Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Capitalism: How Much Is Wasted In Finding Market-based Solutions?

    I WILL TRY TO DO YOUR QUESTION JUSTICE:

    RE: “That represents a huge expenditure of human and physical resources that is not typically looked at when evaluating the efficiency of the winner.”

    Actually, it is obvious, common sense, and assumed in economics and politics, but we come to the opposite conclusion.  (a) we are constantly researching and developing new products and services, and variations of them through constant refinements of products, services, and prices called ‘entrepreneurial research and development”. It is not a process of PRODUCTION. The market is a process of RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.

    Furthermore, as the world consists of millions of resources, all of which have multiple demands on them, we must constantly look for what we refer to as ‘substitutions’ in the form of different resources, different suppliers, different technology, to adapt to constant changes in the demand for and availability of resources from the most simplistic primary resources to the most complex combination of sophisticated production techniques. 

    So. NONE OF IT IS WASTE.   The market is not a machine following a production program. It is a vast network of individuals working in networks some of us call ‘patterns of sustainable specialization and trade”, dynamically changing our efforts in response to other similar networks, in real time on a momentary basis in some cases (oil prices) and on a long term basis in others (commercial construction) and on a very, very long term basis for others (pharmaceutical research.)

    A COMMON ERROR
    It is very common for people who lack knowledge of economics to apply very simplistic concepts of production to an economy. It is very common for people who lack knowledge of economics and to fail to understand prices as an information system by which we coordinate ALL HUMAN ACTIVITY to serve each other’s needs, in a vast division of knowledge and labor, that is incomprehensible to any individual or group of individuals.  It is very common for people who lack knowledge of economics to confuse the difficulty in producing goods and services, as one of applying labor, when labor is, in fact, the cheapest most ready commodity available, and worth very little. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to ORGANIZE VOLUNTARY participation in production that is not a constant process of producing what is know, but a perpetually dynamic process of organizing the process of research and development, which produces an infinite variety of goods, wherein the competition between multiple producers forces all production to the lowest price, so that an increasing number of people can afford to consume goods. 

    Each of us produces very little. None of us, individually, matters to production. However, by voluntarily coordinating our efforts through self interest, by using the information system we call prices to guide us, we can cooperate by in a vast division of incomprehensible knowledge and labor.

    For this reason, people who ORGANIZE production are compensated highly for it, but those who CONSUME that production.  Largely, those of us who consume or labor, gain the benefit of our efforts, each of which is very small, in the form of affordable consumer goods and services.  Not necessarily as compensation. Because it is our labor that is of little value, and the organization of labor for the purpose of production as highly valuable. Because risk taking, forecasting, and guessing the future against competitors, so that we make the best use of the world’s resources at any given time, is what determines success or failure of the coordination of many people’s interwoven efforts as successful. And that success is told to us by the information system in the form of ‘profit’.  Profit which is quite hard to obtain it turns out.  That is because, except at the extremes, organizations, whether private or public consume the maximum amount of profit that investors will tolerate. 

    I HOPE THIS ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION.

    It cannot be waste if it is experiment.  The problem with your question is that you assume we know what we do not and cannot know. It may help to remember that the socialists thought like you do and 100 million people are dead because of it. And the entire world has abandoned socialism (central planning of production) for this reason.  Prices and Incentives are inseparable. without prices we literally cannot think, or plan, or coordinate out efforts. Without incentives we cannot voluntarily get people to continue to conduct research and development.  Without research and development we cannot sustain production at low prices, with increasing advancement in technology, goods and services. Without advancement we would eventually become incrementally poorer as all differences between us were equilibrated, and the incentive to cooperate voluntarily declined. 

    EASY ENTRY LEVEL READINGS
    “I Pencil” (Essay)
    “The Use Of Knowledge In Society” (Essay / Hayek)
    “Parable Of The Bees” (Essay)
    “Economics In One Lesson” (Book / Haslitt)

    That’s about it. You get that. You get economics.  We call it The Economic Way of Thinking. 

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute.
    Kiev

    https://www.quora.com/Capitalism-How-much-is-wasted-in-finding-market-based-solutions

  • Capitalism: How Much Is Wasted In Finding Market-based Solutions?

    I WILL TRY TO DO YOUR QUESTION JUSTICE:

    RE: “That represents a huge expenditure of human and physical resources that is not typically looked at when evaluating the efficiency of the winner.”

