Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • DID I MISS THIS ARTICLE ON TOTALITARIANISM? IT’S FANTASTIC. Basically, the autho

    http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/the-spine/beware-do-not-read-if-all-you-want-intellectual-fix-one-your-political-prejudices-serHOW DID I MISS THIS ARTICLE ON TOTALITARIANISM? IT’S FANTASTIC.

    Basically, the author reiterates the point that Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian political movement.

    I’ve been saying this for years. And it’s true. It may be structured as a religion, the way marxism was a religion structured as a science, but it’s a political movement.

    We had to defeat the east repeatedly in our history.

    The greeks held the east at bay, and the romans conquered it to keep it at bay.

    We arguably lost to christianity until the Germans freed us from it.

    We could have lost to marxism and communism, but we spent the west coming to a stalemate.

    We have lost our will to keep islam at bay.

    Partly because Heroic Aristocracy is alien to the majority.

    Totalitarianism is man’s preferred state.

    We should observe the actions of those who say otherwise.

    Because man demonstrates an interest in the fruits of the market.

    But he does everything possible to avoid participating in it.

    And women in particular seem to love it to their own detriment.

    For some reason, women seem to confused: their desire for collective opinion is in fact, a desire for totalitarianism. They are the same.

    It’s genetic. Women just havent been responsible members of the political universe long enough to incorporate that reality into their oral history.

    Women have taken the country left. Period. End of story.

    🙂

    (how much trouble will that get me in?)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-09 05:34:00 UTC

  • THE FUTURE ECONOMY “…From 1780 to 1840, output per worker rose 46% and the rea

    THE FUTURE ECONOMY

    “…From 1780 to 1840, output per worker rose 46% and the real wage index rose by only about 12%, noting that none of these numbers are close to exact. … The significant real wage gains come after 1840 and — in my view — even more after 1870. After 1830 TFP is growing at the higher rate of about 1% a year, still not impressive by the standards of the early 20th century however.

    During the early 19th century, there is much creative ferment, but much less in terms of products which translate into gains in living standards for the average person.

    …

    Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays off in a big “whoosh,” but it takes many decades, depending on where you draw the starting line of course. A look at the early 19th century is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today. But it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity over the longer run.”. – Tyler Cowen

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-04 15:50:00 UTC

  • REASONS FOR CASUAL DRESS IN SEATTLE From; There are some pretty understandable r

    http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2013/02/28/suffering-for-fashion-not-in-seattle/THE REASONS FOR CASUAL DRESS IN SEATTLE

    From; http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2013/02/28/suffering-for-fashion-not-in-seattle/

    There are some pretty understandable reasons why Seattle dresses casually.

    a) Scandinavian heritage – we don’t signal ostentatiously.

    b) When we do signal, we do so with sport or fitness. This signals that we are ‘locals’, not ‘those uncouth people.’

    c) Because we signal with sport or fitness we wear clothes that signal recreation.

    d) It’s changing, but it used to be that when you asked someone what they did, they replied with their form of recreatoin, not their job.

    e) We have a tradition of rebelling against the ‘east’ and clothing was one of those ways of demonstrating our special-ness.

    f) We imported a lot of engineers directly out of college and often attracted them with persisting the college lifestyle.

    g) The hippie movement that drove population into the northwest, with more communal to portland and more work oriented to seattle, perpetuated our natural biases toward comfortable clothes.

    h) people around the world generally signal with clothing if they have taste but less money. In the USA we signal with cars and houses. In the northwest we signal our effeteness with casualness.

    i) Our young professionals are largely from the middle class already and they work in the suburbs and drive cars, instead of walking in the city where signaling with fashion often grants you access to dating opportunities..

    j) In general, white (protestant) people signal with complexity (intellectual expression) rather than more base emotions – and seattle is the whitest large city in America.

    k) Fashion dress (street fashion) is a preoccupation of the lower middle and upper proletarian classes (most consumers.) Seattle doesn’t have an old aspiring working class looking to demonstrate their fitness for inclusion.

    l) in the attached map of the states, you’ll notice that high style over comfort areas are hispanic, and high comfort over style areas are anglo-germanic.

    In simple terms, we view ‘trying hard’ at style to be ‘gauche’. For all the reasons above.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-01 02:42:00 UTC

  • Ethan Walters: Welcome to the Uncomfortable Enlightenment (or the Dark Enlighten

    http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/

    Ethan Walters:

    Welcome to the Uncomfortable Enlightenment (or the Dark Enlightenment).

    History, Economics and Anthropology have addressed this issue for decades:

    RICHARD DUCHESENE: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

    MARIjA GIMBUTAS: (Everything she has written)

    SAMUEL HUNTINGTON: Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress.

    KAREN ARMSTRONG: The Great Transformation

    (Or See the reading list at: propertarianism.com/menu/reading-list/)

    We’ve learned that our enlightenment view of humanity is flawed. The purpose of that vision was to justify the taking of political power from the landed aristocracy and the church, by the emerging middle class of northern european merchants.

    That political change may have been necessary in order to create the industrial society that we live in. However, the aristocratic view of man and mankind was accurate. And our ‘enlightened’ view of the perfect natural man if only ‘set free’ is simply an error. Man is an animal that must be trained to participate in one society of another.

    Our ‘progressive’ view of humanity is flawed as well. The purpose of that vision was to justify the taking of political power by women and the working classes. The ‘progressive view’ was put forth by Marx and Freud.

    But as Friedrich Hayek said, the trend in 20th century political ideology, which was the product of Marx and Freud, will eventually be seen as a new era of mysticism – with no basis in fact. In fact, counter-to-fact.

