Curt Doolittle

Form: Full Essay

  • Logic, Praxeology And Science: Dependency And Demarcation. Reforming Libertarianism By Incorporating Scientific Argument Rather Than Relying On The Purely Rational

    LOGIC, PRAXEOLOGY AND SCIENCE: DEPENDENCY AND DEMARCATION. REFORMING LIBERTARIANISM BY INCORPORATING SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT RATHER THAN RELYING ON THE PURELY RATIONAL [T]hose three terms, Logic, Praxeology, and Science describe a spectrum. But what is the point of demarcation between each? Which of these domains is capable of testing which category of problems, and what constraints does any domain place upon the others, given that each is open to error, and requires the other to test its hypotheses. I’ve been working on this problem now for quite some time, and have almost got my arms around how to talk about it praxeologically: as observable human action: and therefore a test of possibility, rational choice and incentives. WHY DOES THIS MATTER I have, I think, reformed the concepts of property and morality, but I can’t reform the system of thought that we call libertarian political theory without reforming the distinction between logic (unobservable, internally testable), praxeology (observable and subjectively testable), and science (unobservable, and objectively & externally testable.) That work may have been done somewhere but I haven’t found it yet. And I have a very hard time slogging my way through metaphysical assumptions and highly loaded vocabulary of both logicians on one end and rationalists on the other. Current libertarian (Rothbardian) ethics rely upon very weak rational arguments. I’ve tried to systematically falsify each of them – there are only a handful really. And I think I have been successful. Current progressive (Rawlsian) ethics rely upon very weak rational arguments. I think that I can falsify that argument without much difficulty. Veil of ignorance being a logical fallacy so to speak. Conservatives don’t have an argument, so I have to explain their implied argument in libertarian terminology. [W]hat I find most interesting, from our perspective, as libertarians, is that we acknowledge that the common law is an organic process, and it functions because it must be digestible and applicable by ordinary people in juries. We understand that the english built an empirical society, not a rational one. And that the French took the british concept of liberty and made it into a rational one. Then the germans have tried, and continue to, make it a spiritual one. In other words, Rothbard’s arguments, and one of hoppe’s (his only weak one) rely on rationalism rather than empiricism. And while praxeology may be a test, and while reason may be a test, the purpose of empirical analysis is to extend our senses, and reduce what we cannot sense to analogies that we can perceive by proxy. Now, prior generations had to suffer with the limited tool of Rational argument, because they didn’t have data, and the socialistic system of central control produces data on short periodicity, and can justify itself with that data. While the libertarian and conservative argument is that the externalities produced outweigh the short term benefits. But we have to WAIT for our data, and therefore socialistic arguments gather momentum in and civic behavior alters while we wait. Thankfully we have data now. Our rational arguments were correct. The conservative arguments look like they are correct too. The only progressive argument we are unsure about at present is whether or not fiat money itself can function in a positive fashion, under some as yet undefined circumstance. (We argue that it can’t, out of hand, on rational grounds, but I’m not sure we can prove that there aren’t holes in our reason sufficient to undermine our position.) We are lucky. Time has passed. We’ve learned more than our preceding generations had available to learn. And as such we can debate and restate libertarian theory using scientific rather than rational arguments. And that is what I’m trying to do.

  • Logic, Praxeology And Science: Dependency And Demarcation. Reforming Libertarianism By Incorporating Scientific Argument Rather Than Relying On The Purely Rational

    LOGIC, PRAXEOLOGY AND SCIENCE: DEPENDENCY AND DEMARCATION. REFORMING LIBERTARIANISM BY INCORPORATING SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT RATHER THAN RELYING ON THE PURELY RATIONAL [T]hose three terms, Logic, Praxeology, and Science describe a spectrum. But what is the point of demarcation between each? Which of these domains is capable of testing which category of problems, and what constraints does any domain place upon the others, given that each is open to error, and requires the other to test its hypotheses. I’ve been working on this problem now for quite some time, and have almost got my arms around how to talk about it praxeologically: as observable human action: and therefore a test of possibility, rational choice and incentives. WHY DOES THIS MATTER I have, I think, reformed the concepts of property and morality, but I can’t reform the system of thought that we call libertarian political theory without reforming the distinction between logic (unobservable, internally testable), praxeology (observable and subjectively testable), and science (unobservable, and objectively & externally testable.) That work may have been done somewhere but I haven’t found it yet. And I have a very hard time slogging my way through metaphysical assumptions and highly loaded vocabulary of both logicians on one end and rationalists on the other. Current libertarian (Rothbardian) ethics rely upon very weak rational arguments. I’ve tried to systematically falsify each of them – there are only a handful really. And I think I have been successful. Current progressive (Rawlsian) ethics rely upon very weak rational arguments. I think that I can falsify that argument without much difficulty. Veil of ignorance being a logical fallacy so to speak. Conservatives don’t have an argument, so I have to explain their implied argument in libertarian terminology. [W]hat I find most interesting, from our perspective, as libertarians, is that we acknowledge that the common law is an organic process, and it functions because it must be digestible and applicable by ordinary people in juries. We understand that the english built an empirical society, not a rational one. And that the French took the british concept of liberty and made it into a rational one. Then the germans have tried, and continue to, make it a spiritual one. In other words, Rothbard’s arguments, and one of hoppe’s (his only weak one) rely on rationalism rather than empiricism. And while praxeology may be a test, and while reason may be a test, the purpose of empirical analysis is to extend our senses, and reduce what we cannot sense to analogies that we can perceive by proxy. Now, prior generations had to suffer with the limited tool of Rational argument, because they didn’t have data, and the socialistic system of central control produces data on short periodicity, and can justify itself with that data. While the libertarian and conservative argument is that the externalities produced outweigh the short term benefits. But we have to WAIT for our data, and therefore socialistic arguments gather momentum in and civic behavior alters while we wait. Thankfully we have data now. Our rational arguments were correct. The conservative arguments look like they are correct too. The only progressive argument we are unsure about at present is whether or not fiat money itself can function in a positive fashion, under some as yet undefined circumstance. (We argue that it can’t, out of hand, on rational grounds, but I’m not sure we can prove that there aren’t holes in our reason sufficient to undermine our position.) We are lucky. Time has passed. We’ve learned more than our preceding generations had available to learn. And as such we can debate and restate libertarian theory using scientific rather than rational arguments. And that is what I’m trying to do.

