Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • THE VIRTUE OF MONARCHIES Monarchies, or “private governments” denied access to p

    THE VIRTUE OF MONARCHIES

    Monarchies, or “private governments” denied access to political status to all but the family, and those few hired by the family.

    The remainder of the population sought status signals in the market, and within their identity groups. These societies were ‘diverse’. Sections of each city were dedicated to the cultural expression of their members, and signals within those sections served to convey status without the need for political power to convey such status.

    Under representative democracy, heterogeneous societies compete for the political power necessary to alter their status in relation to other groups. Instead of using the market, and market behavior to signal status. IN other words, we harm cultures by giving them access to political power.

    The answer is not how we share power. It is how we have no ability to use the violence of the state to create signals that are only mutually beneficial if they are manufactured do to the most important community service we can deliver: market participation.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-13 18:18:00 UTC

  • Illustrating The Meaning Of Liberty From A False Dichotomy 🙂

    A Facebook friend asked this question.

    “What is your definition of liberty? Penniless in a free world, or wealthy in a corrupt one. Those are the choices that I give you. Without deviating from those two choices, what is your response?

    I dont understand the question yet….

    First reply to your definition on liberty. Then reply to my questions within that context.

    [H]mmmm….. Ok. Lets define liberty: LIBERTY:a) Sentimentally: liberty is the desire to conduct individual experimental action from which we gain stimulation, knowledge, understanding, or temporal or material gain. b) Historically: it is an allegory to the sentiments of sovereignty in aristocratic egalitarianism. c) Politically: Liberty is the ability to use your property, defined as your body, and your possessions obtained by free exchange and homesteading, as you see fit, as long as you force no involuntary transfers from others by doing so. d) Praxeologically: a set of property definitions which are monopolistically bounded, absent new invention, as norms. THEREFORE [W]ithin the context of that definition of liberty, I can’t address the next dichotomy. SO I will try to deduce the cause of that dichotomy from the two statements and see if I can come up with an answer. ANSWERING THE QUESTION [Y]our question might mean “would you prefer to be penniless in a free world or wealthy in a corrupt one”. The phrasing could also mean “you can only be penniless in a free world and wealthy in a corrupt one”. Which I think is illogical, so I’ll have to assume that’s not correct. Or it could mean that “is it just that there are penniless men in the free world and wealthy men in the corrupt world?” I am going to assume that you mean the first, but might also be suggesting the third. I’ll answer them in that order. I would rather be the wealthy person in the corrupt world of course. However, if I am a penniless man, I would prefer to be in the free world, where it is possible to change my state. To answer the third question, the world is not just because justice requires the possession of knowledge within a limited domain that is available to individuals. ie: the family or tribe, and the family or tribal economy. However, for a division of labor to form, we must possess the knowledge that only money and prices can provide us with. And since none of that knowledge is ‘owned’ and much of it is noise, and the value to the market of scotch tape is much higher than the value of another Beethoven, then whomever ends up wealthy is a matter of the lottery effect and not much else. It’s random. Therefore there is no such thing as output-justice. We have a market precisely because it is created by a lottery effect. if the outcome were known , no one would play in the market. The market is a lottery. It is not just. The only justice is that as a byproduct of that market, goods and services are subject to constant decline in prices and increases in choices. SO the market economy is not a question of individual justice, but of aggregate justice with huge temporal variation among the individuals in the distribution we call the population. And any question of social justice is illogical – at least until you get to my next point: The Propertarian answer to the third question is that if you respect property rights, whatever those rights might be, you have paid for those rights, for yourself, and for others, by forgoing opportunities for involuntary transfer, fraud, theft and violence. As such you are a shareholder in that market. Some might argue that respect for property is just the cost of access to the market. But the cost to the poor of those property rights is far higher than the cost to the wealthy, and as such, those rights are unequaly paid for. So, others, including myself, argue that shareholders not only have the right of access to the market, but we also have the right to whatever distributions (profits) that the market wherein those property rights are defined, produces, in compensation for that variance in costs, and unless we compensate for those variations in costs, then those with property are conducting an involuntary transfer from those who pay a very high price for respecting property. (ie: we have the right of variable redistribution if we adhere to property rights.) (Of course this would also requrie that you did not vote for privileges and redistributions.) This is undeniable praxeological reasoning. There is no alternative to it. Redistribution is warranted. And therefore you will never be a penniless man, even if you are a poor one, unless you have very poor judgement. Propertarianism is based upon the universal human demonstrated preference for a prohibition on involuntary transfer. It is not, like libertarianism, based upon preference, natural law, or any other artificial construct.

