Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • ARISTOCRACY, GODS AND PRAYER : A CURE FOR THE GOD THAT FAILED (meaningful) Arist

    ARISTOCRACY, GODS AND PRAYER : A CURE FOR THE GOD THAT FAILED

    (meaningful)

    Aristocracy prays, if it does, to its ancestors. And you pray to your ancestors only if they are worth praying to. Moreover, you pray to some other god only because your ancestors are not worth praying to.

    All gods exist – at least as much as ideas exist. The question is the relative merit of each. The merit of any god, any religion, is the status of the people who worship it. If a people prosper and endure then they chose the right gods. If they suffer in ignorance and poverty, then they chose the wrong gods.

    Clearly the corporate State, the “God That Failed” was a bad god to pray to. Our old gods must mourn. And the other gods must laugh at them. Because all evidence indicates, that the State is the god of Genocide.

    In that sense, the god of the State, the god of Genocide, is not a failure. The god of Genocide succeeds so more every day. The “God That Failed” is then, a mistake. It is not the god that failed: it is we who failed in choosing our god.

    No man will pray to ancestors that are not his. No man will pray to ancestors that are not worthy. And men who pray to unworthy gods will pay for it. And men who pray to genocidal gods, will pay with their genes – forever. A never-ending price.

    There are many gods. That is just an irrefutable scientific fact. The question is who we choose as our gods. One always chooses a god. Even if one chooses not to. Choosing not to, is a choice too. And at least empirically speaking, it appears to be a very bad one. Because it is a lie. Without choosing other gods, we of necessity choose the state. And the state is a genocidal god.

    Curt Doolittle

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-23 15:03:00 UTC

  • WHAT I LEARNED FROM HANS HOPPE? Someone asked me what I learned from Hoppe, accu

    WHAT I LEARNED FROM HANS HOPPE?

    Someone asked me what I learned from Hoppe, accusatorially. that I hadn’t learned elsewhere. And I was so stupefied by it that I couldn’t put it into words that the time.

    But, what I learned from Hans-Hermann Hoppe that I did NOT learn from any other source, was how to construct moral arguments in economic terms. Or rather, that all moral statements were reducible to statements of property, and that, furthermore, economic reasoning was applicable to ALL human behavior.

    Yes, I have to filter out the Rothbardian and Misesian errors. And yes, Hans likes to interject a lot of sarcastic humor or ridicule into his speeches. But in general, the way of constructing arguments with that much rigor reliant entirely on demonstrated ACTIONS not empty VERBALISMS, is unique to libertarianism. It’s unique to Hoppe really. You just don’t find that intellectual rigor anywhere else. He makes almost all academic philosophy look like the work of children by comparison.

    And that’s where my approach got it from – although I tend to think in more Hayekian voice.

    Now, in my work, I have the ADDITIONAL burden of having to describe the CAUSE of liberty, where Hans didn’t. (He didn’t know it.) Where he had only to work with correlation, I have to work with causation.

    And it’s harder to do that. I can’t rely on an assumed natural morality the way he did. Instead I treat human cooperation as a form of rigorous logic – a science. It’s more burdensome. But it works.

    Anyway. Hans solve the problem I was looking for. He solved what we hadn’t solved for 2500 years. And what he DIDN”T solve, I will (assuming I live long enough – cause that’s a hell of an assumption.)

    That’s why I am so indebted to Hans despite the fact that he didn’t directly give me much help. On the other hand, he didn’t need to.

    Curt Doolittle

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-23 09:23:00 UTC

  • LETTER TO THE BBC – TODAY – IN RESPONSE TO “REQUEST FOR COMMENTS FROM KIEV” (int

    LETTER TO THE BBC – TODAY – IN RESPONSE TO “REQUEST FOR COMMENTS FROM KIEV”

    (interesting insight) (class and diversity)

    –“I live in downtown Kiev. I have for a year and a half. And it might be interesting to relate how I have been affected, at least intellectually, by the protests.

    I think we could help both western journalists and the populace they serve (as well as various State departments) if they would understand one of the vast differences between Ukrainian (and Russian for that matter) cultures and our own.

    Somewhat like the Nordic countries, but very UNLIKE the germanic and anglo countries, Ukrainians do not really consider themselves as participants in a class war. While status signals are about all we seem to seek to collect in the west, here in Ukraine, status signals are something you collect personally, but not on behalf of a class.

    The near destruction of class warfare was perhaps the only benefit of the soviet system. It worked. Whereas, in the west, we are still trying, to create the ‘Aristocracy of Everybody’ that was the unstated promise of the enlightenment in its Anglo, Anglo-American, German and French versions.

