Curt Doolittle

Form: Critique

  • Criticizing Rothbard, Or Criticizing The Abuse Of Rothbard?

    I criticize Rothbard all the time, but always for the same single reason: he did not solve the problem of formal institutions and effectively, he tried to advocate freedom be achieved through informal institutions alone — effectively via a religion. That’s what Confucius did as well. He could not invent politics so he directed the entire civilization to operate as a hierarchical family. But religions are means of rebelling against formal institutions largely by the lower classes, and those rebellions are limited to use by the lower classes. For the middle and upper classes to rebel, they need something to advocate that assists them in cooperation through formal institutions, even if those formal institutions are very limited in scope. And in our terms, limited in scope to the resolution of conflicts. Hoppe solved that problem. He solved the problem of formal institutions. That’s his genius. Hoppe’s weakness is that his English words are structured in turgid German thought, and his writing is not as accessible or organized as are Rothbard’s and Mises’ – nor structured as a social appeal as is Hayek’s work. But Hoppe has found the answer to government that we have been looking for — for two and a half millennia: how to create those cooperative instituions, without at the same time creating bureaucracy. Or, how to create instituions within the market, and subject to the market rather than insulated from it. When we try to advocate Hoppe’s work, we tend to advocate his line of reasoning, rather than the utility of his ideas. I think we do that because we’re paying too much attention to Rothbard’s approach to libertarianism as an informal institution — which again, I’m arguing is counter-factual: the majority do not want freedom, but increased ability to consume. So, both of these argumentative strategies are difficult, because those we wish to convert find fist, that the arguments themselves are ant-social, rather than just thought experiments to help us understand the difference between truth and norm. And second that the arguments are too complex and unnecessary given that the Hoppeian social order is actually quite simple. And any discussion of that social order serves to undermine the presumption behind government: that bureaucracy is a necessary component of achieving social order.

    Curt, … I don’t follow you. what is the problem of “formal institutions,” and how did Rothbard “fail” to solve it, and why is this … something to criticize him about? No one can do evertyhing. What exactly is the probem of “formal instituitons” and what IS the “solution”, in your view? And what has this to do with libertarianism anyway? — SK

    1) Three categories of institutions: a)Technologies: history, numbers, arithmetic, accounting, objective truth, contracts, interest. b) Formal institutions: laws, courts, banking, armies, formal organizations for capital concentration. c) Informal institutions: manners, ethics, morals, norms, traditions, narratives, myths, rituals, public rituals, and religions. 2) Criticize is a bad word I guess, you’re right. a) I think I dont really comprehend how someone can argue for a normative system that is against the expressed political desires of the many, even if only for status reasons, despite the fact that it would serve their economic interests, if not their status seeking interests — or their will to power. So I tend to view rothbard and mises, as did Hayek, as artificially narrowing the scope of the problem for cultural reasons — because of their sentiments. b) The entire argument from Crusoe on down is a useful thought experiment, but one can’t draw conclusions from it without also trying the opposite thought experiment: an island populated with men in which one desires property rights. THe island after all, creates property by definition if one man is on it.. So, the many-man experiment is more insightful. And the Crusoe argument becomes subject to the reductio fallacy. That’s the thought experiment that’s equally as informative. And from that one comparison of thought experiments, we would have to answer the problem of institutions. And I’m pretty sure we run up against the nasty problem of redistribution (or better said: dividends) if we explore that experiment as well. So you’re entirely right. It isn’t up to one man to solve anything. It is however a material problem, if we have created an ideology, rather than a solution. Ideologies are useful for obtaining the power to establish a form of government, even if that form is anarchic. But institutional solutions are necessary: both technical, formal and informal. So I’m criticizing perhaps the abuse of rothbard. He succeeds in creating the INFORMAL institutions. And hoppe the FORMAL institutions. Rothbard created the simple rules that are necessary for infinite application. He just didn’t solve the rest of it. So I’m not so much criticizing him, as much as criticizing a reliance upon the rothbardian rather than hoppeian solution set. 3) What does this have to do with libertarianism? I see libertarian (commercialism), conservative (manorialism), and progressive (socialism) sentiments as cognitive biases that are largely a reflection of mating strategies. (Too deep for this post). And within libertarian sentiments, ‘libertarianism’ is a rothbardian invention. Libertarianism is a rigid concept, as you’ve stated many times. Libertarian sentiments are much wider. And many political solutions can be classified as libertarian in the sense that they serve the sentiment if not adhere to the hard definitions of rothbardian ethics. (— Eds: added text follows –) Further, as I stated in the first posting, hoppe solved the problem of institutions without bureaucracy. (From a FB conversation)

  • CNN Is Anti Christian On Easter. How Nice.

    I really don’t care about the content of religious mythology. I don’t think it matters. It might be better for preachers to read from the Iliad and the Odyssey, The Carolingian Epic, La Morte De Arthur, and the Nibelungen than it is to read from the Bible. It might be better to read selections from history and then speak about current events and how they relate. But the idea of a ceremonial leader and a teacher: someone very well educated that the community hires and pays for, and who speaks to the community every week, so that we actually have some sense of membership in something — even if it’s only for festivals and celebrations, births, marriages, foundings, launchings, consolation and deaths, and so we have an excuse to be civil egalitarians in practice by having an occasional meal together and afterward to work on charity together — well, that all seems like a good thing. I love the Monarchy, History, Mythology and Mankind. Nothing more miraculous than that seems necessary. I love the Pope too, just like I love the Monarchy. The only protection from the mob is having someone out there whose entire purpose is the perpetuation of our extended family, and who can, with caution say, ‘I do not know what is good, but I know what is bad, and this is bad, and this other thing might be better’. Moral leadership when it is powerless except for the use of passionate persuasion is a defense against tyranny of the mob, ideologies, groups or individuals. Monarchy, even only as a vehicle for veto or ascent, is good for the same reason – especially if the nations are small. Monarchy is in history, the most common, best understood, and therefore the natural order of man for this reason. Our parliaments are merely a means of getting more work done – not better work done. Religion need not be supernatural for it to have mystery and profundity in the beauty of its complexity. As humans we are capable of all that and more on our own. Gods should be a role model. A model we can aspire to, and perhaps one day achieve. I might prefer Arthur or Alexander. But if you have to pick a particular Nazarene instead, I’m all for it. He was a good man to use as a role model. And the consequences of using him for that purpose are nothing if not magical. 🙂

  • CNN Is Anti Christian On Easter. How Nice.

