Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Philosophy Needs More Than Rebranding — It Needs A Reformation. (NYT Followup)

    (POSTED ON THE NYT)

    I suggested in my earlier essay that philosophy so conceived is best classified as a science, because of its rigor, technicality, universality, falsifiability, connection with other sciences, and concern with the nature of objective being (among other reasons). I did not claim, however, that it is an empirical science, like physics and chemistry; rather, it is an a priori science, like the “formal science” of mathematics.

    As I understand it (and I am a practitioner, albiet a pragmatist, and I operate within the narrow field of political economy): 1) Philosophy is the process of creating, organizing, disassembling, and reorganizing categories according to their properties in order to expose causal relations which may be used by human beings for the purpose of improving their actions in the physical world — a world in which they possess fragmentary knowledge, experience pervasive material scarcity, limited time, are challenged by instincts and abilities unsuited to a complex society in an ever changing division of knowledge and labor, where those instincts must be sated and intentionally retrained by new ideas on a periodic basis in response to unanticipated change. 2) Philosophy as such is the study of norms: a) existing norms and theories of alternative norms (ethics) b) improvement of our process of reasoning itself by testing against the real world evidence of our norms (which must exist as a norm to function), c) improvement in public rhetoric, so that we may cooperate in large numbers toward shared ends whether by direct political or indirect market action. (which again must exist as an norm). So philosophy is the study of adapting and perpetuating norms, and the tools of constructing and deconstructing norms. Where norms are a tool of human cooperation. 3) Philosophy suffers from association with, and embracement of, mysticism, platonism and religion — in no small part because these allegorical systems are a means of establishing norms.. It suffers from a failure to incorporate empirical data as a means of testing expressions. It suffers from its distraction by the metaphysical program as practitioners attempted to legitimize their discipline as a hard science. It suffers from the desperate attempt of the entrenched institutional careerism by academics who are invested in these irrelevancies. And because of that, philosophy has lost its respect in society — a society that is suffering from the loss of its means of judging and propagating norms. A society that is suffering because of the failure of philosophy to fulfill its role at developing and justifying norms — in a vain attempt at becoming a science. A science is a process of discovery. Philosophy, as a vehicle for norms, is the process of invention. In effect, philosophy has sought to become a science by the process of introspection – which must naturally become recursive and meaningless — rather than the process of experimentation and analysis of the real world and our actions in it. 4) As a study of norms, economics is the means by which we can measure norms. (Albiet limited by our paucity of information collection, but evolving in response to our skill at information collection). Therefore philosophical concepts can be empirically tested. Behavioral psychology is the study of the human instinct and propensity for error. Politics is the means by which we define institutional mechanisms of cooperation. 5) Philosophers work too hard at either justifying existing norms, trying to find utopian norms, or trying to justify existing human instinctual preferences. Political scientists, Economists and behavioral psychologists, are in the process of replacing philosophy as a discipline. if they were to do nothing other than adopt the clarity of analytical philosophy’s language, or if philosophy would do nothing but export this skill to these disciplines, then they would succeed. 6) Philosophy has only one future, and that is to return itself to the study of norms, and a necessary feature of political action and to repudiate the metaphysical program as a series of catastrophic errors born out of the envy of the physical sciences, and the need of careerists and devotees to find relevance. Branding is not the problem. Content is. And any decent marketer will tell you that the best brand is quality that is self evident to the observer. The discipline of philosophy is anything but materially relevant today. It is a profession lost. Gilding a lilly is unnecessary and gilding a dustbin doesn’t help.

  • Philosophy Needs More Than Rebranding — It Needs A Reformation. (NYT Followup)

    (POSTED ON THE NYT)

    I suggested in my earlier essay that philosophy so conceived is best classified as a science, because of its rigor, technicality, universality, falsifiability, connection with other sciences, and concern with the nature of objective being (among other reasons). I did not claim, however, that it is an empirical science, like physics and chemistry; rather, it is an a priori science, like the “formal science” of mathematics.