  • Propertarianism As The Solution To The Problem Of Ethics

    VS ROTHBARD: ARISTOCRATIC VERSUS GHETTO ETHICS [T]he aristocratic egalitarian ethic requires all able men capable of bearing arms, deny access to power, to anyone and everyone. I usually refer to this (erroneously) as the warrior ethic, since it originates with the Indo European warrior caste. The ethic of the bazaar or ghetto (incorrectly referred to as the slave ethic), requires only that we fail to engage in trade with those who would seek power. It is a form of ostracization. Rothbard returned to his cultural history to develop his ethics when he could not sovle the problem of institutions. And in doing so, he regressed ethics into that same ghetto by ignoring the aristocratic ethical requirements of a) symmetry of knowledge, b) warranty that provides proof of that symmetry of knowledge, and c) a prohibition on external involuntary transfer.

    [callout] Propertarianism is the solution to the problem of the incompleteness of Misesian and Rothbardian praxeology, and explains the causal property of Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics, rendering it descriptive, not causal.[/callout]

    All three of these ethical constraints are necessary to create the high trust society. Yet they are also insufficient. The fourth constraint appears to require d) outbreeding by forbidding cousin-marriage. Outbreeding creates a universalist ethic, which in the west we call ‘christian love’ but which means treating all humans regardless of family origin with the same ethical constraints as you would the members of your immediate family or even tribe. [T]his is why libertarianism under Rothbard failed to gain the same level of traction that it has gained under Ron Paul. Ron Paul is promoting Aristocratic Egalitarian Ethics (even if he does not know how to articulate such a thing) while Rothbard was promoting the ethics of the Bazzaar and ghetto (even if he did not understand his actions in this context.) Humans are not terribly bright when it comes to rationalism. But we can sense moral patterns and status signals and ‘feel’ positives and negative moral reactions due to those patterns whether or not we can analytically separate and articulate those moral instincts and reactions. Propertarianism allows us to articulate these moral instincts as reducible to different concpets of property rights. Propertariansm makes moral differences commensurable. If you can grasp that idea, you may eventually understand that Propertarianism is the solution to the problem of the incompleteness of Misesian and Rothbardian praxeology, and explains the causal property of Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics, rendering it descriptive, not causal. This explanation then, in turn, provides us with the tools to solve the 2500 year old problem of politics that the greeks, and the english, and the americans failed to solve.

  • VS ROTHBARD: ARISTOCRATIC VERSUS GHETTO ETHICS PROPERTARIANISM AS SOLVING THE PR

    VS ROTHBARD: ARISTOCRATIC VERSUS GHETTO ETHICS

    PROPERTARIANISM AS SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF ETHICS

    The aristocratic egalitarian ethic requires all able men capable of bearing arms, deny access to power, to anyone and everyone. I usually refer to this (erroneously) as the warrior ethic, since it originates with the Indo European warrior caste.

    The ethic of the bazaar or ghetto (incorrectly referred to as the slave ethic), requires only that we fail to engage in trade with those who would seek power. It is a form of ostracization.

    Rothbard returned to his cultural history to develop his ethics when he could not sovle the problem of institutions. And in doing so, he regressed ethics into that same ghetto by ignoring the aristocratic ethical requirements of a) symmetry of knowledge, b) warranty that provides proof of that symmetry of knowledge, and c) a prohibition on external involuntary transfer.

    All three of these ethical constraints are necessary to create the high trust society. Yet they are also insufficient.

