[I]nnovations are good. Better innovations are better. And, yes, Mises made an innovation, but the expository and explanatory power of the deductive and axiomatic method is LESS than the expository and explanatory power of the ratio-empirical method – not more. Congratulating Mises on improving Kant, who was probably the single greatest contributor to philosophical obscurantism and the destruction of reason in human history, is hardly a compliment. Its an accusation of conspiracy. (See Rand on Kant. Kantian pseudoscience is part of the reason the libertarian project from the continent has failed.) Hoppe’s argument is stated within the context of economic action. He is arguing that economics is purely deductive rather than like all other ‘sciences’ a mixture of: (a) the limits of our biological ability to perceive in real time, (b) a theory describing a general rule, (c) the use of logic to test the internal consistence of the theory, (d) and instrumental tests that replicate and falsify the theory But he misunderstands (or intentionally mischaracterizes) the development of theories. There is no point in retesting them if they’ve been sufficiently tested and criteria for falsification defined. We can develop economic laws just like we can develop physical laws. But we cannot develop economic axioms because axioms are not required to be correspondent with reality, while theories are – and human action exists in reality. [P]hilosophy itself, when expressed operationally, as action (realism), rather than as analogy (platonism etc), or as experience (phenomenalism etc), results in a statement of the ratio-empirical method. The philosophy of action is science, not rationalism, precisely because only science requires demonstration of action. Reason does not. Reason is a continental attempt to conflate authority, morality and reason as a reaction to ratio-empircal science, and commercial morality which would upset the hierarchy as it has in the anglo countries. It’s nonsense though. Economics, and human action, are empirical sciences that may, for the purposes of convenience be reduced to laws that are expressible in axiomatic terms. But axiomatic systems are not dependent upon external correspondence, and as such economics cannot under any circumstances be reduced to a logic. It is a science. It is the most challenging science because it lacks causal relations but it is a science born of observation, reducible to theories, we can use as laws, but these laws are not equivalent to axioms because axioms are not bounded by reality. Period.
Form: Critique
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Adding Kant To History’s Most Destructive Minds
[I]‘m going to add Kant (obscurant anti-realism), to the ranks of history’s most destructive minds: Cantor(obscurant Pseudoscience), Freud(obscurant pseudoscience), Marx(pseudoscience), Napoleon (total war), Constantine(christianization of Europe), Plato (the Republic), Abraham(monotheism), Zoroaster (divine scripture).
Intellectual Sainthood
– Aristotle
– Machiavelli
– Bacon, Newton and Leibniz
– Smith, Hume and Jefferson
– Jevons, Menger, Walras, Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser;
– Pareto, Durkheim, Weber and Hayek.
– Poincaré, Mandelbrot, Brouwer, Bishop, Taleb[N]ow, if I could get Hoppe off his Continental and Kantian platonism, then he would have be the first person to succeed in reducing all rights to property rights. Even if his definition of property is incomplete he would have done it. He managed to articulate the morality of states, but not the morality of polities necessary for the voluntary organization of production. And possibly, that was his only goal. Whereas with propertarianism, I’ve illustrated the definition of property necessary for the formation of a polity capable of voluntary organization of production in the absence of a state. But he isn’t a candidate for intellectual sainthood if he’s stuck in Kantian nonsense.
Failing that I’m stuck with doing it myself. And while I feel I have mastered ethics better than anyone else, I do not feel the same for philosophy proper. And while I’m getting there, I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. But the standard of measure is not my own comprehension, but the structure of my arguments. And I am just getting, after a year of solid hard work, to where I feel I can construct those arguments.
Einstein was right (even if a plagiarist) that most of doing something innovative is just working at it longer than anyone else.
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Adding Kant To History's Most Destructive Minds
[I]‘m going to add Kant (obscurant anti-realism), to the ranks of history’s most destructive minds: Cantor(obscurant Pseudoscience), Freud(obscurant pseudoscience), Marx(pseudoscience), Napoleon (total war), Constantine(christianization of Europe), Plato (the Republic), Abraham(monotheism), Zoroaster (divine scripture).
Intellectual Sainthood
– Aristotle
– Machiavelli
– Bacon, Newton and Leibniz
– Smith, Hume and Jefferson
– Jevons, Menger, Walras, Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser;
– Pareto, Durkheim, Weber and Hayek.
– Poincaré, Mandelbrot, Brouwer, Bishop, Taleb[N]ow, if I could get Hoppe off his Continental and Kantian platonism, then he would have be the first person to succeed in reducing all rights to property rights. Even if his definition of property is incomplete he would have done it. He managed to articulate the morality of states, but not the morality of polities necessary for the voluntary organization of production. And possibly, that was his only goal. Whereas with propertarianism, I’ve illustrated the definition of property necessary for the formation of a polity capable of voluntary organization of production in the absence of a state. But he isn’t a candidate for intellectual sainthood if he’s stuck in Kantian nonsense.
