Curt Doolittle

Form: Full Essay

  • PROPERTARIANISM : UNITING HOPPE AND HAYEK “Hayek’s work composes a system of ide

    PROPERTARIANISM : UNITING HOPPE AND HAYEK

    “Hayek’s work composes a system of ideas, fully as ambitious as the systems of Mill and Marx, but far less vulnerable to criticism than theirs because it is grounded on a philosophically defensible view of the scope and limits of human reason. “

    –John N. Gray, in Hayek on Liberty (1984), Preface, p. ix

    COMMENT

    I originally thought I was trying to reconcile Hayek and Mises — at least, that’s what I remember saying to Walter Block — but really, it turns out, that it’s Mises (calculation), Hoppe (institutions), Rothbard (property as calculation) and Hayek (limits of reason) that needed uniting.

    If you stop for a moment, long enough to grasp that we do not need to JUSTIFY libertarianism (philosophy) as much as simply UNDERSTAND human moral behavior (science), then the question is not what we should choose to believe or prefer to believe, but only what institutions compensate for the deficiencies in our ability to cooperate because of fragmentary knowledge, AND cognitive and moral biases. The result is a libertarian bias in the formation all institutions.

    The problem is not ‘what we should do’ but ‘what can we not do’ without institutions to assist us in cooperating where we cannot cooperate without them. Where cooperation means to cooperate with people we do not and cannot know on means of achieving multiplicative ends, many of which are in conflict, and all of which represent our individual reproductive strategies.

    It’s common for us to discuss Capital in all its forms: Financial, Physical, Institutional, Human and Social.

    But, I don’t like the term ‘social capital’ for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is that the term ‘social’ is heavily loaded. But most importantly, because for the female, collectively-biased mind, ‘social’ implies ‘agreement and consent’.

    Whereas, my preferred term, “informal institutions” consisting of manners, ethics, morals, habits, traditions, rituals, myths, metaphysical biases, is a largely involuntary, non-consensual, habituated rules, reduced to intuitions, many of which we may not even be aware of – and most which we cannot distinguish from biological and genetic instinct.

    It’s common for us to discuss Capital in all its forms:

    1) Human Capital,

    2) Informal Institutional Capital,

    3) Intellectual Capital,

    4) Formal institutional Capital,

    5) Physical Capital,

    6) Financial Capital,

    7) Geographic Capital.

    And to do so in that order, as a sequence from the human being, to physical space, and each dependent upon its priors.

    A SYSTEM OF IDEAS

    Extending property to the full suite of categories which human beings demonstrate that they treat as property, we are able to reconcile the Austro-libertarian program and rescue it from its past errors. We can take calculation and praxeology from mises, and complete praxeology as a biologically based science of incentives, remove deduction from it, but retain praxeology’s ability to test any incentive given the similarity of our sensitivity to incentives. We can take Hayek and show that he simply did not make the connection between the various categories of property and his insights into the limits of information and knowledge.

    We are able to reduce to very compact form, the theory of human cooperation, as non-arbitrary, entirely rational pursuit of our reproductive strategy in whatever organization we are members of.

    COMPACTLY STATED

    To unite these thinkers into ratio-scientific form requires only the following limited steps:

    0) Start with private property, and voluntary exchange

    1) Add remaining categories of property

    2) Add ethical requirement for symmetry and warranty

    3) Add ethical requirement against transfer by externality

    4) Add ethical requirement for operational language

    5) Add ethical requirement for ‘calculability’ (retention of relation)

    6) Add institutional government by contract not law.

    The rest is a set of tactics that require only different levels of technology to achieve the same result.

    THE REASON FOR MORAL DIVERSITY IS THE EXPRESSION OF REPRODUCTIVE INDIVIDUALISM UNDER POST INDUSTRIALISM’S WEALTH

    People pursue their economic and reproductive interests, but only as long as there is an incentive and a means to do so. We are not equal in our reproductive value – which is obvious. Just as we are not equal in our economic value – value to each other.

    The diversity of moral biases increases with the diversity of the reproductive structure. If we all exist in nuclear families in one group, and all exist in tribes in another, then the moral code that he nuclear families operate between all members of all groups, will differ from the bifurcated morally of the tribal group. Because the tribal group treats all non-family as another ‘state’ just as the nuclear families treat all individuals as belonging to their family. This creates an asymmetry of morals, since at all times, both sides attempt to keep all rewards in their families. Except that the nuclear family system keeps rewards universally, and the tribal family does not. As such the nuclear family is easy prey to the immorality of the tribal family.

    Furthermore, under matrilinealism, women trade sex and affection for calories, where as under paternalism men trade calories and security for sex and care-taking using property. In each system there is a bias in reproductive control for each gender.

    Under the nuclear, traditional, and extended families, our reproductive male and female strategies are politically homogenized since what is politically good for one is good for the other. But under the dissolution of the family into single parenthood, and roaming males, reproductive interests are polarized between each group.

    And that is what we see in modern democracy, with the only difference that military prowess (power) gives nations a more masculine character, and lack of it gives nations are more feminine character.

    SCOPE AND SIMPLICITY

    As I write this I’m reminded that it does take an entire book to cover an ethical topic of this breadth. But comforted slightly that once the breadth is understood as a system, it is possible to reduce it to a compact set of rules or laws, and therefore, both fitting the criteria of explanatory power, and the requirement that society consist of very simple, basic rules, comprehensible to anyone.

    And since propertarianism is the codification of instinctual biology in verbal form using property as the means of commensurability, then it is both possible for humans to universally sense, perceive, and comprehend those simple basic additions – additions which in effect, ask us to extend and warrantee all exchanges, verbal and material, to all human beings, as if they were members of our traditional family.

    And as such, create a family in practice despite what are a multitude of families with different preferences, needs, means and ends.

    Cheers

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev 2013

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-23 05:28:00 UTC

  • The Value of Hoppe's Anarcho Capitalist Research Program

    Dear libertarian(s) Some of your statements trouble me, because we need passionate and articulate advocacy of libertarianism. And you’re clearly a passionate and articulate advocate. But it’s better if all of us are the best quality advocates possible, so that we reduce internal friction as wasted effort, and direct it elsewhere where it can be more benefit to liberty. As Caplan has recently argued, Libertarians tend to behave as moral specialists. The cause of this behavior is the libertarian sentiment – the bias against coercion, and the forced sacrifice of opportunity that causes no loss either directly or by externality. But the problem with sentimental and moral arguments is that they since they ARE intuitive, and intuition is limited to whatever it is that we have mastered by experience. In order to agree with Bastiat and Hayek (which, like you I do) we must also intuit that they are morally correct. But that we intuit that they are correct is not sufficient to argue apodeictically (rationally) or scientifically (empirically) that they are correct independent of that intuition.

