Curt Doolittle

Form: Argument

  • Aren’t Meant To Be Friends. Men spend time with women to place a put on an optio

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_lh5fR4DMAWe Aren’t Meant To Be Friends.

    Men spend time with women to place a put on an option for sex. That’s the reason. That’s the only reason. Even if it’s a long option. Even if it’s an infinitely long option. Time is a cheap put. (Women’s gracious illusions to the contrary.) Somewhat interesting and intelligent women decrease the cost of the put. Hot dull women increase the cost of the put. Unattractive women decrease the utility of the return on the put. But its all about the put. Women just aren’t that interesting. Male empathy tends by way of testosterone to make them ‘feel’ abstractions, machines, and processes, not people – something few woman ever seem to be able to grasp.

    Now, if you find an educated and successful and honest woman over 50 or so, who was very attractive in her youth, she’ll give you a similar story about men: Mainly, that you should ‘try an athlete, try a troublemaker, try a musician’, to get ‘it’ out of your system, and then find yourself a decent man who w…

    Source date (UTC): 2011-12-09 09:11:00 UTC

  • Karl Smith says that a government with it’s own currency can never be insolvent.

    Karl Smith says that a government with it’s own currency can never be insolvent. But this is not true. There is a very practical point whereupon the rate of inflation makes planning and coordinating production impossible because prices along the production cycle are no longer calculable. At that point production rapidly crashes, consumption rapidly crashes, people ‘forget’ skills and relationships that make businesses cooperate. They abandon social conventions and mores. They develop black markets for goods and social status. The tax base crashes. And public order fails. To the modern macro economists this is an absurd and impossible probability. To Austrians it is a deterministic and logical consequence of monetary policy.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-11-05 07:02:00 UTC

  • Debating Means Of Stimulus – Tradeoffs Between Goods And Bads

    Karl Smith (correctly) suggests that we could make drastic tax cuts to fund stimulus, and borrow the money cheaply. I think he misses the point of the entire political debate going on in the country today (people don’t trust the government at all, and with the south re-engaging the republican party, both parties are increasingly becoming polarized). But his overall position that we can borrow very cheaply so we’re able to create a stimulus cheaply as long as it produces any reasonable return that doesn’t jeopardize our future. (I know. Thats a lot to ask. But remember that most Keyneisan and New Keynesian economists use a very narrow window of postwar data – a period of exception – on which to base their judgements.) Karl writes:

    If we had enacted $5 Trillion in tax cuts and every bit of it was saved then the total liability that US households face would not have changed. They would owe more in future taxes but they would be able to pay down their mortgages and other debts. And, that is a net plus because the rate at which the government borrows is much lower than subprime mortgage rates and indeed currently negative in real terms. Having the government basically arbitrage the public-private spread is a net win for US households. On top of that I think it likely that some households who didn’t have crushing debt burdens would have taken advantage of the flood of foreclosed homes, cut rates on hotel rooms and dealer mark downs on new cars to get some really great deals. That would have been good for those well positioned households and good for the US economy which was facing a flood of foreclosed homes, empty hotel rooms and autos piling up on dealer lots. It would have been good for those less well positioned households because they could have paid down their debt. The price would be higher future taxes later but with the government paying such low interest rates the real costs of those future taxes would have been smaller than the taxes that were cut. Moreover, the United States could have potentially avoided the devastating effects of a long term balance sheet recession.

