Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Some human social mechanisms are black boxes filled with chaotic nonsense gears,

    Some human social mechanisms are black boxes filled with chaotic nonsense gears, which even under analysis are absurd. In fact, they work, in part, because they are absurd, chaotic, nonsensical black boxes impervious to rational scrutiny.

    Rationalism is overrated. You cannot teach a child to be fully rational in real time. You cannot teach all human beings to be fully rational – because the grasp of some of the greater abstractions upon which our complex world is based is simply beyond all but perhaps ten percent of the population. (Nothing is so irrational as the idiocy of smart people.) You can however, teach parables, myths, and legends: narratives and history, and from that teach children how to use the black box.

    Protestant christianity is a mashup of the objective and technical nature of germanic language, ancient germanic social sentiments and legal customs, pagan river and forest mythology, the demands of being a poor minority on the world stage, an attempt to keep the ‘decadent’ east at bay, the christian ethic restated in germanic terms, a history under the church and a rebellion against it in favor of germanic customs, and a rapid assimilation and embracing of classical aristotelian ideas.

    No sane person would devise such a mechanism. It is a personal philosophy with political ends, and enormously beneficial economic consequences. (And plenty of other religions achieve just the opposite ends – perpetual ignorance and poverty.)

    It works. That’s the problem. Christianity produces ‘goods’. Even in the developing world, the market and political reforms are driven by christians.

    That’s why I support it. Not because it’s rational. But because supporting it is rational.

    I don’t care that it’s nuts. I care that it’s a goose that lays golden eggs.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-10-05 09:24:00 UTC

  • Numbers in financial statements are a record of your decisions, not a predictor

    Numbers in financial statements are a record of your decisions, not a predictor of the future. They don’t predict your business. They predict your behavior. They are predictive to the extent that the quality of your decisions tends to decline if your business changes, tends to remain constant if your business remains constant, and tends to improve if your decisions improve. And the only way to demonstrate that your decision have improved is if your goods and services remain competitive in the market, and profit results from their sale. So, the numbers are a record of decisions. Look to your decisions for insight, not the numbers.

    Why it is that numbers are so addictive to so many people that they inverse the causal relations, and seek insight in the numbers rather than the market is beyond me. I suspect it’s because it’s easier to rely on the false promise of certainty in those numbers, for some, and for others, that their reliance on those numbers allows us to evade the political confrontation that comes from the conflict between the battle for ideas and the organization necessary to execute them, and the constraint on collective resources where everyone in the organization seeks to use them for their own ambitions or fulfillment.

    This is why organizations decline over time: In the organizational battle, the number-certainty-addicts, and rent-seekers win over the customer and market reflectors because of the difference in effort and risk between the two factions.

    The CEO’s problem is to choose whether he will be part of the false-number coalition – a rent-seeker, part of the customer and market coalition – an innovator, or an arbiter between the two – an administrator. And from that decision all other decisions follow.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-10-05 09:02:00 UTC

  • (Someone asked me over fb chat to address this issue due to high activity. Here

    (Someone asked me over fb chat to address this issue due to high activity. Here it is.)

    RE: Separation of Church And State.

    1) It Is a rare in history – and very questionable. Why? Because religions propagate the norms. Norms are ‘costs’ you and I pay by forgoing opportunities to do something we would do if there were not such norms. Norms form dependent networks. These norms are economic principles. Competing norms are effectively theft from one group to another. In effect religions and norms create competing sets of ‘laws’ and competing ‘economies’. Christianity is very ‘special’. The west is ‘special’. it is special because it’s early battle tactics required warriors to provide their own equipment and retinues, and to follow cooperative and individualist battle tactics. As populations grew, they needed to increase the number of soldiers – enfranchisement of more and more people. In trying to keep the ‘east at bay’ the ‘poor minority’ in the west created the ‘fraternal balance of power’ model. From that balance of power, came debate among equals. From debate among equals came logic and rhetoric. From rhetoric philosophy and from philosophy science and the politics of the balance of powers – in effect individualism. From individualism came property rights. From property rights came economic prosperity. That’s why the west is special and is propagating capitalism all around the world. Capitalism means “mass participation in mass production for mass consumption”.