    [callout]…prior to Hoppe and Rothbard, the classical liberal … program had failed to produce a … rational, analytical argument for liberty that was anywhere near the argumentative depth and veracity of marxism.[/callout]

    To understand the contributions of the Anarcho-Capistalist movement, of Rothbard and Hoppe to the advance of liberty, libertarian ethics, and libertarian institutions, we need only appreciate that prior to Hoppe and Rothbard, the classical liberal (libertarian) program had failed to produce a non-intuitive, rational, analytical argument for liberty that was anywhere near the argumentative depth and veracity of marxism. Had it not been for Rothbard and Hoppe in ethics and Friedman in Economics, and Hayek in politics the world might be a very different place. It is arguable that the conservative intellectual program has been a failure even if the political program has been a strategic success. And conversely, our intellectual program has been a success, but by empirical standards, a political failure. The reason we have failed is Rothbard’s ‘ghetto’ ethics are not only intuitively insufficient for the majority who possess classical liberal ethics – they are intuitively reprehensible to them. And for an intuitive system of ethics to evoke intuitively negative emotions is politically problematic. It’s a non-starter. And for us it has been.

    [callout]What is it that conservatives cannot rationally articulate or empirically demonstrate, but ‘sells’, and what what is it about our ethics we can rationally articulate but cannot sell? [/callout]

    If we again look at what the conservatives have accomplished by focusing entirely on the moral sentiments, and not on ratio-scientific argument, it’s instructive. What is it that conservatives cannot rationally articulate or empirically demonstrate, but ‘sells’, and what what is it about our ethics we can rationally articulate but cannot sell? I think I know that answer: and it is what is missing from Rothbardian and Anarcho capitalist ethics. Rothbard gave us the ethics of the ghetto – an ethic of rebellion. He did not give us the ethics of the high trust society – the aristocratic egalitarian, Christian, Protestant ethic of the high trust society, in which symmetry of knowledge is mandated by warranty, and externality is prohibited by morality and law. While the Anarcho Capitalist program is certainly incomplete (I would like to complete it), it is the only advance in political theory that is substantive in the latter half of the twentieth century. Rothbard reduced all rights to property rights. And he restated history to demonstrate that assertion. It was a fundamental insight, and provided us with an analytical language for responding to marxists. But his analysis of the scope of those rights is artificially narrow, and he provided us with no institutional means of obtaining or holding those rights – possibly because he could not solve the problem of institutions. I am extremely critical of Rothbard for these reasons, because he gave us both an insufficient definition of what is moral, and what is essentially a toothless voluntary religion to hold it with. Hoppe has explained to us the incentives of why democracy fails, and why monarchy succeeded. He has tried to give us institutions that will provide services without monopoly bureaucracy, or even legislative law. Hoppe solved the problem of institutions – at least in a homogenous polity – and he did it in rigorous language. He did not solve the problem of heterogeneous polities. (I think I may have, but I am not sure yet.) Neither of these insights were minimal in impact. Rothbard effectively made ethics non-arbitrary, and Hoppe provided a means of ethical governance. Both of them did this by eliminating the monopoly power of government. Hoppe’s weaknesses are a) he relies argumentatively on rational rather than ratio-scientific arguments, which while I might argue are functionally correct, are causally weak, and we now have the ratio-scientific evidence to prove them without relying on complex (and nearly indefensible) rational arguments alone. b) That he is excessively fawning of Rothbard, for personally legitimate reasons – but that Rothbard is sufficiently tainted by the failure of his moral arguments to hinder Hoppe’s legacy, and his arguments. c) Style issues are those of politically active moralism against Marxists. His native german prose only lends itself to anglo articulation after he has reduced it through repetition. He uncomfortably peppers it with unnecessary ridicule as did Rothbard – which I have been consistently critical of, and which he has slowly laundered from his formal works, but not his speech – because it is in fact highly entertaining to audiences. These are problems of argumentative method alone, not of intellectual contribution. Hoppe has given us solutions to serious political problems that are two and a half millennia old. That he did so in the language of his time is something to be acknowledged, but the results simply appreciated for the visionary insights that they are.

    [callout]…just because we agree with something, and we intuit it, is meaningless, since that is exactly what the people on the other pole of the moral spectrum inuit. Intuitions must be defensible.[/callout]

    We cannot say that one is rationally or scientifically arguing for something without a rational or scientific argument. The fact that we are moral specialists, and rely upon moral arguments, and moral arguments that are intuitive to us, may in fact, suggest that our intuitions are correct, if and only if we can ALSO support those intuitions with rational, scientific and institutional solutions. Otherwise, the fact that we intuit liberty to be something moral, is merely an accident of evolutionary biology and nothing meaningful can be said about it. So I would caution you, and most libertarians, who are, in fact, sentimental, rather than rational, ratio-scientific, and institutionally empirical, advocates, that just because we agree with something, and we intuit it, is meaningless, since that is exactly what the people on the other pole of the moral spectrum inuit. Intuitions must be defensible. So while I assume you agree with Bob Murphy (who is our best economist) and Bastiat (who is the father of our institutional rhetoric), I would argue that you correctly intuit classical liberal ethics of the high trust society. In this sense you are superior in intuition to Rothbardian intuitionists. However, we must also acknowledge that the classical liberal political system failed upon the introduction of women and non-property owners into enfranchisement. This is because those without property hold very different ethics – if ethics can be used to describe them. And the female reproductive strategy is to bear children and place the burden of their upkeep on the tribe (society). Private property was an innovation, that allowed males to once again take control of reproductive strategy, and the marriage that resulted from that innovation was a truce between the male and female strategies. A truce that feminists and socialists, and communists, and those that lack property, all seek to break. Private Property and the nuclear family, and the high trust ethic are both politically indivisible. And the classical liberal program cannot survive in their absence. And no one else has provided us with a solution to this problem other than the feminists and socialists – who which to destroy private property, and the anarcho capitalists, who wish to preserve our freedom, and property. And as far as I know, I am the only libertarian who is trying to solve the problem of freedom in the absence of the nuclear family that functioned as a uniform reproductive order now that we are in the order of production we call the industrial and technical age. So these are not questions of sentimental intuition, or belief, or morality. They are questions of institutional, philosophical, and argumentative solutions to the problem of cooperation when the agrarian order of the nuclear and extended family has been replaced by the individualistic and familially diverse. Political theory is not a trivial pursuit. Cheers Curt Doolittle Kiev.

  • The Value of Hoppe’s Anarcho Capitalist Research Program

    Dear libertarian(s) Some of your statements trouble me, because we need passionate and articulate advocacy of libertarianism. And you’re clearly a passionate and articulate advocate. But it’s better if all of us are the best quality advocates possible, so that we reduce internal friction as wasted effort, and direct it elsewhere where it can be more benefit to liberty. As Caplan has recently argued, Libertarians tend to behave as moral specialists. The cause of this behavior is the libertarian sentiment – the bias against coercion, and the forced sacrifice of opportunity that causes no loss either directly or by externality. But the problem with sentimental and moral arguments is that they since they ARE intuitive, and intuition is limited to whatever it is that we have mastered by experience. In order to agree with Bastiat and Hayek (which, like you I do) we must also intuit that they are morally correct. But that we intuit that they are correct is not sufficient to argue apodeictically (rationally) or scientifically (empirically) that they are correct independent of that intuition.

