Curt Doolittle

Form: Full Essay

  • THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT (Coined by John Derbyshire) The novel concept that the en

    THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT

    (Coined by John Derbyshire)

    The 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.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-03 04:24:00 UTC

  • As someone who built a sizeable company specifically with the intent of experime

    As someone who built a sizeable company specifically with the intent of experimenting with libertarian management principles, I can argue that not only does it lead to a high growth company because of transparency and meritocracy, but it’s also a more pleasant place to work because people are empowered – they feel sovereign.

    HOWEVER HERE ARE SOME OBSERVATIONS

    1) CLASS

    libertarianism is a meritocratic, and therefore middle and upper middle class philosophy. If you want to have day laborers, it’s going to be less successful than if you have engineers because the former are less comfortable problem solving than the latter because the former are more open to cheating then the latter (this isn’t necessary that’s just how it works out due to class sorting and peer association).

    While we libertarians feel that liberty is the desire of all, it is not. It is the desire of those of us who have an intellectual advantage. The vast majority of people want only enough liberty to choose who directs them. They do not want to master the information necessary to be fully directed.

    In that sense, liberty is classically defined as consisting of multiple levels:

    1) Freedom of life, property and relationships (liberty)

    2) Freedom to form organizations (association)

    3) Freedom to choose leadership (corporation)

    4) Freedom to ostracize (nationalism)

    5) Freedom to convert or expand (imperialism)

    We libertarians agree with the first three, conservatives and some conservative libertarians with the first four, and neo-conservatives with all five.

    So one cannot easily create a libertarian organization across class lines, unless the majority of control is in the hands of those who wish to preserve that libertarian ordere, and its constant state of variation, meritocracy and competition.

    2) EXPOSE EVERYONE TO PRICES AND PROFIT

    Libertarianism and meritocracy require all people are exposed to the pricing system and its affects. Prices and profit are truths. Opinions are not. Bureaucracy is a synonym for insulation from the pricing system. Engineering this into many companies is extremely difficult. This is because many administrative disciplines are security rather than merit oriented (accounting for example).

    3) ELIMINATE ALL DEDICATED MANAGEMENT

    Middle management provides little if any value in almost all organizations. Knowledge exists at the bottom, and the knowledge to concentrate scarce capital at the top. Design your company to have no pure management. Everyone is responsible for profit. If they are not then you do not need them, and should organize your people differently. Usually it is better to compensate someone very dedicated to produce less profit and split time between leadership/mentoring and productivity/profitability. But if they are not themselves materially productive it is just a countdown before they become valueless. This is counter to human behavior because we all seek to avoid work and subsist upon rents. Management that does not either sell something or produce something is rent seeking.

    4) REORGANIZE YOUR COMPANY FREQUENTLY – EVERY SIX MONTHS

    Try to get your top talent to know more of the business by rotating them through different positions in the company. This will prevent your organization from calcifying in an attempt to be ‘efficient’ at delivering a fixed business model rather than ‘responsive’ and therefore efficient at delivering whatever business model is necessary to satisfy the needs of the market. (Note that it is possible to be a market follower and emphasize efficiency, but libertarianism is an effort to spur innovation. Leave it to liberals to live under the illusion that any commercial model represents a steady state.) Liberty is the source of innovation through competition. But competition creates multiple opportunity for loss.

    5) TALENT

    Marginally competitive companies possess superior talent in key roles. I devote at least a third of my time to recruiting talent.

    7) PROCESSES

    Processes calcify and compensate for stupidity and ignorance. Processes attempt to be efficient in order to minimize the need for interpersonal problem solving. However, this also means that processes are inhibitors to innovation and collaboration. Therefore all processes in your organization may be overridden if a) increase profitability without negative externalities. b) increase customer customer loyalty. (loyalty is meaningful. satisfaction is not. know the difference. satisfaction is only expressed meaningfully as loyalty.) c) increase the chance of opportunity generation without increasing the cost of opportunity generation. You must instill this culture in people so that the understand. Economics is the study, largely, of externalities, since internal exchanges are trivial, and externalities are complicated.

    8) SALES

    My experience is that companies under-invest in sales, and over-invest in fear. The people who generate sales are the most valuable people in your company. There are no exceptions. However, people who can generate sales are contextually dependent. Second, the good ones will only come to places where they are adequately rewarded. So when you are small you cannot generally hire talent that is worth what you pay them. Expect a 60-60% failure rate.

    9) EVERYONE IS A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER

    Every single person you meed is a potential customer. Just like actors and politicians lose their freedom because some paparazzi might catch them at an inopportune moment, an entrepreneur loses the freedom of self expression. (I chose expressly to break this rule because of my intellectual interests, but largely this worked to my advantage as self brand promotion. It turns out that if you will say really controversial things in public and try to defend them, then customers will assume you will give them the same unfiltered advice. It worked for me. In general though, I do not recommend it.)

    10) MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

    As a CEO, you can act as an investor, accountant, operator, salesman or craftsman. Or some combination. Because of personality differences it is unlikely that you will be even moderately successful at more than two. Know your strengths and hire the people who compensate for your weaknesses, but possess your strengths in some minor capacity. (I am a salesman, investor, and craftsman. I hire people who are operators and accountants to actually run the details of the business. Jack Welsh is different, Steve Jobs was different, Bill Gates is different, and Warren Buffett is different. And the guys who turnaround companies that are in trouble are different still. If you are entrepreneurial you are best off being sales and craftsman, because this means you master your industry and its customers. if you are a talented executive in a larger bureaucracy it is better to be operational and financial.

    11) PEER REVIEWS

    Conduct stack ranking peer reviews, with written comments at least once per year and exit the bottom ten percent of the company. (I usually was only able to exit the bottom 4% because the community building within the company was so strong that people would fight hard for underperformers if they thought that they could help them improve. This then creates passionate employees out of both the mentors and those people who were given help in succeeding.

    12) PITCHING AND DESIGNING

    Create some venue where employees suggest new uses for products, or new products, or new services, or pitches for customers. WE were always suprised at how many quiet people from the bottom of the company turned out to be our best idea poeople. It also makes it impossible for others to take credit for someone’s idea.

    13) CREATE PARTIES AND AFTER-PARTIES

    If you can find an excuse to spend a few hundred dollars taking people to a club, restaurant or entertainment venue where they can play, then do it. Every possible time. Have a big event at least once a year that requires formal dress, and is not in competition with some other holiday, just to celebrate each other. Terminate people who do not participate in social events.

