Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • MIGHT MAKES RIGHT? OR, CAN RIGHT EVEN EXIST WITHOUT MIGHT? (profound) Property r

    MIGHT MAKES RIGHT? OR, CAN RIGHT EVEN EXIST WITHOUT MIGHT?

    (profound)

    Property rights have been, and must be, instituted by the organized application of violence to prevent free riding, fraud, theft and violence.

    And while most would argue that fraud, theft and violence are intolerable acts, the majority of private sector theft in the world is perpetuated by acts of free-riding, fraud by omission, fraud by obfuscation, and theft by externalization.

    The majority of public sector or state theft in the world, is created by rent seeking, extortion, using procedural and legal obscurantism.

    So, in this sense, we who desire property rights, use our wealth of violence, as a threat, to institute property rights over the will of those who would engage in private sector theft. However, by doing so we create the opportunity for public sector theft. Public sector theft centralizes free riding and rent seeking and forces the majority of people into the market for goods and services now that their work products are extracted, and their opportunities for free riding and rent seeking have been eliminated. (*Profound*)

    The fact appears to be, that it’s not so much that government does good, but that all action that forces us into the market rather than to rent seek and free ride is in fact ‘good’.

    Now, our problem, since we have centralized free riding and rent seeking in government, is to drive GOVERNMENT into the market for goods and services AS WELL.

    If we have natural man, for whom honest competition is hard work, and now have deprived him of the ability to commit theft by free riding, various frauds, theft and violence, by forcing his criminality into the state, and his efforts into the market, there is no reason we cannot force all the free riding and rent seeking from government into the market.

    I won’t disagree that there are certain circumstances where totalitarian or at least very strong government is necessary to purge systemic theft from the population and drive the population into the market. Nor will I disagree that forcible literacy and education is merely self defense. Nor will I disagree that the use of government to create infrastructure as the only possible means of preventing privatization and free riding of common investment, is necessary – only because it can enforce the prohibition on free riding, privatization and socialization.

    But that does not mean that these activities must be pursued as a monopoly. They don’t. There is no reason why government must be more than rules and courts, and a vehicle for the construction of contracts between groups. The reason that we relied on government is that we failed to articulate all the various means of involuntary transfer, such that any individual could use the courts to prosecute any other individual or group.

    The government for the provision of goods, need only be a market for exchange between classes. But the extractive classes use the monopoly power of government and their freedom from suit as an income stream.

    So this problem – of forcing theft into the market – is not unsolvable.

    It isn’t even that difficult.

    Displacing the people in the vast rent seeking and extractive government is what’s difficult. They have every incentive to stay. And displacing them by revolution is expensive and risky.

    Nullification eventually deprives them of power and costs nothing, and forces them to use violence to change it. Secession immediately deprives them of power, and forces them to use violence to change it. Insurrection destroys a lot of capital, but effectively makes funding the state and the ability to govern impossible.

    Forcing your opposition to attack you is always beneficial. It puts you on the moral high ground.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-09 04:33:00 UTC

  • FORCING ALL IMMORAL ACTION INTO THE MARKET? I guess one of the things that I don

    FORCING ALL IMMORAL ACTION INTO THE MARKET?

    I guess one of the things that I don’t repeat often enough, is that human impulses can be redirected, but not suppressed.

    With extraordinary training those impulses for near term reward can be redirected to longer term rewards. This just requires a hormonal education (training), so that the individual perceives certain suppressions as kicks or highs, the way some of us perceive saving or investing over the experience of consuming something less complex than an ‘idea’.

    All of us have a frustration budget. Some of us have a love of frustration for some reason, so we love to play with problems and are actually unhappy if we dont have any to work on. But most people have a pretty low budget because MOST of their ideas and ambitions are frustrated.

    So when we suppress free riding, and push competition, we must realize how much of the majority’s frustration budget is expended by doing so.

    Now, look at all the types of immoral, involuntary transfers:

    1-DIRECT INDIVIDUAL

    Murder

    Violence

    Destruction

    Theft

    Theft by Fraud

    Theft by Fraud by omission

    2 – INDIRECT INDIVIDUAL

    Theft by Impediment

    Theft by Externalization

    3 – INDIRECT COLLECTIVE

    Theft by Free riding

    Theft by privatization

    Theft by socialization

    4 – ORGANIZATIONAL COLLECTIVE

    Theft by Rent seeking

    Theft by Complexity, Rule, Process or Obscurantism

    Theft by Extortion

    Murder, Destruction and Theft by War

    FORCING ALL IMMORALITY INTO THE MARKET

    While believe it or not, in-family competition, that produces a material ‘loser’ is considered immoral. And as such, most humans intuit competition on PRICE as immoral even if they don’t consider competition on QUALITY immoral.