    [callout]…prior to Hoppe and Rothbard, the classical liberal … program had failed to produce a … rational, analytical argument for liberty that was anywhere near the argumentative depth and veracity of marxism.[/callout]

    To understand the contributions of the Anarcho-Capistalist movement, of Rothbard and Hoppe to the advance of liberty, libertarian ethics, and libertarian institutions, we need only appreciate that prior to Hoppe and Rothbard, the classical liberal (libertarian) program had failed to produce a non-intuitive, rational, analytical argument for liberty that was anywhere near the argumentative depth and veracity of marxism. Had it not been for Rothbard and Hoppe in ethics and Friedman in Economics, and Hayek in politics the world might be a very different place. It is arguable that the conservative intellectual program has been a failure even if the political program has been a strategic success. And conversely, our intellectual program has been a success, but by empirical standards, a political failure. The reason we have failed is Rothbard’s ‘ghetto’ ethics are not only intuitively insufficient for the majority who possess classical liberal ethics – they are intuitively reprehensible to them. And for an intuitive system of ethics to evoke intuitively negative emotions is politically problematic. It’s a non-starter. And for us it has been.

    [callout]What is it that conservatives cannot rationally articulate or empirically demonstrate, but ‘sells’, and what what is it about our ethics we can rationally articulate but cannot sell? [/callout]

    If we again look at what the conservatives have accomplished by focusing entirely on the moral sentiments, and not on ratio-scientific argument, it’s instructive. What is it that conservatives cannot rationally articulate or empirically demonstrate, but ‘sells’, and what what is it about our ethics we can rationally articulate but cannot sell? I think I know that answer: and it is what is missing from Rothbardian and Anarcho capitalist ethics. Rothbard gave us the ethics of the ghetto – an ethic of rebellion. He did not give us the ethics of the high trust society – the aristocratic egalitarian, Christian, Protestant ethic of the high trust society, in which symmetry of knowledge is mandated by warranty, and externality is prohibited by morality and law. While the Anarcho Capitalist program is certainly incomplete (I would like to complete it), it is the only advance in political theory that is substantive in the latter half of the twentieth century. Rothbard reduced all rights to property rights. And he restated history to demonstrate that assertion. It was a fundamental insight, and provided us with an analytical language for responding to marxists. But his analysis of the scope of those rights is artificially narrow, and he provided us with no institutional means of obtaining or holding those rights – possibly because he could not solve the problem of institutions. I am extremely critical of Rothbard for these reasons, because he gave us both an insufficient definition of what is moral, and what is essentially a toothless voluntary religion to hold it with. Hoppe has explained to us the incentives of why democracy fails, and why monarchy succeeded. He has tried to give us institutions that will provide services without monopoly bureaucracy, or even legislative law. Hoppe solved the problem of institutions – at least in a homogenous polity – and he did it in rigorous language. He did not solve the problem of heterogeneous polities. (I think I may have, but I am not sure yet.) Neither of these insights were minimal in impact. Rothbard effectively made ethics non-arbitrary, and Hoppe provided a means of ethical governance. Both of them did this by eliminating the monopoly power of government. Hoppe’s weaknesses are a) he relies argumentatively on rational rather than ratio-scientific arguments, which while I might argue are functionally correct, are causally weak, and we now have the ratio-scientific evidence to prove them without relying on complex (and nearly indefensible) rational arguments alone. b) That he is excessively fawning of Rothbard, for personally legitimate reasons – but that Rothbard is sufficiently tainted by the failure of his moral arguments to hinder Hoppe’s legacy, and his arguments. c) Style issues are those of politically active moralism against Marxists. His native german prose only lends itself to anglo articulation after he has reduced it through repetition. He uncomfortably peppers it with unnecessary ridicule as did Rothbard – which I have been consistently critical of, and which he has slowly laundered from his formal works, but not his speech – because it is in fact highly entertaining to audiences. These are problems of argumentative method alone, not of intellectual contribution. Hoppe has given us solutions to serious political problems that are two and a half millennia old. That he did so in the language of his time is something to be acknowledged, but the results simply appreciated for the visionary insights that they are.

    [callout]…just because we agree with something, and we intuit it, is meaningless, since that is exactly what the people on the other pole of the moral spectrum inuit. Intuitions must be defensible.[/callout]

    We cannot say that one is rationally or scientifically arguing for something without a rational or scientific argument. The fact that we are moral specialists, and rely upon moral arguments, and moral arguments that are intuitive to us, may in fact, suggest that our intuitions are correct, if and only if we can ALSO support those intuitions with rational, scientific and institutional solutions. Otherwise, the fact that we intuit liberty to be something moral, is merely an accident of evolutionary biology and nothing meaningful can be said about it. So I would caution you, and most libertarians, who are, in fact, sentimental, rather than rational, ratio-scientific, and institutionally empirical, advocates, that just because we agree with something, and we intuit it, is meaningless, since that is exactly what the people on the other pole of the moral spectrum inuit. Intuitions must be defensible. So while I assume you agree with Bob Murphy (who is our best economist) and Bastiat (who is the father of our institutional rhetoric), I would argue that you correctly intuit classical liberal ethics of the high trust society. In this sense you are superior in intuition to Rothbardian intuitionists. However, we must also acknowledge that the classical liberal political system failed upon the introduction of women and non-property owners into enfranchisement. This is because those without property hold very different ethics – if ethics can be used to describe them. And the female reproductive strategy is to bear children and place the burden of their upkeep on the tribe (society). Private property was an innovation, that allowed males to once again take control of reproductive strategy, and the marriage that resulted from that innovation was a truce between the male and female strategies. A truce that feminists and socialists, and communists, and those that lack property, all seek to break. Private Property and the nuclear family, and the high trust ethic are both politically indivisible. And the classical liberal program cannot survive in their absence. And no one else has provided us with a solution to this problem other than the feminists and socialists – who which to destroy private property, and the anarcho capitalists, who wish to preserve our freedom, and property. And as far as I know, I am the only libertarian who is trying to solve the problem of freedom in the absence of the nuclear family that functioned as a uniform reproductive order now that we are in the order of production we call the industrial and technical age. So these are not questions of sentimental intuition, or belief, or morality. They are questions of institutional, philosophical, and argumentative solutions to the problem of cooperation when the agrarian order of the nuclear and extended family has been replaced by the individualistic and familially diverse. Political theory is not a trivial pursuit. Cheers Curt Doolittle Kiev.

  • The Value of Hoppe's Anarcho Capitalist Research Program

    Dear libertarian(s) Some of your statements trouble me, because we need passionate and articulate advocacy of libertarianism. And you’re clearly a passionate and articulate advocate. But it’s better if all of us are the best quality advocates possible, so that we reduce internal friction as wasted effort, and direct it elsewhere where it can be more benefit to liberty. As Caplan has recently argued, Libertarians tend to behave as moral specialists. The cause of this behavior is the libertarian sentiment – the bias against coercion, and the forced sacrifice of opportunity that causes no loss either directly or by externality. But the problem with sentimental and moral arguments is that they since they ARE intuitive, and intuition is limited to whatever it is that we have mastered by experience. In order to agree with Bastiat and Hayek (which, like you I do) we must also intuit that they are morally correct. But that we intuit that they are correct is not sufficient to argue apodeictically (rationally) or scientifically (empirically) that they are correct independent of that intuition.