    That’s why Galbraith, before he died, me, and a few others recommended paying down mortgages directly with the trillions of available cheap debt. The “demand story” that you keep referencing in your postings regarding the differences in the size of the boom and recession, is quite simple: that appreciation of home values affects such a vast number of households, that they all spend, even though the actual homebuilding sector is relatively small. Homeowners didn’t feel irrationally wealthy because of prices or credit — but because they believed that they had more income or savings to spend. That’s why the boom and bust has been asymmetrical. Now, after the bust, they think they are poorer than they expected to be. And it affected their retirement plans and calculations. So yes, the shrinkage of the economy has been vast. More so than any suggested stimulus so far will accomplish. And paying down mortgages would have the side benefit that it would not have expanded any of the negative sectors of the state and it’s extra-market allies. Which your recommended stimulus methods DO. Which is why the public won’t tolerate them. The public would have had a frenzy repricing if we had paid down mortgages. Pay down mortgages and refinance them at today’s prices. Of course, I recommended all this when it started. Because, as Austrians we use analysis of individual actions. We recognize that patterns of sustainable specialization and trade must eventually reflect some global reality, while at the same time we also realize that digging holes is actually pretty wasteful of all the potential human capital that would be created by people actually working on internationally competitive sectors, while also aware that digging holes is wasteful of possible returns on fixed capital investment. (THe pyramids were a great investment.) And because, I do recognize, as do the NK’s, that it is hard to get people ‘swarm’ irrationally, but when they do swarm irrationally to certain things (becoming property owners) the externalities that are caused are ‘good’. Whereas the externalities caused by expansion of the state are ‘bads’. And we were right to recommend this ‘stimulus’. Absolutely right. For the reasons you’re stating now – in retrospect. It’s not that we cant still do it. People would become emotionally excited and therefore ACTION ORIENTED at the opportunities created. It would foster the impression of wealth far beyond any institutional stimulus – and it would not expand government – something that the people do not want to pay for. If we combined direct mortgage pay-downs (maybe 2 Trillion?) with some form of credit towards home ownership for anyone who has lost a home, (using stricter lending requirements), with investments in energy production (nuclear plants), a new power grid, and roads, we would alter the economy rapidly in just months – because we would be funding multiple time scales, we would be empowering consumers, and the political resistance to expanding the state would disappear. The American people would prefer to live in hardship rather than expand the state that they do not trust. The question remains whether you agree with them or not. Curt

  • The Ethnic Nation State Is The Most Likely Means Of Preserving Individual Freedom.

    Great panel discussion today, with speakers on China, Turkey, Islam, Europe, and the Anglosphere. The closing questions were largely to do with the changing world boundaries, and nationalism. Summary by, I think, John O’Sullivan, was that, it certainly appears, that the small ethnic nation state is the most likely means of preserving individual freedom. And the consensus was that neither China nor the USA had strong chances of maintaining political unity over the long term. That is, the USA only has such chances if we return to federalism, devolving power to the states, rather than central authority. We can only hope.

  • Reductio Libertarianism As An Effort To Export Costs (ie: Theft)

    In yet another debate with crooks masquerading as libertarians. I ask “Define Moral.” Bob replies “Moral = “Absence of coercion. Immoral = Presence of coercion (force or fraud).” Then he teases me a bit for my usually turgid analytical analysis: “What’s your definition, Curt? We assume it’s gotta be a pretty complex definition or it’s not particularly impressive, correct?” To which I reply: “Yes, you have the correct definition for interpersonal relations. However, the same method of analysis applies to shareholder relations. The problem lies in the process of decision making for transfers of assets, which are determined by the shareholder agreement. ie: “constitution”, whether discreet and written, or traditional and structured, or traditional and unstructured. Moral crimes include crimes against shareholder assets. ie: transfers that are possible because of increasing degrees of ignorance, and therefore without interpersonal coercion. Such transfers are not only possible, but easy and invisible, by the act of transferring opportunity costs: “For example, imagine an island where having a child that you cannot support, and therefore must rely upon charity to feed, is an immoral crime. It is a forcible transfer of wealth, because the shareholder agreement forbids allowing a person or child to starve — and therefore the parent, by having a child, forced other shareholders to pay for the support of that child, otherwise the other shareholders would break the agreement themselves. This is an involuntary transfer. Humans organize. Organizations consist of shareholders. Shareholders have responsibilities to avoid transfers. Any Propertarian analysis must include shareholder agreements and shareholder properties, because people do in fact create and live by those shareholder methods and processes. To ignore such organizations is unscientific. Or, worse, an immoral attempt to privatize opportunities, or externalize costs onto others. 🙂 “So I would state it like this (or as a graph):


    2. There are three forms of coercion:
        1) Violence against a person or property,
        2) Fraud,
        3) Opportunity Deprivation (ie:Ostracization or non-cooperation: deprivation of opportunity) We call this ‘moral’ coercion.