    I really don’t care about the content of religious mythology. I don’t think it matters. It might be better for preachers to read from the Iliad and the Odyssey, The Carolingian Epic, La Morte De Arthur, and the Nibelungen than it is to read from the Bible. It might be better to read selections from history and then speak about current events and how they relate. But the idea of a ceremonial leader and a teacher: someone very well educated that the community hires and pays for, and who speaks to the community every week, so that we actually have some sense of membership in something — even if it’s only for festivals and celebrations, births, marriages, foundings, launchings, consolation and deaths, and so we have an excuse to be civil egalitarians in practice by having an occasional meal together and afterward to work on charity together — well, that all seems like a good thing. I love the Monarchy, History, Mythology and Mankind. Nothing more miraculous than that seems necessary. I love the Pope too, just like I love the Monarchy. The only protection from the mob is having someone out there whose entire purpose is the perpetuation of our extended family, and who can, with caution say, ‘I do not know what is good, but I know what is bad, and this is bad, and this other thing might be better’. Moral leadership when it is powerless except for the use of passionate persuasion is a defense against tyranny of the mob, ideologies, groups or individuals. Monarchy, even only as a vehicle for veto or ascent, is good for the same reason – especially if the nations are small. Monarchy is in history, the most common, best understood, and therefore the natural order of man for this reason. Our parliaments are merely a means of getting more work done – not better work done. Religion need not be supernatural for it to have mystery and profundity in the beauty of its complexity. As humans we are capable of all that and more on our own. Gods should be a role model. A model we can aspire to, and perhaps one day achieve. I might prefer Arthur or Alexander. But if you have to pick a particular Nazarene instead, I’m all for it. He was a good man to use as a role model. And the consequences of using him for that purpose are nothing if not magical. 🙂

  • CNN IS ANTI-CHRISTIAN ON EASTER. HOW NICE. NOW, LETS TRY SOMETHING MORE POSITIVE

    CNN IS ANTI-CHRISTIAN ON EASTER. HOW NICE.

    NOW, LETS TRY SOMETHING MORE POSITIVE

    I really don’t care about the content of religious mythology. I don’t think it matters. It might be better for preachers to read from the Iliad and the Odyssey, The Carolingian Epic, La Morte De Arthur, and the Nibelungen than it is to read from the Bible. It might be better to read selections from history and then speak about current events and how they relate. But the idea of a ceremonial leader and a teacher: someone very well educated that the community hires and pays for, and who speaks to the community every week, so that we actually have some sense of membership in something — even if it’s only for festivals and celebrations, births, marriages, foundings, launchings, consolation and deaths, and so we have an excuse to be civil egalitarians in practice by having an occasional meal together and afterward to work on charity together — well, that all seems like a good thing.

    I love the Monarchy, History, Mythology and Mankind. Nothing more miraculous than that seems necessary. I love the Pope too, just like I love the Monarchy. The only protection from the mob is having someone out there whose entire purpose is the perpetuation of our extended family, and who can, with caution say, ‘I do not know what is good, but I know what is bad, and this is bad, and this other thing might be better’. Moral leadership when it is powerless except for the use of passionate persuasion is a defense against tyranny of the mob, ideologies, groups or individuals. Monarchy, even only as a vehicle for veto or ascent, is good for the same reason – especially if the nations are small. Monarchy is in history, the most common, best understood, and therefore the natural order of man for this reason. Our parliaments are merely a means of getting more work done – not better work done.

    Religion need not be supernatural for it to have mystery and profundity in the beauty of its complexity. As humans we are capable of all that and more on our own. Gods should be a role model. A model we can aspire to, and perhaps one day achieve. I might prefer Arthur or Alexander. But if you have to pick a particular Nazarene instead, I’m all for it. He was a good man to use as a role model. And the consequences of using him for that purpose are nothing if not magical. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-08 13:08:00 UTC

  • than jump on Skye’s thread I’m going to walk through this just to see what I com

    http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2012/04/the-inexpressible.htmlRather than jump on Skye’s thread I’m going to walk through this just to see what I come up with. (Yes, some of us do not have preconceived notions we are blindly attached to. We make arguments to test our ideas. We find the outcomes no matter how unpleasant they are. Usually proving we’re wrong somehow in the process. ) 🙂

    [autistic dialog on]

    QUESTION: Are Some Ideas Inexpressible?

    ANALYSIS: There are patterns we recognize but whose identity, and therefore causality is not yet understood by us. If that causality is not understood then further knowledge must be gained. Such things are not inexpressible they are simply not understood. Once that causality is understood identity is known. Causality and identity must be expressed in language. Language consists of analogies to experience. We can experience such concepts, therefore we can express it via language, however imprecise that language may be. The problem arises when we seek communication rather than expression. Communication requires a shared experience. Or at least rough enough analogies to shared experience that each step in that walk can be followed by the listener. If we are unable to walk someone through a line of thinking, feeling, and experiencing concepts that are either foreign or biologically incomprehensible to them, then we cannot communicate with them. Because communication requires we recognize those shared experiences. One cannot experience what one cannot comprehend by at least analogies to the senses, and abstractions require complex coordination of the senses. The blind man can never understand color. Some of us can never, no mater how hard we try, understand — which means experience — certain categories of knowledge. We are color blind — actually concept blind — to them. I do not think things are inexpressible. They may be incommunicable. As incommunicable they may be untestable. And as us untestable we cannot be sure whether our expression is sufficiently articulate to convey the experience, or whether the recipient is sufficiently possessed of the senses with which to perceive the content of our expressions. (or in most cases, the short term memory required.)

    I do not think ideas are inexpressible if they are available to the senses of any individual. And I have found (adorno’s ramblings included) that the problem lies not in the idea, but in the insufficient labor that was put into articulating it as a series of experiences that the audience can follow — assuming they are able to. More often, (adorno included again) the incompetence at articulation is not a product of laziness, but of deception, erroneous perceptions of the physical world, erroneous concepts of human nature, and psychological avoidance. All of which are conducted abstractly out of complex analogies, because in that obscurity, they make it difficult to detect what our experience would convey to us as faulty. In adorno’s case, like many others, I suspect that the last case arises: it’s not that he doesn’t understand, not that he cannot articulate, not that we cannot perceive, but that we DISAGREE WITH HIS VALUE JUDGEMENTS if he rendered them in the language of common experience. A language which exists precisely because it is tested against the real world daily, and has been honed by trial and error over time to meet its current state.

    Therefore the questions to raise whenever someone states that something is inexpressible are:

    1) Do you understand its causal relations?

    2) Can you articulate those causal relations in terms of shared experiences (even if those experiences are simply formulae)?

    3) Do I lack those shared experiences? Am I capable of understanding those relations if you explain them? Or are you unable to articulate those relations? Which?

    4) If I am capable of understanding those relations, is the reward sufficient that I want to invest in learning those experiences and relations instead of some other set of relations and experiences?

    4) Do I agree that those causal relations correspond to reality if I can understand them?

    5) Do I agree with the value judgements expressed by those causal relations if I can understand them?

