She’s close. McCloskey’s close. It’s actually, that MORAL ARGUMENTS by public intellectuals, changed the in-group instinctual bias AGAINST competition, from an immoral and unethical practice to a moral and ethical virtue because it became clear that despite our instincts, and despite the immorality of competition, it produces a virtuous cycle. THis change in moral codes, despite being contradictory to our instincts, succeeded. For that bias tot work however, requires the nuclear family and the individual to form the productive social unit, rather than the family, extended family, village or tribe. Cities, where people could go to seek opportunities, generated wealth from trade, and the movement of people from the moral structure of the farm, to the new moral structure of the city, allowed increasing numbers of people exit the moral constraints of the extended family, village and tribe and participate as individual economic units in the cities. The reason that this new morality became accepted varied from country to country. But in large part it was made possible by the growing middle class, and a change in policy. In Europe this policy was demonstrated by Ricardo and Smith, and less directly by Hume. The colonies, which were entirely mercantile and lacking nobility, provided a vehicle for creating new forms of ‘nobility’ and therefore purely meritocratic status signals. Governments, eager to increase tax revenue, altered legislation and policy to support this trend (some of it bad, like breaking the common law’s prohibition on pollution). The middle class, who had adopted this new counter-intuitive moral code, slowly accumulated enough political power economically and therefore politically displace the landed aristocracy. In the case of the USA, there never was such an aristocracy and church – at least not one that survived the revolution. In england it merely meant expansion of power of the house of commons. In France it meant the murder of the entire aristocratic class, and the end of french contribution to civilization. In germany it produced. first a reaction to its conquest by napoleon. and second, a reactionary movement, as a defense against future napoleon’s by uniting the german people. Germany found cultural balance in unity where france had failed and unleashed the terrors and where england had bent itself into even more rigid classes to accommodate that rise. This process, (as I argue in my upcoming book), allowed us to force all involuntary transfers in society INTO THE MARKET FOR COMPETITION and out law all other forms of involuntary transfer. THis arrangement was generally limited to the family. But since the family was reduced to the NUCLEAR family in europe, this by definition meant that pretty much all of society except for children was bound by the prohibition against all involuntary transfers except by competition in he market. This is the singular most important advancement in human moral systems since the Silver and Golden Rules were articulated: Do nothing to others you would not want done to you, and if possible, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. [pullquote]There is no name for the moral principle of forcing all involuntary transfers into the market for competition.[/pullquote] We could argue that it is the copper or platinum rule. But that would be trite. And I have no particular instinct for naming it other than, the rule of the moral exclusivity of competition. Anyway. That’s one part of what I’m working on. QUOTE: “According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets and innovations, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. During this time, talk of private property, commerce, and even the bourgeoisie itself radically altered, becoming far more approving and flying in the face of prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn’t grow so dramatically because of economic factors: it grew because rhetoric about markets and free enterprise finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity.”
Form: Mini Essay
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Necessity vs Preference In Political and Ethical Theory
[I]t is all well and good to attempt to construct political and ethical philosophy as the family becomes the village, the tribe becomes the city with a division of labor, and the people become the nation with an anonymous market. It is necessary to do so. But preferences must compete with necessities. We may prefer something but it must in practice be possible. We can temporarily distort necessity, as we with fiat money – because we can. We can permanently distort morality by sanctioning competition as virtuous – because we can. But in human history there are many preferences and few necessities. Those tools that compensate for our limited intellectual abilities: our senses, perception, memory, reason, calculation, and planning are the necessities of human existence. We adapt our norms and institutions to those necessities. Not the other way around. We are not wealthier than our cave dwelling ancestors. The only human currency is time. But through the division of knowledge and labor we have increased the purchasing power of our time to levels unimaginable to those who came before us. [R]omantic, egoistic, anthropocentric vanities encourage us to believe we make directional choices in our evolution but we do not. We seize opportunities good and bad. We forgo opportunities good and bad. And we pay or gain the consequences – by trial and error. Then we congratulate ourselves on our wisdom, and justify to ourselves our errors. The future is opaque and kaleidic. At best, we can attempt to improve our suite of tools, and choose those norms and institutions that increase our sense, perception, memory, calculation, planning, and information sharing. So that we constantly narrow the scope of our trial and error, and in doing so, increase the purchasing power of our time in this earth.
