Curt Doolittle

Form: Full Essay

  • Steve Doll provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major s

    Steve Doll provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major schools of economic thought, and the class and cultural biases that they position as ‘scientific’ but which are really just cherry picking favorite ‘goods’.

    The schools of thought roughly correspond to class philosophies, just as all philosophies consist of class philosophies. And they describe a spectrum of increasing discretion from rule of law, to discretionary rule, to arbitrary rule.

    * The **Rule of Law School** (not rule *BY* law, but rule *OF *law of reciprocity) (Conservative Constitutional – Where the constitution merely codifies the natural law of reciprocity so that it cannot be violated) is the Conservative (Anglo-Saxon). Meaning the rules of the game are the same for all, and attempts to build optimum normative COMMONS. Rather than increase consumption.

    * The **Discretionary Rule School **(Chicago/Freshwater/classical liberal/Pragmatic/Libertarian) attempted to find means of insuring against shocks with the minimum interference in rule of law (and therefore planning).

    * The **Arbitrary Rule School** (New York/Freshwater/Left-Social Democrat/Authoritarian) seeks the maximum consumption possible without collapsing the market, and has no interest whatsoever in rule of law.

    Economics can easily be used to justify “you get what you measure”, and there to advocate what you measure, and ignore or deride what you do not. And the 20th century will be seen (as Hayek predicted) as a period of social pseudoscience (the used the term ‘mysticism’) because of what some of us term ‘innumeracy’ or “pseudo-rationalism”, if not outright deception.

    I think Steve’s broader point is made, but I don’t think it accounts for the following:

    * While it’s true that money is neutral, and all prices equilibrate over time. And that all benefits of the increases in minimum wages equilibrate over time. This is not necessarily true however, since an increase in minimum wages functions just like an increase in taxation – it affects everyone equally. Prices increase, and at least for some period of time, as the price increase works through the economy, the gains are real.

    * The public assumes that the increase comes out of owner’s pockets, but it comes out of increasing prices to customers. Which again, is a trade off between businesses and consumers of the goods of those businesses able to adjust prices. (My hometown of Seattle is still working through its experiment, and the data so far is mixed both directions.)

    * That the issue at hand is that it creates separate and divisive classes. Now, minimum wages can be used to intentionally create separate classes so that there is a clear line between those requiring subsidy (dependency upon the citizenry for support), and those who are self sufficient. Which decreases demand for universal redistribution and concentrates it. This has some benefit in that it tends to remove the underclasses from the job pool (as we see in Denmark). So that the man selling you tickets at the train station is competent, civil, and literate. As far as I know these are the only arguments we can make.

    * That minimum wage increases demand for family run businesses at the low end to skirt minimum wages and this tends to increase the number of ‘artificially small’ businesses that plague most of the world. The first world latin countries are notorious for having followed these policies and created two economies. the third world cannot produce organizations of scale for these reasons. And the social, economic, and political consequences of providing nepotistic rather than meritocratic organizations are profound.

    * That these small businesses, (as we see with asian-immigrant businesses in particular) because they incentivize nepotistic business, **skirt both minimum wage laws and taxes** (why they don’t accept credit cards).

    * That it** raises the cost of entry** into the market for businesses at the low end, and decreases the development of the primary means of obtaining financial independence: small business entrepreneurship. And worse, that small business entrepreneurs carry a disproportionate amount of the country’s economic risk – for which they are not compensated in tax leniency.

    * That it **lowers the rate of rotation** of people out of minimum wage jobs – the purpose of which is nothing other than to train entrants to participate in the economy. Minimum wage jobs function as paid apprenticeships, where in most of history, apprenticeship functioned as very near indentured servitude.

    * That while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands, **it’s distortive to prices,** and contrary to public moral and political intuition, we would be far better off with direct monetary redistribution than minimum wage increases – and that we are simply technologically backward in forcing businesses to act as agents.

    * that while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands – albeit with negative consequence – but that there is equal evidence that raising the minimum wage such that entry level (unskilled labor) is no longer a paid apprenticeship, that because the lifetime window for entry into the job market is fairly short, that we **create permanently unemployable classes**, and the economic, political, and social consequences of creating permanently unemployable classes. In america, as is the human standard, we have about three percent of the population that is unemployable because they are psychologically intolerable. We have an offensive percent of the population that consists of ex-convicts, we have imported a vast number of third worlders who caused employment displacement at the bottom (youth) and top (older citizens). This increases poverty among the young and old.

    * there is equal evidence that we **create hazards with profound external consequences (longer term costs) **in that we provide malincentives to immigrate, and each underclass person we immigrate plus the inflation necessary to create the illusion of employment, plus the capture in taxes of all wealth created by the addition of women to the workforce, plus the destruction of the family and expansion of households, explains where all our productivity has gone: to the subsidy of that which is bad for us. (Northern europe was eugenic for over a thousand years, and the church created dead capital everywhere. So when we imported northern europeans we were importing dead capital and putting it into motion. When we bring in the third world we are not bringing in capital that can be put into motion, but sunk normative political and economic costs. We have gone from importing middle classes (protestants), to importing working classes (catholics), to importing underclasses (third worlders).

    That you get more of whatever you subsidize, and each school seeks to subsidize what they consider a good.

    **Conservative** – Families, Virtues, Commons, Excellences),

    **Libertarian/Classical Liberal** – Opportunities and Insurance.

    **Leftist/Socialist/Social Democrat** – Consumption.

    But we get more of whatever it is we solve for, which is whatever we measure, which includes the externalities we do not solve for. The only ‘honest’ left economist I’ve found is Karl Smith, and his (correct) presumption is that we are all gambling on futures. The conservatives gamble against risk and pushing costs down the timeline. The left gambles in favor of opportunity and to push costs down the timeline. And the Libertarian/Classical Liberal seeks to gamble only with what we can be sure we will obtain returns upon, without externalizing costs to the future.

    At present, all of this is lost both inside the discipline, and outside of it. And the vox populi are just confused. As far as I know, the conservatives and classicals are right, and the left is the worst thing to happen to humanity since marx, who was the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Abrahamic counter-enlightenment.

    You get what you measure, and cherry picking consumption is just pseudoscience, if not outright fraud.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    **Commentary**

    If you haven’t been to France, outside of the center of Paris (like Vienna) where the very rich live, the Isle de’ France, is a donut shaped slum twenty miles across. Just like Los Angeles is largely a seventy mile long slum. Many french cities are as collapsed as Hartford, Baltimore, Detroit, St Louis, and Oakland – and europeans are much poorer in discretionary spending than we are in the first place – and it is spreading to Germany.

    Our world is much larger (more populous) and economically diverse than the ancient world. So while the bronze age collapse ended all of the first generation of civilizations, and the Abrahamic age collapse ended the mediterranean civilizations but left china and india alone, in the current era, the Modern age, cities are collapsing one at a time, states one at a time, but almost as quickly as they did in prior eras.

    Russia collapsed in weeks. Rome largely collapsed in months but systematically over seventy years. And all civilizations collapse for the same reason: overconsumption without sufficient retained capital to adjust to and reorganize in the face of biological (Justinian Plague), Demographic (barbarian invasions), environmental (south american drought), and trade-route shocks (most of central eurasia).

    The leftist looks at today and tomorrow, the libertarian his lifetime, and the conservative across the centuries.

    And the markets for reciprocity under rule of law are the only possible means by which we calculate what is in our mutual intersets, rather than making pseudoscientific arguments to advance our class interests.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-02-19 09:50:00 UTC

