Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • NO I AM NOT GOING TO RUSH. PROPERTARIANISM IS DONE WHEN ITS DONE — AND IT’S DON

    NO I AM NOT GOING TO RUSH. PROPERTARIANISM IS DONE WHEN ITS DONE — AND IT’S DONE WHEN ITS BULLETPROOF.

    I did more, first, faster, than anyone else has. That’s good enough for me. And while encouragement is helpful, impatience is not. I already work pretty much around the clock, and there are no shortcuts. Propertarianism is not an ideology – it’s a logic. I have reduced law to that which is decidable or not. I am pretty much done with it. All up. But the fact that it would take a dozen philosophers from mathematics, logic, economics, politics, law, to carry the conversation means that it is not in a condition where a college graduate in a STEM field can argue it after studying it. Until I get there it is not ‘done’.

    If you are lucky enough to intuit that truthful speech is the single most important virtue in creating a high trust polity with high economic velocity capable of holding first place in world economic competition, then propertarianism will make sense to you. If you do not, then you will need more persuasion.

    It is all well and good that we have interested laymen here. And I am very excited that Eli and others can construct sentimentally appealing variants on these themes (because it is not my forte). Or that Michael Philip has internalized the scientific ethos, and is able to apply it as a general rule. Or the dozen or so others that can already use fragments of propertarianism.

    But you know, this is serious work – and all but a fragment of libertarian philosophy is not – and I have serious work to do.

    So if you can tell me the importance of:

    1) the problem of decidability and the axiom of choice in math, and why this question has been a problem.

    2) the problem of construction in law, and how the progressive rewrote the constitution.

    3) why rule of law under common (organic) law is the only means of producing liberty.

    4) the minimum suppression of immoral and unethical action necessary to eliminate sufficient demand for the state, that rule of law is possible – and how would you prove it.

    5) why free speech is an intrinsic good, rather than truthful speech is an intrinsic good.

    6) why some polities can hold territory, and why some cannot.

    7) The differences between the anglo, german and german-jewish enlightenment programs, and why the anglo program was a threat to the german and jewish group evolutionary strategy.

    8) Why critique is a successful means of lying, and why the cosmopolitans invented it, and why the germans had to invent idealism.

    Then you probably can participate in criticism. Because that’s sort of the minimum bar.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 12:00:00 UTC

  • THE GREEKS SET US ON A PATH. Math isn’t the ideal, economics is. The reason we g

    THE GREEKS SET US ON A PATH. Math isn’t the ideal, economics is.

    The reason we got hooked on deduction was mathematics. In math, the means of exploration (mathematical operations) and the means of testing (mathematical operations) are the same (except in very rare circumstances).

    The greeks ran with this. And we followed.

    The problem is, (as Popper showed us) this convenience in mathematics is an exception due to the simplicity of mathematical operations, and is not a rule. Whereas, in every other field we must use guesses (induction) to arrive at hypotheses, then criticize them for internal consistency(logic), external correspondence(testing), existence (operations), and scope (falsification).

    We test our words to be free of imagination (logic), we test our correspondence with reality to be free of imagination (actions) we test our premises to be free of imagination (operations) and we test our conclusions to be free of imagination (Falsification). (still working on how to say this bit, and not quite there yet.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 11:00:00 UTC

  • ON THE VIRTUE OF CRITICISM Without something to criticize I would have nothing t

    ON THE VIRTUE OF CRITICISM

    Without something to criticize I would have nothing to calculate. My reasons for trying to improve upon critical rationalism are external to physical sciences and partly external to epistemology: they’re in ethics and politics. Meaning, that there is a difference between permissible argument in pursuit of the most parsimonious truth (analytic or platonic truth) where no external costs are imposed upon others, and pursuit of truthful statements along the journey wherever external costs are imposed upon others. But the central ideas are still the same: seek criticism, and criticize. When you do – and especially if others do you the favor of defending their positions, and criticizing yours – you learn. I intuit a set of patterns on the very edge of perception, and just criticize whatever fragments I can sense on the way getting there. And that takes an absurd amount of patience and discipline, because (as followers probably can tell) it can take you YEARS to make incremental improvements in important theories. You cannot make a baby in less than nine months and it seems you cannot make a philosophy in less then seven to ten years.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 10:30:00 UTC

  • YOU SEE, WE NEVER “KNOW” ANYTHING. WE JUST TRY. This is why the rationalist argu

    YOU SEE, WE NEVER “KNOW” ANYTHING. WE JUST TRY.

    This is why the rationalist argument is a straw man. Critical Rationalism won. In propertarianism I focus on truthful speech as an IMPROVEMENT on critical rationalism’s narrow focus in the absence of ethical and moral constraints (imposed costs, such as creating a hazard). So operationalism is an existential test – a further criticism, on top of falsification, that is necessary when we speak of matters that may impose costs upon one another.

    I can never know that I speak the ultimate truth, but I can know if I speak truthfully (morally). I can warranty truthful speech but I cannot warrant a statement is true.