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NECESSITY VS PREFERENCE It is all well and good to attempt to construct politica
NECESSITY VS PREFERENCE
It is all well and good to attempt to construct political and ethical philosophy as the family becomes the village, the tribe becomes the city with a division of labor, and the people become the nation with an anonymous market.
It is necessary to do so.
But preferences must compete with necessities. We may prefer something but it must in practice be possible.
We can temporarily distort necessity, as we with fiat money – because we can. We can permanently distort morality by sanctioning competition as virtuous – because we can.
But in human history there are many preferences and few necessities.
Those tools that compensate for our limited intellectual abilities: our senses, perception, memory, reason, calculation, and planning are the necessities of human existence.
We adapt our norms and institutions to those necessities. Not the other way around.
We are not wealthier than our cave dwelling ancestors. The only human currency is time.
But through the division of knowledge and labor we have increased the purchasing power of our time to levels unimaginable to those who came before us.
Romantic, egoistic, anthropocentric vanities encourage us to believe we make directional choices in our evolution but we do not. We seize opportunities good and bad. We forgo opportunities good and bad. And we pay or gain the consequences – by trial and error.
Then we congratulate ourselves on our wisdom, and justify to ourselves our errors.
The future is opaque and kaleidic.
At best, we can attempt to improve our suite of tools, and choose those norms and institutions that increase our sense, perception, memory, calculation, planning, and information sharing.
So that we constantly narrow the scope of our trial and error, and in doing so, increase the purchasing power of out time in this earth.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-19 06:01:00 UTC
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THE ANSWER TO THE EUROPEAN MIRACLE She’s close. McCloskey’s close. It’s actually
THE ANSWER TO THE EUROPEAN MIRACLE
She’s close. McCloskey’s close.
It’s actually, that MORAL ARGUMENTS by public intellectuals, changed the in-group instinctual bias AGAINST competition, from an immoral and unethical practice to a moral and ethical virtue because it became clear that despite our instincts, and despite the immorality of competition, it produces a virtuous cycle. THis change in moral codes, despite being contradictory to our instincts, succeeded. For that bias tot work however, requires the nuclear family and the individual to form the productive social unit, rather than the family, extended family, village or tribe.
Cities, where people could go to seek opportunities, generated wealth from trade, and the movement of people from the moral structure of the farm, to the new moral structure of the city, allowed increasing numbers of people exit the moral constraints of the extended family, village and tribe and participate as individual economic units in the cities.
The reason that this new morality became accepted varied from country to country. But in large part it was made possible by the growing middle class, and a change in policy. In Europe this policy was demonstrated by Ricardo and Smith, and less directly by hume. The colonies, which were entirely mercantile and lacking nobility, provided a vehicle for creating new forms of ‘nobility’ and therefore purely meritocratic status signals.
Governments, eager to increase tax revenue, altered legislation and policy to support this trend (some of it bad, like breaking the common law’s prohibition on pollution). The middle class, who had adopted this new counter-intuitive moral code, slowly accumulated enough political power economically and therefore politically displace the landed aristocracy. In the case of the USA, there never was such an aristocracy and church – at least not one that survived the revolution. In england it merely meant expansion of power of the house of commons. In France it meant the murder of the entire aristocratic class, and the end of french contribution to civilization. In germany it produced. first a reaction to its conquest by napoleon. and second, a reactionary movement, as a defense against future napoleon’s by uniting the german people. Germany found cultural balance in unity where france had failed and unleashed the terrors and where england had bent itself into even more rigid classes to accommodate that rise.