  • Steve Doll provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major s

    Steve Doll provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major schools of economic thought, and the class and cultural biases that they position as ‘scientific’ but which are really just cherry picking favorite ‘goods’. The schools of thought roughly correspond to class philosophies, just as all philosophies consist of class philosophies. And they describe a spectrum of increasing discretion from rule of law, to discretionary rule, to arbitrary rule. * The **Rule of Law School** (not rule *BY* law, but rule *OF *law of reciprocity) (Conservative Constitutional – Where the constitution merely codifies the natural law of reciprocity so that it cannot be violated) is the Conservative (Anglo-Saxon). Meaning the rules of the game are the same for all, and attempts to build optimum normative COMMONS. Rather than increase consumption. * The **Discretionary Rule School **(Chicago/Freshwater/classical liberal/Pragmatic/Libertarian) attempted to find means of insuring against shocks with the minimum interference in rule of law (and therefore planning). * The **Arbitrary Rule School** (New York/Freshwater/Left-Social Democrat/Authoritarian) seeks the maximum consumption possible without collapsing the market, and has no interest whatsoever in rule of law. Economics can easily be used to justify “you get what you measure”, and there to advocate what you measure, and ignore or deride what you do not. And the 20th century will be seen (as Hayek predicted) as a period of social pseudoscience (the used the term ‘mysticism’) because of what some of us term ‘innumeracy’ or “pseudo-rationalism”, if not outright deception. I think Steve’s broader point is made, but I don’t think it accounts for the following: * While it’s true that money is neutral, and all prices equilibrate over time. And that all benefits of the increases in minimum wages equilibrate over time. This is not necessarily true however, since an increase in minimum wages functions just like an increase in taxation – it affects everyone equally. Prices increase, and at least for some period of time, as the price increase works through the economy, the gains are real. * The public assumes that the increase comes out of owner’s pockets, but it comes out of increasing prices to customers. Which again, is a trade off between businesses and consumers of the goods of those businesses able to adjust prices. (My hometown of Seattle is still working through its experiment, and the data so far is mixed both directions.) * That the issue at hand is that it creates separate and divisive classes. Now, minimum wages can be used to intentionally create separate classes so that there is a clear line between those requiring subsidy (dependency upon the citizenry for support), and those who are self sufficient. Which decreases demand for universal redistribution and concentrates it. This has some benefit in that it tends to remove the underclasses from the job pool (as we see in Denmark). So that the man selling you tickets at the train station is competent, civil, and literate. As far as I know these are the only arguments we can make. * That minimum wage increases demand for family run businesses at the low end to skirt minimum wages and this tends to increase the number of ‘artificially small’ businesses that plague most of the world. The first world latin countries are notorious for having followed these policies and created two economies. the third world cannot produce organizations of scale for these reasons. And the social, economic, and political consequences of providing nepotistic rather than meritocratic organizations are profound. * That these small businesses, (as we see with asian-immigrant businesses in particular) because they incentivize nepotistic business, **skirt both minimum wage laws and taxes** (why they don’t accept credit cards). * That it** raises the cost of entry** into the market for businesses at the low end, and decreases the development of the primary means of obtaining financial independence: small business entrepreneurship. And worse, that small business entrepreneurs carry a disproportionate amount of the country’s economic risk – for which they are not compensated in tax leniency. * That it **lowers the rate of rotation** of people out of minimum wage jobs – the purpose of which is nothing other than to train entrants to participate in the economy. Minimum wage jobs function as paid apprenticeships, where in most of history, apprenticeship functioned as very near indentured servitude. * That while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands, **it’s distortive to prices,** and contrary to public moral and political intuition, we would be far better off with direct monetary redistribution than minimum wage increases – and that we are simply technologically backward in forcing businesses to act as agents. * that while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands – albeit with negative consequence – but that there is equal evidence that raising the minimum wage such that entry level (unskilled labor) is no longer a paid apprenticeship, that because the lifetime window for entry into the job market is fairly short, that we **create permanently unemployable classes**, and the economic, political, and social consequences of creating permanently unemployable classes. In america, as is the human standard, we have about three percent of the population that is unemployable because they are psychologically intolerable. We have an offensive percent of the population that consists of ex-convicts, we have imported a vast number of third worlders who caused employment displacement at the bottom (youth) and top (older citizens). This increases poverty among the young and old. * there is equal evidence that we **create hazards with profound external consequences (longer term costs) **in that we provide malincentives to immigrate, and each underclass person we immigrate plus the inflation necessary to create the illusion of employment, plus the capture in taxes of all wealth created by the addition of women to the workforce, plus the destruction of the family and expansion of households, explains where all our productivity has gone: to the subsidy of that which is bad for us. (Northern europe was eugenic for over a thousand years, and the church created dead capital everywhere. So when we imported northern europeans we were importing dead capital and putting it into motion. When we bring in the third world we are not bringing in capital that can be put into motion, but sunk normative political and economic costs. We have gone from importing middle classes (protestants), to importing working classes (catholics), to importing underclasses (third worlders). That you get more of whatever you subsidize, and each school seeks to subsidize what they consider a good. **Conservative** – Families, Virtues, Commons, Excellences), **Libertarian/Classical Liberal** – Opportunities and Insurance. **Leftist/Socialist/Social Democrat** – Consumption. But we get more of whatever it is we solve for, which is whatever we measure, which includes the externalities we do not solve for. The only ‘honest’ left economist I’ve found is Karl Smith, and his (correct) presumption is that we are all gambling on futures. The conservatives gamble against risk and pushing costs down the timeline. The left gambles in favor of opportunity and to push costs down the timeline. And the Libertarian/Classical Liberal seeks to gamble only with what we can be sure we will obtain returns upon, without externalizing costs to the future. At present, all of this is lost both inside the discipline, and outside of it. And the vox populi are just confused. As far as I know, the conservatives and classicals are right, and the left is the worst thing to happen to humanity since marx, who was the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Abrahamic counter-enlightenment. You get what you measure, and cherry picking consumption is just pseudoscience, if not outright fraud. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine **Commentary** If you haven’t been to France, outside of the center of Paris (like Vienna) where the very rich live, the Isle de’ France, is a donut shaped slum twenty miles across. Just like Los Angeles is largely a seventy mile long slum. Many french cities are as collapsed as Hartford, Baltimore, Detroit, St Louis, and Oakland – and europeans are much poorer in discretionary spending than we are in the first place – and it is spreading to Germany. Our world is much larger (more populous) and economically diverse than the ancient world. So while the bronze age collapse ended all of the first generation of civilizations, and the Abrahamic age collapse ended the mediterranean civilizations but left china and india alone, in the current era, the Modern age, cities are collapsing one at a time, states one at a time, but almost as quickly as they did in prior eras. Russia collapsed in weeks. Rome largely collapsed in months but systematically over seventy years. And all civilizations collapse for the same reason: overconsumption without sufficient retained capital to adjust to and reorganize in the face of biological (Justinian Plague), Demographic (barbarian invasions), environmental (south american drought), and trade-route shocks (most of central eurasia). The leftist looks at today and tomorrow, the libertarian his lifetime, and the conservative across the centuries. And the markets for reciprocity under rule of law are the only possible means by which we calculate what is in our mutual intersets, rather than making pseudoscientific arguments to advance our class interests.

  • Steve Doll provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major s

    Steve Doll provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major schools of economic thought, and the class and cultural biases that they position as ‘scientific’ but which are really just cherry picking favorite ‘goods’. The schools of thought roughly correspond to class philosophies, just as all philosophies consist of class philosophies. And they describe a spectrum of increasing discretion from rule of law, to discretionary rule, to arbitrary rule. * The **Rule of Law School** (not rule *BY* law, but rule *OF *law of reciprocity) (Conservative Constitutional – Where the constitution merely codifies the natural law of reciprocity so that it cannot be violated) is the Conservative (Anglo-Saxon). Meaning the rules of the game are the same for all, and attempts to build optimum normative COMMONS. Rather than increase consumption. * The **Discretionary Rule School **(Chicago/Freshwater/classical liberal/Pragmatic/Libertarian) attempted to find means of insuring against shocks with the minimum interference in rule of law (and therefore planning). * The **Arbitrary Rule School** (New York/Freshwater/Left-Social Democrat/Authoritarian) seeks the maximum consumption possible without collapsing the market, and has no interest whatsoever in rule of law. Economics can easily be used to justify “you get what you measure”, and there to advocate what you measure, and ignore or deride what you do not. And the 20th century will be seen (as Hayek predicted) as a period of social pseudoscience (the used the term ‘mysticism’) because of what some of us term ‘innumeracy’ or “pseudo-rationalism”, if not outright deception. I think Steve’s broader point is made, but I don’t think it accounts for the following: * While it’s true that money is neutral, and all prices equilibrate over time. And that all benefits of the increases in minimum wages equilibrate over time. This is not necessarily true however, since an increase in minimum wages functions just like an increase in taxation – it affects everyone equally. Prices increase, and at least for some period of time, as the price increase works through the economy, the gains are real. * The public assumes that the increase comes out of owner’s pockets, but it comes out of increasing prices to customers. Which again, is a trade off between businesses and consumers of the goods of those businesses able to adjust prices. (My hometown of Seattle is still working through its experiment, and the data so far is mixed both directions.) * That the issue at hand is that it creates separate and divisive classes. Now, minimum wages can be used to intentionally create separate classes so that there is a clear line between those requiring subsidy (dependency upon the citizenry for support), and those who are self sufficient. Which decreases demand for universal redistribution and concentrates it. This has some benefit in that it tends to remove the underclasses from the job pool (as we see in Denmark). So that the man selling you tickets at the train station is competent, civil, and literate. As far as I know these are the only arguments we can make. * That minimum wage increases demand for family run businesses at the low end to skirt minimum wages and this tends to increase the number of ‘artificially small’ businesses that plague most of the world. The first world latin countries are notorious for having followed these policies and created two economies. the third world cannot produce organizations of scale for these reasons. And the social, economic, and political consequences of providing nepotistic rather than meritocratic organizations are profound. * That these small businesses, (as we see with asian-immigrant businesses in particular) because they incentivize nepotistic business, **skirt both minimum wage laws and taxes** (why they don’t accept credit cards). * That it** raises the cost of entry** into the market for businesses at the low end, and decreases the development of the primary means of obtaining financial independence: small business entrepreneurship. And worse, that small business entrepreneurs carry a disproportionate amount of the country’s economic risk – for which they are not compensated in tax leniency. * That it **lowers the rate of rotation** of people out of minimum wage jobs – the purpose of which is nothing other than to train entrants to participate in the economy. Minimum wage jobs function as paid apprenticeships, where in most of history, apprenticeship functioned as very near indentured servitude. * That while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands, **it’s distortive to prices,** and contrary to public moral and political intuition, we would be far better off with direct monetary redistribution than minimum wage increases – and that we are simply technologically backward in forcing businesses to act as agents. * that while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands – albeit with negative consequence – but that there is equal evidence that raising the minimum wage such that entry level (unskilled labor) is no longer a paid apprenticeship, that because the lifetime window for entry into the job market is fairly short, that we **create permanently unemployable classes**, and the economic, political, and social consequences of creating permanently unemployable classes. In america, as is the human standard, we have about three percent of the population that is unemployable because they are psychologically intolerable. We have an offensive percent of the population that consists of ex-convicts, we have imported a vast number of third worlders who caused employment displacement at the bottom (youth) and top (older citizens). This increases poverty among the young and old. * there is equal evidence that we **create hazards with profound external consequences (longer term costs) **in that we provide malincentives to immigrate, and each underclass person we immigrate plus the inflation necessary to create the illusion of employment, plus the capture in taxes of all wealth created by the addition of women to the workforce, plus the destruction of the family and expansion of households, explains where all our productivity has gone: to the subsidy of that which is bad for us. (Northern europe was eugenic for over a thousand years, and the church created dead capital everywhere. So when we imported northern europeans we were importing dead capital and putting it into motion. When we bring in the third world we are not bringing in capital that can be put into motion, but sunk normative political and economic costs. We have gone from importing middle classes (protestants), to importing working classes (catholics), to importing underclasses (third worlders). That you get more of whatever you subsidize, and each school seeks to subsidize what they consider a good. **Conservative** – Families, Virtues, Commons, Excellences), **Libertarian/Classical Liberal** – Opportunities and Insurance. **Leftist/Socialist/Social Democrat** – Consumption. But we get more of whatever it is we solve for, which is whatever we measure, which includes the externalities we do not solve for. The only ‘honest’ left economist I’ve found is Karl Smith, and his (correct) presumption is that we are all gambling on futures. The conservatives gamble against risk and pushing costs down the timeline. The left gambles in favor of opportunity and to push costs down the timeline. And the Libertarian/Classical Liberal seeks to gamble only with what we can be sure we will obtain returns upon, without externalizing costs to the future. At present, all of this is lost both inside the discipline, and outside of it. And the vox populi are just confused. As far as I know, the conservatives and classicals are right, and the left is the worst thing to happen to humanity since marx, who was the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Abrahamic counter-enlightenment. You get what you measure, and cherry picking consumption is just pseudoscience, if not outright fraud. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine **Commentary** If you haven’t been to France, outside of the center of Paris (like Vienna) where the very rich live, the Isle de’ France, is a donut shaped slum twenty miles across. Just like Los Angeles is largely a seventy mile long slum. Many french cities are as collapsed as Hartford, Baltimore, Detroit, St Louis, and Oakland – and europeans are much poorer in discretionary spending than we are in the first place – and it is spreading to Germany. Our world is much larger (more populous) and economically diverse than the ancient world. So while the bronze age collapse ended all of the first generation of civilizations, and the Abrahamic age collapse ended the mediterranean civilizations but left china and india alone, in the current era, the Modern age, cities are collapsing one at a time, states one at a time, but almost as quickly as they did in prior eras. Russia collapsed in weeks. Rome largely collapsed in months but systematically over seventy years. And all civilizations collapse for the same reason: overconsumption without sufficient retained capital to adjust to and reorganize in the face of biological (Justinian Plague), Demographic (barbarian invasions), environmental (south american drought), and trade-route shocks (most of central eurasia). The leftist looks at today and tomorrow, the libertarian his lifetime, and the conservative across the centuries. And the markets for reciprocity under rule of law are the only possible means by which we calculate what is in our mutual intersets, rather than making pseudoscientific arguments to advance our class interests.

