Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Classes are the product of genetic distribution, constantly regressing toward th

    Classes are the product of genetic distribution, constantly regressing toward the mean. And prevented only by class inbreeding.

    Imagine a city, populated largely by the lower middle, middle and upper middle classes, where the very wealthy signal with hedonic crassness, and the remainder, signal with good dress, good taste, and good behavior.

    That is kiev.

    That is Milan.

    Credit systems have produced ills that redistributive systems do not. Redistributive systems have produced ills that credit systems do not. But fiat systems that attempt to create employment in the puritanical model appear to produce the worst ends of all.

    That is not a conclusion that i expected to come to.

    But if we understand that the lower classes lack the ability to do better than they do, the anglo model, as the germans argued from the beginning, is wrong.

    If we avoid the draconian, it seems wiser to pay them for public service, and for controlling their reproduction, rather than constantly distorting the economy with fiat money and credit.

    This constitutes is a voluntary exchange and therefore not contradictory with theory.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-19 03:48:00 UTC

  • CHINA You know, I tend to look at really boring things like demographics, educat

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/10044456/China-may-not-overtake-America-this-century-after-all.htmlON CHINA

    You know, I tend to look at really boring things like demographics, education, cultural values (Trust, Truth, Corruption), and the complexity of the products produced rather than the high variability of financial activity. Most of this stuff falls into the long wave hypothesis, which in my opinion is a variation on the Generations hypothesis.

    That’s why I was right about china’s growth path even though I was wrong about how long that they could hold it together. I said 2010, but clearly I didn’t understand their ability to keep pumping money into the economy well enough. Or maybe I misunderstood the value of china as a safer-haven during the crisis. I don’t know. The medium term isn’t my specialty – the long term is.

    That said, there is no way china gets out of the middle income trap. Velocity is impressive, and I certainly understand what they’re trying to do. But no way. Too many other problems.

    But maybe I should hedge that a bit. Sure, there is no way that they avoid having the middle income problem. That isn’t to say that unlike other smaller countries with less control, that they can’t work out of it with levers that most other countries couldn’t use.

    Authoritarian governments can (a) force literacy (b) force spending into the economy and even (c) control birth rates. They can also (d) brutally crack down on corruption, (e) totally destroy the oligarchs without also tearing the country apart. What I don’t want to see them to is what most countries with less control might do (f) externalize the internal conflict through aggressive military expansion. Russia for example, cannot fix its military culture, or its alcohol culture, despite the fact that they’re closely related.

    India can’t do it because india lacks the central power structure to overcome corruption – the red army is always there and happy to use its power. In india they dont’ have that power, and have to achieve it organically – and slowly, if at all. (I wish our army was as dedicated to the constitution as it is to the idea of civilian leadership. The army is more reliable than the courts.)

    I’m just as impressed with recent data as everyone else is. But I don’t have a handle on the state of affairs well enough to look for contrarian positions. And I’m pretty skeptical that we have enough momentum to insulate ourselves from other possible shocks. (Although, those of us who have been studying international politics long enough probably realize that the speed of communication and information

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-09 09:22:00 UTC

  • WHY SHARIA LAW IS APPRECIATED BY MUSLIMS (harsh statements warning) First, befor

    http://ca.news.yahoo.com/many-muslim-world-want-sharia-law-land-survey-160939872.htmlON WHY SHARIA LAW IS APPRECIATED BY MUSLIMS

    (harsh statements warning)

    First, before we start this discussion we must understand that the Islamic civilization, outside of the former Soviet Union, is en large, poor, comparatively ignorant, abysmally ignorant of what we consider ‘scientific thought’ (or even engineering) and has illiteracy rates that range from 20-60%.

    So, when you ask a people if they would prefer a philosophical, political and legal system that they are familiar with, understand, and they consider ‘just’, you’re going to see positive survey responses. But it’s also because they don’t know the alternatives, and certainly can’t compare them.

