s not.)

    COMPACT WITH BROAD EXPLANATORY POWER

    The NAP is an exceptionally good theory because it is COMPACT, has universal explanatory power, is testable and falsifiable both logically and empirically.

    THE DEFINITION OF PROPERTY

    Now, just so that I can help better intellectually arm fellow libertarians, there is a definition of property: “That which people act as if is their property.” We talk about PRIVATE property. And we advocate the reduction of all rights to PRIVATE property rights.

    I’ve enumerated it here under ‘Scope of Property Rights’: http://www.propertarianism.com/defining-propertarianism/

    THE ALLOCATION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

    So it’s not that we lack a definition of property it’s that the allocation of property between the individual and the commons varies with the family structure that the individual comes from, and the structure of production he comes from, and the moral intuitions that he or she has, which appear to be genetic, and largely correlate gender.

    THE DEFINITION OF LIBERTARIAN

    As for liberty, I think that the definition of libertarian is well established and has finally been empirically established by data from Jonathan Haidt: libertarian is a preference to grant freedom from coercion higher moral status than the other five moral instincts. The left treats harm-care highest, and almost exclusively, and the right treats all six moral values equally.

    That is what libertarians share in common. We simply use different arguments and different institutional solutions to advocate for our desired moral bias.

    ARTICULATING OUR IDEAS

    So neither of these statements helps us a great deal in arguing in FAVOR of libertarianism over some other clam. But they help us in articulating our ideas clearly.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-12 05:16:00 UTC

  • IGNORANCE IS A NECESSARY BYPRODUCT OF POSTMODERNISM If you must believe in SOME

    IGNORANCE IS A NECESSARY BYPRODUCT OF POSTMODERNISM

    If you must believe in SOME falsehoods, that means that you do not believe in scientific TRUTHS.

    Socialism + Feminism = Postmodernism = the collapse of reason and science.

    THE HARD REALITY THAT SCIENCE IS SLOWLY DEMONSTRATING

    (And in which postmodern thought is demonstrated to be false.)

    We are vastly unequal in value to one another.

    Genders are unequal in distribution of talents.

    There are no Female Jack the Rippers and no Female Newtons.

    Feminism has increased single motherhood, and increased poverty from single parenthood.

    Family structure determines property rights and morality.

    Homogenous family structures are necessary for homogenous polities.

    Diversity is bad, everywhere, anywhere.

    Race is a deciding factor in all personal interactions.

    Political preferences are a combination of genetics and family structure.

    Redistribution is eventually, genetically, economically, and politically disastrous for a polity.

    Median IQ is the most important property of any population.

    The “smart fraction” is the most important group of people in any population.

    The Pareto principle demonstrates a *requirement* of how much property must be concentrated in the smart fraction of the population.

    The religious conservatives are using religion to oppose the state because it works as a means of opposing the state’s attack on the nuclear family and meritocracy.

    The state and it’s church (universities) are engaged in a religious Pogrom to replace christianity and aristocracy with pseudo-science and socialism.

    LIBERTARIANISM MAY ERR. BUT IT ISN”T FALSE. Or destructive. Postmodernism IS false and destructive.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-08 11:09:00 UTC

  • Property Rights And Taxes As Loans

    (ironic humor) The exchange of free riding, fraud, theft and violence for property rights functions as an involuntary loan of the opportunity to consume by way of free riding, fraud, theft and violence, on the unproductive. In exchange for which, at some later time, they receive the service of less toil, lower prices and greater variation, and freedom from slavery. Under democracy, the unproductive tax the income of the productive, so that the unproductive receive the same benefit as if they were productive. The problem is that the productive need the unproductive to have money to spend, in order to maintain momentum (velocity) in the economy, from which the productive benefit. So as long as the tax money of the productive is given to consumers, and not the government, and not to competing social interests, it’s a necessary and reasonable exchange of value – instead of a forced loan of free riding, fraud, theft and violence from the unproductive for the purpose of consumption, it’s a forced loan from the productive to the consumer. Now, if the productive could SAVE enough that when they got off the hamster wheel of velocity, that they could maintain their standard of living, I kind of think that this system works in a sort of madcap kind of way. I don’t like it very much. Because the hamster wheel is really risky for entrepreneurs. And I don’t want to suppress the lottery effect. that drives innovation under capitalism. But it might be possible to solve the problem of rewarding entrepreneurship differently from investment and lending. I think, if I work a little bit more at this I can explain it all in moral language that average ‘folk’ can understand. ‘Cause the language of man is morality not empiricism. The world we have made is a hysterically funny place.

