Form: Full Essay

Why Does The 1.7% Jewish Population In Usa Have So Much Political Power?

HERE IS THE REASON
(WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE OF THE STICKS AND STONES IT WILL GENERATE)

I’m going to give the answer that is impolitic and true. Mostly because I’m kind of curious how people interpret it. Just a draft.

MONEY, MEDIA AND WHITE GUILT FOR WW2
That’s the answer. But why?

GROUP EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY
If your gene pool does not have an evolutionary strategy that it can compete with against other groups, then it will fail. Europeans were poor people on the edge of the bronze age who had to rely on small numbers to hold land. To do this they favored technology and a novel kind of cooperation that we call the individualistic and heroic mythos. Jews by contrast were not a landed people, but a migratory one, right at the center of the bronze age explosion, and unsuccessful at holding land.

Landholder ethics are very different from transitory ethics. Land means you can invest in fixed assets, craftsmanship, and industry. You can raise crops, and domesticated animals. You have to defend them, and that requires a great personal sacrifice on the part of most members.

JEWISH GROUP EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY
0) Empirically measurable verbal advantage in Ashkenazim due to eugenic mating.
1) High investment parenting.
3) High investment in in-group success (ethnocentrism).
4) In-Group Cooperation and Out Group predation.
5) Lower ethical requirements in out-group predation.

The first three properties are beneficial and are helpful to host countries. We get specialists in the skills that ORGANIZE production and trade. In a culture that specializes in organizing war (landholding) and property rights, and production.

However, the last two are damaging to host countries and populations and the USA is no exception. So it is a 50/50 proposition when one has a large Jewish population because of these factors. The good comes with the bad, and in general, historically speaking, this strategy was effective enough that host peoples eventually rebelled against it.

Any group sufficiently separate within a host country cannot break the US and THEM barrier that is required for the extension of trust to the state. So the jewish model cannot succeed in any legitimate state – rather any state considered legitimate by its people.

Jewish ethics are more limited than protestant ethics, and jews have, in every host country they have ever been in, gravitated by intention, to those roles that were, and are extractive, because of this lower standard of ethics.
(For the best scholarly treatment see Kevin McDonald’s _The Culture of Critique_. Three volumes on his study of the Jewish cultural survival strategy.)

THE NORTHERN EUROPEAN GROUP STRATEGY
0) Use small numbers, technology, mobile tactics, professional warriors, and egalitarian enfranchisement in property rights to hold land and animals against competitors.
1) Suppress all free riding, so that everyone produces, leaves, or dies.
2) Break property (land and animals) into family divisions to eliminate free riding
3) Prevent the centralization of power, so that members retain their property.
4) Outbreed so that relations and trust are widespread, and conflict is minimized.
5) Conquer if you can. Raid if you can. Trade if you cannot.
This system is weak unless there is high criteria for entry. The enlightenment weakened that limit on entry, and universal democratic enfranchisement eliminated it.

To cooperate in their environments, different cultures suppress different levels of ‘theft’ from the direct, to the indirect. And the reason for the High Trust West and our “Protestant Ethic” is that westerners have suppressed more kinds of theft and cheating than any other people on earth. This suppression was also eugenic for similar reasons that helped the Jews compete – if forces out non-conformists.

Our suppression of all types of criminality, theft and immorality, and very rigid moral and ethical requirements literally suppress nearly all options EXCEPT participation in the market. This is largely because in northern Europe above the Hanjal line, the church outlawed cousin marriage, and the large land owners only would rent land to married couples who could be trusted to produce.

These to factors led to the absolute nuclear family that is unique to northern europe, and the culture of hard work as a status symbol. The extension of property rights to women broke up the ability for large families to compete with the church for land. The result was that almost every form of ‘free riding’ was suppressed both practically and eventually normatively. And the prohibition on cousin marriage created an enormous extended family and the ethic that comes with an extended family. We call this ethic christian universalism. But it is not present in southern europe or anywhere outside of the Hanjal line.

Furthermore, the absolute nuclear family and its requirement for self sufficiency does not exist outside of those cultures. And it was that family structure that the founders brought to the north american colonies, and the rule of law and the nuclear family persisted in america without the overhead of aristocracy until the 1970’s. (Now 40% of children are born to single mothers, and in real terms, after redistribution, only about a quarter of households are self sufficient and pay taxes.)

SUPPRESSION OF THEFTS :
(In economic terms ‘Discounts’)
So lets look at what we can suppress from the most simple to the most complex.
–CRIME–
Murder
Violence
Theft
–ETHICS–
Blackmail
Usury
Fraud
Fraud by omission
Fraud by obfuscation
–MORALITY—
Profiting from suffering
Profiting from disadvantage
Profit without contribution
Profit from Interference in the acts of others
Externalization of costs
Privatization of the commons
Socialization of losses into the commons
Free riding
–POLITICAL MORALITY–
Rent seeking
Corruption
Extortion
Conspiracy
Monopoly (government is technically a monopoly)
–POLITICAL CONQUEST–
Ostracization and Displacement
Conquest through Overbreeding
Conquest through Immigration
Conquest through religious conversion
Conquest through Enslavement
Conquest through war.

Westerners managed to suppress all the moral prohibitions. Even within families, where, almost universally, free riding is not only expected but encouraged.

CONTRASTING WITH JEWISH ETHICS
But jewish ethics in most of history stop at THEFT, and in the 20th century at fraud. And a disproportionate percentage of Jews actively participated in, if not specialized in, what in the west was traditionally considered unethical and immoral industries. Which would include the mass media, advertising, entertainment, pornography, credit, banking, finance, law.

The jewish ethic can be captured in the statement “it only takes two people to agree to a trade”. Unfortunately, that may be true, but the consequences of any trade affect all members of the community. It is this set of consequences, which economists call ‘externalities’ that allow the ‘cheater’ to use a single interaction to effectively extract wealth involuntarily from people outside of the transaction. This prohibition on externalities is the practical meaning of the term ‘immoral’. Just as the prohibition on taking advantage of asymmetry of information is the definition of ‘unethical’.

So the problem is not so much that jews do this or that as it is the over representation of jews in industries that are enticingly profitable, but which are moral hazards, and westerners by their emphasis on production and craft, and prohibition on ‘cunning’ (cheating), controlled not by law, but by morals.

This is why Jews excel everywhere but best in the west: our high trust society gives their particular lack of moral standard outgroup requirement, extraordinary opportunity for success, and their scientific intellectuals greater freedom to work.

If you specialize in what the host nation considers unethical and immoral behavior, and can get away with it, then it is very profitable. The problem is, almost no other civilizations prohibit as much of the moral and ethical spectrum as northern europeans. So northern european countries and the anglosphere provide greater opportunity for profiting from unethical and immoral action.

HISTORY
The jews have been disliked almost everywhere that they’ve been successful, and it is their historical preference for cheating, by verbal means where possible, and profiting from unethical and immoral cheating where possible, that has generally led to their prosecution.

Cheating, especially through various credit schemes (creating a hazard) is extremely profitable. Jewish ingroup bias was particularly useful in creating trust relationships for financing during the hard currency eras.

If you study the Ethics of Gypsies they are very close to jewish ethics, but they lack the intelligence and discipline to move from profit by crime to profit by unethical and immoral actions.

But what is most interesting is that despite being the most literate people in europe jews produced no significant science or literature, while starting in 1200 in England the opposite happened. It appears that only with the structure of western high trust society and the acceptance of jews into western society have the jews been able to contribute to world knowledge. Even if, some of that knowledge (Marx, Freud and Cantor, just like Kant and Rousseau) was pseudoscientific and very damaging to the west.

SIDEBAR: AN INTERESTING HISTORICAL THOUGHT
–And jewish banking became especially useful after the extermination of the Templars. Competing financiers would have provided the states with competitors to jewish bankers and assisted in controlling rates. But the templars made a mistake in trying to obtain land as well as retain their banking and that was too much of a risk for the governments.–

CONTEMPORARY CIRCUMSTANCES
Prior to the war era immigration of eastern european jews, American Jews had become indistinguishable from conservative Scots who dominated business in american institutions. To the point of being accepted into elite institutions. At this point jewish identity has merged with the american model fairly deeply and intermarriage is eroding the prior social structure. So what has happened to the English appears to be happening to the jews.

Now, again, assuming that indoctrination and assimilation will leave jews like the english, scots and germans, an advantaged minority population,

Israel has demonstrated that it may in fact be possible for the jews to hold land develop land holder ethics, and build a state, but at the cost of suppressing the rampant free riding in their more religious members. It may also occur that once again, jewish culture and ethics are insufficient to hold a territory. And given that israel is the most technically advanced society in the region, even if dependent on american handouts, that the loss would be tragic.

MY GOAL IS TO ARTICULATE WESTERN HIGH TRUST ETHICS
I write about ethics in order to explain the economic consequences of different ethical models, as well as why the western ethical model created the high performing high trust society and others did not. This high trust model, wherever it survives, provides a dramatic difference in economic performance that no other civilization has matched.

No other philosopher has successfully articulated the cause and consequence of western high trust ethics. All groups need an evolutionary strategy. But not only do northern Europeans need the high trust society to compete, but given what the high trust society produces in terms of innovation and exchange, the world also needs the high trust society to prevail.

Westerners do not understand their history or why they succeeded despite being a poor illiterate people, small in number, far from the origin of civilization, because their history is articulated in moral and allegorical language not in ratio scientific terms. They cannot defend their social system because they do not understand it. The enlightenment project was a scheme for the seizure of political power from the landed aristocracy by the new middle class. And the mythos of democracy was used to suppress the Aristocratic origins of western civilization. As it turns out the purpose of large democratic states appears largely to be, ever since Napoleon, the export of war and conquest.

The purpose of my work is to make it possible for westerners to rationally debate their values against the encroachment of other value systems so that we can preserve the high trust society – for themselves, and everyone else.

CLOSING
I hope this was useful. This is a draft of a longer argument and I might revise and extend it later. Of course, I expect all sorts of childish nonsense but this is how it is.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-1-7-Jewish-population-in-USA-have-so-much-political-power

January 7, 2014
Why Does The 1.7% Jewish Population In Usa Have So Much Political Power?

HERE IS THE REASON
(WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE OF THE STICKS AND STONES IT WILL GENERATE)

I’m going to give the answer that is impolitic and true. Mostly because I’m kind of curious how people interpret it. Just a draft.

MONEY, MEDIA AND WHITE GUILT FOR WW2
That’s the answer. But why?

GROUP EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY
If your gene pool does not have an evolutionary strategy that it can compete with against other groups, then it will fail. Europeans were poor people on the edge of the bronze age who had to rely on small numbers to hold land. To do this they favored technology and a novel kind of cooperation that we call the individualistic and heroic mythos. Jews by contrast were not a landed people, but a migratory one, right at the center of the bronze age explosion, and unsuccessful at holding land.

Landholder ethics are very different from transitory ethics. Land means you can invest in fixed assets, craftsmanship, and industry. You can raise crops, and domesticated animals. You have to defend them, and that requires a great personal sacrifice on the part of most members.

JEWISH GROUP EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY
0) Empirically measurable verbal advantage in Ashkenazim due to eugenic mating.
1) High investment parenting.
3) High investment in in-group success (ethnocentrism).
4) In-Group Cooperation and Out Group predation.
5) Lower ethical requirements in out-group predation.

The first three properties are beneficial and are helpful to host countries. We get specialists in the skills that ORGANIZE production and trade. In a culture that specializes in organizing war (landholding) and property rights, and production.

However, the last two are damaging to host countries and populations and the USA is no exception. So it is a 50/50 proposition when one has a large Jewish population because of these factors. The good comes with the bad, and in general, historically speaking, this strategy was effective enough that host peoples eventually rebelled against it.

Any group sufficiently separate within a host country cannot break the US and THEM barrier that is required for the extension of trust to the state. So the jewish model cannot succeed in any legitimate state – rather any state considered legitimate by its people.