    In the west, our christian ancestors relied first upon scripture, and then upon ‘natural law’ to help control abuses by the state. It wasn’t until we understood that it was an independent judiciary, the common law and property rights that were the source of freedom, not scripture, and certainly not government, that we abandoned these moral arguments in favor of rational ones. So we too had our episode of desiring the equivalent to Sharia in our past. The only difference is that we have incorporated greek rationalism -reluctantly- since the time of Augustine (and arguably, always.)

    Sharia law is effectively communist. Islamic radicalism has adopted the tactics of world communism for this reason: it’s a revolt by the lowest level civilization, containing the lowest status people outside of sub saharan africa, revolting against the rest of us. Islam grants social status to all equally. This is lost on the rest of us. We live in an aristocratic society where status is EARNED through demonstrated actions. We consistently hear muslims criticizing our interest in heroism. They find our way of life antagonistic – immoral even. Even here in the west, after a century and a half of attack on aristocracy by communism, socialism, feminism and postmodernism (the only politically meaningful being feminism because of the numbers of women who vote against aristocracy) we still retain our heroic culture. (Although, hollywood is having a very hard time producing heroic movies, when they make their money on the international market, without using space aliens.) At least, the majority of white males still practice western aristocratic values. And it is those values that gave us science, reason, and rule of law. (Something which westerners are no longer taught, because it would interfere with state sponsored socialism and the religion of postmodernism practiced by liberals.)

    We must also understand that Islamic society is corrupt, familial, and tribal (because it still inbreeds heavily), as well as mystical and arational. Access to oil revenues via the state grants groups luxuries and idleness that are status enhancing. So just as we have corruption in the west, as special interest and racial groups compete for control of the state, privileges, redistribution and tax revenues, the islamic world, or at least the oil rich regions, compete for access to those revenues.

    Because their society is pervasively corrupt, and tribal, and the western division of the ottoman empire into current states ignored tribal boundaries, these governments are not only terribly corrupt but tribally biased. Just as the USA should break into regions so that the coasts don’t continue to oppress the center and south, the Islamic countries need to be broken into a federation of tribes – something oil revenues make impossible.

    Justice in a corrupt and arbitrary and mystical society is unpredictable if not impossible.

    People rarely reform themselves if they can blame others. So they conveniently blame others – muslims, and Palestinians in particular, almost always choose the bad decision whenever it is presented to them.

    So Sharia is something they understand and trust, it is not arbitrary, not open to much interpretation, and difficult to corrupt. It favors the poor and ignorant. It gives status to people who are at the bottom of the human prestige pyramid, if not the bottom of it’s ethnic pyramid. Muslims are lower class backward outcasts in the rest of the world despite the promise of prestige that their religion promises them.

    It is not irrational for people in these circumstances to prefer Sharia. In fact, given the arbitrary state borders, the level of tribalism, mysticism, ignorance, and corruption in their civilization it is THE CORRECT SOLUTION FOR THEM until they develop rule of law. And they cannot develop the rule of law without a middle class, commercial society. You just can’t. Period. Commercial society disregards familial incentives. WE are all family in the market. This is intolerable to the primitive tribal, familial, and inbred cultures.

    I don’t complain about Muslims wanting Sharia law in their countries. I complaint about our courts excusing behavior because of it, and I complain that muslims do not integrate into western society, and they persist in their inbreeding.

    The only way we can tolerate Muslim culture in the west is to prohibit intermarriage and interbreeding out to six generations (by genetic test, and under threat of deportation) and to shutter all mosques and schools. That islam is practiced as a personal religion at home is one thing. That it is propagated as a political and legal system is another and is a violation of the rest of our rights. The moment that you state that your religion affects law and property, it is no longer a religion. It is politics.

    And in the case of communism and sharia law, It is war on civilization itself.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-01 10:28:00 UTC

  • WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF ALL MONEY SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED? by Curt Doolittle, The Prop

    WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF ALL MONEY SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED?

    by Curt Doolittle, The Propertarian Institute

    (Reposted from Quora)

    Believe it or not, this subject has been given quite a bit of treatment in the literature – mostly during the early part of the last century in response to the communist, socialist and fascist movements.

    REALITY:

    Almost everyone, on the planet, except for perhaps ~500M subsistence farmers would die in the first 30-90 days. Yes. Really. Seriously.