    As I understand it (and I am a practitioner, albiet a pragmatist, and I operate within the narrow field of political economy): 1) Philosophy is the process of creating, organizing, disassembling, and reorganizing categories according to their properties in order to expose causal relations which may be used by human beings for the purpose of improving their actions in the physical world — a world in which they possess fragmentary knowledge, experience pervasive material scarcity, limited time, are challenged by instincts and abilities unsuited to a complex society in an ever changing division of knowledge and labor, where those instincts must be sated and intentionally retrained by new ideas on a periodic basis in response to unanticipated change. 2) Philosophy as such is the study of norms: a) existing norms and theories of alternative norms (ethics) b) improvement of our process of reasoning itself by testing against the real world evidence of our norms (which must exist as a norm to function), c) improvement in public rhetoric, so that we may cooperate in large numbers toward shared ends whether by direct political or indirect market action. (which again must exist as an norm). So philosophy is the study of adapting and perpetuating norms, and the tools of constructing and deconstructing norms. Where norms are a tool of human cooperation. 3) Philosophy suffers from association with, and embracement of, mysticism, platonism and religion — in no small part because these allegorical systems are a means of establishing norms.. It suffers from a failure to incorporate empirical data as a means of testing expressions. It suffers from its distraction by the metaphysical program as practitioners attempted to legitimize their discipline as a hard science. It suffers from the desperate attempt of the entrenched institutional careerism by academics who are invested in these irrelevancies. And because of that, philosophy has lost its respect in society — a society that is suffering from the loss of its means of judging and propagating norms. A society that is suffering because of the failure of philosophy to fulfill its role at developing and justifying norms — in a vain attempt at becoming a science. A science is a process of discovery. Philosophy, as a vehicle for norms, is the process of invention. In effect, philosophy has sought to become a science by the process of introspection – which must naturally become recursive and meaningless — rather than the process of experimentation and analysis of the real world and our actions in it. 4) As a study of norms, economics is the means by which we can measure norms. (Albiet limited by our paucity of information collection, but evolving in response to our skill at information collection). Therefore philosophical concepts can be empirically tested. Behavioral psychology is the study of the human instinct and propensity for error. Politics is the means by which we define institutional mechanisms of cooperation. 5) Philosophers work too hard at either justifying existing norms, trying to find utopian norms, or trying to justify existing human instinctual preferences. Political scientists, Economists and behavioral psychologists, are in the process of replacing philosophy as a discipline. if they were to do nothing other than adopt the clarity of analytical philosophy’s language, or if philosophy would do nothing but export this skill to these disciplines, then they would succeed. 6) Philosophy has only one future, and that is to return itself to the study of norms, and a necessary feature of political action and to repudiate the metaphysical program as a series of catastrophic errors born out of the envy of the physical sciences, and the need of careerists and devotees to find relevance. Branding is not the problem. Content is. And any decent marketer will tell you that the best brand is quality that is self evident to the observer. The discipline of philosophy is anything but materially relevant today. It is a profession lost. Gilding a lilly is unnecessary and gilding a dustbin doesn’t help.

  • Why Doesn’t Philosophy Get Respect?

    Science consists of a network of externally testable hypotheses.Scientific statements are testable because the physical universe is internally consistent, and because of that consistency, subject to fixed categories that are reducible to numbers which can be manipulated by the process of ratios we call mathematics.

    As such, the physical universe is extremely simple compared to the conceptual universe. In the conceptual universe, the entire purpose of philosophy is to construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct plastic categories for the purpose of determining actions, so that we may establish cooperative norms, for human beings existing within that material universe consisting of pervasive but reducible material scarcity caused by the permanent scarcity of time. The purpose of thought its action, and the purpose of action is to outwit and therefore alter, the current course of events so that we may consume the difference within the time frames necessary to perpetuate our survival.

    Philosophy consists of a series of traditions which attempt to solve the conflict of our desire for perpetuating our norms — no matter how ludicrous they may be — while allowing us to adapt to changes in our material world. It took until Aristototle to develop reason as we understand it. We were infected by Persian and Abrahamic Mysticism, and only began to crawl out of it during the reformation and enlightenment. Philosophy undermined theology as the middle class undermined the landed aristocracy. Darwin cut both the magian tradition as well as the rules that our norms were based upon. Most philosophy is not testable. Much of it is terribly bad. Too much of it ignores the data from the physical sciences. Most remains introspective as a means of avoiding the data from the physical sciences. Although, the analytic program has in some reductio way, attempted to solve the problem of making testable statements, and incorporating data from the physical sciences, the discipilne was infected by pervasive religious derivatives and attempted to solve the metaphyisical problem as a way of regaining its prestige lost to the hard sciences. Philosophy struggled to remain relevant. The post analytics finally abandoned mysticism altogether. Some post analytical philosophers call their discipline “Post Philosophy” to openly and finally fully abandon philosophy’s magian ancestry. Meanwhile the sociologists and the economists tried to solve most of the problems of the social sciences through positivism but failed. And both the philosophers and the mystics have continued to fail — because we still hold our desperately to our agrarian norms and categories.

