Curt Doolittle

Form: Full Essay

  • Libertarianism as a Class Philosophy

    [A]ll 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.

  • LIBERTARIANISM AS A CLASS PHILOSOPHY All philosophy is class philosophy. Liberta

    LIBERTARIANISM AS A CLASS PHILOSOPHY

    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.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-27 04:00:00 UTC

  • How Do Christian Conservatives In The Usa Explain The Very High Teen Birth Rates In The Bible Belt?

    INCREDIBLY FUNNY BUT TERRIBLY BAD ANSWERS : HERE IS THE CORRECT ONE.

    Here is the correct, and entirely impolitic one. It also accounts for poverty and IQ statistics.

    Diversity increases extremes.

    —PART 1 – CAUSATION—
    ECONOMICS OF RACE AND REPRODUCTION

    QUESTION: “Why is single motherhood so common in the south?”

    Well, of course I don’t like to say the impolitic truth and then have to fend off the ignorant. Quora is peopled by the demographic that does not rely on data. We know this because almost all questions there can be answered easily with available data. But since all data of meaning requires knowledge of economics and statistics, and ignorance of economics and statistics is pervasive, this prohibits access to comprehension of that data, and prohibits resolution of questions of popular opinion and political doctrine.

    As such, it’s tedious to answer impolitic questions here. That is why few people do it.

    That said, I will do my best:

    FAMILY STRUCTURE

    1) Family structure and family economic structures determine poverty. The nuclear family is highly efficient economic structure. The two income nuclear family is the most efficient economic structure. For a male it is the smallest tribe he can be alpha in, and maintain access to a female as he declines in desirability For a woman she is the alpha female in her tribe of one, and has a monopoly claim on his production for the duration of her childrearing, despite her declining ‘desirability’ during this time. The nuclear family also places asset demands on the male, and therefore delays marriage and mating, both of which increase the skill level, work experience of the members.

    2) Redistribution undermines the family and increases poverty, partly because men in the lower classes are less desirable (and able) than women in the lower classes, because men are more widely distributed in feature and ability than are women, with more men at the very top (nobel prize winners) and more men at the bottom (persistently impulsive criminality). Our Y chromosome is where nature experiements, and our wider male distribution affects mating under monogamy, and less so under polygyny, because under polygyny, a smaller number of more desirable males can be shared amongst a larger number of marginally more desirable females.

    3) Racial groups are more or less ‘desirable’ as mates worldwide, not just in the states. This has largely to do, as best as any of us can tell, with a mating preference for females with thinner skin in contrast to mates with thicker skin as a signal that is different from the thicker skin of males. Since the only uniform scale of beauty across all cultures, other than symmetry, is quality of female skin clarity, this is the only selection preference necessary to explain racial preferences, other than the rate at which we appear to have exited Africa and begun the process of near-speciation (racial diversification), and the problem of access to vitamin D in the northern climes. This research is impolitic and the people who pursue it are ostracized from academia so it has moved to being conducted under a different guise, or now to china where such things are considered only logical. But the research is available. And it shows that fairer, thinner skin on females with finer features, is more desirable regardless of racial group.

    4) People mate almost entirely within race (<15%) and prefer to associate, work, and live within racial groups. With the consumer marketplace for goods the only shared environment. Extremes can run counter to this fact with crossing occurring at the lower and higher ends of desirability where each individual has better options in mates and often better access to social class by crossing racial boundaries.

    5) Even where racial admixture occurs, it places downward pressure on extra-group status and opportunity (desirability). In other words, racially mixed children maintain the lower of their racial preferences. Altough in black and hispanic communities and families children are still ranked in preference by skin color because it grants access to status both mating and social.

    ECONOMICS
    6) Impulsivity (the ability to resist impulses) varies between the races, with the east asians the least impulsive distribution, and the subsaharan african population the most impulsive. Impulsivity is a positive reproductive strategy unless external (climate) pressures punish survival. Impulsivity places a high penalty on learning ability which favors long periods of ‘frustration’ and concentration.

    7) Impulsivity affects both trustworthiness and creditworthiness. Nuclear families have higher more stable incomes, and are more creditworthy, as well as more economically efficient. As such high densities of nuclear families will produce higher wealth. Higher wealth will generate greater opportunity. Greater opportunity within a geography will increase demand for housing in that geography. Housing in that geography will increase in price. People who live in more impulsive, less efficient groups will of course, be unable to gain access to that geography and its opportunities.

    8) For these reasons (Which I assume I should use graphs to illustrate) the reason that poverty and single motherhood are so prevalent in the south is that 74% of black mothers, and a high percentage of hispanic mothers are unmarried. And they live in close communities reliant on support from extended family members, with populations too high to integrate into more successful communities. White single motherhood is on the increase in the lower classes, and teh USA, Ireland and New Zealand, where the postmodernist and feminist movements have been most successful, have the highest rates of single motherhood among whites, and the countries of southern europe who remain familially integral the lowest: Italy, Greece, Spain and Luxembourg.

    TRUST AND OPPORTUNITY
    All humans are faced with opportunities for both cooperation and conflict at all times. We must choose how to apply our limited time effort and resources to a limited number of opportunities.

    All opportunities other than exchanges of commodities purely on price, consist of a network of cost and benefit tradeoffs. All cost and benefit tradeoff’s are simple.

    We trade (cooperate) on all sorts of terms, but economic status, social status, values, language, culture(mythology, habits) are significant terms. Every variation in every property that is not identical in interest is a negative.

    Status signals (status and reputation) have higher value in-group than across groups. Therefore status pressure to encourage each of us to adhere to agreements is of higher value in-group.

    Therefore we trust and cooperate in-group at lower cost and risk than across group.

    This is why people break into racial, cultural, socioeconomic, educational, generational, occupational groups. Because it’s the lowest risk pool of people with the lowest cost of cooperation, even if it’s less productive it may also be the only pool available to you where you can find someone willing to pay the higher cost of cooperating with you across groups.

    Political discourse assumes we want to help each other and we do. The problem is the logic of that statement -it’s meaningless when we CAN help everyone, we must still choose the best return on our help. And we do. And that is how it is. Anything else is irrational.

    SOUTHERN RELIGIOSITY
    Race is the reason for ‘everything’ in the south, including religiosity. Although southern religiosity we must understand is a rebellion against the state, after the north conquered the south. Race is the reason for everything in america. People are born, live, reproduce, associate, work with, and speak to, people within their racial groups except where they participate in the marketplace together.

    RATES OF POVERTY BY RACE
    Page on Carseyinstitute…

    RATES OF SINGLE MOTHERHOOD BY RACE
    LINK: KIDS COUNT Data Center…

    There is no end of data on this subject.


