Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Conservatism Isn’t Always Aristocratic, And Aristocracy Needn’t Be Conservative

    American conservatives struggle with the fact that their political sensibilities consist of both the sentiments of conservatism and the remnants of aristocratic european philosophy – and that because they neither understand aristocratic philosophy, or understand conservatism, they cannot separate these two bodies of thought into their constituent parts. As constituent parts they can easily be defended against radical progressives who would continue to undermine the system of rule of law, and innovative individualism that we have inherited from our ancestors, and which is the source of our prosperity. Conservatism is a sentiment and a philosophy. Aristocracy is a philosophy and a system of government. Conservatism has a skeptical view of man’s abilities. Aristocracy has an aspirational view of man’s abilities. But both conservatism and Aristocratic philosophy acknowledge the difference in ability between humans and that inequality is persistent, permanent, and obvious. Both support the meritocratic rotation of elites, as long as that rotation is accomplished in the market or in defense of the realm – in the service of others. And both hold disdain for political ambitions that are not accomplished through the market or defense of the realm. There is nothing inherently conservative about Aristocratic philosophy. But there is everything meritocratic about it.

  • Why Do Westerners Fear A Rising China?

    Why? Why do westerners fear a rising China? Lets look at the reasons: 1) Their history with communism, and enduring love of authoritarianism 2) Systemic Human rights violations, not only in the conquered territories, but between the political north and the entrepreneurial south. 3) Endemic Corruption at all levels of society and perpetual intransigence 4) Pervasive intellectual property theft, and institutional kleptocracy 5) Rapidly expanding military capability and posture despite their geographic isolation 6) The threat of exporting their authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. 7) Their willingness to use economic warfare in commodities like specialty metals and rare earths. 8) Their threats of using our debt as a weapon of economic warfare. 9) The notorious chip on their collective shoulders at the evident failure of their social order in the face of the post-agrarian era, when competing with younger more dynamic civilizations. 10) Support for authoritarian regimes, and consistent blocking of western political initiatives a the UN. 11) The obvious translation of ‘the middle kingdom’ as ‘the center of the universe’. 12) Their obvious and consistent racism. 13) Their state supported cyber attacks on our internet, our public and private sector. 14) Their systemic use of spies to steal our technology in computer, and both naval and missile technology. If we acted like the Chinese, the Supreme Court would still be populated by protestants, blacks wouldn’t have the vote, the 60’s would have concluded with a lot of dead college students, and we would call the muslims our ‘friends’ and occupy their territory, and convert them to christianity, english, and say that their oil is ours, rather than demand that they act responsibly as market participants. So, is our fear based upon racism? It’s not racism. It’s just experience with China. China as it currently functions is a threat to our 500 year effort to drag humanity out of agrarian ignorance and subsistence poverty. What evidence do we have that the magic traits of Competition, Consumerism, Individualism, Fraternal Enfranchisement, and Rule of Law are adopted along with our technology? Our century and a half of class warfare has made us apologetic for our successes, exaggerating of our failures, and without appreciating the uniqueness and benefit we have given to humanity.

  • Why Do Westerners Fear A Rising China?

    Why? Why do westerners fear a rising China? Lets look at the reasons: 1) Their history with communism, and enduring love of authoritarianism 2) Systemic Human rights violations, not only in the conquered territories, but between the political north and the entrepreneurial south. 3) Endemic Corruption at all levels of society and perpetual intransigence 4) Pervasive intellectual property theft, and institutional kleptocracy 5) Rapidly expanding military capability and posture despite their geographic isolation 6) The threat of exporting their authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. 7) Their willingness to use economic warfare in commodities like specialty metals and rare earths. 8) Their threats of using our debt as a weapon of economic warfare. 9) The notorious chip on their collective shoulders at the evident failure of their social order in the face of the post-agrarian era, when competing with younger more dynamic civilizations. 10) Support for authoritarian regimes, and consistent blocking of western political initiatives a the UN. 11) The obvious translation of ‘the middle kingdom’ as ‘the center of the universe’. 12) Their obvious and consistent racism. 13) Their state supported cyber attacks on our internet, our public and private sector. 14) Their systemic use of spies to steal our technology in computer, and both naval and missile technology. If we acted like the Chinese, the Supreme Court would still be populated by protestants, blacks wouldn’t have the vote, the 60’s would have concluded with a lot of dead college students, and we would call the muslims our ‘friends’ and occupy their territory, and convert them to christianity, english, and say that their oil is ours, rather than demand that they act responsibly as market participants. So, is our fear based upon racism? It’s not racism. It’s just experience with China. China as it currently functions is a threat to our 500 year effort to drag humanity out of agrarian ignorance and subsistence poverty. What evidence do we have that the magic traits of Competition, Consumerism, Individualism, Fraternal Enfranchisement, and Rule of Law are adopted along with our technology? Our century and a half of class warfare has made us apologetic for our successes, exaggerating of our failures, and without appreciating the uniqueness and benefit we have given to humanity.