  • Can Computers Write Creative Programs That Solve Problems?

    ANSWERING YOUR QUESTION IN THE CONTEXT THAT YOU MEAN IT.

    In the context that I think you mean, creativity refers to the application of one pattern of relations to a different circumstance thereby solving a previouslly unsolved problem, and a problem whose solution is not already present in the domain of solutions expressed by the program code.  This set of associations is what produces ‘aha’ moments in humans: when ‘clouds’ of related ideas are connected.

    In this sense, I think the consensus is, that there is no reason we can’t build computers that can do this.  The problem is currently size, expense, and the structure of symbols’memories’ that we put into computers.  So, like interstellar flight, we are really just trying to find an affordable way to do it.  We CAN send someone to mars, or something to another star. It’s just absurdly expensive compared to what we THINK we can do with some innovation. So we’re waiting until its cheaper.

    I don’t have a lot of time right now to be thorough and the information is available elsewhere.  But the simple version is, that if you have a biological organism and start with basic stimuli (a subset of light, sound, vibration, touch, time and memory) that the structure of the physical universe, evolution and experience form a fairly accurate but simplified set of categories in our memories and therefore minds.  We build a set of symbols (patterns) from seemingly disparate stimuli, the same way we ‘see movement’ in the static figures of a flip-book.

    Computers we use today do not start with this atomic level of representation, they start with symbols. And we are just beginning to understand how to symbolically represent  physical reality in commensurable terms, and any computational system requires commensurable terms. Humans have senses,  instincts and preferences which largely form our commensurable terms; all language being an allegory to experience, and all systems of measurement producing allegories to experience.

    For example, money renders all things commensurable by price.  But without prices and money you couldn’t form a division of labor – a market. and we’d still be hunter gatherers or small family farmers.   Likewise  we can’t quite yet design software that symbolically represents reality. (ALthough this project has been underway for more than a century in philosophy, its largely been fruitless.)

    Since language (the written word) is an allegory to experience, that language should (in theory) represent symbols that are commensurable (subject to comparison and evaluation) even if only on ordinal (ordered), not cardinal (numbered) grounds – because humans operate ordinally not cardinally.

    The closest we have to that body of symbolic information that is broad enough in scope to represent enough of the physical world that the errors produced by sybmolic assocation are Turing-testable, is the Google search index.  (And google is fully aware of that). 

    But the computational power to use that data given that its index is not commensurable with other domains, (we think) is approximately equal to the total computing power present on the planet today. And even then, we suppose the mechanical process ‘thinking’ would be very slow.

    (I worked with a group of very bright people on the possibility of raising venture money for solving this problem, given that we are pretty sure how to a) create the programming tool set, b) use existing hardware technology, and c) represent the data in sets of mathematical manifolds, but it is far too early and far too costly to produce this scope of work. And to the venture community it is indistinguishable from snake oil.  So I’m not unfamiliar with the problem set, or the possible technical solutions. And I was willing to put my own money in. So I”m pretty confident.)

    Most solutions today are attempts to model the human brain with digital systems. The general idea is that it’s cheaper to do this with existing hardware than it is with to build dedicated hardware for the purpose.  And even with that technique, most recent estimates I’ve seen are in the billion dollar range.

    But it’s not that it’s not possible for computers to be ‘creative’.  Its that the minimum threshold for ‘creative association’ is a higher than the intelligence of a domestic dog, and we are still programming in symbols, not patterns, because those symbols incorporate our existing knowledge. And we’re doing that, it looks like, because it’s metaphorically the equivalent of a trip to the stars, and no one is ready to pay for that yet. 

    I think that in this short space, that’s the most accurate statement we can render.  It is a matter of money, not logical possibility either by the symbolic route, or the neural route, or the dedicated hardware neural route.

    Cheers
    Curt

    https://www.quora.com/Can-computers-write-creative-programs-that-solve-problems

  • More on Hoppe (et all) vs Popper (from elsewhere)