Jewish ethics are more limited than protestant ethics, and jews have, in every host country they have ever been in, gravitated by intention, to those roles that were, and are extractive, because of this lower standard of ethics.
(For the best scholarly treatment see Kevin McDonald’s _The Culture of Critique_. Three volumes on his study of the Jewish cultural survival strategy.)

THE NORTHERN EUROPEAN GROUP STRATEGY
0) Use small numbers, technology, mobile tactics, professional warriors, and egalitarian enfranchisement in property rights to hold land and animals against competitors.
1) Suppress all free riding, so that everyone produces, leaves, or dies.
2) Break property (land and animals) into family divisions to eliminate free riding
3) Prevent the centralization of power, so that members retain their property.
4) Outbreed so that relations and trust are widespread, and conflict is minimized.
5) Conquer if you can. Raid if you can. Trade if you cannot.
This system is weak unless there is high criteria for entry. The enlightenment weakened that limit on entry, and universal democratic enfranchisement eliminated it.

To cooperate in their environments, different cultures suppress different levels of ‘theft’ from the direct, to the indirect. And the reason for the High Trust West and our “Protestant Ethic” is that westerners have suppressed more kinds of theft and cheating than any other people on earth. This suppression was also eugenic for similar reasons that helped the Jews compete – if forces out non-conformists.

Our suppression of all types of criminality, theft and immorality, and very rigid moral and ethical requirements literally suppress nearly all options EXCEPT participation in the market. This is largely because in northern Europe above the Hanjal line, the church outlawed cousin marriage, and the large land owners only would rent land to married couples who could be trusted to produce.

These to factors led to the absolute nuclear family that is unique to northern europe, and the culture of hard work as a status symbol. The extension of property rights to women broke up the ability for large families to compete with the church for land. The result was that almost every form of ‘free riding’ was suppressed both practically and eventually normatively. And the prohibition on cousin marriage created an enormous extended family and the ethic that comes with an extended family. We call this ethic christian universalism. But it is not present in southern europe or anywhere outside of the Hanjal line.

Furthermore, the absolute nuclear family and its requirement for self sufficiency does not exist outside of those cultures. And it was that family structure that the founders brought to the north american colonies, and the rule of law and the nuclear family persisted in america without the overhead of aristocracy until the 1970’s. (Now 40% of children are born to single mothers, and in real terms, after redistribution, only about a quarter of households are self sufficient and pay taxes.)

SUPPRESSION OF THEFTS :
(In economic terms ‘Discounts’)
So lets look at what we can suppress from the most simple to the most complex.
–CRIME–
Murder
Violence
Theft
–ETHICS–
Blackmail
Usury
Fraud
Fraud by omission
Fraud by obfuscation
–MORALITY—
Profiting from suffering
Profiting from disadvantage
Profit without contribution
Profit from Interference in the acts of others
Externalization of costs
Privatization of the commons
Socialization of losses into the commons
Free riding
–POLITICAL MORALITY–
Rent seeking
Corruption
Extortion
Conspiracy
Monopoly (government is technically a monopoly)
–POLITICAL CONQUEST–
Ostracization and Displacement
Conquest through Overbreeding
Conquest through Immigration
Conquest through religious conversion
Conquest through Enslavement
Conquest through war.

Westerners managed to suppress all the moral prohibitions. Even within families, where, almost universally, free riding is not only expected but encouraged.

CONTRASTING WITH JEWISH ETHICS
But jewish ethics in most of history stop at THEFT, and in the 20th century at fraud. And a disproportionate percentage of Jews actively participated in, if not specialized in, what in the west was traditionally considered unethical and immoral industries. Which would include the mass media, advertising, entertainment, pornography, credit, banking, finance, law.

The jewish ethic can be captured in the statement “it only takes two people to agree to a trade”. Unfortunately, that may be true, but the consequences of any trade affect all members of the community. It is this set of consequences, which economists call ‘externalities’ that allow the ‘cheater’ to use a single interaction to effectively extract wealth involuntarily from people outside of the transaction. This prohibition on externalities is the practical meaning of the term ‘immoral’. Just as the prohibition on taking advantage of asymmetry of information is the definition of ‘unethical’.

So the problem is not so much that jews do this or that as it is the over representation of jews in industries that are enticingly profitable, but which are moral hazards, and westerners by their emphasis on production and craft, and prohibition on ‘cunning’ (cheating), controlled not by law, but by morals.

This is why Jews excel everywhere but best in the west: our high trust society gives their particular lack of moral standard outgroup requirement, extraordinary opportunity for success, and their scientific intellectuals greater freedom to work.

If you specialize in what the host nation considers unethical and immoral behavior, and can get away with it, then it is very profitable. The problem is, almost no other civilizations prohibit as much of the moral and ethical spectrum as northern europeans. So northern european countries and the anglosphere provide greater opportunity for profiting from unethical and immoral action.

HISTORY
The jews have been disliked almost everywhere that they’ve been successful, and it is their historical preference for cheating, by verbal means where possible, and profiting from unethical and immoral cheating where possible, that has generally led to their prosecution.

Cheating, especially through various credit schemes (creating a hazard) is extremely profitable. Jewish ingroup bias was particularly useful in creating trust relationships for financing during the hard currency eras.

If you study the Ethics of Gypsies they are very close to jewish ethics, but they lack the intelligence and discipline to move from profit by crime to profit by unethical and immoral actions.

But what is most interesting is that despite being the most literate people in europe jews produced no significant science or literature, while starting in 1200 in England the opposite happened. It appears that only with the structure of western high trust society and the acceptance of jews into western society have the jews been able to contribute to world knowledge. Even if, some of that knowledge (Marx, Freud and Cantor, just like Kant and Rousseau) was pseudoscientific and very damaging to the west.

SIDEBAR: AN INTERESTING HISTORICAL THOUGHT
–And jewish banking became especially useful after the extermination of the Templars. Competing financiers would have provided the states with competitors to jewish bankers and assisted in controlling rates. But the templars made a mistake in trying to obtain land as well as retain their banking and that was too much of a risk for the governments.–

CONTEMPORARY CIRCUMSTANCES
Prior to the war era immigration of eastern european jews, American Jews had become indistinguishable from conservative Scots who dominated business in american institutions. To the point of being accepted into elite institutions. At this point jewish identity has merged with the american model fairly deeply and intermarriage is eroding the prior social structure. So what has happened to the English appears to be happening to the jews.

Now, again, assuming that indoctrination and assimilation will leave jews like the english, scots and germans, an advantaged minority population,

Israel has demonstrated that it may in fact be possible for the jews to hold land develop land holder ethics, and build a state, but at the cost of suppressing the rampant free riding in their more religious members. It may also occur that once again, jewish culture and ethics are insufficient to hold a territory. And given that israel is the most technically advanced society in the region, even if dependent on american handouts, that the loss would be tragic.

MY GOAL IS TO ARTICULATE WESTERN HIGH TRUST ETHICS
I write about ethics in order to explain the economic consequences of different ethical models, as well as why the western ethical model created the high performing high trust society and others did not. This high trust model, wherever it survives, provides a dramatic difference in economic performance that no other civilization has matched.

No other philosopher has successfully articulated the cause and consequence of western high trust ethics. All groups need an evolutionary strategy. But not only do northern Europeans need the high trust society to compete, but given what the high trust society produces in terms of innovation and exchange, the world also needs the high trust society to prevail.

Westerners do not understand their history or why they succeeded despite being a poor illiterate people, small in number, far from the origin of civilization, because their history is articulated in moral and allegorical language not in ratio scientific terms. They cannot defend their social system because they do not understand it. The enlightenment project was a scheme for the seizure of political power from the landed aristocracy by the new middle class. And the mythos of democracy was used to suppress the Aristocratic origins of western civilization. As it turns out the purpose of large democratic states appears largely to be, ever since Napoleon, the export of war and conquest.

The purpose of my work is to make it possible for westerners to rationally debate their values against the encroachment of other value systems so that we can preserve the high trust society – for themselves, and everyone else.

CLOSING
I hope this was useful. This is a draft of a longer argument and I might revise and extend it later. Of course, I expect all sorts of childish nonsense but this is how it is.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-1-7-Jewish-population-in-USA-have-so-much-political-power

January 7, 2014
The Necessary Properties of Economic Cooperation

(draft of the correction of a priorism in economics, politics and ethics.) (important) Exchanges are unique. Every one. Marginalism alone renders all exchanges unique – even before we consider the uneven distribution of resources and ability, and the vagaries of nature, and the shifting wants and signals of human beings. As such, each exchange is unique, and even aggregate measures of inputs, operations and outputs in similar exchanges are dependent upon Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade; which while sticky, are no guarantee of future exchanges under similar conditions. Constancy is an illusion. Businesses continuously adjust to conditions. So, no relations are constant in economics, even if in the aggregate, in short time periods, they appear so. If no relations are constant in economics, that means that we cannot organize production on the assumption of constant relations. This criticism stands alone, even prior to either the problem of calculation without money and prices, or the problem of incentives independent of rewards. However, we cannot organize any form of production under the assumption of constant relations without the incentives of multitudinous individuals to produce. This is the correct criticism of the socialist method of production. 1) calculation 2) inconstancy of relations 3) impossibility of organization 4) impossibility of incentives. The reason capitalists and executives of all kinds cost more than labor and are rewarded more than labor, is because labor has little to no value in production; and what value it has in production, constantly decreases with mechanization. So, the problem remains how to organize labor whether human, computational or mechanical. And while we might argue that middle management has very little value in the organization of labor, organizing the production of goods using labor, using prices and payments as rules, limits and incentives, is the highest contribution to the value of the goods, since the alignment of incentives – what we call ‘execution’ : organizing humans into production – is the art. And that is the scarcity that the market rewards. THE PROBLEM OF THE A PRIORI ARGUMENT If there are no constant relations in economics, but mathematics is the logic of constant relations, and further we attempt to use mathematics to justify intervention in the market for goods and services, then doing is logically impossible. The logical of constant relations, entirely dependent upon constant categories, cannot be used to describe economic conditions and apply them to the future. All we can do with mathematics is mine the recent data for descriptions of what has happened in the existing patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. So, if the socialist method of production was impossible, and measurement of the economy at all but the aggregate level is impossible, and measurement at the aggregate level does not capture changes in human, social and moral capital, then it becomes very difficult to suggest that governments can do much except (a) limited trade policy, (b) limited industrial policy, and (c) limited education and health policy (d) defend the rule of law and the common law (e) provide a means for the resolution of disputes. Thus, the prior generations argued that we must both not supplant the market means of dynamically organizing unique instances of production, nor interfere with it, and that we may only rely upon deduction and guesswork, and simply leave the market alone. However, this is either mistaken – or it is ill said. We can deduce almost nothing of consequence from human action. First, we can however, TEST any set of statements to determine whether they are rational and what incentives that they produce. But we cannot deduce much of anything at all – we can only test statements and hypotheses to determine likely human action. Second, when we understand that the problem of production is not labor, nor resources, but ORGANIZING production, what we can do is increasingly expand the means by which groups can cooperate on disparate means. The most effective way to assist groups in cooperating on means, even if they have disparate or even irreconcilable ends, which we cannot choose between because of the inability to forecast into a kaleidic future, other than value inferences we obtain from existing patterns of specialization and trade, is to suppress all risks OTHER than those of forecasting. Namely, the suppression of ‘discounts’. Then more discounts we suppress, the more human action that must be pressed into the market for goods and services, entirely upon the price, quality and distribution of those goods in time. (And independent of schemes.) So, if we understand that the production we organize, is the ability for others to frictionlessly organize production, in a world of constant invention and change, it is not entirely true that we can take little action. It is not the production of goods and services that we assist in producing with our governments, but it is the rules by which we dynamically organize production by the suppression of all discounts, everywhere, such than the only possible actions that remain, are to take risks on one’s forecast of the future within one’s patterns of specialization and trade. RATHER THAN THE A PRIORI ERROR – WE STATE THIS INSTEAD: Economics then, consists of: The near universal human ability to test rationality of incentives. The near universal human desire to seek discounts. The use of organized violence to suppress all discounts. The resulting pressure of all human action into the market. The construction of institutions to suppress discounting. The use of empirical measures to gain short term insight into the patterns of trade. The use of such information to inform participants in the ongoing adjustment of such patterns. Institutions required are: 1) Articulated Property Rights and Obligations. 2) The common law. 3) An independent Judiciary. 4) Universal standing so that any individual can seek restitution from any other individual for taking discounts, no matter what the accused’s function in society. 5) A body of people with the ability to construct contracts on behalf of larger groups, to produce goods that the market cannot organize to produce because of arbitrariness of the choices, or the openness of such contractual investments to free riding, privatization, and socialization or other discounts. 6) A means for the collection of dividends and choosing between the expenditure on further investments and distribution of proceeds to shareholders. We do not need much government. What government we do need, need not be a monopoly. What investments we need need not be decided by majority rule – a monopoly. And those services and goods we need, need not be provided by a monopoly bureaucracy. Even if it may be true that the INITIAL CONSTRUCTION of property rights requires the imposition of a monopoly of those rights, and a total prohibition on discounts, that is the limit of such a monopoly. Which is why corporations of separate interests in creating such a system is superior to monopoly of interests in creating such a system, since no member of such a polycentric order would tolerate the usurpation of his rights by another. Such a government is a government of unbreakable rules which we call ‘laws’, not a government of people with capacity for decision making, or coercion, or the ability to make laws. And our defense against that monopoly government and all forms of abuse, is the training of a near-priesthood called judges who adjudicate differences according to private property rights, and the voluntary agreements that we enter into, and the prohibitions against free riding on the goods produced by those agreements we chose NOT to enter into. And to construct as such, that those judges possess only the incentives to use those laws in the fulfillment of their roles. We can reduce all of this to the simple assertion, that no man can know the future sufficiently to force others to obey his direction on the use of their minds, bodies, time and property. However, it is quite possible for each of us to judge incentives and for men with training to judge whether property rights were respected or not. That is all we need.