    And in publishing information into the commons I am distributing a product which may do harm or good. And I can be held accountable for unwarrantable speech, or unwarranted speech, but if I have warrantied my speech I cannot be held accountable in law for the negative consequences of it.

    Conversely, if I did, then I CAN be held accountable for it.

    So it is by these means I have tried to:

    ….(a) Extend critical rationalism by adding the additional requirement of operational description – something scientists already do but outside of psychology do not recognize as necessary criticism, and something that is necessary for all political questions, since only political questions require by definition transfers.

    ….(b) Redefine the scientific method as the method of speaking truthfully (warrantably).

    ….(c) Incorporate the principle of the voluntary exchange of property as the only test of moral action.

    UNIVERSAL STANDING

    Under universal standing each of us can protect his or her commons from lies, cheats, socialization of losses, privatization of gains, and even the use and abuse of others – we an all act as sheriffs. We cannot resort to political favoritism.

    The only problem is in creating judges. And we seem to be far better at creating judges than economists and philosophers.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 10:18:00 UTC

  • HAYEK AND HOPPE – INSUFFICIENT Hayek is right that a condition of liberty can on

    HAYEK AND HOPPE – INSUFFICIENT

    Hayek is right that a condition of liberty can only be constructed by organically evolutionary (common) law of property. Hoppe is right that institutions can replace monopoly bureaucracy.

    However, Hayek has no solution to making such a condition universally preferable; and Hoppe has no solution to the provision of the commons, nor for constructing a condition of liberty. Neither address the influence of the family or the intergenerational means of reproductive production or the entry of women’s socialistic biases into the sphere of politics – and neither addresses the problem of the conflict between the reproductive interests of the classes. Neither solves the problem of a heterogeneous post-agrarian, and possibly post familial, institutional system. Yet that is the set of conditions that we find ourselves in.

    I think I have persuasively argued that over the long term (anyone can benefit from implementing technology that was invented by others in the sort term), high velocity economies are only possible under liberty, and that liberty is only possible under high trust, and that only law under universal standing can construct high trust and liberty, and that those most interested in maintaining this structure are those in the lower middle class and upper proletariat, who are willing to fight to un-constrain their superiors, so that they can gain the privileges of the group with the best leaders. This is why the working classes are conservatively biased – they will fall in status and material possession without the advantages given them by support – the enablement – of their elites.

    So we can look at the successes of philosophers but also look at their failures. Hoppe tries to both preserve cosmopolitan separatism and reconstruct the hanseatic league. But this is not possible without the use of violence, exclusion, and the taking of territory sufficiently advantageous to produce the incentives to join such a polity, nor the economic advantage necessary to see it persist.

    Hoppe’s solution of starting a clean polity isn’t a solution at all. It’s the equivalent of communism for libertines.

    Territory is obtained, held, informal institutions constructed, formal institutions implemented, and monuments built, by the use of violence to do so by those desirous of obtaining advantage for themselves and their people.

    Peace, is not an intrinsic good. The intrinsic good is the perpetuation of your family, tribe, and people in competition with other families tribes and peoples.

    Everything else is just a better way of getting there.

    And the alternative is conquest and suicide. Both of which we are victims of.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 06:41:00 UTC

  • WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS POLITICALLY IRRELEVANT? Because political systems are const

    WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS POLITICALLY IRRELEVANT?

    Because political systems are constructed by violence. And conservatives are willing to create an order that suppresses consumption in order to construct commons, and progressives are willing to use violence to destruct an order so that they can increase consumption. But libertarians are both small in number and unwilling to use violence.

    Violence raises the costs of non-cooperative action, so that cooperation is preferable to non-cooperative action.

    Libertines always look for discounts (freebies). There aren’t any. Order is expensive.

    For these reasons libertarians will only exist in absurdly wealthy periods of history, made possible by conservatives. Otherwise they will exist only as another rejection-cult, criticizing the fact that they are required to pay costs for norms that do not improve their status – but constrain it.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 04:03:00 UTC

  • Film critics function largely within the Cathedral ideology. But lets talk a bit

    Film critics function largely within the Cathedral ideology.

    But lets talk a bit about the future of film.

    The medium is no longer a vehicle for storytelling, but subconscious association; and I think the medium has evolved into something separate from storytelling (the narrative).

    Human minds place greater scrutiny on ordered language than disordered imagery, and disordered imagery produces pre-cognitive associations, often appealing to pre-cognitive reactions. To some degree the narrative appeals more heavily to reason than to the intuition, while film can quite easily, like dreams, appeal more heavily to the intuition, and far less, to reason.

    It is no longer important to construct a narrative if a dream will do. Films certainly appear to be evolving rapidly toward dreams.

    I think this is the correct analysis of the evolution of the medium. The narrative or ‘puzzle’ maintains your attention while the medium communicates to your intuition.