This process, (as I argue in my upcoming book), allowed us to force all involuntary transfers in society INTO THE MARKET FOR COMPETITION and out law all other forms of involuntary transfer. THis arrangement was generally limited to the family. But since the family was reduced to the NUCLEAR family in europe, this by definition meant that pretty much all of society except for children was bound by the prohibition against all involuntary transfers except by competition in he market.
This is the singular most important advancement in human moral systems since the Silver and Golden Rules were articulated: Do nothing to others you would not want done to you, and if possible, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
There is no name for the moral principle of forcing all involuntary transfers into the market for competition. We could argue that it is the copper or platinum rule. But that would be trite. And I have no particular instinct for naming it other than, the rule of the moral exclusivity of competition.
Anyway. That’s one part of what I’m working on.
QUOTE:
“According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets and innovations, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. During this time, talk of private property, commerce, and even the bourgeoisie itself radically altered, becoming far more approving and flying in the face of prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn’t grow so dramatically because of economic factors: it grew because rhetoric about markets and free enterprise finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity.”
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-18 10:53:00 UTC
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NAIL IN THE POSTMODERNIST COFFIN : BREEDING (Profound) People are mammals. Breed
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2013155a.htmlANOTHER NAIL IN THE POSTMODERNIST COFFIN : BREEDING
(Profound)
People are mammals.
Breeding people is no different from breeding dogs. We inherit our traits. Positive and negative.
Assortive mating (breeding) reinforces traits good and bad and prevents natural regression toward the mean.
Inbreeding (cousin marriage in pakistanis, inbreeding in ashkenazi jews) prevents genetic cure of diseases and defects, and instead replicates those traits. Likewise excessive outbreeding regresses the gene pool toward the mean again.
Assortive mating, intra-class breeding, and natural rotation of elites, produce concentrations of talents while supressing undesirable traits.
Our races are analogous to breeds. Our classes also.
The distribution of traits matters because status signals, selection, and cooperation, as well as genetic preference, are higher in group than out group. This is a near universal human bias. Humans act this way no matter what we do.
The market is society. We are all the same value as customers. We must all have the same value before the law.
But we are not all the same value as coworkers, family members or mates. And we are not the same value to humanity either in contribution or genes.
Humans began speciating upon exit of Africa. We were so successful that the speciation was incomplete. We are merely exaggerated breeds. Under mobile populations, industrialization, and consumer capitalism we have, as have the hindus, begun the process of speciating by class.
This matters because it requires a sufficient percentage of any population to both possess an iq greater than 105 in order for a division of knowledge and labor to form under contractual complexity, and for corruption to diminish sufficiently. It also appears that the Pareto rule is not possible to alter, because the majority of assets must be under the control of this more talented group.
A free society then, in the libertarian sense, can only exist in a population of males where 80% of the resources are in hands of those 20% with iq over 105 and there is no opportunity to overturn the allocation of property rights by political means. (Natural Aristocracy).
Or, egalitarian freedom can exist only where the numerical majority’s iq is over 105. (Enlightenment England, 20th century ashkenazim, east asia), And where that majority has political control, and that majority is prohibited from cousin marriage long enough that private property becomes a normative and trust evolves into the extra familial. It also means states must be small, homogenous nation states.
Freedom then is a ‘perfect storm’. Thats why its unique to the west, and high trust society is unique to the Small Arc from England to Switzerland.
POSITION
this doesn’t mean we return to the past. It does mean that we cannot have any future we choose because it is constrained by these necessities.
It means:
Redistribution as calculated by income, without constraining reproduction forces genetic, legal, and normative regression toward the mean.
Immigration outside of culture and gene pool is limited to that which integrates successfully.
The goal for any society should not be downward reproduction but encouragement and funding of reproduction in the middle and upper middle classes. And improvement in the quality of life of the lower classes as long as they adhere to a one child policy.
Time will take care of the rest.
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2013155a.html
QUOTE:
“Another difference between inbreeding and assortative mating is that the effects of inbreeding are expected to be negative, lowering cognitive ability, whereas the effects of assortative mating affect the high, as well as the low end of the ability distribution, thus increasing genetic bariance, that is, when high-ability parents mate assortatively, their children are more likely to be homozygous for variants for high ability, just as offspring of low-ability parents are more likely to be homozygous for variants for low ability….”