    [H]oppe would argue (and has) that the following statements are not possible to contradict – that they are falsifiable, but that is impossible in any circumstances for them be false. 1) increases in the minimum wage increase unemployment. 2) increases in the supply of money cause increases in prices. 3) democracy is simply a slow process of adopting communism. Any circumstance under which any of these statements is false, is a statement of time and externality, not of the scope of the statement itself. And this is why his argument is correct (true) within the framework of action: Any change in the description of circumstances would mean a change in the meaning of the terms minium wage, unemployment, and externality. Any change in the meaning of newtonian gravity would mean a change in the concept of gravity that is open to direct experience. (In other words, as Popper advices elsewhere, our problem lies in our concept of measurement and the calculus of measurement.) So, correctly stated, ACTION has a higher standard of temporal truth than does SCIENCE, and science a higher standard of inter-temporal truth, because science is discovery (the patterns will not change), and ACTION is invention because the pattern of relations are EXPECTED to change, yet we must act in real time to outwit the dark forces of time and ignorance. Within the context of ACTION, the Newtonian theory of gravity is sufficiently precise for the actions to which it need be applied. It is insufficiently precise for larger and smaller relations. But for the scope of action it describes (direct experience), it is in fact, ‘true’. The error was made by those who attempted to extend it into different domains (where tools are needed to experience gravitational effects. Tools expand our perceptions, so we must extend our concepts with our tools. And, it does not mean that any of these concepts likely to be falsified, even though they are falsifiable. It means that the scope of the statement does not require further precision than the statement contains. (The argument, for example, that there is no real reason for this apple not to fall through the table top. It’s just that the chance of such an event occurring requires a time frame many times greater than the existence of the known universe.) For the purpose of action in real time, this statement is true. This is the difference between Humean and Popperian scientific criticism of induction, and the utility of induction for the purpose of taking action. It is also why Popper is ‘weak’ in that he maintains analytical philosophy’s attachment to the metaphysical problem – rather than fully moving into Naturalism. This ‘halfway’ postion is why he’s open to criticism. The mistake in widespread application of the arguments against induction derives from the failure to treating philosophy as a symbolic language for the manipulation of the natural world that exists in our heads, and giving priority to science rather than the phenomenon of experience that we gain from constant bombardment of our short term memory by stimuli both direct and reflected from our memories. So, Hoppe is correct I think, just inarticulate, because he makes a similar error to Popper by confusing domains, even though he is correct because he uses a theory of action. Popper is wrong, I think, because he maintains the language of the metaphysical error – truth independent of action. It’s only by contrasting these types of arguments that we can see the errors in each. ie: we must subject theories to external tests, not those which are proscribed by the philosopher, or constrained by the language of the philosopher. [I] would agree that the mind body problem exists. However, evidence is, that the physical sciences are solving this, and that the philosophical program has been distracted by solving it. Philosophy is a language for transforming external information into perceptions. It is in fact, a system of measurement and calculation. But measurements and calculations must come from outside of us – if only because our internal ‘tools’ are not precise enough to self-analyze, and because we are prone to a pretty significant array of cognitive biases – and philosophy, as well as all other forms of measurement and calculation, must help us overcome those perceptual biases and errors. Our ability to perceive, remember, and calculate (categorize, compare and manipulate) the world is actually incredibly weak. But with language to form networks of perception and calculation with others so that we can perceive more than we can on our own. Writing to store those perceptions and judgements for later consumption. Philosophy to test and manipulate objects, properties and relations (calculate). Tools for extending our perception. And measurements for transforming the output of those tools into sensations that we can perceive, and compare, we can compensate for our inherent weakness. That is: we have incredibly scary-good associative memories, but terrible short term memories, and the ability to grasp only three to five concepts at a time, on perhaps two axis. And while that is good for throwing stones and spears, it is notoriously terrible for understanding the flow, pool and eddy that most of the universe consists of, under Mandelbrotian fractal complexity, to us which appears as kaleidic uncertainty: … “magic”. This means that the problem is in the scope of our statements in the context of our necessary actions. Not a problem with induction per se. But instead, a problem of induction when the scope of the problem is greater than the scope of action we attribute to it. Again, this is because philosophy is still trying to cure itself of the disease of the metaphysical problem. Religions die hard. The criticism I’m levying is that popper is trapped in his era of philosophy (analytical proper) and Hoppe is not (action proper) probably stands. Hoppe’s argumentation ethic probably doesn’t stand. Hoppe’s criticism of popper’s recommendation that we experiment with policy despite the fact that economic statements such as the example he’s given, are open to experimentation, is in fact, a criticism that Popper is an advocate of the error of positivism. Or something like that. I am not done experimenting with this line of argument obviously. The point being that deduction, induction, and abduction are simply statements about the amount of information we lack. I have covered a very complex set of ideas here, and done the best I an in a short space. I hope it’s added some clarity. Perhaps it is just confusing.

  • How Uneducated Are Americans? How Many People Skipped “intellectual Refinement” (no High School, No College And Beyond)?

    A MORE INTERESTING QUESTION THAN IT FIRST APPEARS. I”LL TRY TO DO IT JUSITC.

    1) Americans have the highest confidence despite middling education by comparison to other countries. (Google it.)

    2) Americans are disproportionately wealthy so our lower classes can express their ideas, and are more confident expressing those ideas.

    3) Our education system promotes common falsehoods in support of postmodern ideology, and our religious and traditional systems promote common falsehoods in support of aristocratic ideology (traditional american values).

    4) The Pareto principle applies to all human activity: about 1% of people think of everything, about 19% understand and distribute that knowledge, and the remaining 80% form a long chain of imitation of that 20%. The distribution of IQ over 105 largely reflects the Pareto Principle.  105 is the boundary for articulated reason and repair of machines.

    5) The evidence is that people reason much better over the past century.  Its just that more people, in a wider distribution, with a lower average, participate in public discourse — and our academics have adopted a new but equally fallacious, albeit secular, religion and are propagating that religion, which both encourages confidence and spreads falsehoods.  In response, the traditionalists retrench into their ideologies and so the din of irrationality continues to increase.

    6) Despite the increase in population and the dramatic increase in education, hard degrees have remained relatively constant since 1963 – (we have not increased the number of ‘smart’ people getting degrees that require ‘smarts’ since that time. See Louis Menand and his bibliography on this topic.)  Despite he dramatic change in our economy since the introduction of information technology and the decline of labor as an economic value, our education system still teaches using the model of the 1940’s and 1950’s – due largely to the competition over ideological control of education content combined with the resistance of teacher’s unions, and the transfer of spending on budgets from teachers salaries to administrative bureaucracy.

    Advice: Until you understand the failings of science, the limits of mathematics under complexity, the lack of maturity in our understanding of the calculus of measurement, the immaturity of our understanding of economics and statistics, and the extraordinary influence of our cognitive biases – particularly false consensus bias, and the patently false content of most political philosophy, especially Postmodern political philosophy (“liberalism”), you might want to consider that allegorical, moral, and historical arguments have survived evolutionary processes and have produce positive outcomes even if articulated in arational terms. The profundity of this problem is  what those of us who occupy ourselves with the solution to political problems struggle with.  And this is Hayek’s lesson in The Road to Serfdom as well as the warning given us by Popper, Kuhn and Taleb, and historians like Mokyr. Reason is a limited tool, because of the variation in human ability.

    The west is only beginning to understand what made it unique in world history, and it turns out that it’s not what we thought – and it might not even be very comforting – it’s just true anyway.