    3. There is only one form of ‘manipulation’ of another person’s actions, which is both voluntary and symmetrical ((I use the term ‘symmetrical’ where most would use ‘equitable’, only because I am somewhat concerned about the loaded content of the word ‘equitable’ which is both imprecise and emotionally loaded for my purposes . )), and that is voluntary Trade (Exchange).

    4. People join organizations in order to increase their opportunities, and decrease their costs of opportunities.

    5. Membership in organizations requires Individuals pay direct costs, such as actions and payments, as well as indirect costs, such as forgoing opportunities for gratification, or choosing a less gratifying alternative in order to adhere to specific moral coercions, because it is these moral self-deprivations that forbid the privatization of other people’s forgone opportunity costs.

    6. People join multiple organizations. They do so by paying the direct costs and opportunity costs prescribed in the ‘shareholder agreement’.

    7. Some organizational requirements conflict with other organizational requirements, therefore people ‘cheat’ on their membership costs in order to obtain additional opportunities at a discount

    8. Therefore Interpersonal Moral Action = Absence of coercion.” But since people join organizations in order to increase their opportunities, and decrease their costs of opportunities, this is an insufficient definition for all exchanges.

    9. Therefore Shareholder Moral Action = Absence of Coercion + Absence of Externalization of Costs + Absence of Privatization of Opportunities. This is a sufficient definition for environments where organizations are present.

    10. All moral human actions consist of one or more actions, using zero or more objects, and zero or more interpersonal exchanges, which occur under zero to many shareholder agreements, where the individual does not use any of the three forms of coercion, and does not externalize costs onto other shareholders, or privatize opportunities unto one’s self, or transfer opportunities to others.

    1. The institution of property itself is a form of coercion. Of sacrificing opportunity costs according to a social contract. Therefore we cannot have property to transfer without the costs paid for self deprivation of opportunity – that’s without even considering the necessity for collective defense.
    2. Narrowly Defining morality only as Interpersonal Moral actions is an attempt at appropriation, that is THEFT, by FRAUDULENT MEANS of the vast opportunity costs paid by all members of an organization, both past and present.
    3. Non-conformity is a form of either expensive research programs, or theft, or forcible redistribution — depending upon whether the objective is to increase production (moral), or to conduct a transfer (immoral)
    4. Humans conduct conflicts between their different organizations using these opportunity cost differences embodied in their different social contracts, to which we apply the terms “culture”. Wars can be conducted by direct violence, or economic competition, or by thefts of cultural opportunity costs. This is why religious cults, and class wars, and immigration can succeed in obtaining power. They steal opportunity costs.

    “Is that OK? Because it’s right you know….. :)”

  • Is There An Unassailable Argument Against The Religion Of Rand? (And Whacky Derivatives Like Galambos?)