    —PART II—
    CORRELATION NOT CAUSATION

    States are, in general, rational economic alliances, usually run by an oligarchy, and usually the oligarchy grants monopolistic privileges to key industries in order to fund them sufficiently that they can compete outside of the local market where returns are highest.  We call this corporatism.  It is a rational system. Unfortunately, the natural incentive of all monopolies, and of course, a political bureaucracy is by definition a monopoly, are self interested and will prey upon their populations to the limits at which they can maintain power.

    Religions are ARATIONAL (not irrational) and they are a means of setting the moral limits to the actions of the state. Religions are resistance movements. Mystical religions consist of rational ends, but stated irrationally.  The only religion that is compatible with the state rather than an opposition to it is polytheistic, or what we today would call ‘history worship.”  The state will attempt to control religious doctrine to the best of its ability. In some cases it succeeds – theocracy results.  This is usually bad, because while oligarchic monopolies are self interested and predatory, they are also economically productive.  Theocratic bureaucracies are self interested and predatory but economically unproductive, and they manufacture ignorance in volume.

    The south is religious as a means of opposing the state. First, in response to the conquest by the north. Second as a resistance to the north.  Third as a resistance to racial integration.  Fourth as a resistance the feminist and postmodern attack on the family using redistribution and law. 

    I will leave it to you whether the use of arational methods to resist the state is effective (it is) or and whether or not it is right (it appears that the feminist, socialist, and postmondern movements have systemically increased poverty by destruction of the nuclear family.)

    —PART III – CONCLUSION—

    There is a correlation between southern religiosity and single motherhood, but there is no causal relationship.

    I hope that this was helpful and informative.

    Curt Doolittle

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-Christian-conservatives-in-the-USA-explain-the-very-high-teen-birth-rates-in-the-Bible-Belt

  • Is Libertarianism The Same As Anarcho-capitalism?

    The other answers are not quite correct.  Hopefully I will do this subject justice.

    Konkin’s History of the Libertarian Movement Is an accurate record of libertarianism.  But there are many terms that derive from the root word ‘liberty’ and the preference for liberty.

    DEFINITIONS.

    LIBERTY: all other things being equal, a preference for private property rights, and the grant of reciprocal freedom from coercion  – of the body, actions and property.

    LIBERTARIAN:

    1) Libertarian as an instinctual desire. A biological predisposition in favor of new stimuli expressed as freedom from constraint in obtaining new stimuli.

    2) A moral sentiment: A moral bias giving higher preference to liberty than competing moral sentiments, the most dominant of which are (a) Harm/Care and (b) Loyalty, Respect, Proportionality and Purity.  Left (communalists) is singularly biased toward (a), and right (aristocratic egalitarians) toward (a+b), and libertarians toward (c) Liberty and Proportionality.  Although Proportionality is considered differently by right (paternalistic) and left (maternalistic) factions.

    3) Libertarian as a Political Preference: A preference for the least government intervention in the economy as possible.  There are many thinkers and groups that fall into this category, including most conservatives, as well as classical liberals. The point of demarcation between social conservatives (conservatism) and economic conservatives (libertarians) is whether it is necessary to enforce norms by threat of law, or (as libertarians argue) the market is a sufficient means of enforcing normative ethics.)  

    BTW: Libertarians are empirically wrong on this subject, and conservatives simply lack a means of articulating the conditions under which it is permissible to altern norms – such as homosexuality, now that we know it is a biological factor not a choice. They  have no exit, even if they would adapt if they could.  So the libertarian and conservative groups remain divided. (Which I am admittedly trying to change.)

    Furthermore, the right uses an ancient, well-known and well-understood tactic of rebellion against oppression: religion, and the use of metahorical rather than secular rational language. It is the same religion that the simple people used to resist roman norms and culture while finding community in the newly mobile mediterranean world created by Rome.  It is the same technique used by the germans to free themselves from mediterranean trade, tax, government and morals.

    This is also the strategy in use by the Religion of Postmodernism and the institution of the Democratic Socialist State. Having demonized mystical religion in favor of the religion of ‘scientific socialism’, when Communism and Socialism were demonstrated to be failures in both theory and practice it  became necessary to resort to Chomskyian ‘framing’ in order to replace religious mysticism with contra-rational falsehoods and contra-factual impossibilities that can be constantly repeatedin contradictory contexts thereby creating an alternate reality of non-rational but contextual associations by way of chanting – just as islam does through daily repetition, christianity and judaism do through rituals and prayer.

    All religous systems bring people into groups to evoke the sense of spirituality, which is our pre-human desire to surrender our minds and wills to the elation of the running pack (yes, that is what spirituality is caused by),  and then to repeat mantras and narratives in this circumstance. 

    Tribal peoples in the tropical belt do the same thing by chanting and dancing – its’ all the same process.

    Western heroicism was accomplished by repeating some variation of either the prehistoric Indo-european, Homeric, Roman, Carolingian, or Arthurian legends around the feast’s fire pits. Americans repeated the narrative of the Cult of the Revolution around hearths, churches and schools, and in books, pamphlets and speeches.

    It is the same process in every human society. It works. We evolved to run down game together. That is why we look different from apes, and act like wolves. We are very efficient at running and dissipating heat. We can run down any animal on earth. We do not have to fight them. Just chase them as a pack until they are exhausted.  Watch a video of Masai crossing a plain. That is human biological advantage.

    The process of repeating ideas within a context allows us to create intuitive associations and therefore intuitive responses, instead of depending upon our demonstrably frail reason.  It is our pre-rational system of learning. We use it still today.

    And because nearly all of our decisions are made intuitively. So these intuitions end up with greater expression than those of our reason.  In the case of postmodernism (progressivism), and christianity  (social conservatism), these narratives are irrational by false logic and fact (progressivism) or arational by mystical allegory (conservatism).

    4) Libertarianism as a Political Philosophy:
    As articulated by Rothbard, libertarianism it is a rigorous, analytically stated ethical and political philosophy originating with natural law. The ethical system is based on very smple rules: your body and those things that you obtain by voluntary exchange, are yours, and you have a monopoly on the use of them. Don’t steal, dont commit fraud, and don’t initiate violence, and you have respected the same of others.

    The state is a corporation of shareholders who we call bureaucrats, who extract unwilling fees from hard working people, in order to fund their own indolence rather than do the equally hard work of taking risks in the market. Norms are unnecessary because the market for competition and reputation will instill the proper commercial normative respect for property without the intervention of a government (something privately owned), or a state(something abstractly owned).