January 3, 2014
The Necessary Properties of Economic Cooperation

(draft of the correction of a priorism in economics, politics and ethics.) (important) Exchanges are unique. Every one. Marginalism alone renders all exchanges unique – even before we consider the uneven distribution of resources and ability, and the vagaries of nature, and the shifting wants and signals of human beings. As such, each exchange is unique, and even aggregate measures of inputs, operations and outputs in similar exchanges are dependent upon Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade; which while sticky, are no guarantee of future exchanges under similar conditions. Constancy is an illusion. Businesses continuously adjust to conditions. So, no relations are constant in economics, even if in the aggregate, in short time periods, they appear so. If no relations are constant in economics, that means that we cannot organize production on the assumption of constant relations. This criticism stands alone, even prior to either the problem of calculation without money and prices, or the problem of incentives independent of rewards. However, we cannot organize any form of production under the assumption of constant relations without the incentives of multitudinous individuals to produce. This is the correct criticism of the socialist method of production. 1) calculation 2) inconstancy of relations 3) impossibility of organization 4) impossibility of incentives. The reason capitalists and executives of all kinds cost more than labor and are rewarded more than labor, is because labor has little to no value in production; and what value it has in production, constantly decreases with mechanization. So, the problem remains how to organize labor whether human, computational or mechanical. And while we might argue that middle management has very little value in the organization of labor, organizing the production of goods using labor, using prices and payments as rules, limits and incentives, is the highest contribution to the value of the goods, since the alignment of incentives – what we call ‘execution’ : organizing humans into production – is the art. And that is the scarcity that the market rewards. THE PROBLEM OF THE A PRIORI ARGUMENT If there are no constant relations in economics, but mathematics is the logic of constant relations, and further we attempt to use mathematics to justify intervention in the market for goods and services, then doing is logically impossible. The logical of constant relations, entirely dependent upon constant categories, cannot be used to describe economic conditions and apply them to the future. All we can do with mathematics is mine the recent data for descriptions of what has happened in the existing patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. So, if the socialist method of production was impossible, and measurement of the economy at all but the aggregate level is impossible, and measurement at the aggregate level does not capture changes in human, social and moral capital, then it becomes very difficult to suggest that governments can do much except (a) limited trade policy, (b) limited industrial policy, and (c) limited education and health policy (d) defend the rule of law and the common law (e) provide a means for the resolution of disputes. Thus, the prior generations argued that we must both not supplant the market means of dynamically organizing unique instances of production, nor interfere with it, and that we may only rely upon deduction and guesswork, and simply leave the market alone. However, this is either mistaken – or it is ill said. We can deduce almost nothing of consequence from human action. First, we can however, TEST any set of statements to determine whether they are rational and what incentives that they produce. But we cannot deduce much of anything at all – we can only test statements and hypotheses to determine likely human action. Second, when we understand that the problem of production is not labor, nor resources, but ORGANIZING production, what we can do is increasingly expand the means by which groups can cooperate on disparate means. The most effective way to assist groups in cooperating on means, even if they have disparate or even irreconcilable ends, which we cannot choose between because of the inability to forecast into a kaleidic future, other than value inferences we obtain from existing patterns of specialization and trade, is to suppress all risks OTHER than those of forecasting. Namely, the suppression of ‘discounts’. Then more discounts we suppress, the more human action that must be pressed into the market for goods and services, entirely upon the price, quality and distribution of those goods in time. (And independent of schemes.) So, if we understand that the production we organize, is the ability for others to frictionlessly organize production, in a world of constant invention and change, it is not entirely true that we can take little action. It is not the production of goods and services that we assist in producing with our governments, but it is the rules by which we dynamically organize production by the suppression of all discounts, everywhere, such than the only possible actions that remain, are to take risks on one’s forecast of the future within one’s patterns of specialization and trade. RATHER THAN THE A PRIORI ERROR – WE STATE THIS INSTEAD: Economics then, consists of: The near universal human ability to test rationality of incentives. The near universal human desire to seek discounts. The use of organized violence to suppress all discounts. The resulting pressure of all human action into the market. The construction of institutions to suppress discounting. The use of empirical measures to gain short term insight into the patterns of trade. The use of such information to inform participants in the ongoing adjustment of such patterns. Institutions required are: 1) Articulated Property Rights and Obligations. 2) The common law. 3) An independent Judiciary. 4) Universal standing so that any individual can seek restitution from any other individual for taking discounts, no matter what the accused’s function in society. 5) A body of people with the ability to construct contracts on behalf of larger groups, to produce goods that the market cannot organize to produce because of arbitrariness of the choices, or the openness of such contractual investments to free riding, privatization, and socialization or other discounts. 6) A means for the collection of dividends and choosing between the expenditure on further investments and distribution of proceeds to shareholders. We do not need much government. What government we do need, need not be a monopoly. What investments we need need not be decided by majority rule – a monopoly. And those services and goods we need, need not be provided by a monopoly bureaucracy. Even if it may be true that the INITIAL CONSTRUCTION of property rights requires the imposition of a monopoly of those rights, and a total prohibition on discounts, that is the limit of such a monopoly. Which is why corporations of separate interests in creating such a system is superior to monopoly of interests in creating such a system, since no member of such a polycentric order would tolerate the usurpation of his rights by another. Such a government is a government of unbreakable rules which we call ‘laws’, not a government of people with capacity for decision making, or coercion, or the ability to make laws. And our defense against that monopoly government and all forms of abuse, is the training of a near-priesthood called judges who adjudicate differences according to private property rights, and the voluntary agreements that we enter into, and the prohibitions against free riding on the goods produced by those agreements we chose NOT to enter into. And to construct as such, that those judges possess only the incentives to use those laws in the fulfillment of their roles. We can reduce all of this to the simple assertion, that no man can know the future sufficiently to force others to obey his direction on the use of their minds, bodies, time and property. However, it is quite possible for each of us to judge incentives and for men with training to judge whether property rights were respected or not. That is all we need.

January 3, 2014
ENDING MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM : BECAUSE IT’S IMMORAL (ISN”T THAT ENOUGH OF A REA

ENDING MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM : BECAUSE IT’S IMMORAL (ISN”T THAT ENOUGH OF A REASON?)

(reposted from elsewhere for archival purposes)

Math was constructed from, and must, of necessity, consist of a series of operations. And consequently, all mathematics is reducible to a few simple operations. (Which is why computers can calculate.) In practice. everything we can think of can be reduced to adding or removing one, and the test of equality.

(As an aside, this is why we can explain more possibilities with mathematics than the physical universe can demonstrate in reality: because the universe does not have this level of freedom due to the apparent complexity of its interacting forces.)

The act of adding and subtracting the symbols we call numerals and positional numbers, is an obvious and common example of creating symbols to replace what would be tedious and incomprehensible repetitions.

This necessity to use symbols to condense information into usable components (categories) is what our brains need to do. Imagine trying to do all operations by counting? It would be impossible. We could not function without these symbols.

Furthermore, describing mathematical equations and proofs as operations is both verbally and syntactically burdensome. And since these operations are largely simple, and can be accurately reduced to symbols (named functions) there is little value in articulating them as operations.

So mathematicians have developed a multitude of symbols and names for what are not extant objects, but names of functions (sets of operations) – just as every other discipline creates heavily loaded terms in order to allow informationally dense communication with fewer words.

Most ‘numbers’ are anything but: they are names, glyphs and symbols, for functions that consist of large numbers of operations. “The natural numbers exist in nature, but all else is the work of man.”

The reason for this complexity is that quantitative, and directional relationships are expressed as ratios, and while some ratios are reducible to numbers, others are not. Those that are not reducible must be expressed as functions. We have not invented a mathematical system that can circumvent this problem. It is possible such a thing cannot be done.

Now aside from the practical utility of creating symbols, that obscure the operations, there is a practical value in using these names by disconnecting these names from their operations and from correspondence with any given scale.

That is, that disconnection allows one to use the logic of mathematics independent of cause, correspondence and scale, to explore ONLY the properties of the relations between the entities in question. And this turns out to be extremely useful for deducing what causes we do not now.

And this extraordinary utility has been responsible for the fact that the discipline has laundered time, causality and scale (precision) from the discipline. But one cannot say that a mathematical statement is true without correspondence with the real world. We can say it is internally consistent (a proof), but not that it is true (descriptive of reality via correspondence).

Mathematics when ‘wrong’ most recently, with Cantor’s sets, in which he used imaginary objects, infinity, the excluded middle and the the axiom of choice, to preserve this syntactical convenience of names, and in doing so, completed the diversion of mathematics from a logic of truth (external correspondence), to one that is merely a logic of proof (internal consistency).

Cantor’s work came at the expense of correspondence, and by consequence at the expense of truth. ie: mathematics does not determine truths, only proofs, because all correspondence has been removed by these ‘contrivances’, whose initial purpose was convenience, but whose accumulated errors have led to such (frankly, absurd) debates, .

So the problem with mathematical platonism, which turns out to be fairly useful for the convenience of practitioners, is not so much a technical problem but a MORAL ONE. First, mathematicians, even the best, rarely grasp this concept. Second, since, because it is EASIER to construct mathematical proofs than any other form of logic, it is the gold standard for other forms of logic. And the envy of other disciplines. And as such mathematical platonism has ‘bled’ into other envious fields, the same way that Physics has bled into economics.

Worse, this multi-axial new mysticism has been adopted by philosophers from Kant to the Frankfurt school to the postmodernists, to contemporary totalitarian humanists as a vehicle for reinserting arational mysticism into political debate – as a means of obtaining power.

Quite contrary to academic opinion, all totalitarianism is, is catholicism restated in non-religious terms, with the academy replacing the church as the constructor of obscurant language.

I suspect this fairly significant error is what has plagued the physics community, but we have found no alternative to current approaches. Albeit, I expect, that if we retrained mathematicians, physicists, and economists to require operational language in the expression of mathematical relations, that whatever error we are making in our understanding of physics would emerge within a generation.

No infinity can exist. Because no operation can be performed infinitely. We can however, adjust the precision and scale of any proof to suit the context, since any mathematical expression, consists of ratios that, if correspond to reality, we can arbitrarily adjust for increasing precision.