    2) The purpose of Christian Monarchies was to allow the church to unite the germanic tribes so that the (evil) East could be kept ‘at bay’. Christendom is a means of preserving european independence from eastern conquest. The average westerner does not understand this reason and attacks christianity on logical rather than utilitarian grounds. The post medieval monarchies were ‘private governments’ that had public institutions – and they relied upon the balance of powers and the gold standard for self regulation. THis appears to have been the best form of government invented by human beings to date. (I can argue this on very technical grounds if I need to.) It may not be clear that the western church was always poorer than the eastern church and that the west really fell because of the mohammedans (islam), when they conquered byzantium, disrupting mediterranian trade, and creating a shortage of coinage. The plagues prior to this period were no help either. THE WEST is an attempt for individuals to keep the decadent (mystical) east at bay.

    3) The enlightenment purpose for separating church and state was enacted for two reasons. a) because the colonies did not want to ‘weaken’ religiosity with a diluted and dispassionate state religion. Their purpose wasn’t to keep the church out of the state. It was to prevent the state from weakening the moral and religious structure of society. b) when the industrial revolution started in the 1700’s, and people moved to factory-cities, the churches combated alienation, and provided social services that were needed due to dislocation and disenfranchisement. The thinking at the time was that the state needed all these little sects to make people feel at home – a community center – and that the state was incapable of providing the service. So supporting multiple CHRISTIAN SECTS was desirable. There is absolutely no evidence that the framers were anything other than devout – in the sense of the time – which prior to Darwin, mean that mythology was a thing, and science was a thing, and they’re just ‘different things’. Fundamentalism (including state fundamentalism – the religion of state worship) is a reaction to darwinian attacks on mythology.

    It is very likely that everything you currently think about your existing government and the governments that came before it, consists of intentionally created and distributed political propaganda that was used to discredit the monarchy and the church so that the middle and lower classes could take over the government and use it to profit from the newly discovered north american continent. It was a profit seeking land grab. Constitutional, Multi-house, Monarchies were the best form of government ever invented by man. Because they reflect the social structure of society, and they force the social classes to cooperate rather than compete for spoils of self destruction.

    Democracy is the god that failed. It is an even worse god than the monarchic one.

    I hope this helps with the discussion.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-09-02 16:28:00 UTC

  • Libertarians are smarter than liberals

    Libertarians are smarter than liberals. Republicans are smarter than democrats. Libertarians the thought leadership of the conservative movement. Liberals and progressives have the space on the curve below libertarians and below conservatives. In other words, liberals are the thought leadership for the proles and the working class, and libertarians and classical liberal conservatives are the thought leadership for the middle classes. Statistically, liberals are a minority (less than 18%), and libertarians are a minority (less than 10% but climbing). If conservatives and libertarians (the individual spectrum) are compared to progressives and liberals (the collective spectrum) the numbers are in the conservative favor. It’s the fact that libertarians do not self identify as conservatives, yet vote Republican that skew the numbers. This is one of the reasons why Republicans test smarter than Democrats – because libertarians vote republican not libertarian, just as liberals vote democrat not ‘socialist’ – because it’s not in their interest as a minority to waste their vote. The republican economic program, which is a combination of conservative sentiments and libertarian economics and philosophy, simply appeals to more, smarter people. Libertarians promote individual achievement. Liberals promote redistribution of other people’s production. Liberals tend to be verbal (and female) and conservatives tend to be spatial-temporal (and male). Liberals tend not to be historians, but exerperientialists, and conservatives tend to be historians. This reflects research into Time Preference, in which liberals have a shorter (higher) time horizon, and conservatives nave a longer (lower) time horizon, and these conflicts are immutable. In Jonathan Haidt’s work, which expands Machiavelli’s and Pareto’s works, liberals only consider two of the five social sentiments, while conservatives value all five equally. To some degree this is an expression of the ancient battle of the sexes. The reason for the survey data’s (correct) conclusion that many very bright people develop redistributive and authoritarian philosophies was developed by Schumpeter, who said that these people PROFIT both materially and in social status by giving away that which they do not produce. They’re today’s church. Schumpeter said that Marx was wrong: that totalitarianism would not be brought about by the proletariat, but by ‘intellectuals’ who would use their privilege to undermine the system of capitalism that made their privilege possible, and that they would do it in exchange for social status. The change in political tenor in the country is due to three factors: 1) immigration first of catholics, then of the third world. 2) the concentration of these people in urban areas where urbanites perceive a lower cost of production due to low opportunity costs. 3) the south’s abandonment of it’s civil war era bias against the republican party, changing conservative democrats into republicans. The parties had more philosophical breadth during the southern ‘rejection’ but now that the parties are roughly ideologically opposite, it is not possible to create a compromise position. Now, this whole discussion tends to ignore the moderate but conservative-leaning majority who actually determine the outcome of elections. And it should be noted that no civilization in history has survived urbanization and immigration. (The reason is too complicated for a blog posting.) A fact that is OK with liberals and horrid to conservatives.