    7) Most political differences consist of differences in time preference and mating strategy.  As we evolve into individual economic units and the nuclear family becomes a minority, our different reproductive strategies – which determine our moral preferences and biases – are increasingly expressed in our political preferences, and social rhetoric.  We have lost the common interest that multi house republican democracy under majority rule assumes we possess.   Majority rule can solve the problem of selecting priorities for people with similar interests. Multi house majority rule can solve the problem of selecting priorities and negotiating compromises and trades between the social and economic classes.  But majority rule cannot solve the problem of selecting from competing interests, or even negotiating resolutions between competing interests.

    Our political system was designed to prevent legislation without wide support.  But it has devolved for the reasons I mention above. and there is no solution to it in our current political system. We have an agrarian system of government designed in the age of sail, using accounting methods with agrarian (monthly) periodicity, that requires nuclear families with common interests, and a people with homogenous cultural values.  

    But we no longer have homogenous values, we no longer have common interests, we no longer have nuclear families, we no longer have agrarian economies, we operate in an age of instant transfer of information, and our businesses are organized, conducted, and then decline, not over generations but over less than a decades.

    in context – people appear ‘dumber’ for these reasons. 🙂

    https://www.quora.com/How-uneducated-are-Americans-How-many-people-skipped-intellectual-refinement-no-high-school-no-college-and-beyond

  • When Did The Capitalist Regime Under Which We Currently Live *begin*?

    INTERESTING QUESTION. I”LL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE.

    The west has been more ‘capitalist’ since its inception 4500 years ago, because it’s been more individualistic, and it’s property rights have been more widely distributed and therefore power has been distributed and balanced for most of our history.   It’s also true that enfranchisement in those property rights has expanded and contracted along with prosperity. YOu had more under rome, and less under feudalism.  More under english common law, and less under european napoleonic law.  More in the 19th century and less today.

    ‘Capitalistic’ means that property rights are distributed.  ‘Socialistic’ means that property rights are concentrated in the state.  The concentration of large amounts of credit under a network of contracts is illogical and unnecessary under concentrated socialistic  systems that we associate with totalitarian governments.

    You could argue that the invention of Venetian accounting, followed by English and Dutch mercantilism is the origin of our modern political model, and that it was formalized into language by Smith, Hume, and the American Constitution.

    Most people, I think, would argue that Napoleon created the nation state and the concept of ‘total war’ and that the system of credit that developed in response to the Napoleonic wars was the origin of our capitalist state.

    Others would argue that the 20th century development of fiat money, fiat credit, the practice of regulating unemployment, and the state as the insurer of last resort was probably when we developed an institutional balance between capitalism, socialism and corporatism.

    Most modern states are ‘capitalistic’ in that they use consumer capitalism and individual property rights to run their economies.  Most modern states levy taxes and and redistribute those taxes under the social democratic thesis that we must have capitalism but we can abscond with a considerable amount of the profits people make, and treat those profits as common property, even if all property is held privately.  Most modern states subsidize key industries as a means of creating an internationally competitive product that gives the country an economic advantage – this is corporatism.

    When the socialist movements succeeded in Europe and Canada, they did not succeed in the USA – probably because we were the military and political center of western civilization in the post war period. Instead, the combination of the Vietnam war, the temporary economic rise of the proletariat due to the rest of the world’s economic collapse from the war, the increase in proletarian birth rates that gave us the 60’s and 70’s, the racial movement of the 60’s,  feminism because of birth control, and various other factors led to a fracturing of american society that continues to effect us to this day.  

    It had become apparent that socialism had failed in theory (incentives and calculation) and as the 70’s progressed we learned that the great society programs ambitions were also a failure, so socialism was a failure in practice. And finally in the 90’s we saw the collapse of world communism and the universal adoption of consumer capitalism.

    1) Starting in the 50’s progressives and liberals (socialists) began trying to develop a philosophical and political framework given that socialism was failing in theory, and because the american people were not ‘buying it’.  This system of philosophy was called ‘postmodernism’.  Postmodernism is an attempt to use the technique of monotheistic religious dogma to propagate falsehoods, that must be passionately treated as moral truths (equality, equality of outcome, relativity of morals except postmodern morals, relativity of cultures except western culture which is bad, and a dozen more.)  Postmodernism and postmodernists have been successful and has effectively become the state religion in america. This is because it both sells goods and services, as well as promotes concentration of power in the state.

    2) Staring in the 70’s conservatives and libertarians developed a series of strategies to combat socialism and postmodernism.  This included what we see today in think tanks, policies, and ideologies.  All of which were designed to combat the state.

    These ideas fell into the following groups:

    1) The most rigid was that the state would bankrupt capitalism, and destroy our traditional society if capitalists didn’t bankrupt the state first.  This meant effectively hiring the corporations and financial empires by granting them privileges and protecting them from taxation.  This approach has been successful – mostly, because Keynesian economic policy requires that the government use the financial sector to insert money into the economy, and the profit available to the financial sector provides them with the incentive to fight the state.

    2) The more practical approach was to promote libertarian policy solutions to social democratic problems, which would accomplish redistribution without empowering the state and expanding its bureaucracy.   This approach has been marginally successful. Most voucher systems or privatization in both Europe and America, were the result of these libertarian ideas.

    3) The ancient approach has been used too. The purpose of organized religion is largely to oppose the state. As the state has grown, the more traditional segments of the populace have turned increasingly fundamentalist as a means of opposing the state. For ancient reasons, it is not possible in america to interfere with religion.  And religions determine the limits of political power.  So religious fervor has increased as a means of opposing the state’s attack on the nuclear family and traditional roles for men and women – and therefore the status signals available to people in nuclear families.

    4) The marxists were extremely successful in promoting ideology instead of philosophy – ideology is a collection of statements for the purpose of obtaining power by appealing to emotions instead of reason.  (This is, again, a tactic taken from the monotheistic religions.)  The conservative and libertarian think tanks began promoting conservative and libertarian ideology, as well as launching news networks and talk radio shows as well as books and magazines.  Ideology and religion are more effective than reason in a population because we are, in total, when voting, expressing our moral feelings, not our rational understanding.