    Actually, it is obvious, common sense, and assumed in economics and politics, but we come to the opposite conclusion.  (a) we are constantly researching and developing new products and services, and variations of them through constant refinements of products, services, and prices called ‘entrepreneurial research and development”. It is not a process of PRODUCTION. The market is a process of RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.

    Furthermore, as the world consists of millions of resources, all of which have multiple demands on them, we must constantly look for what we refer to as ‘substitutions’ in the form of different resources, different suppliers, different technology, to adapt to constant changes in the demand for and availability of resources from the most simplistic primary resources to the most complex combination of sophisticated production techniques. 

    So. NONE OF IT IS WASTE.   The market is not a machine following a production program. It is a vast network of individuals working in networks some of us call ‘patterns of sustainable specialization and trade”, dynamically changing our efforts in response to other similar networks, in real time on a momentary basis in some cases (oil prices) and on a long term basis in others (commercial construction) and on a very, very long term basis for others (pharmaceutical research.)

    A COMMON ERROR
    It is very common for people who lack knowledge of economics to apply very simplistic concepts of production to an economy. It is very common for people who lack knowledge of economics and to fail to understand prices as an information system by which we coordinate ALL HUMAN ACTIVITY to serve each other’s needs, in a vast division of knowledge and labor, that is incomprehensible to any individual or group of individuals.  It is very common for people who lack knowledge of economics to confuse the difficulty in producing goods and services, as one of applying labor, when labor is, in fact, the cheapest most ready commodity available, and worth very little. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to ORGANIZE VOLUNTARY participation in production that is not a constant process of producing what is know, but a perpetually dynamic process of organizing the process of research and development, which produces an infinite variety of goods, wherein the competition between multiple producers forces all production to the lowest price, so that an increasing number of people can afford to consume goods. 

    Each of us produces very little. None of us, individually, matters to production. However, by voluntarily coordinating our efforts through self interest, by using the information system we call prices to guide us, we can cooperate by in a vast division of incomprehensible knowledge and labor.

    For this reason, people who ORGANIZE production are compensated highly for it, but those who CONSUME that production.  Largely, those of us who consume or labor, gain the benefit of our efforts, each of which is very small, in the form of affordable consumer goods and services.  Not necessarily as compensation. Because it is our labor that is of little value, and the organization of labor for the purpose of production as highly valuable. Because risk taking, forecasting, and guessing the future against competitors, so that we make the best use of the world’s resources at any given time, is what determines success or failure of the coordination of many people’s interwoven efforts as successful. And that success is told to us by the information system in the form of ‘profit’.  Profit which is quite hard to obtain it turns out.  That is because, except at the extremes, organizations, whether private or public consume the maximum amount of profit that investors will tolerate. 

    I HOPE THIS ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION.

    It cannot be waste if it is experiment.  The problem with your question is that you assume we know what we do not and cannot know. It may help to remember that the socialists thought like you do and 100 million people are dead because of it. And the entire world has abandoned socialism (central planning of production) for this reason.  Prices and Incentives are inseparable. without prices we literally cannot think, or plan, or coordinate out efforts. Without incentives we cannot voluntarily get people to continue to conduct research and development.  Without research and development we cannot sustain production at low prices, with increasing advancement in technology, goods and services. Without advancement we would eventually become incrementally poorer as all differences between us were equilibrated, and the incentive to cooperate voluntarily declined. 

    EASY ENTRY LEVEL READINGS
    “I Pencil” (Essay)
    “The Use Of Knowledge In Society” (Essay / Hayek)
    “Parable Of The Bees” (Essay)
    “Economics In One Lesson” (Book / Haslitt)

    That’s about it. You get that. You get economics.  We call it The Economic Way of Thinking. 

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute.
    Kiev

    https://www.quora.com/Capitalism-How-much-is-wasted-in-finding-market-based-solutions

  • “THE CULTURE OF PREVENTION” : WESTERN POSITIVISM : THE SIX RULES OF PREVENTION :

    “THE CULTURE OF PREVENTION” : WESTERN POSITIVISM : THE SIX RULES OF PREVENTION : THE SYSTEMATIC WESTERN ADOPTION OF JEWISH OBSCURANTISM

    (insight)

    The interesting thing about western culture, is the underlying assumption that we can CHANGE THE WORLD to suit our desires. It’s a POSITIVE outlook on life. Life isn’t suffering or difficult. Its an opportunity for heroisim and GLORY. “The purpose of life is to bend nature to our will, such that we leave the world better for having lived in it.”