  • Would Everyone’s Salary Increase If The Minimum Wage Increased To $15/hour?

    Steve Doll does a good job of answering the question, but he also provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major schools of economic thought, and the class and cultural biases that they position as ‘scientific’ but which are really just cherry picking favorite ‘goods’.

    The schools of thought roughly correspond to class philosophies, just as all philosophies consist of class philosophies. And they describe a spectrum of increasing discretion from rule of law, to discretionary rule, to arbitrary rule.

    • The Rule of Law School (not rule BY law, but rule OF law of reciprocity) (Conservative Constitutional – Where the constitution merely codifies the natural law of reciprocity so that it cannot be violated) is the Conservative (Anglo-Saxon). Meaning the rules of the game are the same for all, and attempts to build optimum normative COMMONS. Rather than increase consumption.
    • The Discretionary Rule School (Chicago/Freshwater/classical liberal/Pragmatic/Libertarian) attempted to find means of insuring against shocks with the minimum interference in rule of law (and therefore planning).
    • The Arbitrary Rule School (New York/Freshwater/Left-Social Democrat/Authoritarian) seeks the maximum consumption possible without collapsing the market, and has no interest whatsoever in rule of law.

    Economics can easily be used to justify “you get what you measure”, and there to advocate what you measure, and ignore or deride what you do not. And the 20th century will be seen (as Hayek predicted) as a period of social pseudoscience (the used the term ‘mysticism’) because of what some of us term ‘innumeracy’ or “pseudo-rationalism”, if not outright deception.

    I think Steve’s broader point is made, but I don’t think it accounts for the following:

    • While it’s true that money is neutral, and all prices equilibrate over time. And that all benefits of the increases in minimum wages equilibrate over time. This is not necessarily true however, since an increase in minimum wages functions just like an increase in taxation – it affects everyone equally. Prices increase, and at least for some period of time, as the price increase works through the economy, the gains are real.
    • The public assumes that the increase comes out of owner’s pockets, but it comes out of increasing prices to customers. Which again, is a trade off between businesses and consumers of the goods of those businesses able to adjust prices. (My hometown of Seattle is still working through its experiment, and the data so far is mixed both directions.)
    • That the issue at hand is that it creates separate and divisive classes. Now, minimum wages can be used to intentionally create separate classes so that there is a clear line between those requiring subsidy (dependency upon the citizenry for support), and those who are self sufficient. Which decreases demand for universal redistribution and concentrates it. This has some benefit in that it tends to remove the underclasses from the job pool (as we see in Denmark). So that the man selling you tickets at the train station is competent, civil, and literate. As far as I know these are the only arguments we can make.
    • That minimum wage increases demand for family run businesses at the low end to skirt minimum wages and this tends to increase the number of ‘artificially small’ businesses that plague most of the world. The first world latin countries are notorious for having followed these policies and created two economies. the third world cannot produce organizations of scale for these reasons. And the social, economic, and political consequences of providing nepotistic rather than meritocratic organizations are profound.
    • That these small businesses, (as we see with asian-immigrant businesses in particular) because they incentivize nepotistic business, skirt both minimum wage laws and taxes (why they don’t accept credit cards).
    • That it raises the cost of entry into the market for businesses at the low end, and decreases the development of the primary means of obtaining financial independence: small business entrepreneurship. And worse, that small business entrepreneurs carry a disproportionate amount of the country’s economic risk – for which they are not compensated in tax leniency.
    • That it lowers the rate of rotation of people out of minimum wage jobs – the purpose of which is nothing other than to train entrants to participate in the economy. Minimum wage jobs function as paid apprenticeships, where in most of history, apprenticeship functioned as very near indentured servitude.
    • That while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands, it’s distortive to prices, and contrary to public moral and political intuition, we would be far better off with direct monetary redistribution than minimum wage increases – and that we are simply technologically backward in forcing businesses to act as agents.
    • that while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands – albeit with negative consequence – but that there is equal evidence that raising the minimum wage such that entry level (unskilled labor) is no longer a paid apprenticeship, that because the lifetime window for entry into the job market is fairly short, that we create permanently unemployable classes, and the economic, political, and social consequences of creating permanently unemployable classes. In america, as is the human standard, we have about three percent of the population that is unemployable because they are psychologically intolerable. We have an offensive percent of the population that consists of ex-convicts, we have imported a vast number of third worlders who caused employment displacement at the bottom (youth) and top (older citizens). This increases poverty among the young and old.
    • there is equal evidence that we create hazards with profound external consequences (longer term costs) in that we provide malincentives to immigrate, and each underclass person we immigrate plus the inflation necessary to create the illusion of employment, plus the capture in taxes of all wealth created by the addition of women to the workforce, plus the destruction of the family and expansion of households, explains where all our productivity has gone: to the subsidy of that which is bad for us. (Northern europe was eugenic for over a thousand years, and the church created dead capital everywhere. So when we imported northern europeans we were importing dead capital and putting it into motion. When we bring in the third world we are not bringing in capital that can be put into motion, but sunk normative political and economic costs. We have gone from importing middle classes (protestants), to importing working classes (catholics), to importing underclasses (third worlders).
    • That you get more of whatever you subsidize, and each school seeks to subsidize what they consider a good. Conservative – Families, Virtues, Commons, Excellences), Libertarian/Classical Liberal – Opportunities and Insurance. Leftist/Socialist/Social Democrat – Consumption. But we get more of whatever it is we solve for, which is whatever we measure, which includes the externalities we do not solve for. The only ‘honest’ left economist I’ve found is Karl Smith, and his (correct) presumption is that we are all gambling on futures. The conservatives gamble against risk and pushing costs down the timeline. The left gambles in favor of opportunity and to push costs down the timeline. And the Libertarian/Classical Liberal seeks to gamble only with what we can be sure we will obtain returns upon, without externalizing costs to the future.

    At present, all of this is lost both inside the discipline, and outside of it. And the vox populi are just confused. As far as I know, the conservatives and classicals are right, and the left is the worst thing to happen to humanity since marx, who was the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Abrahamic counter-enlightenment.

    You get what you measure, and cherry picking consumption is just pseudoscience, if not outright fraud.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

    Commentary

    If you haven’t been to France, outside of the center of Paris (like Vienna) where the very rich live, the Isle de’ France, is a donut shaped slum twenty miles across. Just like Los Angeles is largely a seventy mile long slum. Many french cities are as collapsed as Hartford, Baltimore, Detroit, St Louis, and Oakland – and europeans are much poorer in discretionary spending than we are in the first place – and it is spreading to Germany.

    Our world is much larger (more populous) and economically diverse than the ancient world. So while the bronze age collapse ended all of the first generation of civilizations, and the Abrahamic age collapse ended the mediterranean civilizations but left china and india alone, in the current era, the Modern age, cities are collapsing one at a time, states one at a time, but almost as quickly as they did in prior eras. Russia collapsed in weeks. Rome largely collapsed in months but systematically over seventy years. And all civilizations collapse for the same reason: overconsumption without sufficient retained capital to adjust to and reorganize in the face of biological (Justinian Plague), Demographic (barbarian invasions), environmental (south american drought), and trade-route shocks (most of central eurasia).