    [callout]…prior to Hoppe and Rothbard, the classical liberal … program had failed to produce a … rational, analytical argument for liberty that was anywhere near the argumentative depth and veracity of marxism.[/callout]

    To understand the contributions of the Anarcho-Capistalist movement, of Rothbard and Hoppe to the advance of liberty, libertarian ethics, and libertarian institutions, we need only appreciate that prior to Hoppe and Rothbard, the classical liberal (libertarian) program had failed to produce a non-intuitive, rational, analytical argument for liberty that was anywhere near the argumentative depth and veracity of marxism. Had it not been for Rothbard and Hoppe in ethics and Friedman in Economics, and Hayek in politics the world might be a very different place. It is arguable that the conservative intellectual program has been a failure even if the political program has been a strategic success. And conversely, our intellectual program has been a success, but by empirical standards, a political failure. The reason we have failed is Rothbard’s ‘ghetto’ ethics are not only intuitively insufficient for the majority who possess classical liberal ethics – they are intuitively reprehensible to them. And for an intuitive system of ethics to evoke intuitively negative emotions is politically problematic. It’s a non-starter. And for us it has been.

    [callout]What is it that conservatives cannot rationally articulate or empirically demonstrate, but ‘sells’, and what what is it about our ethics we can rationally articulate but cannot sell? [/callout]

    If we again look at what the conservatives have accomplished by focusing entirely on the moral sentiments, and not on ratio-scientific argument, it’s instructive. What is it that conservatives cannot rationally articulate or empirically demonstrate, but ‘sells’, and what what is it about our ethics we can rationally articulate but cannot sell? I think I know that answer: and it is what is missing from Rothbardian and Anarcho capitalist ethics. Rothbard gave us the ethics of the ghetto – an ethic of rebellion. He did not give us the ethics of the high trust society – the aristocratic egalitarian, Christian, Protestant ethic of the high trust society, in which symmetry of knowledge is mandated by warranty, and externality is prohibited by morality and law. While the Anarcho Capitalist program is certainly incomplete (I would like to complete it), it is the only advance in political theory that is substantive in the latter half of the twentieth century. Rothbard reduced all rights to property rights. And he restated history to demonstrate that assertion. It was a fundamental insight, and provided us with an analytical language for responding to marxists. But his analysis of the scope of those rights is artificially narrow, and he provided us with no institutional means of obtaining or holding those rights – possibly because he could not solve the problem of institutions. I am extremely critical of Rothbard for these reasons, because he gave us both an insufficient definition of what is moral, and what is essentially a toothless voluntary religion to hold it with. Hoppe has explained to us the incentives of why democracy fails, and why monarchy succeeded. He has tried to give us institutions that will provide services without monopoly bureaucracy, or even legislative law. Hoppe solved the problem of institutions – at least in a homogenous polity – and he did it in rigorous language. He did not solve the problem of heterogeneous polities. (I think I may have, but I am not sure yet.) Neither of these insights were minimal in impact. Rothbard effectively made ethics non-arbitrary, and Hoppe provided a means of ethical governance. Both of them did this by eliminating the monopoly power of government. Hoppe’s weaknesses are a) he relies argumentatively on rational rather than ratio-scientific arguments, which while I might argue are functionally correct, are causally weak, and we now have the ratio-scientific evidence to prove them without relying on complex (and nearly indefensible) rational arguments alone. b) That he is excessively fawning of Rothbard, for personally legitimate reasons – but that Rothbard is sufficiently tainted by the failure of his moral arguments to hinder Hoppe’s legacy, and his arguments. c) Style issues are those of politically active moralism against Marxists. His native german prose only lends itself to anglo articulation after he has reduced it through repetition. He uncomfortably peppers it with unnecessary ridicule as did Rothbard – which I have been consistently critical of, and which he has slowly laundered from his formal works, but not his speech – because it is in fact highly entertaining to audiences. These are problems of argumentative method alone, not of intellectual contribution. Hoppe has given us solutions to serious political problems that are two and a half millennia old. That he did so in the language of his time is something to be acknowledged, but the results simply appreciated for the visionary insights that they are.

    [callout]…just because we agree with something, and we intuit it, is meaningless, since that is exactly what the people on the other pole of the moral spectrum inuit. Intuitions must be defensible.[/callout]

    We cannot say that one is rationally or scientifically arguing for something without a rational or scientific argument. The fact that we are moral specialists, and rely upon moral arguments, and moral arguments that are intuitive to us, may in fact, suggest that our intuitions are correct, if and only if we can ALSO support those intuitions with rational, scientific and institutional solutions. Otherwise, the fact that we intuit liberty to be something moral, is merely an accident of evolutionary biology and nothing meaningful can be said about it. So I would caution you, and most libertarians, who are, in fact, sentimental, rather than rational, ratio-scientific, and institutionally empirical, advocates, that just because we agree with something, and we intuit it, is meaningless, since that is exactly what the people on the other pole of the moral spectrum inuit. Intuitions must be defensible. So while I assume you agree with Bob Murphy (who is our best economist) and Bastiat (who is the father of our institutional rhetoric), I would argue that you correctly intuit classical liberal ethics of the high trust society. In this sense you are superior in intuition to Rothbardian intuitionists. However, we must also acknowledge that the classical liberal political system failed upon the introduction of women and non-property owners into enfranchisement. This is because those without property hold very different ethics – if ethics can be used to describe them. And the female reproductive strategy is to bear children and place the burden of their upkeep on the tribe (society). Private property was an innovation, that allowed males to once again take control of reproductive strategy, and the marriage that resulted from that innovation was a truce between the male and female strategies. A truce that feminists and socialists, and communists, and those that lack property, all seek to break. Private Property and the nuclear family, and the high trust ethic are both politically indivisible. And the classical liberal program cannot survive in their absence. And no one else has provided us with a solution to this problem other than the feminists and socialists – who which to destroy private property, and the anarcho capitalists, who wish to preserve our freedom, and property. And as far as I know, I am the only libertarian who is trying to solve the problem of freedom in the absence of the nuclear family that functioned as a uniform reproductive order now that we are in the order of production we call the industrial and technical age. So these are not questions of sentimental intuition, or belief, or morality. They are questions of institutional, philosophical, and argumentative solutions to the problem of cooperation when the agrarian order of the nuclear and extended family has been replaced by the individualistic and familially diverse. Political theory is not a trivial pursuit. Cheers Curt Doolittle Kiev.

  • The Value of Hoppe’s Anarcho Capitalist Research Program

    Dear libertarian(s) Some of your statements trouble me, because we need passionate and articulate advocacy of libertarianism. And you’re clearly a passionate and articulate advocate. But it’s better if all of us are the best quality advocates possible, so that we reduce internal friction as wasted effort, and direct it elsewhere where it can be more benefit to liberty. As Caplan has recently argued, Libertarians tend to behave as moral specialists. The cause of this behavior is the libertarian sentiment – the bias against coercion, and the forced sacrifice of opportunity that causes no loss either directly or by externality. But the problem with sentimental and moral arguments is that they since they ARE intuitive, and intuition is limited to whatever it is that we have mastered by experience. In order to agree with Bastiat and Hayek (which, like you I do) we must also intuit that they are morally correct. But that we intuit that they are correct is not sufficient to argue apodeictically (rationally) or scientifically (empirically) that they are correct independent of that intuition.