Mathematics cannot claim truth without correspondence.

Correspondence in measures is a function of scale and the UTILITY of precision, in the CONTEXT of which the operation is calculated (limit).

A language of mathematics that is described independent of scale in given context, can be correctly stated. It need not be magian.

Fields can still be understood to be imaginary patterns.

But the entire reason that we find such things interesting, is a folly of the mind, no different from the illusion of movement in a film.

The real world exists. We are weak computers of property in pursuit of our reproduction and amusement. We developed many forms of instrumentalism to extend our weak abilities. We must use instruments and methods to reduce to analogies to experience, those things which we cannot directly do so.

It’s just that simple.

AGAINST THE PLATONIC (IMAGINARY) WORLD

Why must we support imaginary objects, as extant? Especially when the constructive argument (intuitionist) in operational language, can provide equal explanatory power?

Why must we rely on ZFC+AC when we have recursive math, or when we can explain all mathematics in operational language without loss of context, scale, precision and utility? Just ’cause it’s easier.

But that complexity is a defense against obscurantism and platonism. So it is merely a matter of cost.

I understand Popper as trying to solve a problem of meta ethics, rather than anything particularly scientific. And I see most of his work as doing the best he could for the purposes that I’ve stated.

Anyone who disagrees with me would have to disagree with my premies and my argument, not rely on the existence of platonist entities (magic) in order to win such an argument.

That this is impossible, is at least something that I understand if no one else yet does. I don’t so much need someone to agree with me as constantly improve my argument so that I can test and harden it until it is unassailable or defeated.

I think that defeating this argument is going to be very, very, difficult.

TIME AND OPERATIONS (ACTIONS) IN TIME

One cannot state that abstract ideas can be constructed independent of time, or even that they could be identified without changes in state over time. Or that thought can occur without the passage of time. Or consciousness can occur without the passage of time.

Whether I make one choice or another is not material. This question is not a matter of choice, it is a matter of possibility. I can make no choice without the passage of time.

I think that the only certain knowledge consists of negations, and that all the rest is conjecture. This is the only moral position to take. And it is the only moral position since argument exists for the purpose of persuasion, and persuasion for cooperation.

I keep seeing this sort of desire to promote the rather obvious idea that induction is nonsense – yet everyone uses it, as a tremendous diversion from the fact that induction is necessary for action in real time, whenever the cost of not acting is higher than the cost of acting.

Description, deduction, induction, abduction, guessing and intuitive choice are just descriptions of the processes we must use given the amount of information at our disposal. Science has no urgency, and life threatening emergencies do.

Popper (and CR-ists for that matter) seem to want to perpetuate either mysticism, or skepticism as religion, rather than make the very simple point that the demands for ‘truth’ increase and decrease given the necessity of acting in time.

I guess that I could take a psychological detour into why people would want to do this. But I suspect that I am correct (as I stated in one of these posts) that popper was, as part of his era, trying to react against the use of science and academia to replace the coercive power of the church. So he restated skepticism by establishing very high criteria for scientific truth.

And all the nonsense that continues to be written about his work seek to read into platonic tea leaves, when the facts are quite SIMPLE. (Back to Argumentation Ethics at this point.) The fact is that humans must act in real time and as the urgency of action increases so does the demand for truth. Conversely, as the demand for cooperation increases, the demand for truth increases. Finally at the top of the scale we have science, which in itself is an expensive pursuit, and as such one is forbidden to externalize costs to other scientists. (Although if we look at papers this doesn’t actually work that well except at the very top margin.)

THE QUESTION IS ONE OF COOPERATION

The problem is ECONOMIC AND COOPERATIVE AND MORAL, not scientific.

It’s just that simple. We cannot disconnect argument from cooperation without entering the platonic. We cannot disconnect math from context without entering the platonic. We cannot disconnect numbers from identity without entering the platonic.

Each form of logic constrains the other. But the logic that constrains them all, is action. Without action, we end up with the delusions we spend most of philosophical discourse on. It’s all nonsense.

I understand the difference between the real and the unreal, and the necessity of our various logics as instruments for the reduction of that which we cannot comprehend (sympathize with) to analogies to experience that we can comprehend ( sympathize with).

Which is profound if you grasp it.

THE PROBLEM OF SYMBOLS AND ECONOMY OF LANGUAGE

If you cannot describe something as human action, then you do not understand it. Operational language is the most important, and least articulated canon of science.

I do not argue against the economy of language. I argue against the loss of causality and correspondence that accompanies repeated use of economizing terms.

( I am pretty sure I put a bullet in this topic along with apriorism in economics. )

MORAL STANDARDS OF TRUTH

Requiring a higher standard of truth places a higher barrier on cooperation.

This is most important in matters of involuntary transfer, such as taxation or social and moral norms.

Religions place an impossible standard of truth. This is why they are used so effectively to resist the state. Religious doctrine reliant upon faith is argumentatively inviolable.

As such, no cooperation can be asked or offered outside of their established terms. … It’s brilliant really. Its why religious groups can resist the predation of the state.

I would prefer instead we relied upon a prohibition on obscurant language and the requisite illustration of involuntary transfers, such that exchanges were easily made possible, and discounts (thefts) made nearly impossible.

This is, the correct criteria for CR, not the platonic one that is assumed. In this light CR looks correct in practice if incorrect in argument.

(There. I did it. Took me a bit.)

Curt Doolittle

Source date (UTC): 2014-01-02 10:44:00 UTC

January 2, 2014
THE NECESSARY PROPERTIES OF ECONOMIC COOPERATION (draft of the correction of a p

THE NECESSARY PROPERTIES OF ECONOMIC COOPERATION

(draft of the correction of a priorism in economics, politics and ethics.) (important)

Exchanges are unique. Every one. Marginalism alone renders all exchanges unique – even before we consider the uneven distribution of resources and ability, and the vagaries of nature, and the shifting wants and signals of human beings.

As such, each exchange is unique, and even aggregate measures of inputs, operations and outputs in similar exchanges are dependent upon Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade; which while sticky, are no guarantee of future exchanges under similar conditions. Constancy is an illusion. Businesses continuously adjust to conditions. So, no relations are constant in economics, even if in the aggregate, in short time periods, they appear so.

If no relations are constant in economics, that means that we cannot organize production on the assumption of constant relations. This criticism stands alone, even prior to either the problem of calculation without money and prices, or the problem of incentives independent of rewards.

However, we cannot organize any form of production under the assumption of constant relations without the incentives of multitudinous individuals to produce.

This is the correct criticism of the socialist method of production.

1) calculation

2) inconstancy of relations

3) impossibility of organization

4) impossibility of incentives.

The reason capitalists and executives of all kinds cost more than labor and are rewarded more than labor, is because labor has little to no value in production; and what value it has in production, constantly decreases with mechanization. So, the problem remains how to organize labor whether human, computational or mechanical.

And while we might argue that middle management has very little value in the organization of labor, organizing the production of goods using labor, using prices and payments as rules, limits and incentives, is the highest contribution to the value of the goods, since the alignment of incentives – what we call ‘execution’ : organizing humans into production – is the art.

And that is the scarcity that the market rewards.

THE PROBLEM OF THE A PRIORI ARGUMENT

If there are no constant relations in economics, but mathematics is the logic of constant relations, and further we attempt to use mathematics to justify intervention in the market for goods and services, then doing is logically impossible. The logical of constant relations, entirely dependent upon constant categories, cannot be used to describe economic conditions and apply them to the future. All we can do with mathematics is mine the recent data for descriptions of what has happened in the existing patterns of sustainable specialization and trade.

So, if the socialist method of production was impossible, and measurement of the economy at all but the aggregate level is impossible, and measurement at the aggregate level does not capture changes in human, social and moral capital, then it becomes very difficult to suggest that governments can do much except (a) limited trade policy, (b) limited industrial policy, and (c) limited education and health policy (d) defend the rule of law and the common law (e) provide a means for the resolution of disputes.

Thus, the prior generations argued that we must both not supplant the market means of dynamically organizing unique instances of production, nor interfere with it, and that we may only rely upon deduction and guesswork, and simply leave the market alone.

However, this is either mistaken – or it is ill said. We can deduce almost nothing of consequence from human action.

First, we can however, TEST any set of statements to determine whether they are rational and what incentives that they produce. But we cannot deduce much of anything at all – we can only test statements and hypotheses to determine likely human action.

Second, when we understand that the problem of production is not labor, nor resources, but ORGANIZING production, what we can do is increasingly expand the means by which groups can cooperate on disparate means.

The most effective way to assist groups in cooperating on means, even if they have disparate or even irreconcilable ends, which we cannot choose between because of the inability to forecast into a kaleidic future, other than value inferences we obtain from existing patterns of specialization and trade, is to suppress all risks OTHER than those of forecasting.

Namely, the suppression of ‘discounts’. Then more discounts we suppress, the more human action that must be pressed into the market for goods and services, entirely upon the price, quality and distribution of those goods in time. (And independent of schemes.)

So, if we understand that the production we organize, is the ability for others to frictionlessly organize production, in a world of constant invention and change, it is not entirely true that we can take little action. It is not the production of goods and services that we assist in producing with our governments, but it is the rules by which we dynamically organize production by the suppression of all discounts, everywhere, such than the only possible actions that remain, are to take risks on one’s forecast of the future within one’s patterns of specialization and trade.

RATHER THAN THE A PRIORI ERROR – WE STATE THIS INSTEAD:

Economics then, consists of:

The near universal human ability to test rationality of incentives.

The near universal human desire to seek discounts.

The use of organized violence to suppress all discounts.

The resulting pressure of all human action into the market.

The construction of institutions to suppress discounting.

The use of empirical measures to gain short term insight into the patterns of trade.

The use of such information to inform participants in the ongoing adjustment of such patterns.

Institutions required are:

1) Articulated Property Rights and Obligations.

2) The common law.

3) An independent Judiciary.

4) Universal standing so that any individual can seek restitution from any other individual for taking discounts, no matter what the accused’s function in society.

5) A body of people with the ability to construct contracts on behalf of larger groups, to produce goods that the market cannot organize to produce because of arbitrariness of the choices, or the openness of such contractual investments to free riding, privatization, and socialization or other discounts.

6) A means for the collection of dividends and choosing between the expenditure on further investments and distribution of proceeds to shareholders.

We do not need much government. What government we do need, need not be a monopoly. What investments we need need not be decided by majority rule – a monopoly. And those services and goods we need, need not be provided by a monopoly bureaucracy.

Even if it may be true that the INITIAL CONSTRUCTION of property rights requires the imposition of a monopoly of those rights, and a total prohibition on discounts, that is the limit of such a monopoly. Which is why corporations of separate interests in creating such a system is superior to monopoly of interests in creating such a system, since no member of such a polycentric order would tolerate the usurpation of his rights by another.

Such a government is a government of unbreakable rules which we call ‘laws’, not a government of people with capacity for decision making, or coercion, or the ability to make laws.

And our defense against that monopoly government and all forms of abuse, is the training of a near-priesthood called judges who adjudicate differences according to private property rights, and the voluntary agreements that we enter into, and the prohibitions against free riding on the goods produced by those agreements we chose NOT to enter into.

And to construct as such, that those judges possess only the incentives to use those laws in the fulfillment of their roles.

We can reduce all of this to the simple assertion, that no man can know the future sufficiently to force others to obey his direction on the use of their minds, bodies, time and property. However, it is quite possible for each of us to judge incentives and for men with training to judge whether property rights were respected or not.

That is all we need.