    Philosophy today is a form of fitness that allows one to not fall prey to the limited methodology of another technical discipline. As a discipline itself it has failed to solve the material problems of creating an internally consistent set of categories and relations that will assist us in the development of new norms without at the same time perishing because of our hubris. One cannot study economics, history, sociology, politics and philosophy as an integrated program. One must either choose an empirical course of study, or choose a narrative course of study. Until philosophy unites these fields, it will remain irrelevant. And synthesis is what we need of it.

    There is still room for philosophy precisely because all the disciplines have failed to produce a conceptual framework for adapting to modernity. But philosophy is as much a prisoner of its traditions as it benefits from them. And academic philosophy, mired in the error of the analytic program’s pursuit of the metaphysical problem has been, and simply perpetuates an error that renders the discipline ineffective and deprives society of answers to pressing problems of anonymity and insensitivity created by a division of knowledge and labor that yields an inverse relationship between material comforts and psychological comforts.

    Mankind suffers for their folly.

  • Why Doesn’t Philosophy Get Respect?

    Science consists of a network of externally testable hypotheses.Scientific statements are testable because the physical universe is internally consistent, and because of that consistency, subject to fixed categories that are reducible to numbers which can be manipulated by the process of ratios we call mathematics.

    As such, the physical universe is extremely simple compared to the conceptual universe. In the conceptual universe, the entire purpose of philosophy is to construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct plastic categories for the purpose of determining actions, so that we may establish cooperative norms, for human beings existing within that material universe consisting of pervasive but reducible material scarcity caused by the permanent scarcity of time. The purpose of thought its action, and the purpose of action is to outwit and therefore alter, the current course of events so that we may consume the difference within the time frames necessary to perpetuate our survival.

    Philosophy consists of a series of traditions which attempt to solve the conflict of our desire for perpetuating our norms — no matter how ludicrous they may be — while allowing us to adapt to changes in our material world. It took until Aristototle to develop reason as we understand it. We were infected by Persian and Abrahamic Mysticism, and only began to crawl out of it during the reformation and enlightenment. Philosophy undermined theology as the middle class undermined the landed aristocracy. Darwin cut both the magian tradition as well as the rules that our norms were based upon. Most philosophy is not testable. Much of it is terribly bad. Too much of it ignores the data from the physical sciences. Most remains introspective as a means of avoiding the data from the physical sciences. Although, the analytic program has in some reductio way, attempted to solve the problem of making testable statements, and incorporating data from the physical sciences, the discipilne was infected by pervasive religious derivatives and attempted to solve the metaphyisical problem as a way of regaining its prestige lost to the hard sciences. Philosophy struggled to remain relevant. The post analytics finally abandoned mysticism altogether. Some post analytical philosophers call their discipline “Post Philosophy” to openly and finally fully abandon philosophy’s magian ancestry. Meanwhile the sociologists and the economists tried to solve most of the problems of the social sciences through positivism but failed. And both the philosophers and the mystics have continued to fail — because we still hold our desperately to our agrarian norms and categories.

    Philosophy today is a form of fitness that allows one to not fall prey to the limited methodology of another technical discipline. As a discipline itself it has failed to solve the material problems of creating an internally consistent set of categories and relations that will assist us in the development of new norms without at the same time perishing because of our hubris. One cannot study economics, history, sociology, politics and philosophy as an integrated program. One must either choose an empirical course of study, or choose a narrative course of study. Until philosophy unites these fields, it will remain irrelevant. And synthesis is what we need of it.

    There is still room for philosophy precisely because all the disciplines have failed to produce a conceptual framework for adapting to modernity. But philosophy is as much a prisoner of its traditions as it benefits from them. And academic philosophy, mired in the error of the analytic program’s pursuit of the metaphysical problem has been, and simply perpetuates an error that renders the discipline ineffective and deprives society of answers to pressing problems of anonymity and insensitivity created by a division of knowledge and labor that yields an inverse relationship between material comforts and psychological comforts.