  • A Mouthful Of Pebbles And The Roar Of The Ocean

    Someone asked me (again) today, why I waste my time on some silly online political debate group. And that’s a good question. But I know the answer. It’s a choice. First, it’s not really very useful to argue with people who agree with you. I spent a good half hour last night at a dinner table overlooking the Aegean, arguing core libertarian ethical theory with Stephan Kinsella, who relies on preference and moral argument for his theories. If I agreed with him, what would I learn? You know, it’s like this: The Athenian orator Demosthenes, who had a soft and stammering voice, said that he filled his mouth with pebbles and practiced over the roar of he waves until his speech was perfect. I have a tendency to speak in high abstraction, making leaps between concepts that are too far apart in causal relation for most people to follow. About a decade ago, two friends, Ali from Iran, and Frank from the USA, abused me daily for this kind of lazy communication. I began to view this tendency as ‘my problem’. A form of impediment. And so for ten years I have worked, as Spinoza suggested, to “speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people”. Unfortunately, the common people will not debate, and are happy in their ignorance. But motivated ideological opponents, regardless of their motives, mental ability or character defect, are convenient foils for the improvement of one’s arguments. So, this group, like most online forums, is my mouthful of pebbles. I don’t seek to convert anyone. Although I do find friends occasionally. I simply seek to improve my argument. If others learn in the process than that is find with me. But my purpose is to improve my ability to express ideas.

  • Regarding The Wars Of Religion: The wars of religion were the result of economic

    Regarding The Wars Of Religion: The wars of religion were the result of economic power transferred from the Mediterranean to the atlantic, and the rise in germanic people’s populations which in turn resulted in their ‘revolution’ and separation from the south. Protestantism was a reaction to the political corruption of the church and the export of capital from the north to the south as taxes. The germanic monarchies wanted to keep the money in-country rather than export it to the south, and so they supported Luther. The people were simple pawns in this process, just as they were during the American civil war. The American civil war was fought between a merchant manufacturing north and an agrarian export south, over the markets created by the westward expansion made possible by the Louisiana purchase and the fact that the south could block northern legislation leading to political stalemate, and the south, as an export economy, paid for all the government’s costs, so there was a tension between the two economic and political bases. Europe’s first civil war was not over religion, it was over economics. America’s first civil war was not over slavery, it was over economics. All wars are over economics. It’s not complicated. What we are seeing today in the muslim world is similar. A combination of rapid increase in population accompanied by rapid increase in food prices, when food prices consume 70% or more of the income of these peoples. They are not ideological revolutions. They are about food. The fact that we talk about these historical events in moral and emotive populist terms is why we fail to learn from them and hence repeat them. THe USA is now going through a demographic shift, and trifurcation if not a four way split of the economy, and a political stalemate between regional cultural differences. This will eventually result in some sort of revolution or change int he political system. THere are any number of theories when this will occur. But the economic and cultural interests are sufficiently divergent that it is unlikely that the domestic empire can persist indefinitely. There are no wars of religion. There are wars of economic interest. FOLLOW THE MONEY.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-05-18 06:16:00 UTC

  • What Would You Learn From A Lifetime Of Studying Politics And Economics?