    But we have discovered that the market, conducted outside of the family, produces a virtuous cycle, since as long as there are two sellers and one buyer, while one seller loses on opportunity the buyer gains, and both sellers LEARN, and are forced to constantly innovate.

    And that the civil society is produced by allowing ONLY the market as a means of fulfililng wants and needs.

    Since we are unequally capable in the market, this is frustrating to many, and rewarding to the few. Even though all benefit, the inability to rest from the competition turns most of us into slaves who will be passed by if we do not stay in the race.

    The only problem I see with this system is that redistribution increases the rates of breeding in the lower classes while rates of innovation make the lower classes increasingly unemployable.

    We have not yet solved this problem.

    As far as I can tell, the only solution is to pay the lower classes not to breed.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-08 12:46:00 UTC

  • EVERYONE IS THE SAME COLOR : GOLD In the market, we are all just ‘customers’ tha

    EVERYONE IS THE SAME COLOR : GOLD

    In the market, we are all just ‘customers’ that need to be made happy.

    But the state is a tool for the gaining of status, privilege, rents, and monopolies. And it is far too easy for groups to rally together to obtain status, privilege, rents and partial monopolies. The state ENCOURAGES us to try to obtain status, privilege, rents, and partial monopolies. It TRIES to make us free-riders. It then uses its mandate to care for free riders to enslave us through money and credit.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-08 06:33:00 UTC

  • NEGOTIATING TACTICS AND MORALITY In politics, in serious negotiations, when you

    NEGOTIATING TACTICS AND MORALITY

    In politics, in serious negotiations, when you ask your opposition party to return to its constituency with demands that they are unwilling to suffer, your function is to provide your opposition with the material means of extracting the demand from their constituency.

    Those material means, or the threat, must be believable, and sufficient, and the timing must be such that there is no alternative in the time frame. This tactic has been effective throughout history. It is best if your opposition party is unsure whether or not the threat is serious, because this frustrates their ability to project the future, but they must believe the threat is, at least, possible. You must empower your opponents to operate on your behalf.

    Depending upon your perspective in the matter, it is doing your opposition a favor. Although, they rarely appreciate it at the time. In retrospect getting such an ask generally improves the ability of all participants from that point forward to work together because it rebalances the playing field so that the participants in the negotiation are weighted as highly as the constituency – if only because the circumstances are no longer predictable. It is far better for your opposition to worry about that which they do not expect, than that which they expect, and which makes them overconfident.

    If, regardless of party, we do the right thing for everyone, then the moral constraint remains in place. If we do not do the right thing for everyone, then the moral constraint is off in negotiations. So it is always important to hold the moral high ground, rather than retreat into proceduralism specifically designed to abrogate moral constraints. Because it is moral constraint that binds all negotiations regardless of procedure and law. In the end, all moral codes consist of property rights, albeit different allocations of them.

    THE PURPOSE OF RULES AND PROCEDURES IS GENERALLY TO LIE OR STEAL. There is but one rule, and that is property. Property is the moral high ground. Always.

    I’m autistic. I write political and ethical theory. This kind of thing is just tedium.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-06 14:31:00 UTC

  • Remember that wonder? Your parents. Your teachers and professors? Great minds in

    Remember that wonder? Your parents. Your teachers and professors? Great minds in great books? The sense that there exists an endless series of undiscovered valleys where you can shop for interesting ideas, gaining a little more knowledge, power, and control over your world as you learn?

    But at some point you may become a master, then a teacher, at another point a professor, and possibly a prophet.