    Think about the rest of the world’s “golden rule” and the anglo saxon “silver rule”. While they say “do unto others” we say “do not do unto others, that which you would not have done unto you.” The implied sovereignty in the Anglo Silver Rule is quite different from the slavish peasantry implied in the Golden Rule.

    WESTERN CIV is the culture of PREVENTION, under the ASSUMPTION that we can achieve our desires if no external entity PREVENTS IT. So our goal is to let everyone pursue their desires, and for us to pursue our mutual desires, and to PREVENT anyone from impeding that process. Nature is beautiful for this reason, as is man, as is life. Because it is not a struggle for the opportunity to pursue one’s fancy, it is a struggle only to prevent those from preventing us from pursuing our fancies.

    This is much more English a vision than the German vision of accomplishing the same thru duty.

    THE MAGIC LAWS OF THE CULTURE OF PREVENTION

    1) PREVENT THE USE OF POWER : DECENTRALIZATION, BALANCE OF FORCES, COMPETITION, MILITIA, SOVEREIGNTY

    2) PREVENT VIOLENCE THEFT AND FREE RIDING : PRIVATE PROPERTY AND COMMON LAW, RIGOROUS NORMS

    3) PREVENT LOSS OF CAPITAL : FORCE ALL CONFLICT INTO THE MARKET WHERE IT PRODUCES CAPITAL RATHER THAN DESTROYS IT

    4) PREVENT THE IMMORAL SOCIETY OF THE EXTENDED FAMILY : NUCLEAR FAMILY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

    5) PREVENT CONQUEST BY SUPERIOR FORCES : RELY ON TECHNOLOGY, PROFESSIONAL WARRIORS, AND THE MILITIA, TO MAKE USE OF INFERIOR NUMBERS AND WEALTH.

    6) PREVENT FRAUD BY OBSCURANTISM : TRUTH, SCIENCE, AND OPERATIONAL LANGUAGE

    THE CULTURE THAT DECRIES HUBRIS

    Greek mythology would only be created by a people who had such confidence that their warning would be a universal caution against any incidence of hubris. It is the mythology of a cautious, conservative, but confident people. The same is true for Germanic mythology. Albeit Christianity tries desperately to tame it by directing it to positive uses. The church could not defend against the Normans so they directed them to fighting the crusades. Not that the crusades were not a good use of men. But that it gave vent to the warrior ethos. Chivalric codes did the rest by allowing warriors, or those who could not afford to be, or those not able to be, to demonstrate heroism through service.

    ON THE WESTERN ADOPTION OF JEWISH OBSCURANTISM

    Unfortunately Jewish culture has mastered the art of obscurantism, pseudo-rationality and pseudo-science, as a means of undermining land-holder moral and social codes, and we have failed to convert them to our aristocratic doctrine. Or we had succeeded prior to the second world war, when American Jewry and Scotts Presbyterians were indistinguishable from one another, and both doing our civilization justice. Since them, we have legions of westerners in university settings doing the same, since Freud, Marx, Cantor gave birth to the Bolsheviks, the Frankfurt School and the Postmodernists took control of the university in an effort to claim for themselves what had previously been the social power of the church.

    Thought leadership in obscurantism has, since then, become a western profession thanks to Kant, Heidegger, Rorty, Adorno, Foucault. Rawls tried to resurrect it with his Victorian parlor trick, and Hayek alone could not hold them back, because he confused psychology with the necessity of calculation and did not yet have the analogy of computer science to help him solve the problem as we propertarians have.

    Mises and Rothbard took us again, into another Jewish pseudo-science, which Hoppe partly rescued us from, and which I’m trying to rescue us from entirely.

    But the real heavy lifting has been done, as always in the west, by empirical scientists in the Anglo tradition, leaving the rationalists in the continental tradition, once again, searching for some form of obscurantism to justify their tyrannical appropriation from the masses, and the meritocratic natural aristocracy that would arise without their predation on them by means of force of government, and various modes of obscurantist language.