    Fundamentally, assuming you were intellectually honest, if you were to spend the next twenty years of your life studying political science, with the goal of long term stability and prosperity, then you would come to these conclusions:

    • The Problem

        a) Time:
        b) Space (distribution):
        d) Acting:
        c) Choosing an Action:
        d) Memory:
        e) Limited Knowledge:
        f) Planning:
        g) Opportunity Costs:
        h) Learning (imitation):
        i) Choosing What To Learn (Alphas)
      • Mankind:
        • The Genders:
        • Society
          • A Society is it’s Market
          • Productivity
        • Institutions:
          • Cultural-Forgone Opportunities:
          • Time Preference
          • Suppression Of Corruption
          • A System Of Property Definitions
          • Metaphysical Objectives
          • Administrative and Procedural:
          • Cooperative Institutions
          • Meritocratic Rotation of Elites / Denial Of Non Meritocratic Access:
          • Recognizing New Rules
          • Coordinating Of Group Investments:
          • Means Of Resolving Differences:
          • Limits On Power
        • Government:
        • hereditary monarch
        • aristocracy
        • democratically elected common house
          • Monarchy:
        • Rule Of Law:
          • Redistribution:

            7) Failure: Governments and empires fail for these reasons:

            • Debasement:
            • Overextension:
            • Birth Rates:
            • Money:
            • Trade Routes:
            • Calculative Institutions:
            • Irrationalism:
            • Cultural Habits/Opportunity Costs:
            • Externalities:
            • Disasters:

            8) Three Types Of Coercion

              9) Social and Economic Classes 10) Human Failure:

                11) Failures Of Political Discourse a) the multitude of transfers 12) The Hierarchy Of Argument

                  13) Personal Ethics a) Speak The Truth, and at worst say nothing b) Do Nothing To Others You Would Not Want Done Unto You c) Engage in no exchange wherein the other party will ever regret his purchase. 15) Social Problems In Advanced Society a) The Loneliness and Anonymity Of The Division Of Labor and The Affect On Society b) The Difference Between The Urban And The Rural c) The Status Competition Between Groups who will seek political power to alter their condition. The utility of different governments can be determined by historical analogy, by articulated reason, by empirical study of economic performance, and by demonstrated stability against revolution, adaptability to external shocks, and the temporal duration of the system of rules itself. Under those criteria, only the class-tiered system of government survives scrutiny. In particular, democratic governments are temporary, and the result of extraordinary wealth created by conquest of new territory or trade routes. And totalitarian governments are impoverishing, regardless of circumstances. It is the combination of all forms of government so that the different social classes have institutions wich allow them to achieve their ends without detriment to the institutions of the society that is superior to forms of government that reflect the desires ONLY of certain classes of society. Our western error has been that we feel we must enfranchise everyone into the same structure without accounting for differences in our knowledge, skill, ability and preferences. Unfortunately, the horrors of the world wars caused westerners to question their civilization’s principles, rather than the rate of technological evolution and the rate of population growth, and our inability to EXTEND our system of western government fast enough to accomodate them, and instead we have, quite wrongly, thrown out the entire system rather than improving it by ADDING to our rather empirical system of government. The consequences of marxian collectivism, coinciding with feminism, the debate over slavery, and the immigration of non-western people’s, was far greater than our system could tolerate. And the reason our system could not tolerate it, was because we were still relying too much on moral religious doctrine rather than fully articulated reason: we simply did not understand the reasons our western form of government was superior.

                • Camus Didn’t Take It Far Enough

                  Camus starts The Myth of Sisyphus with this insight.

                  “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”

                  To which I’ll add:

                  “There is but one truly serious problem of political philosophy, and that is, why not kill others and take their property?”

                  We always assume common interest, and that politics starts with debate. Debate is a proxy for violence. But we too often assume that a proxy is equally advantageous. It isn’t. Debate arose uniquely in the west as a means of enfranchising fellow warriors who must pay the high cost of equipping themselves for battle, so that they can participate in the fraternal defense of market centers – what we call towns, or cities, or the polis. It was a transfer of social status and power from the strong to the weak, so that together they might be stronger. The assumed equality in debate is for the purpose of the debate itself. Equality does not exist outside of that venue. There are the weak, and the strong. Violence is still the choice of the strong. And debate is a trade off for them. They hope to be stronger by it. But if debate becomes a means of making them weaker, they have the choice to return to violence. The only serious question of politics is why the strong do not kill or enslave the weak. From that question all others follow. If instead, we start with any other assumption, there is already a transfer of wealth going on, from the strong to the weak.