    The Ukrainian society is, despite its fracture along geographic lines, language lines, religious lines, and political lines, NOT fractured along class lines.

    And without this constant class and status warfare by everyone, people don’t demonize each other. They aren’t frustrated with each other. And even as a low-trust society, they don’t necessarily mistrust each other. Instead, they think and act as an extended family.

    As such there just isn’t all that pent up anger and frustration that we have in anglo countries – since it’s IMPOSSIBLE to create an aristocracy of everybody – many people become frustrated at the conflict between the promise of upper middle class life, and the reality that western countries form normal distributions. That just doesn’t happen here.

    Ukraine is tribally heterogeneous, but not necessarily culturally heterogeneous. Certainly less different than Quebecois and Anglo Anglos in Canada. Even in Canada the conflict is more over the class differences between the French who were predominantly from the continental lower classes, and the english who were not. In america the conflict is increasingly between married protestants with two incomes that can maintain middle class status, and everyone else.

    The Ukrainian people reserve their anger and frustration for the corrupt government and do not display it toward one another. In fact, they are extremely civil and loving (despite absurd levels of alcohol consumption and zero prohibition on fist-to-cuffs). They have a nobility and pride that we have lost in our constant great game of class warfare.

    The uncomfortable truth we westerners (particularly in the Anglosphere) must learn to deal with is that homogenous small societies demonstrate tolerance for greater redistribution and intolerance for class warfare. And that diverse, large societies resist redistribution and encourage class and culture warfare. In small homogenous polities, the government is a vehicle for cooperation. In large heterogeneous polities the government is a vehicle for class and cultural competition.

    I am not sure we should be so proud of ourselves in the Anglo world. Ukrainians formed a militia in 90 days out of hand-made armor, surplus military gear, motorcycle and hockey gear, baseball bats, pipes, and a few weapons that they stole from the police and military.

    That little militia did more for their freedom than democracy ever had.

    I think that’s what I learned from watching Ukrainians revolt.”–

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-23 08:32:00 UTC

  • FUTURE : RUSSIAN POWER AGAINST UKRAINE? (note: I am pro-russian and pro-ukrainia

    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/why-a-new-ukraine-is-the-kremlins-worst-nightmare-9146751.htmlTHE FUTURE : RUSSIAN POWER AGAINST UKRAINE?

    (note: I am pro-russian and pro-ukrainian both. My interest in this geopolitical rough and tumble is simple: I want a strong east that suppresses visible corruption so that people can economically prosper. )

    “Russia has talked a lot about its “soft power” in recent years. It isn’t particularly soft. The new Ukraine will pay more for gas, which will be regularly cut off for “technical reasons”. Russia’s crazy “food safety” agency will declare that everything that comes out of Ukraine is radioactive. Ukrainian migrant workers will be sent home now they have finished helping to rebuild Sochi.

    Worst of all, Russia will work hard to try to re-corrupt the political system. The Kremlin used to boast that it could exploit Ukraine’s old-style “democracy” – meaning that, just like Yanukovych, they could launch their own puppet parties and buy agents of influence in the honest ones. The Ukrainian Front, a bizarre alliance of hooligans and bikers with a vaguely pan-Slavist ideology that appeared in the eastern city of Kharkiv two weeks ago, was backed by the Russians. Skinheads and sportsmen with the money to spend on propaganda are not a natural combination. Similar groups may pop up in Crimea and elsewhere, where the last elements of the old regime may try and regroup.

    But Russia’s ultimate problem is the same as Yanukovych faced. The Kremlin simply can’t understand that protesters would be motivated by ideology rather than by money or foreign support. The Russians were good at manipulating the old system, but dealing with real revolutionaries is a different matter. Ukraine is starting a very bumpy ride.”

    THEY ARE NOT MOTIVATED BY IDEOLOGY BUT ECONOMIC SUFFERING AND FREEDOM FROM SYSTEMIC CORRUPTION.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-22 23:15:00 UTC

  • UNDERSTANDING WESTERN POLICY AS RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE (reposted)(expanded) You gott

    UNDERSTANDING WESTERN POLICY AS RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE

    (reposted)(expanded)

    You gotta understand this. And this is hard for some people to grasp:

    The entire IDENTITY of the west is predicated on their superiority in human rights. Their claim of legitimacy is predicated upon it. Their identity, self worth, system of status signals, political mythology, and moral authority is based upon it. The US’s argument in favor of its use of POWER is predicated upon it.

    So, when you take a bunch of peaceful white folk, and shoot them, this is not so much a question of Ukraine. It’s a question of ‘religious devotion’ on the part of westerners.