    MONEY

    Money makes planning of complex things possible.

    Humans literally cannot ‘think’ as we understand the term, without numbers, money, property, contracts, credit and interest. Just as drawings and written words help us remember things, numbers help us remember things we could not remember, think about, or compare without them. Money makes numbers possible to apply to things that are DIFFERENT. Whereas numbers without money can only be used for things that are the SAME. As such, we say that money makes it possible to compare objects that are otherwise incommensurable. Money renders the world commensurable: open to planning and the use of mathematics (measurement and forecasting).

    In practical terms, money and prices form an information system that tells us all what to do in real time in response to what others want and need. It is how we tell each other how to cooperate. It is the human social system. And the use of that social system, plus the capture of fossile fuel, has taken us out of ignorance and poverty.

    CONVERSELY

    What money and credit have also done is make it possible to breed again up to new malthusian levels. While Malthus was only half right, he was half right. Group selection accomplishes what malthus did not account for. THe general belief of ‘progressives’ is that technology will ‘save us again’ just like agrarianism, and then pastoralism saved us in the past. But the truth is we just breed up to these levels again, and reduce ourselves back to poverty.

    The problem then is that we must control our breeding. And that has been, except for a brief period in china, or the middle ages in England under Manorialism impossible to achieve. Partly because it is so profitable to sell things to people who bear children, and those children as they too mature.

    EXAMPLES

    THe US economy is primarily driven by housing, and the high rate of return on lending for housing, and the large supply of labor jobs for the production of housing. From this perspective, the exceptional nature of the american economy is not the product of ‘democracy’ or innovation, but the product of selling off a continent to waves of immigrants and their offspring, and using the profits from the sale of the (conquered) continent to invest in increasingly complex technologies.

    THe Chinese for example have figured this out and are doing the same thing but moving people from the ‘poor’ village farm to cities where they *hope* the population will be more productive than they were at subsistence farming. China can do this bcause it adopted consumer capitalism (money, prices and interest) and abandoned communism (no money, no prices, and no interest).

    The problem other countries face (India and say, Ukraine) is india is so pervasively corrupt that it’s not possible to create infrastructure without privatization of the investment through corruption, and the population is still expanding unsustainably in a dirty and hot environment. THe problem Ukraine faces, is that it cannot play ‘china’ because the lower levels of government are so corrupt and the country sees no demand for its currency, so the government cannot issue credit, and therefore the people remain poor.

    IN CLOSING

    When you say ‘money went away’ what you must also understand is that with money and prices will go the ability to communicate, and think. Literally. Humans would not be able to cooperate, communicate, plan and think without money. Worse, they would have no incentive to do so, because to have an incentive one must be able to think of something to do. And you couldn’t think of anything to do that you couldn’t do with your own two hands.

    THere is about 4 days worth of energy, and 14 days worth of food in the pipeline. If you made money vanish, you would need to make 6B people vanish along with it.

    You may find a more thorough, or a more simplistic answer elsewhere. But this is the answer, and there isnt any alternative.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-01 06:37:00 UTC

  • What Would Happen If There Were No Money On Earth?

    Believe it or not, this subject has been given quite a bit of treatment in the literature – mostly during the early part of the last century in response to the communist, socialist and fascist movements.

    REALITY:
    Almost everyone, on the planet,  except for perhaps ~500M subsistence farmers would die in the first 30-90 days.  Yes.  Really.  Seriously.

    MONEY
    Money makes planning of complex things possible.
    Humans literally cannot ‘think’ as we understand the term, without numbers, money, property, contracts, credit and interest. Just as drawings and written words help us remember things, numbers help us remember things we could not remember, think about, or compare without them.  Money makes numbers possible to apply to things that are DIFFERENT.  Whereas numbers without  money can only be used for things that are the SAME. As such, we say that money makes it possible to compare objects that are otherwise incommensurable.  Money renders the world commensurable: open to planning and the use of mathematics (measurement and forecasting).

    In practical terms, money and prices form an information system that tells us all what to do in real time in response to what others want and need. It is how we tell each other how to cooperate.  It is the human social system. And the use of that social system, plus the capture of fossile fuel, has taken us out of ignorance and poverty.