    14) HIRE FAMILY AND FRIENDS IF THEY HAVE THE TALENT – NEPOTISM IS THE BEST LOYALTY YOU CAN BUY

    Loyalty is the willingness to absorb losses of opportunity for one’s self in order to create opportunity for the group to whom you are a member. Families do this by nature. Never hire ANY family member who cannot perform, or any friend, and never sacrifice your hiring process. But never discount a friend or family. They will work much harder at group cohesion than outsiders.

    EXPENSIVE?

    If any of this sounds either inefficient or expensive then you should do something other than go into business. People are tribal animals. they calculate all sorts of things with and against one another every day, every hour, every second.

    Make sure that they are calculating something that binds them together to create products and services for your company, in the service of customers, that can be delivered to them at a profit. Because profit is our only way of knowing that we have made use of the world’s resources to serve others, in a manner that they demonstrate by their dear actions rather than their cheap words.

    CLOSING

    I have spent too much time on this post already, but perhaps it will do one person some good. And if so, then I’ve passed it on, and done the moral thing. 🙂

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 05:47:00 UTC

  • LIBERTARIANISM AND INSTITUTIONS The mysterious criticism that libertarians decry

    LIBERTARIANISM AND INSTITUTIONS

    The mysterious criticism that libertarians decry all institutions is a false one. And if it were true, it would be self contradictory. Property is an institution, even if only an informal one. One cannot both argue that institutions are unnecessary, or universally malicious when property itself is an institution.

    And morals are institutions too, even if they are all, in the final analysis derivations of the institution of property as it is implemented by different groups. This fact helps us understand why some moral codes are superior to others: private, several property both allows more calculation of opportunities, and provides the incentive to act upon them

    Formal institutions are not contrary to liberty. Tribal leaders who resolve conflicts, and independent judges are institutions. A code of common law is an institution. A network of banks, and the practice of interest are institutions And perhaps the least intuitive to westerners who live within these institutions, the informal institution of objective truth, its implementation as truth telling, as well as the institution of ethical universalism by which we forgo opportunities to benefit self, family, and tribe, and restrict ourselves to actions that can be subject to the market – a counter-intuitive concept which we live every day, is the source of the germanic west’s limited corruption by comparison to other cultures. And the realization that our ethics is governed by the market rather than self, family or tribe, is alien to westerners who cannot conceive of any alternative way of thinking.

    If a group of people create a homeowners association, or found a new city, o even a new country, as long as they deprive no one else of property, either directly or indirectly by doing so, even if the formation of a such a contract is one to which all members and their guests and progeny must adhere, is not a violation of liberty. Even if they, like shopping mall owners, require that visitors and new members abide by that contract.

    These are all forms of institutions. So, institutions are not prohibited by the desire for liberty. It is not institutions themselves that eradicate liberty, since liberty is the result of the institution of property. It is human beings functioning within a bureaucracy that comprises an institution that eradicates liberty. Bureaucracies must of necessity, out of a lack of choice, act for the purpose of perpetuating the institution itself, or for the purpose of simplifying the job of its members. And both self perpetuation and self service are caused by the monopoly power granted to these institutions, when they are insulated from competition.

    Because while rules are abstractions which of themselves have no self interest to express, people are real things, and in the midst of complexity, have no cognitive choice but to rely upon simple rules of thumb, instinct, self interest and moral judgement.

    And those moral judgements, because of genetic necessity, vary. To argue otherwise is simply advocating totalitarian eugenics, while making the error that we are in fact materially equal, rather than equal in our right to property. That is, by the extension of enfranchisement to the lower classes, those with alternative allocations of property rights, those with habits of familialism and tribalism, and in particular, with the addition of women to the pool of voters and to the market for consumption, production and trade, – for whom males possess a polar reproductives strategy, all have quite different moral codes. Ad those moral codes are a gene expression. We have given those with alternative moral codes, the freedom to alter the western definitions of property rights to favor their preferred method of gene expression. And the more natural one. Aristocracy, that is, meritocracy, is a rarity. Just as are truth telling, and universalism.

    Bureaucracy was created to enforce homogeneity. And we are no longer homogenous. Any bureaucratic institution that exists to create homogeneity is by definition immoral, and enforcing not just self service, but self service by forced involuntary transfer from some to others, which in turn violates not just our property rights but our genetic composition and rights of reproduction. Rather than a bureaucracy of homogeneity, the only rule a population needs is several, personal, property, and the means by which to resolve conflicts over its transfer, and the willingness of some individuals to use their capacity for violence to maintain that right to personal property.

    So it is bureaucracy that is the threat to our freedom. When we criticize government broadly, we are making a mistake that confuses people outside the movement. A government is a set of institutions that assist people in cooperating in a division of knowledge and labor. It is the institutions that allow us to express and make use of the institution of property. As such a government is not necessarily bad, as Rothbard’s diasporic voluntarism, and Hoppe’s private government have show us. Is not government in the abstract then that is systemically corrupting of man. It is the abrogation of property rights and the very existence of a bureaucracy within a bureaucratic state that sap our liberty and all that follows from it.