    The leftist looks at today and tomorrow, the libertarian his lifetime, and the conservative across the centuries.

    And the markets for reciprocity under rule of law are the only possible means by which we calculate what is in our mutual intersets, rather than making pseudoscientific arguments to advance our class interests.

    https://www.quora.com/Would-everyones-salary-increase-if-the-minimum-wage-increased-to-15-hour

  • Would Everyone’s Salary Increase If The Minimum Wage Increased To $15/hour?

    Steve Doll does a good job of answering the question, but he also provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major schools of economic thought, and the class and cultural biases that they position as ‘scientific’ but which are really just cherry picking favorite ‘goods’.

    The schools of thought roughly correspond to class philosophies, just as all philosophies consist of class philosophies. And they describe a spectrum of increasing discretion from rule of law, to discretionary rule, to arbitrary rule.

    • The Rule of Law School (not rule BY law, but rule OF law of reciprocity) (Conservative Constitutional – Where the constitution merely codifies the natural law of reciprocity so that it cannot be violated) is the Conservative (Anglo-Saxon). Meaning the rules of the game are the same for all, and attempts to build optimum normative COMMONS. Rather than increase consumption.
    • The Discretionary Rule School (Chicago/Freshwater/classical liberal/Pragmatic/Libertarian) attempted to find means of insuring against shocks with the minimum interference in rule of law (and therefore planning).
    • The Arbitrary Rule School (New York/Freshwater/Left-Social Democrat/Authoritarian) seeks the maximum consumption possible without collapsing the market, and has no interest whatsoever in rule of law.

    Economics can easily be used to justify “you get what you measure”, and there to advocate what you measure, and ignore or deride what you do not. And the 20th century will be seen (as Hayek predicted) as a period of social pseudoscience (the used the term ‘mysticism’) because of what some of us term ‘innumeracy’ or “pseudo-rationalism”, if not outright deception.

    I think Steve’s broader point is made, but I don’t think it accounts for the following:

    • While it’s true that money is neutral, and all prices equilibrate over time. And that all benefits of the increases in minimum wages equilibrate over time. This is not necessarily true however, since an increase in minimum wages functions just like an increase in taxation – it affects everyone equally. Prices increase, and at least for some period of time, as the price increase works through the economy, the gains are real.
    • The public assumes that the increase comes out of owner’s pockets, but it comes out of increasing prices to customers. Which again, is a trade off between businesses and consumers of the goods of those businesses able to adjust prices. (My hometown of Seattle is still working through its experiment, and the data so far is mixed both directions.)
    • That the issue at hand is that it creates separate and divisive classes. Now, minimum wages can be used to intentionally create separate classes so that there is a clear line between those requiring subsidy (dependency upon the citizenry for support), and those who are self sufficient. Which decreases demand for universal redistribution and concentrates it. This has some benefit in that it tends to remove the underclasses from the job pool (as we see in Denmark). So that the man selling you tickets at the train station is competent, civil, and literate. As far as I know these are the only arguments we can make.
    • That minimum wage increases demand for family run businesses at the low end to skirt minimum wages and this tends to increase the number of ‘artificially small’ businesses that plague most of the world. The first world latin countries are notorious for having followed these policies and created two economies. the third world cannot produce organizations of scale for these reasons. And the social, economic, and political consequences of providing nepotistic rather than meritocratic organizations are profound.
    • That these small businesses, (as we see with asian-immigrant businesses in particular) because they incentivize nepotistic business, skirt both minimum wage laws and taxes (why they don’t accept credit cards).
    • That it raises the cost of entry into the market for businesses at the low end, and decreases the development of the primary means of obtaining financial independence: small business entrepreneurship. And worse, that small business entrepreneurs carry a disproportionate amount of the country’s economic risk – for which they are not compensated in tax leniency.
    • That it lowers the rate of rotation of people out of minimum wage jobs – the purpose of which is nothing other than to train entrants to participate in the economy. Minimum wage jobs function as paid apprenticeships, where in most of history, apprenticeship functioned as very near indentured servitude.
    • That while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands, it’s distortive to prices, and contrary to public moral and political intuition, we would be far better off with direct monetary redistribution than minimum wage increases – and that we are simply technologically backward in forcing businesses to act as agents.
    • that while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands – albeit with negative consequence – but that there is equal evidence that raising the minimum wage such that entry level (unskilled labor) is no longer a paid apprenticeship, that because the lifetime window for entry into the job market is fairly short, that we create permanently unemployable classes, and the economic, political, and social consequences of creating permanently unemployable classes. In america, as is the human standard, we have about three percent of the population that is unemployable because they are psychologically intolerable. We have an offensive percent of the population that consists of ex-convicts, we have imported a vast number of third worlders who caused employment displacement at the bottom (youth) and top (older citizens). This increases poverty among the young and old.
    • there is equal evidence that we create hazards with profound external consequences (longer term costs) in that we provide malincentives to immigrate, and each underclass person we immigrate plus the inflation necessary to create the illusion of employment, plus the capture in taxes of all wealth created by the addition of women to the workforce, plus the destruction of the family and expansion of households, explains where all our productivity has gone: to the subsidy of that which is bad for us. (Northern europe was eugenic for over a thousand years, and the church created dead capital everywhere. So when we imported northern europeans we were importing dead capital and putting it into motion. When we bring in the third world we are not bringing in capital that can be put into motion, but sunk normative political and economic costs. We have gone from importing middle classes (protestants), to importing working classes (catholics), to importing underclasses (third worlders).
    • That you get more of whatever you subsidize, and each school seeks to subsidize what they consider a good. Conservative – Families, Virtues, Commons, Excellences), Libertarian/Classical Liberal – Opportunities and Insurance. Leftist/Socialist/Social Democrat – Consumption. But we get more of whatever it is we solve for, which is whatever we measure, which includes the externalities we do not solve for. The only ‘honest’ left economist I’ve found is Karl Smith, and his (correct) presumption is that we are all gambling on futures. The conservatives gamble against risk and pushing costs down the timeline. The left gambles in favor of opportunity and to push costs down the timeline. And the Libertarian/Classical Liberal seeks to gamble only with what we can be sure we will obtain returns upon, without externalizing costs to the future.

    At present, all of this is lost both inside the discipline, and outside of it. And the vox populi are just confused. As far as I know, the conservatives and classicals are right, and the left is the worst thing to happen to humanity since marx, who was the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Abrahamic counter-enlightenment.

    You get what you measure, and cherry picking consumption is just pseudoscience, if not outright fraud.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

    Commentary

    If you haven’t been to France, outside of the center of Paris (like Vienna) where the very rich live, the Isle de’ France, is a donut shaped slum twenty miles across. Just like Los Angeles is largely a seventy mile long slum. Many french cities are as collapsed as Hartford, Baltimore, Detroit, St Louis, and Oakland – and europeans are much poorer in discretionary spending than we are in the first place – and it is spreading to Germany.

    Our world is much larger (more populous) and economically diverse than the ancient world. So while the bronze age collapse ended all of the first generation of civilizations, and the Abrahamic age collapse ended the mediterranean civilizations but left china and india alone, in the current era, the Modern age, cities are collapsing one at a time, states one at a time, but almost as quickly as they did in prior eras. Russia collapsed in weeks. Rome largely collapsed in months but systematically over seventy years. And all civilizations collapse for the same reason: overconsumption without sufficient retained capital to adjust to and reorganize in the face of biological (Justinian Plague), Demographic (barbarian invasions), environmental (south american drought), and trade-route shocks (most of central eurasia).

    The leftist looks at today and tomorrow, the libertarian his lifetime, and the conservative across the centuries.

    And the markets for reciprocity under rule of law are the only possible means by which we calculate what is in our mutual intersets, rather than making pseudoscientific arguments to advance our class interests.

    https://www.quora.com/Would-everyones-salary-increase-if-the-minimum-wage-increased-to-15-hour

  • —”Is there something akin to a Law of Progress for systems of people or even the