    The fourth constraint appears to require d) outbreeding by forbidding cousin-marriage. Outbreeding creates a universalist ethic, which in the west we call ‘christian love’ but which means treating all humans regardless of family origin with the same ethical constraints as you would the members of your immediate family or even tribe.

    This is why libertarianism under Rothbard failed to gain the same level of traction that it has gained under Ron Paul. Ron Paul is promoting Aristocratic Egalitarian Ethics (even if he does not know how to articulate such a thing) while Rothbard was promoting the ethics of the Bazzaar and ghetto (even if he did not understand his actions in this context.)

    Humans are not terribly bright when it comes to rationalism. But we can sense moral patterns and status signals and ‘feel’ positives and negative moral reactions due to those patterns whether or not we can analytically separate and articulate those moral instincts and reactions.

    Propertarianism allows us to articulate these moral instincts as reducible to different concpets of property rights. Propertariansm makes moral differences commensurable.

    If you can grasp that idea, you may eventually understand that Propertarianism is the solution to the problem of the incompleteness of Misesian, Rothbardian praxeology, and explains the causal property of Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics, rendering it descriptive, not causal. This explanation then, in turn, provides us with the tools to solve the 2500 year old problem of politics that the greeks, and the english, and the americans failed to solve.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-11 07:47:00 UTC

  • THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AND ACADEMIC BLOGGERS AND A NOTE ON PRAXEOLOG

    THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AND ACADEMIC BLOGGERS

    AND A NOTE ON PRAXEOLOGY

    Um. It’s not complicated:

    1) Academics make more complex errors in logic. Independents tend to not possess sufficient scope of knowledge to render the opinions that they do. So they make more simplistic errors out of ignorance. Most logical errors I find in academic work are due to methodological constraints within a narrow discipline that erroneously attribute causation within that paradigm.

    2) Academic errors are most often driven by accepted political beliefs. Popper and Kuhn’s warning about paradigmiatic traps is a greater problem in economic science than it is in the physical sciences. Independent writers tend to vary more from the accepted paradigm. Thats why they’re interesting. The current problem with academic work is its nearly exclusive reliance on aggregates, and the fact that aggregates reinforce the goals of totalitarian state action.

    3) Academics are more likely to rely upon multiple sources of empirical data, and unfortunately, independents are not. Independents are more likely driven by the desire of something to be true, and to rely upon confirmation biases. Although, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s a natural process of research and development.

    WHY PRAXEOLOGY?

    Praxeology protects against necessary errors of information loss in any process of aggregation. Aggregation exposes limits to praxeological analysis.

    There are plenty of people working with collections of data. There are too few praxeologists working on the interpretation of data. That is because analysis of aggregates hides involuntary transfers, and praxeological analysis exposes involuntary transfers. As such, Praxeology is a libertarian, and Aggregates a totalitarian methodology.

    That’s why there are fewer praxeologists. In academica, it’s against the status quo.

    WHAT WOULD ACADEMIC RESEARCH LOOK LIKE WITHOUT THE MAJORITY RULE STATE?

    If the ‘government’ were constructed to allow exchanges, not majority rule, then academics would search for beneficial exchanges between groups rather than optimums that are always for the benefit of one group at the expense of another.

    In other words, solutions proposing an optimum are always “BAD” . Because they deprive us of that which could be mutually beneficial means even if we have independent ends.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-02 05:49:00 UTC

  • DIVERSITY IS A “BAD” We have known for some time now that diversity produces neg

    DIVERSITY IS A “BAD”

    We have known for some time now that diversity produces negative consequences.

    Those consequences are most visible in the reluctance by individuals to contribute to the commons: taxes, redistribution, and even maintenance of common areas. And of course both the willingness and ability to enforce morals and norms.

    In the west we have lost the battle for the sacrifice that is necessary for the nuclear family. Our immigrants are accelerating that abandonment and returning maintaining their inbreeding, extended family traditions if paternalistic, and serial marriage if maternalistic. We have lost our anglo saxon rights to freedom along with our constitution. We have lost our obligation to charity and devotion to the commons in the form if voluntary organizations that provided both the moral impetative and institutional framework for our previous civil society. We have lost our right to juridical defense for all regulatory and much legislative law. We have lost the primacy of our common and natural laws. And we have lost our religion and mythology. As well as our unique western identity. In economic terms, we have lost most of the social capital that makes the high trust society possible.