    And the process, like aging backwards, is terrifying. There are no undiscovered valleys, neatly plowed and sown. All that’s left is an infinite darkness into which you can, with your accumulated wisdom, peer only a short distance, and even then, dimly; treading cautiously, aware of your ignorance, despite all the shoulders of the past that you stand upon.

    it’s not all that pleasant really. It’s just very humbling.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-06 10:49:00 UTC

  • THE 20TH CENTURY AS AN AGE OF MYSTICISM You know, sitting here, reading a Engels

    THE 20TH CENTURY AS AN AGE OF MYSTICISM

    You know, sitting here, reading a Engels, written in 1884, it’s pretty clear that it has only been, perhaps, since maybe, what, 1990, or maybe 2000, or maybe the milestone was Pinker’s 2002 book The Blank Slate, that the era of progressive and postmodern mysticism has begun to fade.

    The conservatives, the marxists, the postmodernists, all the political nonsense that was constructed in the 20th century as for the purpose of using mass media to persuade a large ignorant population to transfer power to the state. Hell, the nonsense we libertarians came up with for the same reason is just as frustrating. Or it would be if we weren’t the only people on the planet who actually contributed anything to the advancement of political theory since the enlightenment.

    Terrifying.

    Hayek was right. Looking back on it, the 20th century, or at least, starting with the works of freud, marx and cantor, and maturing into the 20th century, became an age of mysticism.

    It took only from Darwin to Marx to create economic obscurantism (experiences rather than necessities), and to Freud to convert from mystical obscurantism to psychological obscurantism (experiences rather than causes), and to Cantor to create mathematical mysticism (sizes rather than frequencies). Of course, the culprit is Kant, who could not bear that economics and individuals could determine status, so he invented a new irrationalism. But Hegel and Heidegger gave academia license to create more obscurantism.

    It’s terrifying.

    And I just stumbled on Hoppe. Damn. Lucky for me.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-03 17:25:00 UTC

  • WHAT IF LIBERTY IS TRANSITIONAL? (uncomfortable idea) (interesting analysis) Wha

    WHAT IF LIBERTY IS TRANSITIONAL?

    (uncomfortable idea) (interesting analysis)

    What if, bias toward the market, is a transitional phase, where the opportunities from participation in the market are greater than the opportunities from rent seeking and free riding?

    What if, say, Todd is right, and that the stagnancy, ignorance, poverty, and low trust of the middle east, is the natural line of maturity in human civilizations? What if the greeks were in fact, the originators of inbred paternalism as a means of protecting against diversity created by democracy?

    Again, then (and I keep running into this problem), liberty is an unnatural state that must be forcibly held against the common will by force of arms, by a minority unwilling to let society return to its natural state of maximizing free riding and rent seeking?

    Liberty is unnatural. It is unique to the west. It is a contractual benefit exchanged between those willing and able to fight to create it against the general tide of free riding pervasive in all societies.

    Just as spears and other weapons, allowed a group of men to organize to control or kill dangerous alpha males within the band or tribe, the combination of advanced weapons and domesticated animals allowed the concentration of wealth and violence, so that free riding could be suppressed.

    In this sense, the struggle for civilization, is the effort of liberty seeking males to suppress free riders and rent seekers by forcibly creating the institution of private property, so that the majority of males will seek to imitate that wealth, and as such, the minority is constantly refreshed with new members who are likewise incentivized to use violence to maintain private property.

    This was the second falsehood of the enlightenment: men do not desire liberty. They desire consumption.

    Since the number that can, and desire to compete, is limited in any population, then so will be the number of liberty seekers. It is not rational that without belief in success, that individuals should desire to compete only to fail, in a population where they are anonymous.

    Then, liberty and private property, must be forcibly held, by those who desire it. And it is non rational, and immoral, to force those who do not desire liberty, and who cannot or are unwilling to compete to do so. This means that the multi-house form of government was the only known solution to political cooperation. The aristocracy can choose liberty and private property, and the rent seekers and free riders can choose to communalize their efforts, and effectively charge the aristocracy for access to the market of consumers that consists of communal rent seekers and free riders.

    I can’t see an argument around that, which doesn’t violate the both the lower standard of NAP, and the higher moral standard of Propertarianism.

    And moral claims about the virtue of liberty are nonsensical. They are an attempt to obtain a discount without paying the high cost of suppressing free riding and rent seeking – an probably fraud as well.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-03 05:53:00 UTC

  • OSTRUM VS PROPERTARIANISM : THE GRAMMAR OF POLITICS (I HAVE’T READ OSTROM UNTIL

    OSTRUM VS PROPERTARIANISM : THE GRAMMAR OF POLITICS

    (I HAVE’T READ OSTROM UNTIL TODAY – SADLY)

    (this part paraphrased)

    “Ostrom presents a grammar that has five elements:

    1) the attributes that qualify someone as a participant in the system;

    2) whether actions are permitted, required, or forbidden (may, must, must not);

    3) the covered actions;

    4) the conditions under which the rules apply; and

    5) the consequences of not following the rule.