  • Emotions Are Universally A Reaction To Changes In Property – An Austrian Criticism Of Immigration

    Karl Smith quotes Eli Dourado

    It is perhaps unsurprising that those who think they benefit from the current system wish to keep it. They trot out all kinds of practical-sounding excuses for why we cannot completely open the border. All of these reasons have analogs in the system of class-based privilege. Most of us, I imagine, would like to think that if we were aristocrats of centuries past, we would see through the lameness of the arguments for using the state to keep down the lower classes. Yet the widespread opposition to open borders today shows that we are not that good.

    Although Dourado repeats the less than novel convenient ‘metaphor’. It could also be restated as: ‘People demonstrably object to the forcible appropriation and transfer of their opportunities, their social status, their political power, their traditions and their culture so that those who have not earned it may profit by redistributing it to others who have also not earned it. People consider these things their property, and they act as if it is their property.” But let’s ask a few questions that the positivist does not ask: Just what is it that creates and maintains the behavior of forgone opportunity costs we call property? The high cost of truth telling? The high cost of non-corruption? Where to ‘incentives’ come from? Why are some organizations of people impervious to all attempts at quelling corruption both public and private? Conservatism is more complicated than Karl or Dourado suggest. Conservatism consists of a series of properties: (a) a general resistance to change in social order: the habits, manners, ethics, morals, and laws by political means. (b) In the USA, it consists of Jeffersonian Classical Liberalism, and the Civic Republican sentiments (real or not) and the predominant culture of the prewar era. (c) In the west it consists of the remnants of Fraternal Aristocracy — and all the social habits, myths and values that it entails. Railing against conservatives due to (a) and (a) alone, is a convenient ruse by which opponents ignore and fail to consider the value inherent in (b) and (c), and whether the system of property rights, and requisite costs that individuals must pay to create and maintain those property rights (in both individual an political spectrums) as well as the system of economic calculation, incentives and social status, that are implied in (b) and (c) CAN POSSIBLY be perpetuated WITHOUT (a). Especially given the different time preferences of the social classes. Each of these norms requires individual costs: each of these habits, these cultural forms of ‘capital’ is a cost born by the individuals who adhere to them, day by day, action by action, judgement by judgement. People treat as property that which they pay costs to acquire – even if they are acquiring a ‘norm’. if you take from them that property – even the abstraction of property we call tradition – they will cease paying for it, by abandoning the morals, ethics, manners, habits, and social status – even the very culture and government and nation itself. Because it is no longer an investment for them. Furthermore they will resent the theft of it. In their minds, they have financed a system of meritocratic rotation of elites by serving consumers in the market. Either there is a meritocratic rotation of elites through the service of consumers and society in the market, or there is a dictator who makes a non-meritocratic and arbitrary judgement such that none of us should attempt to meritocratically rotate elites due to service of consumers in the market. It is one or the other. Immigration is incompatible with the welfare state. It explains why small ethnically homogenous states are redistributive and empires are not. Because people PAY for their social status, their culture, their morals, ethics, manners, habits, narratives, and all other friction-reducing behaviors by acting as if they are making purchases. The more diluted the status, the less it is worth. If you steal the status, then people just stop paying for the state. And THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING TODAY. This is an Austrian analysis of human actions. (Versus some silly Rothbardian ideology, or some simplistic overly reductive positivist explanation) It is also Hayek’s criticism of policy. It is a claim against HUBRIS. In particular, an argument against the hubris of positivism. We are markedly different from other civilizations due to the secondary effects that were caused by the need of a technically superior but numerically weak fraternity of independently financed warrior-shareholders (Aristocrats), to hold the numerically and economically superior and totalitarian East at bay. This accidental social order led to the technologies of debate, philosophy, science, and the concepts of balance of power, contract, an independent judiciary, natural rights, personal freedom, political freedom, national freedom, and democratic republicanism – without which the western commercial order, and all that has come from it could not have evolved. And (as Hoppe has tried to illustrate) the behavior of monarchs as intertemporal guardians of property rights has been demonstrably superior to that of democratic socialists. If there is a man alive today that is capable of articulating how we can use a positivist technology to maintain the system of calculation and incentives, and the perpetuate the willingness to pay requisite costs in order to maintain the system of property, manners, ethics, and morals, non-corruption, non-privatization, over four generations of time without these conservative traditions, then I would like to meet him. Because despite a lifetime of attempting to find that some solution to this problem I cannot. Hayek failed, as did Mises and Parsons. Positivism is an insufficient and hubristic technology for a problem we barely comprehend, and the mechanics of which, at least in the aggregate, we are only beginning to discover. Children shouldn’t play with dangerous things.