    Libertarianism was designed to create an opposition religion to the marxist, socialist, and postmodernist religions. It is an ideological system based upon the jewish rebellious ethic of the ghetto. The primary content of this ethical system is a very limited concept of  property rights, where those property rights are absent the prohibitions on involuntary transfer by asymmetry and externality, that are necessary to fund investments in the commons of high trust norms.  It is the ethics of the low trust society. This is why it is a demonstrated failure outside of a narrow niche of americans.  Because the rest of americans, while they cannot articulate these ideas in rational terms, correctly intuit that rothbardian libertarianism is immoral.  Because it is. It is a means of rebellion. It is a religion.  And its ethics are immoral. 

    5) Libertarianism as a Political Ideology : Having observed the methodology of Marxists in propagating ideas,  Libertarianism has been promoted by the Mises institute into an ideology. An ideology is a set of memes that attempt to obtain power for a body of people in a political system.  Ideology is  different from philosophy in that the larger community relies upon representatives (intellectuals, priests, symbolic individuals) and argues by analogy, rather than making use of the precise arguments of their philosophy, if they oculd rationally master and articulate it.   That these short narratives are the equivlaent of mythic narratives is not material since the purpose is to motivate people emotionally to action, not intellectually to agreement. If you understand this then you will understand the purpose of most political ideology: motivation to act.

    ANARCHO-CAPITALISM
    6) Anarcho-capitalist branch of libertarianism:  Anarcho Capitalism is one of a number of monikers representing different factoins within the libertarian political, moral, sentimental movements.  This moniker was necessary in order to distinguish those followers of rothbard and mises, from those who also used the term libertarian, and had other rationales and arguments – and leadership.

    Anarcho-Capitalism is a more specific, and very thoroughly articulated, extension of libertarian philosophy to include the works of additional thinkers, the most important of which is Hans Hoppe. Hoppe’s insight was technical: that we could solve the problem of the natural behavior of monopolistic bureaucracies by replacing mandatory bureaucracies with private insurance companies, provide for defense, justice, and policing with private organizations.  Since there is only one ‘law’ in anarcho capitalism – private property – then the constitution doesn’t need to be written, or modified.  Intellectuals (myself included) consider Anarcho Capitalism one of the most interesting and successful political research programs.  Others treat it like an exetension of libertarian philosophy, and others practice it as an ideology.  But this is a description of the different rhetorical abilities of practitioners and little else.

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

  • On Cultures as Competing Portfolios Of Property Rights

    CULTURE noun ˈkəl-chər KUHL-churEtymology Middle English (denoting a cultivated piece of land): the noun from French culture or directly from Latin cultura ‘growing, cultivation’; the verb from obsolete French culturer or medieval Latin culturare, both based on Latin colere ‘tend, cultivate’ (see cultivate). In late Middle English the sense was ‘cultivation of the soil’ and from this (early 16th century), arose ‘cultivation (of the mind, faculties, or manners’); culture (sense 1 of the noun) dates from the early 19th century. AlsoCULT (n.) (1) 1610s, “worship,” also “a particular form of worship,” from French culte (17c.), from Latin cultus “care, labor; cultivation, culture; worship, reverence,” originally “tended, cultivated,” pp. of colere “to till” (see colony). Rare after 17c.; revived mid-19c. with reference to ancient or primitive rituals. Meaning “devotion to a person or thing” is from 1829. (2) Cult. An organized group of people, religious or not, with whom you disagree. [Rawson] CULTURE: DEFINITIONS1) : SYSTEM OF ASSUMPTIONS, GOALS, PROPERTY RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS, RITUALS AND SIGNALS WHICH CAN AND ARE TRANSMITTED BETWEEN GENERATIONS.(a) Webster: “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior learned and transmitted knowledge to succeeding generations.” (b) Propertarianism: “a set of suppositions about the nature of man, and his preferred and necessary relation to others, and to nature. The myths that convey those relations, and attach positive and negative values to them. The property rights that codify and enforce those relations in daily life. The Gender Biases, Mating Rituals, Childrearing Rituals, Feast Rituals, Celebratory Rituals, Group Identity Signals such as dress, and learned food choice and preparation preferences. All of which can and must be learned and transmitted to succeeding generations, and which can and do survive transmission to succeeding generations. 2) : CULTURED Knowledge of or Mastery of, the cannon of the most well-crafted examples of History, Letters, and Arts, produced by members of that culture, which celebrate that culture, and demonstrating, and therefore, signaling, the Morals, ethics and manners, of those most well crafted examples. 3) SUBCULTURE (By Analogy), shortened to CULTURE by abbreviation, loading and analogy: A set of STATUS SIGNALS – the competing suppositions, myths, values, property rights, rituals and signals, of a racial (Genetic inter-temporal relations), religious (normative inter-temporal relations), or social group (generational, class, geographic, or occupational relations); 4) BY ANALOGY: POPULAR CULTURE (by analogy): A cyclical preference for a) inexpensive status signals used to illustrate coming of age, b) inexpensive status signals used to demonstrate group membership in order to create opportunities for entertainment, association, occupation or mating created by the set of goods and services marketed to people who are coming of age, participating in mating and child-rearing as well as early career development.

    CULTURES CONSIST OF A PORTFOLIO OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

    CULTURAL PORTFOLIOS ARE INTERGENERATIONAL DEVICES FOR CONVEYING RULES OF ACTION, AND SIGNALS ABOUT FITNESS OF INDIVIDUALS WITHIN GROUPS MAKING USE OF THOSE RULES, THAT FACILITATE COOPERATION, WHERE COOPERATION TAKES PLACE ACCORDING TO A SET OF ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT MAN AND NATURE. [C]ultures consist of a set of myths and norms that determine the goals and limits of human action within each cultural group.. These myths and norms compose a ‘program’ consisting of a world-view about man’s relation to the universe, a series of myths, rituals and habits that reinforce that world view, and a set of property rights and obligations that by habituation rather than intent, survived generations of use in daily life and evolved to perpetuate that world view. While it is true that much cultural content is fungible, it is also true that much of it is not. That which is not, is what is unstated by the myths and traditions but which is a common assumption or implication throughout. In earlier centuries, there were fewer means of incentive with which to direct people to either cooperate, or to do as some individual or group willed. This is because there are very few means of ‘coercing’ people to cooperate toward a given end:

    • a)
    • b)
    • c)

    Early civilizations were split between the application of force, and the application of mysticism. Eventually, in large part, peoples everywhere in the world created organized means of violence for enforcing some system of property rights, even if they were the most corrupt possible. And religion usually formed a means of opposition to that violence, by determining the limits by which the population would consent to be governed – ie: institutional religion described the boundary of legitimacy, and formed a resistance movement. Wherever successful, the state then adopted that religious limitation and as often as possible took control of the religious institutions as well.