    There is some debate that over the medium term the economic benefit of immigration may mask those negative consequences.

    But why does diversity create bads?

    Because diversity creates a competition of norms and signals. And humans stop paying for norms when their payments are stolen by those with competing norms and signals.

    What does that mean?

    Traditions and norms matter. They matter because they are prescriptions for an order, or portfolio of types of property. It is not so much that people will forget certain norms and the knowledge that they contain. But that they will refuse to pay for the commons that we call norms, if they find them either bad investments or more commonly A TAX THAT THEY PAY, but which OTHERS CHEAT AND THEREFORE ESCAPE PAYING.

    Norms are paid when they are observed. They bear a cost. Every single time. Morals bear a cost. A high one. Every time they are observed.

    We humans abhor cheating. And competing sets of norms, especially those that demand less discipline, are licenses to cheat and steal.

    Humans will not reward cheaters. In fact they will redouble their efforts to punish them. And in the case of norms, they will fail to pay for the commons. At least they will fail to pay when the value of signaling conformity drops.

    And this leads us to the other bit of research: that the purpose of progressive promotion of diversity is just signaling that is available cheaply with little effort.

    In other words: the desire for diversity is status seeking.

    So some of us signal by our production. Some of us by consumption. And liberals by giving away other people’s money.

    Which I find fascinating.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-30 17:18:00 UTC

  • FAMILY HISTORY: AMERICA, ENGLAND, BUT IS IT NORMANDY, ENGLAND OR GERMANY? I’ve w

    FAMILY HISTORY: AMERICA, ENGLAND, BUT IS IT NORMANDY, ENGLAND OR GERMANY?

    I’ve written a bit about this before. But our small family came to the states in the 1630’s. But we know everyone’s name back to the 1400’s. The family historians have made claims that we’re Normans. But that’s entirely specious. And the argument they used to prove it only serves to disprove it. We know, I think, no more than 25 names of people who participated in the Norman invasion. And our family was from central England. So, I’m fairly sure that like most english people’s we’re largely germanic. Mostly celtic. Although, given their Puritanism, and their location, it’s just as likely that they were part of the wave of German immigrants who left for greater freedom in England, or even more likely part of the Danish gene pool that dominated that area. But until we have genetic samples from enough members of the family to create some semblance of a pattern – at least on the male side, we will have a hard time being sure.

    In the large, we have retained the protestant english behavior of small business, martial devotion, and did not substantially outbreed, at least in New England, until the second world war. Although we must keep in mind that the prices of land were driven up in new England in the 1700’s, partly because it was some of the best land on earth at the time, and many families moved to the ohio river valley to take advantage of the lower cost of land. And it is more likely that that wing of the family has retained its homogeneity. The southern wing of the family is fairly large but harder to isolate.

    Some day I’ll spend some time on this. Some day. Maybe….

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-23 06:40:00 UTC

  • STATES ARE NOT PEOPLES I’ve changed my identity. My country has left me. I’m not

    STATES ARE NOT PEOPLES

    I’ve changed my identity. My country has left me. I’m not an American. I’m an Englishman. A member of the English race. A race with both genetic and written history. I will be a member of that race no matter what state chooses to deprive me of my property, and by my property, my freedom. A modern passport is a slave-brand. It’s a title. It’s ownership of your body, actions and property. Its a claim on your production. If that is not slavery, then there is no other kind. As such, I need not stand and fight for political commands, or a constitution that has failed me and my people, nor for a state that has branded me a slave, relegated me to second class legal status as a white male, and intentionally demonized me, my race and our history. I will fight for my rights as an Englishman. The right of property. The right of the common law for the adjudication of differences over property. And therefore the right of freedom from arbitrary commands by an arbitrary state.