    THE RESULT

    Capitalist ideology (libertarian and aristocratic conservative) , and socialist ideology (postmodernism and democratic socialism) are opposing means of running a society and so we are constantly subjected to extremist arguments form both sized.  Meanwhile we vote our morals. And our morals are almost entirely a reflection of our reproductive strategy.  Since women have more in common in their reproductive strategy than do men, as the number of single women and single mothers increases, the vote continues to move to the socialistic (feminine) social model.  However, immigration and the minioritization of the white population are causing a consolidation of parties into racial and gender distributions that are fairly predictable.

    So most of it is noise.

    ON CAPITALISM

    It is not possible to have any means of production that is not capitalistic. Money and prices contain information and convey incentives that cannot be done in this level of complexity by other means.  However, it is also true that it is possible to expropriate the profits from individuals and redistribute them while preserving the capitalist system of information and incentives.

    Given that a population is small and heterogeneous enough, it appears that a combination of socialistic redistribution and capitalistic production is politically possible. However, heterogeneous societies resist redistribution and increase competition and friction in the state.

    For this reason we will likely continue to have friction here in America until the demographic system plays out with white minority status, and likely some serious conflict at that point.

    YOUR ANSWER

    The capitalistic system evolved over thousands of years and is one of the primary reasons why the west, despite being small, poor, and on the fringe, developed rapidly both in its ancient and modern periods.

    Today we are in less of a capitalistic system but capitalistic rhetoric is very high because of the minoritization of whites, and the opposition to the state. 

    Furthermore, regardless of rhetoric you will always live under a capitalistic system because it’s not possible to coordinate a complex division of knowledge and labor without capitalism.


    I hope this helps provide some clarity amidst the nonsense we are subject to every day.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev

    https://www.quora.com/When-did-the-capitalist-regime-under-which-we-currently-live-*begin*

  • When Did The Capitalist Regime Under Which We Currently Live *begin*?

    INTERESTING QUESTION. I”LL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE.

    The west has been more ‘capitalist’ since its inception 4500 years ago, because it’s been more individualistic, and it’s property rights have been more widely distributed and therefore power has been distributed and balanced for most of our history.   It’s also true that enfranchisement in those property rights has expanded and contracted along with prosperity. YOu had more under rome, and less under feudalism.  More under english common law, and less under european napoleonic law.  More in the 19th century and less today.

    ‘Capitalistic’ means that property rights are distributed.  ‘Socialistic’ means that property rights are concentrated in the state.  The concentration of large amounts of credit under a network of contracts is illogical and unnecessary under concentrated socialistic  systems that we associate with totalitarian governments.

    You could argue that the invention of Venetian accounting, followed by English and Dutch mercantilism is the origin of our modern political model, and that it was formalized into language by Smith, Hume, and the American Constitution.

    Most people, I think, would argue that Napoleon created the nation state and the concept of ‘total war’ and that the system of credit that developed in response to the Napoleonic wars was the origin of our capitalist state.

    Others would argue that the 20th century development of fiat money, fiat credit, the practice of regulating unemployment, and the state as the insurer of last resort was probably when we developed an institutional balance between capitalism, socialism and corporatism.

    Most modern states are ‘capitalistic’ in that they use consumer capitalism and individual property rights to run their economies.  Most modern states levy taxes and and redistribute those taxes under the social democratic thesis that we must have capitalism but we can abscond with a considerable amount of the profits people make, and treat those profits as common property, even if all property is held privately.  Most modern states subsidize key industries as a means of creating an internationally competitive product that gives the country an economic advantage – this is corporatism.

    When the socialist movements succeeded in Europe and Canada, they did not succeed in the USA – probably because we were the military and political center of western civilization in the post war period. Instead, the combination of the Vietnam war, the temporary economic rise of the proletariat due to the rest of the world’s economic collapse from the war, the increase in proletarian birth rates that gave us the 60’s and 70’s, the racial movement of the 60’s,  feminism because of birth control, and various other factors led to a fracturing of american society that continues to effect us to this day.  

    It had become apparent that socialism had failed in theory (incentives and calculation) and as the 70’s progressed we learned that the great society programs ambitions were also a failure, so socialism was a failure in practice. And finally in the 90’s we saw the collapse of world communism and the universal adoption of consumer capitalism.

    1) Starting in the 50’s progressives and liberals (socialists) began trying to develop a philosophical and political framework given that socialism was failing in theory, and because the american people were not ‘buying it’.  This system of philosophy was called ‘postmodernism’.  Postmodernism is an attempt to use the technique of monotheistic religious dogma to propagate falsehoods, that must be passionately treated as moral truths (equality, equality of outcome, relativity of morals except postmodern morals, relativity of cultures except western culture which is bad, and a dozen more.)  Postmodernism and postmodernists have been successful and has effectively become the state religion in america. This is because it both sells goods and services, as well as promotes concentration of power in the state.

    2) Staring in the 70’s conservatives and libertarians developed a series of strategies to combat socialism and postmodernism.  This included what we see today in think tanks, policies, and ideologies.  All of which were designed to combat the state.

    These ideas fell into the following groups:

    1) The most rigid was that the state would bankrupt capitalism, and destroy our traditional society if capitalists didn’t bankrupt the state first.  This meant effectively hiring the corporations and financial empires by granting them privileges and protecting them from taxation.  This approach has been successful – mostly, because Keynesian economic policy requires that the government use the financial sector to insert money into the economy, and the profit available to the financial sector provides them with the incentive to fight the state.

    2) The more practical approach was to promote libertarian policy solutions to social democratic problems, which would accomplish redistribution without empowering the state and expanding its bureaucracy.   This approach has been marginally successful. Most voucher systems or privatization in both Europe and America, were the result of these libertarian ideas.