    PORTFOLIOS

    [C]ultures then, are defined by their different “portfolios” of property rights. The composition of, and distribution of those property rights, varies from culture to culture. In each culture, those rights are expressed as norms. Property rights themselves are a norm. Those property rights perpetuated by norms may be more or less beneficial than other portfolios of property rights. But any idiot who thinks that (a) formal institutions don’t matter – such as libertarians or (b) that formal institutions are sufficient – such as progressives, will have history prove him wrong to the chagrin of the people who understand (c) that norms are a form of property – conservatives. Norms are a commons that we all pay for. The tax we pay for them with is forgone opportunity to consume them, and absorbing the risk that no others will absorb them too. Aristocratic Egalitarian Culture (The West) prohibits not just fraud, theft and violence, but the more deceptive versions of fraud: profit from asymmetry of knowledge, and profit from involuntary transfer via externalities. Market competition itself, is an involuntary transfer via externality from people outside of the exchange (competitors). This is why humans naturally object to it, and must be trained to respect and practice competition. But this externality provides instruction and incentive to all in the market, such that we all seek greater variety and lower cost of production. It produces beneficial ends. But it is non-trivial to create the norm of respecting and practicing competition. That’s why so few cultures did it. [R]othbard was wrong. The market isn’t sufficient to maintain the norms against fraud theft and violence, and certainly not against externalities. The marginal impact of reputation in the market is lower than the marginal impact of fraud. That’s why only the west developed the high trust society – by out-breeding such that the entire nation to be an extended family – at least within it’s social classes. Without excessive out-breeding that destroyed the perception of extended family through common physical properties, and common normative behavior. In order to retain the sense of extended family, both physical properties and normative properties must be similiar enough that signaling is consisten within the group, and only class (selection quality) within the extended family differentiates between group members. Trust. The extension of familial trust to all possible exchange partners, by prohibitions on externality and asymmetry, when backed by warranty, is the composition that creates the high – trust society. Only AFTER these informal institutions are enforced by formal institutions, even if only the formal institution of the common law, will trust develop. And with trust, the velocity of trade that makes extraordinary marginal wealth possible for a group, because that group is more competitive than other groups.

  • IS A LIBERAL? (Seriously) 1) Liberalism: The democratic republican model of poli

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiberalismWHAT IS A LIBERAL?

    (Seriously)

    1) Liberalism: The democratic republican model of political institutions that arose out of the enlightenment – Locke ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism ) Free Markets, Private Property, Enfranchisement of the middle class. This is the pleasant definition. It could also be defined as the ideology that justified the seizure of political power, and political institutions by the middle class, as trade expanded, wealth expanded, and therefore the economic power of the landed, agrarian, aristocracy was dramatically reduced.

    HISTORY

    During the 1800’s In reaction to the industrial revolution, the lower classes became consumers, and sought and were enfranchised because of the labor, communist and socialist movements, and the introduction of women into the voting and work force.

    The ‘Liberal’ movement broke into two branches. a) “Classical Liberal”, which favored limited government, and as such was ‘conservative’ and b) “Social Democrat” which incorporated the ideas of the socialists and communists and favored a mixed economy that combined the state and private property, and as such was ‘progressive’.

    While technically speaking a ‘liberal’ means a ‘classical liberal’, and therefore a ‘conservative’ the left intellectuals intentionally adopted and promoted adoption of the term ‘liberal’ as a self-identifier in order to use a term that was more tolerable than ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ which were not acceptable in the united states. In Europe, where states are smaller and more homogenous, and where there is a history of aristocracy, these terms, especially post-war, are not seen as negatively, and “liberal’ maintains it’s original meaning – the opposite of how its used in the United States. And this is both a source of humor to intellectuals and confusion to average people.

    Today, a “liberal” means a “social democrat”. But what does a “social democrat” mean? To understand that requires we understand Aristocratic Manorialism, Liberalism, communism and socialism.

    MODELS

    1) Aristocratic Manorialism, is the ownership of property by the aristocracy, and this property is then rented out to everyone else to work on, and farm, or build shops.

    2) Liberalism is the individual ownership of property by individual farmers, craftsmen and merchants.

    3) Socialism is the ownership of property by the state, and individuals are directed by central planners to do the work that is planned for them. Of course, this led to black markets, poverty, dictatorship, and the death of 100M people. Socialism was the greatest tragedy ever to befall human beings.

    4) Communism is the theory that after enough socialism, private property will disappear because it will, supposedly, become unnecessary.

    Unfortunately what we found out is that money, prices, and private property are necessary both to make use of dispersed knowledge, to make use of it in real time, and to provide people with the abilty to make plans, and for people to possess the incentives to make plans. The whole world has adopted capitalism (private property, money, and prices) for these reasons.

    5) Social democracy is the ownership of property by the state, which is then lent out to people for use as private property. Then people are allowed to keep some portion of the income themselves, and the rest is captured by the state in the form of taxes for use by the state. This model then maintains the money, prices, incentives of classical liberal private property, and does not fall into the problem of the impossibility of planning and the impossibility of the incentive to work, but it’s still possible to take money from people after they have produced it.

    Social democracy is a solution to the necessity of capitalism in order to get people to produce, while maintaining the ability of the state to sieze and use or redistribute the profits from production. It is the dominant model in the world.

    Today, conservatives (classical liberals) and progressives (liberals) compete to determine the amount of individualism or socialism that we will have.

    But why do we hold these different opinions? That’s pretty interesting.

    WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

    To put these political movements in perspective: Just as the classical liberal model is the ideology that justifies the seizure of power by the middle class from the aristocracy, communism and socialism are the ideologies that justify the seizure of power by the lower classes from the middle class.

    Social democracy is a means by which the clerical classes (administrative, educational) can compete for status with the entrepreneurial classes. The military class has been all but ostracized from power since the 1960’s – something unique in history. To maintain power, any set of elites, whether clerical, commercial/entrepreneurial, or military, must have widespread support of the common people.

    As we have moved from a civilization of farmers, craftsmen and merchants, all of whom are individual producers and small business people, to a world where most of us work in government bureaucracy or clerical functions in large corporations, or clerical functions in universities, the number of people who actively participate in the commercial economy by taking personal risks with their own capital, has dramatically declined. But in the aggregate, this change in what we do for a living is actually driven more by the introduction of women into the dominance of clerical labor, and the voting pool than any other factor. Women lean and vote progressive and men lean and vote conservative, and single women vote heavily progressive, and single unmarried women vote almost entirely progressively. And what has happened since 1960, is a dramatic increase in single women due to delayed marriage, and single mothers due to the dissolution of the family.