  • Well, The World May or May Not Be Overpopulated – But It’s Energy Production Not Geography That Determines Population Limits.

    I love Don Boudreaux. But as a conservative, this post troubled me. It troubled me because while I agree with the conclusion, that conclusion isn’t based upon sound reasoning, and would lead to policy that increased fragility.

    The World is UNDERpopulated by DON BOUDREAUX … While many myths compete with “the-world-is-over-populated-with-humans” myth for the honor of being the myth with least empirical and theoretical support, no myth surpasses the over-population myth in groundlessness and, really, absurdity pregnant with totalitarian impulses.

    From there Don points to some wonderful graphics that show how little of the earth would be consumed if we had different population densities. But, one wise visitor replies:

    The real limits to population are determined by the energy supply. With energy and food being interconvertable,

    And I expand with: Yes. That is correct. And moreover, moral arguments are nonsense. Political arguments are nonsense. The question of population is determined only how much energy an be converted and put to use. What we claim (here and elsewhere) are benefits of our ‘technology’ and ‘limitless human creativity” is almost entirely attributable to our ability to convert energy stores to our immediate use. All consequential innovations are dependent upon that one set of technologies. We are coming very close to known physical limits of conversion. And while we are vastly ignorant of our own economies, due to the fact that we collect very poor data, and categorize it even more poorly, we are not vastly ignorant of the laws of physics. Nor does History consist of ever-onward progress. Quite the contrary. It consists of multiple periods of regression to subsistence. In a world where we can all return to the fields, we just suffer. In a world where we cannot return to the fields, those who can’t are dead. Black swans that cause these changes are not rare. They are just unforeseen and incalculable. Our only rational choice is to build a world that is not fragile. And to rail against those who create fragility. I am not arguing with the general criticism of the population myth. I’m arguing that the REASONS why it is excessive or not are not included in anyone’s argument above, and as such the statements above are nothing but naive egoistic folly. Or put in proper economic terms “an attempt to obtain a discount on current consumption by exporting risk onto others.” It is probably not obvious that there is an identical correspondence between the argument for sound money, and the argument for preserving land against immigration. And if it is acceptable to immigrate, then it is acceptable to debase the currency. But that is another story altogether. The fact that current austrian thinking does not account for opportunity costs — from Mises onward through Rothbard, even though somewhat obtusely corrected by Hoppe, is either a oversight or a deception. I do not know. But Misesians do not account for land holding. If economics is limited in scope to money, and avoids status and opportunity costs, then is not a social science. It is a justification for plunder.

  • We Don’t Disagree On Objectives

    On Modeled Behavior, Karl posts that Unemployment is ‘Awful’. And he posts a chart illustrating that losing a job is a serious emotional experience. But, the most obvious conclusion from the data in that chart is that “separation from your social and familial group” – separation from your tribe – is what troubles human beings the most. There is nothing to be learned about ‘money’ from the list of psychological stressors. That aside, and back to your point: No one disagrees that unemployment is bad. The disagreement results from our differences in opinion over how to improve unemployment while producing the least damaging externalities. The difference between conservatives and progressives is largely one of creating systemic fixes with positive externalities using the private sector that may take time on the one hand, and creating dependencies that create negative externalities using the government sector that produce immediate relief and long term negative consequences that serve to reduce liberty on the other. And in the different evaluation of those externalities by the two sides. To progressives, a powerful state that helps them oppose the market is beneficial. To conservatives a powerful state that opposes the market is a threat. It is inconceivable to conservatives that freedom is not more important than temporary stress. Conservatives in the US are classical liberals, which by definition means liberty-seekers. Freedom is an intrinsic good. They do not understand that freedom is, and always has been, a minority proposition, and that only under rare circumstances can freedom be obtained – precisely because a large percentage of people do not want it, and another group can achieve elite status by preventing any group from obtaining it. Market prosperity requires personal freedom: property rights. Market prosperity does not require political or national freedom. Given the distribution of freedom seekers versus security seekers, Political freedom for the majority is a guarantee that the freedom-seeking minority will lose both political and personal freedom. Freedom is not a desire of the many. Inexpensive goods that result from freedom are. But freedom to take risks in the market is, and always has been, a minority proposition that is only possible during periods where the majority of citizens are small business people – such as under expansionist agrarianism in both Classical Greece, MIgration Period Settlement, Ascendent England, and the conquest of the american continent. The rest of the time, most people are some form of dependent – serfs – to the minority of people who actually take personal speculative risk in creating production for the market. The progressive vision of the universe is that there is a world of plenty from which they are ostracized. The conservative vision of the universe is that there is a world of scarcity which must be constantly replenished through risk taking and experimentation. The progressive sees human reason as able to solve anything we can agree upon. The conservative vision sees human reason as demonstrably frail, and that our hubris is what undermines our success – only discipline and work can create material improvement.