    Mankind suffers for their folly.

  • A Little Appreciation For Paul Gottfried

    Paul Gottfried

    via Paul Gottfried – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I’ve met Paul a handful of times, and while he probably doesn’t remember, been to lunch with him once to discuss his work. Paul’s been a troubling figure for me for two reasons. First, as a sensitive person, he’s personalized the attacks on him rather than simply kept on with the drudgery that is expected of all of us. It makes him petulant. Personally I think it’s because he can’t find anyone worthy enough to debate him on his terms. But the solution to that problem is to change your terms. And second, I’m troubled because he attacks WASPS broadly rather than christian women in particular. Institutionally, I just don’t think wasps are open to that much criticism. In fact, I think we’re only beginning to understand the value of the manorial system. But Paul’s a German nationalist. And a bit of Continental. Meaning he retains the continental obsession with emotions in his work when emotions are nothing more than a reaction to changes in state, and changes in state are only a reaction to norms. It’s our norms and institutions that are open to criticism and analysis. Our emotions are only so much distracting chaff. As a post-analytic philosopher myself I have very hard time translating most continental philosophy for this reason: we always have to map these emotions backward into a normative expression then evaluate the norm and it’s tedious. Like Paul, I happen to be one of the small number of people on the planet who thinks the Germans were in the right, and the English in the wrong. As time passes, and emotions wane, I expect that our opinion will become that of the academic majority. I’m also one of the small number of people that has suggested that the German social model (and its Asian parallel the Japanese) is the best social model for advanced societies. I think time has proven that assertion true. Although the political model of inter-temporal redistribution is probably in the process of failing, I see that as a separate question from the metaphysical assumptions in any social portfolio of norms. And in that portfolio, the Germans have clearly emerged as the best. So in those matters I agree with Paul. What I don’t agree with is the notion that the American WASP is as much to blame as the incorporation of women into the political process. We would not have had Hitler, nor FDR nor Kennedy nor any other left leaning American president without women voting. We established a constitution for property owning males. We protected against the known crimes of men. We did not protect against the unknown fantasies of women. And I think that’s the correct problem to address. The Germanic manorial system worked north of the Hanjal line. It worked in no small part by suppressing the birth rates of the underclasses and concentrating capital in the productive classes. That the English encountered the problem of over-extension and the need to develop the norms of an empire is true. That the Manorial system as a means of suppressing the locust like behavior of the underclasses is something else entirely. And to that end, the blame goes to women. All this said, I’ve spent some time on Paul’s writing, and it’s intelligent, and well argued and I’m going to have to go through all of it now to see if it can be restated in propertarian terms: absent the continental baggage. Because if I can re-frame his arguments as propertarian statements rather than emotional statemts about norms, I suspect that his work will defend my premise.

  • A Little Appreciation For Paul Gottfried

    Paul Gottfried

    via Paul Gottfried – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I’ve met Paul a handful of times, and while he probably doesn’t remember, been to lunch with him once to discuss his work. Paul’s been a troubling figure for me for two reasons. First, as a sensitive person, he’s personalized the attacks on him rather than simply kept on with the drudgery that is expected of all of us. It makes him petulant. Personally I think it’s because he can’t find anyone worthy enough to debate him on his terms. But the solution to that problem is to change your terms. And second, I’m troubled because he attacks WASPS broadly rather than christian women in particular. Institutionally, I just don’t think wasps are open to that much criticism. In fact, I think we’re only beginning to understand the value of the manorial system. But Paul’s a German nationalist. And a bit of Continental. Meaning he retains the continental obsession with emotions in his work when emotions are nothing more than a reaction to changes in state, and changes in state are only a reaction to norms. It’s our norms and institutions that are open to criticism and analysis. Our emotions are only so much distracting chaff. As a post-analytic philosopher myself I have very hard time translating most continental philosophy for this reason: we always have to map these emotions backward into a normative expression then evaluate the norm and it’s tedious. Like Paul, I happen to be one of the small number of people on the planet who thinks the Germans were in the right, and the English in the wrong. As time passes, and emotions wane, I expect that our opinion will become that of the academic majority. I’m also one of the small number of people that has suggested that the German social model (and its Asian parallel the Japanese) is the best social model for advanced societies. I think time has proven that assertion true. Although the political model of inter-temporal redistribution is probably in the process of failing, I see that as a separate question from the metaphysical assumptions in any social portfolio of norms. And in that portfolio, the Germans have clearly emerged as the best. So in those matters I agree with Paul. What I don’t agree with is the notion that the American WASP is as much to blame as the incorporation of women into the political process. We would not have had Hitler, nor FDR nor Kennedy nor any other left leaning American president without women voting. We established a constitution for property owning males. We protected against the known crimes of men. We did not protect against the unknown fantasies of women. And I think that’s the correct problem to address. The Germanic manorial system worked north of the Hanjal line. It worked in no small part by suppressing the birth rates of the underclasses and concentrating capital in the productive classes. That the English encountered the problem of over-extension and the need to develop the norms of an empire is true. That the Manorial system as a means of suppressing the locust like behavior of the underclasses is something else entirely. And to that end, the blame goes to women. All this said, I’ve spent some time on Paul’s writing, and it’s intelligent, and well argued and I’m going to have to go through all of it now to see if it can be restated in propertarian terms: absent the continental baggage. Because if I can re-frame his arguments as propertarian statements rather than emotional statemts about norms, I suspect that his work will defend my premise.