    WHY DO WE VOTE THIS WAY?

    Now, the question arises as to why affluent educated but non-entrepreneurial people appear to adopt Social Democrat values in college, and why some people positively have this progressive bias. And it turns out that there are at least three factors.

    The first appears to be genetic, in that the individual’s moral code is very narrow, and treats care-taking and protection from harm as the highest, and only moral mandate. (See Jonathan Haidt). Whereas conservatives have five or six moral mandates that they adhere to fairly equally.

    The second is signaling (demonstrating your social status), where the educated in the country, whose status comes from education, but who do not gain status as business owners, business leaders or capitalists, signal their ‘high mindedness’ as a means of gaining status.

    The third is an intellectual view of mankind that has extraordinary faith in humans and the technology of human beings, to solve all the world’s problems ‘if we just put our minds to it’. (Conservatives just see this as an illusion that is the product of ‘False Consensus Bias’. And it may be that this is the underlying cause – the female tendency to desire consensus and the male desire to be attractive to women by signaling similar concerns.)

    GENES

    We are not entirely sure which of these is more influential. But what we do know is that the political affiliations are highly dependent upon gender. And that people are highly attracted to political affiliation for both gender and genetic reasons. (See Pew Research’s excellent collection of graphs and data.)

    In simple terms, socialism and individualism reflect the mating and reproductive strategies of the genders. And it certainly appears from the data we’ve collected that people vote for their moral codes and their moral codes reflect their reproductive strategies in any given economy at any given time. And therefore the result of our political debates is driven almost entirely by our reproductive strategies. (Which to those of us in political theory, is pretty funny, or pretty frustrating.)

    It’s all demographics and our shouting is meaningless. Elections are decided by the 10-15% of people who don’t care. The rest of us are committed to our polarized ideologies. WHat whil happen over the next few decades is that protestant european culture will continue to vote conservative, while the immigrant populations, the underclasses, and single women and the educational and political sectors will continue to vote progressive.

    Conservatives breed, and liberals dont, but the less individualistic minorities breed fast enough to keep up with the decline in liberal births.

    Thanks

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-22 07:52:00 UTC

  • Fixing A False Criticism: Libertarianism, Anarchy and Somalia

    THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING PROPERTY RIGHTS WHERE THEY DO NOT EXIST IS STILL OPEN. [T]o start with, definitions help us communicate clearly. And they both force us to be honest, and prevent others from making false arguments against us. 1) Liberty is a sentiment. It is a minority sentiment. It is a sentiment held by some percentage of the people that favors the ability to obtain new experiences without external constraint, as long as they harm no others in doing so. (see Haidt) 2) Libertarianism is a political bias. That bias favors various forms of minimal government. It eschews the concentration of power, and the loss of sovereignty. It is a sentiment that is embedded in the western tradition. That western tradition is the egalitarian union of aristocracy. That Aristocratic Egalitarianism is a social adaptation to early Indo-European battle tactics which required independent but coordinated action by self-funded warriors. This social strategy allowed a professionalized minority using advanced weapon technology to conquer or fend off conquerors with much greater numbers. (see Duchesne) 3) Libertarianism it is a philosophical framework authored by Murray Rothbard. This framework argues that all possible rights are reducible to articulated property rights. It contains errors. (Which I have discussed elsewhere). Those errors are significant in that they are morally, and therefore socially and economically regressive. However, the fundamental insight that human actions can be reduced to property rights remains valid, and the errors in Rothbard’s incomplete ethical framework are repairable. Rothbard was unable to solve the problem of institutions, so his framework describes little more than a secular moral religion of opposition to the state. Hoppe solved the problem of cooperative institutions, but did not correct Rothbard’s (or Mises’) initial errors. He did not solve the problem of heterogeneous societies which we live in. So for these two reasons he has described small governments. (I have tried to repair Mises and Rothbard’s errors, and use Hoppe’s insights to create solutions for the problem of heterogeneous and therefore large governments consisting of voluntary institutions which preserve the aristocratic egalitarian ethical system of property rights. But my work is incomplete and not yet available for analysis and criticism.) 4) Anarchy is a) a state of disorder – an inability for humans to organize. Propertarians argue that this means little more than an absence of homogeneous property rights. b) Anarchy is a Utopian idea of an ordered society without any articulated form of order other than human instincts.5) Property is a form of establishing order – the ability of humans to organize. It is a very simple rule that matches, with some significant variation, the human moral instinct, while allowing us to cooperate in a vast division of knowledge and labor, the result of which is lower prices and increased choices. Since a) property can vary from the purely private to the purely common, and since b) the utility of property at any point on that spectrum is different for those with different abilities, and c) since the genetic bias of men and women has shown us a demonstrated preference for different points on that spectrum, which better suit the reproductive strategies of each gender, therefore, the preferred monopoly of property rights varies by class and gender, as well as, perhaps, race whenever a population is heterogeneous. 6) Anarchism is a philosophical research program the purpose of which is to find institutional solutions (organizations, processes and rules) that are an alternative to a monopoly power that we grant to the state, when we create a government in order to institute some set of property rights, and therefore establish order.

    [callout]But in no case do Anarchists or Libertarians suggest there is no ‘governance’. A set of articulated property rights and a judiciary that resolves conflicts over property, is a government. It is just a reactive government. A government or rules. It is the rule of law. [/callout]