    —”Is there something akin to a Law of Progress for systems of people or even the individual? Closer to linear or exponential, incremental or rapid?”—** I assume we mean economic **growth** rather than **progress**. Or at least, that we should separate growth from progress so that we understand their causes, and then can reflect on those causes. In the professional vernacular (economics, and political economy) *growth* refers to **productivity**, and *progress* refers to upward **economic class rotation**. Productivity refers to an increase in the amount of goods and services produced per hour worked, (per head of the population) over a period of time – and therefore increases in consumption over time. But it does not differentiate between ‘good productivity’ (innovation and market expansion), fake productivity (results of immigration), fraudulent productivity (rents on transport) and ‘bad productivity’ (spending down assets). Progress provides discounts on consumption that we interpret as increase in income. In other words, when we are more productive we make better use of our time, in producing goods, services, (and now information), that people want. Money or money substitutes, (or any trade or barter good) represent (really) a store of **time** saved. That is why it has value – why any good has value. So money is in fact an exceptional measure of productivity. Progress is (often) the result of increases in productivity. Most increase in productivity occurs from discovery of means of harnessing energy. (fire, kiln, crucible, coal, steam, fluid hydrocarbons, electricity, gears, relays, transistors, software), and discounts on energy expenditure (pack animals, riding horses, Everything else that occurs in every era And uncomfortably, the best productivity return – and the one we never think of – is genetic (eugenic reproduction, or upward redistribution of reproduction). Progress is offset by underclass reproduction (malthusian limits), underclass immigration, or upper class under-reproduction. This is because every person at the bottom is six times as costly as each person at the top is over-productive. In fact, the unstated but obvious failure to increase american incomes after the mid 1960s is due to inflation and immigration. For most of european modernity we have been liberating dead capital (The Church) and distributing it to under utilized capital (european middle classes). But since 1965, we have been using debt to redistribute debt to underclass immigration. And as far as I know this is the entire reason for our condition. Inflation and Immigration creating a false economy. For all of human history, most people lived on what we call about a dollar a day today. Trade in the first enlightenment prior to the bronze age collapse (prior to 1177bc), and trade during the ancient enlightenment, prior to the Abrahamic and Plague collapse (300–700 ad), then trade after the enlightenment, and prior to the late 20th century (which appears to be either an inflection point or collapse), appears to have produced a great leap in each era which defeated for a time, the fertility of Malthusian underclasses. So, yes, is there a law of productivity. Sort of. As a rule of thumb, a person can produce about twenty percent more than he can consume, if he works at it. During periods under which we have captured a new form of energy, or a new discount on energy consumption, we can increase this. Otherwise the only means of increasing productivity is to increase the quality of the population (as did europe and china/korea/japan) because by doing so, a people decrease frictions on cooperation, and frictions on cooperation can easily fall into (almost universal) equilibrium with productivity – which is the condition of nearly all of human history. So, armed with that understanding, China is going through what europe did, and what all post enlightenment peoples did, in the modern(steel), ancient(iron), and early bronze ages – and from what I understand, the late paleo (copper) age expansions. Why is china different from brazil? Homogeneity of genetics and culture, A highly nationalist military, and a vast store of underutilized human capital. None of which brazil has to work with. All but very short term opportunities, all of human economic activity is just another extension of the laws of the physical universe. Energy and Time vs Entropy. Or stated more simply; all evolutionary systems grow continuously or they die. And if they grow, they will grow by punctuated equilibriums. (which Michael mentions as ‘graduated then suddenly’. At present we are having a bit of a debate as to whether we have captured all the low hanging fruit of the capture of hydrocarbon, steam, and electrical energy. And given declining rates of innovation, it appears so. (Information technology eradicates frictions like nothing before it, but does not produce new energy). We are closing in on if not having past, our ability to harness enough energy to advance physics. We have ‘finished’ chemistry. We have just begun biochemistry. And we are scratching the surface of sentience (which is the same problem of three different scales.) As far as I know the debates over keynesian economics vs the business cycle, and the fallacy of infinite growth (‘technology is our savior’), and the fallacy of are over. As far as I know we are beyond the unmanaged carrying capacity of the planet (which I think is something on the order of 1B people, if not 500M). So given malthusian underclass rates of reproduction, and given the near exhaustion of the political and economic change of the enlightenment and industrial revolution, and given the peak in everything we can see, it certainly appears that productivity will decline everywhere to or under the rate of inflation. Because there is no more underutilized human capital. If you understand this, then all economic, social, and political behavior today, and in all of history is quite simple. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • THE PRETENSE OF PROOF (from elsewhere, against demand for proof) I don’t know if

    THE PRETENSE OF PROOF

    (from elsewhere, against demand for proof)

    I don’t know if I mean to target anyone with this criticism, so much as almost anyone who vastly overstates and possibly misrepresents what it is possible to accomplish with the formal logics (meaning deflationary grammars of constant relations, and their representation using symbols in general rules), versus the inherent human capacity that is a byproduct of recursive hierarchies of neural relations, that we call ‘logic’: the test of constant relations between states (in any single or set of dimensions).

    I think this disconnect we face, is not lack of knowledge of the logics, but between people trained in rational (verbal) logic inherited from mathematics, law, justificationary philosophy, and scriptural interpretation of meaning) and people trained in the sciences (testimony of truth regardless of semantic reference), and a public not trained, but environmentally exposed to the semantics of both, and as such conflating them, – and therefore everyone talks past each other.

    1- Reason (a human capacity of deliberate ‘calculation’),

    2 – logic (the human capacity that makes reason possible),

    3 – Logics (deflationary grammars) are not synonyms.

    They refer to the biological ability to determine differences at ever increasing scales of relations(logic), the use of our ability to make use of logic in decisions of all scales (‘reason’), and the the discipline by which we create and use deflationary grammars to study the general rules that vary between different sets of constant relations.

    So few logicians make the bridge between how scientific speech provides tests of truth (testimony that’s consistent, correspondent, operational(existential), moral(reciprocal), fully-accounted, and coherent by survival) – meaning ever contingent theories; and logic as he we it provides a test of internal consistency across axioms (propositions that are declared). In other words, the difference between truthful testimony about the universe given forever contingent knowledge, about speech itself.

    Nor is it obvious that for anyone to make a truth claim requires the statement consist of incomplete knowledge – otherwise we are not testifying to the due diligence of our reason, but merely stating a tautology.

    In other words, as far as I know you cannot prove any non trivial statement (which is why logic is not used outside of training people in the discipline of analysis) and the entire world operates on scientific speech, not the formal logics – whose application is extremely limited just as game theory is extremely limited – because knowledge is always too fractional, and relations in in minds too elastic, to make use of either.

    We make proofs of internal consistency (not truth – we use “true” by analogy in math as we do in construction ‘plumb and true’) And we can create proos of internal consistency in mathematics because the relations of positions are by necessity constant – they cannot be otherwise.

    I mean, mathematics consists in the logic of POSITIONAL relations. Numbers exist of nothing but positional names. In that sense, they are the only perfect information set of any complexity we humans work with, and of any scale. Which is why they are so useful to us: our tests of truth consist in the search for constant relations. If expressed in positional relations (as numbers) we are nearly guaranteed of the preservation of constant relations.

    Unfortunately the semantics and grammar of the constant relations of positional names cannot always be applied to some categories (such as economics) due to the substitution of properties of categories we measure, and measurement of more granular transactions is beyond our current technical ability.

    All speech relies upon grammar (rules of continuous disambiguation), and unfortunately because ordinary language grammar and semantics include fictions, fictionalisms, and the purely experiential and non-rational (unlimited), we tend to separate semantics(networks recursive references to sensory relations) and grammar.

    Whereas the we apply logical reasoning (tests of constant relations) in everything from languages of the disciplines, legal and contractual, to the algorithmic, to mathematics, to ‘the logics’, and each consists of a deflationary grammar (a more constrained set of rules of continuous disambiguation) which also consists in a deflationary semantics (in other words, semantics of any deflationary language are demonstrably bound by grammar).

    And as such, the deflationary grammars allow us to limit semantic content to a subset of the constant relations we are capable of perceiving and remembering, recalling, and comparing, by analogy to sense-experience – thereby making testable comparisons possible within the limits of human perception.

    In my experience Logic (Formal logic) is almost never used to make an assertion of truth proper, (as is science) but as a means of falsifying the assertions of others.

    In this sense, like pilpul, religious scripture, and law, it serves as a means of preventing non-conformity in arbitrary relations (justification, scripture, norm, and law), while science consist largely of an effort to circumvent the failings of logic ( interpretation of scriptural, philosophical, moral, legal prose of arbitrary relations) by limiting us to a grammar and semantics that consist exclusively of continuous relations with reality – not just continuous relations between written or spoken words (textualism).

    And to no small degree it certainly appears that philosophical logic can neither join mathematics, nor join the sciences, and serves little other purpose than training us to falsify language – not to demonstrate truths (statements about reality).

    We use logic to falsify inference between propositions. And that is its’ function. We *can* use logic like any of the formal deflationary grammars, to discover what we cannot articulate, and because we cannot articulate it,we learn we do not understand it.

    So we can use logic ‘against’ (to test) our thoughts about our thoughts, the way we can use empirical tests against our thoughts about the universe.

    Conversely we make arguments in science to falsify non correspondence with reality. And that which survives does so.

    One can positively construct a proof given perfect knowledge (Axioms – Positional Names are perfect knowledge and mathematics axiomatic, meaning declarable) where one applies tests of constant relations to falsify the correspondence between statements.

    Whereas one cannot do so under contingent knowledge whose constant relations are not provided by declaration (definition).

    Instead since we never know if any non trivial statement (premise, proposition) is false, then we can only seek to falsify inferences from it.

    Or stated differently, logic of ordinary language (imperfect knowledge) serves only as a means of determining inconstancy of relations between propositions – not truth (consistency, correspondence, existence, morality, and coherence) between our statements and reality.

    Asking for proofs is the same category of error in logic that we call ‘mathiness’ in economics. Math-envy. It’s one of the reasons in almost any general proposition describing a distribution, one cannot achieve greater precision than a single regression analysis.

    We are forever limited because our knowledge is always continent, because the set of constant relations that provide commensurability (coherence) in the semantics of our languages, is subject to reorganization (albeit it appears, greater parsimony) as knowledge (and therefore paradigm: the set of constant relations within a domain) change.

    So it’s a kind of “fraud or pseudoscience”, to demand a proof of an asserted truthful statement about the world – it can’t be done other than for the reductio ad absurdum.

    And I generally find people who conflate the study of logic for the purpose of studying logic (grammars of constant relations) itself, by the construction of proofs, pretenders to knowledge and wisdom when they ask for proofs rather than use logic for it’s only possible purpose, which is to demonstrate the failure of constant relations in claims of constant relations about the world. It is just a continuation of the invention of that great deceit we call scripturalism, and the technique used to justify it ‘pilpul’.