Source date (UTC): 2014-01-01 15:55:00 UTC

January 1, 2014
On The Limits Of The Misesian Criticism

“Mises’s contention came in setting the context for Human Action by explaining why people have had such a hard time accepting the validity of (Austrian) economics as a field of knowledge–it does not fit in with anything else.” – Konrad Love you man, but I want to clean this up a bit. And I hope you will forgive me for using your statements as a jumping off point to articulate this subject a little more clearly than is usual in our field. 2) The first is your statements (a) “put into context” and (b) “human action”. Praxeologically speaking, any statement regarding human action, not stated as human action, is untestable by praxeological analysis. As such, if you can’t say something in operational terms, then it is possible that you are mistaken, or misled, since only such operational language opens any statement to praxeological testing. Mises was trying to refute socialism. He was frustrated because there was not empirical means of demonstrating that it wouldn’t work. So he had to rely on rational deduction. He was attempting to show (as was popper by very different means) how socialism was impossible – particularly, the socialist method of production. Praxeology was his attempt to use the very clear, irrefutable, sympathetic test of the rational incentives of actors given their need to act in real time, to refute the theory that humans would act by the same means without money and prices. Without money and prices, and the incentives that they make possible, humans cannot rationally act. He suggested, and argued poorly, that humans literally could not think, in the same way that we would be radically impaired in our thinking, without the use of numbers, numeric operations, ratios, measurements, and the syllogism. As such, if people cannot cooperate rationally using property, money, prices and time, then in fact, no science of economics is therefore possible. We cannot conduct a science predicated on a unit of measure dependent upon property and prices, if neither property nor prices no voluntary cooperation exist. That is non-logical. We should note that this is an argument, now proven, both logically and by evidence, that the socialist method of production does not work, precisely as Mises predicted, because Calculation and it’s obverse, Incentives, are impossible. But this is a limited criticism. We must understand that the limit of Misesian criticism, is the socialist mode of production. It does not mean that progressive taxation, especially by simply increasing transaction costs at the high end, and redistributing the fees on those costs to consumers, or investing them into infrastructure violate the ability of people to think, plan, and coordinate their actions. The science of economics can in fact exist, if the logical method of measurement that it depends upon: voluntary cooperation using property, money and prices, does exist/ So the Misesian critique of economics as a discipline dependent upon human action is a refutation of the socialist mode of production, but it is not a refutation of the democratic socialist redistributive method of production. (Although I am not sure anyone else has said so this clearly. I haven’t run across it if so. Caplans ‘Why I am not..” is an obscurant, and meaningless argument which he later took the teeth out of himself : there is no difference between economic calculation and incentives. They are mutually dependent concepts. An argument which I forgive him for, and attribute to the folly of his youth. ) 2) The second problem you put forth is that people have a problem understanding Austrian Economics. And I’m afraid that’s just not demonstrably true. (a) the argument from the mainstream economics profession is that the insights of the Austrians have been fully integrated into mainstream economics. (b) The only remaining dispute that separates Austrian economists from mainstream economists today, is the theory of the business cycle, where by continuous distortions of the money supply, while long term neutral in affect on price, are non-neutral on the Sustainable Patters Of Specialization and Trade – largely due to little more than the fact that humans due to the process of youth, maturity, reproduction, decline in learning capacity (or increase in required repetitions), as well as normal aging, mean that not only are prices, and contracts ‘sticky’ but so are human lives and relations. And while we may ameliorate the problems caused by the stickiness of prices,we appear to have very little control over contracts, and the accumulated impact on individuals in the business cycle means that such cycles, the longer that they are perpetuated, force their members to become increasingly sticky, and if more than four years to nine years in duration, that it is no longer possible for individuals to transition at anywhere near the same quality of life. This may in fact be another argument against immigration which only exacerbates this problem severely. The last argument, and the one made by conservative advocates of Austrian economics, is not just the utility of the lost human capital, but the loss of moral capital, and the increase in demand for the state as insurer, now that the individual citizens have been placed at risk by the use of credit and insurance by the state, rathe than allowing the natural, and frequent cycle of PSST to discourage people from over-investing in any given pattern, and instead, developing dynamic risk protection given the constant reordering of such patterns. 3) The point being the one I articulated in my first response to your post: that the Austrian method makes visible the involuntary transfer of property, and the behavior of individuals within patterns of sustainable specialization and trade IF WE MEASURE patterns of sustainable specialization and trade as our category of measurement. (industry networks are the highest level of meaningful aggregation). And investment in trade policy and industrial policy should outweigh any interest in monetary policy. If only because those policies have been in use since the dawn of human cities, and appear to have worked well. Whereas, the use of Keynesian aggregates and monetary policy does not localize distortions and those distortions that are caused by such policy are not measured, or even measurable. Just as Einstein did not invent relativity(actually, constancy), Keynes did not invent his ideas either – he adapted them from Marx, and cut out the references to prevent criticism of what he had accomplished via even greater obscurant language than Marx: the forcible involuntary transfer of wealth and the consequential empowerment of the government as the vehicle for such transfer. All of which was justified as a means of decreasing unemployment. The sacrifice of the west for reduction of unemployment and facilitation of the expansion of the reproduction of the lower classes that had been held in check by private property and manorialism for more than 2500 years. The great weakness of human reason is our inability to disentangle multiple axis of complex relations. Only analysis of the voluntary transfer of property allows us to disentangle heavily loaded propositions and reduce what appears to be many competing and overlapping axes of causality to one simple factor: whether property, which is the necessary device for cooperation, has been voluntarily expropriated or voluntarily exchanged. CLOSING This is probably worth sharing or saving for later reference. Affections Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev

December 25, 2013
On The Limits Of The Misesian Criticism

“Mises’s contention came in setting the context for Human Action by explaining why people have had such a hard time accepting the validity of (Austrian) economics as a field of knowledge–it does not fit in with anything else.” – Konrad Love you man, but I want to clean this up a bit. And I hope you will forgive me for using your statements as a jumping off point to articulate this subject a little more clearly than is usual in our field. 2) The first is your statements (a) “put into context” and (b) “human action”. Praxeologically speaking, any statement regarding human action, not stated as human action, is untestable by praxeological analysis. As such, if you can’t say something in operational terms, then it is possible that you are mistaken, or misled, since only such operational language opens any statement to praxeological testing. Mises was trying to refute socialism. He was frustrated because there was not empirical means of demonstrating that it wouldn’t work. So he had to rely on rational deduction. He was attempting to show (as was popper by very different means) how socialism was impossible – particularly, the socialist method of production. Praxeology was his attempt to use the very clear, irrefutable, sympathetic test of the rational incentives of actors given their need to act in real time, to refute the theory that humans would act by the same means without money and prices. Without money and prices, and the incentives that they make possible, humans cannot rationally act. He suggested, and argued poorly, that humans literally could not think, in the same way that we would be radically impaired in our thinking, without the use of numbers, numeric operations, ratios, measurements, and the syllogism. As such, if people cannot cooperate rationally using property, money, prices and time, then in fact, no science of economics is therefore possible. We cannot conduct a science predicated on a unit of measure dependent upon property and prices, if neither property nor prices no voluntary cooperation exist. That is non-logical. We should note that this is an argument, now proven, both logically and by evidence, that the socialist method of production does not work, precisely as Mises predicted, because Calculation and it’s obverse, Incentives, are impossible. But this is a limited criticism. We must understand that the limit of Misesian criticism, is the socialist mode of production. It does not mean that progressive taxation, especially by simply increasing transaction costs at the high end, and redistributing the fees on those costs to consumers, or investing them into infrastructure violate the ability of people to think, plan, and coordinate their actions. The science of economics can in fact exist, if the logical method of measurement that it depends upon: voluntary cooperation using property, money and prices, does exist/ So the Misesian critique of economics as a discipline dependent upon human action is a refutation of the socialist mode of production, but it is not a refutation of the democratic socialist redistributive method of production. (Although I am not sure anyone else has said so this clearly. I haven’t run across it if so. Caplans ‘Why I am not..” is an obscurant, and meaningless argument which he later took the teeth out of himself : there is no difference between economic calculation and incentives. They are mutually dependent concepts. An argument which I forgive him for, and attribute to the folly of his youth. ) 2) The second problem you put forth is that people have a problem understanding Austrian Economics. And I’m afraid that’s just not demonstrably true. (a) the argument from the mainstream economics profession is that the insights of the Austrians have been fully integrated into mainstream economics. (b) The only remaining dispute that separates Austrian economists from mainstream economists today, is the theory of the business cycle, where by continuous distortions of the money supply, while long term neutral in affect on price, are non-neutral on the Sustainable Patters Of Specialization and Trade – largely due to little more than the fact that humans due to the process of youth, maturity, reproduction, decline in learning capacity (or increase in required repetitions), as well as normal aging, mean that not only are prices, and contracts ‘sticky’ but so are human lives and relations. And while we may ameliorate the problems caused by the stickiness of prices,we appear to have very little control over contracts, and the accumulated impact on individuals in the business cycle means that such cycles, the longer that they are perpetuated, force their members to become increasingly sticky, and if more than four years to nine years in duration, that it is no longer possible for individuals to transition at anywhere near the same quality of life. This may in fact be another argument against immigration which only exacerbates this problem severely. The last argument, and the one made by conservative advocates of Austrian economics, is not just the utility of the lost human capital, but the loss of moral capital, and the increase in demand for the state as insurer, now that the individual citizens have been placed at risk by the use of credit and insurance by the state, rathe than allowing the natural, and frequent cycle of PSST to discourage people from over-investing in any given pattern, and instead, developing dynamic risk protection given the constant reordering of such patterns. 3) The point being the one I articulated in my first response to your post: that the Austrian method makes visible the involuntary transfer of property, and the behavior of individuals within patterns of sustainable specialization and trade IF WE MEASURE patterns of sustainable specialization and trade as our category of measurement. (industry networks are the highest level of meaningful aggregation). And investment in trade policy and industrial policy should outweigh any interest in monetary policy. If only because those policies have been in use since the dawn of human cities, and appear to have worked well. Whereas, the use of Keynesian aggregates and monetary policy does not localize distortions and those distortions that are caused by such policy are not measured, or even measurable. Just as Einstein did not invent relativity(actually, constancy), Keynes did not invent his ideas either – he adapted them from Marx, and cut out the references to prevent criticism of what he had accomplished via even greater obscurant language than Marx: the forcible involuntary transfer of wealth and the consequential empowerment of the government as the vehicle for such transfer. All of which was justified as a means of decreasing unemployment. The sacrifice of the west for reduction of unemployment and facilitation of the expansion of the reproduction of the lower classes that had been held in check by private property and manorialism for more than 2500 years. The great weakness of human reason is our inability to disentangle multiple axis of complex relations. Only analysis of the voluntary transfer of property allows us to disentangle heavily loaded propositions and reduce what appears to be many competing and overlapping axes of causality to one simple factor: whether property, which is the necessary device for cooperation, has been voluntarily expropriated or voluntarily exchanged. CLOSING This is probably worth sharing or saving for later reference. Affections Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev

December 25, 2013
Propertarianism vs Libertarianism – Universally Descriptive vs Preferentially Prescriptive – But All Rights Remain Property Rights
Prescriptive vs Descriptive

There is a very great difference between rothbardian libertarianism as an aspirational philosophy ADVOCATING liberty, and Propertarianism as the correction and completion of praxeology as the science of human cooperation. Libertarianism is structured as advocacy: a NORMATIVE ETHIC. Propertarianism is structured as explanation: A DESCRIPTIVE ETHIC. And that is the difference between libertarianism, and my attempt to reform libertarianism in Propertarianism. Or rather, merge libertarianism and conservatism into a single rational language, that unifies the libertarian emphasis on economy, with the conservative emphasis on norms. As a united attack on totalitarians who wish to restore rent seeking and free riding to the masses. Conservatives are right on morality. They are the remnants of aristocratic egalitarianism. The explicit, universal ban on free-riding that occurred under the various forms of manorialism. I am using the insights from the Dark Enlightenment (reactionary conservatives) to ground libertarianism (reduction of rights to property rights) in ratio-scientific rather than purely rational (deductive) terms.

Objectives

My objectives are:
- 1)
- 2)
- 3)
- 4)
- 5)
I knew Hoppe had the answer the first time I heard him speak. The explanatory power when taken along with calculation and incentives was there: a necessary rather than arbitrary analysis of political orders. There was something subtly wrong with it. I only intuited that. But I have spent about fourteen years trying to identify an repair it for my more ratio-scientific generation. In Propertarianism, I extend property to a UNIVERSAL DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS – those demonstrated by humans rather than NORMATIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY ETHICS that we have developed as a set of technologies for the suppression of various forms of free riding.

