Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • We Need A Very Different Government

    While we use it as such, Government is not a synonym for a bureaucracy that wields law with which it coerces others by the threat of violence. It is not government itself that people disagree with. It is government whose actions they disagree with. And those actions are only possible because we believe government must consist of a bureaucracy. Everything we disdain about government is a criticism of bureaucracy, and the iron law of oligarchy that is the unavoidable consequence of bureaucracy. We don’t need a bureaucracy. We dont need majority rule. We need a government where groups and classes can exchange with one another. We need something entirely different from what we have.

  • We Need A Very Different Government

    While we use it as such, Government is not a synonym for a bureaucracy that wields law with which it coerces others by the threat of violence. It is not government itself that people disagree with. It is government whose actions they disagree with. And those actions are only possible because we believe government must consist of a bureaucracy. Everything we disdain about government is a criticism of bureaucracy, and the iron law of oligarchy that is the unavoidable consequence of bureaucracy. We don’t need a bureaucracy. We dont need majority rule. We need a government where groups and classes can exchange with one another. We need something entirely different from what we have.

  • Pew Research: Republicans are More Informed And Open Minded Than Democrats

    (From Pew Research.) If Republicans skew male, and Democrats skew female, and men accumulate more economic and political knowledge than women, and women have fewer and less diverse friends than men, then isn’t the fact that Republicans are better informed and more open minded than Democrats simply an artifact of the distribution of men and women between the parties? The classical liberal system was designed to create separate houses for different classes of males. It has not survived the addition of females to the electorate. We should not have eliminated the class division of houses, we should have added to it. Then we could compromise rather than conduct ideological warfare, class warfare, and gender warfare. And the results of these polls would be obvious.

  • THE VIRTUE OF SIMPLE RULES Simple rules compensate for the diversity of human in

    THE VIRTUE OF SIMPLE RULES

    Simple rules compensate for the diversity of human intellectual ability, and the variance in knowledge and experience between the ignorance of youth and the wisdom of old age.

    Do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

    Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (The golden rules two sides of a coin. They produce different results – you have to adhere to both of them.)

    Speak the truth even if it leads to harm.

    Keep your promises even if it causes you losses.

    Adhere to manners, ethics and morals even if they make no sense.

    Take no other person’s words personally – they are a self description of the speaker.

    Save one fifth of everything you make.

    Read at least one book every two weeks.

    Sample every bit of life that you can – we get only one chance at it.

    Master a craft, it is how you become valuable to others.

    Master an additional new craft every seven years.

    Become a skilled and patient lover.

    Keep a dog. It will teach you loyalty and love.

    If you choose to marry, choose well, and late in life. Marrying young, romantically and poorly is the most expensive error we all make.

    There is only one law, and that is property: a prohibition in the involuntary transfer of property by violence, fraud, theft of indirection.

    We are all different. Political equality is achieved not through majority violence, but through exchanges between groups facilitated by institutions. Institutions that compensate for the inter-temporal differences in our productivity, because the incorrectly named division of labor is instead, a division of knowledge and labor in time: we function on different time frames. The future is kaleidic. And we build that future as a division of knowledge and labor and time — not because we agree upon it. But because it is what is possible for us to achieve despite our inability to agree.

    Anything else is not high mindedness, but brutal theft under the mythology of communal government.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-23 10:54:00 UTC

  • Why Does The Left Alliance Of Economists Fail? (Krugman, DeLong, Yglasias, Thoma, Smith)