    -Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-14 20:40:00 UTC

  • An Example Of The Sea Change In Libertarianism

    ‘AN EXAMPLE OF THE SEA CHANGE IN LIBERTARIANISM (I posted this in response to a comment on The Skeptical Libertarian, which was critical of Tom Woods’ jibe that TSL was not skeptical enough of the government. It’s an opportunity to illustrate the current changes in the libertarian movement. These comments get lost if I don’t post them on my own timeline so I’ve copied it here for reference, and for those who might want to read it.)1) LIBERTARIANISM IS A SENTIMENT AND WE HAVE CREATED A SPECTRUM OF INSTITUTIONAL SOLUTIONS The ROTHBARDIANS are the anarchic WING of LIBERTARIANISM. Libertarianism describes a spectrum of political solutions of which Rothbardian Anarchism is only one permutation. 2) ROTHBARD”S INSIGHT The Rothbardians were successful largely because Rothbard’s PROPERTARIANISM, in his Ethics of Liberty created a rational framework that could be used to defeat marxist arguments, where both conservatives and classical liberal libertarians had failed to provide such a rational framework. Marxism is philosophically rigorous. Rothbard made libertarianism philosophically rigorous. He then created a revisionist history to support his arguments. 3) THE PROBLEM WITH ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS There is a tragic weakness in Rothbardianism that invalidates much of his reliance on Natural Law. THat is that human beings are twice as motivated to suppress ‘cheating’ in others as they are to create personal gain. Rothbardianism provides no vehicle for suppressing ‘cheating’. In particular, the export of involuntary transfers to third parties. Hoppe managed to repair much of Rothbardianism, but his written works do not successfully capture his oral arguments, nor is his rather turgid german prose as accessible as Rothbard’s. So Rothbardianism remains the gospel of the anti-state movement. (I’ve tried to capture these ethical problems on my site. But my work is quite philosophically dense and not accessible either.) 4) THE MISES INSTITUTE These ROTHBARDIANS are concentrated in the Mises organization, which was purposefully constructed by Lew Rockwell. The Mises organization is trying to monopolize the language of libertarianism using Alinsky’s model for Marxism. The idea is to create a ‘religion’, because emotionally activated advocates are more effective, loyal and missionary than are rationally educated constituents. This strategy is not something they are shy about. (I’ve written about this frequently.) 5) THE NEED FOR ARGUMENTS As part of their intellectual program, Rothbardians provide arguments against all state activities that we assume cannot be provided from the market. They acknowledge that market solutions produce DIFFERENT externalities than does government, but they state that market externalities are LESS BAD than government externalities. 6) TOM WOODS When Tom Woods criticizes others, it’s in this context: he’s saying that the externalities produced by odd science are less bad than government regulations and mandates. This is somewhat hard to argue with. However, it is vulnerable to criticism because human beings have such high distaste for ‘cheating’. And they consider silly science and snake oil cheating, but are unable to determine which items are snake oil and which are not. And as Kuhn showed us, science is prone to paradigmatic error. So we rarely know when science is junk science or not. 7) GENERATIONAL SHIFT IN THE PROBLEM SET We should note that there is a generational change in libertarianism at the moment. We are moving from a suite of intellectuals who fought against socialism to a suite of intellectuals who fight against redistributive social democracy, and another that more closely matches the white conservative movement, now that whites are acting as a minority. There is a certain surrender to demographic change going on. Also, the polarization of the electorate due to the south abandoning it’s prohibition on the Republican party, and the reaction of whites to immigration that has made them a minority, has caused frustration with the government that has made the youngest generation of voters the most libertarian in history. But they are socially positive if institutionally negative. And this has created a problem for the Rothbardians. In this changing generational environment the dominance of Rothbardians in the intellectual debate has caused a number of reactions. I. First, the other sects (Cato, Bleeding Hearts, Heritage, various others, including my Propertarianism) both congratulate Lew and his MIses organization for their success at promoting libertarian ideas, and adopt those communication strategies that the mises organization was visionary in employing on the internet. II. Second, there is a limit to the number of acolytes that will adopt the anti-social rothbardian ideology. (although not the Hoppean version.) We are at that limit. The Mises organization is making changes to eliminate the ‘whacky factor’. This includes cleaning up their blog and limiting it to intellectuals. So the Mises org is adapting as well. III. Third, and probably not as obvious, is that science has increasingly undermined the ‘progressive’ vision of human nature, and is on its way to confirming the conservative vision of human nature. We are slowly retiring the equality meme’s nonsensical environmental presumption in favor of the conservative genetic argument. The current argument is 60/40 and I suspect we will eventually conclude it is an 80/20 proposition. It may be too late, but the ideological tide has turned. This will make it possible to address institutional solutions rationally in a way that has been impossible for seventy years. IV. Fourth, it is becoming obvious from the data that classical liberalism’s multi-house model cannot survive the addition of women to the voting pool. Men and women have different reproductive strategies and different moral codes which agrarian marriage and the nuclear family managed to accomodate. However, since males skew individualist, and women skew collectivist, we cannot use majority rule to accomodate both moral codes. We have no ‘houses’ which will allow the creating of exchanges rather than ‘takings’. The conservative think tanks are so enamored of the past that they cannot solve this problem. All think tanks, all ideologies, all movements, currently seek to gain a majority of like-minded individuals under majority rule, rather than to construct a government where these groups can conduct exchanges. The market allows us to cooperate on means if not ends. The population will need a means to do so as well. And to do so where ‘cheating’ is prohibited. This is why government will persist: as a means of prohibiting cheating. TRENDS For the first two reasons above, you should expect to see the eccentricity of the Rothbarian movement coming out of the Mises institute to be less supportive of heretical science, and more explicit in its use of arguments that discuss the differences in externalities between government and market solutions. I do not know if they will be smart enough to try to move from a Rothbardian criticism-dominated, to a Hoppeian solution-dominated framework, and therefor provide an institutional solution that is competitive to and superior to that of the classical liberals. And I can’t imagine that they would try to co-opt the classical liberal wing (where the money is), and by doing so suggest the entire spectrum of libertarian institutional solutions, but they are the people who could successfully accomplish it if they tried. I just can’t see them being that pragmatic. You do not build an ideology then become a pragmatist. That would take new leadership. The Heritage organization is data driven and has wide appeal. But it is not philosophically rigorous, and it does not recommend changes to the existing institutions that would accomodate contemporary reality. Cato is neither data driven nor philosophically rigorous, but corresponds correctly to classical sentiments. Rothbardianism and Hoppianism as well as Hayekianism are all philosophically rigorous systems of thought. But Rothbardianism is not going to ever be acceptable to enough people to gain office and change institutions. It is a brilliant ideological strategy. It worked. We shoujld all congratulate Lew Rockwell on his vision. But Rothbardianism is not an institutional solution. Because a Christian people will not tolerate the rampant cheating present in the ‘ethics of the bazaar’ that Rothbard advocates. and they’re right to reject it. They spent too many centuries trying to escape it, and build the High Trust Society. Perhaps the only high trust society that ever existed.

  • AN EXAMPLE OF THE SEA CHANGE IN LIBERTARIANISM (I posted this in response to a c

    AN EXAMPLE OF THE SEA CHANGE IN LIBERTARIANISM

    (I posted this in response to a comment on The Skeptical Libertarian, which was critical of Tom Woods’ jibe that TSL was not skeptical enough of the government. It’s an opportunity to illustrate the current changes in the libertarian movement. These comments get lost if I don’t post them on my own timeline so I’ve copied it here for reference, and for those who might want to read it.)

    1) LIBERTARIANISM IS A SENTIMENT AND WE HAVE CREATED A SPECTRUM OF INSTITUTIONAL SOLUTIONS

    The ROTHBARDIANS are the anarchic WING of LIBERTARIANISM. Libertarianism describes a spectrum of political solutions of which Rothbardian Anarchism is only one permutation.