The Theory is “All Rights Are Reducible To Property Rights”

The theory is that ALL RIGHTS can be reduced to property rights. Even commons can be reduced to shares of individual property rights. Even norms can be reduced to property rights. The NAP is an epistemic test of whether private property rights have been violated. It is an exceptional test. But that is the limit of it. One still needs a theory to test.

Property Rights: Cause or Consequence?

We can argue the construction of property from the bottom up as the prohibition of discounts, or from the top down, as advocacy of private property:
- 1)
- 2)
In this light, which I will show below, humans do not necessarily desire private property, but they universally demonstrate a distaste for discounts (cheating). As such, private property is the natural consequence of SUPPRESSING ALL CHEATING, and requiring earning of benefits. This is a profound theoretical difference in understanding liberty: The prohibition on all cheating among members of an extended family of common genetic interests, versus the advocacy of private property. This may also explain why the mature societies closer to the fertile crescent are teh most inbred, and serve as a warning that liberty is an artifact of primitivism, and that low-trust, inbred familialism with a high demand for a strong state, is the norm into which all societies mature, unless freedom is constantly and vigilantly maintained. The Fallacy of Crusoe’s Island This thought experiment is backwards, and a common source of confusion in libertarian circles. Crusoe on his island, is surrounded by an impenetrable army, called ‘the sea’. So property is created by the force of the ocean. Just as argumentation is presupposed upon the presence of violence. The ethical question is not what to do when one is upon an island,and property already has been created by the sea. The question is, how does one, on a plain, heavily populated by others, construct the institution of private property against the multitudes who would seek to appropriate it by all means of discounting possible? By the organized application of violence. That is how. The Crusoe argument is nonsensical. It presupposes what it attempts to demonstrate. It is true that once we assume property we can correctly deduce implications from that point. But argument and agreement are not the source of property itself. Violence is. Was. Forever will be.

The Construction of Property from a Prohibition on Discounts

“THOU SHALT NOT LIE, CHEAT, STEAL OR HARM” This rule applies to all human societies whether all property is communal or all private. I. CAUSAL AXES Four Possible Actions:
- Axis 1
- Axis 2
- Axis 3
- Axis 4
Restated as Weapons of Influence We humans have invented only four weapons of influence.
- Influence 1)
- Influence 2)
- Influence 3)
- Influence 4)
II. DISCOUNTS However: We can use permutations of the above weapons of influence to extract DISCOUNTS. Forms of Discount:
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
III. FORMS OF PROPERTY1. Several (Personal) Property Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
2. Interpersonal (Relationship) Property Cooperative Property: “relationships with others and tools of relationships upon which we reciprocally depend.”
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
3. Institutional (Community) Property Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.”
- 1.
- 2.
4. Artificial Property Artificial Property: “Can a group issue specific rights to members?” This topic is dependent, upon the ORIGIN of rights in the circumstance. If markets are made, then the shareholders of the market may create artificial property of any type that they desire. Including but not limited to:
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Questions on the Limits of Property Rights

1. Ownership of the market depends upon:
- i)
- ii)
2. Whether, we pay for our property rights by forgoing our opportunity for using violence, theft and fraud – or using any form of discount. If so, then by consequence, people pay for the norm of property – and in fact, pay for ALL norms. And as such, failing to observe norms is a theft from the shareholders of those norms. 5. Limits: On the limits of property rights (at what points one’s rights begin and end). For example, some would argue that the right to property is infinite regardless of the circumstances of others. Some would argue that property rights are a norm that is subject to limits at the extremes. So, for example, if I have gallons of water in a desert I cannot let the man before me die of thirst. Some would say I must simply give it to him. Others would argue that the man owes for the drink of water at a later date at market price, but that I cannot refuse to give it to him under this condition of duress simply because he currently lacks a means of payment. I support the latter position since it does not violate the principle of property it only presses my assets into a receivable. Otherwise I am profiting from suffering which is an involuntary transfer, not a voluntary exchange. 6. Temporality: Whether property rights apply across time (after death), and across generations.

Trust (Velocity of transactions)

The NAP, as used in libertarian ideological discourse, suffers from the weakness of the low trust society, in that it relies entirely upon Ostracization to suppress various forms of fraud. The problem is that we cannot demonstrate that fraud is suppressed without the associated norms rules and laws that suppress it. Then market is demonstrably insufficient for the suppression of fraud, and certainly for the suppression of fraud by either omission or obfuscation. The high trust, aristocratic egalitarian society of the northern Protestant west, relies on the ADDITION of these moral constraints to the NAP:
These ethics arose because everyone in the area was closely related, and as such they obeyed family ethical biases, rather than adopting extra family ethical biases. This is why diversity only works for a short while, until power, signal and property structures can be coordinated using signals within the extended family group. Canada will only be politically “Canadian” for two more generations. And London and New York are already ‘post-anglo’ corporations rather than city-nations.

Descriptive High Trust Ethics of Northern Europeans

The intra-family system of outbred North Sea Europeans contains these rules:
- 0)
- 1)
- 2)
- 3)
- 4)
- 5)
- 6)
These additional properties forbid the use of ‘cunning’ in exchange itself, and force all cunning in production, and distribution. Furthermore in propertarianism, I have added political constraints on contracts (ad laws):
- 7)
- 8)
- 9)
These last three topics are the complex matters I have had to wrestle with in Propertarianism. Primarily as a defense against the Continentals, the Culture of Critique, the Postmoderns, and their philosophical heirs. All of whom have adopted the technique of obscurantism from monotheistic religion, and modernized it for advocacy of the state. Unfortunately, the Culture of Critique, Postmodernists, and the Continentals have mastered the art of obscurantism, and as such we must require operational language, and calculability of contracts, as does science, as a means of prohibiting use of obscurant language as means of obtaining discounts (theft).

High Trust Is A Prohibition On Discounts

These rules prohibit discounts. The only reason to eschew violence and engage in exchange is if ALL discounts are prohibited from the market, and therefore, by consequence, all improvements are in the construction and distribution of goods, and NOT in the verbal means of selling those goods.

As Such, All Conflict Is Pressed Into The Market

Not the market for words, but the market for goods and services. And since the only possible means of competing is innovation in production and distribution, then such societies will innovate in production and distribution faster than all others. So not only do such rules that place a prohibition on both violence, theft, and discounts foster peace and prosperity, it fosters innovation, and trust. As Such,
As Such, A Common Law System Can Function

Where a homogenous set of property rights exist, and *ALL* discounts are violations of property rights, demand for intervention is limited to disputes over property via common law courts. Without homogeneity of property rights, and wherever all discounts are not suppressed, then demand for the State increases, since commensurability of discounts is logically impossible. (This is profound if you grasp it.) In other words, under rothbardian ethics, the common law is not possible. Under aristocratic ethics, it is possible.

Any Science Requires Means of Commensurability

As such Propetarianism provides us with the previously unmet promise of praxeology by changing the theory of human behavior from a deductive a priori form of rationalism, to an empirically descriptive science of all human behavior whose units of measure are property, and whose truths and falsehoods are involuntary transfers via discounts. Praxeology: Action, Property, Calculation and Incentives, supplies us with a science of human action, if we treat property as DESCRIPTIVE rather than NORMATIVE.
- 1)
- 2)
- 3)
- 4)
- 5)
- 6)
Comprehensibility

I am not interested in Criticizing Kinsella, Hoppe, the BHL’s or anyone else. I’d rather advance their agenda, because I advocate big-tent libertarianism, if only for the problem of accessibility of ideas to different quintiles. But myself, addressing my demographic, I’d rather advance liberty in ratio-scientific, rather than ratio-moral language. The prior generation of thinkers had to rely on rationalism and deduction to fight the intellectual and ideological battle with the socialists who were winning the population and the institutions. But our generation does not NEED to rely on rationalism alone, and instead, can rely on evidence that, since about 1980, has been produced in volume; and at this point, overwhelmingly demonstrates that universalism, whether libertarian universalism or communal universalism, would be intolerable. And that micro-states catering to different moral codes is the only possible route to liberty for those of us who desire it. But that liberty is neither desirable or advantageous for the many, for whom collectivism, free riding and rent seeking are the only effective means of group competition. I am not terribly concerned just yet whether my work is comprehensible or not, since until I have reduced it to a book, there isn’t enough of it in one place for anyone to criticize. On the other hand, it has taken prior writers on average about seven or eight years to put together a work of this nature, and I’m only half way through that time period. As I state frequently, I make my philosophy in public and those that follow me tend to appreciate it – errors and all. I treat arguments in analytic philosophy as theories that must be tested. If I can construct an argument that I cannot defeat, then that is the best that I can do. And some of them succeed and others fail. Hopefully my book will contain only the successes. I am too well aware of individuals using the terms ‘confused’ to criticize opposing propositions whose only failure is to conform to their structure of argument. I am not confused. I am struggling to articulate in existing language a counter-intuitive proposition, that morals are not available through introspection, any more than is the mind, even if the source of moral biases are scientifically identifiable as reproductive strategies. I have seen numerous criticism of ‘engineering thinking’, mostly of others, despite the fact that rationalists have, in their proximity to analogous religious argument, failed to grasp that most of the advancements in conservative thought are in fact coming from engineers, for the very reason, that unlike science, physics, macro economics, and philosophy, engineering must constantly reconcile demonstrated human behavior with scientific evidence and formulae. I would address this problem in both ‘departmental mathematics’ as well as Macro Economics as well as any branch outside of scientific philosophy here, but the truth is, that other than maybe Rod Long, I’m not sure any other reader could grasp it. Further, Hoppe is not exactly an easy read. And if Hoppe is challenging go back to Bohm Bawerk, whose writing is nearly opaque with analogy. Clarity is a function of marketing and having clarity as a goal. The accessibility of an idea has nothing to do with whether an idea provides compact explanatory power and survives falsification. Rothbard is not challenging because he does not solve the hard problem of norms. Propertarianism does solve that problem. And I can reduce it to less than 10K words. It is the application of the principles, and the refutation of criticism that takes a book length work. I am struggling (at Hoppe’s criticism) to use extant language, and it is working, but I must make it increasingly compact, which is an art in itself.

We Must Understand That Rothbardian Ethics Have Failed

All of that prevarication aside, we must realize that we libertarians have not succeeded in affecting policy. We have given OTHER libertarians a common language, and label for our preference. We have united people with libertarian sentiments and intuitions under a common name, common ideology, and in rare circumstances, common philosophy. But we have been unable to affect policy. By contrast, the conservatives have affected the government, bringing it to a halt, merely by appealing to traditional morality – even against the economic interests of conservatives. They may only have managed to put up a resistance, and failed to implement new policy, but they correctly understood the moral code of western peoples, and ‘libertarians’ didn’t. That is an empirical criticism. It is what it is. Evidence is evidence. Libertarianism can be demonstrated as a sentiment, a moral argument, a rational argument, an economic argument to utility, or a ratio-scientific argument about human nature. Ideologies make use of sentiments, religions of moral arguments, and political scientists make use of scientific evidence. If your libertarianism is ideological or religious in structure, then that is one thing. If it is rational that is another. If it is ratio-scientifically based, it is yet another. And mine is ratio-scientifically based. Philosophy in this context is just a means of reordering the objects and relations and values we attach to them prior to developing a system of measurement for them. But to reduce something to a science requires a means of commensurability and property, if defined as demonstrated, rather than defined as aspired to, provides us with a science of cooperation. Criticizing the left is easy because most of what they do is demonstrate conspicuous consumption in an effort to gain cheap status signals, by spending other people’s money and flaunting disregard for norms. But libertarians, too often justly called ‘asperger-tarians’ are far too often enraptured by their self rewarding signal economy of self righteousness to grasp that liberty is demonstrably not desirable or advantageous for many. It is actually advantageous for those who do not desire liberty, that we exist as libertarians SOMEWHERE in the world, to innovate and compete, but not necessarily in the same geographic monopoly of arbitrary property rights, insured by the threat of violence. They cannot compete with us without organizing the equivalent of trade policy against us in exchange for access to their markets. It is not rational for them to expect us to. We insure ourselves with our competitiveness. They insure themselves as a collective by mutually sharing rents and free riding, and negotiating terms as a block. We may prefer otherwise, but to enact liberty upon those who do not desire it is to ask them to let us prey upon their uncompetitiveness.