    In wittgenstein’s case, I kind of doubt that he was sure himself whether he understood. And I think later writers have stated as such. (That’s ok. It gave grad students something to do.) In Adorno’s case I think he was just creating a mess in order to advocate his ideas while avoiding unveiling the miscreant underlying his language. And he was a miscreant. (But then, maybe I’m wrong. I don’t understand Heidegger either. Because I lack empathy for his values and experience. And I do not see the value in obtaining the knowledge necessary to empathize with him, and therefore build a shared experience.) 🙂

    Sorry if that was too long, but I just wanted to walk through it and see what I came up with. [Autistic dialog off]

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-04 16:12:00 UTC

  • Caplan and Boettke On Wikipedia And The Economic Calculation Debate

    I haven’t read the wiki article on economic calculation before. But this subject is one on which I have spent ten years of work, and Caplan’s quote in the wiki as it’s written bothers me because it’s too easy to misinterpret. 1) Caplan’s argument is reducible to this statement: “between price signals for planning and incentives for coordination, the greater problem is the one of incentives.” The problem of incentives without prices manifests itself in a multitude of behaviors. That multitude of manifested behaviors renders a planned economy impossible. He has stated repeatedly that his criticism is one of subtle priority between incentives and prices. 2) The dispute between the priority of prices and incentives is an artificial distinction. Just as one cannot have a principle of voluntary transfer without the institution of property, one cannot have the institution of prices without human incentives. And prices have no meaning without incentives. The two concepts are inseparable. Incentives require choice, and prices are required to choose between multiple alternatives. Just as voluntary transfer has no meaning without property. While incentives can exist without prices — fear, want, belonging, security, barter and the like — they are limited to simple goods that we can use or consume ourselves. In and industrial economy those goods are abstractions that we cannot grasp the use of with our senses (specialty metals, chemicals, tools). They require special knowledge that one must have an incentive to acquire. So without prices, planning in an industrial economy consisting of factors of production that can be put to multiple purposes in real time, cannot be organized into any rational plan by the multitude of people required to produce any single good. (See I Pencil/I Hamburger). ergo: while the human mind can conceive of an artificially constant organization of individuals, resources and means of production once it is already known, and once individuals possess the appropriate knowledge — an industrial economy is impossible to FIGURE OUT and it is impossible to SUSTAIN without prices and the impact of those prices on incentives. Companies organize to create production all the time. They then have to reorganize in order to suit changes in the market that are signalled by prices of the factors of production AND their outputs. This last bit is important, because producers find a market price for their goods and services then alter their production processes (their cost structure) to satisfy market prices. Humans lack the information to make decisions, but decision making is only important given that they need to have incentives in order to perform the work. Mises doesn’t so much overstate his case, as he is simply more concerned about the problem of money and calculation given the events of his time. 3) The problem for any economy functioning in an equilibrium (competing with other economies) is that competition forces constant recalculation of the use of factors of production, and the organizations that such factors of production are used by. The problem for any economy dependent upon natural resources (food) as a means of production (feeding people), and where production requires time (seasons), is that nature does not adhere to plans and is subject to black swan effects (natural disasters). And it may be impossible to ‘re-plan’ in real time without irreparable effects (starvation) because of the lack of prices and incentives. 4) We might also put Caplan’s statement in context: GMU’s Austrian Economists are in an identity clash with the Rothbardians from the Mises institute. The rothbardians have appropriated the terms ‘libertarian’ and ‘austrian economics’ by adopting Alinsky’s marxist model of propagandizing. Because the Rothbardians have been so successful in doing so, this has caused the only university department in the USA that actively promotes Austrian theory, to defend its theory from ideological if not intellectual abuse, for market reasons. (I am not criticizing the rothbardians, just pointing out the motivations involved. All publicity is good publicity.) In effect Caplan is not commenting about Mises and his economics, he’s commenting about the Rothbardians and their political movement. 5) A paper by Boettke supposedly refutes Caplan. Accusing Caplan of not understanding the arguments Mises was making about Socialism. This is somewhat of a comedy of errors, because in his attempted refutation, Boettke makes that mistake, and Caplan does not. Caplan is not arguing against Misesian era socialism, and the stipulation by socialists that the problem of scarcity would be solved by state ownership of property. But he’s from a younger generation. He is arguing against his generation’s problems of social democracy (private ownership of property, public ownership of profits, which we call redistributive or progressive social democracy.) In this new context he’s saying that incentives matter more than prices, and that there is too much being made of the price issue, rather than the behavioral issue. He’s addressing current issues. In particular the Rothbardian over-emphasis on prices in relation to current socialistic arguments over maximum taxation, and the impact that such taxation would have on the economy. So Caplan’s critique stands to date. And if we were to ask Block, Herbner and Solerno, who wrote most of the papers on the subject, and all of which I have read repeatedly, they would say that the debate has closed. (I know. They’ve told me in person.) There is no meaningful difference between the price and incentive arguments. The importance of each has more to do with the emphasis needed to address each generation’s attempts to protect private property, because the two instantiations of socialistic behavior (socialism and democratic socialism) attempt to appropriate different aspects of property: the means of production by socialists, and the results of production by democratic socialists. Socialism failed because of the inability to both plan and provide incentives. Democratic socialism to some degree continues to survive because it allows (rental?) ownership of property which allows economic calculation and does not appropriate so much of the proceeds that we fail to have the incentive to work. (in most cases.) In fact, in the literature to date (and there is a great deal of it) economists on the left attempt to figure out how much more can be taxed without negative aggregate effects on the economy. They estimate it is much higher. 6) In Why I Am Not An Austrian Economist, Caplan makes the following material errors: a) That probability and uncertainty are the same thing. This is the [glossary:ludic fallacy]. (wiki Ludic Fallacy) And b) that we can predict highly disequlibrating events (black swans.) Or that models can accomodate for black swan effects. 7) Caplan is fundamentally wrong in his understanding of Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe, and Section 2, which attempts to articulate why the neoclassical economists are correct and why models are viable, is a confused set of prevarications I am surprised that has not been better refuted. I do not propose to do full justice here. But while I agreed with Caplan years ago, I have come to understand that he’s simply making excuses for using mathematical models where Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe were trying to discover human nature, so that a better system of government, if any, could be resolved. I don’t think Caplan’s critique is valuable any longer. I think the world has moved on. But at this point in my life I’m pretty sure I can dismantle his arguments as presented in WIANAAE, by demonstrating that Boettke’s argument that Caplan does not understand is actually true. 🙂 And I think Caplan’s later waffling only prove it. But I’m in the middle of a dozen other ideas that are more valuable. Hopefully it’ll be a nice bit of work for some grad student someday. So I’ll stick with my assertion that his arguments have political not material motives. That his single observation about the relationship between incentives and prices is true. That Boettke’s criticism is wrong. And that Caplan’s broader understanding of mises, rothbard, and hoppe are wrong. Everyone is conducting a research program. We’re just scratching the surface.