    2) ROTHBARD”S INSIGHT

    The Rothbardians were successful largely because Rothbard’s PROPERTARIANISM, in his Ethics of Liberty created a rational framework that could be used to defeat marxist arguments, where both conservatives and classical liberal libertarians had failed to provide such a rational framework. Marxism is philosophically rigorous. Rothbard made libertarianism philosophically rigorous. He then created a revisionist history to support his arguments.

    3) THE PROBLEM WITH ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS

    There is a tragic weakness in Rothbardianism that invalidates much of his reliance on Natural Law. THat is that human beings are twice as motivated to suppress ‘cheating’ in others as they are to create personal gain. Rothbardianism provides no vehicle for suppressing ‘cheating’. In particular, the export of involuntary transfers to third parties. Hoppe managed to repair much of Rothbardianism, but his written works do not successfully capture his oral arguments, nor is his rather turgid german prose as accessible as Rothbard’s. So Rothbardianism remains the gospel of the anti-state movement. (I’ve tried to capture these ethical problems on my site. But my work is quite philosophically dense and not accessible either.)

    4) THE MISES INSTITUTE

    These ROTHBARDIANS are concentrated in the Mises organization, which was purposefully constructed by Lew Rockwell. The Mises organization is trying to monopolize the language of libertarianism using Alinsky’s model for Marxism. The idea is to create a ‘religion’, because emotionally activated advocates are more effective, loyal and missionary than are rationally educated constituents. This strategy is not something they are shy about. (I’ve written about this frequently.)

    5) THE NEED FOR ARGUMENTS

    As part of their intellectual program, Rothbardians provide arguments against all state activities that we assume cannot be provided from the market. They acknowledge that market solutions produce DIFFERENT externalities than does government, but they state that market externalities are LESS BAD than government externalities.

    6) TOM WOODS

    When Tom Woods criticizes others, it’s in this context: he’s saying that the externalities produced by odd science are less bad than government regulations and mandates. This is somewhat hard to argue with. However, it is vulnerable to criticism because human beings have such high distaste for ‘cheating’. And they consider silly science and snake oil cheating, but are unable to determine which items are snake oil and which are not. And as Kuhn showed us, science is prone to paradigmatic error. So we rarely know when science is junk science or not.

    7) GENERATIONAL SHIFT IN THE PROBLEM SET

    We should note that there is a generational change in libertarianism at the moment. We are moving from a suite of intellectuals who fought against socialism to a suite of intellectuals who fight against redistributive social democracy, and another that more closely matches the white conservative movement, now that whites are acting as a minority. There is a certain surrender to demographic change going on.

    Also, the polarization of the electorate due to the south abandoning it’s prohibition on the Republican party, and the reaction of whites to immigration that has made them a minority, has caused frustration with the government that has made the youngest generation of voters the most libertarian in history. But they are socially positive if institutionally negative. And this has created a problem for the Rothbardians.

    In this changing generational environment the dominance of Rothbardians in the intellectual debate has caused a number of reactions.

    First, the other sects (Cato, Bleeding Hearts, Heritage, various others, including my Propertarianism) both congratulate Lew and his MIses organization for their success at promoting libertarian ideas, and adopt those communication strategies that the mises organization was visionary in employing on the internet.

    Second, there is a limit to the number of acolytes that will adopt the anti-social rothbardian ideology. (although not the Hoppean version.) We are at that limit. The Mises organization is making changes to eliminate the ‘whacky factor’. This includes cleaning up their blog and limiting it to intellectuals. So the Mises org is adapting as well.

    Third, and probably not as obvious, is that science has increasingly undermined the ‘progressive’ vision of human nature, and is on its way to confirming the conservative vision of human nature. We are slowly retiring the equality meme’s nonsensical environmental presumption in favor of the conservative genetic argument. The current argument is 60/40 and I suspect we will eventually conclude it is an 80/20 proposition. It may be too late, but the ideological tide has turned. This will make it possible to address institutional solutions rationally in a way that has been impossible for seventy years.

    Fourth, it is becoming obvious from the data that classical liberalism’s multi-house model cannot survive the addition of women to the voting pool. Men and women have different reproductive strategies and different moral codes which agrarian marriage and the nuclear family managed to accomodate. However, since males skew individualist, and women skew collectivist, we cannot use majority rule to accomodate both moral codes. We have no ‘houses’ which will allow the creating of exchanges rather than ‘takings’. The conservative think tanks are so enamored of the past that they cannot solve this problem. All think tanks, all ideologies, all movements, currently seek to gain a majority of like-minded individuals under majority rule, rather than to construct a government where these groups can conduct exchanges. The market allows us to cooperate on means if not ends. The population will need a means to do so as well. And to do so where ‘cheating’ is prohibited. This is why government will persist: as a means of prohibiting cheating.

    For the first two reasons above, you should expect to see the eccentricity of the Rothbarian movement coming out of the Mises institute to be less supportive of heretical science, and more explicit in its use of arguments that discuss the differences in externalities between government and market solutions.

    I do not know if they will be smart enough to try to move from a Rothbardian criticism-dominated, to a Hoppeian solution-dominated framework, and therefor provide an institutional solution that is competitive to and superior to that of the classical liberals. And I can’t imagine that they would try to co-opt the classical liberal wing (where the money is), and by doing so suggest the entire spectrum of libertarian institutional solutions, but they are the people who could successfully accomplish it if they tried. I just can’t see them being that pragmatic. You do not build an ideology then become a pragmatist. That would take new leadership.

    The Heritage organization is data driven and has wide appeal. But it is not philosophically rigorous, and it does not recommend changes to the existing institutions that would accomodate contemporary reality. Cato is neither data driven nor philosophically rigorous, but corresponds correctly to classical sentiments. Rothbardianism and Hoppianism as well as Hayekianism are all philosophically rigorous systems of thought.

    But Rothbardianism is not going to ever be acceptable to enough people to gain office and change institutions. It is a brilliant ideological strategy. It worked. We shoujld all congratulate Lew Rockwell on his vision. But Rothbardianism is not an institutional solution. Because a Christian people will not tolerate the rampant cheating present in the ‘ethics of the bazaar’ that Rothbard advocates. and they’re right to reject it. They spent too many centuries trying to escape it, and build the High Trust Society. Perhaps the only high trust society that ever existed.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-20 13:27:00 UTC

  • How Can The United States Remain A/the Global Leader?

    I am pretty sure that this represents the best overview of the USA’s current circumstances that exists today. 

    There are six factors that play into power:
    1) geography,
    2) demographics,
    3) economy,
    4) currency,
    5) technology
    6) military.
    They are all inter-related. Here are the major factors affecting the future of US power at the present time.