Why Hoppe Is Right – On Everything

It is the monopoly of government and the state that forces us under the same insurer of both economic transactions and social insurance policy. When under federation in the swiss model of direct democracy, we could separate the functions of insurer of transactions (property rights) with insurer of life and limb (social programs.) In Hoppe’s model we hire our own insurers. These arguments are the same. He is right. It is quite simple do demonstrate that while the Argumentation ethic is sufficient for deduction of all that Hoppe has deduced from it, it is not a CAUSAL argument. If Hoppe’s insights are to survive the loading he has added and that his critics have added, and his critics are to be allayed, we must complete his work by transforming his insights from entirely rational to ratio-scientific arguments. I am doing that. My argument is that Hoppe, despite relying entirely on Argumentation Ethics, rather than the underlying causal properties that give rise to opportunities for argumentation, has correctly deduced everything – including his correct stance on immigration. And that if we use the explanatory power of Propertarianism, we can further reduce not only all RIGHTS, but all human BEHAVIOR to statements of property and its voluntary or involuntary transfer. Because that reduction is the universal cause of all property rights in all cultures, in all circumstances, for all of mankind. Therefore the difference between Hoppe’s analysis of what would be PREFERABLE for people with libertarian sentiments, and for Hayekian reasons of productive utility and wealth, No one other than me, that I know of, is trying to convert Hoppe to ratio-scientific argument and prove that his deductions were correct, and that the criticisms of his Argumentation Ethics are erroneous in so far as that they are correct that Argumentation is not a cause. But incorrect in that argumentation is not sufficient for the purpose of deducing all that Hoppe has deduced from it. (That this has escaped so many other philosophers is somewhat surprising to me.) As such, what propertarianism does, is provide a universal language for exposing involuntary transfer (theft) and conducting commensurable arguments in all moral codes regardless of the portfolio of moral codes made use of by any polity.

Failures and Successes

Hayek did not correctly understand Mises’ arguments and tried to solve the problem of universal behavior using, what I would call ‘psychology’ and the properties of the mind. However, Mises was closer to the answer provided by Propertarianism with the Obverse of Economic Calculation, and its Reverse: Incentives. However, Mises again, out of necessity, attempted to create a rational and deductive science without integrating all forms of property, especially norms and human capital into his analysis. For this reason both Mises and Hayek despite being very close, failed to make the observation that it was not money or psychology or mind that all human behavior could be deduced from, but property in all its forms as humans actually demonstrably practice the discipline of property allocation and use. Rothbard was very, very close. Unfortunately in his quest for a rigorous ideology and admonition of bureaucracy, he put forth an argument again, which discounted the high trust norms. Instead, arguing that the market would be sufficient to suppress the various subtle forms of theft. We all draw upon our ethical backgrounds. Me on my anglo imperialism, Hoppe on his Northern Germanic nationalism, and Rothbard on his Jewish diasporic tribalism. Without the knowledge of Propertarianism – that all behavior is reducible to property rights- we must rely on our intuitions. Even Weber and Durkheim came close but did not succeed in making Rothbard and Hoppe’s insights. And if I do my work correctly, just as Rothbard solved the problem of normative institutions for homogenous diasporic tribes, and Hoppe the problem of formal institutions and normative institutions for homogenous landed nuclear families, I will solve the problem of rhetoric, commensurability, and institutions for entirely heterogeneous polities. In this sense we will have completed the promise of libertarianism, by reducing all rights, in fact, all ethics and moral argument, and therefore all political arguments, to statements of property rights, and in doing so demonstrate the casual link between biologically necessary reproductive strategy, the structure of the family, the structure of moral codes, and teh demand for different levels of intervention by the ‘state’.

The Ghetto vs The Aristocracy

This is the ethic of the high trust society, and the only society every to invent and employ liberty – the protestant west. It may be unclear that the Absolute Nuclear family is yet again another institution that forbids discounts. And that is why ANF families from northern european cultures prefer liberty, and NF and Traditional families from southern Europe prefer more of the state: because ANF Families suppress all free riding and NF and Traditional families do not. ANF and property rights are eugenic and ostracizing. They are the rights of aristocratic egalitarians. The rights of those who can compete. Those that cannot compete do not seek those rights as they view free riding and rent seeking at the very least to be necessary for competitive survival. That is all that there is to understand about politics. Rothbardian’s NAP is the ethic of the ghetto. It is not the high trust ethic of the northern europeans, and certainly not a sufficient ethic to allow a low friction common law society to function without a strong state. For this reason the NAP is insufficient AS A THEORY, and it is the reason for the failure of rothbardian, libertarian ethics to gain any acceptance in the population. The reason being, that it’s too low a bar. It does not prohibit discounts> I will leave it to Kevin MacDonald to illustrate where Rothbard got these ideas from and why. I was very frustrated with Rothbard originally, but now see him, as Hayek saw Mises, and as I see Hayek, as a participant in an intuitive culture which they lacked the scientific evidence to escape by comparative analysis. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev
December 22, 2013
Propertarianism vs Libertarianism – Universally Descriptive vs Preferentially Prescriptive – But All Rights Remain Property Rights
Prescriptive vs Descriptive

There is a very great difference between rothbardian libertarianism as an aspirational philosophy ADVOCATING liberty, and Propertarianism as the correction and completion of praxeology as the science of human cooperation. Libertarianism is structured as advocacy: a NORMATIVE ETHIC. Propertarianism is structured as explanation: A DESCRIPTIVE ETHIC. And that is the difference between libertarianism, and my attempt to reform libertarianism in Propertarianism. Or rather, merge libertarianism and conservatism into a single rational language, that unifies the libertarian emphasis on economy, with the conservative emphasis on norms. As a united attack on totalitarians who wish to restore rent seeking and free riding to the masses. Conservatives are right on morality. They are the remnants of aristocratic egalitarianism. The explicit, universal ban on free-riding that occurred under the various forms of manorialism. I am using the insights from the Dark Enlightenment (reactionary conservatives) to ground libertarianism (reduction of rights to property rights) in ratio-scientific rather than purely rational (deductive) terms.

Objectives

My objectives are:
- 1)
- 2)
- 3)
- 4)
- 5)
I knew Hoppe had the answer the first time I heard him speak. The explanatory power when taken along with calculation and incentives was there: a necessary rather than arbitrary analysis of political orders. There was something subtly wrong with it. I only intuited that. But I have spent about fourteen years trying to identify an repair it for my more ratio-scientific generation. In Propertarianism, I extend property to a UNIVERSAL DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS – those demonstrated by humans rather than NORMATIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY ETHICS that we have developed as a set of technologies for the suppression of various forms of free riding.

The Theory is “All Rights Are Reducible To Property Rights”

The theory is that ALL RIGHTS can be reduced to property rights. Even commons can be reduced to shares of individual property rights. Even norms can be reduced to property rights. The NAP is an epistemic test of whether private property rights have been violated. It is an exceptional test. But that is the limit of it. One still needs a theory to test.

Property Rights: Cause or Consequence?

We can argue the construction of property from the bottom up as the prohibition of discounts, or from the top down, as advocacy of private property:
- 1)
- 2)
In this light, which I will show below, humans do not necessarily desire private property, but they universally demonstrate a distaste for discounts (cheating). As such, private property is the natural consequence of SUPPRESSING ALL CHEATING, and requiring earning of benefits. This is a profound theoretical difference in understanding liberty: The prohibition on all cheating among members of an extended family of common genetic interests, versus the advocacy of private property. This may also explain why the mature societies closer to the fertile crescent are teh most inbred, and serve as a warning that liberty is an artifact of primitivism, and that low-trust, inbred familialism with a high demand for a strong state, is the norm into which all societies mature, unless freedom is constantly and vigilantly maintained. The Fallacy of Crusoe’s Island This thought experiment is backwards, and a common source of confusion in libertarian circles. Crusoe on his island, is surrounded by an impenetrable army, called ‘the sea’. So property is created by the force of the ocean. Just as argumentation is presupposed upon the presence of violence. The ethical question is not what to do when one is upon an island,and property already has been created by the sea. The question is, how does one, on a plain, heavily populated by others, construct the institution of private property against the multitudes who would seek to appropriate it by all means of discounting possible? By the organized application of violence. That is how. The Crusoe argument is nonsensical. It presupposes what it attempts to demonstrate. It is true that once we assume property we can correctly deduce implications from that point. But argument and agreement are not the source of property itself. Violence is. Was. Forever will be.

The Construction of Property from a Prohibition on Discounts

“THOU SHALT NOT LIE, CHEAT, STEAL OR HARM” This rule applies to all human societies whether all property is communal or all private. I. CAUSAL AXES Four Possible Actions:
- Axis 1
- Axis 2
- Axis 3
- Axis 4
Restated as Weapons of Influence We humans have invented only four weapons of influence.
- Influence 1)
- Influence 2)
- Influence 3)
- Influence 4)
II. DISCOUNTS However: We can use permutations of the above weapons of influence to extract DISCOUNTS. Forms of Discount:
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
III. FORMS OF PROPERTY1. Several (Personal) Property Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
2. Interpersonal (Relationship) Property Cooperative Property: “relationships with others and tools of relationships upon which we reciprocally depend.”
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
3. Institutional (Community) Property Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.”
- 1.
- 2.
4. Artificial Property Artificial Property: “Can a group issue specific rights to members?” This topic is dependent, upon the ORIGIN of rights in the circumstance. If markets are made, then the shareholders of the market may create artificial property of any type that they desire. Including but not limited to:
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Questions on the Limits of Property Rights

1. Ownership of the market depends upon:
- i)
- ii)
2. Whether, we pay for our property rights by forgoing our opportunity for using violence, theft and fraud – or using any form of discount. If so, then by consequence, people pay for the norm of property – and in fact, pay for ALL norms. And as such, failing to observe norms is a theft from the shareholders of those norms. 5. Limits: On the limits of property rights (at what points one’s rights begin and end). For example, some would argue that the right to property is infinite regardless of the circumstances of others. Some would argue that property rights are a norm that is subject to limits at the extremes. So, for example, if I have gallons of water in a desert I cannot let the man before me die of thirst. Some would say I must simply give it to him. Others would argue that the man owes for the drink of water at a later date at market price, but that I cannot refuse to give it to him under this condition of duress simply because he currently lacks a means of payment. I support the latter position since it does not violate the principle of property it only presses my assets into a receivable. Otherwise I am profiting from suffering which is an involuntary transfer, not a voluntary exchange. 6. Temporality: Whether property rights apply across time (after death), and across generations.

Trust (Velocity of transactions)

The NAP, as used in libertarian ideological discourse, suffers from the weakness of the low trust society, in that it relies entirely upon Ostracization to suppress various forms of fraud. The problem is that we cannot demonstrate that fraud is suppressed without the associated norms rules and laws that suppress it. Then market is demonstrably insufficient for the suppression of fraud, and certainly for the suppression of fraud by either omission or obfuscation. The high trust, aristocratic egalitarian society of the northern Protestant west, relies on the ADDITION of these moral constraints to the NAP:
These ethics arose because everyone in the area was closely related, and as such they obeyed family ethical biases, rather than adopting extra family ethical biases. This is why diversity only works for a short while, until power, signal and property structures can be coordinated using signals within the extended family group. Canada will only be politically “Canadian” for two more generations. And London and New York are already ‘post-anglo’ corporations rather than city-nations.