    Why does wall street resist QE for example? Wall Street staff are in the business of planning and policy interferes with their plans, both by uncertainty and by impact. Like any specialization with a defined methodology and therefore a limited scope of understanding, Wall Street’s opinion is irrelevant (as @Richard Williamson says above) as their opinions are too unsophisticated to have meaning. WS is a mob not a hierarchy. WS is only material in how they REACT to change. How they react to change in the short term will be negative — to anything that interferes with their existing plans. Where ‘plans’ in this case are vague heuristic assumptions. But because they have the highest liquidity and most flexible liquidity of any industry in the market, their cost for changing plans is lower than the cost of changing plans for anyone else in the market. So, the problem with advancing QE/Spending policy is not wall street. It is politics, of which WS is just one constituency. And the problem of politics is the failure of the four groups of ECONOMIC IDEOLOGISTS to compose an economic program that PREVENTS INVOLUNTARY TRANSFERS between groups and instead BORROWS FROM AND REWARDS GROUPS. Where groups profit from different temporal positions on the human production cycle, and where that production cycle manifests itself as time preference. Your assumption is instead, that it will ‘trickle through’ the economy, making you no different from any one of the OTHER groups of economic ideologists who want to rewards to ‘trickle up’ or ‘trickle down’ or ‘trickle out from the entrepreneurial middle’. ‘Trickling’ produces all sorts of involuntary transfers, of status, of risk, of opportunity, and of wealth. We are not children, we do not have to play one note. we can compose a chord of solutions. The fantasy of the egalitarian community of common interest, for some reason, blinds left-economists and moderates alike to the inequality of function and therefore inequality of methods and incentives that different functional groups have in the economy,and by consequence the incentives of the political groups that represent them. As Kahneman argues, people fight MUCH harder to prevent involuntary transfers than they do for their own reward. This behavior MANDATES that the four major schools, each of whom represent four groups, who represent four periodicities of human planning, conduct processes of voluntary exchange between the groups rather than attempt to support one ‘team’ winning. For this reason I find the left’s position somewhat humorously hypocritical: a pot calling a kettle black. The methodology and incentives of WS are narrow and self serving, and the methodology of Keyensians is narrow and self serving. I will be proven right in time — certainly more right than the Keynesians. I look at that group the way they look at wall street: myopic because of methodologically enforced ignorance, all of which is preceded by a cognitive bias, a cognitive bias which is the product of biology not wisdom. As is evidenced by their failure to grasp the principles of human cooperation that are common sense to conservatives. The conservatives are offering compromises, and have been doing so consistently (DOE and HUD). And you don’t want to pay those compromises, so they fit and fuss over creating a distraction to avoid the fact that they just want what they want regardless of the costs to others. DEAR PROGRESSIVE ECONOMISTS. THE PROBLEM IS YOU, NOT WALL STREET, BUT YOU. THE PROBLEM IS YOU. You’re supposed to be smart. Try to be. Otherwise, if possessed of this knowledge you are just another person seeking involuntary transfers from others under the pretense that outcomes are kaliedic. But they are only kaliedic because of your ignorance. Ignorance others do not possess. In that event, you are either just another fool or just another thief. The question is whether you want to refrain from being both, and become a statesman instead. We need some. Heck, one would do. Cheers

  • Mises On Determinism: An Agnostic.

    His argument is that the human mind must determine action or the human creature cannot survive as an acting animal, And the human mind therefore is incapable of seeing the universe as anything other than a sequence of causes. It is a criticism of the tendency of the human mind to err.

    Quote: “It is impossible, … for the human mind to think of any event as uncaused. The concepts of chance and contingency, if properly analyzed, do not refer ultimately to the course of events in the universe. They refer to human knowledge, prevision, and action. They have a praxeological, not an ontological connotation.”

    [callout]The universe cannot observe itself, predict it’s own movements, and construct a plan by which it may alter events. It consists of constant categories. The categories used by human beings are limited only by their desired actions, and their desired actions, in collective permutation, are less limited than those of the physical universe.[/callout]

    In other words, any notion of determinism is an artifact of the human mind. He goes on to give examples of how different fields err. He summarizes by saying we just don’t know whether it is or not, and that we may be prevented from understanding whether it is or not, simply because we cannot conceive of it otherwise. He’s agnostic. He’s not a determinist. He says we just don’t know, and in all the examples that we have tried so far, none of them survive critical analysis. He argues that the use of numerical aggregates and statistics only reinforce that issue. I can see how someone would not understand his argument if they didn’t read it carefully. But his first paragraph makes the entire argument:

    Quote “Whatever the true nature of the universe and of reality may be, man can learn about it only what the logical structure of his mind makes comprehensible to him. Reason, the sole instrument of human science and philosophy, does not convey absolute knowledge and final wisdom. It is vain to speculate about ultimate things. What appears to man’s inquiry as an ultimate given, defying further analysis and reduction to something more fundamental, may or may not appear such to a more perfect intellect. We do not know.”