    1) The United States has a strategic geographic location, is a large country, and has quite a few natural resources.  These factors are is enough to ensure relative importance in global affairs.

    2) The USA (along with the germanic countries) is reasonably free of government corruption, and it’s judiciary can be counted on to resolve contracts.  Therefore it has commercial investment strengths that are difficult to duplicate. There is no other place to put risk capital anywhere close to that of the USA.

    3) The liquidity provided by the USA stock market creates a ‘lottery’ that encourages high risk ventures, which is why so much commercial experimentation happens in the states. But statistically speaking, it looks very much like wall street in general produces ‘noise’ and little else. With the collapse of demand for complex financial products, and the rising awareness of the nature of the financial system, plus the backlash against the crash in order to increase taxes on the wealthy, this system appears fragile.

    4) The USA has the highest corporate taxes in the world which encourages companies to invest and make money overseas rather than domestically.  Combined with the incentive to use overseas labor, these are strong incentives to create jobs elsewhere.

    5) The USA is plagued by an educational system designed for converting farmers to industrial laborers, and the rest of the advanced economies have converted to systems designed to create a more advanced labor force.  Meanwhile a lot of cheaper labor has come online, putting pressure on the lower classes (unskilled labor).

    6) The USA benefits from a) status as a reserve currency, b) price stability in oil caused by threat of military intervention, c) status as a petro-currency, and d) the ability (because of these factors) to accumulate significant debt, then inflate it away rapidly. These benefits are all waning due to the USA’s relative decline in world economic power.

    7) USA’s budget is about 1/3 for Social Security and Medicare benefit programs, 1/3 for the military, and 1/3 for the entire rest of the budget.  Taxes only cover 2/3 of the budget. 1/3 must be borrowed and inflated away.  So, in practice, the USA cannot maintain the military complex necessary for world power unless it maintains an ability to generate debt, and inflate that debt away.

    8) The military infrastructure built up for the cold war is aging, and modern programs to produce innovative technology have been plagued with technical failures and very high costs. The wars in the middle east have ‘consumed’ existing ‘capital equipment”.  The USA will have to invest in new technology and equipment in order to maintain and project power. In particular, the surface navy, which the USA relies upon to project its power worldwide, is an extremely vulnerable technology. We also lack the type of equipment to fight urban warfare, which dominates the future of life and warfare. And it is possible that the structure of the army is unsuited for the future of warfare (and the marines are correctly structured.)  Western civilization has generally been more successful at war than other cultures despite being poorer and in smaller numbers, because of its reliance on technology, and willingness to rapidly adapt to technology. Technology is expensive.  It is coming into question whether we can endure: a) a racially divisive domestic political ’empire’ which is clearly polarizing  along racial and cultural lines.  b) an aging population that requires high health and support costs.  c) an unemployable unskilled class, and unemployably expensive low skilled working class d) a loss of relative economic power needed to pay for power projection, e) our status as a reserve currency, and our status as a petro  currency, creating demand for US debt which is used to accumulate dollars which in turn is used for reserves and for the purchase oil.  f) a decline in our abilty to issue and inflate debt as a means of paying for our military program that is not covered by taxes.

    9) Given the size of the economy and its geographic location, the USA will continue to hold onto relatively strong world power. It will however, be increasingly unable to project power, and its abilty to pay for programs necessary to modernize and keep pace with changing world powers is waning.

    10) In particular there are two scenarios that are obvious:

    a) if the Iran is successful in creating an Iranian/pakistani/syrian/iraqi block that becomes a nuclear enabled military force that is capable of dictating world oil prices, and therefore capable of demanding the use of any given currency, the USA will not be able to fund its military program, because all ‘profits’ from reserve currency status, and petro-dollar status, will be captured by Iran.  (If I could only get Tom Clancy to write a book on that story. Because that’s the story people might desire to understand.)

    b) China is a geographically vulnerable country (with a huge chip on its shoulder due to its loss of position in world history, and its failure with communism.) It would be very, very, easy to starve chinese citizens and foment civil war there by simply controlling the south china seas.  The chinese know this and are very concerned about the ‘conquered’ provinces as well as the conflict between rich and poor and south and north.  China also has a significant advantage in IQ distribution and literacy that gives its economy an advantage in spite of endemic poverty.  The USA does not have this advantage because of a different (lower) IQ and literacy distribution.  The “bottom” quintiles of chinese society are much better than the ‘bottom’ quintiles of american society.  As impolitic and unpleasant that fact may be.

    https://www.quora.com/How-can-the-United-States-remain-a-the-global-leader

  • How Do The Best Graphic And Web Design Firms Handle Sales?

    SALES: It varies by the size of the company.   Small companies generally are hired because they are local and cheap for small projects. Small projects get more attention and quality from small local companies. Big companies hate small stuff and are expensive. Selling to local companies is really just a matter of knocking on doors and showing work until they give you some of it.

    Large agencies are generally hired for their breadth of services, ability to scale, and strategic understanding.  Large agencies are able to attract and pay for a lot of talent in sales and delivery.

    Most opportunities are found through relationships between people who know each other.  But customers are always seeking new agencies and ideas. So customers will sometimes seek out an agency that wins awards or does promotional work for interesting clients.

    But most new companies do not have relationships and must generally produce gratis work for non-profits to promote its abilities. Much of the best award winning creative work is done gratis.  Usually, established companies are too conservative to fund projects that are useful for the agency to use in a sales pitch.

    Rarely do companies get off the ground without one or two accounts to support the startup.

    If I understand your question above, ‘Design Services’ is what you’re selling. 
    The problem is that for marketers, design services are like buying paper towels, toilet paper, and dish soap: they’re commodities. Design isn’t scarce. The difference between all but the top talent is marginal. So to get clients, you need to sell something other than the work itself.  Generally, you’re willingness to do it cheaply, or with greater customer service. Or perhaps because you understand their business or customers.  Largely; it’s “ease, dependability and price”.

    Most agencies MARKET rather than sell themselves.  Most service companies SELL themselves rather than MARKET themselves.  The question is, whether you have the money and talent to market yourself, or whether you are still just a service company and need to sell commodity services directly until you have relationships and business understanding. 