    CONVERSELY
    What money and credit have also done is make it possible to breed again up to new malthusian levels. While Malthus was only half right, he was half right. Group selection accomplishes what malthus did not account for.  THe general belief of ‘progressives’ is that technology will ‘save us again’ just like agrarianism, and then pastoralism saved us in the past.  But the truth is we just breed up to these levels again, and reduce ourselves back to poverty.

    The problem then is that we must control our breeding.  And that has been, except for a brief period in china, or the middle ages in England under Manorialism impossible to achieve. Partly because it is so profitable to sell things to people who bear children, and those children as they too mature.

    EXAMPLES
    THe US economy is primarily driven by housing, and the high rate of return on lending for housing, and the large supply of labor jobs for the production of housing. From this perspective, the exceptional nature of the american economy is not the product of ‘democracy’ or innovation, but the product of selling off a continent to waves of immigrants and their offspring, and using the profits from the sale of the (conquered) continent to invest in increasingly complex technologies.

    THe Chinese for example have figured this out and are doing the same thing but moving people from the ‘poor’ village farm to cities where they *hope* the population will be more productive than they were at subsistence farming. China can do this bcause it adopted consumer capitalism (money, prices and interest) and abandoned communism (no money, no prices, and no interest). 

    The problem other countries face (India and say, Ukraine) is india is so pervasively corrupt that it’s not possible to create infrastructure without privatization of the investment through corruption, and the population is still expanding unsustainably in a dirty and hot environment.  THe problem Ukraine faces, is that it cannot play ‘china’ because the lower levels of government are so corrupt and the country sees no demand for its currency, so the government cannot issue credit, and therefore the people remain poor.

    IN CLOSING
    When you say ‘money went away’ what you must also understand is that with money and prices will go the ability to communicate, and think. Literally.  Humans would not be able to cooperate, communicate, plan and think without money. Worse, they would have no incentive to do so, because to have an incentive one must be able to think of something to do.  And you couldn’t think of anything to do that you couldn’t do with your own two hands.

    THere is about 4 days worth of energy, and 14 days worth of food in the pipeline. If you made money vanish, you would need to make 6B people vanish along with it.

    You may find a more thorough, or a more simplistic answer elsewhere. But this is the answer, and there isnt any alternative.

    https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-there-were-no-money-on-earth

  • OBJECTIFY AND SUBJECTIFY – MEN VS WOMEN IN DEBATE One more fascinating differenc

    OBJECTIFY AND SUBJECTIFY – MEN VS WOMEN IN DEBATE

    One more fascinating difference between women and men in debate.

    As men, our ideas are separate from ourselves. We discuss, and argue, whenever possible with facts, not experiences. Women think we objectify them. Well, the fact is we do. But women aren’t special. We objectify everything. Objectifying things is what makes us MEN.

    With women, their ideas are indistinguishable from themselves. They discuss, argue, with experiences not facts independent of experiences. Women SUBJECTIFY everything. That is what makes them WOMEN.

    This is why men dominate debates (and hard sciences). If our arguments fail, we just try a different one, and learn from it. It isn’t personal. With women, not only is there argument a failure, but because it is intertwined with their emotional experiences, and because the identify with their emotional experiences they feel, far too often, that they have failed.

    Yet another reason why it is so much easier to be a male. I get exhausted whenever I try to think like a woman. I can do it for about half a second before I’m completely incapable of reason, and collapse from exhaustion. 😉

    But who would take care of screaming irrational children if women operated like men do? We’d be extinct.

    PS: now, before some idiot says “not all women”, please understand that categories that are universal describe distributions. It’s implicit that we are UNEQUAL even within gender, and therefore as UNEQUAL within gender, we can be described along multiple distributions. I realize that simple people think in simple terms (equality) but grownups think in terms of distributions and equilibria. ie: a point described by an ideal type, vs multiple-axis.