    Instead, statements either survive criticism of consistency (internal consistence), correspondence, existential possibility (constant existential relations in operational grammar and semantics), morality(reciprocity), fully accounting (avoiding cherry picking), and coherence (constant relations across all those dimensions.

    If a statement survives such falsification then it is a truth candidate. If not it is not. But one does not construct a proof of anything that is not complete, axiomatic, and declared. On only tests statements as if they were complete, axiomatic, and declared. To say otherwise is to claim that which is demonstrably false.

    Criticism serves as a market like any other – by Internal criticism, demonstration criticism, market criticism, and ultimate survival.

    But demands for warranty of perfect information are a kind of fraudulent argument. It is a common kind of fraud. A logical violation in and of itself. But that does not stop it from being a widespread exercise in dominance expression and silencing non-conformity rather than whether speech is false or survives falsification.

    if you cannot explain something in operational language either you do not understand it (which does not mean a carpenter cannot use a drill without understanding the electric motor), or you are trying to preserve a deception, whether a deception by convention, or a deception by overstating the veracity of one’s system and units of measure.

    One does not prove an argument. One puts for a theory, informs others as to its method of construction, and asks them to falsify whether it it is consistent, correspondent, existentially possible, reciprocal, fully accounted and coherent. Either it survives or does not. However, one might pull a statement out of think air, provide no justification, and such a statement could survive (and often does) all attempts at falsification.

    But NO DIMENSION IS CLOSED. That’s the lesson of the 20th century’s exercise in attempting to merge mathematics and language. The logics (other than the trivial_ are not closed, and therefore the test of correspondence defeats the test of consistency, just as the test of operational grammar defeats the test of correspondence, just as the test of reciprocity defeats the tests of correspondence, just as coherence defeats all. The only test of truth is science: falsification in each dimension of action possibly by man. The rest is pretense. So a great deal of ‘contradiction is not as such contradiction but merely appeal to the next dimension (correspondence) rather than dependence upon the impossible completeness of the underlying propositions that an argument is built from. I find this the most common error of people trained in philosophy, logic and rhetoric, – even mathematics – but not trained in the hard sciences. (Albeit the criticism works both directions.)

    Ergo, just as pseudoscience exists, peudorationalism exists, and the pretense that we can justify rather than falsify a statement is endemic.

    Yet, what we CAN do with justification is make arbitrary ordinary language statements just as we can express arbitrary mathematical statements and test whether they are internally consistent across states (statements).

    But there exist no non-arbitrary true statements, only truthful statements about arbitrary statements. Hence why philosophers and theologians rely on rationalism: because one can (as we see in numerology, astrology, philosophy, and theology) anything at all.

    Justification tells us little other than to suspect the speaker of deceit or fraud.

    A scientist (falsificationist), like science itself, evolved both in the ancient world (reason) and in the early modern (empiricism), and currently in the later modern, as a means of falsifying the frauds made possible by justification in each of those eras. Specifically those of the Germans and French (Rousseau, Kant, Hegel) and most importantly those of the Marxists (pseudoscience and pseudorationalism), Boazians (pseudoscience), Freudians (Pseudoscience), Cantorians (pseudoscience, but artful), postmoderns (outright denial and deceit as an attack on truth), and every group in between that took advantage of the ability to overload the very limited ability for humans to test constant relations in other tha trivial causal density.

    Humans are only capable of cognition and therefore arguments in N dimensions (listed above), and truth propositions (theories) must be tested in each of those dimensions without appeal to closure in any, before we can warranty due diligence on our parts, that we do not engage in ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism (pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, pseudo-historicism/myth), or outright lying.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2018-01-20 19:19:00 UTC

  • NO. NO EXIT. IT IS TIME FOR US TO FIGHT –“The thing which is intensely apparent

    NO. NO EXIT. IT IS TIME FOR US TO FIGHT

    –“The thing which is intensely apparent the longer you spend looking at the world and people’s opinions about it and what to do is this: we are truly out of our depth here.”—

    I think it’s that there are two few people who are not. But let’s move on and see what we have here….

    –“Just basic stuff like “birth control plus the nuclear family have produced the loneliest generation of women in history, and the gaps left by kids and extended family hurt.” Or the other one, which is that we just don’t have enough natural resources to provide the entire world with a basically adequate standard of living without extremely radical technological transformations.”—

    Correct. And Both are possible only because of keynesian debt – although that era is quickly coming to a close. And the purpose of keynesian debt is to accelerate consumption. And the surest means of accelerating consumption is increasing population until the malthusian limit is not supply but demand (think about that one a bit).

    It’s possible that this collapse is precisely what ‘the other side wants’. To reduce us back to pre-paternal poverty.

    –“These [failures] are extremely straight forward. But they are [failures] that exist in cultural and personal blind spots,”—

    I would say that they exist in economic ignorance, and political practicality. I mean, it’s non trivial to accumulate sufficient knowledge of math, logic, and economic and physical sciences to represent what you sense in scientific terms. Worse, addressing these failures means admitting that the enlightenment assessments of human nature were wrong, that democracy is a bad thing, and that one of the principle successes of western civilization was millennia of eugenics under aristocratic meritocracy.

    –“so although they are precisely the medicine required to bring people to an awareness of what is wrong and what could meaningfully improved in the world, nobody can hear them. You can sit there talking about this stuff all day long, but because it flies against the prevailing narratives of the day, it just washes straight past people.”–

    Well, that’s because people will always choose consumption, hyperconsumption, conspicuous consumption,virtue signaling, and virtue signal spirals *if there is no means of limiting them from doing so*. Usually the market, and the available resources prevent them from doing so. Keynesian economics misinforms them that there is no limit. HOWEVER, as you note, acting as if there is no limit merely consumes accumulated informational, habitual, normative, cultural, institutional, territorial, and genetic capital.

    —“Here’s another one: you can have your anonymous censorship resistant free speech platform, but it will become uninhabitable for women and minorities because of the constant seas of harassment they will encounter. It will also be a breeding ground for the very worse in human nature, that awkward place where utter personal failure meets the Nazi philosophy, and horrible men dream of redemption through shedding the blood of The Other.”—

    I dunno. Thats the market at work, right? Didn’t you yourself just fall to the same ‘unlimited resources, equality of human capital, equality of habit, norm, culture, institution,

    Who is it that is doing the hyperconsumption by hyper-reproduction? Reproduction is just deficit spending. Do we really have any other problem than underclass reproduction and middle and upper class under-reproduction?

    —“In each case, our lag in building cultural understanding means that good people are wasting their lives on bad ideas, because the news that these ideas are bad take a generation or two to trickle through academia to become a respectable truth.”—

    It’s not cultural understanding. It’s economics, genetics, and physics. And thats difficult because they are contrary to the ‘dream’. The dream is a falsehood. America is wealthy because we have spent a couple of centuries conquering and selling off a continent under the anglo rule of law of torts. That’s the only reason. IT’s true that anglo law is the best law discovered in history. Anglos had the benefits of the north sea civilization and the hansa to convert into an effective commercial code.

    —“And I just can’t get the help. I’m a man who occasionally swears oaths, things like “I will die before you do” which, in a safety critical situation, is as good a guarantee as one can give of your intentions and your seriousness. “I will not do anything for money I am not willing to do for free” was another very strong oath – which I kept for more than 12 years, and which rendered me continuously precarious and worse a few times, but also allowed me to live with integrity in a very, very dirty world.”—

    You are not alone. “Revolution Comes.”

    –“I realized recently that I don’t know anyone else who swears and keeps oaths. People just do what’s expedient.”—

    Loyalty provides long term very high returns, and is the opposite of short term consumption, conspicuous consumption, virtue signaling, and virtue spirals. Heroism, loyalty, truth and sovereignty are uniquely western values and always have been.

    So what does it say about you (positively) that you want such returns?

    —“And that’s when it clicked. The world is as it is because people are as they are. And the choices are as they ever were: the best force organization on the worse, or we spend our lives trying to improve people. To govern, or to teach, are the basic choices.”—

    Absolutely correct. The strong determine all else. If the world is shit then it is the fault of them men who CAN act, for not HAVING acted, such that they bring about THE BEST RULE BY THE BEST.

    —“I’ve picked govern. I’ve seen everybody who’s tried to teach fail to get major results, and it’s a hard, hard conclusion but I just don’t think the results are there. It’s just not that time or place.”—

    Correct.

    —“And here, sitting [?with govern?], I can just do the best I can, and nothing more. I don’t see how we can teach people a realistic politics: too few want to know the truth about how the world works.”—

    Um. the best we can is to fight.

    We are given an OPPORTUNITY FOR HEROISM. And opportunity WRITE OUR NAMES ON HISTORY FOR ALL TIME. This is not a tragedy but an opportunity. An opportunity men laying abed wishing for adventure, fame, and meaning rarely have.

    —“This leaves us with Straussian options, and conspiracy – Bannon who was a director of Biosphere 2 knows damn well that climate change is real, and believes that fortress America must be girded with iron to survive it.”—

    I have no idea why that’s relevant. The only reason we have any warming is the masses, and unregulated reproduction.

    —“Which brings me back to the simple expedience of make the money, spend the money, and enforce accountability. It may not be much, but it’s literally the only effective strategy I can see right now for enacting global change.”—-

    I would say that you are, like many, looking for an excuse to admit failure and unwillingness to fight to bring about governing, ruling best, by the best.

    —“I get clearer and purer in this understanding every time I derive it again from first principles. I just have to use the market and the mechanisms it affords for changing the world.”—

    The market for coopearation is a tool for seizing opportunities made possible by markets. The market for violence is a tool for constructing the opportunities, and LIMITS of those markets. The market for gossip, information, ideas, is a tool for organizing violence with which to create markets constructed of opportunities and limits.