    He’s an agnostic, not a determinist: “WE DO NOT KNOW.” And any illusion that we can know is a byproduct of the structure of the human mind. Therefore by occam’s razor, it’s more likely that we’re simply WRONG whenever we have deterministic ideas. So Mises was not a determinist. Since his time, we have learned enough, that it is possible to defeat the argument to physical determinism in human action, if not the physical world. What arguments to Determinism that remain, are artifacts of religious mysticism and the structure of our minds. 1) Causality Exists 2) Determinism doesn’t. (Unless there is a god who determines everything.)

    “RE: “Like “Existence”, “Causation” is, as Gian-Carlo Rota might have said, a folie. There is only direction of entropy as measured by gradients of correlation. It is one of those dirty secrets of philosophy of science.” – A Critic

    This view of causality is only true in the abstract, special case of relations in the physical universe which exist independently of human action. When instead, we consider that category of relations which are the result of human action, and where such action requires information necessary to plan, and where such information is of necessity a generalization of the complexity of the physical universe, and as such where a loss of information is necessitated by such acts of generalization, and where such a loss of information is necessary in order to compose an action which will alter the existing course of events using a process of heuristic calculation, where that calculation is made with fragmentary information, and where actions are limited to the possible scope of human actions. Then by necessity causation consists of a set of actions that are observable, and categorically definable both individually, and in the aggregate, by observation of those actions. Actions which produce patterns of outcome which are distinguishable from the entropic limitations of the physical universe. A physical universe to which calculation and aggregation are impossible concepts. The universe cannot observe itself, predict it’s own movements, and construct a plan by which it may alter events. It consists of constant categories. The categories used by human beings are limited only by their desired actions, and their desired actions, in collective permutation, are less limited than those of the physical universe. Anyway, I think I might understand the suggestion that mises was a causal determinist at this point as saying: a) State t1 is the product of prior states tn{..}. b) each state in tn{} is the product of human naming and identity. BUT c) this is not to say that tn{} is complete. d) this is not to say that tn+1 must occur, only that tn+1 can be described by tn+1{…} In this sense, human action is not deterministic, it is however causally determinable. If the question of determinism is metaphysical, then: a) Mises has made no statements to metaphysical determinism, only that humans think in deterministic terms and are incapable of doing otherwise. This is a statement about human beings, not the physical universe. b) If instead of a metaphysical question, it is a question of praxeological action, then all human actions have causes, moreover, all actions are rational (in the broader sense of the term). c) causality is separate from determinacy. That all events have enumerable causes is separate and distinct from the assertion that all causes produce fixed ends. In this sense, the term causal (praxeological) determinism can have meaning separate from Fatalism, Predeterminism, or Predictability, as well as causal (metaphysical) determinism. Mises may have ben a praxeological determinist but not a metaphysical determinist. Clear as mud I’m sure. 🙂