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-18 07:02:00 UTC
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The Difference Between Legal Equality and Civil Inequality
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEGAL EQUALITY AND CIVIL INEQUALITY: PROFILING AND 27-1 RATIOS
Print
Lies are lies, even if they are comforting lies. Falsehoods are falsehoods even if they are comforting falsehoods. In my work, I have to deal with facts, if I want to find new solutions to the failings of western social democracy. I can’t do that if people believe falsehoods. THE NECESSITY OF RATIONAL ACTION Justice must be blind, but the rest of us must not be.“…The problem is that profiling is an indispensable part of a living a safe, rational life…. ” – Taki’s Blog
Author John Derbyshire said exactly the same thing last year, and lost his job for it. His job, in the dark enlightenment movement, is to point out the failings of enlightenment and postmodern thought. He tries to do it with british humor. Which may work or not. But that’s his work, just like most people in the dark enlightenment. I defended him, and the Village Voice called me a member of the ‘hard right’. I’m actually a left-leaning libertarian by most accounts, making me a classical liberal on most things. But a conservative on the nature of man. That is because both left liberalism and right morality appear to consist largely of correct propositions – even if they are poorly stated in archaic or silly language. HARD FACTS AND UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS That the law must treat all of us equally for it to be a just law, the fact is that we are not equal as individuals, and as groups we exaggerate those inequalities. And while the law MUST treat us equally to function justly, we CANNOT treat each other equally and function safely.
“…There actually are huge statistical differences in behavior by demographic groups. For example, an obscure Obama Administration report admitted: “…While young [age 14 to 24] black males have accounted for about 1% of the population from 1980 to 2008…(b)y 2008, young black males made up about a quarter of all homicide offenders (27%). “…Yet to many Americans these days, the thought of noticing giant facts such as this 27-to-1 ratio seems like blasphemy against the Declaration of Independence’s “proposition” that “all men are created equal.”
POSTMODERN RELIGION HAS NO PLACE IN LAW It is as irrational to attempt to preserve the falsehood of equality, as it is to preserve any other RELIGIOUS FALSEHOOD. This falsehood alone is enough to convict Postmodernism as a civic RELIGION, and therefore ban it from inclusion and support of state action. Law must consist of truth, or it cannot be just.
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DIVERSITY WORKS FOR THE SMALL Small is how ‘diversity’ can work: diverse inter-s
DIVERSITY WORKS FOR THE SMALL
Small is how ‘diversity’ can work: diverse inter-state trade, rather than diverse intra-state politics.
Switzerland has 27 ‘states’ each with it’s own constitution, direct democracy, only one of which is over 1M people (Zurich), and the majority of which are in the tens of thousands. This is consistent with democratic theory as we understand it: small works. Largely because government cannot be used to accumulate power, and because each small area is homogenous, and has its own signals.
Denmark consists of 5.7M, in 5 Regions, from .5M – 1.7M, and 89% of whom are ethnic danes, and less than 8% who are immigrants.
Sweden consists of 9M people 86% of whom are native Swedes and only ~4.1% are immigrants from non western countries. (turkey, iran, iraq, somalia)
Norway consists of 5M people, 89% of whom are native Norwegian and only ~6% are non western immigrants.
Small homogenous nation states, and lots of them, are better solutions to free and happy and prosperous people. Big states can accumulate debt, engage in war, and must manage inter-group competition by political and apolitical means, instead of by trade.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-17 09:28:00 UTC
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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEGAL EQUALITY AND CIVIL INEQUALITY: PROFILING AND 27-1 RATIO
http://takimag.com/article/the_failure_of_profiling_racists_steve_sailer/printTHE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEGAL EQUALITY AND CIVIL INEQUALITY: PROFILING AND 27-1 RATIOS
Lies are lies, even if they are comforting lies. Falsehoods are falsehoods even if they are comforting falsehoods. In my work, I have to deal with facts, if I want to find new solutions to the failings of western social democracy. I can’t do that if people believe falsehoods.