    DISCUSSION [S]ince our invention of politics, we cannot seem to limit the republican or democratic state to the functions that preserve our aristocratic egalitarian order: a) the defense of those property rights, and b) the concentration of capital for shared investment at the same time. And by doing so, force people to cooperate in the market, instead of by violence, or the proxy of physical violence we call politics. So, because of that failure of democratic institutions, the anarchic research program seeks to use competition for services to eliminate the corporeal state’s monopoly on power, while maintaining a monopoly on the articulated enumeration of some set of property rights within a geography. The a) libertarian sentiment, b) Libertarian history (the classical liberal model) and c) the libertarian philosophy (all of which are different things) do not answer this problem. The anarchic research program has attempted to. And any attempt by libertarians to state that we have solved this problem is either a failure to understand the state of our intellectual development, or an intentional misrepresentation of it. But in no case do Anarchists or Libertarians suggest there is no ‘governance’. A set of articulated property rights and a judiciary that resolves conflicts over property, is a government. It is just a reactive government. A government or rules. Judges under the common law cannot make law. They can discover it. And they can be overruled by other judges through market competition. But they cannot proactively make law. As such, there is a government under all libertarian models that have been articulated to any degree. The problem remains only in how we first establish a set of property rights. In the west this is not as difficult as elsewhere because those property rights are native to the framework of thought that we inherited with our Aristocratic Egalitarianism. Anyone who is enfranchised (fights) has a right to property which is not abridge-able by his peers. We extended the requirement to fighting, first to those who demonstrated nobility through service of any kind (chivalry). And third to those who demonstrated nobility through exchange and trade. But the principle of property is fundamental regardless of which means one earns his enfranchisement. When anarchists say that they advocate anarchy, it means that they eschew the concentration of power to alter the set of property rights involuntarily, since it breaks with the Aristocratic Egalitarian ethics. Ethics which allow each of us who is enfranchised to experiement and add value to ourselves and society as long as we commit no involuntary transfer from others who are enfranchised. CREATING THAT SYSTEM What anarchists and libertarians of all stripes have failed to do is describe how we create a monopoly definition of property rights without the application of force to do it. In the west, the aristocracy created it out of habitual necessity. And they did it by force. Rome in particular was a powerful machine that mandated a set of property rights and then defended them because it was simply profitable to do so. CRITICS AND ADVOCATES Critics are wrong in the sense that libertarianism will not work in somalia. But they are right in that libertarians and anarchists have not provided a means by which to institute a monopoly of property rights without it first existing. FILLING THE HOLES IN ANARCHISM AND LIBERTARIANISM As I’ve stated above, we are less than a century into our research program at articulating our ancient system of cooperation that we call the libertarian sentiment, but which is more accurately termed the political system called Aristocratic Egalitarianism with its dependency on property rights. While I have filled the hole in our ethics. The hole in our institutional process of implementing a monopoly of individual property rights by other than organized violence is still in need of filling. And we should ask our critics to help us answer that problem, rather than deny we have it.

  • FIXING THE FALSE CRITICISM: LIBERTARIANISM IN SOMALIA. THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING P

    FIXING THE FALSE CRITICISM: LIBERTARIANISM IN SOMALIA.

    THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING PROPERTY RIGHTS WHERE THEY DO NOT EXIST IS STILL OPEN.

    To start with, definitions help us communicate clearly. And they both force us to be honest, and prevent others from making false arguments against us.

    1) Liberty is a sentiment. It is a minority sentiment. It is a sentiment held by some percentage of the people that favors the ability to obtain new experiences without external constraint, as long as they harm no others in doing so. (see Haidt)

    2) Libertarianism is a political bias. That bias favors various forms of minimal government. It eschews the concentration of power, and the loss of sovereignty. It is a sentiment that is embedded in the western tradition. That western tradition is the egalitarian union of aristocracy. That Aristocratic Egalitarianism is a social adaptation to early Indo-European battle tactics which required independent but coordinated action by self-funded warriors. This social strategy allowed a professionalized minority using advanced weapon technology to conquer or fend off conquerors with much greater numbers. (see Duchesne)

    3) Libertarianism it is a philosophical framework authored by Murray Rothbard. This framework argues that all possible rights are reducible to articulated property rights. It contains errors. (Which I have discussed elsewhere). Those errors are significant in that they are morally, and therefore socially and economically regressive. However, the fundamental insight that human actions can be reduced to property rights remains valid, and the errors in Rothbard’s incomplete ethical framework are repairable.

    Rothbard was unable to solve the problem of institutions, so his framework describes little more than a secular moral religion of opposition to the state. Hoppe solved the problem of cooperative institutions, but did not correct Rothbard’s (or Mises’) initial errors. He did not solve the problem of heterogeneous societies which we live in. So for these two reasons he has described small governments. (I have tried to repair Mises and Rothbard’s errors, and use Hoppe’s insights to create solutions for the problem of heterogeneous and therefore large governments consisting of voluntary institutions which preserve the aristocratic egalitarian ethical system of property rights. But my work is incomplete and not yet available for analysis and criticism.)

    4) Anarchy is a) a state of disorder – an inability for humans to organize. Propertarians argue that this means little more than an absence of homogeneous property rights. b) Anarchy is a Utopian idea of an ordered society without any articulated form of order other than human instincts.

    5) Property is a form of establishing order – the ability of humans to organize. It is a very simple rule that matches, with some significant variation, the human moral instinct, while allowing us to cooperate in a vast division of knowledge and labor, the result of which is lower prices and increased choices.

    Since a) property can vary from the purely private to the purely common, and since b) the utility of property at any point on that spectrum is different for those with different abilities, and c) since the genetic bias of men and women has shown us a demonstrated preference for different points on that spectrum, which better suit the reproductive strategies of each gender, therefore, the preferred monopoly of property rights varies by class and gender, as well as, perhaps, race whenever a population is heterogeneous.

    6) Anarchism is a philosophical research program the purpose of which is to find institutional solutions (organizations, processes and rules) that are an alternative to a monopoly power that we grant to the state, when we create a government in order to institute some set of property rights, and therefore establish order.

    DISCUSSION

    Since our invention of it, we cannot seem to limit the republican or democratic state to a) the defense of those property rights, and b) the concentration of capital for shared investment at the same time. And by doing so, force people to cooperate in the market, instead of by violence, or the proxy of physical violence we call politics. So, because of that failure of democratic institutions, the anarchic research program seeks to use competition for services to eliminate the corporeal state’s monopoly on power, while maintaining a monopoly on the articulated enumeration of some set of property rights within a geography.

    The libertarian sentiment, and the libertarian philosophy (which are different things) do not answer this problem. The anarchic research program has attempted to. And any attempt by libertarians to state that we have solved this problem is either a failure to understand the state of our intellectual development, or an intentional misrepresentation of it.

    But in no case do Anarchists or Libertarians suggest there is no ‘governance’. A set of articulated property rights and a judiciary that resolves conflicts over property, is a government. It is just a reactive government. A government or rules. Judges under the common law cannot make law. They can discover it. And they can be overruled by other judges through market competition. But they cannot proactively make law. As such, there is a government under all libertarian models that have been articulated to any degree.

    The problem remains only in how we first establish a set of property rights. In the west this is not as difficult as elsewhere because those property rights are native to the framework of thought that we inherited with our Aristocratic Egalitarianism. Anyone who is enfranchised (fights) has a right to property which is not abridge-able by his peers. We extended the requirement to fighting, first to those who demonstrated nobility through service of any kind (chivalry). And third to those who demonstrated nobility through exchange and trade. But the principle of property is fundamental regardless of which means one earns his enfranchisement.