    [callout]…prior to Hoppe and Rothbard, the classical liberal … program had failed to produce a … rational, analytical argument for liberty that was anywhere near the argumentative depth and veracity of marxism.[/callout]

    To understand the contributions of the Anarcho-Capistalist movement, of Rothbard and Hoppe to the advance of liberty, libertarian ethics, and libertarian institutions, we need only appreciate that prior to Hoppe and Rothbard, the classical liberal (libertarian) program had failed to produce a non-intuitive, rational, analytical argument for liberty that was anywhere near the argumentative depth and veracity of marxism. Had it not been for Rothbard and Hoppe in ethics and Friedman in Economics, and Hayek in politics the world might be a very different place. It is arguable that the conservative intellectual program has been a failure even if the political program has been a strategic success. And conversely, our intellectual program has been a success, but by empirical standards, a political failure. The reason we have failed is Rothbard’s ‘ghetto’ ethics are not only intuitively insufficient for the majority who possess classical liberal ethics – they are intuitively reprehensible to them. And for an intuitive system of ethics to evoke intuitively negative emotions is politically problematic. It’s a non-starter. And for us it has been.

    [callout]What is it that conservatives cannot rationally articulate or empirically demonstrate, but ‘sells’, and what what is it about our ethics we can rationally articulate but cannot sell? [/callout]

    If we again look at what the conservatives have accomplished by focusing entirely on the moral sentiments, and not on ratio-scientific argument, it’s instructive. What is it that conservatives cannot rationally articulate or empirically demonstrate, but ‘sells’, and what what is it about our ethics we can rationally articulate but cannot sell? I think I know that answer: and it is what is missing from Rothbardian and Anarcho capitalist ethics. Rothbard gave us the ethics of the ghetto – an ethic of rebellion. He did not give us the ethics of the high trust society – the aristocratic egalitarian, Christian, Protestant ethic of the high trust society, in which symmetry of knowledge is mandated by warranty, and externality is prohibited by morality and law. While the Anarcho Capitalist program is certainly incomplete (I would like to complete it), it is the only advance in political theory that is substantive in the latter half of the twentieth century. Rothbard reduced all rights to property rights. And he restated history to demonstrate that assertion. It was a fundamental insight, and provided us with an analytical language for responding to marxists. But his analysis of the scope of those rights is artificially narrow, and he provided us with no institutional means of obtaining or holding those rights – possibly because he could not solve the problem of institutions. I am extremely critical of Rothbard for these reasons, because he gave us both an insufficient definition of what is moral, and what is essentially a toothless voluntary religion to hold it with. Hoppe has explained to us the incentives of why democracy fails, and why monarchy succeeded. He has tried to give us institutions that will provide services without monopoly bureaucracy, or even legislative law. Hoppe solved the problem of institutions – at least in a homogenous polity – and he did it in rigorous language. He did not solve the problem of heterogeneous polities. (I think I may have, but I am not sure yet.) Neither of these insights were minimal in impact. Rothbard effectively made ethics non-arbitrary, and Hoppe provided a means of ethical governance. Both of them did this by eliminating the monopoly power of government. Hoppe’s weaknesses are a) he relies argumentatively on rational rather than ratio-scientific arguments, which while I might argue are functionally correct, are causally weak, and we now have the ratio-scientific evidence to prove them without relying on complex (and nearly indefensible) rational arguments alone. b) That he is excessively fawning of Rothbard, for personally legitimate reasons – but that Rothbard is sufficiently tainted by the failure of his moral arguments to hinder Hoppe’s legacy, and his arguments. c) Style issues are those of politically active moralism against Marxists. His native german prose only lends itself to anglo articulation after he has reduced it through repetition. He uncomfortably peppers it with unnecessary ridicule as did Rothbard – which I have been consistently critical of, and which he has slowly laundered from his formal works, but not his speech – because it is in fact highly entertaining to audiences. These are problems of argumentative method alone, not of intellectual contribution. Hoppe has given us solutions to serious political problems that are two and a half millennia old. That he did so in the language of his time is something to be acknowledged, but the results simply appreciated for the visionary insights that they are.

    [callout]…just because we agree with something, and we intuit it, is meaningless, since that is exactly what the people on the other pole of the moral spectrum inuit. Intuitions must be defensible.[/callout]

    We cannot say that one is rationally or scientifically arguing for something without a rational or scientific argument. The fact that we are moral specialists, and rely upon moral arguments, and moral arguments that are intuitive to us, may in fact, suggest that our intuitions are correct, if and only if we can ALSO support those intuitions with rational, scientific and institutional solutions. Otherwise, the fact that we intuit liberty to be something moral, is merely an accident of evolutionary biology and nothing meaningful can be said about it. So I would caution you, and most libertarians, who are, in fact, sentimental, rather than rational, ratio-scientific, and institutionally empirical, advocates, that just because we agree with something, and we intuit it, is meaningless, since that is exactly what the people on the other pole of the moral spectrum inuit. Intuitions must be defensible. So while I assume you agree with Bob Murphy (who is our best economist) and Bastiat (who is the father of our institutional rhetoric), I would argue that you correctly intuit classical liberal ethics of the high trust society. In this sense you are superior in intuition to Rothbardian intuitionists. However, we must also acknowledge that the classical liberal political system failed upon the introduction of women and non-property owners into enfranchisement. This is because those without property hold very different ethics – if ethics can be used to describe them. And the female reproductive strategy is to bear children and place the burden of their upkeep on the tribe (society). Private property was an innovation, that allowed males to once again take control of reproductive strategy, and the marriage that resulted from that innovation was a truce between the male and female strategies. A truce that feminists and socialists, and communists, and those that lack property, all seek to break. Private Property and the nuclear family, and the high trust ethic are both politically indivisible. And the classical liberal program cannot survive in their absence. And no one else has provided us with a solution to this problem other than the feminists and socialists – who which to destroy private property, and the anarcho capitalists, who wish to preserve our freedom, and property. And as far as I know, I am the only libertarian who is trying to solve the problem of freedom in the absence of the nuclear family that functioned as a uniform reproductive order now that we are in the order of production we call the industrial and technical age. So these are not questions of sentimental intuition, or belief, or morality. They are questions of institutional, philosophical, and argumentative solutions to the problem of cooperation when the agrarian order of the nuclear and extended family has been replaced by the individualistic and familially diverse. Political theory is not a trivial pursuit. Cheers Curt Doolittle Kiev.