  • Baiting? See Saul Alinsky, Strategist Of The Proletarian Left

    I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting one of their tactics: baiting. But let’s see where those tactics comes from. Saul Alinsky. Our president’s hero. The western concept of political debate originated in the right of the enfranchised warrior to debate tactics in order to gain consensus on those tactics — since unlike eastern militaries, western tactics required individual initiative. The citizen warrior’s right was predicated on forgoing theft, fraud, and violence, and speaking the truth and only the truth in the process of that debate. If truth was abandoned, error was presumed, passons could be forgiven. But if RIDICULE was employed, then the prohibition on violence for the purpose of debate was forgone, and the ridiculed could fight and kill the man who broke the contract by which we put down our weapons and enter debate. While Marx and marxists were wrong in their understanding of the physical world, of human nature, and of economics, they could be counted upon to adhere to rational discourse and confine themselves to moral criticism. Saul Alinsky was one of the first people to strategically abandon the western principle of honest discourse and promote argumentative ‘the ends justify the means’. To those of us who are from the aristocratic manorial tradition, within which dishonesty, cowardice, or loose and libelous words are reason to end someone’s life, Alinsky’s tactics are a violation of every civic principle, and draw out our basic conservative instinct to kill threats to our hierarchy, social order, and group competitiveness. His strategy (from a lost link) is this: CREATE AN IDEOLOGICAL ARMY OPERATING ON EMOTIONAL ANTAGONISM NOT A PROGRAM OF RATIONAL SOLUTIONS THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO INTELLECTUALLY DEFEND ON THEIR OWN. Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals. Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand. SUN TZU: DECEPTION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN HONESTY Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do. SPEAK IN THE IGNORANT VOICE OF YOUR PEOPLE SO THEY FEEL THEY SPEAK THROUGH YOU Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat. Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. ARGUE FOR BLACK OR WHITE FALLACIES THAT FORCE THE CRITICISM OF YOUR OPPONENT BUT WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR PROPOSE SOLUTIONS Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.” AVOID REASON, IT WOULD ONLY EXPOSE YOUR LACK OF A SOLUTION OR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL REALITY. Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. THE LOWER CLASSES HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO DO, SO GIVE THEM AN EXCUSE TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES AND CELEBRATE A UNITED IDENTITY. SUCH RELIGIONS ARE OPIATES OF THE MASSES. Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.” A MEANINGFUL ARGUMENT IS OPEN TO CRITICISM AND REQUIRES INTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE SOLUTION. INSTEAD, MAINTAIN THE GROUP’S EMOTIONAL AND MORAL ANTAGONISM TOWARD YOUR OPPONENT AND AVOID THE SELF DOUBT THAT WOULD OCCUR IF THEY HAD TO BECOME INTROSPECTIVE. Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues. CONTROL THE INITIATIVE BUT PREVENTING YOUR OPPONENT FROM DETERMINING THAT YOU HAVE NO PROPOSED SOLUTION OTHER THAN THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER. THE RATIONAL MAN CNANOT UNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLISTIC A STRATEGY: OBTAIN POWER. ONCE YOU HAVE POWER YOUR ARGUMENTS DO NOT MATTER. POWER CAN BE OBTAINED THROUGH MORALIZING, CRITICISM AND DISTRACTION. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE OBTAINED BY SOLUTION, ARGUMENT OR REASON. THAT ONLY WEAKENS YOU. Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.” RELY ON TERRORISM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. CREATE FEAR BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR IS A GREATER THAN THE ACTUAL RESULT. PEOPLE WILL ABANDON MAORAL AND TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLES IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ENOUGH FOR THEM TO RESIST YOUR PURSUIT OF POWER. Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation. STICK WITH YOUR ATTACKS, NEVER OFFER SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD ExpOSE YOU TO CRITICISM Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?” DEMONIZE INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT ENGAGE IN REASON. DO NOT ENAGE IN FACTS. SIMPLY DEMONIZE AND RIDICULE THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS POLITICAL POWER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS WILL DIMINISH. Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame. CONTROL YOUR ENEMY’S RESPONSES TO YOU SO THAT HE BECOMES EMOTIONALLY RATHER THAN RATIONALLY ENGAGED AND LOSES HIS ONE REAL STRENGTH: RATIONAL SOLUTIONS. According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

  • ALINSKY – STRATEGIST OF THE LEFT I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting

    http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.htmlSAUL ALINSKY – STRATEGIST OF THE LEFT

    I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting one of the Left’s tactics. But let’s see where those tactics comes from. Saul Alinsky. Our president’s hero.

    The western concept of political debate originated in the right of the enfranchised warrior to debate tactics in order to gain consensus on those tactics — since unlike eastern militaries, western tactics required individual initiative. The citizen warrior’s right was predicated on forgoing theft, fraud, and violence, and speaking the truth and only the truth in the process of that debate. If truth was abandoned, error was presumed, passons could be forgiven. But if RIDICULE was employed, then the prohibition on violence for the purpose of debate was forgone, and the ridiculed could fight and kill the man who broke the contract by which we put down our weapons and enter debate.

    While Marx and marxists were wrong in their understanding of the physical world, of human nature, and of economics, they could be counted upon to adhere to rational discourse and confine themselves to moral criticism.

    Saul Alinsky was one of the first people to strategically abandon the western principle of honest discourse and promote argumentative ‘the ends justify the means’.

    To those of us who are from the aristocratic manorial tradition, within which dishonesty, cowardice, or loose and libelous words are reason to end someone’s life, Alinsky’s tactics are a violation of every civic principle, and draw out our basic conservative instinct to kill threats to our hierarchy, social order, and group competitiveness.

    His strategy (from a lost link) is this:

    CREATE AN IDEOLOGICAL ARMY OPERATING ON EMOTIONAL ANTAGONISM NOT A PROGRAM OF RATIONAL SOLUTIONS THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO INTELLECTUALLY DEFEND ON THEIR OWN.

    Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.

    Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.

    SUN TZU: DECEPTION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN HONESTY

    Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

    SPEAK IN THE IGNORANT VOICE OF YOUR PEOPLE SO THEY FEEL THEY SPEAK THROUGH YOU

    Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.

    The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

    Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

    ARGUE FOR BLACK OR WHITE FALLACIES THAT FORCE THE CRITICISM OF YOUR OPPONENT BUT WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR PROPOSE SOLUTIONS

    Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

    AVOID REASON, IT WOULD ONLY EXPOSE YOUR LACK OF A SOLUTION OR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL REALITY.

    Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

    THE LOWER CLASSES HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO DO, SO GIVE THEM AN EXCUSE TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES AND CELEBRATE A UNITED IDENTITY. SUCH RELIGIONS ARE OPIATES OF THE MASSES.

    Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

    A MEANINGFUL ARGUMENT IS OPEN TO CRITICISM AND REQUIRES INTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE SOLUTION. INSTEAD, MAINTAIN THE GROUP’S EMOTIONAL AND MORAL ANTAGONISM TOWARD YOUR OPPONENT AND AVOID THE SELF DOUBT THAT WOULD OCCUR IF THEY HAD TO BECOME INTROSPECTIVE.

    Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

    CONTROL THE INITIATIVE BUT PREVENTING YOUR OPPONENT FROM DETERMINING THAT YOU HAVE NO PROPOSED SOLUTION OTHER THAN THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER. THE RATIONAL MAN CNANOT UNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLISTIC A STRATEGY: OBTAIN POWER. ONCE YOU HAVE POWER YOUR ARGUMENTS DO NOT MATTER. POWER CAN BE OBTAINED THROUGH MORALIZING, CRITICISM AND DISTRACTION. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE OBTAINED BY SOLUTION, ARGUMENT OR REASON. THAT ONLY WEAKENS YOU.

    Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”

    RELY ON TERRORISM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. CREATE FEAR BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR IS A GREATER THAN THE ACTUAL RESULT. PEOPLE WILL ABANDON MAORAL AND TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLES IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ENOUGH FOR THEM TO RESIST YOUR PURSUIT OF POWER.

    Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.

    STICK WITH YOUR ATTACKS, NEVER OFFER SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD ExpOSE YOU TO CRITICISM

    Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”

    DEMONIZE INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT ENGAGE IN REASON. DO NOT ENAGE IN FACTS. SIMPLY DEMONIZE AND RIDICULE THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS POLITICAL POWER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS WILL DIMINISH.

    Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

    CONTROL YOUR ENEMY’S RESPONSES TO YOU SO THAT HE BECOMES EMOTIONALLY RATHER THAN RATIONALLY ENGAGED AND LOSES HIS ONE REAL STRENGTH: RATIONAL SOLUTIONS.

    According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

    AS AN ADDENDUM

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-02 18:02:00 UTC

  • Defending Hans Hermann Hoppe On Immigration

    I have to defend Hoppe a lot less frequently these days from passionate critics who don’t understand him, but here is another one. I don’t think I do a very good job really. But I get the discussion started.

    By Garry Ladouceur:

     THIS IS WHAT THIS ACADEMIC HAS TO SAY ABOUT IMMIGRATION-HE IS OF COURSE A MADMAN.

    First, with the establishment of a state and territorially defined state borders, “immigration” takes on an entirely new meaning. In a natural order, immigration is a person’s migration from one neighborhood-community into a different one (micro-migration).

    Is Garry saying that neighborhoods consisting of parcels of private property, or which consist of domicilies that are collectively ‘owned’ by shareholders (a defined community) as a ‘commons’ are a natural order without the existence of a “state”, or without the tribal equivalent that consists of a headman and a few warriors who have been arguably as defensive of resources and norms or more so than states? Where does Gary get his concept of ‘natural order” Is he making the fallacy of primitivism? The noble savage fallacy?

    In contrast, under statist conditions immigration is immigration by “foreigners” from across state borders, and the decision whom to exclude or include, and under what conditions, rests not with a multitude of independent private property owners or neighborhoods of owners but with a single central (and centralizing) state-government as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic residents and their properties (macro-migration).

    Is Gary saying that the state behaves differently than do the tribesman? Because we don’t have much evidence of that. Another mouth to feed is another mouth to feed, and an immigrant’s mouth to feed is not a member of our gene pool to which we have filial instincts.

    If a domestic resident-owner invites a person and arranges for his access onto the resident-owner’s property but the government ex- cludes this person from the state territory,it is a case of forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist in a natural order). On the other hand, if the government admits a person while there is no domestic resident-owner who has invited this person onto his property, it is a case of forced integration (also non-existent in a natural order, where all movement is invited).

    This argument limits the determination of just action to the act of movement, not to involuntary transfers, or their effects on supposed commons. So it’s just false on it’s premise. Groups encourage transport and trade. They always have, regardless of political construct. What they discourage is appropriation of the ‘commons’, and most importantly the disruption of the commons that we call ‘norms’. Norms are highly expensive. More so than property. And we protect them voraciously by instinct.

    Firstly, Hoppe has migrated endlessly.  This means that he is not honest.  I find him a liar.  That is not a good start to developing a teacher taught relationship.  

    Secondly, He is German of the Austrian school.  He speaks of natural order.  He is of course a fascist as well.  He does not speak to the favourite form of immigration in Europe and Europe to elsewhere which is at the point of a bayonet. So in other words he is dishonest.  

    You simply do not understand what Hoppe is saying.

    Hoppe atttempts (and some of us think he has succeeded) in deducing a means of making political judgments by relying upon the single principle of property rights. Property rights are dependent on the principles of avoiding fraud and theft, and prohibiting involuntary transfers. All that’s going on here, like most people who criticize Hoppe, is that you don’t know all the types of involuntary transfer (theft) you advocate with your beliefs. Hoppe has tried make all those ‘thefts’ and acts of violence visible. A Few Definitions:

    Order : any system of human cooperation (avoiding theft fraud and violence) that avoids chaos (pervasive theft fraud and violence).

    Natural Order = natural rotation of elites by voluntary exchange in the market, rather than by military force or political force. (Oversimplified).

    Immigration vs Migration. migration is what occurs whenever a person transfers geographic location without fraud, theft or violence. Immigration is what happens when they PAY for migration. When people immigrate without PAYING for that immigration they are committing an act of theft, fraud or violence.

    Citizenship mens you have obtained membership in an ORDER by avoiding theft fraud and violence, and that you maintain your membership in that order by forgoing theft, fraud and violence.

    Any forcible transfer by a government from ont or more people to one or more people is an involuntary transfer under the treat of violence. Any contractual transfer between people in mutual exchange is a voluntary transfer, and therefore not an act of theft, fraud or violence.

    Hoppe is arguing that open immigration is incompatible with a welfare state because it causes theft from the existing tax payers to the immigrant. This argument is pretty hard to defeat.

    Your only defense is that you have the right, by some divine authority, to determine who can be solen from under the threat of violence in order to give to someone else — which is an act in which you profit by not having to satisfy your wants with your own resources.

    Hoppe would argue that we can have as many voluntary little ‘countries’ that we want, and that rednecks and racists, and homophobes, and every feminist, separatist anad whatever advocacy one has should exist voluntarily without conducting transfers from people who disagree with that.

    In other words, there is no moral argument for stealing from people to give to other people.

    I suspect from your emotionally loaded posting that analytical philosophy is not something you have exposure to. It requires that we make a long series of testable statements. Hoppe uses that language. It is not the simple moralistic language of the public intellectual or the common person. Which is why he is poorly understood.

    One of the reasons people dislike him is that he has put forth arguments that are very difficult to dismiss. Both he and rothbard may START from different positions ( evolutionary necessity and natural law respectively.) Since they produced their works, we have improved our understanding of economics, psychology (jonathan haidt), political history (Fukuyama on one end and North on the other). And people like me have attempted to reduce their original premises to something more scientifically mandated.

    You might not understand that Hoppe started out as a marxist and through his work adopted his current position. His first major work was written on socialism and in that work he shows how it is logically impossible. (As does mises on one end, and hayek on another — although hoppe opposes hayek.)

    Hopefully I’ve helped you with Hoppe. (Although I kind of doubt you care.)

    Also, please define “facist”. One cannot be a ‘fascist’ without a state. So how, if he rejects the state can he be a fascist?

    I will happily debate you on Hoppe to your heart’s content. And I know him quite well and he does not mitigate. Ever.

    Curt

  • Matt Bruenig Uses Advanced Name Calling (Framing) Against Conservatives

    Matt has used liberal framing to categorize three different conservative argumentative techniques. Effectively, it’s an elaborate game of name calling. And nothing more. Instead, he ignores all of history, all of the development of thought in philosophy, law, and government in order to reduce his argument to one of simplistic ideology and emotions. Which makes no sense, in particular, because conservatives if anything, are driven by history and use it in daily life — rather than relying on liberal’s primitive animalistic liberal approval and disapproval cues. The dispute between conservatives and liberals can be summarized in this quote from Matt:

    The only reason someone does not have enough money to support a child is because of government policies to enact a certain kind of economy. You have to first argue why those policies should be the policies we choose. You never do that. You just assume that the default policy set is a marginal productivity policy set. But that’s not the default set. It is 1 among 100 other policy sets. You still fail to put forward an argument for that set.