  • The Four Academic Political Parties Of The Economic Apocalypse

    The Four Academic Parties Of The Economic Apocalypse The 1) Keynesian Spenders, 2) Chicago Monetarists, 3) Classical Liberal Industrial Policy Advocates and 4) Austrian Human Capital Advocates, will not put aside ideological differences and work together to propose a suite of solutions that will both stimulate the economy, and provide each ‘economic political party’, and each ‘governmental political party’ and their respective constituencies, with compensation for the involuntary transfers that will occur, and the negative externalities that will be brought about, if we borrow and spend.Blame Krugman And The Left I blame this set off affairs on on Krugman in particular, but the entire mainstream movement in general, whose ‘party’ is currently in power. And who, like all parties in power, seek to push their agenda independently of compromise rather than the agenda of the collective through artful compromise. Unfortunately, the people in government do not have a sufficient grasp of the different schools to think of them as the adjuncts to political parties that they are. When Obama called a meeting of ‘top economists’, there oval office contained only left wing economists – none of them white or christian either. Thereby demonstrating his preference, and in doing so guaranteeing that a broad based solution was impossible. Exchanges Build Permission To Spend It would be entirely possible for the left to ’spend’ in exchange for wiping out the DOE, HUD and public education tenure. That would be a fair exchange. It would be entirely possible to ’spend’ in exchange for a new immigration policy. That would be a fair exchange. But all efforts at exchange have failed. Polarization continues. And you simply seek economic dictatorship, so that you can remove the means by which the population can rebel against the state. The Reincarnation Of The Devil Himself: The Cashless Economy I agree with the MMT crowd, and Yglasias, that the elimination of paper currency will allow forcible redistribution across the entire economy by way of monetary policy alone, which will allow the Left/Statist/Keynesian alliance to overwhelm the Monetarist, Industrial and Human Capital parties, and each of their supporters, in the domesticl economic legislature of intellectual opinion. The Resistance Movement The other Political/Economic party coalitions object to spending, because they object to further empowering the left/state/keynesian party. This is the opportunity that the moderate and right side coalitions are using to punish the state for over reaching. The conservative strategy is to starve the beast and bankrupt the state before it can bankrupt them, and entirely destroy their culture. (Albiet, it’s probably too late now.) It appears to most of us, who focus on productivity instead of consumption, that both increases in spending, and a cashless society, simply remove the constraints on destruction of productivity, and further encourages the creation of catastrophic bubbles that will not be able to be ‘fixed’ by market corrections, but instead, will be solved only by revolution, economic irrelevance and poverty, or military conquest. Yes People Prefer Depression To Revolution, Civil War, Economic Impoverishment, and Conquest. So yes, people clearly prefer this ‘state of affairs’ to those where the state is further empowered to expose them to risk. And in that sense, it is a rational choice, a fair trade, and it is currently being purchased at a discount. Economics is inseparable from politics. Because economics is a subset of politics. And politics prevail. Politics prevails because the material economy lives at the service of the status economy.  It always has and it always will.

  • The Four Academic Political Parties Of The Economic Apocalypse

    The Four Academic Parties Of The Economic Apocalypse The 1) Keynesian Spenders, 2) Chicago Monetarists, 3) Classical Liberal Industrial Policy Advocates and 4) Austrian Human Capital Advocates, will not put aside ideological differences and work together to propose a suite of solutions that will both stimulate the economy, and provide each ‘economic political party’, and each ‘governmental political party’ and their respective constituencies, with compensation for the involuntary transfers that will occur, and the negative externalities that will be brought about, if we borrow and spend.Blame Krugman And The Left I blame this set off affairs on on Krugman in particular, but the entire mainstream movement in general, whose ‘party’ is currently in power. And who, like all parties in power, seek to push their agenda independently of compromise rather than the agenda of the collective through artful compromise. Unfortunately, the people in government do not have a sufficient grasp of the different schools to think of them as the adjuncts to political parties that they are. When Obama called a meeting of ‘top economists’, there oval office contained only left wing economists – none of them white or christian either. Thereby demonstrating his preference, and in doing so guaranteeing that a broad based solution was impossible. Exchanges Build Permission To Spend It would be entirely possible for the left to ’spend’ in exchange for wiping out the DOE, HUD and public education tenure. That would be a fair exchange. It would be entirely possible to ’spend’ in exchange for a new immigration policy. That would be a fair exchange. But all efforts at exchange have failed. Polarization continues. And you simply seek economic dictatorship, so that you can remove the means by which the population can rebel against the state. The Reincarnation Of The Devil Himself: The Cashless Economy I agree with the MMT crowd, and Yglasias, that the elimination of paper currency will allow forcible redistribution across the entire economy by way of monetary policy alone, which will allow the Left/Statist/Keynesian alliance to overwhelm the Monetarist, Industrial and Human Capital parties, and each of their supporters, in the domesticl economic legislature of intellectual opinion. The Resistance Movement The other Political/Economic party coalitions object to spending, because they object to further empowering the left/state/keynesian party. This is the opportunity that the moderate and right side coalitions are using to punish the state for over reaching. The conservative strategy is to starve the beast and bankrupt the state before it can bankrupt them, and entirely destroy their culture. (Albiet, it’s probably too late now.) It appears to most of us, who focus on productivity instead of consumption, that both increases in spending, and a cashless society, simply remove the constraints on destruction of productivity, and further encourages the creation of catastrophic bubbles that will not be able to be ‘fixed’ by market corrections, but instead, will be solved only by revolution, economic irrelevance and poverty, or military conquest. Yes People Prefer Depression To Revolution, Civil War, Economic Impoverishment, and Conquest. So yes, people clearly prefer this ‘state of affairs’ to those where the state is further empowered to expose them to risk. And in that sense, it is a rational choice, a fair trade, and it is currently being purchased at a discount. Economics is inseparable from politics. Because economics is a subset of politics. And politics prevail. Politics prevails because the material economy lives at the service of the status economy.  It always has and it always will.

