Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • We dont need another way of thinking. We cant convince anyone to adopt it. We do

    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.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 14:47:00 UTC

  • AUSTERITY – WHY THE CONSERVATIVES WON. In a series of posts in 2009-2011 on Paul

    AUSTERITY – WHY THE CONSERVATIVES WON.

    In a series of posts in 2009-2011 on Paul Krugman’s blog on the NYT (who will not engage us), and Karl Smith’s (who at the time had the freedom and inclination to engage us), I argued that the only possible solution to the conflict between the short time preference of the left, and the long time preference of the right, was to propose a range of spending and saving options that gave something to everyone. I did this because back-channel conservatives were arguing that they would give into spending and redistribution if they could dismantle some part of monopoly on indoctrination held by the left.

    And I know I sounded ridiculous at the time. But my argument was sound. And it’s been proven over time to have been correct: Haidt’s thesis that the conservatives have a lock on morality that can only be overcome by demographics is correct. The conservatives will happily bring the government to a craw, and possibly even bankrupt it, if it means fighting for what they morally believe.

    We know that human beings will pay very high costs to punish cheating. This is why the middle doesn’t move. Free riding is cheating. Sure the bankers are bad. But that’s government’s fault. But free riding is also government’s fault. THere is no greater chance that americans will tolerate free riding than germans will.

    MORALITY TRUMPS ECONOMICS.

    Morality is a product of genetic distribution and family structure. If you don’t grasp and internalize that. Then you will never grasp and internalize politics. And you policy initiatives will always fail.

    LIBERTARIANS AND PROGRESSIVES ALIKE

    It may not be obvious that I’m criticizing both progressives and libertarians. I am. We are not equal. We do not possess the same moral codes. Our reproductive interests are not the same. And at some point there is a limit to the compromise we will pay to sacrifice our reproductive interests for others.

    That we intuit these sensations as moral rather than biological is simply our own egocentrism playing games with us. We are intuitive creatures bound by a thin veil of reason, and enmeshed in a network of habits we call a socially constructed reality. But our justifications are little more than that. In the end, over time, we obey our selfish genes, or we will not exist.

    He who breeds wins.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 08:27:00 UTC

  • WHY WE NEED THE “DARK ENLIGHTENMENT” Why was anglo objective, universalist empir

    WHY WE NEED THE “DARK ENLIGHTENMENT”

    Why was anglo objective, universalist empiricism intuitive and acceptable to the British, while a duty-bound subjective hierarchy intuitive and acceptable to the germans? Why are order and duty more important to germans than to the english? Is Raico right that it’s just geographic?

    I can understand why the counter-enlightenment (the continentals) fought against the anglo social construct, although I cannot really grasp why they didn’t simply try to solve the problem empirically rather than mystically. The germans at least, were correct. Anglo civilization degenerated rapidly, while german society at least for now, survives. Anglo civilization I suspect, without some event, will survive only in the protestant religions. We are, without our insular island, fragile.

    Isn’t providing a RATIONAL and EMPIRICAL institutional solution to uniting germanic order and duty with anglo individual empiricism something that can reunite the two strains? I don’t think so. They are fine. We’re in trouble. I don’t see how to unite us.

    Are we forced for some reason, into a choice between anti-rationalist socialism, and scientific and rational, individualist, universalist, self-destruction?

    Or, is it possible to solve our cultural problem by creating institutions that acknowledge that the universalist property of the enlightenment was a failure? That equality and universalism are incompatible, just as freedom and democracy are incompatible?

    Science and Reason, Naturalism and Correspondence need not be abandoned. But it appears that we must abandon the belief in universalism and equality, in exchange for nationalism and relative equality within a meritocratic hierarchy?

    But given the lack of our individual power under capitalism, and the presence of mass political and economic power under all forms of representative government, can we create a hierarchy of meritocracy rather than pure political power? I don’t see how that can be accomplished without violence.

    Our political history is masculine – the paternal family with private property. But women, in the work force and in politics, try to restore the feminine – the socialist model of common property. So that they need not form micro tribes of one man and one woman but instead, can force the support for their children onto the rest.