  • The Necessity, Virtue And Morality Of Organized Violence

    THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY: THE NECESSITY, VIRTUE AND MORALITY OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE I (we) may not be able to coerce you into accepting freedom – individual monopoly of control over property obtained by voluntary exchange production or homesteading – as a superior form of cooperation to all other forms of cooperation. But you may not coerce me (us) into abandoning freedom as our preferred, committed, required, demanded and threatened form of cooperation. THE SOURCE OF PROPERTY IS VIOLENCE The source of property is the use of violence to create, obtain, and protect it. Only those who performed militial service created private property. Only those who performed militial service obtained private property. Only those who perform militial service will keep private property. A militia is a voluntary alliance of property owners whose common interest is the preservation of private property rights. A militia is not the same as an army, any more than freedom is the same as liberty. You create freedom by using violence. You request or desire liberty from someone else. The purpose of a libertarian government is to create private property through the organized application of violence to create it. And libertarian pacifists and moralists are in fact the reason we are losing it. VIOLENCE IS A VIRTUE. Violence is a virtue not a vice. If all rights are property rights. If property defines morality, then violence to create property is the first moral action upon which all other morality rests. We should encourage the mastery of violence in all men at all times, and the exercise of violence by all men at all times, in the defense of property rights, the highest form of morality that a man can display. Because by acts of violence to preserve property he pays the highest contribution to morality possible. Defense of property does not require words. It requires actions. FREEDOM IS SYNONYMOUS WITH MILITIA The only free people are, and must be, a people whose government is a militia, and whose resolution of disputes over property is decided by judges using the single rule of private property as their criteria for adjudication. A militia is synonymous with enfranchisement. No one else has paid for his or her right of property. They merely free ride on the expenses of others. Therefore, political democracy is synonymous with militial participation. No other meaning is possible. All other attributions are acts of theft by fraud. Militial participation requires no more than the personal use of violence to protect property rights. The use of the militia is to create and preserve property rights. The use of judges is to resolve conflicts without violence. The use of democratic government is not to create laws, but to create physical commons. The use of public intellectuals, is to carry on the public debate over which commons we may choose to invest in, and which not. The use of ‘religion’ and literature is to teach us these necessary and immutable laws of human cooperation so that we never forget them – and by forgetting them lose our freedom. You cannot obtain the right of private property at a discount. It is an extremely costly right to possess. It is an extremely costly right to maintain. Those who attempt to gain freedom – property – at a discount, will obtain an inferior product to those who pay for a better one. And the only currency of freedom -property – is violence. Be armed. Be willing. Be vigilant. And Act. —– Curt Doolittle Kiev, 2013 “Putting violence back into liberty one sentence at a time.”

  • The Moral Obligation To Disregard Feelings In Political Discourse

    (Silencing the silly people) [P]olitical discourse is not civilized. It is a bloody brutal deceitful affair that is conducted in the pursuit the of power to allocate influence, property and opportunity, using every dishonest, distracting, fraudulent tactic available. Humanities is what it is. And I will let the empirical evidence speak for itself. It is a discourse on norms and morality. Recursive as it may be. It is intuitionist not empirical. Normative not scientific. My point has been a consistent one: we have developed a set of technologies that compensate for the weakness of our perceptions. Debate, reason, measurement, mathematics, science, and economics are fields that only exist to compensate for the limitations of our senses. Our senses are plagued by limitations and by error (cognitive biases). We desire at all times to rely on intuition (memory) rather than thinking (comparison). These are not biases, preferences, opinions. They are empirical facts. They are what they are. Numbers, money, prices, accounting, credit, interest, contract, and rule of law, are technologies just like any other technology that gives us information about the world around us, and compensates for the inability to sense and perceive the world in real time. But that statement alone makes no sense unless we understand also, that the reason we need these things is to coordinate ourselves in a vast network of production none of us could grasp even the simplest part of. The point is that the world is not filled with evil people. It is filled with real human beings who have to survive with fragments of knowledge and resources, but as a collective, we produce the most amazing things, that our ancestors, could not even have imagined could exist. The price for this productivity is that we are in fact, ‘alienated’ by that information: the destruction of our illusion of importance. When the family, extended family, village or tribe was a productive unit, then each persons value was obvious. When all humanity, together, as a collective is the productive unit, then each person’s value is not only not obvious, it is trivialized by the experience. WE don’t like it. We’re alienated by it. We feel alone. And strangely enough we keep consuming to compensate for feeling alone. It’s maddening. So how can we do both? This is the goal of equality. But we cannot have perfect equality for the same reasons that we need numbers: differentiation is necessary for calculation. If I make you feel bad. I am sorry for your feelings. But the stakes are more important than your feelings. Your feelings are a reaction to changes in state. The state of what? your self image? Your perception how the group values you? Your confidence in your grasp and therefore control over the world? What is it that is changing state? Is it Marx’s alienation? It is.

    [callout]It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us.[/callout]

    If I had to make everyone feel really bad for a while in order to achieve relative equality and preserve productivity at the same time. I would think that was a fairly low cost. At least compared to the 100M dead from the result of communism. We are not equal. Certain people make me feel really dumb. I don’t feel bad because of it. I’m thankful that the world has smarter people than I am in it. Because it’s certainly too much work for me, or anyone else for that matter, to do alone. A world without people smarter than I am really scares me. It would mean that instead of feeling alone at times, I would in fact BE alone for all intents and purposes. I studied fine art and art history in school. At the end of the semester we had a critique. The professors tore us apart. Most people left in tears. It was the most important thing we learned all year. And we all were better for it. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world. (See Surviving as an artist.How to survive an art critique.) On the other hand. It made me, and all the rest of us, pretty numb to criticism. (And americans are, quite clearly, the most narcissistic people on earth.) (See The Culture of Narcissism.Bibiography of American Narcissism. So I am glad that I received that curative process. Although, living here in the east, in the Post-Soviet system, I am very aware how narcissistic americans are. Aware of how I must alter my speech pattern. And I literally cringe whenever I hear an american accent. Americans talk about themselves and how they feel incessantly. [I] have tried to construct this argument as compassionately as possible. But idealism, impossibility, ignorance, deception, and lying are not, in Kantian terms ‘ethical’ means of discourse. The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible.

    [callout]The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible. [/callout]

    That is, acting morally. It is not moral to respect someone’s feelings if it violates those tenets. It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us. We cannot construct that we know of an alternative to the pricing system as an information and incentive system. We can however, learn from it and construct alternatives by using it, the same way we constructed morality under capitalism by making use of self-interest. However, the basic problem, which is that the system itself is both incomprehensible and uncontrollable is probably forever beyond our grasp. And I suggest that it MUST be. Otherwise, like the Corporatism of current large scale institutionalized banking is, it would be little more than an instrument of tyranny.

  • The Moral Obligation To Disregard Feelings In Political Discourse

    (Silencing the silly people) [P]olitical discourse is not civilized. It is a bloody brutal deceitful affair that is conducted in the pursuit the of power to allocate influence, property and opportunity, using every dishonest, distracting, fraudulent tactic available. Humanities is what it is. And I will let the empirical evidence speak for itself. It is a discourse on norms and morality. Recursive as it may be. It is intuitionist not empirical. Normative not scientific. My point has been a consistent one: we have developed a set of technologies that compensate for the weakness of our perceptions. Debate, reason, measurement, mathematics, science, and economics are fields that only exist to compensate for the limitations of our senses. Our senses are plagued by limitations and by error (cognitive biases). We desire at all times to rely on intuition (memory) rather than thinking (comparison). These are not biases, preferences, opinions. They are empirical facts. They are what they are. Numbers, money, prices, accounting, credit, interest, contract, and rule of law, are technologies just like any other technology that gives us information about the world around us, and compensates for the inability to sense and perceive the world in real time. But that statement alone makes no sense unless we understand also, that the reason we need these things is to coordinate ourselves in a vast network of production none of us could grasp even the simplest part of. The point is that the world is not filled with evil people. It is filled with real human beings who have to survive with fragments of knowledge and resources, but as a collective, we produce the most amazing things, that our ancestors, could not even have imagined could exist. The price for this productivity is that we are in fact, ‘alienated’ by that information: the destruction of our illusion of importance. When the family, extended family, village or tribe was a productive unit, then each persons value was obvious. When all humanity, together, as a collective is the productive unit, then each person’s value is not only not obvious, it is trivialized by the experience. WE don’t like it. We’re alienated by it. We feel alone. And strangely enough we keep consuming to compensate for feeling alone. It’s maddening. So how can we do both? This is the goal of equality. But we cannot have perfect equality for the same reasons that we need numbers: differentiation is necessary for calculation. If I make you feel bad. I am sorry for your feelings. But the stakes are more important than your feelings. Your feelings are a reaction to changes in state. The state of what? your self image? Your perception how the group values you? Your confidence in your grasp and therefore control over the world? What is it that is changing state? Is it Marx’s alienation? It is.