    3) The ancient approach has been used too. The purpose of organized religion is largely to oppose the state. As the state has grown, the more traditional segments of the populace have turned increasingly fundamentalist as a means of opposing the state. For ancient reasons, it is not possible in america to interfere with religion.  And religions determine the limits of political power.  So religious fervor has increased as a means of opposing the state’s attack on the nuclear family and traditional roles for men and women – and therefore the status signals available to people in nuclear families.

    4) The marxists were extremely successful in promoting ideology instead of philosophy – ideology is a collection of statements for the purpose of obtaining power by appealing to emotions instead of reason.  (This is, again, a tactic taken from the monotheistic religions.)  The conservative and libertarian think tanks began promoting conservative and libertarian ideology, as well as launching news networks and talk radio shows as well as books and magazines.  Ideology and religion are more effective than reason in a population because we are, in total, when voting, expressing our moral feelings, not our rational understanding.

    THE RESULT

    Capitalist ideology (libertarian and aristocratic conservative) , and socialist ideology (postmodernism and democratic socialism) are opposing means of running a society and so we are constantly subjected to extremist arguments form both sized.  Meanwhile we vote our morals. And our morals are almost entirely a reflection of our reproductive strategy.  Since women have more in common in their reproductive strategy than do men, as the number of single women and single mothers increases, the vote continues to move to the socialistic (feminine) social model.  However, immigration and the minioritization of the white population are causing a consolidation of parties into racial and gender distributions that are fairly predictable.

    So most of it is noise.

    ON CAPITALISM

    It is not possible to have any means of production that is not capitalistic. Money and prices contain information and convey incentives that cannot be done in this level of complexity by other means.  However, it is also true that it is possible to expropriate the profits from individuals and redistribute them while preserving the capitalist system of information and incentives.

    Given that a population is small and heterogeneous enough, it appears that a combination of socialistic redistribution and capitalistic production is politically possible. However, heterogeneous societies resist redistribution and increase competition and friction in the state.

    For this reason we will likely continue to have friction here in America until the demographic system plays out with white minority status, and likely some serious conflict at that point.

    YOUR ANSWER

    The capitalistic system evolved over thousands of years and is one of the primary reasons why the west, despite being small, poor, and on the fringe, developed rapidly both in its ancient and modern periods.

    Today we are in less of a capitalistic system but capitalistic rhetoric is very high because of the minoritization of whites, and the opposition to the state. 

    Furthermore, regardless of rhetoric you will always live under a capitalistic system because it’s not possible to coordinate a complex division of knowledge and labor without capitalism.


    I hope this helps provide some clarity amidst the nonsense we are subject to every day.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev

    https://www.quora.com/When-did-the-capitalist-regime-under-which-we-currently-live-*begin*

  • FROM QUORA: IS GOVERNMENT OR PRIVATE PROPERTY MORE “NATURAL’? QUESTION: “Is priv

    FROM QUORA: IS GOVERNMENT OR PRIVATE PROPERTY MORE “NATURAL’?

    QUESTION: “Is private property is more natural than government? Why or why not?”

    AN INTERESTING QUESTION – THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST TO ANSWER IT. I’ll try to give you the best answer currently available.

    “We have laws because we have property, we do not have property because we have laws” – Frederic Bastiat.

    PROPERTY AS A SPECTRUM

    We define private property as something over which one EXPECTS TO HAVE exclusive “monopoly” control, and common family property as something over which we expect to have limited control and consumption, and shareholder property something over which one expects to have LIMITED control and prohibition from consumption, and ‘the commons’ over which one expects to be PROHIBITED from consumption and or exclusive control, but where membership is dynamic.

    NATURE

    Many animals treat their nests, stores of food, mates and offspring as property. Humans have more complex memories, and can put objects to a multiplicity of uses. And humans can learn to specialize in the use of certain resources to produce certain increasingly complex goods and services.

    The first value of memory is to observe resources and avoid dangers. But once we have complex memory, and the abilty to locate and store resources, we can create property, and therefore conserve energy by creating stores for future consumption, and stores for future production. The human mind is a is a difference engine, but the primary difference it calculates is property: what can I expect to make use of or not make use of, as a member of a family, band, tribe, or society?

    We can speak. That we can speak and negotiate demonstrates that property is natural. Without property cooperation would be unnecessary. To debate by definition is to acknowledge the existence of property. And we were able to speak before we were able to form governments. We were able to trade before we were able to form governments.

    However, just because property is natural to man, and humans can peaceably cooperate by conducting voluntary exchange of property, that does not mean that humans will do the hard work of trying to satisfy the wants of others. Instead, rather than exchange, humans try to harm, steal, commit fraud, commit fraud by omission. Rather than adhere to agreements as shareholders, humans free-ride, rent-seek, privatize assets and socialize losses.

    So, despite our natural ability to create and use property, and to negotiate exchanges and contracts, we also require the use of third parties to administer conflicts. We have used tribal headmen, elders, priests, judges for private matters, and politicians, lawyers, advocates, and lawmaking to regulate the process of dispute resolution itself.

    However, rather than justly administer agreements people engage in all possible manner of direct and systemic corruption. But, rather than enter political agreements honestly, they lie, cheat, defraud, deceive, use incrementalism, use coercion and bribery.

    So, despite our creation of these administrative institutions, we have created the constitutions, rule of law, and a high court so that we may limit the ability of politicians, kings, bureaucrats to conduct thefts of many kinds. And hold them accountable. We have enacted democratic processes to remove them from office if they commit these crimes.

    However, rather than adhere to constitutions and rule of law, people undermine the rule of law, buy voters compliance with redistribution and privileges. Threaten to replace judges if they don’t rule in the politician’s favor.

    So, despite our creation of limits on politicians and law makers, and the bureaucracy, and judges, we must retain our ability to use violence and revolution in order to defend ourselves from those who would seek to live off our efforts rather than administer our efforts.