    PROCESS: 1)if you’re small just knock on doors and learn about possible client’s businesses.  Eat whatever ‘bugs’ you have to in order to get in the door.
    2) Develop a pitch team of Creative, Editorial, Technical, Marketing and account management.  Most of the time, in my experience, there are only two strong people out of that set in any given company. 
    3) if you get big enough, then hire a salesperson.  Usually the founders of small firms perform sales.   Sales people are very risky. Almost all business I have purchased in my life have gotten in trouble when the founders try to stop selling and hire salespeople.

    RFP’s: have a very bad name largely because customers will steal ideas, and because most of the time you’re just ‘column fodder’.  Pitches are EXPENSIVE.    A big agency for example only might put in five pitches a year. But they would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on each pitch. A midsized agency might spend over 50K for each pitch and do more of them, and a small agency less than that. It’s expensive.  A commodity agency might never pitch just sell services based upon proposals.  So, if you’re in the pitch business, it’s best to pick the RFP’s you’re capable of winning and then to absolutely kill it with good ideas, and price on the pitch. 

    My main bit of criticism, as someone who almost never loses a pitch, is that it’s not worth pitching something that you havent given your all.  So only pitch when you’re willing to give it your all, and where what you’re pitching is really valuable to the customer.  Everything else is a waste of time and money.  Count on at least one-quarter of your business leaving each year, so that if you want a greater than 20% growth rate – which is what attracts customers and talent – then you need to sell enough pitches to generate 40-50% of your revenue a year. If you figure out the average size of your accounts as they exist today, then the size of the pitches you feel you can win, then the rate of your wins, it’s just some simple math.   (Most agencies are puny, at under 5M in billings.) 

    (I’m trying to keep this simple enough for a Quora posting, so if something isn’t clear then ask.)

    SOFTWARE: Adobe suite. Macs. You need to be able to speak PC well enough to work with and deliver customers assets though.

    REFERENCES: There are notoriously few books on this business that are worth reading.  Ogilvy on Advertising is about all you really need to know.  There is one on copywriting the name and author escapes me.  Maister’s book on being a “Trusted Advisor” is as timeless as Ogilvy’s.   Other than Seth Godin’s attempt to shock the old guard into thinking about the identity of consumers today little has been written that’s really valuable. (There book about the marketing history of Mazda is good too.) Generally, high minded and fashionable books on marketing and advertising are just nonsense.  Find work. Take care of clients. Accumulate talent.  Try to survive. It’s a craft. Not a science.  It’s not that complicated.

    LAST BIT OF ADVICE: Creativity is not magic. It is the process of filling your mind with related information then playing while the subconscious does its thing.  It’s repeatable. It’s procedural. And you can get good at it as an individual or team.  The best defense against doing bad work is to simply collect as much work as possible and keep examples of both good and ‘failures’.  I can’t tell you how many ideas I’ve shot down by using an example of a known failure.

    OVERALL: It is a murderously overpopulated business in transition from a highly profitable past to a less profitable future, where you are little more than a commodity and where you live hand-to mouth in exchange for the freedom to work in a field that accepts “playing” as doing work.

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-the-best-graphic-and-web-design-firms-handle-sales

  • What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Different Philosophies Of Economics?

    You listed political philosophies but not economic philosophies.  They are two sets of questions.

    1) Political philosophies consider three different questions:
    a) How is the institution of property constructed (is property owned by individuals, the collective, an institution, or an authoritarian figure, and what are the limits on the use of that property)
    b) what institution is used to determine the use of property (the market, heads of families, bureaucracy, or a dictator)
    c) what claims do citizens (shareholders) have on the results of production or the profits from exchange. (Which are technically the same thing.)
    Everything else is trappings.  We know that incentives and the ability to calculate and plan determine the rate of innovation and effort put into work.  So the more individual property rights are, the more consumption is possible at the lowest cost.

    2) Economic philosophies fall into temporal categories from the short term to the long term, and advocates differer not so much on the utility of any given tactic, but on their approval or disapproval of the externalities (secondary consequences) of using the tactic. Economists then, tend to ally with political philosophies based upon those SECONDARY outcomes.

    These outcomes are driven by ‘fears’.  The liberal fears that the poor or less able will experience discomfort.  The conservative fears that society will be made fragile and uncompetitive.  If we work very hard and save then society will become hierarchical but safe.  If we redistribute and only a few work hard then society will have less discomfort but more fragility.  At least, that’s the theory. The left tolerates fragility and the right tolerates discomfort. It really boils down to that simple a difference.

    What economists do agree upon is that stimulating demand (consumption) stimulates the economy and does it quickly.  What they disagree upon is the good or bad consequences that come from stimulating the economy. The different economic strategies insert money into the economy in a range from very short to very long time frames.

    And the political ideologies are biased toward these two time frames: conservative the long term and liberal the short term.  In effect, the left wants the most redistribution possible right away in order to diminish the stress of the natural difference between teh classes, and think incentives are a means of coercion, and the right wants a meritocratic society where people have an incentive to be productive. (These are simply expressions of the feminine and masculine reproductive strategies. Nothing more.) 

    The different economic tactics below are organized from short term (liberal) to long term (conservative).  Economists tend to fall into camps that PREFER one or more of the tactics. 

    The Economic Tactics:
    a) Modern Monetarists (MMT): when necessary, just give money directly to people in order to stimulate consumption.  MMT is a counter intuitive theory that is widely disputed.  But the idea that we should be able to bypass the financial sector and directly credit consumer bank accounts is not a bad one. The data shows that tax incentives are not useful in the short term. (I was one of the people advocating that we just pay down consumer mortgages by 200K – it would be cheaper than letting the world economy collapse for a decade. Galbraith recommended the same thing before he died. And he and I are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.)   The counter arguments are that there isn’t any way to do this today, and it’s pretty hard to not create a moral hazard, and it’s pretty hard to be equitable, because you’re effectively rewarding people who used bad judgement.  FAVORED BY THE RADICAL LEFT

    b) Monetary Policy: when necessary, reduce the cost of credit (interest rates) so that people are more willing to borrow money. This puts cheap money into the banking system and money works its way through consumers and business into the economy.  This works well in ordinary times mostly as fine tuning, but when we are subject to shocks, like the recession, we can’t make money cheap enough that people actually will spend it. Right now, given the rate of inflation, money is effectively free to borrow. But people still aren’t lending or borrowing.  There is wide consensus that monetary policy is necessary under fiat (monopoly) money.  There is wide consensus that monetary policy can decrease the problems of money shortage compared to the gold standard. The criticism is that monetary policy exaggerates booms and busts.  WIDESPREAD CONSENSUS OTHER THAN LIBERTARIANS