    —“Nothing else will work. Which sucks, but there we are.”—

    No. You are, like many, trying to find a self justification for exit.

    There is only one exit: failure for all time.

    There is only one success: revolution and change, for all time.

    Love you brother, and I love all, but you were born with little other than a wealth of time and a wealth of violence and it is time to put your inheritance to work.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-01-10 08:42:00 UTC

  • No. No Exit. It Is Time For Us To Fight

    –“The thing which is intensely apparent the longer you spend looking at the world and people’s opinions about it and what to do is this: we are truly out of our depth here.”— I think it’s that there are two few people who are not. But let’s move on and see what we have here…. –“Just basic stuff like “birth control plus the nuclear family have produced the loneliest generation of women in history, and the gaps left by kids and extended family hurt.” Or the other one, which is that we just don’t have enough natural resources to provide the entire world with a basically adequate standard of living without extremely radical technological transformations.”— Correct. And Both are possible only because of keynesian debt – although that era is quickly coming to a close. And the purpose of keynesian debt is to accelerate consumption. And the surest means of accelerating consumption is increasing population until the malthusian limit is not supply but demand (think about that one a bit). It’s possible that this collapse is precisely what ‘the other side wants’. To reduce us back to pre-paternal poverty. –“These [failures] are extremely straight forward. But they are [failures] that exist in cultural and personal blind spots,”— I would say that they exist in economic ignorance, and political practicality. I mean, it’s non trivial to accumulate sufficient knowledge of math, logic, and economic and physical sciences to represent what you sense in scientific terms. Worse, addressing these failures means admitting that the enlightenment assessments of human nature were wrong, that democracy is a bad thing, and that one of the principle successes of western civilization was millennia of eugenics under aristocratic meritocracy. –“so although they are precisely the medicine required to bring people to an awareness of what is wrong and what could meaningfully improved in the world, nobody can hear them. You can sit there talking about this stuff all day long, but because it flies against the prevailing narratives of the day, it just washes straight past people.”– Well, that’s because people will always choose consumption, hyperconsumption, conspicuous consumption,virtue signaling, and virtue signal spirals *if there is no means of limiting them from doing so*. Usually the market, and the available resources prevent them from doing so. Keynesian economics misinforms them that there is no limit. HOWEVER, as you note, acting as if there is no limit merely consumes accumulated informational, habitual, normative, cultural, institutional, territorial, and genetic capital. —“Here’s another one: you can have your anonymous censorship resistant free speech platform, but it will become uninhabitable for women and minorities because of the constant seas of harassment they will encounter. It will also be a breeding ground for the very worse in human nature, that awkward place where utter personal failure meets the Nazi philosophy, and horrible men dream of redemption through shedding the blood of The Other.”— I dunno. Thats the market at work, right? Didn’t you yourself just fall to the same ‘unlimited resources, equality of human capital, equality of habit, norm, culture, institution, Who is it that is doing the hyperconsumption by hyper-reproduction? Reproduction is just deficit spending. Do we really have any other problem than underclass reproduction and middle and upper class under-reproduction? —“In each case, our lag in building cultural understanding means that good people are wasting their lives on bad ideas, because the news that these ideas are bad take a generation or two to trickle through academia to become a respectable truth.”— It’s not cultural understanding. It’s economics, genetics, and physics. And thats difficult because they are contrary to the ‘dream’. The dream is a falsehood. America is wealthy because we have spent a couple of centuries conquering and selling off a continent under the anglo rule of law of torts. That’s the only reason. IT’s true that anglo law is the best law discovered in history. Anglos had the benefits of the north sea civilization and the hansa to convert into an effective commercial code. —“And I just can’t get the help. I’m a man who occasionally swears oaths, things like “I will die before you do” which, in a safety critical situation, is as good a guarantee as one can give of your intentions and your seriousness. “I will not do anything for money I am not willing to do for free” was another very strong oath – which I kept for more than 12 years, and which rendered me continuously precarious and worse a few times, but also allowed me to live with integrity in a very, very dirty world.”— You are not alone. “Revolution Comes.” –“I realized recently that I don’t know anyone else who swears and keeps oaths. People just do what’s expedient.”— Loyalty provides long term very high returns, and is the opposite of short term consumption, conspicuous consumption, virtue signaling, and virtue spirals. Heroism, loyalty, truth and sovereignty are uniquely western values and always have been. So what does it say about you (positively) that you want such returns? —“And that’s when it clicked. The world is as it is because people are as they are. And the choices are as they ever were: the best force organization on the worse, or we spend our lives trying to improve people. To govern, or to teach, are the basic choices.”— Absolutely correct. The strong determine all else. If the world is shit then it is the fault of them men who CAN act, for not HAVING acted, such that they bring about THE BEST RULE BY THE BEST. —“I’ve picked govern. I’ve seen everybody who’s tried to teach fail to get major results, and it’s a hard, hard conclusion but I just don’t think the results are there. It’s just not that time or place.”— Correct. —“And here, sitting [?with govern?], I can just do the best I can, and nothing more. I don’t see how we can teach people a realistic politics: too few want to know the truth about how the world works.”— Um. the best we can is to fight. We are given an OPPORTUNITY FOR HEROISM. And opportunity WRITE OUR NAMES ON HISTORY FOR ALL TIME. This is not a tragedy but an opportunity. An opportunity men laying abed wishing for adventure, fame, and meaning rarely have. —“This leaves us with Straussian options, and conspiracy – Bannon who was a director of Biosphere 2 knows damn well that climate change is real, and believes that fortress America must be girded with iron to survive it.”— I have no idea why that’s relevant. The only reason we have any warming is the masses, and unregulated reproduction. —“Which brings me back to the simple expedience of make the money, spend the money, and enforce accountability. It may not be much, but it’s literally the only effective strategy I can see right now for enacting global change.”—- I would say that you are, like many, looking for an excuse to admit failure and unwillingness to fight to bring about governing, ruling best, by the best. —“I get clearer and purer in this understanding every time I derive it again from first principles. I just have to use the market and the mechanisms it affords for changing the world.”— The market for coopearation is a tool for seizing opportunities made possible by markets. The market for violence is a tool for constructing the opportunities, and LIMITS of those markets. The market for gossip, information, ideas, is a tool for organizing violence with which to create markets constructed of opportunities and limits. —“Nothing else will work. Which sucks, but there we are.”— No. You are, like many, trying to find a self justification for exit. There is only one exit: failure for all time. There is only one success: revolution and change, for all time. Love you brother, and I love all, but you were born with little other than a wealth of time and a wealth of violence and it is time to put your inheritance to work. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Everything You Need To Know About Guns (Today) Sidearms