    When anarchists say that they advocate anarchy, it means that they eschew the concentration of power to alter the set of property rights involuntarily, since it breaks with the Aristocratic Egalitarian ethics. Ethics which allow each of us who is enfranchised to experiement and add value to ourselves and society as long as we commit no involuntary transfer from others who are enfranchised.

    CREATING THAT SYSTEM

    What anarchists and libertarians of all stripes have failed to do is describe how we create a monopoly definition of property rights without the application of force to do it. In the west, the aristocracy created it out of habitual necessity. And they did it by force. Rome in particular was a powerful machine that mandated a set of property rights and then defended them because it was simply profitable to do so.

    CRITICS AND ADVOCATES

    Critics are wrong in the sense that libertarianism will not work in somalia. But they are right in that libertarians and anarchists have not provided a means by which to institute a monopoly of property rights without it first existing.

    FILLING THE HOLES IN ANARCHISM AND LIBERTARIANISM

    As I’ve stated above, we are less than a century into our research program at articulating our ancient system of cooperation that we call the libertarian sentiment, but which is more accurately termed the political system called Aristocratic Egalitarianism with its dependency on property rights.

    While I have filled the hole in our ethics. The hole in our institutional process of implementing a monopoly of individual property rights by other than organized violence is still in need of filling.

    And we should ask our critics to help us answer that problem, rather than deny we have it.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-11 08:45:00 UTC

  • The Alternative To Bureaucratic Monopolistic Government : That Makes Communitarians Happy

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    [T]here is only one law, and that is property. If the different forms of property are understood: life, private property, common property, norms as property, and if the forms of theft are understood: risk transfer, indirect involuntary transfer, direct involuntary transfer, theft, fraud and violence, then no other law need exist, and people need be educated to confirm to no other laws. But once the principle of property is violated, so that we allow various forms of theft, we must create a multiplicity of artificial laws the same way that by telling one lie we must tell a dozen to hide it, and a dozen for each of them, and a dozen for each of them. Complexity in life comes from lies in all their forms. Telling the truth makes for a simple life. Complexity in the politics of life comes from abuses of the one law of property. Respecting property in all its forms makes for a simple life, and a simple government. All else that we need can come from contracts and not laws. Contracts exist within the one law of property, in all its forms. Contracts can be fulfilled, they have a definite time period, they require specific performance, and specific When you move to an area, you can sign the contracts that are currently in place, or not move to that area. And the contracts may not violate the one law of property, and judges can resolve conflicts over them easily. The problem judges face is largely to do with the complex network of ‘commands’ and institutionalized thefts masquerading as laws that distort or violate the law of property. The second problem judges face comes from the complexity that arises by justifying the monopoly of the state: the artificial scarcity of judges, the necessity of taking cases rather than taking cases on merit, and the inability to specialize. And the side effect of violating the law of property, is that we MUST degenerate into totalitarianism of commands: the lies and the impact of the lies, the commands masquerading as law, the thefts masquerading as contracts. We must degenerate, because there is no longer a common principle that these laws share. And it is the commonality of principles which determines the habits of the population that must make judgements day in and day out over generations. People who must memorize overlapping complex commands, will soon abandon them. There is only one law, and that is property. The rest is lies masquerading as law. The purpose of which is to empower government with the ability to enslave. [D]oes this mean that redistribution is not warranted, and that we must rely on voluntary investment? Or that the unfortunate must be left to charity? No. It does not. If we have contracts that require performance there must be a return on that performance, otherwise it is not an exchange, but a theft. Markets must have consumers and providers: buyers and sellers just as do shopping malls. just as the mall obtains profits for its shareholders, so do the marketplace’s investors obtain profits for their investment in their market: their geography. To become an investor in that market one need only respect property, and the contracts that are required of the participants in that market. And as an investor, one is due returns on it. Since we all take the same actions to join the market, by adhering to contract, and the one law of property, which are payments in the forgone opportunities for theft, we are equally due returns on our investment in that market. Since we unequally take commercial risks in that market we are unequally due returns from our commercial risks, even if we are equally due returns from our investment in forgone opportunity, which we call respect for the one law of property: which makes the market possible. The commission that investors make on transactions in their market – commissions which can come from sales transactions, or rental fees that come from uses of the commons, can vary, and can be progressive. Otherwise there is an involuntary transfer from the market. However, the contracted terms must not be open to alteration. Because if they are, then there is an opportunity for the majority of shareholders to steal from the minority of shareholders through the act of fraud that we call ‘bait and switch.’ If services are privatized, so that they are not run by a bureaucracy, and contracts cannot be violated by that bureaucracy, and all relations outside of those contracts are voluntary, then we do not create the problem with government: bureaucracy and regulation which manufacture commands and organized thefts masquerading as law. If we do not have ‘elected representatives’ but hire professionals who must respect that law of property, then we do not create the opportunity for government to be a vehicle by which individuals and the artifice of bureaucracy can be purchased by special interests whose entire function is to violate the one law of property and the contracts that have been established. Elected representatives were only necessary because of a lack of ability to communicate preferences in time and space, and the lack of education in the population. If it is not possible to violate the law of property, only to issue new contracts as old one’s expire, and if these contracts are marketed like any other good or service, then they can be purchased by investors who vote their shares. There is no need for the system of theft and corruption we call bureaucratic government. [T]here may indeed be a need for a judiciary. And a record of the common laws which illustrate the means by which knowledge of property evolves over time. And there is certainly the need to hire administrative talent to manage the investment that all members make in their market by their forgone opportunities for fraud theft and violence. But there is no need to allow them to create laws, rather than to administer contracts. There is no need to grant them that special ability to violate the law of property. To create an opportunity for individuals to be purchased by special interests – which we call corruption. There is no need to create a vehicle for our enslavement. Because we are no longer limited in our ability to communicate. So we no longer need to delegate our decision making to anyone. Society is the market. Property is required to make the market. And legislative representative government is the means by which we destroy the institution of property which makes that market possible. It is not a government that protects people. It is the judiciary and the common law, under the one law of property. If all people are possible to sue, and no person is given special protection from it, and the court has the ability to enforce the one law of property, and punishment is limited to restitution, then the institution of property will naturally prevail. We only have problems of abuse within capitalism because the government engages in corporatism: granting thefts we call privileges. SO this is not an appeal to anarchy. It is not an appeal to the absence of government per se. It is government by law: the one law, that no one can violate. Where we do not ask mere human beings to both respect the one law, the rule of law, while at the same time, create an institutionalized means by which their sole purpose is to violate that institutions of property. That we even engage in so foolish a conflict of motives is confirmation of our ability to use the power of myth to deny the obvious. Society is easy to construct with the one rule of property. It is easy to destroy without it.