    [callout]It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us.[/callout]

    If I had to make everyone feel really bad for a while in order to achieve relative equality and preserve productivity at the same time. I would think that was a fairly low cost. At least compared to the 100M dead from the result of communism. We are not equal. Certain people make me feel really dumb. I don’t feel bad because of it. I’m thankful that the world has smarter people than I am in it. Because it’s certainly too much work for me, or anyone else for that matter, to do alone. A world without people smarter than I am really scares me. It would mean that instead of feeling alone at times, I would in fact BE alone for all intents and purposes. I studied fine art and art history in school. At the end of the semester we had a critique. The professors tore us apart. Most people left in tears. It was the most important thing we learned all year. And we all were better for it. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world. (See Surviving as an artist.How to survive an art critique.) On the other hand. It made me, and all the rest of us, pretty numb to criticism. (And americans are, quite clearly, the most narcissistic people on earth.) (See The Culture of Narcissism.Bibiography of American Narcissism. So I am glad that I received that curative process. Although, living here in the east, in the Post-Soviet system, I am very aware how narcissistic americans are. Aware of how I must alter my speech pattern. And I literally cringe whenever I hear an american accent. Americans talk about themselves and how they feel incessantly. [I] have tried to construct this argument as compassionately as possible. But idealism, impossibility, ignorance, deception, and lying are not, in Kantian terms ‘ethical’ means of discourse. The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible.

    [callout]The only ethics I know of that I can prove are a) to speak the truth as best as I understand it, b) rely on instrumental science wherever possible as superior to intuitive sense and reason, and c) to avoid involuntary transfers of any kind from others, and d) to prohibit others from conducting involuntary transfers whenever possible. [/callout]

    That is, acting morally. It is not moral to respect someone’s feelings if it violates those tenets. It is immoral to make someone feel good for believing something that is demonstrably false. Yet we cannot be prisoners of truths. We must struggle to find solutions even when the truth stops us. We cannot construct that we know of an alternative to the pricing system as an information and incentive system. We can however, learn from it and construct alternatives by using it, the same way we constructed morality under capitalism by making use of self-interest. However, the basic problem, which is that the system itself is both incomprehensible and uncontrollable is probably forever beyond our grasp. And I suggest that it MUST be. Otherwise, like the Corporatism of current large scale institutionalized banking is, it would be little more than an instrument of tyranny.

  • Is Socialism The Same As Capitalism?

    THANK YOU FOR ASKING. I WILL TRY TO DO YOUR QUESTION JUSTICE

    ( You will, very likely, obtain moralistic, and therefore meaningless answers. I will try to give you the most scientific answer that I can.)

    We have to define some terms here, because your question confuses economic systems (means of allocating control over property) with political systems (means of making decisions).

    1. Socialism: an economic system where the state (a corporation wherein all citizens are equal shareholders) owns all property, means of production, and production is managed by central control.
    2. Social Democracy: a political and economic system that employs representative democracy, but retains limited private use of property, but public claim on the profits of employing that property.
    3. Representative Democracy: a political system where administration is rotated by the election of representatives by one of a various number of allocations of means of determining the winner.
    4. Classical Liberalism : A political and economic system that employs representative democracy, retains private use of property, with limited claims one the profits of employing that property.
    5. Capitalism: an economic system where private property is held entirely by individuals with no corporeal  involuntary claim on the property of the individual or the proceeds from using it.

    THEREFORE
    1. No capitalism and socialism are not the same. They are opposing economic models.
    2. Elected bodies are corruptible under both social democracy and classical liberal democracy, because they are both representative democracies.  And the problem of corruption is a function, not of the economic model, but of the democratic political model used by both systems.
    3. So representative democracy, in the forms of social democracy or classical liberal democracy, and indeed any in form of elected, representative government, will eventually produce similar results. With the only differences determined by (a) how homogenous or heterogeneous the population is, and (b) the structure of the family, from the extended family to the family to the individual.

    MORE DETAILS

    YOUR QUESTION IS ABOUT SOFT CORRUPTION (INFLUENCE)

    The problem with any system of representation is that the incentives of politicians are counter to the voters desires. And our mistake is in creating  institutions that require saints but we people them with ordinary men. THe greeks used lottocracy (random assignment to administrative positions). Others have recommended direct voting for initiatives (like ebay for policy).  Others have recommended economic democracy, where we allocate our tax money ourselves to particular uses. 

    But the more or less redistributive a country is has very little to do with its system of electors. As much as we might wish to think it does.

    PRACTICAL DIFFERENCES IN REDISTRIBUTION

    The practical difference that separates whether these systems of government can be implemented appears to be nothing more than the HOMOGENEITY of the population in terms of kinship, language, and norms. The more homogenous the looser control, the higher the trust and the more redistributive.  The more diverse the more authoritarian, the lower the trust and the less redistributive.

    There are various mathematical estimates of the maximum redistribution possible without the production of negative externalities.  As much as 75%. The willingness to redistribute varies from group to group. in-kin redistribution is quite high. Cross kin redistribution universally meets resistance.

    PRACTICAL DIFFERENCES IN ECONOMICS

    Socialism isn’t possible because (a) economic calculation is impossible, (b) coordination of people without prices is impossible, and (c) incentive to produce is impossible without money and prices. That is why the world has abandoned socialism. It’s an impossible system. It CAN’T work.

    In a division of knowledge and labor capitalism is a logical necessity.  It is impossible to coordinate complex means of production without property, money, prices and incentives. It’s not POSSIBLE. 

    The entire point of capitalism (property rights) is to force voluntary exchange: service of the self thru service of others. “Trade” is voluntary. It is impossible to obtain through trade anything involuntarily, since property and voluntary exchange are dependent terms just as are prices and incentives. It’s a contradiction in terms.

    Complex names like “Catallaxy” have been given to this process of self organization by voluntary exchanges, but self-organizing-systems is the current common terminology.   This is because (see “I Pencil”) the knowledge necessary to coordinate activities, and the incentives necessary to entice people to act in a coordinated fashion, are not possible to organize by other means than self organizing methods, while still adapting to multivariate changes in resources, technologies, demands, and competition.

    There are technical reasons why anarchic capitalism cannot work that are too complex for this context. However, the world has adopted the capitalist economic system almost universally. Except in those countries where oil allows countries to be less a division of labor and more of family feeding from the wealth produced by oil. This combination isn’t possible to change that we know of.

    THE FUTURE
    Capitalism will persist largely because it must.  Redistribution will persist because it must.  And Corporatism with ceremonial rotation of electorate in european countries, and little rotation elsewhere, appears to be the standard of government that the world is settling upon.