                • Correcting Our Uses Of Taxes, Law, Money And Credit

                  There is a natural conflict between the need to avoid a scarcity of cash and credit, such that all opportunities for increases in productivity within the economy can be exploited, and the fact that fiat money and fiat credit tend to mask, obscure and distort the information that would come from climbing interest rates. The general strategy has been to monitor the interest rate. However, the interest rate alone is not a sufficient barometer because a) people ‘flock’ or ‘school’ to over exploit opportunities — and b) unfortunately, (and this is becoming a topic of interest by the serious mathematicians in the field due to the plethora of data collected from the boom) it appears the entire economy is becoming governed, not by opportunities and not by productivity, but by nothing more than *responses to the discount rate.* Which means, (as the austrians have said for a century), the distortion caused by fiat money is cumulatively, and recursively the source of booms and busts. Of course, the fact that those of us say it is logically obvious is countered by the short term quants who fall into the ludic fallacy of probabilism.

                  [callout]There is a natural conflict between the need to avoid a scarcity of cash and credit, such that all opportunities for increases in productivity within the economy can be exploited, and the fact that fiat money and fiat credit tend to mask, obscure and distort the information that would come from climbing interest rates.[/callout]

                  There is a way out of this problem. But we would need a long and deep discussion about the nature of government to fix it. We are using a system of lawmaking and taxation that was invented for an agrarian era when the unit of work was at best a season, but accounts were settled annually. We live today in a world where the month is a meaningless topic, and only weeks and quarters are of informational value. Instead, by the combination of pooling accounts (the error of aggregation of plastic categories under quantitative analysis), taxes (which are disconnected from the causal actions that produce profits), and fiat money and fiat credit (which obscure information signals) we effectively launder causality from the pricing system which is the entire purpose of HAVING a pricing system. If we issued loans rather than collected taxes, this problem would right itself quite quickly, and both our political rhetoric, and abuses by the government would be much more rational and tangible if we did. Or rather we taxed what we should (income against an averaged three year balance sheet) and we gave loans rather than provided general liquidity, we would allow private money to pursue it’s ends and public money it’s ends.

                  [callout]There is a way out of this problem. But we would need a long and deep discussion about the nature of government to fix it. [/callout]

                  Furthermore, tagging all financial transactions, then treating the internet, and the financial network as a utility that can tolerate failure through multiple layers of redundancy wouldn’t hurt either. There is nothing magic about this series of prescriptions. They simply prevent the laundering of causal information from the pricing system by the error of aggregation. In the simplest terms, tax pooling and general funds are money laundering. Loans are causally transparent. Taxes are causally opaque. We cannot have a RATIONAL government if the data that they rely upon is by DEFINITION, IRRATIONAL, null, and void of rational content. THE DISCOUNT RATE IS, FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, AN ERROR OF AGGREGATION. THIS ERROR THEN “FINACIAL-IZES” THE ECONOMY OUT OF THE PURSUIT OF PRODUCTIVITY. (Of course, under that scenario the profits of the big banks would be captured by the public sector.)

                • Fiat And Private Money From Both Sides Of The Coin

                  The first reason that the USA wanted it’s own money is so that it did not export profits to England or France in the form of currency appreciation. The second reason was to reduce trade friction between the colonies. The third was because private money is a riskier proposition, and trade was artificially limited by the instability and problems that came from runs and scares. The reasons that the USA developed the banking system and fiat money was because there was a shortage of money to lend in order to finance the westward expansion of the country.

                  [callout]Since only the government, which consists of citizens who spend their time on geographic protection, protects the geographic territory, and since the citizens are shareholders in the government, then to expect the government to conduct territorial wars, yet to allow private profiteering of the windfall opportunity of geographic expansion because the state is unable to create money to provide the credit, is for individuals to PRIVATIZE WINS AND SOCIALIZE LOSSES. [/callout]

