Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • THE END OF THE MYTH OF THE ECONOMIC VIRTUE OF DENSE CITIES Now this is something

    THE END OF THE MYTH OF THE ECONOMIC VIRTUE OF DENSE CITIES

    Now this is something that I wasn’t sure was going to play out. But it appears that the data is starting to work in favor of suburbia (the ring around a city) more so than the downtown itself. The places that are experiencing growth are those that are not benefitting so much from the immigration of numbers (poor) but the immigration of talent.

    So I suspect that the next progressive myth that science is going to undermine, is the virtue of well managed big cities, rather than a number of closely related suburbs.

    I’ve sort of been watching the data that’s been slung around for the past decade and I assumed that it was just a matter of cities making it easier for bureaucrats to seek rents. And that’s actually the ‘first cause’. But it didn’t really occur to me that the “seattle/bellevue/redmond” model was actually the one that worked best.

    Now, I’ve looked at various Georgist theories, and there is definitely something to e said there since density increases productivity (of smart people) so much. And I’ve also worked at my preferred solution: pay people to do the work of policing laws, commons and norms. And you know that they accomplish slightly different things. My solution would actually distribute the poor into the surrounding territory where their lower value in production is not hampering the productivity of more productive people by forcing them out. Unfortunately the less well off want the value of the city even if they’re a net drag on the generation of tax revenue because really all they serve to do is allow vote buying that allows political and bureaucratic rent seekers to capture more of the revenue for themselves. Also, normative pressure is higher in rural areas, so the more ‘troublesome’ populations are more subject to normative pressures to ‘behave’ than in urban environments. ALso we are stuck with the fact that raising children in a city in no way is as awesome as raising them in a suburban home. (Spoken as someone raised in a small rural farm town, but who has lived in cities or suburbia for most of his adult life.)

    Anyway, I want to keep working on this a little more before taking a better position on it.

    Net is, that the progressive fantasy is the walking dead at this point. The conservative fantasy is impossible. The Rothbardian fantasy is immoral and impossible. So, what is our solution to the problem of formal institutions that is both moral and possible, even if it’s not ‘efficient’.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-08 15:11:00 UTC

  • LIBERTARIANS FIGHT THE LAST WAR, OR THE ONE BEFORE THAT MAYBE. I’M PLANNING FOR

    LIBERTARIANS FIGHT THE LAST WAR, OR THE ONE BEFORE THAT MAYBE. I’M PLANNING FOR THE NEXT ONE.

    (reposted and edited) (thanks to Juan Sebastian Ortiz for the inspiration.)

    Rather than make plans on how to manipulate democracies, I am more in line with global theorists who suggest that the nation state, which was invented in response to Napoleon’s combination of state credit and total war, will be brought down by the fragility of our modern systems (which are very fragile), the low cost of interrupting or damaging those systems, the enormous economic impact of those system disruptions, the small numbers (and value of small numbers) needed to conduct interruptions of systems, the universal availability of communications previously only available to governments, the inability of states to either control those insurrections, or to violently suppress them, and the demand of the populace for respite from system shocks, by giving into demands.

    It is this particular trend, not the polite democratic one, that I am constructing my logical arguments in support of. A moral code, a system of arguments, that gives moral authority to such actions, and the institutional model to replace the nation state with.

    I want to construct the program for the establishment and organization of private governments and the restitution of the militia and the aristocracy from whence our freedoms came. Because it is only that model under which we hold freedom of our choosing, rather than by the mere permissions of others.

    Libertarians like horsemen in an age of machines, are still fighting the war before the last war. I’m making plans for the next one.

    Sure, I’m working a little ahead of the curve, but my health is not in my favor.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 15:27:00 UTC

  • AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS. Richard Ebeling has been posting old photos of Austrians we

    AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS.

    Richard Ebeling has been posting old photos of Austrians we admire. Today we see Roger Garrison. (I have a long standing man crush on Roger Garrison’s brain, and am profoundly envious of his lecturing skills.)