    Everything else is just like sports teams – entertainment for the masses and not much else.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-socialism-the-same-as-capitalism

  • A Defense and Criticism of The Class Philosophy We Call ‘Libertarianism’

    [A]ll philosophy is class philosophy. All philosophies give precedence to one class or another. Libertarianism is a class philosophy as well. A CLASS PHILOSOPHY

      AN ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY Libertarianism is an economic philosophy that states that:

        A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Libertarianism as a political philosophy that states that:

          BRANCHES OF LIBERTARIANISM

          • CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
          • MINIMAL STATE LIBERTARIANISM
          • ANARCHISM
          • ROTHBARDIAN

          LIBERTARIANISM IS AN ARGUMENT AGAINST MONOPOLY AND BUREAUCRACY – NOT SOCIAL GOODSLibertarianism is not an argument against ‘government’. It is an argument against monopoly and bureaucracy which hinder individual innovation and competition, and the creating of ‘differences’ (inequalities) which we then seek to eliminate. Libertarianism is not a prohibition on government. IT IS A PROHIBITION ON A MONOPOLY BUREAUCRACY that we call the STATE, that is able to issue COMMANDS under the guise of LAWS, because it maintains a monopoly on the use of violence to enforce those commands, because that state is isolated from competition, and as such, can pursue the interests of the bureaucracy, or become a tool of special interests that likewise desire monopoly privileges, at the expense of the citizenry. THE POWER OF LIKE-MINDED COMMUNITIES EVEN IF THEIR POWER IS BASED SOLEY ON THEIR VALUE AS CONSUMERS Libertarianism allows us to form our own communities with our own rules and norms, in a balance of power between communities with similar interests. These communities will then compete with one another for population, talent, and services. And people can choose which community to belong to. In this model there is no ‘state’. There are just collections of people who form contractual alliances. Just as we make voluntary commercial organizations, we can make voluntary civic organizations. Consumers are very important. Without consumers and credit it is impossible for commercial organizations to make money, and without the ability to make money there is no ability for people to organize into groups. The lower classes are consumers, and quite honestly, produce very little of value other than their consumption. Lower classes in the libertarian model will either exchange adoption to norms for redistributions in wealthy communities, or organize into their own organizations and charge fees for access to their consumers, which can then be redistributed, thereby minimizing profit. COOPERATING ON MEANS EVEN IF WE HAVE DIFFERENT ENDS: BY EXCHANGES IN THE MARKET AND IN GOVERNMENT The market for competition lets us compete toward different ends and preferences, even if we cooperate on means of achieving them. Monopoly government forces us to compete in government in a win-lose battle for control of the monopoly bureaucracy. Humans have been cooperating in the market on means, despite having disparate ends, for millennia There is no reason that we cannot take this insight as far as possible. MORALITY AND COMPETITION The market allows us to compete upon ends while cooperating upon means. However, competition is morally objectionable to human beings inside the family group, village or tribe. We license and encourage competition, because it produces positive results: a virtuous cycle. We tolerate only one form of immorality: competition. Every other form of involuntary transfer: violence, theft, fraud, omission, externalization, free riding, rent seeking and privatization, systemic corruption, systemic procedural involuntary transfer and warfare – we have constrained or outlawed. We can, in the market, use boycott to deprive organizations of wealth. But it is not always a strong lever. We can use the courts to protect us from violence, theft, fraud and omission if we do not surrender our right to sue. We can use government to protect us from unnecessary competition, free riding and privatization of the commons. when we invest in commons. We can use the state ‘bank’ as an insurer of last resort. We can use multiple houses of government, where we have them, to negotiate exchanges between the classes where market exchange is not possible or creation of commons is not possible, because of the asymmetry of reward of investment in various commons’. But we can only use market and government to cooperate on means of achieving disparate ends, if government is not open to corruttion. And government is open to corruption if it can make laws rather than conttracts. Only the courts can find or discover laws. The government if not corrupt, can only negotiate contracts impossible to negotiate in the market. This emphasis on contracts relies upon the morality of exchange, rather than the immorality of majority rule, or arbitrary command in pursuit of some artificial common ‘good’. ANY OTHER SOLUTION MEANS YOU’RE A THIEF That is, unless your desire is to STEAL rather than EXCHANGE. And you are most likely to want to STEAL rather than exchange if government provides a systematic means of stealing from others. And that’s what government does. It provides a systematic means of stealing. THe common law and property rights provide a systematic means of exchanging instead of stealing.

          ON THE NECESSARY, ADVANTAGEOUS, AND LUXURY FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT

          A) NECESSARY PROPERTIES The NECESSARY properties of of a government are:

            These are the minimum properties of a government. B) ADVANTAGEOUS PROPERTIES In addition to these properties, it may also be possible for a group of people to afford to also have government engage in the following:

              These are advantageous properties of government. C) PROPERTIES THAT ARE LUXURIES In addition to these properties, it may be possible for a group of people to afford to also have the government engage in the following LUXURIES:

                These are LUXURIES that can be provided by some governments under rare circumstances in exceptional periods of time, where malthusian and group selection problems have been temporarily held at bay by technological innovation. The government is not the source of the ‘good things’. The courts, under the common law and property rights is the source of ‘good things’. The government has destroyed the common law, the rule of law, and crated both corporatism and socialism. And we now suffer between two factions that try to control the government for corporatist or socialist means.

                RESERVATIONS ABOUT LIBERTARIANISM

                THE ANCIENT SOURCE OF LIBERTY AND THE DESIRE FOR LIBERTARIANISM White males (the european, or perhaps germanic, race) seek status under the ancient indo-european proscription for heroism via competition. The west is unique for having produced this philosophy of aristocratic egalitarianism – inclusion in equalitarian leadership, and therefore obtaining the reward of property rights, by demonstrated heroism. And the high trust society of the west is the result of aristocratic egalitarianism (heroic achievement, demonstrated excellence, virtue). For most of history, and pre-history, males could achieve this only through combat. With the advent of manorialism, males could demonstrate their fitness through hard work. With the advent of chivalry males could demonstrate their heroic status by charitable service. With the advent of consumer capitalism, males could demonstrate their heroic fitness in commerce. Heroic achievemnet grants access to mates (we have a lof of data on this now that confirms this fact – to the point where we know how many dollars in income per inch of height under 5’10” you must earn to gain the same quality of attractive woman…. Really.) Women are as shallow about status as men are about physical attraction – and the data is the data. As such, white males are intuitively attracted to libertarianism if they see in libertarianism a means of pursuing traditional signals for mating, social status, and wealth. That libertarianism is a rigorous philospohy equalled in detail only by Marxism, and is articulated in economic language and analytical philosophy. It is accessible only to those people with both incentive to learn it, and the ability to understand it. This is why libertarianism is a minority white male philosophy. It is an aristocratic philosophy and difficult to access. Other cultures lack both the mythology and cultural values for heroism and egalitarianism Which is why other cultures also cannot produce the high trust society. And without the high trust society, the wealth necessary for redistribution (charity) is impossible to achieve at scale. RESERVATIONS ABOUT LIBERTARIANISM

                • 1) DISCOUNT-DRIVEN PACIFISM.
                • 2) LIBERTY IS A DESIRE OF THE MINORITY.
                • 3) LACK OF ORGANIZATION.