    It must be visible that the system will not work before an alternative is an acceptable compromise. Monogamous marriage was a compromise. One that must return for a society to be economically viable, I think. I do not see it possible any other way, for the high costs of single parent families to compete with the lower cost of double income families. Nor do i see double income families continuing to support those who breed without double incomes. This is just a recipe for a caste system.

    In the end, the family structure provides the morality that sustains the society and fulfills the demands of production. So I cannot see how

    The reason that we need the “Dark Enlightenment” is because we need to use MORE science, not less. We need to use science to demonstate that the german social model is correct, but that anglo ratio-empiricism is correct. We need the common law. But germanic morality, community and duty.

    Because we anglos have no community at all any longer.

    And without community we are dead.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 06:36:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY (MAYBE IT’S THE COFFEE) I was just going to sit and relax and listen to

    LIBERTY (MAYBE IT’S THE COFFEE)

    I was just going to sit and relax and listen to a book on tape today before designing this one feature that needs some of my attention.

    And then one particular post just made me lose my patience.

    Why the hell do I want to reform libertarianism?

    Because I spent most of my life trying to solve the problem of CONFLICT. And I spent most of my early adulthood trying to find a language that would give aristocratic conservatives the ability to defend their ideas in ratio-scientific rather than purely moral and allegorical terms.

    And then, by accident, in a speech by Hans Hoppe I saw that he had made necessary, not preferential arguments. I knew something was wrong. I intuited that something was wrong with his logic. And it bothered me. But the fact that he had found a path through democracy was enough of a starting point.

    It has taken me twelve years from hearing that speech, to base his arguments on science rather than rationalism. And to correct libertarian arguments by returning them from the ghetto to the aristocracy where they came from.

    The kernel of the solution to political conflict is in Hoppe’s work. It’s not right yet. His Argumentation is a DESCRIPTION not a CAUSE. But it allowed me to find the CAUSE and with that cause, explain all moral codes and how we can cooperate across them, rather than the need for a monopoly of moral codes that imposes one morality by political force upon others with different moral preferences.

    Libertarians need not be so self impressed. Conservatives, without reason and science, are much more effective at politics that we are. And that is because they correctly understand human nature.

    We have an INCORRECT (arguably semitic) assumption about human nature in our rothbardian arguments that is scientifically false, demonstrably undesirable, and demonstrably ineffective. The aristocratic west is the only high trust society in existence. And we accomplished that using the moral code of conservatives, not rothbardian libertarianism.

    We were wrong on morality. The conservatives were right. Hoppe is right on institutions. But we must understand that we were wrong on morality and as such we are INSUFFICIENT in our institutional solutions.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 06:20:00 UTC

  • EVOLUTIONARY RAPIDITY UNDER PATERNALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY Because evolution h

    EVOLUTIONARY RAPIDITY UNDER PATERNALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

    Because evolution has apparently accelerated under agrarianism and property rights, I am slowly beginning to think that I can make the case that evolution is faster under paternalism and property rights than under maternalism and communism. So not only is maternalism dysgenic, but it prevents adaptation? Not only are paternalism and property rights eugenic, but accelerates adaptation despite the fact that we are no longer under environmental selection pressures?

    That’s a pretty interesting moral argument against matrilinealism: that it’s not only dysgenic, but maladaptive. Which would certainly explain its absence.

    I keep finding correlations between property and genetics. I don’t mean to find them. They just happen to be there.

    This correlates with the book I read this weekend: Butler Schaffer’s Boundaries of Order. I really don’t like the soft structure of his argument by analogy – which I object to almost always – but it is apparently the case that property is necessary for evolutionary competition.

    FYI: Michael J. McKay

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-26 04:46:00 UTC

  • PRIOR WARNING TO MY FEMALE FRIENDS I have to kill off the ideas of Universalism,

    PRIOR WARNING TO MY FEMALE FRIENDS

    I have to kill off the ideas of Universalism, Postmodernism and Democracy, not morally, but rationally and empirically. In doing so I must criticize feminism and democracy, and some of the emotions that women intuitively hold dear.