  • Property Rights And Taxes As Loans

    (ironic humor) The exchange of free riding, fraud, theft and violence for property rights functions as an involuntary loan of the opportunity to consume by way of free riding, fraud, theft and violence, on the unproductive. In exchange for which, at some later time, they receive the service of less toil, lower prices and greater variation, and freedom from slavery. Under democracy, the unproductive tax the income of the productive, so that the unproductive receive the same benefit as if they were productive. The problem is that the productive need the unproductive to have money to spend, in order to maintain momentum (velocity) in the economy, from which the productive benefit. So as long as the tax money of the productive is given to consumers, and not the government, and not to competing social interests, it’s a necessary and reasonable exchange of value – instead of a forced loan of free riding, fraud, theft and violence from the unproductive for the purpose of consumption, it’s a forced loan from the productive to the consumer. Now, if the productive could SAVE enough that when they got off the hamster wheel of velocity, that they could maintain their standard of living, I kind of think that this system works in a sort of madcap kind of way. I don’t like it very much. Because the hamster wheel is really risky for entrepreneurs. And I don’t want to suppress the lottery effect. that drives innovation under capitalism. But it might be possible to solve the problem of rewarding entrepreneurship differently from investment and lending. I think, if I work a little bit more at this I can explain it all in moral language that average ‘folk’ can understand. ‘Cause the language of man is morality not empiricism. The world we have made is a hysterically funny place.

  • BECOMES A REACTIONARY Politics is determined by morality not economics. People w

    http://crookedtimber.org/2013/08/18/krugman-keynes-kalecki-konczal1/comment-page-1/#commentsKRUGMAN BECOMES A REACTIONARY

    Politics is determined by morality not economics. People will universally endure hardship to punish immorality. The majority may like democratic candidates, but they prefer conservative morality. The conservatives understand this which is why they hold power.

    I stopped posting thus mantra on left economic blogs in 2012, trying to persuade them to strike a bargain with conservatives on education reform. Which they would have bought. But the left us just as fanatical in their devotion as the right. So its not one sided.

    You might also put Krugman in context: austerity worked. It worked in both Europe and the states. It achieved moral ends. And it taught lessons: the lessons the productive people wanted taught.

    Communism failed. Socialism failed. And much of democratic redistibutive socialism is failing.

    When socialism failed the left in academia created and promoted Postmodernism: anti-rationalism. Now that their only hope is failing. They will resort to reactionary tactics that are even less rational than Postmodern irrationalities : diversity and equality.

    Humans all demonstrate the moral principle of proportionality. But proportionality is dependent upon your moral code, and your moral code on your family structure and social class. (Reproductive desirability.)

    Democracy cannot work across heterogeneous family structures. In particular not across single mother, serial marriage and nuclear or extended family structures. Bucause the morality if property rights differs irresolvably between them.

    Economic reality, political data, and scientific research dismantling the progressive and postmodern religious beliefs are combining to accomplish what a universe of conservative and libertarian think tanks could not.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-18 08:29:00 UTC

  • LIMITED NUMBER OF WOMEN CEOS AND BOARD MEMBERS I think we know the answer and ha

    LIMITED NUMBER OF WOMEN CEOS AND BOARD MEMBERS

    I think we know the answer and have known the answer for years:

    1) the distribution of IQ at 130 or higher, which is common threshold in CEO’s and board members, and necessary for marginally competitive advantage means that executive participation by women will max at around 30%. Nature does not produce an equivalent number of marginally different women.

    2) board membership is not fun. It is largely hard work. The material is quantitative. And decisions are legal, funancial, political, factional and risky. Appeals to empathy or sympathy are considered rightly to be attemts at deception. Board members usually have little information and what they do have they must treat skepyically. Consensus can be difficult and intractable.

    3) Women will not as willingly play the cost of maintaining unpleasant, argumentative factional loyalty as often or as well as men, so they are percieved as less trustworthy partners on a team. Those that do are paired with men they agree with. And that combination seems to be powerful.

    4) more men prefer to specialize in abstract rules, and devote their time to one specialization. So more men tend to master what organizations value.

    Free from nevessary domestic toil, women dominate the middle of the economy and men the margins, and assortive mating reinforces that distribution. There is no chance it will change and if it did, those companies operation by existing means would rapidly dominate those with less meritocratic orders.

    We are only equal under the law in the resolution of disputes over property and even then not universally so – as males will attest in family court.

    But we are not equal in ability. Equal in value to others. Equal in status ( mating potential). Nor equal in value to mankind.

    Equality is achieveable in kinship matters, but not commercial relations. And commerce under individualism is not kinship outside of a homogenous city state.

    Just how it is and must be.

    We can bend natures laws but we cannot ignore them.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-17 04:22:00 UTC