    I have spent a long time trying to demonstrate the connection between economics and morality – that they’re the same. But that while humans are universally acquisitive, they are MORE universally MORAL than acquisitive. And that is an evolutionary necessity.

    Just as Coase worked to add the theory of the firm to macro Economics. I want to add morality into macro economics. And the logic of cooperation into Philosophy. (I don’t know if I can at this point, because i’m in my 50’s already. But i’m going to keep at it.) But if I succeed, then at that point, economics will be, THE social science. Both internally consistent (logic of cooperation) and eternally correspondent (macro economics).

    So, for the RELIGION of the secular christian west, shooting protesters is the far more serious an offense to the secular christianity that we call democratic socialism, than drawing comics of Muhammed as a goat-f_cker.

    I am not a ‘christian’ in this sense. I am an aristocratic egalitarian. Christianity as we practice it incorporates some aristocratic egalitarian values and virtues. That we worship one particular philosopher (Jesus/Peter/Paul) rather than all philosophers, generals, and statesmen and is a catastrophe of the christianization of Europe.

    My religion, if I have one, is “sovereignty”. Which translates to property rights in libertarian language. However, the difference in aristocratic egalitarianism, is that you EARN those property rights by paying for them with your constant diligence. You are’t born with them. And logically – you just can’t be anyway.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-22 06:04:00 UTC

  • I THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN FOUR YEARS AGO Just ruminating. Turning bearish on c

    http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/02/21/even-chinas-economists-are-singing-the-blues/?mod=WSJBlogCHINA – I THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN FOUR YEARS AGO

    Just ruminating.

    Turning bearish on china is all well and good. But you know, I can’t make heads or tales out of what’s coming out of that country. Not sure how anyone else does. I’m not as good at the data as I am the interpretation of the logic of those that are.

    I can tell you other than the vague feeling that ‘something isn’t looking good here’ no one is very sure what’s going on.

    So, I still don’t feel confident one way or the other. I mean, China is an example of Keynes’ suggestion that we just dig holes and bury money in it. Except they make cities instead of holes. I mean, the really bad part about overbuilding is that infrastructure like that is more expensive to maintain than it is to build, and if it’s built at the same time (American roads) it fails at the same time (like light bulbs).

    So at this point, I’m just confused. The one figure that bothers me most is actually the degree to which China’s economy is managed by foreign entities (70-80%). That means that they aren’t actually adapting at all. And I don’t understand the economy well enough to judge what kind of distortions are in place. I think, from what I see, they are buying density (transition from farming) in exchange for distortion. This actually makes sense believe it or not. And that’s a pretty good use of a command economy. I guess that if they get far enough with the population shift to cities, then they can use consumer credit after that – but only if enough people and institutions develop the skills for trustworthy transactions. And I just don’t see evidence of that yet.

    I don’t underestimate the intelligence of the political class over there.

    So they might be fine with it. But I don’t see how that internal ‘bad’ command-economy run by the state, translates into converting the ‘good’ economy run by foreigners. I just don’t see that. If they go long enough then the natural evolution of people in the cities might take care of it. I suppose that makes some sense. But the rapid personal wealth increases just won’t be there.

    WE ALL CANNOT BE MIDDLE CLASS because not enough of us are productive enough to reach it. We can generate false middle classes for periods (British colonialism, american expansion, postwar america, petro-dollar america, post-communist-credit china). But you can’t ‘fake it’ forever. (No matter what Krugmans of the world like to pretend.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-21 08:41:00 UTC

  • MORALITY BACK INTO ECONOMICS – ONE POST AT A TIME (response to ‘economist’s view

    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2014/02/forget-the-minimum-wage-job-losses-its-government-cuts-thatll-getyou-mad.htmlADDING MORALITY BACK INTO ECONOMICS – ONE POST AT A TIME

    (response to ‘economist’s view’)

    NOTE: current macro economic models assumes either (a) a nation state or (b) universalism. But it does not account for moral differences in a heterogeneous polity. My argument is that these models are increasingly predictive under artificially heated economies, and increasingly NON-PREDICTIVE under increasingly normal economies. The rate of change in wealth determines our tolerance for ‘immoral’ behavior. The lower the rate of change, the less tolerance, and the rate of contraction determines the level of intolerance.

    I believe that this is one of the missing ‘laws’ of macro economic analysis.

    Moral heterogeneity is a bad thing. It’s not a matter of race. it’s a matter of morality and identity. Race just happens to influence identity and morality a lot. Less so in the UK than the States for example. Less so in Canada than the UK. For obvious reasons: density and rates of change.

    — POST FOLLOWS—

    –“I love the clarity and consistency of the posts on this blog. But Cosmopolitan morality is not universal. It has a specific ideological origin. And it’s both a luxury good, and a status symbol, and symbol of conspicuous consumption.