  • Four Levers Of Policy Create An Opportunity For Exchange

    http://modeledbehavior.com/2012/04/17/phelps-on-keynesianism

    It is clear why you could not get economic growth without innovation but the vast majority of business activity over the course of human history have been in economies that were not growing. Indeed, the vast majority of business activity that occurs from now until the end time will almost certainly be in economies that are not growing. Sustained per capita growth is an odd thing that just started recently and will likely end in fairly short span of time.

    That’s false. It’s not ‘clear’ at all. The argument is not settled. We INTUIT that spending may in some ways create innovation. But we can’t prove it. There isn’t much evidence of it. And there is so much noise created by the boom bust cycle that it’s pretty hard to make out anything at all. We know that spending and loose money creates demand, decreases employment AND misallocates capital. Capital follows the easiest opportunity. It exacerbates booms and busts. You just choose to write off the damage done whenever you’re questioned about it. I don’t think you understand the tragedy of the commons behavior this process creates — exploit what you can before it falls apart. It’s not like this nonsense takes place entirely in the market. It moves from the market into politics, and further polarizes the entire process. We SUSPECT that periods of ‘contraction’ do the opposite, which is to expand innovation of all types, everywhere. It certainly looks to be the case. It makes logical sense that opportunity constraint makes people seek opportunity in ‘harder’ places. But the jury is out. The argument is not settled. Other than perhaps the confirmation provided by the Germans, who pursue this strategy on cultural and moral grounds rather than rational grounds, and they have less coalition building to do in their party system, so it’s not necessary to express the problem in rational terms. We can’t achieve the same thing here in the states because of ideological factions, most of which are antagonized by your hero. You “SPENDERS” don’t look at all four policy levers as a set that must be moved IN CONCERT so that misallocation of capital does not occur. The side-effect of moving all four levers in concert is that everyone across the political spectrum also buys into the solution: a) spending (liberals and progressives) b) credit (moderates) c) industrial policy (classical liberals and conservatives) d) human capital (austrians and conservatives) Why do they ‘buy in’? Because a four-lever ‘transaction’ is an inter-temporal exchange from which everyone in every class benefits, not an inter-temporal redistribution which benefits some at the cost of others. Even if none of the participants can articulate their idea in such clear language. This is why the progressive alliance fails. It fails because it seeks redistribution rather than exchange. This is why you and Krugman are frustrated. You because you beliefe “Sh__t happens”. Krugman because he’s a racist and an ideologue. He’s well aware of what he’s doing. He’s just the Limbaugh of the Left. Limbaugh works with the economy of norms, Krugman with the monetary economy. But they’re identical in practice. You on the other hand simply err: “Sh__” doesn’t “happen”. It’s caused. It’s caused by distortion of the inter-temporal information system that allows us to coordinate our activities in such a way that we ensure we are following productive ends. Politics is either voluntary exchange or involuntary theft. Exchanges are self-justifying. Thefts are unjustifiable. Period. Politics is coalition forming, or it’s just dictatorship. And however you choose to justify your preference for dictatorship, it’s dictatorship and nothing more. And the moment you justify your preference with dictatorship, you put back on the table the opposition’s right to press for dictatorship. And in this case, the other side is more capable of putting it into place and maintaining it. They have a more accurate view of human nature. They’re just less willing and interested in doing so. So let’s all stay with seeking exchanges, OK? There are at least four specialties in political economy if we don’t count the MMT group. Together those four groups force an inter-temporal exchange that limites the distortionary effects of credit and spending by matching them with future increases in production. Statesmen lead their states. Ideologues lead their ideology. Hacks are just hacks.