    c) Fiscal Policy (Keynesians) : when necessary, the government borrows (or prints) and spends money on all sorts of programs in order to put money into the economy using the goverment’s spending network.  The problem is that it does take some time to work its way into people’s hands. There are not “shovel ready’ projects available and they take time.  And the real reason people object is because it finances political corruption, and the party in power tends to spend it in partisan fashion. (WHich is why the republicans won’t allow it right now.)  The other reason is that people just don’t trust the government any longer.  So they don’t want to reward the government.  The third reason is that conservatives in particular do not want to expand the government, but contract it.  FAVORED BY THE LEFT

    d) Industrial Policy: the government should (as do most other countries) invest in particular industries that will create jobs and lead to a competitive advantage.  INdustrial policy is usually accompanied by TRADE POLICY (import export controls and taxation).  The asian countries have used these policies to their benefit. China in particular.  The right and libertarians abandoned industrial policy and moved to free trade when the unions allied with the left.  But industrial policy is naturally attractive to the right.  For all intents and purposes, industrial policy has been abandoned in the USA. FAVORED BY THE RIGHT, DESPISED BY LIBERTARIANS.

    e) Human capital policy (Education) : Education policy is the means of improving the competitive value of citizens in relation to other countries.  It takes a very long time for  education policy to take effect.  The germans have demonstrated the best understanding of education. Although most americans would find their model invasive.
    FAVORED BY THE RIGHT, FAVORED BY LIBERTARIANS, ACTIVELY UNDERMINED BY THE LEFT.

    f) Strategic Policy (Military Policy): control of global trade routes, oil, and petro dollars is one of the most important reasons for the USA’s standard of living, despite the relative lack of competitiveness of it’s working classes.  This is a very complex and long topic, but strategic policy IS ECONOMIC POLICY.  The average american gets a pretty big return on his military expenditures. But that’s an unpleasant reality for many.  Strategic policy takes a very long time to play out. But most countries engage in it.  Iran for example is trying to become the core state of islamic civilization and control world oil supplies and prices, and by doing so, eliminate the discount that western citizens pay for oil. 
    FAVORED BY THE RIGHT, DESPISED BY LIBERTARIANS AND THE LEFT

    This needs to be a book length topic but hopefully it illustrates that political philosophy and economic philosophy are two different things.  But that economic philosophy is divided into specialties that correlate with the different sides of the political spectrum.

    One thing is for certain: economists will talk as if they are far more certain than they are or can be. We are too inexperienced in the field of economics, and the problem is far too complex for us to be sure of what we are doing. In effect, we are running a very big experiment on humanity. It seems to be working reasonably well. But some patients are definitely harmed in the process.  The most important of which is that we are expanding the population to questionable levels.

    (I have a splitting headache so i will have to come back and check this for edits this later.  -Cheers)

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-different-philosophies-of-economics

  • A Note To Jonathan Haidt: An Explanation Of Elite Conservative Strategy Since Reagan

    Jonathan Haidt first attacks republicans then rescinds it. I try to put conservative strategy in context. And in that context it’s quite simple. It’s an extension of the tactic used against world communism: “Resist until they go bankrupt.” If you understand this strategy everything the conservatives and Republicans do makes complete sense. Everything. Jonathan, Very interesting post, and equally interesting comments. One commenter above writes that you (Jonathan) should perhaps seek to understand conservative elite theory. (People like me.) The conservative intellectuals succeeded in defeating world communism and socialism through a variety of military, political, economic, and intellectual tactics. But conservatives failed to come up with a strategy for defeating democratic redistributive socialism and the secular progressive attack on the meritocratic hierarchical conservative society. Due to this failure, the libertarians, who are explicitly economic in their strategy, took over leadership of the anti-collectivism, and whenever possible, the conservatives adopted the libertarian economic and political program. But about the time of Reagan, conservative thought leaders looked at the demographic data and determined that the program of expanding statism would win out over time. So, the conservatives abandoned their belief that they could gain a majority and keep control of the state, or even defend themselves against it. And instead, they increased militarism, worked to increase home ownership, and tried to rekindle entrepreneurship rather than government as the central narrative behind western success. They then allied with the capitalist class to attempt to bankrupt the state before european style nanny state could develop. This was consistent with the approach to communism: “Just resist them and wear them out. They will eventually fail because their concept of an economy is unsustainable.” The conservative battle against the state is simply the conservative tactic against world communism replayed. It is perhaps useful to note that the conservative argument against central planning, urban planning, welfare disincentives, laxity on crime and punishment, the social and economic impact of the dissolution of the institution of marriage, as well as the problem of the ponzi financing strategy of social programs (rather than the Singapore model of forced and subsidized savings) were all correct. The conservative vision of hubristic man and economic incentives is more accurate a world view than the liberal egalitarian ideal. And while it is not that we cannot use the ideas of both sides. It is that progressive desires must be accomplished through conservative means: retaining the relationship between cause, effect and incentives. The USA, as a set of political institutions, faces the multicultural problem that faces all empires. It currently must cope with the combination of a)”The Demands Of Empire” that give the state greater scope than just the nation + b)”Nine Nations Of North America” which represent geographic differences in culture + c)”Racial Self-Preference in Association, and Differences In Ability” + d)”Gender Biases” + e) The class exaggerating effect of the extraordinary economic advantage of having an IQ greater than 105 in the information economy. All of these biases exist within a set of political institutions designed to resolve conflicts in priority between property owning males with homogenous norms. It is not possible to resolve conflicts over ends using decision making by majority rule. In the market we cooperate on means and are ignorant of one another’s ends. In majority rule government, there are winners and losers because we argue over ends. Majority rule must (as Federalist papers 10 stated) lead to extra-political resolution of conflict between groups with such mutually exclusive goals. Liberals slant toward the female reproductive strategy (the largest number of human births with the most equal experience) and the conservatives slant toward the male reproductive strategy (the most competitive tribe with the best people in charge of it.) This level of conflict over instinctual preference will not be resolved by the liberal desire to use our instituions of majority rule to suppress the instincts of the other side any more than conservatives would succeed in encouraging liberals to adopt conservative norms. For this reason, something has to give. Either demographics have to play out (it’s possible), or the federal government has to devolve (unlikely without catastrophic military or economic causes) or we will have to develop new institutions that allow us to federate while pursuing opposing social ends (Just as unlikely). But it’s also just as likely that we will lose our high trust society as groups seek extra-political means of status seeking (like Mediterranean’s and Eastern Europeans, and Russians.) And if we lose that we will also lose our risk taking – which is why we’re a wealthy economy. Risk taking creates innovation. But the USA is too big and too diverse ann empire to persist as we have known it. Classical liberalism is a means of governance for a small state or a small federation. Not an empire. And the USA is an empire. The Classical mutli-house model did not work for the british empire, and it will not work for the american empire. So while I believe you have finally supplied the social sciences with the language by which to understand political conflcits I do not believe that the conflict is resolvable. People under Russian and Chinese socialism developed ‘black markets’ for everything. People under majority rule who have opposing interests will develop extra-political ‘black markets’ for power. They will circumvent the political institutions to achieve their desired ends. The state will attempt to preserve itself by increasing control, which will only expand the black markets. The liberals circumvented the constitution, and the conservatives circumvent the state apparatus. There is no solution here without changes to our institutions. In government, big is bad and small is good. The city state and a mobile population allow the greatest diversity and freedom. So the problem we have is finding an institutional solution to that equilibrium: allowing federation of some things but not federation of norms.