    The post reminds me that my criticism of Austrian Economics is limited to the positioning by Mises and then Rothbard of Praxeology as a deductive a priori ‘science’ rather than an empirical science like any other. And that they confuse introspective observation and conclusions from introspection as somehow different from external observation, instrumentation, and the reduction of complexity to analogies to perception, which are then subject to introspective analysis. In other words, this whole kantian nonsense is an erroneous edifice upon which to build the mythology that economics does not require instrumentalism for the purpose of observing emergent phenomenon. Just because we can never predict those phenomenon, does not mean we cannot learn the nature of man and cooperation from them. And as such we are open to terrible criticism for anti-empiricism which is merely an error in the fundamental understanding of the human cognitive process.

    As I’ve stated, praxeology is not so much ‘true’ as it is ethical. Because by reducing economic statements to operational langage, subject to individual perception as a series of actions, it becomes possible to test wether or not any action is moral – ie: a change in state of property is rationally voluntary. So the value in praxeology is not in its ability to assist us in deducing economic rules, but it is in ensuring that economic statements adhere to moral realism, by requiring moral operationalism. That this is the same requirement we hold scientists to in the presentation of their theories might be lost on people. But it is precisely for this moral constraint that we hold scientists accountable for their statements. The same is true for economic statements. They are as immoral as unscientific statements in the physical sciences, whenever those statements are not reducible to a sequence of operations, each of which we can sympathize with and test for the rationality of the incentives, as to whether the change in state of property would be rationally voluntary or not. That we have been on a century long dead end because of Jewish Cosmopolitan logic compounded by German Continental logic (if you want to take the great leap of calling either of them logical) is unfortunate but a common mistake in philosophy readily solved yet again by science – this time cognitive science.

    However, other than this argumentative fallacy, the basic insight that (a) political intervention is immoral and unethical (b) that it exacerbates booms and busts (c) that it may in the long term distort an economy, a state, a culture, and even a civilization to the point of collapse is something I see no way of contradicting. And the only reason it is a problem is because we are victims of well meaning fools, rather than a set of small states all experimenting so that we ‘fail small’ even if we wish to experiment with economic immorality.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 10:36:00 UTC

  • EDUCATION IN PHILOSOPHY VS EDUCATION IN SKILLS I don’t view philosophy as a trad

    EDUCATION IN PHILOSOPHY VS EDUCATION IN SKILLS

    I don’t view philosophy as a trade or skill, but like history, as general knowledge: ‘wisdom’. Skills and trades are niche applications of knowledge that assist in production under the division of knowledge and labor. Wisdom is the means by which we assist in the organization of society such that the voluntary organization of production in a division of labor is possible. This is why wisdom matters, but why wisdom and skill are resources that are useful the the production of different things: one is goods and services. The other is the ability to organize the voluntary production of goods and services.

    Philosophy is moral and political. It will help you in general life. But only in ADDITION to skills which support you economically in the short term.

    1) Philosophy, Economics, Law and Politics : The skill of the organization of voluntary production.

    2) Economics, Finance, Accounting : the measurement of the organization of voluntary production: cooperative instrumentalism.

    3) Science, Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, and statistics : Logical Instrumentalism for use in the organization of voluntary production.

    4) Craftsmanship, Labor : the transformation of things from one state to another.

    5) Aesthetics: the study of the consumption of the fruits of production. 🙂

    Pretty much in that order. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 02:04:00 UTC

  • MORAL BLINDNESS AND DEMONSTRATED SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE (interesting post)(reposted

    MORAL BLINDNESS AND DEMONSTRATED SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE

    (interesting post)(reposted from comment)

    What I didn’t understand was that the left’s solipsism is non-cognitive, morally blind, inalterable, and very powerful. From the data conservatives understand the world most accurately. followed by moderate democrats who are just practical. libertarians understand the world less, but they use economics as a proxy for understanding which is kind of fascinating really now that I understand it. Progressives have very little grasp of the world, and very little of morality, but do not use economics as a proxy for understanding because they’re confident.

    The left is a genetic expression of the female need to care for a child and advocate for the child in the context of the tribe regardless of the rationality of doing so for the tribe, and regardless of the child’s merits. It’s why mothers of serial killers don’t believe their son’s are guilty, and progressives think that children are the product of the environment not their genes. A mother’s love at the political level. It is understandable in this context, but not rational or beneficial in this context.

    I don’t know the degree to which the ‘cathedral’ influences morality, but using postmodern language has certainly helped them with the educated classes who are LESS dependent on morality. So, in the educated classes, both of which are less moral than the less educated classes, of the two of them, only one (libertarians) uses a proxy for morality, and the other (progressives) have no proxy – no means of sensing objective morality, and no desire for one. Libertarians are outnumbered by progressives more than two to one.