THE NECESSITY OF RATIONAL ACTION
Justice must be blind, but the rest of us must not be.
“…The problem is that profiling is an indispensable part of a living a safe, rational life…. ” – Taki’s Blog
Author John Derbyshire said exactly the same thing last year, and lost his job for it.
His job, in the dark enlightenment movement, is to point out the failings of enlightenment and postmodern thought. He tries to do it with british humor. Which may work or not. But that’s his work, just like most people in the dark enlightenment.
I defended him, and the Village Voice called me a member of the ‘hard right’. I’m actually a left-leaning libertarian by most accounts, making me a classical liberal on most things. But a conservative on the nature of man. That is because both left liberalism and right morality appear to consist largely of correct propositions – even if they are poorly stated in archaic or silly language.
HARD FACTS AND UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS
That the law must treat all of us equally for it to be a just law, the fact is that we are not equal as individuals, and as groups we exaggerate those inequalities. And while the law MUST treat us equally to function justly, we CANNOT treat each other equally and function safely.
“…There actually are huge statistical differences in behavior by demographic groups. For example, an obscure Obama Administration report admitted:
“…While young [age 14 to 24] black males have accounted for about 1% of the population from 1980 to 2008…(b)y 2008, young black males made up about a quarter of all homicide offenders (27%).
“…Yet to many Americans these days, the thought of noticing giant facts such as this 27-to-1 ratio seems like blasphemy against the Declaration of Independence’s “proposition” that “all men are created equal.”
POSTMODERN RELIGION HAS NO PLACE IN LAW
It is as irrational to attempt to preserve the falsehood of equality, as it is to preserve any other RELIGIOUS FALSEHOOD. This falsehood alone is enough to convict Postmodernism as a civic RELIGION, and therefore ban it from inclusion and support of state action.
Law must consist of truth, or it cannot be just.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-17 04:27:00 UTC
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LOGIC, PRAXEOLOGY AND SCIENCE: DEPENDENCY AND DEMARCATION. REFORMING LIBERTARIAN
LOGIC, PRAXEOLOGY AND SCIENCE: DEPENDENCY AND DEMARCATION. REFORMING LIBERTARIANISM BY INCORPORATING SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT RATHER THAN RELYING ON THE PURELY RATIONAL
Those three terms, Logic, Praxeology, and Science describe a spectrum. But what is the point of demarcation between each?
Which of these domains is capable of testing which category of problems, and what constraints does any domain place upon the others, given that each is open to error, and requires the other to test its hypotheses.
I’ve been working on this problem now for quite some time, and have almost got my arms around how to talk about it praxeologically: as observable human action: and therefore a test of possibility, rational choice and incentives.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER
I have, I think, reformed the concepts of property and morality, but I can’t reform the system of thought that we call libertarian political theory without reforming the distinction between logic (unobservable, internally testable), praxeology (observable and subjectively testable), and science (unobservable, and objectively & externally testable.) That work may have been done somewhere but I haven’t found it yet. And I have a very hard time slogging my way through metaphysical assumptions and highly loaded vocabulary of both logicians on one end and rationalists on the other.
Current libertarian (Rothbardian) ethics rely upon very weak rational arguments. I’ve tried to systematically falsify each of them – there are only a handful really. And I think I have been successful.
Current progressive (Rawlsian) ethics rely upon very weak rational arguments. I think that I can falsify that argument without much difficulty. Veil of ignorance being a logical fallacy so to speak.
Conservatives don’t have an argument, so I have to explain their implied argument in libertarian terminology.
What I find most interesting, from our perspective, as libertarians, is that we acknowledge that the common law is an organic process, and it functions because it must be digestible and applicable by ordinary people in juries. We understand that the english built an empirical society, not a rational one. And that the French took the british concept of liberty and made it into a rational one. Then the germans have tried, and continue to, make it a spiritual one.