    Thats the whole problem isn’t it? But a) CAN an economy accomplish this (Looks like no. Not over more than a few generations.) b) Will a society capable of doing so persist (looks like no, and it also looks like the reason that all other urbanized civilizations have died) c) therefore why should those of us who are productive support the breeding of those who are unproductive? It’s a simple question. Why is it that one person has more right to bear children than another person has the right to consume the product of his efforts? This is the fundamental problem between the frameworks. There is no other point of reasoning. And any other approach is dishonest. Especially ‘name calling’. HERE IS OUR THREAD His full article is included at the bottom of this post. (With a few other comments from others thrown in.) A desert is a place without water, and lots of sand. A dessert is a thing you eat after dinner. 🙂 Your ‘just desserts’ are what you achieve based upon your character and your labor. Conservatives seeks to concentrate capital in the hands of those who will best innovate with it. Since innovation is the source of all prosperity, because innovation causes the decrease in prices, and innovation requires the concentration of capital behind those best demonstrably able to innovate. The argument is that less able, more impulsive, more hedonistic people have higher (shorter) time preferences, and are unable or unwilling to delay gratification in order to achieve what conservatives have achieved. Why should a conservative do without, when he had to sacrifice to get something? Why should some people work harder and longer with more discipline than others if only to have to give it away? The competing arguments are that instead of superior ability and discipline, conservatives have superior advantages. The problem is producing some data that supports it. If instead, you want to say that we must accomodate the inferior, then the exchange must be that the inferior should not be allowed to breed in exchange for redistribution. Why should you have what another person has? Why should he do with less, and have less to experiment with, because the proles feel privileged to reproduce like cockroaches? It’s not a complicated argument. all a conservative asks, is ‘what will you give me in exchange’. A progressive asks is ‘give it to me without anything in exchange.’ We have made it culturally impolitic to state the inferiority of proletarians. But that does not mean we actually believe they are equal. Property is the only means by which we can have liberty. And liberty is incompatible with equality. Because we are marginally indifferent. We are unequal in ability. And for every 15 points of IQ we are dramatically unequal in ability in the modern world. The superior are practically superior in every way, and as such, the produce more, and are of more value to society than the inferiors. That we should have charity to the inferiors is not a question. The question is why we permit them to breed if they cannot support themselves. Why should we sacrifice so that others can fulfill their wants without compensation in return? FOLLOWED BY In the end. The point I am making is that you’re correctly articulating EMOTIONAL REACTIONARY arguments but not the CAUSAL arguments that give rise to them. And I’m supplying them: Conservatism is a reaction to the status quo. The status quo conservatives feel affectation for is the aristocratic manorial system with classical liberal institutions. It is an agrarian system where there is little difference between most people that are not reducible to behavioral traits. It may or may not be applicable to the industrial era. We do not know. I have very little confidence in the progressive social democratic model (redistributive socialism) because a comparative analysis of world institutions across history demonstrates the uniqueness of the western model, and the unique ability of the western model to produce innovations that improve the quality of life of all human beings. The problem is, that that western model also includes an implicitly eugenic system. And I am not sure that we shouldn’t consider it carefully. Even if it offends our sensibilities. THe world contains a finite set of resources after all. And our defeat of malthusian forces is a product of harnessing fossile fuels, not a product of our intellect.

    I will take your second sentence to mean that I am correctly explaining what conservative philosophical frameworks actually say, but that you think there are other motivations beside the intellectual ones conservatives provide. My post is not trying to talk about what actually motivates conservatives. I know for instance, many self-identified conservatives are secretly (or not so secretly) motivated by racism for instance. Nonetheless, these are the intellectual arguments they put forward. – Matt

    (actually they’re a liberal FRAMING of the arguments put forward.) Well, technically I’m saying you’re correctly categorizing three types of conservative arguments, but creating your own labels (framing) in order to obscure the underlying aristocratic (conservative) theory so that you can demonize it as an emotional and selfish rather than rational and social construct, and then claim that you’ve provided an insight simply by failing to use established terms. In other words you’re employing a ‘shifty argument’. Those three categories have been historically discussed in the literature as: 1) Market Competition — instead of political competition 2) Rule of Law (evolving through common law) — rather than rule by political decree, 3) Meritocracy: Meritocratic Service Of Society Through The Voluntary Market — rather than political corruption by political decree. You’re missing four more categories of argument: 4) Balance of Powers (competition between houses of government), and balance between ethical institutions (the church which teaches manners, ethics, morals and myths) and property institutions (the state which adjudicates disputes and ‘discovers’ laws ). 5) Institutional Balance of Class Powers (multiple houses as in the British and pre 1911 US model that allow classes to cooperate) (We artificially call this ‘enfranchisement’ or ‘suffrage’ today.) 6) Social innovation by adopting demonstrated success rather than political experimentation that externalizes failure. (ie: conservatism is scientific) 7) Property is an individual possession which we grant to the government to wisely use for the common good, versus property is communal and ‘lent out’ for utilitarian purposes to individuals for use in achieving the common good. 8) The nuclear family which creates the smallest possible collaborative economic unit for the purpose of raising children, while at the same time undermining both tribal and extended family ties and inbreeding. — (I missed this one, so it’s included here only as reference for the future.) The conservative does not abandon the poor. He just does not support failure. We all need insurance. We do not need to support living an impulsive life at others expense. We understand that there are material differences in intellectual, emotional, and physical ability. And that all people should be protected from suffering through charity. But that does not mean we should desire equality of outcomes – in fact, that would be a perverse incentive. It is true that conservatives like progressives resort to nonsense arguments. But there is nothing virtuous about either party in that regard. It might be argued that conservatives have been right about all the big questions since Burke invented Conservatism in response to the horrors and bloodshed of the French Revolution. It can also be argued that the privileged hide behind conservatism (slavery) when it suits them. But there is no way of arguing that the entire socialistic program was based upon faulty concepts of man and economics and have been relegated to the dustbin of history. We are once again are proving conservatives right – that we are in the early stages of the abandonment of the ponzi scheme of the european welfare state. Just as conservatives have warned. Humans under capitalism do not breed in an ever expanding intergenerational pyramid. So, no I do not think you’re honestly or correctly positioning the conservative argument. I think you’re conducting a dishonest argument through typical progressive framing. Nothing more.