                  Credit money is useful to all societies and it DOES cause inflation, because there is no way for people to KNOW when and when not to lend. As long as there is credit money there will be booms and busts. Paper money is necessary for the same reasons – there are artificial limits to competitive productivity without paper money, and without fiat money. Furthermore, as we have seen in the PIGS countries, fiat money tends to decrease corruption. Early in US history, when they tried a multiplicity of monies it created financial instability and trade friction. It was only after taking the dollar off the gold standard that we saw the abuse of it. The question is, if there is a geographic opportunity, should private investors profit from that or should the government profit from it? That is not the same type of investment as the use of private personal knowledge for the purpose of increasing production. Since only the government, which consists of citizens who spend their time on geographic protection, protects the geographic territory, and since the citizens are shareholders in the government, then to expect the government to conduct territorial wars, yet to allow private profiteering of the windfall opportunity of geographic expansion because the state is unable to create money to provide the credit, is for individuals to PRIVATIZE WINS AND SOCIALIZE LOSSES. This may take a few readings to understand. But this is the entire point. Christian Classical liberalism and it’s restatement as Hayekian libertarianism differs from jewish anarchism and it’s restatement as Hothbardian libertarianism almost entirely because christians are philosophically fraternal land holders, and their metaphysics assumes the necessity of land holding, while jews assume land is magically held by someone else because they are metaphysically nomadic and have been diasporic since being conquered by Rome. These assumptions have been part of both groups’ tribal sentiments, philosophy and cultural ethics for thousands of years. Judaism is an arrested civilization. Christianity is an overextended civilization. But you will have a hard time pointing to the success of non-landed civilizations. So, in the end, private money is as often a means of privatizing wins and socializing losses as is fiat money a means of destroying productivity and socializing profits that were made by individuals taking personal risks. The problem with money is that it serves to coordinate diverse and dispersed and fragmentary human KNOWLEDGE, and that gold, or hard money, or private money, because it is scarce, serves better to make use of that dispersed knowledge by capturing willingness to put it behind any initiative or investment that might be poorly considered. While soft money helps to solve the problem that occurs when people have a willingness because they agree on an opportunity for investment, yet they cannot obtain the scarce money to do so. Our problem is not necessarily fiat money. It is that the state can use ‘pooling’ of funds to mask transfers. That is a deeper conversation. But hopefully I have given you some food for thought.

                • Governments Should Be Empirical Not Moral

                  All societies in history, without exception, appear to have a ‘referee’ or ‘judge’ — usually an elder male. This topic has been researched to death: Egalitarian tribal warfare societies have some elder male. Chieftain societies tend to concentrate decision making power. Urban societies develop specialists. Advanced civilizations have micro-specialists (judges). Likewise, as they grow, societies also develop specialists for extra-group conflict resolution (warriors), and specialists for in-group conflict resolution (politicians). It is impossible to have a peaceful and prosperous society without conflict resolution because planning and risk taking necessary for production become impossible. If we continue our evolution into industrialization, market economies become so much more productive than any other in history, that shareholders (people who pay the cost of adhering to norms and rules) desire returns on their investment in that society via conformity.

                  [callout] If instead, our government operated as a bank and insurance company, it would be empirical, calculative and specific rather than rational and deliberative, and general. As such, it would be far less easy to rely upon supposedly moral arguments, that are in effect, universally, without exception, forms of deception or convenient rationalizations and justifications for either theft, class warfare, or corruption.[/callout]

                  The problem for social scientists, and the citizenry, is not the rational constitution of, and methods used by these different specialists in conflict resolution. The problems are the coordination of their activities, the setting of priorities, and the limits on their privatization of opportunities (corruption), as roles filled by individuals evolve into institutions and then into methodological, self interested bureaucracies. In the private sector we use prices, money and accounting and contracts to coordinate our activities – they are empirical. Instead, the bureaucracies coordinate their activities using laws, regulations and rules – and laws and rules are insufficiently granular and empirical for the size and complexity of our current population sizes and the resulting complexity of our devision of knowledge and labor (instead their moderately rational, which is less precise, and more reliant on interpretation). This is the problem with the rule of law – the formal principle for any law is that it must apply to all people equally in order to protect the citizenry from overreach. It is by definition and necessity a GENERAL rather than SPECIFIC tool. If instead, our government operated as a bank and insurance company, it would be empirical, calculative and specific rather than rational and deliberative, and general. As such, it would be far less easy to rely upon supposedly moral arguments, that are in effect, universally, without exception, forms of deception or convenient rationalizations and justifications for either theft, class warfare, or corruption. This is the hole in our philosophy of government. (It is the hole some of us are trying desperately to fill with a solution.)