    Meanwhile at home, as means of resisting the state, the religious right uses a time honored form of obscurantism themselves to save their society from conquest by the predatory state bureaucracy.

    OBSCURANT LANGUAGE IS IMMORAL BECAUSE IT IS FRAUD. IF YOU CANNOT DESCRIBE IT IN THE LANGUAGE OF ACTION (AS OPERATIONS) THEN YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT. IF YOU USE OBSCURANT LANGUAGE YOU ARE LYING, WHETHER YOU UNDERSTAND IT OPERATIONALLY OR NOT.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-20 08:39:00 UTC

  • “INEQUALITY IS THE PRICE OF DIVERSITY” Now some people have tried to argue other

    “INEQUALITY IS THE PRICE OF DIVERSITY”

    Now some people have tried to argue otherwise, but they confuse the market with the political and normative. AGGREGATES ARE DECEPTIONS. Aggregates launder causality.Causality in human affairs consists of people following incentives in real time, where those incentives are, at any moment, more or less probable. And people are quite simple following their incentives:

    INCENTIVE SELECTION

    1) The Greatest Reward

    2) In the shortest time.

    3) At the least effort.

    4) At the lowest risk.

    5) With the greatest certainty.

    ANOTHER PROPERTARIAN LESSON : CLEARING THE NETWORK OF PREFERENCES

    People do not order their preferences. The evaluate the weights of any action in CLEARING a set of preferences. They evaluate the set of any actions in clearing further preferences.

    ANOTHER PROPERTARIAN LESSON : THE STATUS ECONOMY

    1) Status is the human economy, and money is just a vehicle for it.

    2) Loss aversion for status is higher than any other loss aversion other than life, limb and offspring. Money isn’t as important as status. Status gets one access to opportunity.

    3) STATUS SIGNALS in group are CHEAPER to get an maintain than status signals across groups.

    That last bit is why diversity doesn’t work.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-20 07:44:00 UTC

  • SCIENCE AS RELIGION : THE CIVIC SOCIETY : THE CONTRAST OF BUDDHISM Science helps

    SCIENCE AS RELIGION : THE CIVIC SOCIETY : THE CONTRAST OF BUDDHISM

    Science helps us understand causality:

    (a) incentives.

    (b) repetition.

    (c) emergent behavior

    (d) unintended consequences.

    I complain about most mystical religions for the same reason. Buddhism is the least bad of the bad.

    A friend just posted excerpts from the Dali Lama’s book. And while I find practitioners non-threatening, the argument troubles me. The argument that we should unite science and religion. Because the tradition in buddhist thought is that we explore the self. But, it is much less the process of exploration than it is the process of manufacture. The mind is emergent, not existent.

    If we look at the incentives it is a less political religion, because it is a more personal philosophy. We tend to attribute to buddhism less harm, because it is a personal, rather than political philosophy: a reformation of hinduism from the political to the personal.

    But there is no need to reconcile religion and science. We have. History as mythology. Heroes as gods. Politics as ritual. Science as personal philosophy. The participatory civil society so unique to the west. The civil society that our government, like the Chinese government, has actively destroyed by exporting responsibility for society to the bureaucracy.

    Now, it may be that this pagan religion of history, science and reason is focused on the group rather than the self. And it may be that this pagan religion is non-platonic. And it may be that this pagan religion is less INTUITIVE, but equally EMERGENT, and produces superior EXTERNALITIES by focusing human thought on cooperation, rather than introspection.

    It may be that this pagan religion is an aristocratic religion and that the buddhism, like most other religions, must be allegorical because it is not possible for all humans to grasp science and reason.

    It may be that the aristocratic political, and the commoner-introspective, are compatible. But I do not think that the civil society can tolerate it. And I this one of the reasons that buddhism feels more acceptable today to us – we have surrendered the civil society to the state, and become subjects, and can NO LONGER FIND SATISFACTION by participating in the civil society.

    Buddhism is escapism. Powerlessness. Acceptance of the world as it is. It masks the ease of intuitive internal obsession as the excuse not to engage in the difficulty of unintuitive, contemplation. It is so because the individual is indeed POWERLESS in the imperial bureaucratic society. Just as he is POWERFUL in the civil, participatory, society.

    Western man seeks to transform the world to his will. Eastern to accept and conform to the world. This is the fundamental difference between our cultures. They submit. We participate.