    Regarding Philosophy, Religion, and Government: a) A Philosophy is a set of related ideas for the purpose of allowing humans to take actions that accomplish ends in the face of necessary uncertainty about the future. b) A Religion is a habituated philosophical framework, for political purposes, using pedagogy for indoctrination, and which relies ostensibly upon voluntary participation, but because of habituation by the individual and within the environment, is largely involuntary. c) A Government is an institutionalized philosophical framework using forcible coercion, and therefore relies upon involuntary participation. What separates a philosophy, from a religion, from a government, is the formality of the institutions, where the increasing formality of the institutions eliminate human choice. What starts as a personal conceptual framework, becomes a framework that a group teaches to others, becomes formal institutions that compel others to adhere to the principles of the philosophy. It is an arbitrary Everything, every idea, has to come from somewhere. Humans may have natural sentiments. But ideas are something that they come by. Military, Political, judicial and pedagogical (religious) institutions do not require belief or consent. They compel adherence by the application of force, or, by near universal habituation, deprivation of opportunity for non-conformers. Philosophy alone allows voluntary adherence to Military, Policial, Judicial, Pedagogical as well as Moral, Ethical and Mannerism frameworks. But let’s look at the problem of choosing philosophy a bit… If there is anyone who is willing to debate me on the limitations of Rand, I’ll take the bet. Even if you bring Peikoff to the table. Yet, despite those limitations, I can defend her propositions against all classical arguments. However, the one I cannot defend it against, is the idea that it is in the interest of the common man, to adopt a political philosophy that is not in his or her individual, temporal, interest. We have but one life, and it consists of limited time. And the proletariat therefore, has a shorter term time horizon than the upper classes. So, Marxism is in the poor’s interest. Democratic socialism is in the working and lower middle class interest. Libertarianism is in the upper middle class interest. And classical liberalism is in the upper class interest. To argue that Rand is anything other than a class philosophy, is to argue that men are equal. Since men are not equal in ability, health, age, knowledge, experience, skill, resources, and relationships — then any philosophy that attempts to be universal to man is by definition a religion. That’s the provence of religion: universal application. Even if some adhere to tenets out of mysticism, some out of allegory, and some out of rational moral analysis, the tenets are the same. That’s the elegance of a religion, and the cultural principles of cooperation that religious idea sets contain. Unfortunately religions rely on mysticism in order to capture the attention of the poor and ignorant proletariat. The secular religion does not. It simply attempts to buy their conformity with services, consumer goods and redistribution. It is cheaper to rely upon mysticism. More expensive to rely on redistribution. And it appears to be more economically productive to rely on redistribution. The question is only how to achieve the redistribution, and the limits of it. Rand, like Marx, Trotsky, Mises and Rothbard, (and Simmel) is simply trying to apply Jewish diasporic religious sentiments to political philosophy. An attempt, that despite the obvious evidence that jewish philosophy is the result of either an arrested or failed civilization. A failed civilization wherein the members of the faith are either unwilling or unable to pay the social sacrifices necessary to hold land. And, having held land, created create the institutions of land holding, and then, by consequence, the institutions of property and built capital needed for an advanced society consisting of a division of labor wherein the natural inequality of humans is expressed by their unequal rewards from participating in the market. All humans seek to JUSTIFY their SENTIMENTS. An act which is anything but scientific. And an act which is arguably religious – it seeks justification rather than exposition.

    [callout]A political philosophy that requires unanimity of belief, that does not have cooperative institutions, even private institutions as Hoppe recommends, is to argue that men will adopt a philosophy that is in the interest of other men, particularly those in a competing social class, and is against their interests economically, and socially (status being the human political economy), is not scientific. It is not scientific Because it is COUNTER TO OBSERVATION AND COUNTER TO REASON. [/callout]

    A political philosophy that requires unanimity of belief, that does not have cooperative institutions, even private institutions as Hoppe recommends, is to argue that men will adopt a philosophy that is in the interest of other men, particularly those in a competing social class, and is against their interests economically, and socially (status being the human political economy), is not scientific. It is not scientific Because it is COUNTER TO OBSERVATION AND COUNTER TO REASON. Social status is the native human accounting system. We need no devices to sense it. We must rely upon social status so that human animals can know who to imitate, and learn from and associate with in order to best achieve their potential, and the group’s potential. People form groups: Race, Religion, Language, Nation, Class, Generation and Skill Set or career, then hierarchy within that career, are the broadest and most common. Social cues intra-group are lower cost than social cues extra-group. Therefore people specialize in intra-group social cues. This is why individuals in small homogenous single-city-state societies are more egalitarian than in empires. Empires may be able to dictate terms of commerce and issue inflationary currency, but why they are socially tumultuous if the groups can use the political system rather than the market to compete with other groups. As Randianism (and Galmbosianism) is counter to reason, because it requires unanimity of belief, despite not being the interest of the working or judicial classes, then it is unscientific. If it requires unanimity of belief then it is by definition a religion. Because it is the belief in the impossible and irrational. It has replaced superstitious belief in god, with a superstitious belief in the behavior of man. The market economy is superior because the pricing system is the most effective way of informing people as to the behavior that they must exhibit in order to create a low cost high production society where even the poor have more than our ancestors ever dreamed of. However, the market requires institutions and a minimal private government, which we consider a network of contractual agreements. And if individuals simply REFRAIN from theft, fraud, and violence, then they are in effect, shareholders in that society and due profits on their contributions to it. As such, some minimal distribution from the results of the market are due those minority shareholders. The argument that they pay no costs, and make no contribution to the market is false. Since inaction, even the inaction of refraining from theft, fraud, and violence, is a form of action. To say otherwise is to say only money is action.