    The world is fascinating really if you don’t subscribe to dogma. 🙂

    🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-30 08:21:00 UTC

  • LIBERTARIANISM, FREE MARKETS AND GOVERNMENT? In response to a criticism of the f

    LIBERTARIANISM, FREE MARKETS AND GOVERNMENT?

    In response to a criticism of the free market, under the question: “Libertarianism: What reservations do you have about libertarian principles?”

    First (a) the free market described by libertarians of all stripes includes prohibitions on Violence, theft, fraud and monopoly (Because monopolies can only be created by governments.) (b) governments prohibit you and I from suing companies and controlling their behavior both by court and market, so the problem is government, not corporations. (c) environmental problems are caused by the government grant of companies special privileges and the elimination of the common law right to sue for pollution and misuse. Again, this is caused by government. (d) None of (the common) criticisms are examples of free market activity – they are examples of corporatist activity that was created by the government.

    GOVERNMENT IS THE CAUSE OF PROBLEMS YOU STATE.

    Property rights, the common law, rule of law, and the courts are our protection against negatives, and boycotts in the market are our protection against poor behavior. THere is a difference between poor behavior, and corporatism, fraud, theft, and violence.

    THE GOVERNMENT in practice (always has) CREATED CORPORATIONS and given them PRIVILEGES. This was done BY DESIGN, in order to eliminate the right that the common man had under the common law to use the courts to control organizations and powerful individuals. The governments took away our rights, and left us the market (boycotts) as a control in order to decrease unemployement and increase tax revenue. (Yes, this is history. Government did this.)

    I will venture that there is NOTHING YOU CAN THINK OF that causes CORPORATISM (which is what you’re arguing against) that was not caused by government. The courts and the market must equally bear responsibility for controlling both the government and companies. The common law is our only defense against government abuses via social groups (SOCIALISM) or corporate groups (CORPORATISM). And the common law can only function if private property is articulated in law, and the state cannot override private property in theory or in practice. And when the courts administer the law by the common law, and the common law alone.

    ON GOVERNMENT

    The NECESSARY properties of of a government are

    1) provide a means of resolving differences without the use of violence (ie: to create a monopoly of violence within a geography.)

    2) To provide a means of resolving differences requires a definition of property rights.

    3) To prohibit alternative definitions of property rights from being imposed by force, theft or fraud, (or immigration.)

    4) To provide a means of investing in commons (human and physical infrastructure) by prohibiting free-riding, privatization, and competition when investing in commons.

    These are the minimum properties of a government.

    In addition to these properties, it may also be possible for a group of people to afford to also have government engage in the following:

    5) To provide a means of cooperation between classes where privatization, free riding, rent seeking and competition prevent cooperation between classes.

    6) To reduce both transaction costs and fraud by implementing weights, measures and currency.

    7) To perform as an insurer of last resort against catastrophes.

    These are advantageous properties of government.

    In addition to these properties, it may be possible for a group of people to afford to also have the government engage in the following LUXURIES:

    8) Redistribution of all kinds, both in services, and in direct payments.

    9) Inter-temporal redistribution from young to old, rather than saving and lending from old to young. (But this is very fragile.)

    These are LUXURIES that can be provided by some governments under rare circumstances in exceptional periods of time, where malthusian and group selection problems have been temporarily held at bay by technological innovation.

    HOPEFULLY THIS HELPED YOU SOMEWHAT

    The government is not the source of the good things. The courts under the common law of property rights is the source of good things. The government has destroyed the common law, the rule of law, and crated both corporatism and socialism. And we now suffer between two factions that try to control the government for corporatist or socialist means.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-30 07:51:00 UTC