    Libertarians have been distracted by ‘immoral libertarianism’ for thirty years. And unable to fulfill their role as the intellectual leadership of conservatives. So I’m illustrating the errors of immoral libertarianism, and libertarian moral blindness, so that liberty seekers can once again form the intellectual leadership of the much more numerous conservatives.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 00:04:00 UTC

  • THE VIRTUE OF VIOLENCE I’m an aristocratic egalitarian libertarian. I don’t free

    THE VIRTUE OF VIOLENCE

    I’m an aristocratic egalitarian libertarian. I don’t free-ride on others labors then justify my liberty. I don’t claim my freedom is innate. Or a natural law. Or a gift of the gods. Instead, I claim that property rights are obtained in contractual exchange from others who likewise promise to defend that liberty – those property rights.

    It’s my moral obligation to fight for the self determination of any people who seek to be free. It is only through this agreement that I obtain my freedom, we obtain our freedom, and free men increase in number.

    I’m not afraid of violence. I worship it. I covet it. I want to collect it. To celebrate it. To honor it. Because with enough of it I can free myself, and others from the tyranny of the state.

    Sic Semper Tyrannis.

    The state should fear us. The state shall fear us. And once they fear us we shall win.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-06 04:16:00 UTC

  • THE FAR RIGHT? Technically speaking while a libertarian, like Hoppe, I’m also a

    THE FAR RIGHT?

    Technically speaking while a libertarian, like Hoppe, I’m also a member of the ‘far right’. I have no problem with the ‘Far Right’ and it’s emphasis on excellence, tradition, family, exclusion, ostracization, nationalism, and all that good tribal stuff that we lost and are dearly paying for. I understand that the working-class far-right wants elites to fight for their privileges – even if that privilege is only status signals. And the working-class, and increasingly the middle class, feels that their elites have sold them out. Because they have been sold out. And they are losing their privilege, earned for them by their elites in generations past, and now abandoned and consumed by them in generations present.

    But that doesn’t override my moral preference for either liberty for myself, and my people, or my moral preference for self determination. If some other people do not want a far right world, and if they can have it without parasitism upon those of us who seek liberty, status, or tradition, then I”m in support of it.

    I’m all in favor of many small countries with many differences. And let the market sort it out. And if you’re not, then by definition you’re an immoral person. A predator and parasite.

    Heterogeneity is a luxury good. Under threat, people return to tribal roots. Ad we are now under a permanent, unalterable, threat that we have not seen in over a thousand years.

    Russia is working with this knowledge. But I cannot tolerate being under ‘the only white people who failed’. Their pervasive nihilism and corruption. Their persistent failures. Their low trust society.

    So if Russia will not restore both tribalism and liberty, then its up to *US* to restore tribalism and liberty. Because liberty is only possible within a MORALLY homogenous polity.

    —

    BTW: Do you know what’s going to happen? Ghettos. The scale of which we have not seen before. Why? Because it’s been done before. It works. And we are going to flood the intellectual market with papers on how to do it.

    Yeah. I’m talking to you. You who want something to do? To contribute? We need papers on how we have constructed ghettos in the past, and how to construct ghettos today.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-05 09:26:00 UTC

  • PROPAGANDA Just as a matter of art, the Russian use of the internet, RTV, paid n

    PROPAGANDA

    Just as a matter of art, the Russian use of the internet, RTV, paid newsgroup and chat room propagandists, denial of service attacks, edited and manipulated video and photographs, paying local insurgents to cause chaos and destruction, bribing poorly paid police to stay home, while issuing perfect-pitch propaganda from bench, has got to be the most innovative form of warfare that I have seen in my lifetime.

    I mean, the whole international islamist militia is pretty good. But they have nothing on Russia.

    The only alternative to this kind of warfare is the anglo-swiss military model, which trains every single man, gives him a rifle, and makes him stay and capable through his 40’s.

    I mean. As someone who appreciates good propaganda and ideology, marketing and strategy, I have to say that its pretty impressive, low cost way of conducting war.