    (1) Buy a gun that ‘points’ naturally with your hand relaxed and finger on the trigger. Buy the weapon with the highest caliber you can hit something with while firing fairly rapidly. For starters thats .380 or 9mm. For those of us with zillions of rounds behind us, .40sw, .45 and 10mm are fine, but for others, they have too much recoil for fast follow-up shots. Rounds-in-the-air when bad things happen, matter. To stop a person from attacking you it will often take more than one round. You shoot until they stop moving. which is about the time it takes for blood to stop getting to the brain. (I can shoot a 45 on target like it was machine gun, and but only because i trained for weeks to do it with a fantastic instructor.) Most people can get there with 9mm without spending a fortune. Make sure you have two magazines. If possible get three or four. The purpose is to help you train, not carry four magazines. (2) Heavier guns are heavier to carry but absorb more recoil. Lighter guns are lighter to carry but absorb less recoil. Metal guns are heavier than composite guns. Composite guns generally hold more ammunition and ar bigger. Small composite and light, to big metal and heavy. If you want to carry a gun pick one you are willing to lug around with you. Otherwise it’s just a paperweight in a safe somewhere. Carry guns and fighting guns are not the same. Older guns are slimmer with fewer rounds. Newer guns bulkier with more. Buy a weapon for your purpose. Most require at least two: ‘dress gun’ for emergencies, and ‘fight gun’ to protect self, kin, and home. For home, a shotgun is about as simplee and effective as you can get, and you don’t even have to aim very well. (Plus people are disproportionately scared of them, and the sound is unmistakable.) ( I advise people that they will buy two guns. Usually a .380/9mm small, and a 9/40/45 full size. And eventually sell back the one they don’t use. ) Modern (post 1980, and certainly post 2009) composite pistols from the top manufacturers all come with decockers, trigger safeties, manual safeties, hammer-blocks, lock open when empty, and have thumb-press magazine releases. All of these are safety features. I suggest avoiding manual safeties on the slide. They are too difficult to manipulate. 1911’s have only grip and manual safeties. They are for ‘experienced’ and ‘trained’ users. I’ve listed suggested manufacturers below. BASICS (3) Learn basic safety. “Always and Nevers”. a) never point the gun at anything, ever, even for a millisecond, ever unless you intend to kill it and pay the consequences for killing it. Guns are to be treated as permanently-on laser beams that kill everything out into infinity wherever they are pointed. b) never touch the trigger unless you’re going to use it to kill someone – the minute you touch the trigger you’ve committed to killing someone. c) the gun is always loaded whenever you think it isn’t. Unless you check it as the very first step in doing everything you do to it, you’ve just forgotten it’s loaded. Guns teach you humility and the frailty of human mind and memory. Guns require ‘agency’. You must be dead certain at all times. (Hence why liberals can’t deal with them. they are impulsive and lack agency.) d) only hand someone a gun, with the clip removed, round ejected, chamber open and exposed, after checking yourself that it is clear. Never take a gun from someone without the clip removed, round ejected, chamber open and checking that it’s clear. e) never load a gun in the presence of others who are not armed as well. Never handle a gun in the presence of others who are not armed as well. f) Never point the gun at anyone, any creature, or anything, unless you are intent on ‘killing’ that person, animal, or thing. g) if you can’t do all of the above, you are not worthy of owning and operating a weapon. Thankfully we can teach young men to do this around the world with practice. (4) Learn how to take apart and reassemble the gun ‘gently’. Do it at least 50 times, and do that at least five times. It will be unconscious at that point. That’s what you’re looking for. (5) Learn how to clear the weapon of jams:failure to seat the magazine, failure to feed from the magazine, failure to battery, failure to eject, stove-piping. Buy cheap ammo and randomly stick it in your magazines, and practice it. Practice it dry. Do ten of each, every three days, for two months. It will be unconscious at that point. That’s what you’re looking for. (6) Buy fake (plastic, dummy) rounds, and have someone randomly insert them in your clip among your regular rounds. (or do it yourself and then mix up the magazines). This will train you not to flinch. After that, learn double-tap. After than learn the Mozambique drill – two in the chest, one in the head. (Personally that’s all I ever practice. ) Practice once a week, for three months. It will be unconscious at that point. That’s what you’re looking for. (7) Keep the target at 25 yards or less. Spend half your time shooting with the sights. Half your time point-shooting without them. You will be very happy you did. Initial sight picture takes 1.0-2.5 seconds. Follow-up shots take .25 seconds. Point shooting takes only the time to point and follow ups only the time for you to feel the recoil and trigger reset. practice once a week for three months. Practice a bit less often for a year. It will be unconscious at that point. That’s what you’re looking for. MASTERY (8) Martial artists know teach to side step, and move forward and backwards, or at an angle while maintaining ‘stance’ (secure footing). Fencing is probably the best. But old fashioned basic karate and ju jitsu teach it as well. Most police and soldiers do this VERY BADLY. I have seen example after example of people ‘tripping’ because they don’t know how to move. It should only take you a few hours to learn it, but a lot of time to practice it. After you have practiced it, practice point and sight shooting while moving back and forth, and side to side. It will be unconscious at that point. That’s what you’re looking for. At this point you have mastery of the sidearm. (9) Do not try to quick draw until you have been shooting for at least a year regularly. Never do it alone. And never at a range. Only out in the wild. With someone who can drive you to the hospital. Otherwise you will absolutely positively shoot yourself. it hurts. It hurts like hell. Instead, practice quick draw with an empty gun. Practice point shooting starting with your finger off the trigger, with your arm 15 degrees out from your side. When you have done this a few hundred times over at least three weeks, then do it with fake rounds. When you have don this a few hundred times over at least there weeks, then do it with one round. etc. 10) Learn how to shoot flat against a wall, both directions, then how to drop and shoot on one knee, seated on one knee with leg outstretched, prone (lying down) all four directions. Then inverted (on your back) in four directions. 11) There is a vast difference between ‘concealment’ and ‘cover’. Concealment hides you but can be shot through. Cover hides you but cannot be shot through (easily). With modern weapons there is effectively no ‘cover’ only concealment. In other words, modern weapons shoot through pretty much everything: windows, doors, walls, car doors, concrete walls, brick walls, really thick steel plate. And pretty much everything but three layers of heavy sandbags. For all intents and purposes walls, furniture, cars, refrigerators and appliances, are made of something more than smoke and less than cardboard. Larger slower bullets will stop, but smaller faster bullets will not. Expanding bullets will stop better, solid and cored bullets will not stop. if you have a 9mm pistol the fact that someone is hiding behind a door or wall or in a car is meaningless. Likewise, if you are hiding behind a door or wall or in a car, it’s meaningless. In fact the only wall you can reliably hide behind is the one made of the bullets you are shooting at the other person. If someone has a modern rifle the fact is, that they can effectively shoot through steel, and very likely drill through a wall with multiple shots. So, you can either teach yourself to shoot through concealment, or be the victim of those who have taught themselves to shoot through concealment. Because the only cover is the cover you generate by returning fire. GROUP MASTERY 12) Learn anticipatory shooting. Often we know the shape of the space we cannot see. We can practice shooting targets before we have sight picture. So that we can shoot from high, low, and center without exposing our bodies to fire. And so that we can only expose ourselves for minimum time to hit an anticipated spot. And so that we can enter an area shooting. We can practice providing covering fire while others move. Then Learn clearing a room. Anticipatory shooting plus entry into an enclosed space. 13) Learn basic movement (look it up. I don’t have to cover it here. However, note that militaries using combined arms (concentration of forces) have to patrol a lot of territory using human bodies as ‘sensors’. People who are defending their homeland, conducting a revolt, or a revolution do not. They merely have to be able to blend in, move, perform an action, and return home or to safety. Furthermore, there is a great deal of advantage using only sidearms in purely urban or suburban areas. 13) Learn bounding. One person provides cover while the others move past a point of vulnerability. Rotate with the next first in line at the next point of vulnerability. until you are . (The military taught this badly last I knew.) it takes quite a few seconds to observe a hallway, an alley, or street, or courtyard, or any open space. 14) Learn basic medical (wounds). I don’t have to cover that here. 15) Learn basic fitness. Modern militaries carry too much weight. If you can walk for 20 miles with 30 lbs of water bottles and still do 50 pushups and 30 jumping jacks (drinking them along the way) then you are fit. Bulk is your enemy. SAFETY (16) a) Never give another person your gun to shoot without doing the same rituals above. I have taught dozens of people to shoot. I can make someone who is serious about it, safe when handling a gun in one day. And confident after three to five half-hour lessons. (b) Never give a girl a gun to shoot with more than one round in it. EVER, unless you want someone – likely you – to get shot. Same for kids. (c) Never give a ‘newbie’ a gun over 9mm with or with more than one round unless you want someone to get shot -likely you. d) Never use or be in the presence of anyone using a machine pistol, an SMG, or Full Auto Carbine or Rifle, until you have, and they have, mastered using it a single shot at a time, as above – unless you want everyone in visual range to get shot. You must lean heavily into, and physically work to hold down, and use both leaning and holding to control these weapons. As far as I know, unless you are providing suppressing fire when you can’t see the enemy, three to five round smg bursts fired to ‘paint’ a space, or to intersect with a movement, are the maximum utility these weapons provide. Shooting fast with a pistol is a lot safer. 11) The safest place for a gun is in your hands, against your chest, pointing wherever you’re looking. iii) The next safest place is in your pocket, in your belt or in a holster in your belt. iv) the next safest place is in a safe with a lock on it. v) the next safest place is in reach of your pillow. vi) everywhere else is NOT SAFE. 12) Avoiding ‘situations’ is always wise. Running away whenever possible is always preferable. The only reason not to run away is to prevent harm to you, your kin, those you love, those under your charge, those under your protection, and in defense of the civic commons from the proliferation of corrupt, criminal, predatory, or evil behavior. Killing is never a question of property. Other than fine art and artifacts, everything except life and limb is replaceable. Stopping a robbery in modernity is for the purpose of stopping the spread of behavior. So know what it is that you are shooting for, and why you must shoot. That said, those most needing arms are those not privileged to be insulated from troublesome characters by birt, wealth, or ability. And we must consider their circumstances as unequal to ours if we have such privileges. What is ‘reasonable’ behavior in an industry with many ex convicts where theft is common, and threat is common, and stress is common, and hardship is common, is very different from what is reasonable behavior among middle class people with education and comfortable consumption due to comfortable employment. WHAT TO BUY PISTOLS: Glock, S&W, CZ modern pistols. HK older pistols – although collectors drive up prices. For ‘aesthetes’ the 1911 is the Harley of guns, and can be customized heavily and easily for your needs. Special nod to Walther ppk, HKP4+ and Makarov’s. That’s it. Better used great gun than new cheap gun. Evidence is revolvers are only good for girls afraid of guns. They are dead simple to operate, dead simple, to learn, and good as a last resort. RIFLES: “Black Rifles” AR-15 or HK416 or AR15 with HK416 plunger systems. Any variation on the AK47. And special nod to the Steyer-Aug variants for those that want weight close to the body or to take up less space. That’s it. There are some superior older models of rifles but the black rifle won the 20th century because the tech is just lighter and more precise. In the very near future the 5.56mm will be replaced by a more powerful cartridge, but nearly anyone can be taught to fire a black rifle without losing sight picture. The AK is a weapon more tolerant of the operator (russian philosophy at work), and of conditions. It hits very hard, goes through everything, and there is steel core ammunition everywhere on the market. HUNTING RIFLES: Hunting Rifles for men are like women’s purses or shoes: they come in all sorts of variations for all sorts of tasks, and all sorts of tastes. That isn’t my specialty. Although it is pretty hard to argue with S&W .50 pistols, Remington 700’s, and Italian shotguns. 😉 THE PURPOSE OF WEAPONS The purpose of weapons is to *Preserve Sovereignty for the Great, Liberty for the Talented, Freedom for the Able, and Subsidy for the Weak and those lacking Agency, using the single law of Reciprocity, under the distributed dictatorship of armed men we call ‘western civilization’.* Sovereignty, liberty, freedom, and subsidy cannot be produced by other means than a militia: shareholders in the preservation of reciprocity by the prohibition on rule. Western civilization begins with the militia: all free men capable of bearing arms. Every man a craftsmen, every man a sheriff, every man a soldier, every man a warrior, every man a judge. A judge of reciprocity. In the end, when all is said and done, we are equal only in our defense of one another’s interests. And that is equal enough for everything else that matters. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute “The Philosophy of Aristocracy” “The distributed dictatorship of sovereign men.”