  • On White Males and Libertarianism

    [W]hite males (the european, or perhaps germanic, race) seek status under the ancient indo-european proscription for heroism via competition. The west is unique for having produced this philosophy of aristocratic egalitarianism – inclusion in equalitarian leadership, and therefore obtaining the reward of property rights, by demonstrated heroism. And the high trust society of the west is the result of aristocratic egalitarianism (heroic achievement, demonstrated excellence, virtue). For most of history, and pre-history, males could achieve this only through combat. With the advent of manorialism, males could demonstrate their fitness through hard work. With the advent of chivalry males could demonstrate their heroic status by charitable service. With the advent of consumer capitalism, males could demonstrate their heroic fitness in commerce. Heroic achievemnet grants access to mates (we have a lof of data on this now that confirms this fact – to the point where we know how many dollars in income per inch of height under 5’10” you must earn to gain the same quality of attractive woman…. Really.) Women are as shallow about status as men are about physical attraction – and the data is the data. As such, white males are intuitively attracted to libertarianism if they see in libertarianism a means of pursuing traditional signals for mating, social status, and wealth. That libertarianism is a rigorous philospohy equalled in detail only by Marxism, and is articulated in economic language and analytical philosophy. It is accessible only to those people with both incentive to learn it, and the ability to understand it. This is why libertarianism is a minority white male philosophy. It is an aristocratic philosophy and difficult to access. Other cultures lack both the mythology and cultural values for heroism and egalitarianism Which is why other cultures also cannot produce the high trust society. And without the high trust society, the wealth necessary for redistribution (charity) is impossible to achieve at scale.

  • REGARDING WHITE MALES AND LIBERTARIANISM White males (the european, or perhaps g

    REGARDING WHITE MALES AND LIBERTARIANISM

    White males (the european, or perhaps germanic, race) seek status under the ancient indo-european proscription for heroism via competition. The west is unique for having produced this philosophy of aristocratic egalitarianism – inclusion in equalitarian leadership, and therefore obtaining the reward of property rights, by demonstrated heroism. And the high trust society of the west is the result of aristocratic egalitarianism (heroic achievement, demonstrated excellence, virtue).

    For most of history, and pre-history, males could achieve this only through combat. With the advent of manorialism, males could demonstrate their fitness through hard work. With the advent of chivalry males could demonstrate their heroic status by charitable service. With the advent of consumer capitalism, males could demonstrate their heroic fitness in commerce.

    Heroic achievemnet grants access to mates (we have a lof of data on this now that confirms this fact – to the point where we know how many dollars in income per inch of height under 5’10” you must earn to gain the same quality of attractive woman…. Really.) Women are as shallow about status as men are about physical attraction – and the data is the data.

    As such, white males are intuitively attracted to libertarianism if they see in libertarianism a means of pursuing traditional signals for mating, social status, and wealth.

    That libertarianism is a rigorous philospohy equalled in detail only by Marxism, and is articulated in economic language and analytical philosophy. It is accessible only to those people with both incentive to learn it, and the ability to understand it. This is why libertarianism is a minority white male philosophy. It is an aristocratic philosophy and difficult to access.

    Other cultures lack both the mythology and cultural values for heroism and egalitarianism Which is why other cultures also cannot produce the high trust society. And without the high trust society, the wealth necessary for redistribution (charity) is impossible to achieve at scale.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-27 03:57:00 UTC

  • BALACE OF POWERS, EMPIRE, AND HEGEMONY America is a domestic empire prosecuting

    http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/anarchy-and-hegemonyANARCHY, BALACE OF POWERS, EMPIRE, AND HEGEMONY

    America is a domestic empire prosecuting coastal tyranny, cultural war, and genocide against the agrarian interior, and America is an international hegemony in power largely because it is cheap and easy to have America in power. And america IS in power, because everyone else (largely) WANTS it to be. (Certain oil producing minorities which America prohibits from forming a cartel are the exception.)

    As I’ve stated before (and generated a lot of comments) Americans finance the military through the export of debt which is then inflated away. For this service, americans have a higher standard of living and gain preferential status in world trade negotiations, not the least of which is because the USA determines the terms by which world trade is conducted.

    I would argue, that it would be just fine with me if we separated out Washington DC as a separate ‘nation’, and let it fulfill the hegemonic duties that it does, while returning power to the regions or states so that we may persist our local cultures and preferences without the imposition of coastal tyranny.

    You can undermine a bureaucracy, or you can promote it. I’m of the opinion that promoting washington is easier than shutting it down. And the world will happily shut it down for us over time. Meanwhile each region of the country is free to trade and behave as it sees fit without the dictatorship of the coasts.

    Think about that a bit.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-25 07:18:00 UTC