  • Conservative Strategy Since 1980

    The Leftist blog Economists View posts that Stiglitz writes that there is an ideological crisis in western capitalism. by which he simply means the “right is wrong”, and Stiglitz is right. Really. That’s all he says. And, of course, Stiglitz’s analysis is a straw man. CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY The conservative strategy since 1980 has been: 1) Defeat ideological communism as a threat to the international order, and to American trade interests – and to borrow any amount of money to do so. 2) Dismantle the left wing “great society’ movement, and if possible privatize education, social security and medicare as a means of starving and de-politicizing the government. 3) Starve the government either by over commitment or over extension, forcing either the dismantlement or privatization of ‘socialist’ programs. 4) Support of the entrepreneurial class, and increase home ownership in order expand conservative sentiments. UNEXPECTED a) The replacement of ideological communism with ideological Islam was an unexpected threat and a high cost. b) The christian whites have become a minority was faster than they expected, and the transition of christian whites into a political block that acts like an minority was also unexpected. Therefore the conservative movement has not been able to ideologically adapt to this change fully – they still remain attached to the Classical LIberal Constitutional model, despite the obvious evidence that the model has failed them and (per Epstein) attacks on constitutionalism by the courts and leftist cultural indoctrination by the schools has been largely successful. The next development in conservatism will be to acknowledge that failure and to become a more consistently adversarial, entrenched and likely racially or culturally identifiable block. RESULTS The end result is : a) that the country remains center-right, and will continue to remain center-right for any politically actionable period of time. b) the process of converting the rest of the world to some form of capitalism, albeit, totalitarian capitalism, or social democratic capitalism, is complete, outside of Islam, which now only needs one or more likely two core states to emerge – neither of which will be an expansionist and militant Iran. c) the country is fragmenting into permanent regional blocks opposed to one another. Family moving patterns suggest that this trend will continue to create stronger divisions, further amplifying the effects created by the end of southern conservatism’s association with the Democratic party. d) the attempt to move people into home ownership as a means of encouraging the conservative sentiment has failed and was an unwise plan in the first place. THe lower class population needs to be mobile and increasingly urbanized to compete. e) the right will claim that the constitution has been sufficiently undermined that it no longer holds sway, and that the left will simply use temporary political power to circumvent it, and there the right will develop the mantra that ‘it’s just mob rule’ and that the constitution is simply ‘how we conservatives shackle each other and give the left time to undermine freedom.’ This will be the next political movement for the right. It is only logical. f) it may be true that Chicago monetarism has been undermined, but it is also true that almost all quantitative DSGEM theory has been undermined. But the institutional investment in academia in the failed doctrine will continue to persist until a radical paradigmatic changes has been developed elsewhere. TRENDS The general trend that will drive support for conservative sentiments will be: 1) the regionalization and fractionalization of domestic culture due to demographic concentrations. and the eventual exhaustion of the population’s tolerance for discord. It appears from the data that our urban centers are headed toward the south american model of an elite urban (white) center, surrounded by a ring of poverty, and a (white) conservative rural culture. 2) the increase in small businesses due to repositioning of the US work force in the global economy. 3) the increase sense of threat from weakened US strategic and economic power. 4) the extended economic stress that will likely lose a generation of permanently displaced workers. STRAW MAN So, Stiglitz simply does not understand conservative strategy or motivations and is arguing against a straw man by assuming that conservative and liberal goals are the same. FREEDOM IS A GOAL IN ITSELF To conservatives, freedom is the goal itself, and freedom is incompatible with the left’s agenda. And the willingness to protect that freedom is infinite. Revolt works from both directions. The left is willing to create the totalitarian redistributive society by class warfare and destruction of the western identity. The right is wiling to bankrupt what they see as a corrupt government in order to preserve it’s identity. The fact that one monetary or economic policy or another was used to accomplish this is immaterial.