    I’ve been arguing since ’06 I think, that people DEMONSTRATE by their actions that they will absorb significant personal harm, in order to ‘punish’ cheaters and free riders.

    At present, the financial community is an ally against the state. And the state has very, very bad polling numbers. Trust (polling number on our civil interactions) has declined rapidly since the 60’s along with the increase in our homogeneity of interest.

    So the people in both the USA and in Europe, are rebelling against what they see as ‘immoral’ behavior both by the state, and in the case of Europe, the low trust high corruption southern europeans. And in America, the high trust protestants against the low trust everyone-else.

    ‘We’ are not a family. There is no Cosmopolitan ‘we’. We are an empire.

    Cooperation is very different from redistribution. And redistribution is only tolerable if it does not produce immoral consequences. We can agree to cooperate if we have different objectives. But we cannot sacrifice across trust, family, race and cultural boundaries.

    We can all agree that the means of redistributing money via the financial system instead of directly to consumers is simply an artifact of previous technical limitations – limitations that we no longer have. MMT looks like a partial answer to the problem since we can issue debit cards and accounts to individuals at near zero cost. And we could even eliminate the financial system as a distribution network.

    This has the benefit of making work a means of obtaining luxuries, rather than absolute necessities. And it removes employment from consideration in policy, and instead refocuses us on productivity.

    The problem is, that the only way that will be enacted over moral objection, and over economic constraints, is to eliminate all entitlement programs, and all social service programs, and roll them into the new model.

    The conservatives will go for this solution if it means disbanding interference – including in the labor and social market, by the state.

    The truth test then, is whether people on the left are actually interested in such conversion of the economy and polity, or whether it’s just political power over the productive class. “–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-21 08:17:00 UTC

  • UKRAINE : A LESSON FOR AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES The square in Maydan has held ne

    UKRAINE : A LESSON FOR AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES

    The square in Maydan has held nearly a million people, but is being manned by as few as 20,000.

    Their successes and sacrifices have encouraged people in other areas of the country to revolt.

    It is very easy to render a country ungovernable, and a government illegitimate, with a very small number of people willing to use violence and to risk life and limb for freedom.

    A small, armed, distributed population, willing to use weapons against police and military, to disrupt bureaucratic organizations from functioning under their the thin veil of legitimacy, can rapidly bring an economy to a halt.

    The status quo in any society is not an immutable force of gravity. It’s a fragile set of habits, easily disrupted. And with that disruption the veil of ignorance is lifted from the public: governments are disposable. Freedom is not.

    UKRAINE IS A TUTORIAL.

    WATCH CAREFULLY.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-20 13:13:00 UTC

  • THE POOR QUALITY OF POLITICIANS One thing that I hear pretty consistently, is th

    THE POOR QUALITY OF POLITICIANS

    One thing that I hear pretty consistently, is that the people in charge of the different political factions, and in fact, everyone in politics here, “Isn’t very good” or “isn’t very smart”. And you really do get that impression.

    I don’t know where the smart people are, or if they left, but you know, I always have this impression that the IQ distribution here is narrower (not sure where to get the data to prove that). I know that IQ is a bit lower (around 96) but again, I’ll bet that if I got my hands on the data, it’s a distribution issue. IQ rapidly degenerates south and east of Ukraine. Anything that the Turks touched was seriously impacted.

    But all that nonsense aside, you don’t seem to find smart people in government. And it’s not an anti-intellectual culture. Just the opposite. But the politicians really just remind you of gangsters and thugs.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-18 14:56:00 UTC

  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND PAIN TOLERANCE This winter has reminded me once again that

    ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND PAIN TOLERANCE

    This winter has reminded me once again that entrepreneurship is determined in no small part by your willingness to work hard while enduring a great deal of emotional and psychological pain at high risk.

    I just think that there are too few of us willing to work under those conditions.

    For me, I get one thing out of it: the sense of heroic achievement with ‘my guys’.

    Entrepreneurship is the closest thing we can do today to conducting warfare.

    You can get your high’s from sports, from the military, from entrepreneurship, and from intellectual achievement. I don’t have the physical ability to win at team sports (asthma), although I was better than fair at wrestling other sweaty men, and I will catch a football that comes close to me even if it kills me. And I think I’m probably going to make my dent in intellectual history.

    But there is no feeling in this world than leading a group of other men on the hunt to conquer some bit of territory – be it war, sport, business, or intellectual.

    Nothing like it at all.

    We still seek to be kings. And entrepreneurship is one of the paths available to us.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-18 07:52:00 UTC