  • What Are The Real Motivations Of Conservatives, Libertarians And Liberals?

    What do conservatives, liberals, and libertarians believe is the hidden agenda of the other two political philosophies? From Quora.Conservatives Conservatives believe in a meritocratic hierarchical society where a) there are as few ‘cheaters’ living off the efforts of others as is posible, b) that enfranchisement should be earned, c) that government should resolve conflicts not direct society d) that civic duties should be preferred to administrative bureaucracies. e) They believe a good society can best be created by norms, rather than laws. f) They view all property as individual, but wich we must put to collective ends. Jonathan Haidt has shown that conservatives treat all six moral codes equally. (liberty, care-taking, hierarchy, loyalty, purity, fairness) Libertarians Libertarians believe in a meritocratic non hierarchical society where there are as few cheaters as possible living off the efforts of others and that enfranchisement should be earned, and that government should be limited to resolving conflicts over property. They believe civic virtues will emerge from this society, and the government bureaucracy (correctly) is the source of all bad government, so that privatization should be used rather than public bureaucracy, whenever possible. Progressives (Liberals) Progressives believe in an egalitarian non hierarchical society where people produce what they can and that we redistribute from one another to one another as needed by way of the government. They believe all property is community property and that individuals are just temporary stewards of property in order to achieve what is best for the common good. They believe civic egalitarianism is best achieved through expansionary government that intervenes wherever possible in order to ensure equality of ends and means. Jonathan Haidt has shown that progressives (liberals) care only about two of the moral codes, and ignore the other four: fairness and care-taking. It’s Gender What may not be obvious to the average person is that these three groups represent a spectrum that expresses the different reproductive strategies of the genders, and that liberals on one end and conservatives on the other each skew toward gender lines. In fact, if women were not to vote, we would never have had a progressive government in our history. The female reproductive strategy is to give her child every opportunity to rise above his abilities. The male reproductive strategy is to ensure the competitiveness of the group by promoting the strongest. While these are generalizations, when we are talking about genders we are in fact, making very broad generalizations. And the data supports those generalizations. Our Institutions Could Not Tolerate The Change Our political sentiments are largely inherited, largely a function of gender and class. Or political system was invented when the church was the authority of all moral teaching, when our voting classes were all some version of protestants, when the state was restricted to the resolution of disputes. And when we were all small business people (farmers and shopkeepers) and so we were all market participants and there were very few ‘leeches’ in the system. The political system was originally structured by social class with the senate appointed from influential people, the house elected from business people (land owners) and the proletariat was uneducated if not illiterate. Our constitution was designed to limit the government to resolution of conflicts and to avoid prescription. And that political system did not survive the Louisiana purchase, the civil war, the inclusion of women, and the rapid immigration of non-protestants into the country as a means of filling the newly acquired continent, and as new citizens, their inclusion into the voting pool. The industrial revolution and the world wars that threw England’s empire into our hands was an opportunity for profit that we could not pass up . Each Ideology Fails So, that is why conservatives fail. Because they are attempting to recreate a political system that is insufficiently complex for the society we live in today. Liberals fail because the population disagrees with their economic and military program — justifiably so. But more importantly because they do not understand the relationship between the nuclear family, the military requirements of the empire, and the unique property of western civilization: non-corruption. Libertarians fail because their ethic is antithetical to both conservatives and liberals. WHile libertarians have the best grasp of economics, liberals wil disagree with the libertarian economic program and conservatives will disagree with the libertarian social program. All people reject cheating. Liberals see individualization of profits as cheating. Libertarians and conservatives see the redistribution of profits as cheating. Conservatives see immorality as cheating. We can try every permutation, but it’s all the same. In simple terms, liberal=society unified by law, libertarian=society unified by commerce, conservative=society unified by norms. The problem is that we are materially different in our desires and permanently so. So the problem is inventing new institutions that can accomodate the different factions now that we have expanded enfranchisement beyond market-participating males. And we know the lefts economic program is impossible. we know the conservative normative program is impossible. We know the libertarian normative and institutional program is impossible. So we devolve into moralistic banter rather than attempt to solve the problem of creating institutions that allow us to cooperate despite our differences. The Secret Of Western Civilization But I will let you in on a secret. This conflict is ancient. And can be answered by one question: why is it that a woman has a right to bear a child that she cannot on her own support? If you can answer that question you can solve the conflict between the conservatives and the liberals. because that one question is what drives it. The western manorial aristocratic economic system that is our heritage required that men demonstrate their fitness in order to gain access to land, and delayed childbirth so that women could work in the crafts. This process suppresses the breeding rates of the underclasses. The church likewise banned inbreeding which encourages early reproduction. THese two factors led to the advancement of western civilization as much as did the rule of law, science, and the division of powers. Conservatives are attempting still to restrain the breeding of the lower classes to those who can afford to support their own. Liberals are doing the opposite:they are encouraging all the breeding that is possible. These are just the masculine and feminine reproductive strategies of our distant ancestors writ large. Nothing more. So when you ask the question, what is it that separates the different political ideologies, almost everything you will hear is an elaborate form of justification: a ruse to distract you from this one underlying difference: should we allow everyone to breed if it means that the middle classes must suppress their breeding so that the lower classes may advance their breeding? Now if someone told you that this is the single most important factor in raising a civilization out of ignorance and poverty, and that it is impossible to build an egalitarian civil society otherwise, how would that affect your answer? How you answer that question is how you define your political preference. It’s really that simple. NOTES: Moral Foundations Theory: 1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance. 2) Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives] 3) Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor. 4) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s “one for all, and all for one.” 5) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions. 6) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).