Descriptive High Trust Ethics of Northern Europeans

The intra-family system of outbred North Sea Europeans contains these rules:
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These additional properties forbid the use of ‘cunning’ in exchange itself, and force all cunning in production, and distribution. Furthermore in propertarianism, I have added political constraints on contracts (ad laws):
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These last three topics are the complex matters I have had to wrestle with in Propertarianism. Primarily as a defense against the Continentals, the Culture of Critique, the Postmoderns, and their philosophical heirs. All of whom have adopted the technique of obscurantism from monotheistic religion, and modernized it for advocacy of the state. Unfortunately, the Culture of Critique, Postmodernists, and the Continentals have mastered the art of obscurantism, and as such we must require operational language, and calculability of contracts, as does science, as a means of prohibiting use of obscurant language as means of obtaining discounts (theft).

High Trust Is A Prohibition On Discounts

These rules prohibit discounts. The only reason to eschew violence and engage in exchange is if ALL discounts are prohibited from the market, and therefore, by consequence, all improvements are in the construction and distribution of goods, and NOT in the verbal means of selling those goods.

As Such, All Conflict Is Pressed Into The Market

Not the market for words, but the market for goods and services. And since the only possible means of competing is innovation in production and distribution, then such societies will innovate in production and distribution faster than all others. So not only do such rules that place a prohibition on both violence, theft, and discounts foster peace and prosperity, it fosters innovation, and trust. As Such,
As Such, A Common Law System Can Function

Where a homogenous set of property rights exist, and *ALL* discounts are violations of property rights, demand for intervention is limited to disputes over property via common law courts. Without homogeneity of property rights, and wherever all discounts are not suppressed, then demand for the State increases, since commensurability of discounts is logically impossible. (This is profound if you grasp it.) In other words, under rothbardian ethics, the common law is not possible. Under aristocratic ethics, it is possible.

Any Science Requires Means of Commensurability

As such Propetarianism provides us with the previously unmet promise of praxeology by changing the theory of human behavior from a deductive a priori form of rationalism, to an empirically descriptive science of all human behavior whose units of measure are property, and whose truths and falsehoods are involuntary transfers via discounts. Praxeology: Action, Property, Calculation and Incentives, supplies us with a science of human action, if we treat property as DESCRIPTIVE rather than NORMATIVE.
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Comprehensibility

I am not interested in Criticizing Kinsella, Hoppe, the BHL’s or anyone else. I’d rather advance their agenda, because I advocate big-tent libertarianism, if only for the problem of accessibility of ideas to different quintiles. But myself, addressing my demographic, I’d rather advance liberty in ratio-scientific, rather than ratio-moral language. The prior generation of thinkers had to rely on rationalism and deduction to fight the intellectual and ideological battle with the socialists who were winning the population and the institutions. But our generation does not NEED to rely on rationalism alone, and instead, can rely on evidence that, since about 1980, has been produced in volume; and at this point, overwhelmingly demonstrates that universalism, whether libertarian universalism or communal universalism, would be intolerable. And that micro-states catering to different moral codes is the only possible route to liberty for those of us who desire it. But that liberty is neither desirable or advantageous for the many, for whom collectivism, free riding and rent seeking are the only effective means of group competition. I am not terribly concerned just yet whether my work is comprehensible or not, since until I have reduced it to a book, there isn’t enough of it in one place for anyone to criticize. On the other hand, it has taken prior writers on average about seven or eight years to put together a work of this nature, and I’m only half way through that time period. As I state frequently, I make my philosophy in public and those that follow me tend to appreciate it – errors and all. I treat arguments in analytic philosophy as theories that must be tested. If I can construct an argument that I cannot defeat, then that is the best that I can do. And some of them succeed and others fail. Hopefully my book will contain only the successes. I am too well aware of individuals using the terms ‘confused’ to criticize opposing propositions whose only failure is to conform to their structure of argument. I am not confused. I am struggling to articulate in existing language a counter-intuitive proposition, that morals are not available through introspection, any more than is the mind, even if the source of moral biases are scientifically identifiable as reproductive strategies. I have seen numerous criticism of ‘engineering thinking’, mostly of others, despite the fact that rationalists have, in their proximity to analogous religious argument, failed to grasp that most of the advancements in conservative thought are in fact coming from engineers, for the very reason, that unlike science, physics, macro economics, and philosophy, engineering must constantly reconcile demonstrated human behavior with scientific evidence and formulae. I would address this problem in both ‘departmental mathematics’ as well as Macro Economics as well as any branch outside of scientific philosophy here, but the truth is, that other than maybe Rod Long, I’m not sure any other reader could grasp it. Further, Hoppe is not exactly an easy read. And if Hoppe is challenging go back to Bohm Bawerk, whose writing is nearly opaque with analogy. Clarity is a function of marketing and having clarity as a goal. The accessibility of an idea has nothing to do with whether an idea provides compact explanatory power and survives falsification. Rothbard is not challenging because he does not solve the hard problem of norms. Propertarianism does solve that problem. And I can reduce it to less than 10K words. It is the application of the principles, and the refutation of criticism that takes a book length work. I am struggling (at Hoppe’s criticism) to use extant language, and it is working, but I must make it increasingly compact, which is an art in itself.

We Must Understand That Rothbardian Ethics Have Failed

All of that prevarication aside, we must realize that we libertarians have not succeeded in affecting policy. We have given OTHER libertarians a common language, and label for our preference. We have united people with libertarian sentiments and intuitions under a common name, common ideology, and in rare circumstances, common philosophy. But we have been unable to affect policy. By contrast, the conservatives have affected the government, bringing it to a halt, merely by appealing to traditional morality – even against the economic interests of conservatives. They may only have managed to put up a resistance, and failed to implement new policy, but they correctly understood the moral code of western peoples, and ‘libertarians’ didn’t. That is an empirical criticism. It is what it is. Evidence is evidence. Libertarianism can be demonstrated as a sentiment, a moral argument, a rational argument, an economic argument to utility, or a ratio-scientific argument about human nature. Ideologies make use of sentiments, religions of moral arguments, and political scientists make use of scientific evidence. If your libertarianism is ideological or religious in structure, then that is one thing. If it is rational that is another. If it is ratio-scientifically based, it is yet another. And mine is ratio-scientifically based. Philosophy in this context is just a means of reordering the objects and relations and values we attach to them prior to developing a system of measurement for them. But to reduce something to a science requires a means of commensurability and property, if defined as demonstrated, rather than defined as aspired to, provides us with a science of cooperation. Criticizing the left is easy because most of what they do is demonstrate conspicuous consumption in an effort to gain cheap status signals, by spending other people’s money and flaunting disregard for norms. But libertarians, too often justly called ‘asperger-tarians’ are far too often enraptured by their self rewarding signal economy of self righteousness to grasp that liberty is demonstrably not desirable or advantageous for many. It is actually advantageous for those who do not desire liberty, that we exist as libertarians SOMEWHERE in the world, to innovate and compete, but not necessarily in the same geographic monopoly of arbitrary property rights, insured by the threat of violence. They cannot compete with us without organizing the equivalent of trade policy against us in exchange for access to their markets. It is not rational for them to expect us to. We insure ourselves with our competitiveness. They insure themselves as a collective by mutually sharing rents and free riding, and negotiating terms as a block. We may prefer otherwise, but to enact liberty upon those who do not desire it is to ask them to let us prey upon their uncompetitiveness.

Why Hoppe Is Right – On Everything

It is the monopoly of government and the state that forces us under the same insurer of both economic transactions and social insurance policy. When under federation in the swiss model of direct democracy, we could separate the functions of insurer of transactions (property rights) with insurer of life and limb (social programs.) In Hoppe’s model we hire our own insurers. These arguments are the same. He is right. It is quite simple do demonstrate that while the Argumentation ethic is sufficient for deduction of all that Hoppe has deduced from it, it is not a CAUSAL argument. If Hoppe’s insights are to survive the loading he has added and that his critics have added, and his critics are to be allayed, we must complete his work by transforming his insights from entirely rational to ratio-scientific arguments. I am doing that. My argument is that Hoppe, despite relying entirely on Argumentation Ethics, rather than the underlying causal properties that give rise to opportunities for argumentation, has correctly deduced everything – including his correct stance on immigration. And that if we use the explanatory power of Propertarianism, we can further reduce not only all RIGHTS, but all human BEHAVIOR to statements of property and its voluntary or involuntary transfer. Because that reduction is the universal cause of all property rights in all cultures, in all circumstances, for all of mankind. Therefore the difference between Hoppe’s analysis of what would be PREFERABLE for people with libertarian sentiments, and for Hayekian reasons of productive utility and wealth, No one other than me, that I know of, is trying to convert Hoppe to ratio-scientific argument and prove that his deductions were correct, and that the criticisms of his Argumentation Ethics are erroneous in so far as that they are correct that Argumentation is not a cause. But incorrect in that argumentation is not sufficient for the purpose of deducing all that Hoppe has deduced from it. (That this has escaped so many other philosophers is somewhat surprising to me.) As such, what propertarianism does, is provide a universal language for exposing involuntary transfer (theft) and conducting commensurable arguments in all moral codes regardless of the portfolio of moral codes made use of by any polity.

Failures and Successes

Hayek did not correctly understand Mises’ arguments and tried to solve the problem of universal behavior using, what I would call ‘psychology’ and the properties of the mind. However, Mises was closer to the answer provided by Propertarianism with the Obverse of Economic Calculation, and its Reverse: Incentives. However, Mises again, out of necessity, attempted to create a rational and deductive science without integrating all forms of property, especially norms and human capital into his analysis. For this reason both Mises and Hayek despite being very close, failed to make the observation that it was not money or psychology or mind that all human behavior could be deduced from, but property in all its forms as humans actually demonstrably practice the discipline of property allocation and use. Rothbard was very, very close. Unfortunately in his quest for a rigorous ideology and admonition of bureaucracy, he put forth an argument again, which discounted the high trust norms. Instead, arguing that the market would be sufficient to suppress the various subtle forms of theft. We all draw upon our ethical backgrounds. Me on my anglo imperialism, Hoppe on his Northern Germanic nationalism, and Rothbard on his Jewish diasporic tribalism. Without the knowledge of Propertarianism – that all behavior is reducible to property rights- we must rely on our intuitions. Even Weber and Durkheim came close but did not succeed in making Rothbard and Hoppe’s insights. And if I do my work correctly, just as Rothbard solved the problem of normative institutions for homogenous diasporic tribes, and Hoppe the problem of formal institutions and normative institutions for homogenous landed nuclear families, I will solve the problem of rhetoric, commensurability, and institutions for entirely heterogeneous polities. In this sense we will have completed the promise of libertarianism, by reducing all rights, in fact, all ethics and moral argument, and therefore all political arguments, to statements of property rights, and in doing so demonstrate the casual link between biologically necessary reproductive strategy, the structure of the family, the structure of moral codes, and teh demand for different levels of intervention by the ‘state’.

The Ghetto vs The Aristocracy

This is the ethic of the high trust society, and the only society every to invent and employ liberty – the protestant west. It may be unclear that the Absolute Nuclear family is yet again another institution that forbids discounts. And that is why ANF families from northern european cultures prefer liberty, and NF and Traditional families from southern Europe prefer more of the state: because ANF Families suppress all free riding and NF and Traditional families do not. ANF and property rights are eugenic and ostracizing. They are the rights of aristocratic egalitarians. The rights of those who can compete. Those that cannot compete do not seek those rights as they view free riding and rent seeking at the very least to be necessary for competitive survival. That is all that there is to understand about politics. Rothbardian’s NAP is the ethic of the ghetto. It is not the high trust ethic of the northern europeans, and certainly not a sufficient ethic to allow a low friction common law society to function without a strong state. For this reason the NAP is insufficient AS A THEORY, and it is the reason for the failure of rothbardian, libertarian ethics to gain any acceptance in the population. The reason being, that it’s too low a bar. It does not prohibit discounts> I will leave it to Kevin MacDonald to illustrate where Rothbard got these ideas from and why. I was very frustrated with Rothbard originally, but now see him, as Hayek saw Mises, and as I see Hayek, as a participant in an intuitive culture which they lacked the scientific evidence to escape by comparative analysis. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev
December 22, 2013