  • Capitalism Is A Political Concept

    THIS IS FALSE: “capitalism is not a political concept” – Andrew J Galambos. THIS IS TRUE: Capitalism is not a *rhetorical* concept that relies upon the process of debate for the purpose of decision-making about the use of resources within a geography. However, capitalism is a political concept, because it relies upon the **absence** of rhetorical debate for the purpose of decision-making about the use of resources in a geography. And it requires agreement upon the *absence* of authoritarian property definitions, and managerial administration of property and transactions. Any principle that requires unanimity of compliance in a population is by definition political. Property rights require unanimity of compliance in a population. And creating those rights (albeit expressed differently in different cultures) is the purpose of government. Some governments create horrid property rights, others egalitarian. All nations have property rights of some sort. But few have individual property rights. And it’s individual property rights that permit economic calculation and incentives in a vast division of knowledge and labor. Therefore Capitalism is a political concept even if it does not include a dependence upon the process of debate for the purpose of allocating resources. Capitalism is a process of utilizing and allocating resources and providing incentives to serve one another. It is a political concept. It simply does not depend upon the decision-making of politicians – managers. Even totalitarianism is a political process because some number of people must be incentivized to comply with the totalitarian edicts for the purpose of compelling those people who are non-compliant. The capitalist system simply acknowledges that the market is superior to both managerial socialism, authoritarianism, and classical republican rhetorical debate. Because the purpose of the market is to allow us to cooperate in large numbers WITHOUT debate when our minds are incapable of possessing sufficient knowledge, and we are not capable of coordinating actions in a vast division of knowledge and labor. Nor is debate capable of providing the individual incentives needed for peaceful cooperation, since there is no ordered agreement on the use of resources in a population, nor can there be agreement on the use of resources other than under market prices. This is the fundamental criticism of socialism that brought about its end. it is not that socialism is immoral. It is that it is IMPOSSIBLE for people to cooperate, to calculate, and to possess incentives for increasing production that then causes decreases in prices by any other means, whether rhetorical or dictatorial. – CD. We have given up on socialism, which means the destruction of private property. We have instead, adopted redistributive socialism, which treats all property as collective, and where individual property is a temporary right for the purpose of cooperating and coordinating, and where rights to commissions on the use of property are determined by the state. This democratic socialism is simply a slower way of destroying a civilization than individual property rights. That there may be limits on the concentration of capital is not unreasonable. If money and property can be used to distort the market, or for political ends, then this is the exercise of power that is not in the interest of citizens. Therefore there must be limits on the use of capital. Especially under fiat money, where all money is effectively borrowed from average citizens.

  • What does free speech have to do with copyright law?

    An interesting question from Mises.org:

    ” What does free speech have to do with copyright law?”