    These components can be used to describe rules, norms and shared strategies. “

    (end)

    RULES: Rules have all 5 components,

    NORMS: Norms specify all but the consequences, and

    SHARED STRATEGIES: Shared strategies are statements that only contain the first three components.

    (Paraphrased)

    “When using this framework, you have to be aware that most rules can be rephrased between prohibitions and compulsions without changing their sense. When comparing two institutions, a little care is usually enough to penetrate this surface distinction. For example “Actor X is forbidden to take action Y” could be written as “X must perform a non-Y action” or “X does not have the option of doing Y”.

    (end)

    PROPERTY RIGHTS

    I suppose it’s only clear to a libertarian, that these five are the criteria for a shareholder’s agreement, and the property rights of shareholders.

    At least, that’s the GRAMMAR I am using. And PROPERTARIAN GRAMMAR grammar is more useful since propertarianism is a prohibition against involuntary transfer vie other than virtuous competition.

    Ostrom is correct but didn’t take it far enough. Nor did she make the connection between rules, and rights, nor between rights and morality, nor between morality and reproductive strategy.

    What we should learn from Rothbard, from Ostrom, from Hayek, from Mises, is that GRAMMARS (languages) are necessary for the development and articulation of commensurability between moral codes.

    The problem is, that none of these people was able to produce the entire grammar. None of them took it far enough. I suspect that’s only because it’s taken so long for us to produce enough data to make those connections.

    Standing on the shoulders of others makes doing the previously impossible a lot easier. 🙂

    PROPERTARIANISM IS A GRAMMAR FOR POLITICS

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-01 13:12:00 UTC

  • "Way's Of Thinking" Are Premodern Solutions. We Need Understanding of Our Failures and Institutions That Correct Them.

    We dont need another way of thinking. We cant convince anyone to adopt it. We dont need a new religion or belief. What we need is to understand why our beliefs, ways of thinking, and institutions failed to survive the extension of the franchise, and what to do about it now that they have failed. We cannot turn back the clock. Nor is the absurdity of the progressive fantasy either possible or survivable. It appears possible to reform our institutions by impending systemic collapse, or by outright insurrection. But it is clear that the majority favors feudal equality over entrepreneurial freedom. Numbers tell us that they do. So if we are to have freedom and they equality without one side conquering the other then we must sever our relations into multiple states or develop an alternative to majority monopoly rule. Given the value of scale in an insurer of last resort, and the virtue of a multiplicity of city states. And given the economic opportunity and cultural freedom that secession creates for each state, it may be possible to design a compromise solution which serves the moral differences and financial commonalities if each given modern technology. It would take a few years to implement but that time would permit demographic adjustment as well as the dismantlement of the federal monopoly, and the possibility if the solution would give vent to what is now leading to civil war.

  • “Way’s Of Thinking” Are Premodern Solutions. We Need Understanding of Our Failures and Institutions That Correct Them.

    We dont need another way of thinking. We cant convince anyone to adopt it. We dont need a new religion or belief. What we need is to understand why our beliefs, ways of thinking, and institutions failed to survive the extension of the franchise, and what to do about it now that they have failed. We cannot turn back the clock. Nor is the absurdity of the progressive fantasy either possible or survivable. It appears possible to reform our institutions by impending systemic collapse, or by outright insurrection. But it is clear that the majority favors feudal equality over entrepreneurial freedom. Numbers tell us that they do. So if we are to have freedom and they equality without one side conquering the other then we must sever our relations into multiple states or develop an alternative to majority monopoly rule. Given the value of scale in an insurer of last resort, and the virtue of a multiplicity of city states. And given the economic opportunity and cultural freedom that secession creates for each state, it may be possible to design a compromise solution which serves the moral differences and financial commonalities if each given modern technology. It would take a few years to implement but that time would permit demographic adjustment as well as the dismantlement of the federal monopoly, and the possibility if the solution would give vent to what is now leading to civil war.