    Property is the result of memory. Property is necessary to make use of the vicissitudes of time, to store and produce goods. Property is necessaty to uniquely and efficiently calculate uses of resources. Property is necessary to reduce conflict over possible usees even within families and tribes. Property is necessary for the construction a division of knowledge and labor. Without which we cannot specialize, save time, and produce high value goods that make us independent of nature’s bounty.

    Property is prior to government. Government exists to resolve disputes over property.

    As our division of labor increases, it becomes useful to develop additional common property. In a marketplace, competition provides us with incentives to produce better products and services at lower coasts. Competition is the privatization of other people’s assumptions about the opportunities in the market. However, common property, unlike private property, is hard to protect from privatization, and necessary to protect from competition, which for any commons, is just a theft from those who organize and pay for the commons by those who fail to organize and pay for the commons. In the market competition and privatization are desirable, but in the production of commons competition is an unnecessary cost. Therefore, the second purpose of government is to allow the formation of commons at a discount by prohibiting privatization of any commons, and preventing free-riding on any commons by the use of mandatory taxation.

    THE TWO NECESSARY PROPERTIES OF GOVERNMENT

    These are the only two necessary properties of government. In order to perform these functions any body of people must have a portfolio of property definitions that describe each kind of property on the spectrum from private to commons. Most difficulties arise from the failure for societies to do so. One of the reasons the west was (and partly remains) superior in economic per capita perormance is that more of the property in the civilization is privatized, and therefore available for frictionless use, and therefore as an incentive for individuals to act to better their status.

    CLOSING

    I won’t carry this further for now, and it is a book length topic, but it is probably the most, if not only, accurate description of property and government that you will be able to find, despite extraordinary efforts to research the subject. That is because I’ve tried to articulate the necessary properties of government not the multitude of abuses we can put it to.

    Cheers

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute, Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-12 08:09:00 UTC

  • Is Private Property More Natural Than Government? Why Or Why Not? And What Are The Policy Implications?

    AN INTERESTING QUESTION – THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST TO ANSWER IT.  I’ll try to give you the best answer currently available.

    “We have laws because we have property, we do not have property because we have laws” – Frederic Bastiat.

    PROPERTY AS A SPECTRUM
    We define private property as something over which one EXPECTS TO HAVE exclusive “monopoly” control, and common family property as something over which we expect to have limited control and consumption, and shareholder property something over which one expects to have LIMITED control and prohibition from consumption, and ‘the commons’ over which one expects to be PROHIBITED from consumption and or exclusive control, but where membership is dynamic.

    NATURE
    Many animals treat their nests, stores of food, mates and offspring as property. Humans have more complex memories, and can put objects to a multiplicity of uses.  And humans can learn to specialize in the use of certain resources to produce certain increasingly complex goods and services.

    The first value of memory is to observe resources and avoid dangers. But once we have complex memory, and the abilty to locate and store resources, we can create property, and therefore conserve energy by creating stores for  future consumption, and stores for future production.  The human mind is a is a difference engine, but the primary difference it calculates is property: what can I expect to make use of or not make use of, as a member of a family, band, tribe, or society? 

    We can speak. That we can speak and negotiate demonstrates that property is natural. Without property cooperation would be unnecessary. To debate by definition is to acknowledge the existence of property.  And we were able to speak before we were able to form governments.  We were able to trade before we were able to form governments.

    However, just because property is natural to man, and humans can peaceably cooperate by conducting voluntary exchange of property, that does not mean that humans will do the hard work of trying to satisfy the wants of others. Instead, rather than exchange, humans try to harm, steal, commit fraud, commit fraud by omission.  Rather than adhere to agreements as shareholders, humans free-ride, rent-seek, privatize assets and socialize losses.

    So, despite our natural ability to create and use property, and to negotiate exchanges and contracts, we also require the use of third parties to administer conflicts.   We have used tribal headmen, elders, priests, judges for private matters, and politicians, lawyers, advocates, and lawmaking to regulate the process of dispute resolution itself.

    However, rather than justly administer agreements people engage in all possible manner of direct and systemic corruption.  But, rather than enter political agreements honestly, they lie, cheat, defraud, deceive, use incrementalism, use coercion and bribery.

    So, despite our creation of these administrative institutions, we have created the constitutions, rule of law, and a high court so that we may limit the ability of politicians, kings, bureaucrats to conduct thefts of many kinds.  And hold them accountable.  We have enacted democratic processes to remove them from office if they commit these crimes.

    However, rather than adhere to constitutions and rule of law, people undermine the rule of law, buy voters compliance with redistribution and privileges. Threaten to replace judges if they don’t rule in the politician’s favor. 

    So, despite our creation of limits on politicians and law makers, and the bureaucracy, and judges, we must retain our ability to use violence and revolution in order to defend ourselves from those who would seek to live off our efforts rather than administer our efforts.

    Property is the result of memory. Property is necessary to make use of the vicissitudes of time, to store and produce goods. Property is necessaty to uniquely and efficiently calculate uses of resources. Property is necessary to reduce conflict over possible usees even within families and tribes. Property is necessary for the construction a division of knowledge and labor. Without which we cannot specialize, save time, and produce high value goods that make us independent of nature’s bounty.

    Property is prior to government. Government exists to resolve disputes over property.

    As our division of labor increases, it becomes useful to develop additional common property. In a marketplace, competition provides us with incentives to produce better products and services at lower coasts. Competition is the privatization of other people’s assumptions about the opportunities in the market.  However, common property, unlike private property, is hard to protect from privatization, and necessary to protect from competition, which for any commons, is just a theft from those who organize and pay for the commons by those who fail to organize and pay for the commons. In the market competition and privatization are desirable, but in the production of commons competition is an unnecessary cost.  Therefore, the second purpose of government is to allow the formation of commons at a discount by prohibiting privatization of any commons, and preventing free-riding on any commons  by the use of mandatory taxation.