Failing that I’m stuck with doing it myself. And while I feel I have mastered ethics better than anyone else, I do not feel the same for philosophy proper. And while I’m getting there, I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. But the standard of measure is not my own comprehension, but the structure of my arguments. And I am just getting, after a year of solid hard work, to where I feel I can construct those arguments.
Einstein was right (even if a plagiarist) that most of doing something innovative is just working at it longer than anyone else.
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Adding Kant To History’s Most Destructive Minds
[I]‘m going to add Kant (obscurant anti-realism), to the ranks of history’s most destructive minds: Cantor(obscurant Pseudoscience), Freud(obscurant pseudoscience), Marx(pseudoscience), Napoleon (total war), Constantine(christianization of Europe), Plato (the Republic), Abraham(monotheism), Zoroaster (divine scripture).
Intellectual Sainthood
– Aristotle
– Machiavelli
– Bacon, Newton and Leibniz
– Smith, Hume and Jefferson
– Jevons, Menger, Walras, Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser;
– Pareto, Durkheim, Weber and Hayek.
– Poincaré, Mandelbrot, Brouwer, Bishop, Taleb[N]ow, if I could get Hoppe off his Continental and Kantian platonism, then he would have be the first person to succeed in reducing all rights to property rights. Even if his definition of property is incomplete he would have done it. He managed to articulate the morality of states, but not the morality of polities necessary for the voluntary organization of production. And possibly, that was his only goal. Whereas with propertarianism, I’ve illustrated the definition of property necessary for the formation of a polity capable of voluntary organization of production in the absence of a state. But he isn’t a candidate for intellectual sainthood if he’s stuck in Kantian nonsense.
Failing that I’m stuck with doing it myself. And while I feel I have mastered ethics better than anyone else, I do not feel the same for philosophy proper. And while I’m getting there, I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. But the standard of measure is not my own comprehension, but the structure of my arguments. And I am just getting, after a year of solid hard work, to where I feel I can construct those arguments.
Einstein was right (even if a plagiarist) that most of doing something innovative is just working at it longer than anyone else.
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Adding Kant To History's Most Destructive Minds
[I]‘m going to add Kant (obscurant anti-realism), to the ranks of history’s most destructive minds: Cantor(obscurant Pseudoscience), Freud(obscurant pseudoscience), Marx(pseudoscience), Napoleon (total war), Constantine(christianization of Europe), Plato (the Republic), Abraham(monotheism), Zoroaster (divine scripture).
Intellectual Sainthood
– Aristotle
– Machiavelli
– Bacon, Newton and Leibniz
– Smith, Hume and Jefferson
– Jevons, Menger, Walras, Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser;
– Pareto, Durkheim, Weber and Hayek.
– Poincaré, Mandelbrot, Brouwer, Bishop, Taleb[N]ow, if I could get Hoppe off his Continental and Kantian platonism, then he would have be the first person to succeed in reducing all rights to property rights. Even if his definition of property is incomplete he would have done it. He managed to articulate the morality of states, but not the morality of polities necessary for the voluntary organization of production. And possibly, that was his only goal. Whereas with propertarianism, I’ve illustrated the definition of property necessary for the formation of a polity capable of voluntary organization of production in the absence of a state. But he isn’t a candidate for intellectual sainthood if he’s stuck in Kantian nonsense.
Failing that I’m stuck with doing it myself. And while I feel I have mastered ethics better than anyone else, I do not feel the same for philosophy proper. And while I’m getting there, I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. But the standard of measure is not my own comprehension, but the structure of my arguments. And I am just getting, after a year of solid hard work, to where I feel I can construct those arguments.
Einstein was right (even if a plagiarist) that most of doing something innovative is just working at it longer than anyone else.
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Libertarian Non-logic Of 'Rights'
[Y]ou know, if you have to work that hard to ‘invent’ something like a ‘right’, it pretty clear evidence that there is something wrong with your reasoning. I’m an aristocratic egalitarian libertarian. We obtain property rights from one another by mastering violence and organizing to apply that violence against anyone who would interfere with our contract for property rights. See how parsimonious that is? Occam’s razor and all that? Because it’s true. You earn your rights only by the ancient exchange of the promise to protect all who claim property rights, from those who would deny them.
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Libertarian Non-logic Of ‘Rights’
[Y]ou know, if you have to work that hard to ‘invent’ something like a ‘right’, it pretty clear evidence that there is something wrong with your reasoning. I’m an aristocratic egalitarian libertarian. We obtain property rights from one another by mastering violence and organizing to apply that violence against anyone who would interfere with our contract for property rights. See how parsimonious that is? Occam’s razor and all that? Because it’s true. You earn your rights only by the ancient exchange of the promise to protect all who claim property rights, from those who would deny them.