In other words, Rothbard’s arguments, and one of hoppe’s (his only weak one) rely on rationalism rather than empiricism. And while praxeology may be a test, and while reason may be a test, the purpose of empirical analysis is to extend our senses, and reduce what we cannot sense to analogies that we can perceive by proxy.
Now, prior generations had to suffer with the limited tool of Rational argument, because they didn’t have data, and the socialistic system of central control produces data on short periodicity, and can justify itself with that data. While the libertarian and conservative argument is that the externalities produced outweigh the short term benefits. But we have to WAIT for our data, and therefore socialistic arguments gather momentum in and civic behavior alters while we wait.
Thankfully we have data now. Our rational arguments were correct. The conservative arguments look like they are correct too. The only progressive argument we are unsure about at present is whether or not fiat money itself can function in a positive fashion, under some as yet undefined circumstance. (We argue that it can’t, out of hand, on rational grounds, but I’m not sure we can prove that there aren’t holes in our reason sufficient to undermine our position.)
We are lucky. Time has passed. We’ve learned more than our preceding generations had available to learn. And as such we can debate and restate libertarian theory using scientific rather than rational arguments.
And that is what I’m trying to do.
Source date (UTC): 2013-07-16 05:23:00 UTC
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On Realism
[W]hat is the relationship between:
and the combination of:
when given
In purest terms, of course, there are limits because of necessary information loss from the process of categorization. And it certainly appears that we can use science (categories and measurements and narratives that express causal relations that are allegories to experience) to understand almost everything we desire to = eventually. But despite apparent successes, the question is whether those limits are meaningful in the context of being a human: converting extra sensual perceptions to sense perceptions. Those limits can be meaningful in at least three dimensions: a) the scope of the patterns that we can identify (which I suspect we can use machines for), b) the period of those patterns, given that causality depends on arbitrary selection of periods of regularity, c) the number of axis of causal relations that we can understand. But since our problem is knowledge for the purpose of action in real time, not ‘knowledge’ as a static absolute, and it is our actions that are limited by our ignorance, and we would not be ‘human’ without those limits, the question always seems irrational. If we understand that all thought is time-contingent based upon the knowledge at our disposal, then it’s simply illogical to even try to represent knowledge as static ‘truths’. The question itself is irrational. If the standard is ‘enough perception that we can act to achieve our ends despite the limits of our minds’ that is very different from ‘we can understand the full set of causal relations by a process of representing measures of categories, and reducing them to expressions that are possible to articulate as a narrative.’ Since, we can test our theories, and science demands that we can both test (reproduce)( and determine the boundary conditions (falsify) our theories, using science and language to extend our sense perceptions, then we can test the correspondence of our understanding of the real world. It certainly appears that we can be successful in reducing the unobservable complexity of the real world into symbolic and linguistic representations that are sufficient allegories to experience, that we can understand and at at any scale in which we an define a scheme of measurement (sensing). And there is no reason at present to believe that there is some limit to this, other than our ability to marshall the physical resources to perform tests, or because performing those tests would violate the terms of cooperation with other humans (morality). And so, as Steven says above, theories are descriptive within the state of knowledge of the moment, if they correctly express the measurements and narratives of causal relations as we understand them at the moment, because they cannot exist without the context of the forms of measurement that we used to formulate them. Those statements in fact, correspond with reality at some level of precision. So the realist expectation is that we increasingly understand the complexity of reality, but may never fully achieve it. Although that imperfection may be meaningless for the purposes of action, as long as the allegory to experience is sufficient to produce the actions in question. The generational problem affecting the discipline of philosophy is that the metaphysical assumption that we can introspectively solve these problems without the help of science is as absurd as thinking that we can solve these problems without language. The discipline of Philosophy can help us construct analogies to experience so that we may consume those analogies and ‘understand’ them. But we cannot introspectively sense, perceive, and understand much outside of human scale, without the discipline of science. Hence not only is CR a form of Realism, but it is an improvement on Realism because it does not assume that representations are static.