    THE TWO NECESSARY PROPERTIES OF GOVERNMENT
    These are the only two necessary properties of government.  In order to perform these functions any body of people must have a portfolio of property definitions that describe each kind of property on the spectrum from private to commons. Most difficulties arise from the failure for societies to do so. One of the reasons the west was (and partly remains) superior in economic per capita perormance is that more of the property in the civilization is privatized, and therefore available for frictionless use, and therefore as an incentive for individuals to act to better their status.

    CLOSING
    I won’t carry this further for now, and it is a book length topic, but it is probably the most, if not only, accurate description of property and government that you will be able to find, despite extraordinary efforts to research the subject. That is because I’ve tried to articulate the necessary properties of government not the multitude of abuses we can put it to.

    Cheers
    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute, Kiev.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-private-property-more-natural-than-government-Why-or-why-not-And-what-are-the-policy-implications

  • What Reservations Do You Have About Libertarian Principles?

    All philosophy is class philosophy.  Libertarianism is a class philosophy.  All philosophies give precedence to one class or another.

    Just as socialism suggests that all are better off if we give primacy to the objective of equality, and political power to the lower classes; just as postmodernism suggests that we will all be better off if we give primacy to equality and political power to the academic and public intellectual classes; just as clssical liberalism suggests that we will be better off if we give primacy to the institution of the family to conduct the family as a business without the interference of the state, and give power to family property owners;  libertarianism suggests that we will be better off if we give primacy to individuals who pursue commercial innovation, and political power to the rule of law (contracts) that allow this innovation to persist unfettered. 

    Libertarianism is an economic philosophy that states that (a) we all demonstrate a preference for having our own choices (b) that wealth makes possible our choices (c) that wealth is the product of innovation (creating inequalities which we then pay to equilibrate.)

    Libertarianism as a political philosophy that states that (a) all monopolies are bad because people cannot use competition to constrain the bad behavior of people in monopolies (b) all bureaucracies are bad because people in bureaucracies pursue the interest of the bureaucracy at the expense of those it purports to serve (c) government is a monopoly and a bureaucracy that pursues its interests at the expense of those who do ‘real work’ of innovating, producing, risking.

    Libertarianism is not against ‘government’.  It is against monopoly and bureaucracy which hinder individual innovation and competition, and the creating of ‘differences’ (inequalities) which we then seek to eliminate. 

    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.

    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 th euse 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.

    Consumers arre 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.

    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.

    That is, unless your desire is to STEAL rather than EXCHANGE. And you are most likely to want to STEAL rather than exchange if governmetn 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. 

    ANARCHISM, or anarcho capitalism (a branch of libertarianism) is a RESEARCH PROGRAM that seeks to find solutions to political problems without the use of the monopolistic bureaucratic state.  Libertarian writers have done a thorough job of solving all but one or two very large problems (I think I may have solved those remaning issues in my work but I am not yet certain.)

    ROTHBARDIAN Libertarianism, which is prominent on the web, was designed to be an ideological religion based upon rigorously defended philosophy combining jewish ethics of resistance (the ghetto) with christian legal and moral arguments (natural law) as a  means of resisting both socialism and postmodernism.  As and ideology he reduced that philosophy to very simple moral principles that can function as an ideology (generating emotion) rather than as an institutional prescription (generating arguments.)  This is because Rothbard and his generation understood that the communists had produced a significant literature but could not win the hearts and minds of ordinary voters unless this philosophy was reduced to policy (the ten planks) and ideology (simple, repeatable, emotionally moralistic statements  that would incite people to talk and act in support of those ideas.   So Rothbardian libertarianism is an ideological philosophy not a prescription for institutional solutions to the problems of politics.

    REGARDING WHITE MALES : 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
    1) The first reservation that I have about libertarianism is that unlike classical liberalism (conservatism) and socialism, libertarians are pacifist and unwilling to use violence to establish their social order – and as such it is impossible to put into place. Theft is powerful motivation, and profitable to use in pursuit of political power, and theft is antithetical to Libertarians. Socialism is by definition kleptocracy, and wither you conquer as Rome or as Washington DC, conquest by theft, backed by threat of violence is more successful and profitable than pacifism. (If India had been a French colony, Ghandi would not have been an old man.)

    2) The second reservatoin I have about libertarianism is that all philosophies are class philosophies, and that classes are of different sizes. The indo europeans from the Kurgan’s onward were technology using pastoral conquerors and brought aristocratic egalitarianism with them by the use of force. Aristocratic philosophy generates wealth, but also makes visible our differences.  And when those differences in value are visible, people who are in the bottom half of society, or who gain their status through less meritocratic means, feel left behind and ‘unequal’.   For these reasons I think libertarianism is a minority movement and despite having found solutions to every political problem that we know of, we cannot both create inovation and differences while preserving equality   This is logically impossible.  The only solution is to ‘buy’ the compliance of the lower classes through redistribution.

    3) The third reservation I have about libertarianism is the discord its less sophisticated advocates create by creating confusion between state, government, court and market.

    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 licence 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 priviatization, systemic corruption, systemic procedural involntary 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’.

    ON THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT

    A) NECESSARY PROPERTIES
    The NECESSARY properties of of a government are
    1) provide a means of resolving differences without the use of violence (ie: to create a monopoly of violence within a geography.)
    2) To provide a means of resolving differences requires a definition of property rights.
    3) To prohibit alternative definitions of property rights from being imposed by force, theft or fraud, (or immigration.)
    4) To provide a means of investing in commons (human and physical infrastructure) by prohibiting free-riding, privatization, and competition when investing in commons.

    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:
    5) To provide a means of cooperation between classes where privatization, free riding, rent seeking and competition prevent cooperation between classes.
    6) To reduce both transaction costs and fraud by implementing weights, measures and currency.
    7) To perform as an insurer of last resort against catastrophes.

    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:
    8) Redistribution of all kinds, both in services, and in direct payments.
    9) Inter-temporal redistribution from young to old, rather than saving and lending from old to young. (But this is very fragile.)

    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.

    https://www.quora.com/What-reservations-do-you-have-about-libertarian-principles