    Unlike other reactionaries (aggressive conservatives) I don’t recommend returning to the past. Like a libertarian, I recommend freedom. But I also recognize the difference in reproductive strategies and moral sentiments between men and women.

    Given that it is no longer necessary for women to be exclusively bound to home and child rearing, and that women both participate in the work force and dominate it’s middle ground, the past arrangement between men and women under agrarian society is no longer necessary even if it were preferable.

    GIven this change from a male economy and a female homestead, to a pre-agrarian female homestead, with transitory males, now that he feminists have succeeded in destroying the family, by forcing economic cooperation between men and women via marriage, through the proxy of the state via taxation. It seems prudent to attempt to construct a social order that recognizes the heterogeneity of our interests as males and females.

    One thing is deterministically certain. If we the long term monogamous family is indeed a dead or at least marginal institution, the current remnants of family (child support and spousal support) will disappear along with that institution. Largely because large members of men will continue to lack incentive to work and pay taxes, or to signal status by familial conformity. And the increasingly disturbing rate of single mother hood will continue to reduce the majority of women and children into single parent poverty, until the system of redistribution is perceived as not only unfair but destructive, and overwhelms both the tax system, the economy and the political system.

    We see this slowly happening now. And the economic luxury we possessed when first the socialists, then the feminists, then the multi-culturalists, banded together, no longer exists and is no longer possible due to the flooding of the world workforce with billions of laborers after the fall of communism and the failure of the socialist project.

    So what does this have to do with me? I think it’s possible to take what we have learned from the market and technology and to produce a political order that allows us to cooperate on means even if we have opposing ends.

    But in order to make a new idea both understandable, and desirable, I must criticize and show the failure of the existing ideas.

    I must criticize it so that I can replace it with something better.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-23 00:50:00 UTC

  • Tonight I’m reminded that Hayek was a gentleman and didn’t refute Keynes because

    Tonight I’m reminded that Hayek was a gentleman and didn’t refute Keynes because he thought it was obvious, and that it would be ungentlemanly to criticize him too harshly.

    Friedman was unapologetically argumentative, and Rothbard was radically so. Sowell is at least apologetically argumentative.

    The conservatives have abandoned direct discourse and taken the debate to its constituency on moral grounds and entirely ignores debate with their opposition, focusing only on criticism.

    Which of these approaches to political discourse is empirically superior? Which can we demonstrate has been more effective at altering the course of policy?

    Politics is not nice. It is not sweet. It is a bloody, brutal, dishonest battle for control over teh means of extracting and distributing resources, profits, opportunity and privilege and the stakes are demonstrably high. Perhaps at the cost of the civilization itself.

    The period where we could return to civil discourse is done. The empire must end. They tyranny of the majority must end. Either fight for freedom or lose what you have left of it.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-17 23:06:00 UTC

  • WE LOVE SMART WOMEN. We just prefer they’re feminine. There are plenty of smart

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2417942/Im-single-50-Why-Men-hate-brainier-says-KATE-MULVEY.htmlACTUALLY, WE LOVE SMART WOMEN.

    We just prefer they’re feminine.

    There are plenty of smart men in the world. But they aren’t feminine either. The scarce thing for men is femininity, not intelligence. Smart men are surrounded by other smart men. And frankly, given that men tend to talk in facts, not experiences, they’re a lot less work to understand, and far more interesting for ‘intelligent conversation’.

    I mean, seriously? Why do we need another masculine, competitive, unattractive person in our lives? Women are expensive. They cost us a great deal of effort and money. We must constantly compromise our desires for theirs. Why would we do that without getting femininity in return?

    Femininity in any woman that pays attention to us is the ultimate scarcity. Intelligence on the other hand, is a commodity. It isn’t scarce. Intelligent people pay attention to us all the time.

    Femininity sells. Nesting sells. Care-taking sells. Period. That’s just the data. We have tons of data now. It all says the same thing. Femininity sells. Everything else is a nice-to-have. You cant sell a nice-to-have on its own.

    Femininity is what beauty means. And every woman is capable of it. In fact, it’s pretty hard to avoid being feminine unless you actively try to suppress it.

    Did I say ‘feminine’ enough times yet?