    It’s fascinating how this fairly simple set of ideas can exist in the public discourse without understanding the rational foundation upon which the concepts of free speech and copyright are based. a) Books, magazines, movies, plays, music (at least, in theory, music with lyrics), advertising, speeches, lectures, photographs, works of art, are products that market ideas (largely narratives.) Copyright law attempts to protect narratives from theft just as patents protect manufactured goods, from profiteering by copying and redistributing other people’s inventions. b) Any of these ‘narrative product’ may contain political speech.(content) c) Determination of political content is extremely difficult. Harmful or beneficial political content is hard to judge (pornography for example), and therefore the law (as a profession) seeks to avoid having to make those decisions. d) Free speech as a practical constitutional concept rests on two assumptions: d.i – that the admitted harm that comes to society from free speech is offset by the protections we obtain from free speech. d.ii — And to narrow these protections to just those that are overtly political is extremely difficult to the point of practical impossibility. e) Some products are political by definition, and copyright can be used to deny political works to the market, and especially intellectual products that are purely social and political in nature. f) copyrights (like patents) should not allow a product to be held from the market, for the purpose of increasing it’s price. (Granted a monopoly.) So, speech and copyright law are effectively tied-concepts because they are mutually dependent. One cannot have copyright without speech, because all copyright is dependent upon speech. We would have far less speech (content) and experimentation (innovation) without copyrights. The scope of speech that needs protection is untestable, and perhaps unknowable, and it is therefore impossible to regulate by content. The argument from the Anarchist position is that copyrights AS THEY ARE CONSTRUCTED create a host of reasons for abusive government, regardless of the attempts of the creators of copyright law to prevent just such abuses. But the practical, measurable empirical evidence is that copyrights do improve innovation, wihc in turn, improves competitiveness, which in turn, reduces prices. The Hoppian/Rothbardian solution, even if they would not advocate it, would be to privatize copyright protections, so that we are not burdened by abusive government, or the costs of administering other people’s works. Again, the fundamental problem here is that it is very difficult to develop criteria by which one thing is equal to another thing, for the purposes of copyright. It is very difficult and expensive to regulate and jury. THe other is that artificially increasing prices of easily reproduced goods is counter to the premise on which the market is based. I think that the solution, as others have said above, is that reproduction for commercial or self use is different from reproduction for the purpose of distribution and sale. I think personal reproduction, even if it deprives the author of profits is within the speech and copyright objectives. I do not see that there is an argument wherein the authors have the right to prevent you from doing whatever it is once you’ve purchased a commercial product from within the market. I do see that someone concentrating capital for the purpose of profiteering from activity in the market, based upon the innovations of others, without paying a commission for doing so, is simply theft, and is not beneficial. The market political theory requires us to innovate, even if innovation is simply opening up new markets.. I do not see the value in copying. That’s just parasitism. Markets exist and function because of enfranchisement, not parasitism. I do not think that the market philosophy (even in libertarianism) supports parasitism. I know libertarians do not support rent seeking (parasitism) by the use of organs of the state. Why should we tolerate parasitism in absence of the state? Or is it that we care more about the state than we do about the very market society which we hope to entrust with our social order? That is the incongruity in Anarchist thought. Government exists to improve the competitiveness of the market for the purposes of decreasing prices and increasing choices. Without a market, there can be no government. There can be slavery, but no government. We pay for the market by forgone opportunities for violence, for theft. Violence and theft are epistemologically simple tasks. However, markets invite fraud BECAUSE they prohibit violence (retribution for theft). And as far as I can tell, copyright law is simply fraud protection. Others are welcome to debate me on this. But I doubt efforts will result in success.

  • Why Not Change Our Tax Structure To Punish Extra-Market Coercion?

    Paul Krugman writes:

    Soros, Obama, And Me What do we have in common? We’re all small business owners, according to Mitch McConnell. Obama and I make our business income off books — he sells the audacity of hope, Robin and I sell the misery of Econ 101; Soros makes his money off financial destruction directing funds to their most productive use; but we’re all in the same category as the owner of a small factory.

    Small business people? Hardly. That writing provides a limited return is not a measure of its level of consumption by a large number of customers, but a measure of how little people are willing to pay for it. The term Mitch is looking for is not “entrepreneur” it is “[glossary:Schumpeterian Intellectuals]”: people who bring about the destruction of capitalism, the market, and the prosperity of national competitiveness by undermining both the sentiment of, and capital structure of entrepreneurship.

    [callout]Then, perhaps some of us should put our capital stock of violence to better use, if in our restraint, we are disabused by men who simply take advantage of our creation – the market. It would be the optimum use of our asset.[/callout]