    The emergent mind in the practice of science produces the Flynn effect of making us all constantly smarter. And wealthier. And more healthy.

    The reason we are in conflict is that we are both scientifically AND we have surrendered the CIVIL SOCIETY to the BUREAUCRATIC STATE, and as such we seek a new religion, because our real religion CIVIC PARTICIPATION has been taken from us, in order to create worship of the state.

    The state did not kill christianity. Christianity was just ritual. The state killed our civic society.

    If you grasp this the will understand the interrelatedness of our mental models of the world, and the trivial simplicity of the organized religions compared to the CIVIL SOCIETY of the west, which, operating as city states of extended families, created the high trust society, and all the prosperity that came from it.

    – Curt Doolittle. Kiev.

    NOTE

    Allegorical language is the language of deception. It may be the language of self-deception. It may be the language of political deception. But it is the vehicle for deception. Science speaks in operational language so that we cannot so easily engage in deception under the guise of inarticulate language.

    Operational language

    Historical Language

    Allegorical Langauge

    Mystical Language

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-18 04:25:00 UTC

  • THE NEW HOLIDAY: FRIDAY THE 13TH : TEMPLARS DAY : BANKING AND LIBERTY (idea) I t

    THE NEW HOLIDAY: FRIDAY THE 13TH : TEMPLARS DAY : BANKING AND LIBERTY

    (idea)

    I think I’m going to celebrate every Friday the 13th as Templar Day! A ‘High Holiday’. 🙂

    Friday, 13 December 2013

    Friday, 13 June 2014

    Friday, 13 February 2015

    Friday, 13 March 2015

    Friday, 13 November 2015

    Friday, 13 May 2016

    Friday, 13 January 2016

    Friday, 13 October 2016

    COMMENT: FREEDOM AND BANKING

    If you have a bank, and you have weapons, you can form a state within a state. The mormons use an unpleasantly ridiculous doctrine to achieve this state within a state. But there is no need for a ridiculous doctrine. History is a sufficient mythology, and credit, and community, a sufficient incentive. People, money, and guns control geography.

    Banks are necessary for us to cooperate anonymously with one another: without understanding what each of us does. Money and credit are information systems, and a bank is a market for cooperation.

    TEMPLAR BANKERS

    “Though initially an Order of poor monks, the official papal sanction made the Knights Templar a charity across Europe. Further resources came in when members joined the Order, as they had to take oaths of poverty, and therefore often donated large amounts of their original cash or property to the Order. Additional revenue came from business dealings. Since the monks themselves were sworn to poverty, but had the strength of a large and trusted international infrastructure behind them, nobles would occasionally use them as a kind of bank or power of attorney. If a noble wished to join the Crusades, this might entail an absence of years from their home. So some nobles would place all of their wealth and businesses under the control of Templars, to safeguard it for them until their return. The Order’s financial power became substantial, and the majority of the Order’s infrastructure was devoted not to combat, but to economic pursuits.

    “By 1150, the Order’s original mission of guarding pilgrims had changed into a mission of guarding their valuables through an innovative way of issuing letters of credit, an early precursor of modern banking. Pilgrims would visit a Templar house in their home country, depositing their deeds and valuables. The Templars would then give them a letter which would describe their holdings. Modern scholars have stated that the letters were encrypted with a cipher alphabet based on a Maltese Cross; however there is some disagreement on this, and it is possible that the code system was introduced later, and not something used by the medieval Templars themselves.[5][6][7] While traveling, the pilgrims could present the letter to other Templars along the way, to “withdraw” funds from their accounts. This kept the pilgrims safe since they were not carrying valuables, and further increased the power of the Templars.

    “The Knights’ involvement in banking grew over time into a new basis for money, as Templars became increasingly involved in banking activities. One indication of their powerful political connections is that the Templars’ involvement in usury did not lead to more controversy within the Order and the church at large. Officially the idea of lending money in return for interest was forbidden by the church, but the Order sidestepped this with clever loopholes, such as a stipulation that the Templars retained the rights to the production of mortgaged property. Or as one Templar researcher put it, “Since they weren’t allowed to charge interest, they charged rent instead.”