    Some Things Are Worth Repeating

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-23 06:21:00 UTC

  • GENDER RELATIONS In America, men are trained to eschew all violence against wome

    GENDER RELATIONS

    In America, men are trained to eschew all violence against women, even the most minor, the threat of it, the verbal expression of it, and even the demonstration of their superior strength or speed.

    We are taught that everything is always our fault, that women have the right to be irresponsible in word and action and to walk away at the first sign of danger.

    My father had an abusive temper and was prone to violence. I both inherited this trait and almost completely suppressed it. The best technique I learned is to simply walk away. To vote with my feet. And to return when cooler heads prevail.

    For some reason, which I suspect is connected to my minor autism, I inspire frustration in the women I am with. I must train every woman not to use minor violence against me. So this prohibition is asymmetric in America.

    Dating here in Ukraine is interesting. And walking away is considered not gentlemanly, but weak. It is an enormous insult to the woman. Partly I suspect because it denies them their feeling if power. And oddly enough, the women seem to actually want you to be physically dominant with them when they ate emotionally raging.

    Which is just programmed out of me entirely.

    Furthermore, women do not see themselves as weak here like their american counterparts do – even while denying it at every opportunity. They see men as physically strong and dangerous. But not that they have any particular advantage. Women know that manipulating men is trivially easy. And they master their craft like no other women on earth. I have heard ” he is just a man” spoken about one man or another from a dozen women now.

    Obviously I haven’t come to terms with this difference in cultural expectations. And I’m not sure I want to.

    But I have to also observe that despite their relative poverty, and because of it, the limited alternatives for masculine signaling have made these men more masculine than their western counterparts.

    And relationships here, once you see through Byzantine nihilism, are less like american marital business partnerships, and more like families.

    It’s a beautiful thing.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-23 02:19:00 UTC

  • JUST ROADSTERS – NO PRETENDERS Just because you have two seats and a convertible

    JUST ROADSTERS – NO PRETENDERS

    Just because you have two seats and a convertible top does not make you a roadster. A roadster is a four wheeled motorcycle. They are not overly powerful. They are not overly fast. They just FEEL fast and powerful because they’re small and light and you feel connected to both the car and the road. With the top down you are part of the great outdoors. And you FEEL it.

    The list of available roadsters is:

    ALFA ROMEO SPIDER

    BMW Z4/Z8

    FIAT BARCHETTA

    GTM SPYDER

    HONDA S2000

    MAZDA MIATA

    MG TF

    PANOZ ESPERANTE

    PORSCHE BOXSTER

    GM SKY/SOLSTICE

    TOYOTA MR2

    TVR TAMORA/TUSCAN

    WISEMANN RX

    The Panoz, TVR and Wisemann are all cars I’d love to own. Although you dont really own great sports cars. You get lucky enough to hold onto a bit of automotive history for a few years before passing it on to someone else. Sort of like a the Stanley Cup or something. 🙂

    CUTS:

    =============

    I cut the following because they may be sports cars, but they are not roadsters. You cannot take a coupe, give it a soft top, and call it a roadster. It’s a pretender.

    CONVERTIBLE SPORTS CARS

    AUDI TT

    NISSAN Z

    MERCEDES SL

    LEXUS LFA

    SPYKER SWB

    ASTON MARTIN VANTAGE

    CHEVROLET CORVETTE

    DODGE VIPER

    AUDI A8

    TRACK CARS

    SMART ROADSTER

    TESLA ROADSTER

    LOTUS ELISE

    VAUXHALL VX220

    YES! ROADSTERTRACK CARS

    SMART ROADSTER

    TESLA ROADSTER

    LOTUS ELISE

    VAUXHALL VX220

    YES! ROADSTER

    ANYTHING WITH EXTERIOR FRONT WHEELS.

    MORGAN

    CATERHAM

    ALLARD

    ATOM

    BROOKE

    WESTFIELD

    VARIOUS SUPERCARS (ALL)

    If you have a supercar it’s not a roadster. Its a sports car or an imitation race car. Although any number of ferraris I’m sure could make the cut.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-06 19:14:00 UTC