  • On Proximity To The Dark Enlightenment

    THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT [T]he novel concept that the enlightenment’s optimistic, heroic, equalitarian view of man has proven to be wrong, that the dirty secret of our genome project is that we are profoundly unequal, and that by consequence our civic religion based upon this error, as well as the political system that we use to ritualize and celebrate that religion, is simply a new mysticism that replaces the old mysticism, with an equally false premise. While I am not technically part of this movement, because the purpose of that movement is to understand, make arguments for, and criticize enlightenment equalitarianism, and not to provide solutions given that we know that it is false, I do, in effect, subscribe to its premise. The difference is, that I am working to solve the problem of political order – cooperation in a division of knowledge and labor – DESPITE our inequality, rather than debate who should or should not have power over others because of either equality or inequality. I have abandoned both the optimistic libertarian as well as rational classical liberal prescriptions for social order, because both of them rely upon a requirement that members of a economic polity ‘believe’ in the sanctity or utility of the same social and political order. Both libertarianism and classical liberalism as currently structured require from their adherents a homogenous preference for means and ends. And as I have argued extensively, it is not possible for us to have these similar means and ends, especially given that women’s reproductive and social strategy is in direct conflict to that of men’s. While it may be possible to compromise between men of different classes, it is not possible to compromise between the genders without the armistice provided by the nuclear family. And the nuclear family is a product of that settled and static agrarian order – an order which we no longer live in. Without that agrarian order the truce between male and female reproductive strategies is broken and both fight through the violence of the state to obtain their preferred order at the expense of the other’s preference. While we are unequal, it doesn’t really matter which gender, class, race, or culture is superior or inferior unless you are arguing that one group should control another. While it’s true that some groups are superior to others – and it’s true that much of that superiority comes from the distributions of certain talents within that group and therefore the norms that develop to suit that distribution – that acknowledgement doesn’t, in itself, help us at all. Because even if we are unequal, we must cooperate peacefully for mutual benefit – if only so that we do not engage in mutually harmful conflict. And while this is a less positive and inspirational view of man, it is both true and utilitarian, and as such provides us with a superior premise with which we may create constructive institutional solutions to the problem of cooperation between groups with different distributions of talents, and therefore norms and preferences. If we possess the knowledge that we are unequal and in permanent opposition on desired ends, the question then, is how do we create institutions of human cooperation that do not rely upon a false assumption of equality of ability, interest or preference? The market provides us with some insights, because the market illustrates how people can cooperate on means even if they have opposing ends, or are unaware of each other’s desired ends. But contrary to libertarian reasoning, there are problems that cannot be solved within the market structure because of human moral sensibilities. Mostly, that we create governments largely to make both normative and physical capital investments, which include prohibitions on involuntary transfer or privatization of those normative and physical capital investments. ie: humans consider appropriation of the commons cheating and they deplore cheating. And universally demonstrate that they deplore it, in every conceivable manner without exception. The most obvious example is that it has been extremely difficult to create the normative perception that competition is a good rather than a theft of the commons, despite the pervasive evidence that competition benefits all. The structural problem with our political systems and our philosophy of government is that we carry with them the idea of an abstract common good that is somehow achievable through intentional cooperation on ends. Rather than achievable through unintended cooperation on ends but cooperation on means. And therefore we rationalize the creation of laws in support of a fictional and unknowable common good, instead of using government as a vehicle for constructing contracts that consist of voluntary exchanges between groups or classes as we do in the market, and prohibiting cheating on those contracts. This contractual rather than legislative government allows us to cooperate on means if not ends in those circumstances where ‘cheating’ would create a barrier to shared investment. The English managed to accomplish this feat of inter-class cooperation with parliaments and divided houses. Unfortunately, we did not add additional houses for the proletariat and instead, given our new religious doctrine of the equality of man, we collapsed our houses rather than expanded them. As such, what has occurred, is that government is no longer the vehicle by which people with separate interests reach compromise via exchange for mutual benefit. But that we use every political and extra-political process to attempt to gain control of the monopolistic and dictatorial process of law making. In America the conservatives have hired the capitalists to defend them from government and the proletarians and single women (who are the majority of women) have hired the government to extract revenues from the middle classes. The conservatives use think tanks and the progressives use popular media. The list is infinite. While I am still working out what I believe are the particulars, it is quite possible to have institutions that promote cooperation among people with dissimilar interests. We need not revert to small states – although that would be preferable in almost every way I can imagine. And even within small states, we do not have to conduct constant political competitions all of which are predicated upon lies, because our civic religion and its political institutions are predicated upon the enlightenment lie of human equality of both ability and interest. The Dark Enlightenment presents us with an uncomfortable scientific reality that is as painfully inescapable for our secular religion as was Darwin for the mystical religion of the church. And I am, in some way, part of this movement in the sense that I acknowledge the truth of human inequality. But that said, I do not believe our political philosophy can accomodate this reality without practical institutional solutions. I am not interested in complaints about an obvious institutional ailment, I’m interested in solutions to that ailment. To argue that one political system or another will place one class or another in control of other classes is to argue that some group will agree to suffer deprivation without receiving something in exchange for their adherence to norm, custom and rule. This is as illogical an assumption as is equality. Until both conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians understand that we require institutions that accomodate the insights of the Dark Enlightenment that do not involve re-nationalization (despite it’s attractiveness) they will continue to spout what is in effect, a religion of HOMOGENEITY OF INTEREST, which is as false as the homogeneity of ability that they criticize in the enlightenment. Our problem is not in developing a consensus on what is best. It is in developing institutions that allow us to cooperate in complex political orders the way that we cooperate in the market: on means if not ends, using contracts, not laws, because privatization of the commons or ‘cheating’ is too high a transaction cost to be overcome without institutions that satisfy the moral prohibition on cheating. In this sense, we have our political philosophy backwards. We think we must create homogeneity in order to achieve a collective end. When in fact, we need to achieve multitudinous ends, and can only do so, if we prohibit ‘cheating’. Morality in all cultures is a set of rules that prohibit cheating – transfer of the commons. It is a necessary and irreversible property of the human animal, without which cooperation could not have evolved. And prohibition on cheating, so that capital can be concentrated, both normative and physical, is, after the ability to calculate using money and numbers, the primary institutional development necessary for a division of knowledge and labor – from which all our prosperity descends. Curt Doolittle December 3, 2012 11:00AM, Kiev, Ukraine.