    “Their holdings were necessary to support their campaigns; in 1180, a Burgundian noble required 3 square kilometres of estate to support himself as a knight, and by 1260 this had risen to 15.6 km². The Order potentially supported up to 4,000 horses and pack animals at any given time, if provisions of the rule were followed; these horses had extremely high maintenance costs due to the heat in Outremer (Crusader states at the Eastern Mediterranean), and had high mortality rates due to both disease and the Turkish bowmen strategy of aiming at a knight’s horse rather than the knight himself. In addition, the high mortality rates of the knights in the East (regularly ninety percent in battle, not including wounded) resulted in extremely high campaign costs due to the need to recruit and train more knights. In 1244, at the battle of La Forbie, where only thirty-three of 300 knights survived, it is estimated the financial loss was equivalent to one-ninth of the entire Capetian yearly revenue.

    “The Templars’ political connections and awareness of the essentially urban and commercial nature of the Outremer communities led the Order to a position of significant power, both in Europe and the Holy Land.[citation needed] They owned large tracts of land both in Europe and the Middle East, built churches and castles, bought farms and vineyards, were involved in manufacturing and import/export, had their own fleet of ships, and for a time even “owned” the entire island of Cyprus.”

    “The Templars were already a “state within a state”, were institutionally wealthy, paid no taxes, and had a large standing army which by papal decree could move freely through all European borders. However, this army no longer had a presence in the Holy Land, leaving it with no battlefield. These factors, plus the fact that Philip had inherited an impoverished kingdom from his father and was already deeply in debt to the Templars, were probably what led to his actions. However, recent studies emphasize the political and religious motivations of the french king. It seems that, with the “discovery” and repression of the “Templars’ heresy,” the Capetian monarchy claimed for itself the mystic foundations of the papal theocracy. The Temple case was the last step of a process of appropriating these foundations, which had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII. Being the ultimate defender of the Catholic faith, the Capetian king was invested with a Christlike function that put him above the pope : what was at stake in the Templars’ trial, then, was the establishment of a “royal theocracy”.

    “At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured in locations such as the tower at Chinon, into admitting heresy and other sacrilegious offenses in the Order. then they were put to death.”

    MANY MANY LIBERTARIAN LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 04:29:00 UTC

  • VS ORTHODOXY : “THE IMPORTANCE OF MORAL CAPITAL” (insight) Conservatism relies u

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691037116/ref=tsm_1_fb_lkCONSERVATISM VS ORTHODOXY : “THE IMPORTANCE OF MORAL CAPITAL”

    (insight)

    Conservatism relies upon the use of articulated reason to critique the enlightenment program. Orthodoxy relies upon adherence to rules. The problem is that conservatives fail to understand the uniqueness of western civilizations. Aristocratic civilization is more fragile, because the society based upon the nuclear family is more fragile.

    From Jonathan Haidt:

    “Muller began by distinguishing conservatism from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the view that there exists a “transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society.” Christians who look to the Bible as a guide for legislation, like Muslims who want to live under sharia, are examples of orthodoxy. They want their society to match an externally ordained moral order, so they advocate change, sometimes radical change. This can put them at odds with true conservatives, who see radical change as dangerous.

    “Muller next distinguished conservatism from the counter-Enlightenment. It is true that most resistance to the Enlightenment can be said to have been conservative, by definition (i.e., clerics and aristocrats were trying to conserve the old order). But modern conservatism, Muller asserts, finds its origins within the main currents of Enlightenment thinking, when men such as David Hume and Edmund Burke tried to develop a reasoned, pragmatic, and essentially utilitarian critique of the Enlightenment project. Here’s the line that quite literally floored me:

    –What makes social and political arguments conservative as opposed to orthodox is that the critique of liberal or progressive arguments takes place on the enlightened grounds of the search for human happiness based on the use of reason. —

    “As a lifelong liberal, I had assumed that conservatism = orthodoxy = religion = faith = rejection of science. It followed, therefore, that as an atheist and a scientist, I was obligated to be a liberal. But Muller asserted that modern conservatism is really about creating the best possible society, the one that brings about the greatest happiness given local circumstances. Could it be? Was there a kind of conservatism that could compete against liberalism in the court of social science? Might conservatives have a better formula for how to create a healthy, happy society?