    Well done, Curt, you have revealed all conservatives as cold hearted Darwinists. You fool! That wasn’t to be revealed until NEXT DECADE! Seriously, though, Doolittle has DONE little other than feed a false stereotype. This makes me immediately suspicious of where his (if it is even a male) true intentions. The basic difference between conservatives and liberals involves immediate gratification, and is an emotion versus logic argument, which is why it will never end, but also never be resolved. – RTP

    ?? I’m all over the internet. I use my real name. I belong to two (three) libertarian organizations. I don’t hide or cower. Just use Google for goodness sake. BTW: Aside from using an ad hominem, you are using amateurish language in your posting. The technical terminology in economics is “Time Preference”. The behavioral terminology is “Impulsiveness” or “impulsivity”. The psychological terminology is Gratification -delayed or instantaneous”. For background see Banfield’s “The Unheavenly City” and “The Unheavenly City Revisited”. See Fussell’s “Class” for fun. Banfield was the first (I think) to demonstrate that the urban poor were poor because they have a higher (shorter) time preference. We have since learned that they also have lower IQ’s. And conservatives have said for centuries, that the purpose of civic virtues is to compensate for lower IQ’s and to train the impulsive to have longer (lower) time preferences. We can see that the lower classes are abandoning the civic virtues. (Murray) We can see that not only have physical labors (farming) but now manufacturing and construction are disappearing as reliable means of obtaining an income, and that the lower classes are unable to learn the abstract tools and concepts which in turn is leading to the concentration of wealth in the more intelligent and better educated. We can see that as women enter the work force they are breeding less. We can see that the upper classes are forming a caste. And that the lower classes are forming at least one if not two castes. The question is, what are we going to do about it? We can adopt the conservative strategy and encourage the impulsive to adopt virtues. Or we can adopt the progressive strategy to subsidize the impulsive and their overbreeding. (As the british have done.) One way we end up with a communal society. the other way we end up with castes.

    Adam S. i enjoyed this post and then Curt’s comment was the masterstroke that made me love the internet all over again

    Thanks adam. Although I will tell you that most conservative intellectuals do not play on blogs. They look for positions in think tanks and magazines (and conservatism is not a verbal system anyway). But my feeling is that magazines preach to the choir, and most conservative arguments are sentimental rather than rational. So I want to fix that. In any way that I can. And blogs are a good way to try. Cheers.

    I have been a social worker for 20 yrs. and can tell you not only from my clients and training but also from growing up in poverty – the dependency argument is false and only applies to the middle class, rich and the corporate world who receive many more and undeserved entitlements. – Maria

    I don’t think the question is whether we need safety nets as a means of insuring each other against accidents. I think the question is whether you FEEL people have a right to breed children that they cannot afford to support. There is no good reason we need more children in this world. So you FEEL people have that right, then that’s OK. But your feeling ends when someone else’s pocketbook becomes involved.

    Of course the only fly in the ointment with your argument is that the proletarians produce everything. A proletarian drilled the oil to make the plastic that another proletarian made into the keyboard that that was delivered to your house by another proletarian that allowed you to type out this great admission of ignorance that you produced a week ago. The car you drive, the sidewalks you walk upon, the planes you fly in… all are produced by the working class. You don’t have a clue of a clue. As far as equality goes the American founders placed it right alongside of liberty. Not because they thought all people had equal abilities but because all people, in order to have liberty, must be equals in the eyes of the law and the government that is based upon those laws. The billionaire and the street person, when dealing with the government must be treated equally, using the same rules and same procedures. In order to guarantee liberty the State has to be an impartial arbiter of justice, ignoring class, ignoring the inequality of achievement of individuals and dispensing justice equally to the rich and poor. – fishskicanoe

    RE: Proletarians produce everything. But this isn’t true is it? Look at world unemployment. Even in this recession, unemployment is almost an entirely proletarian problem. Overpopulation. Energy consumption. Pollution. Peak oil. Social security. These are all proletarian problems. The upper classes (middle and up) are barely replacing themselves.

    We all know this is what conservatives are thinking but its a tactical error to come out and say it! I will be using your comment to illustrate the real beliefs of conservatives to the people I know who support right wing parties. – GM

    It’s not a tactical error. It’s the truth. If you tell conservatives that the reason the aristocratic social model succeeded in producing the world we live in in part because it suppressed the birth rates of the lower classes and increased average IQ by doing so, and they’re offended by that, then you have a convert. I mean, do we all wnat to argue in pseudo moralistic nonsensical terms forever? Or do we want to find a way to solve the issue? All political differences come down to this one problem: the difference in male and female mating strategies, and the different social orders that the two strategies would favor compared to the OUTCOMES of the two strategies, and which OUTCOMES we would favor. So, why is it that a woman has the right to bear children she cannot support, and afford to educate? I think the world would be better off if we had honest discourse.

    They cannot support their children because they do not have high enough incomes to do so. Why not? You say because they are not productive enough. Even if we somehow pretend that people are paid according to their marginal productivity, the whole line of analysis is still question-begging. There is no fundamental rule of the universe that individual compensation must be what their productivity is. A system that distributes income on that basis is one invented by government policies. That still leaves the question then: Why adopt Policy Set X (that distributes income according to productivity) over Policy Set Y? An intentional decision was made to implement one set of policies over another. The dispute is about which policy set to enact. All of your analysis proceeds on the question-begging assumption that Policy Set X is somehow the way things have to be. But they don’t. Your job is to actually give a justification for Policy Set X, not to just assume it exists and then talk about some of the impacts of it (for instance, that it creates such poverty among large swaths of the population that they do not have enough money to raise their kids). That is a consequence of the decision to pick Policy Set X over Policy Set Y. It is not a consequence of the nature of the universe, but of government policy selection. You still need to make an argument *for* Policy Set X if you want to avoid question-begging. – Matt Bruenig