    Everyone who hasn’t read Keegan’s History of Warfare should: war is conducted and won by the criteria set by the culture. The west uses truth and immediate conflict for immediate resolution. China uses precisely the opposite: deception and delay. Russia has chosen the middle ground of deception and steady progress.

    When we come for Washington DC it will be on such terms.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-05 06:42:00 UTC

  • EFFECTIVE INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT VS IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL ARGUMENT. (I’m ri

    EFFECTIVE INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT VS IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL ARGUMENT.

    (I’m riffing off Peter’s point. Not so much countering it. Because political debate is not in the same class as intellectual and academic engagement.)

    Status Update

    By Peter Boettke

    Four rules of effective intellectual engagement — from Daniel Dennett

    How to compose a successful critical commentary:

    (1) You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

    (2) You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

    (3) You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

    (4) Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

    I was taught these rules by Don Lavoie, I wish I was good enough of a person and scholar to always follow them. I will strive to do better.

    ====

    Curt Doolittle

    Very victorian Peter. It depends on the sector and the consequences. The history of Ideological debate does not agree with your advice. The history of academic study does.

    I learned a hard lesson from Hayek’s gentlemanly failure, and Friedman, Rothbard and Krugman’s immediate impact: if you’re debating science then that’s a gentleman’s game. Science is a luxury good. Politics is a proxy for war, and ideology is the weapon of influence.

    Time is precious.

    (Affections as always.)

    Curt Doolittle

    –” This is granting several enormous assumptions; (1) that your fellow actually believes what he says, (2) that he is stating the same reasons that he actually has for his position, and (3) that the crowd or stakeholders actually believe his argument based on the publicly stated reasons.

    I find it entirely likely, if not 100% certainly the case that (1) The arguments are just publicly digestible justifications. (2) The fellow has actual motives and reasons that differ from the arguments given, and (3) the crowd believes in the position due to the hidden reasons, regardless of the stated reasons.

    To accept your methodology, in my opinion, is to admit that Public Choice Theory is not valid.”–

    OMG. STEALING THIS.

    Curt Doolittle

    Note: one of the problems those of us at the lofty reaches fall prey to is ‘smart people disease’. (Projection Bias) Because we are both better able to identify deception and error, and because we associate with people better able to identify deception and error, and because we and those we associate with encounter less deception and error, we discount the near universal presence of deception even if we do not discount the near universal presence of error. The biggest threat to rational discourse is not error, or fallacy, it is deception, obscurantism, and postmodernism. Against which, Victorian ethics are a handicap.

    CLOSING

    I try to draw blood.

    Because your opponent is less likely to walk away when wounded.

    And you can defeat him thoroughly.

    I’m not a gentlemen. I’m a warrior.

    And I understand the moral difference between the two.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-02 17:25:00 UTC

  • I REALLY DISLIKE RACISM One should blame one’s own people for their failures, no

    I REALLY DISLIKE RACISM

    One should blame one’s own people for their failures, not others for taking advantage of them. If you are occupied and conquered by others through immigration or displacement, it is no different from being occupied or conquered by others through religious conversion, political usurpation, or military conquest. It is your failure to prevent it. Not theirs for taking advantage of it.

    I see the world as families and tribes that can all prosper if we cooperate productively, without free riding, parasitism and predation. Unfortunately, free riding, parasitism and predation are much easier than mutually beneficial production. So humans prefer free riding, parasitism and predation whenever possible.

    I agree that the distribution of talents in the races is different, and that performatively, we can see that the median distribution of talents is indeed hierarchical.

    I agree that people act as political groups, acting in the favor of their group at the expense of other groups, whenever possible. I believe that the evidence tells us that race is on of the most influential factors in determining group membership, if not the most influential factor.

    I agree that because of those differences, our means and ends are different. But that does not mean that the different classes of all the races, and tribes, particularly the upper classes, cannot work together for the benefit of each tribe rather than abandoning the lower classes to conflict over resources and opportunities. The lower classes exist, and without their upper classes to grant them opportunities through superior competitiveness and cooperation, then they lose the competitive advantage that elites provide.

    The most heinous crime that an upper class can commit is to prey upon it’s own people, rather than provide competitive value for it’s lower classes, in relation to other lower classes.

    This is one of the primary reasons why the middle and lower classes support their elites and act as a group: because its in their interest to do so.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-01 06:01:00 UTC