    This is only possible with a medium other than language. Although it is possible to use suggestion via language (I use this very heavily). One can offer positive suggestions and negative suggestions.

    I think the high art of film will emerge as dream-creation because it does not require effort. And that the narrative, which is harder, and requires effort will remain the domain of storytelling.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-20 04:25:00 UTC

  • MORAL CORPORATISM LIBERTARIAN A libertarian ethic in negative sense, is that one

    MORAL CORPORATISM

    LIBERTARIAN

    A libertarian ethic in negative sense, is that one seeks to eliminate all external constraints upon his resources so that he may seize opportunities for productive gain. His analogy to a shareholder agreement is one in which he will cause no cost, but in return will liquidate his holdings if opportunities can be seized.

    CONSERVATIVE

    A conservative ethics in the negative sense, is that one seeks so accumulate defensive resources by forgoing consumption until later. His analogy to a shareholder agreement is one in which he will only invest in long term storage of resources (including genetic resources), and deny himself and others access to consumption.

    PROGRESSIVE

    A progressive ethic, in the negative sense, is that one seeks to accumulate all human bodies, by consuming everything possible – now. His analogy to a shareholder agreement is one in which all dividends are immediately consumed.

    CURRENT STATUS OF TECHNOLOGY

    We currently construct all three of these via shareholder agreements today, and would do more of them, more widely if the government were not structured to force spending by these organizations so that they can be taxed at maximum yields and thereby forcing risk into investors management and employees. So government today takes money and increases risk from producers to decrease risk and increase consumption of non-producers. If this did not yield dysgenic results, lower trust, and economic degeneracy, then it would be rational (the scandinavian small state model, plus prohibition on immigration).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-20 03:21:00 UTC

  • HUMANS ARE THE MOST UNEQUAL CREATURES ON EARTH (interesting) HUMANS divide (a)Pe

    HUMANS ARE THE MOST UNEQUAL CREATURES ON EARTH

    (interesting)

    HUMANS divide (a)Perception, (b)Consideration, (c)Knowledge, (d)Labor, and (e) reproduction – and we negotiate through words and provide ‘facts’ or ‘data’ through acts of voluntary exchange.

    We operate as a fascinating computational system. Just as a transistor flips to make a connection that was not previously available, and signals downstream its change in state, we signal through voluntary exchange our change in state, and in doing so we capture and distribute information about our perceptions.

    We were cognizant of the division of reproductive labor, overly obsessed with the division of labor once we discovered it, and only in the past few generations have come to understand the importance of the division of knowledge determined by intellectual ability, and now we have begun to understand the division of perception and consideration is also genetically determined.

    We got stock in the error of equality. Yet, we are perhaps one of the most unequal, if not THE MOST UNEQUAL creatures in existence – because we have greater capacity for inequality.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev,

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-18 03:14:00 UTC

  • Intellectual Property (IP) In Propertarianism

    [H]ere is where I end up. And it hasn’t changed much in two years.

    1) Trademarking.
    Yes. It’s a weight and measure. And it’s testable. Violating trademarks is fraudulent.

    2) Copyrighting.
    Possibly – but only if under the model of the creative commons. Meaning free for non commercial use. I don’t care about patents anywhere near as much as I care about ending copyrights on user copyable media. It is very, very, hard to argue that pop music, film and literature are a public good – and I think the evidence is the opposite.  Artists and writers will do their work regardless of compensation, and without compensation those who lack are will be dis-incentivized from producing it.

    The difference between my position on copyrighting and the rothbardian, is that since high trust is necessary for the rational voluntary formation of even a moderately anarchic polity, then the criteria for moral action necessary for a high trust society will be: “Truthfully stated, fully informed, warrantied, productive, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality” – and those criteria are violated by commercially profiting from the creative works of another.

    While it is hard to say that one should be cast as a criminal for duplicating a non-scarce good, it is another to say that one has the right to profit from it instead of its creator. It would violate the requirement that we all contribute to production rather than act parasitically in order for cooperation to be inter-temporally rational. (ie: Non-retaliatory.)

    I can’t agree that a publisher can make money selling a book without a commission to the author. But I can agree that an author cannot prevent the copying of a book. Same for film, music, and art. And I take this position not because I like it but because I cannot logically find an alternative to it. Humans will retaliate against parasitism, and that is what defines property-en-toto.

    3) Patents.
    Possibly in rare circumstances, but only for very, very, specific public (Citizen-Shareholder) investments that would not be served by the market otherwise. It is arguable that such criteria is not in fact meaningfully similar enough to a patent to call it patenting. But the idea of funding off-book research and development at private expense in hope of public reward is difficult to morally argue against – particularly in medicine and physical science. If we wanted to put a ten billion dollar bounty on the invention of a fusion reactor that met X criteria it is hard to say that wouldn’t be a good investment.

    Again, I am not sure that this qualifies as a ‘patent’, but to prohibit a voluntarily organized polity from offering a market bounty for the off book production of a high risk good is hard to find argument against.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.