  • Paul Krugman Watch: Framing The Divide As Foolishness Rather Than Strategy Serves No One

    Paul Krugman writes that the right wing strategy is based on false principles. But he misses the point:

    There were some technical problems with my earlier post on GOP deficit phoniness, although not in any way that changes the message. So, here’s an update. I use the intermediate-cost estimate from CRFB (pdf) for the four Republican plans, and for consistency, I use CRFB’s own estimate (pdf) for Obama. … So it remains true that all of the proposals, except maybe Ron Paul’s (which contains huge and probably impossible spending cuts) would lead to higher deficits than Obama, based on a common assessment. … So let me rephrase my question: what conceivable evidence would convince people that supply-side magic doesn’t work?

    Paul, 1) The conservative strategy is to starve the beast as the only hope of preserving their freedom and their culture. In that context, their approach is entirely rational for Schumpeterian reasons: in the battle between the public intellectual who would undermine their culture, and the entrepreneur who would preserve it, they are funding the entrepreneur. Again, this is an entirely rational strategy. It is absolutely straightforward. Just as it is rationally Schumpeterian that the public intellectuals like yourself seek to fund the state. 2) There is no community of common interest in the country any longer. The combination of immigration, relocation, the dissolution of the family, and the consequential abandonment of traditional values by the lower classes, when combined with the evolution of technology that rewards those who can process and use abstract rules and principles has guaranteed a permanent and irreversible conflict of values. This is a religious conflict. This era is a battle of the communal religion of the secular state, and the aristocratic religion of the traditional classical liberals. The left’s strategy is to enable the lower classes to have a beneficent lifestyle. The right’s strategy is to constrain the reproductive ability of the lower classes and concentrate investment in the middle classes. Even if they must suffer hardship to obtain their political ends. There is nothing new about this conflict of visions. Its the female sentiment and male sentiment writ large. Progressive economists are terrible historians and worse political philosophers. You cannot have consensus on policy in a divided electorate. Arguing over technicalities is simply a self congratulatory distraction. I cannot tell whether you are intellectually honest. You are framing the debate under a false assumption that is contrary to the data. Since you’re doing that, it’s either an accident or an intentional misrepresentation. I don’t know which. But by falsely framing the discourse, you do a disservice as a public intellectual, and hinder the resolution of the underlying conflict. Demographically, your side will win within thirty years assuming there is no unforeseen change. But it will not because you convince anyone.

  • Paul Krugman Watch: Framing The Divide As Foolishness Rather Than Strategy Serves No One

    Paul Krugman writes that the right wing strategy is based on false principles. But he misses the point:

    There were some technical problems with my earlier post on GOP deficit phoniness, although not in any way that changes the message. So, here’s an update. I use the intermediate-cost estimate from CRFB (pdf) for the four Republican plans, and for consistency, I use CRFB’s own estimate (pdf) for Obama. … So it remains true that all of the proposals, except maybe Ron Paul’s (which contains huge and probably impossible spending cuts) would lead to higher deficits than Obama, based on a common assessment. … So let me rephrase my question: what conceivable evidence would convince people that supply-side magic doesn’t work?