    Unfortunately, we don’t have special taxes for Shumpeterian market destroyers like we have special taxes on entrepreneurial market creators. But we can fix that. Perhaps we should level the playing field by heavily taxing political, extra-market goods and services, and lowering taxes on apolitical intra-market goods and services? Wouldn’t that be a switch? I mean, why should the amount of income be the axis of measurement, rather than the service provided to the market? Under that measure we could confiscate all of Soros’ money, recover our losses from the bloated financial sector, and reduce the media to non-profit status, and make political writing an unprofitable exercise. As for putting capital to a better purpose, that’s not yet proven. Soros was not participating in the market for goods and services by creating unemployment and reorganizing that capital for his use. He’s just using remunerative coercion under state protections. And extra-market remunerative coercion at that. A form of coercion made possible only by the restraint of violence by others in order to create the somewhat free market – a restraint he does not himself employ. And while that asymmetry of restraint may not be apparent to your cult of those who are incapable of holding territory and trade routes, or building an durable government, or durable institutions of calculation and cooperation, it is not lost on those of us whose ancestors have done so for a millennia or more. It seems odd to me that so many people fail to grasp just how entertaining and enjoyable civil war is for those people who practice militial restraint – often at high personal [glossary:forgone opportunity cost]. Modern war is a ‘hell’ only for people who fight in the western model. It’s not for warriors, terrorists and raiders. We forget that the reason we cannot conquer the Afghans is in no small part because raiding and killing are actually enjoyable, entertaining, status-enhancing pass times among practitioners. And creating markets and property rights, and philosophy and econometrics, is a poor substitute. Then, perhaps some of us should put our capital stock of violence to better use, if in our restraint, we are disabused by men who simply take advantage of our creation – the market. It would be the optimum use of our asset. Or those who put their financial capital stock, or political capital stock to such extra-market or Schumpeterian Intellectual purposes, could pay the opportunity cost of restraint, so that we do not have put our stock of violence to extra-market uses. So that we can continue to devote our energies to the proxy of entrepreneurship instead of the more enjoyable and rewarding uses of our capital stock of violence. Why should we simply transfer our capital at a discount from a stock of market making violence to a stock of market destroying verbal and political coercive uses, or remunerative extra-market coercive uses. After all, violence is far more coercive. And much more rewarding. 🙂 Cheers See [glossary:three coercive technologies].

    The depth of this insult is probalby accessible to only a few people. But I have to say this is one of my favorite little essays of late. – Curt

  • The Reality Of Freedom #1: Freedom Requires Coercion

    Whenever something is scarce,  some concept of property (the exclusive use of a resource)  is necessary for the development of incentives, coordination, and production — even if the difference between ‘several property’ and ‘shareholder property’, is defined differently by different groups — therefore all societies include and sanction some form of coercion.  No society can exist without coercion. This applies to tribal hunter gatherers, nomads, village agrarians, market city dwellers, and vast urban and rural empires in a complex division of knowledge and labor. We can equally forgo the opportunity for violence theft, fraud, corruption.  For the poorest, this means refraining from theft, fraud, deception and violence in exchange for access to the market society and it’s prices. For the middle class, it means refraining from fraud and deception in exchange for participating in the market society and profiting from it.  For the wealthiest, it means refraining from manipulation of market prices or and participating in corruption of the rules of the market, and corruption, in exchange for status and choice.  For the most powerful it means refraining from corruption, and refraining from laziness, incompetence, and maintaining disciplined efforts to serve the marketplace in exchange for freedom from participation in the marketplace. Each of these forgone opportunities for profit is a cost to the individual.  Cumulatively, for each individual, and for any society, these are very, very high costs, because opportunities for violence, theft, fraud, deception, market manipulation, and corruption are more frequent than opportunities for fair exchange of goods and services due to asymmetries of knowledge and resources — even if the type of cost is different along the spectrum: theft and violence are easiest for the bottom and corruption is most easy for the top.

    [callout=’Freedom’]There is no social order that is free of coercion as long as there is scarcity. Property itself is a form of coercion. It must be or we would not have to invent it and enforce it.[/callout]

    There is no social order that is free of coercion as long as there is scarcity.  Property itself is a form of coercion. It must be or we would not have to invent it and enforce it. The coercion that people object to, and classify as corruption, is profiteering by the political class.  Or financial coercion, which means the taking of their time, opportunity, effort, property, or most importantly, status, and to some degree their very attention,  and distributing it to people with whom they disagree, or using it for purposes with which they disagree.  They see this as corruption: obtaining political office and favors by taking from one group and giving to another whom they disfavor. All societies concentrate and redistribute wealth. All societies participate in coercion – or else they could not have property and production.  But whenever a society consists of people with dissimilar interests, by definition there must be negative coercion. Almost all members of any society will tolerate any commonly accepted set of property definitions, even if the scope of individual property is severely limited.  They may form black markets if that scope is too severely limited.  They may form tax avoidance schemes if taxes are too expansive.  But if those definitions remain constant, and they do not have to feel that their plans, and efforts at gain were frustrated, then they will not see the state as coercive. Freedom is defined as freedom from coercion. Meaning freedom from all but equal coercions. And the only freedom we can equally coerce each other with is respect for property. And even then, respecting property is a higher cost for some, and lower for others.