  • Conservative Strategy Since 1980

    The Leftist blog Economists View posts that Stiglitz writes that there is an ideological crisis in western capitalism. by which he simply means the “right is wrong”, and Stiglitz is right. Really. That’s all he says. And, of course, Stiglitz’s analysis is a straw man. CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY The conservative strategy since 1980 has been: 1) Defeat ideological communism as a threat to the international order, and to American trade interests – and to borrow any amount of money to do so. 2) Dismantle the left wing “great society’ movement, and if possible privatize education, social security and medicare as a means of starving and de-politicizing the government. 3) Starve the government either by over commitment or over extension, forcing either the dismantlement or privatization of ‘socialist’ programs. 4) Support of the entrepreneurial class, and increase home ownership in order expand conservative sentiments. UNEXPECTED a) The replacement of ideological communism with ideological Islam was an unexpected threat and a high cost. b) The christian whites have become a minority was faster than they expected, and the transition of christian whites into a political block that acts like an minority was also unexpected. Therefore the conservative movement has not been able to ideologically adapt to this change fully – they still remain attached to the Classical LIberal Constitutional model, despite the obvious evidence that the model has failed them and (per Epstein) attacks on constitutionalism by the courts and leftist cultural indoctrination by the schools has been largely successful. The next development in conservatism will be to acknowledge that failure and to become a more consistently adversarial, entrenched and likely racially or culturally identifiable block. RESULTS The end result is : a) that the country remains center-right, and will continue to remain center-right for any politically actionable period of time. b) the process of converting the rest of the world to some form of capitalism, albeit, totalitarian capitalism, or social democratic capitalism, is complete, outside of Islam, which now only needs one or more likely two core states to emerge – neither of which will be an expansionist and militant Iran. c) the country is fragmenting into permanent regional blocks opposed to one another. Family moving patterns suggest that this trend will continue to create stronger divisions, further amplifying the effects created by the end of southern conservatism’s association with the Democratic party. d) the attempt to move people into home ownership as a means of encouraging the conservative sentiment has failed and was an unwise plan in the first place. THe lower class population needs to be mobile and increasingly urbanized to compete. e) the right will claim that the constitution has been sufficiently undermined that it no longer holds sway, and that the left will simply use temporary political power to circumvent it, and there the right will develop the mantra that ‘it’s just mob rule’ and that the constitution is simply ‘how we conservatives shackle each other and give the left time to undermine freedom.’ This will be the next political movement for the right. It is only logical. f) it may be true that Chicago monetarism has been undermined, but it is also true that almost all quantitative DSGEM theory has been undermined. But the institutional investment in academia in the failed doctrine will continue to persist until a radical paradigmatic changes has been developed elsewhere. TRENDS The general trend that will drive support for conservative sentiments will be: 1) the regionalization and fractionalization of domestic culture due to demographic concentrations. and the eventual exhaustion of the population’s tolerance for discord. It appears from the data that our urban centers are headed toward the south american model of an elite urban (white) center, surrounded by a ring of poverty, and a (white) conservative rural culture. 2) the increase in small businesses due to repositioning of the US work force in the global economy. 3) the increase sense of threat from weakened US strategic and economic power. 4) the extended economic stress that will likely lose a generation of permanently displaced workers. STRAW MAN So, Stiglitz simply does not understand conservative strategy or motivations and is arguing against a straw man by assuming that conservative and liberal goals are the same. FREEDOM IS A GOAL IN ITSELF To conservatives, freedom is the goal itself, and freedom is incompatible with the left’s agenda. And the willingness to protect that freedom is infinite. Revolt works from both directions. The left is willing to create the totalitarian redistributive society by class warfare and destruction of the western identity. The right is wiling to bankrupt what they see as a corrupt government in order to preserve it’s identity. The fact that one monetary or economic policy or another was used to accomplish this is immaterial.

  • July 4th: A mistake?

    I love my country. The world is a better place because of the American Constitution. And the evidence is clear that everyone has been better off having been an English colony than a French one. But the colonists declared independence largely to escape paying the costs incurred by England in protecting the colonies during the Seven Years War. Which was at the very least, an unjust avoidance of responsibility by the colonists. Personally, I would prefer we had remained a colony. And I would still prefer a King or Queen to a president. History is a better thing to admire than politicians, and the evidence appears to suggest that monarchs were far better governors that our elected representatives have been. Despite the comforting untruths we tell ourselves. I still like the fireworks. 🙂