  • Why Do Ordinary People Vote Conservative?

    THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE – SORT OF.
    We have plenty of data on why people vote. In very, very, general terms:
    1 – They agree with the conservative economic program.
    2 – They agree with the conservative military program.
    3 – They agree with the liberals sympathy to the plight of minorities and the vulnerable, but not to the point of creating a welfare state.
    4 – They see the (urban) liberal assault on traditional culture as ‘haughty’ and insulting.

    So, when they add all this up, they end up on the side of the conservatives.

    Liberals are more subject to the false consensus bias than are conservatives, and tend to think everyone agrees with them.  Conservatives are more subject to threats that will destabilize society than liberals, and have a more pessimistic view of human nature.  The public agrees with that perception of human nature. Especially on crime, the economy, welfare and the military. So that’s where the ‘average’ conservative comes from if there is one.

    COMPOSITION OF THE ELECTORATE
    The majority (for now) of the country remains ‘leaning conservative’ by a large margin.  (Liberals are less that 20% of the electorate).  The USA is a very conservative country by international standards. It maintains it’s germanic protestant roots.  Religious belief is higher.  We have more violent crime -albiet it is largely race related — but less petty crime that other countries.

    PARTIES SERVE COALITIONS NOT ‘AVERAGES’
    Both parties are built out of coalitions. Sort of like hands of playing cards. And parties use them like playing cards.  Thats how they stay in power. To understand your question, requires really looking at that set of coalitions.  There are really no ‘average’ people in the sense that you mean it.  The level of scientific understanding that political marketers have of how people behave is disconcerting in its accuracy.

    THE EXTREME ENDS AND THE IMPORTANT MIDDLE
    Political speech is very extreme. The media represents extremes.  Each side of the spectrum is fully committed to their party.  There is a small group in the middle that is highly pragmatic, that is not committed either way, and who make up their minds who to vote for at the last minute.  That group determines everything in every election.  So, practically speaking, all the ‘talk’ we hear is really for the purpose of getting people’s attention so that the media can profit from advertising, and so that the ‘base’ of each party will provide monetary contributions to the candidates. 

    ADVERTISING BUYS THE ILLUSION OF CONSENSUS
    The middle tends to make its decision on popular consensus as they understand it. that consensus is produced very often by advertising and media. So the heated conversations exist largely to provide enough money so that the media can be saturated sufficiently to create the impression that there is a consensus, so that the middle will go with the consensus.

    ONCE IN POWER THE POLITICIANS FIND OUT HOW LITTLE POWER THEY HAVE.
    The bureaucracy, the practical demands of being the worlds’ policemen, and the problem of so many different coalitions, the influence of lobbyists, as well as the need to obtain reelection money, render much of government a system of entertainment more than anything else.

    I know it probably sounds absurd. But while oversimplified, that is a pretty accurate representation of what’s going on.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-ordinary-people-vote-conservative