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Libertarian Non-logic Of 'Rights'
[Y]ou know, if you have to work that hard to ‘invent’ something like a ‘right’, it pretty clear evidence that there is something wrong with your reasoning. I’m an aristocratic egalitarian libertarian. We obtain property rights from one another by mastering violence and organizing to apply that violence against anyone who would interfere with our contract for property rights. See how parsimonious that is? Occam’s razor and all that? Because it’s true. You earn your rights only by the ancient exchange of the promise to protect all who claim property rights, from those who would deny them.
-
Libertarian Non-logic Of ‘Rights’
[Y]ou know, if you have to work that hard to ‘invent’ something like a ‘right’, it pretty clear evidence that there is something wrong with your reasoning. I’m an aristocratic egalitarian libertarian. We obtain property rights from one another by mastering violence and organizing to apply that violence against anyone who would interfere with our contract for property rights. See how parsimonious that is? Occam’s razor and all that? Because it’s true. You earn your rights only by the ancient exchange of the promise to protect all who claim property rights, from those who would deny them.
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I’M CRITICIZING ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS, NOT HOPPEIAN INSTITUTIONS CRITICISM IS LIMIT
I’M CRITICIZING ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS, NOT HOPPEIAN INSTITUTIONS
CRITICISM IS LIMITED TO ETHICS AND CLAIMS THAT PRAXEOLOGY IS A SCIENCE RATHER THAN A LOGIC.
I criticize the NAP and Rothbardian ethics because they are insufficient in scope for the rational voluntary formation of a polity (of other than sociopaths). Rothbardian ethics are parasitic. High trust ethics are productive. And no polity has EVER chosen parasitic ethics. Gypsies, Jews, and to a lesser degree eastern europeans and mediterraneans as well as Arabs and some nomads practice parasitic ethics outside the group, but not within the group. No group can persist (cooperate) under in-group parasitism.
My solution is to define property as people define it by their actions, not as it is defined by intersubjective verifiability (hoppe’s definition).
THE NECESSITY OF THE COMMON LAW AND A UNIVERSAL DEFINITION OF IN-GROUP PROPERTY RIGHTS.
And the reason this definition of property matters, is that all libertarian institutional solutions are predicated on the assumption that a constitution defining property and requiring the common law, is sufficient ‘government’ that no ‘government’ capable of making laws need exist.
Without the common law libertarianism fails to be ‘rational and calculable’ since without a common definition of property, disputes over property rights are unsolvable by rational means.
Now I also argue that in addition to the common law, and a definition of property as people demonstrate property by their actions, no group can compete economically against other groups unless it can produce commons. And that the production of commons requires prevention of free riding, socialization of losses and privatization of the commons and gains from the commons.
HOPPEIAN INSTITUTIONS ARE THE ANSWER TO MONOPOLY BUREAUCRACY
But that is not a criticism of Hoppeian libertarian solutions to the problem of monopoly bureaucracy by the use of competing private insurance companies rather than that same insurance provided by the monopoly bureaucracy that we call the state.
The problems with the state are (a) law-making (command issuance) given that laws cannot be made, only discovered, and (b) the self interest of all members of a bureaucracy and the unavoidable predation that results from bureaucracy. (c) Technically speaking the errors of democracy and majority rule are properties of one form of government, and not government per se.
LIBERTARIANISM AS FREEDOM FROM CONSPIRATORIAL IMMORALITY: FREE RIDING BY THE BUREAUCRACY.
I’ve been criticizing ‘stupid-tarians’, and ‘immoral-tarians’, ‘coward-tarians’ and ‘libertines’ of late, masquerading as libertarians. If you follow a rule based ethic (the NAP) rather than the outcome of human actions in producing liberty, you are really quite stupid, honestly, because it is quite clear that (a) the NAP is a failed test if we limit property contestable in court to ‘private property’, because it’s non-rational for people to choose an immoral and unethical polity and as such they will not eliminate demand for the state under NAP. And (b) because it’s pretty obvious to all but autistic and immoral people that the NAP permits – legally – immoral and unethical behavior: thefts via indirection, deception and externality. (c) that only outcomes, not observance of rules determines the success or failure of any set of rules. And Rothbardianism is a failed, ridiculed, illogical, immoral, ethical system.
So, libertarian then means ‘working for liberty that is logically and empirically achievable. If it means something else to you, then you’re just a stupid-tarian, immoral-tarian, or libertine, and not a libertarian: one who places liberty above all other moral values.
If libertarian means stupid, unethical, immoral, cowardly, and libertine, then we must rescue liberty and the terminology from the stupid, unethical, immoral, cowardly and libertine.
Liberty, as a brand, as a meme, as a term, and as a political objective, is not open for capture by the stupid, unethical, immoral, cowardly and libertine.
That would be immoral.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-03 10:33:00 UTC