    Women in my generation got screwed in life. Or didn’t. … er… Whatever…. sigh.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-16 17:04:00 UTC

  • WE LOVE SMART WOMEN. We just prefer they’re feminine. There are plenty of smart

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2417942/Im-single-50-Why-Men-hate-brainier-says-KATE-MULVEY.htmlACTUALLY, WE LOVE SMART WOMEN.

    We just prefer they’re feminine.

    There are plenty of smart men in the world. But they aren’t feminine either. The scarce thing for men is femininity, not intelligence. Smart men are surrounded by other smart men. And frankly, given that men tend to talk in facts, not experiences, they’re a lot less work to understand, and far more interesting for ‘intelligent conversation’. Intelligence is a commodity. It isn’t scarce. Femininity in any woman that pays attention to us is the ultimate scarcity.

    I mean, seriously? Why do we need another masculine, competitive, unattractive person in our lives? Women are expensive. They cost us a great deal of effort and money. We must constantly compromise our desires for theirs. Why would we do that without getting femininity in return?

    Did I say ‘femininity’ enough times yet?

    That’s just the data. We have tons of data now. It all says the same thing. Femininity sells. Nesting sells. Care-taking sells. Period. Everything else is a nice-to-have. You cant sell a nice-to-have on its own. Femininity is what beauty is. And every woman is capable of it. In fact, it’s pretty hard to avoid being feminine unless you actively try to suppress it in women.

    Women in my generation got screwed in life. Or didn’t. … er… Whatever…. sigh.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-16 16:08:00 UTC

  • ON STRATEGY In my experience, strategy is not something you should be looking fo

    ON STRATEGY

    In my experience, strategy is not something you should be looking for outside of your business. If you are, then its hopeless.

    Strategy is a largely logical and empirical problem. And aesthetics are as well.

    The reason that, in my experience, large companies need strategic advice is because the incentives in the business are either incorrectly organized, or the information used to create aggregates by which decisions are made is incorrectly organized. Or there is no rational leader in the organization who either understands the business, or has the power ( or believes he does ) to alter the business.

    You might criticize me for brevity here, but i promise that any criticism is only my choice of brevity, not my failure to understand.

    I cannot recall , ever, in my career, a time when the answer to the strategic problem was not readily available in the company, and often well known. And that management, board or investor influence was not the causal problem. Ever.

    The people next to the customers almost always know the answer.

    My job, almost without exception, was to socialize with empirical and logical argument, what was commonly held knowledge somewhere in the organization. And thus arm everyone with the concepts and vocabulary to advocate the best idea and make it impossible for political land grabbing, and a lack of transparency to prevent the strategy that was obvious from emerging by self organizing means.

    This was a more effective strategy than delivering a powerpoint that could easily be ignored.

    When selling my service I used the reluctant close all the time, to the horror of my sales staff.

    “I will do the work if you want me to. But you must be sure that you want the right answer to your question. Because I will find it, and you might not like it. And I have better things to do than spend my time with organizations that do not really want to change. “

    Always worked.

    I stopped doing strategy in 2005 when I spent six months with a certain tech giant having to talk to them like kindergardeners and realized that they did not want to change. Because their incentives were contrary to the market. And I decided that money isnt that important to me. The market will (and has) taught them what I could not.

    And it was nowhere near as considerate as I am.

    We teach political economics. Macro economics. Which is little more than democratic ideology wrapped in a thin veneer of fragile correlative mathematics.

    And while I am not one of those people that advocates austrian economics – micro economics – in the political sphere ( its largely been incorporated already). I think that we should teach accounting, finance and austrian economics much more so than the silliness of the liberal arts education.

    Because Austrian economics is first and foremost a theory of incentives, and the organizational model of the self organizing organization, as a response to the self organizing market.

    Command and control went out with the age if sail. Central control went out with the collapse of world communism.

    We argue that the world has gone socialistic. But in fact, it has gone Corporatist: just as all governments in history have been.

    Companies are increasingly perishable alliances of people and capital that must constantly reorganize in response to the market.

    And that is the only strategic law that we must currently understand.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-09-12 07:29:00 UTC