    “…Muller went through a series of claims about human nature and institutions, which he said are the core beliefs of conservatism. Conservatives believe that people are inherently imperfect and are prone to act badly when all constraints and accountability are removed . Our reasoning is flawed and prone to overconfidence, so it’s dangerous to construct theories based on pure reason, unconstrained by intuition and historical experience. Institutions emerge gradually as social facts, which we then respect and even sacralize, but if we strip these institutions of authority and treat them as arbitrary contrivances that exist only for our benefit, we render them less effective. We then expose ourselves to increased anomie and social disorder.

    “…As I continued to read the writings of conservative intellectuals, from Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century through Friedrich Hayek and Thomas Sowell in the twentieth, I began to see that they had attained a crucial insight into the sociology of morality that I had never encountered before. They understood the importance of what I’ll call moral capital.”

    Haidt, Jonathan (2012-03-13). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Kindle Locations 5075-5103). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 03:21:00 UTC

  • THE PROBLEM OF JUSTIFICATION IN PHILOSOPHY There is a pretty interesting play in

    THE PROBLEM OF JUSTIFICATION IN PHILOSOPHY

    There is a pretty interesting play in philosophy between justification and innovation. It certainly seems that most innovations are the byproduct of justification. That is, we seek to justify some objective and we search for means of justifying it, rather than seek what is in fact ‘true’.

    Because, what is ‘true’ in ethics depends upon (a) the allocation of property rights as implied in the norms, (b) the structure of the family and (c) the structure of production.

    I think some people gasp this, but most do not grasp the degree to which some of us practice either justificationism or critical rationalism.

    Mises and Weber, Rothbard and Hoppe, Hayek and historians, have all sought justification. The most interesting recent writer is JC Lester, who came very, very close to the answer of propertarianism, but was so enthralled with trying to justify his methodology, and libertarian bias, he missed the fact that propertarian reasoning makes all moral codes commensurable.

    It’s not that property per se, mandates libertarian moral biases. It’s that the distribution of property rights determines what is moral in any population. Individual property rights benefit the nuclear family, but they do not benefit the extended family structure. For members of the nuclear family, all other members of the society who also exist in, and cater to, the nuclear family, are treated as potential mates, or near relatives. As such, everyone is family. And as such, all in-family morals are applied to all extra-family members of the society. This is what makes the high trust society.

    So private property rights are inseparable from the nuclear family, and a homogenous polity, that can reasonably be expected to act as an extended family. This is why norms are so rigid in high trust cultures, yet require so little enforcement.

    There is nothing in propertarian reasoning specific to libertarianism whatsoever. Propertarianism is an explanatory system for rendering all human behavior commensurable, without linguistic and moral loading.

    Propertarianism is what praxeology would have been if it was complete. Because propertarianism is praxeology completed.

    That said, our ability to stay ahead of Malthusian poverty is predicated on our rate of innovation, and it is not possible to innovate and provide incentives sufficient to organize or participate in production of an innovation without private property rights. Just can’t. It’s just math. The friction is too high. And the future too Kaleidic for individuals to constantly make cooperative decisions on the multitude of possible ends to which we put our time, effort, and scarce property to productive use.

    Libertarian societies will always out-perform communal societies. And in that sense, they are the only societies that can defeat malthus.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-16 10:03:00 UTC

  • SEA CHANGE We have seen, since 1990, the slow accumulation of scientific evidenc

    SEA CHANGE

    We have seen, since 1990, the slow accumulation of scientific evidence that undermines the progressive fantasy. Overturning environment, equality, diversity, and returning to particularism, tribalism, and breeding.

    A few months ago The left’s intellectual leadership openly started discussing the impossibility of their project. A lament. They cannot overcome the majority moral objection to free riding.

    Since 2000 we have seen the slow development of a reactionary language. And a reactionary philosophy that incrementally gains momentum.

    Since 2010 we have seen the rapid accumulation of mainstream intellectual work, that while immaturely domain specific, follows the trend of overturning the progressive dogma originating in our universities as an alternative to the failure of socialism in economics and marxism in cultural morality, and therefore politics.

    I was one of the early movers in libertarianism, correcting the failure of Rothbardian ethics to find purchase in the public conscience by implementing what we have learned in science over this period as the basis for propertarian ethics. But others seek various forms of justification by multiple yet unsuccessful means.

    We are all participants in this transition. But it is difficult or impossible to know whether we are the greeks looking back at the end of their greatness or the english looking forward to their accidental empire.