    Paul, 1) The conservative strategy is to starve the beast as the only hope of preserving their freedom and their culture. In that context, their approach is entirely rational for Schumpeterian reasons: in the battle between the public intellectual who would undermine their culture, and the entrepreneur who would preserve it, they are funding the entrepreneur. Again, this is an entirely rational strategy. It is absolutely straightforward. Just as it is rationally Schumpeterian that the public intellectuals like yourself seek to fund the state. 2) There is no community of common interest in the country any longer. The combination of immigration, relocation, the dissolution of the family, and the consequential abandonment of traditional values by the lower classes, when combined with the evolution of technology that rewards those who can process and use abstract rules and principles has guaranteed a permanent and irreversible conflict of values. This is a religious conflict. This era is a battle of the communal religion of the secular state, and the aristocratic religion of the traditional classical liberals. The left’s strategy is to enable the lower classes to have a beneficent lifestyle. The right’s strategy is to constrain the reproductive ability of the lower classes and concentrate investment in the middle classes. Even if they must suffer hardship to obtain their political ends. There is nothing new about this conflict of visions. Its the female sentiment and male sentiment writ large. Progressive economists are terrible historians and worse political philosophers. You cannot have consensus on policy in a divided electorate. Arguing over technicalities is simply a self congratulatory distraction. I cannot tell whether you are intellectually honest. You are framing the debate under a false assumption that is contrary to the data. Since you’re doing that, it’s either an accident or an intentional misrepresentation. I don’t know which. But by falsely framing the discourse, you do a disservice as a public intellectual, and hinder the resolution of the underlying conflict. Demographically, your side will win within thirty years assuming there is no unforeseen change. But it will not because you convince anyone.

  • PROSECUTING IDEAS Intellectual honesty involves coming up with an idea, refining

    PROSECUTING IDEAS

    Intellectual honesty involves coming up with an idea, refining it, then refuting it. If it survives refutation, then it’s something to work with.

    As a CEO, I had an interesting time with board members. It took, in some cases, years before some board members would understand that I used the board as a vehicle for refuting my ideas. I would bring an idea to the board. Usually somewhat early in the process, and advocate for it. I advocated it to see if they could shoot holes in it. It’s a very rational process. If I cannot defeat their arguments, or find a way to solve them, then the idea isn’t viable.

    In the past, I feel pretty strongly that if your board consists of owners, and your owners are involved, then they should support an idea. They cannot usually anticipate the future well enough to support valuable ideas that are counter to trend. So involving them in the decision and getting them to adopt them makes them better independent actors despite their lack of visibility. I did succeed in that objective. I’ve succeeded every time.

    But I’ve also set the stage for making the organization fragile – vulnerable to a board who feels more confident and empowered than it should be: when you must act and act quickly to sieze opportunities, or avoid threats, your board is now trained to argue with you, and feels entitled to do so — even obligated to do so.

    Today I would do things differently. I would test my ideas with a management team, then use the board entirely as a financial counsel. And never the two shall meet.

    This is another example of where academic personalities and business personalities serve different purposes.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-02-27 15:24:00 UTC

  • It’s Not That I Value Free Markets In The Abstract.

    Last night, a wonderfully intelligent Canadian I’ve recently met referred to me as a ‘free marketer’. Which in Canadian lingo is a synonym for Libertarian. (We clearly need a Mises chapter up here in eastern Canada.) And, I’m fussing with writing a page the separates Propertarians from Anarcho Capitalists. If it was possible to regulate trade intelligently, I don’t have a problem with it per se. I have a problem with market regulation because its not possible to regulate it without causing harm. I don’t see regulation as an abstract ethical question, because I see markets as intentional not natural constructs. (Which I’ve addressed elsewhere.) I see it as a time-knowledge problem. That’s a long way of stating that it’s kind of interesting to be referred to by a property of one’s classification, where the property is tangental to the classification. 🙂 I’d prefer to be called a conservative or libertarian. I want freedom on principle. The economy is just a tool. Propertarian reasoning says that we cannot do certain things. It explains why we must do certain things. It allows us to do stupid things if we want to. It allows us to do beneficial things if we want to. We pay or gain the consequences either way. Just like any other corporation.