    They cannot support their children because they are not productive enough to support their children. I do not need to make an argument why people are paid anything. The market proves it. People are paid for their value to others. I’ve articulated the causal difference. That is, that conservatives want a meritocratic society based on performance and progressives want a society that is not. It’s not complicated. OPENING POSTING: Matt. I did not see these replies until running through my Google alerts today. So I apologize for the delayed response. 1) The conservative sentiment (it’s only a sentiment as it is poorly articulated, even by Kirk or Oakeshott) is in support of the aristocratic social order reinforced by the classical liberal institutional model. I am simply explaining that causal relation. 2) In the second paragraph you mention, I’m articulating it in utilitarian rather than moral language. But that utilitarianism is in effect the strategy embedded in the aristocratic model. 3) The solution I’m suggesting is to ask for exchanges, rather than become either reticent, or the victim of encroaching totalitarianism. We must ask for retention of freedoms in exchange for redistribution. I do not know why that is controversial. 4) Whether you agree that the underclasses should trade something in exchange for breeding children that they cannot support is simply a choice. Under the manorial system only the fit could obtain access to land. Without access to land, one could not produce, without production, one could not obtain a wife, without a wife, one could not breed (easily). The entire western cultural corpus is based upon this one unstated but obvious necessity: the need to obtain productive resources, to demonstrate your character in order to obtain them, and late marriage that allowed women to participate in the work force. (More than that. but that will do.) So, I am simply applying the concepts that were the source of our traditions to the current time period, and and articulating those concepts in current terms. CONSERVATISM IS BY DEFINITION SOCIAL DARWINISM in the sense that it is behaviorally meritocratic and genetically meritocratic. (Albiet the market is a lottery and it must be in order to function.) The weather and starvation now do not accomplish what they have in ages past. The point we have to deal with is that under the manorial system we have improved the ‘human capital’ both in classical and medieval times. Since 1850 it looks like we have reduced average european IQ by 5 points. In other words, we’ve taken european descendants from rough parity to ashkenazim and asians to 1/3 of a standard deviation lower. And why does this matter? It matters because the norms it is possible to instill in a population, and therefore the institutions it is possible for a population to operate under, are governed by the distribution of (verbal) IQ in a population. SO if you want your freedom, you have to respect certain realities – physical laws so to speak. Nothing I’ve said here hasn’t been said before in one way or another. The problem is that we are still plagued by the Nazi memory instead of looking at the problem rationally. I do not particularly care which solution we choose. I would prefer that we broke the country up into smaller nations with more similar cultural interests and continued with the american experiment. But as a historian of aristocratic philosophy, I’m articulating in clearer language, WHY conservatives have these ideas — because they are a the habituated remnants of an historical strategy that was eminently successful compared to the three other global traditions. And furthermore, I’m articulating the concepts in conservatism as a defense by the upper classes against the lower classes. I’m acknowledging that societies are bi-modal, and I”m acknowledging that the two cultures that produced the industrial revolution (greece and england) were both aristocratic manorial cultures with a competition between multiple institutions rather than a central government. And that is the secret to the west: the manorial system, competition, and a balance of powers. The fact that this system is NOT dysgenic may be an accident. But it worked. Knowing that all other models have failed. What does one do? MATT’S ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY POSTED HERE FOR REFERENCE

    The three big conservative philosophical frameworks by MATT BRUENIG on DECEMBER 20, 2011 · in PHILOSOPHY

    The three big conservative philosophical frameworks
    Conservatives are pretty shifty in arguments. One moment they appear to be concerned about the poor and how taxes will ultimately hurt them and kill their jobs. The other moment they seem to think the poor don’t deserve anything anyways. Most folks — no matter their political leanings — do not consciously think about the philosophical frameworks that the justifications for their opinions tend to fall in. Although rigid frameworks are probably a bit reductive, they can be useful tools to understand what exactly people are saying. The following three conservative philosophical frameworks can account for almost all of the conservative rhetoric and arguments out there these days. I offer them here to hopefully help those who want to understand and better analyze conservative justifications. Utilitarianism Utilitarian arguments used to be much more prominent among conservative political thinkers. Economists especially relied upon the idea of subjective utility and growth to argue that unrestrained free markets were the way to go. The way this argument works is probably familiar to most. Because low-tax, low-regulation markets generate economic growth while allowing individuals to choose for themselves what to purchase, utility is supposed to be ultimately maximized by conservative economic policies. Milton Friedman, probably the most famous libertarian of the 20th century, was the most prominent advocate of this way of thinking. When asked whether redistribution should be pursued, Friedman’s response was almost never about who deserved what income or the violence of taxation; instead, it was about how taxing the rich would ultimately hurt the poor, undermining the whole purpose of the project. The closest resemblance to this kind of reasoning these days has to be the right-wing rhetoric surrounding “job creators.” Doing anything mildly redistributive through the government is claimed to reduce overall employment, thus hurting the poor. There is a lot to be said in response to this kind of viewpoint, and obviously I am not very moved by it. But for the purpose of this post, just note how the argument works. The problem with moves towards redistribution is not so much that it takes from the productive and gives to the parasites or that the process of redistributive taxation is intolerably forceful or aggressive. Instead, the problem is that it will reduce utility because of the negative economic impacts that follow. While this framework is still around of course, conservatives — especially younger conservatives — have shifted away from it and towards other other philosophical approaches. It has its obvious flaws. The most glaring flaw is that comparatively speaking, strong social democratic countries appear to have generated the best overall utility of any political system implemented thus far. They serve as an empirical check on the idea that redistributive taxes and well-run universal state services are a drag on overall welfare. There are also of course more theoretical objections to the idea that redistribution is always somehow utility-destroying. After all, taking a dollar from a rich person and giving it to a poor person should almost always increase overall utility if done efficiently. Procedural Justice Conservatives who are a bit scared of making the utility argument — as they should be because it is probably the weakest one they have — often fall back on a procedural justice framework to justify their viewpoint. Procedural justice theories rely on the idea that a just economy and political system is one that follows just processes. So long as just processes are followed, whatever outcome that results is necessarily just. The conservative/libertarian thinkers most prominent in this camp are Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, and the super-bizarre internet sensation Stefan Molyneux. The conservative procedural justice account can get pretty complicated at times, but most have probably run into the basic elements of it from time to time. The account emphasizes free exchange, free association, and voluntary agreements. Advocates of it drone on about self-ownership and non-aggression, two qualities that they think libertarian economic processes possess. When someone complains about their terribly low wages and work conditions, these are the guys who retort back “but you voluntarily agreed to work there didn’t you?” Taxation is called theft, aggression, and slavery because it is not consented to. I think this account is probably the strangest one, mainly because as far as I can tell the 19th century anarchist philosophers successfully beat back all the libertarian procedural justice arguments that are now popping back up again. But without getting too involved in that whole discussion, I just hope here to emphasize the way the framework works. The procedural justice position is not concerned with utility and it is not concerned even with giving people what they deserve necessarily. It is only concerned with following just processes even if those processes result in widespread misery. Desert Theory Desert theory has to be the most American of the conservative political theories. It is at the root of the ideology of the American Dream. According to desert theory, we want to design the economy and political apparatus in a way that gives people what they deserve. What do they deserve? Well, conservative constructions of desert theory are generally based upon productivity: you should be paid equivalent to the amount of value you add to the economy. The most famous proponent of desert theory among American conservatives is of course Ayn Rand. In her philosophy, the super-rich basically make everything in the world and they deserve everything they get and probably even more. Paul Ryan, the much-praised House Republican from Wisconsin, is reported to be a huge fan of Rand’s work, possibly explaining his atrocious budget plan which was clearly Rand-inspired. The problems with this approach are numerous and the word “privilege” probably goes the furthest in counteracting this idea. One’s race, class, gender, family, and all sorts of other non-meritocratic things have enormous impacts on how well one does in life. Once this is conceded, the whole desert theory approach becomes very vacuous very fast. Nonetheless, the framework persists in one form or another. When people talk about welfare mothers living off the dole, they typically have in mind some sort of desert theory of justice. When they talk about how rich people work hard and how poor people are lazy, they typically have in mind a desert theory of justice. On the desert view, our aim should be giving people what they deserve from their hard work, not maximizing utility or necessarily following just processes. Conclusion As far as I can tell, these three frameworks encompass about 99% of what comes out of the mouths of conservatives in one form or another. Either they are concerned about utility, just processes, or just desert. Often of course, they jump from one to the other right in the middle of a discussion if they find themselves pinned down. But, now that you know these frameworks, you can at least identify when those jumps are happening and begin to better understand what exactly the conservatives are trying to get across when they argue.