    Each academic revels in his own innovation. His horse-blinders help delude him. Obscuring the fact that we all sense the same change but have not yet come to consensus on it:

    The end of the enlightenment project, the end of the marxist project, the end of the progressive project, the end of european dominance, and the end of democracy as a credible political model at scale.

    The end of the dominance of our world view in world affairs. A world view that never was very useful. Our success was science, technology, accounting and credit. Not our political system. Our political system was a temporary luxury made possible by our technological advancement over other societies – most importantly the african, ottoman, and american indian. An advantage we have mitigated by our civil, world war.

    Whether we achieve anything with this knowledge is open to question. History offers encouraging and discouraging examples.

    More later.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-15 16:47:00 UTC

  • THOUGHTS ESTIMATING CREATIVE AND SOFTWARE PROJECTS : POKER You know the whole ca

    THOUGHTS ESTIMATING CREATIVE AND SOFTWARE PROJECTS : POKER

    You know the whole card game thing actually works pretty well. But it’s harder to do in some settings than others. In house dev is pretty easy. But international groups, with different skill sets, it’s pretty hard.

    If you read everything out there (I have) most of it’s pretty obvious behavioral psychology. In my view I want to encourage people to invest very little time up front estimating, but to get estimates from a lot of people on the team, and narrow those estimates as we come closer to execution. The reason is that the statistical analysis of each individual’s estimate of any given work item, over time, is pretty accurate. In other words, if you estimate 100 things over three months, and the end work actuals are captured as hard data, over time, we can do a better job of predicting estimates on first blush than we can with deep analysis. Just how it is. Intuition being what it is across a group of people.

    What bothers me is that in house people are pretty comfortable sitting around pondering this stuff. But in my experience, high speed high production service businesses, have an extremely hard time doing this kind of thing, partly because they have less direct influence over team members who have much more autonomy, and more varied and irregular demands.

    So, the way I’ve looked at the feature in oversing, after looking at a zillion alternatives, is to set up a mixture of triangulation and card game that can be done real-time or not. The PM/DM/SM or whatever picks a range of stories / features to estimate. We handle both narrative and functional approaches. (In-house I use functional not narrative because of the workflow engine’s ability to modify all experiences.) Then launches the game at a particular time, and can do it interactively, or iteratively. Personally I absolutely love the iterative approach because I freaking hate sitting there working at the rate of the slowest bandwidth at the table.

    Each item is presented for triangulation against other previous estimates (if there are any) and you vote by dragging the card into the position with the appropriate points. When done, you commit that card. At some point, the PM/DM/SM calls the hand, flips the cards, and all the players are informed about the ‘hand’.

    This means I can run through thirty items at my speed, and someone else at theirs, and we don’t have to do it at the same time, and we can do it as a cognitive break from our other work.

    Now, I’ve set it up to ‘award the pot’ to people who are accurate estimators. So it’s a little bit of a game. The pot is just a score, and this score is part of your profile. The better your ‘winnings’ are the better you look at estimating. It’s pretty fun really.

    This kind of gamification matters because in large consulting companies people don’t know much about you and these sort of metrics build an empirical reputation for you tat’s visible on your FB-like profile.

    Alternatively, you can run the game interactively, with people right in the room, or over Skype etc. The point is that you can run it either way. Or even a combination of the two. (I don’t have to be there in person to play my hands – yes I know purists. But again. I dont get to tell people how to run their projects. I just get to find ways to help them run them the way that they want to. Advocacy is your job. Enablement is mine. )

    Now, when you move from the backlog to the sprint you estimate, (or at least most people do) in hours, and break the story or feature into discrete measurable tasks.

    Oversing records actuals in painful detail. You sort of plan your day or week on an normal calendar, and we just assume that whatever you plan is what you did unless you change it. It’s pretty easy to reconcile your billings this way, by handling exceptions to your agenda rather than trying to remember what you did. (I’m not doing it justice here.) You don’t really fill much out on your timecard. The system does all of that for you. (I know. Cool. It’s awesome. Thank Max Romanenko. It’s his doing.)

    So, we have SWAGS in points, Refined estimates from the triangulation-poker-game, hourly estimates for tasks, forecast time against them, actual time recorded. And our funnel statistics are pretty solid with that information.

    That said, any brilliant insights would be appreciated.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-12 16:03:00 UTC