    And that will mirror the warnings of most of the great historians: Toynbee, Gibbon, Braudel, Spengler, Quigley, Durant, Burnham, McNeil, Keegan. That we are unique and unique for circumstantial reasons, and that all of science and reason are the product of our uniqueness.

    It has only been since the progressive ideology has become received wisdom due to the ‘revisionist history’ put forth by the last generation of academics, and then followed by the collapse of western economic uniqueness, that we have begun to see scientists, and a new generation of academics begin to undermine that ideological view of man.

    Welcome to the “Dark Enlightenment”: We are unequal and Western Civ is Unique and impossible to replicate.

    Western civ is the product of individualistic aristocratic egalitarianism caused by indo european battle tactics learned as pastoral radiers. Objectivity, debate and science, and the unique western solution to the problems of politics and market are the product of the need to obtain consent from other peers, rather than obey a chosen leader.

    Then, the church created individual property rights, and created the universalism which led to the high trust society when it tried to break up the noble families, outlawed cousin marriage, and gave women property rights. Western high trust is a produced within the Hanjal line and the Lotharingian kingdom at the bottom, and the english and scandinavians at the top.

    Manorialism: or the ownership of land, and the need for men to demonstrate their conformity and reliability, as well as participate in military when needed, in order to gain access to land, created the protestant ethic. It encourage the working classes to adopt the ethics of the nobility.

    Chivalry provided a means for men regardless of land-holding to demonstrate their socials status through service -which is a unique means of status achievement we thing of as ‘heroism’ that no other society has in such abstract, non-familial terms.

    The need to ‘keep the east at bay’ using the germans, and therefore preserving german militarism was a intentional choice of the catholic countries. The western high trust society is the product of this aristocratic egalitarian individualism.

    Culture is a set of property definitions, property rights, relying upon myths, traditions and rituals to propagate those rights. It is a set of rules for sending status signals. Status signals are those things that we imitate because they give us better access to mates and opportunities. Property definitions vary from the individual to the commons on one axis, and administration of it from the individual to the state on the other. Cultures matter. Our culture matters most. Cultures are not equal, and ours was (not is) unique.

    Northern European (protestant) Americans (at least to some degree) carry this ancient aristocratic tradition with them today. It isn’t well understood that the anglo-celtic and german populations were about equal in america until the progressive strategy to take over ‘white’ america through immigration was put in place in the 60’s. (But that’s why American english speech is flatter than UK english – it’s merged with the flatter german tonal structure.)

    Americans did not have an ‘aristocracy’ or a landed church to rebel against. There was no opportunity like in europe to create a popular “US vs Them”. We retained our distaste for government, where the europeans saw themselves as taking over the government from the aristocracy and church. Instead, it became feminists and the lower classes against white protestant male culture. This is one of the reasons why other cultures think our male-female relations are ‘businesslike’ rather than intimate and affectionate.

    And quite contrary to the revisionist progressive historians, it was not luck that made we westerners successful in our ‘great divergence’. The west was a poorer, less numerous people on the edge of the bronze age who used technology, cooperation, speed and strategy to give their inferior numbers the advantage against an east that was always more brutal, totalitarian, numerous and wealthy.

    Americans have the lock on the world’s speculative capital, because we are the people least likely to abuse it through various schemes of privatization. In abstract terms, we own the stock market. and the Brits own the Bond market. The brits lend and the americans risk. You can trust an english speaker or one of the varieties of german speaker with your money. But you pretty much can’t trust anyone else in the world. And that is a cultural value that runs back 4500 years.

    We westerners apologize for our conquest and colonialism, but we have spent the past five hundred years dragging humanity out of ignorance, mysticism, totalitarianism and dirt-scratching crushing poverty, hunger and disease. We should not feel guilty for it. We should instead, require others thank us for it. For while we did it sloppily at times, we did it none the less.

    (In essence, that’s the Dark Enlightenment philosophy.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-26 03:19:00 UTC

  • ARE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP? And an aside on the morality of business

    http://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/What-is-the-most-effective-yet-efficient-way-to-get-rich-2/answer/Reem-Yared/comment/1778627?srid=u4Qv&share=1WHERE ARE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

    And an aside on the morality of business.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-22 00:37:00 UTC

  • Property: “..the three [necessary] elements of private property are: (1) exclusi

    http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/02/armen-alchian.htmlPrivate Property: “..the three [necessary] elements of private property are:

    (1) exclusivity of rights to choose the use of a resource,

    (2) exclusivity of rights to the services of a resource, and

    (3) rights to exchange the resource at mutually agreeable terms.”

    (We libertarians tend to say that Private property is a monopoly on the use of the self, those things that are homesteaded, or which are obtained by voluntary exchange.)

    The Third Law of Demand: (Shipping Out The Good Apples): “…when the prices of two substitute goods, such as high and low grades of the same product, are both increased by a fixed per-unit amount such as a transportation cost or a lump-sum tax, consumption will shift toward the higher-grade product. This is true because the added per-unit amount decreases the relative price of the higher-grade product.”

    (For those who don’t know the three laws of Demand, here are 1 and 2.)

    The Second Law Of Demand: (Price Elasticity Over Time) “…demand is more responsive to price in the long run than in the short run.”

    The First Law Of Demand: (Supply vs Demand) : “..all else being equal, as the price of a product increases, a lower quantity will be demanded; likewise, as the price of a product decreases, a higher quantity will be demanded.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-20 02:32:00 UTC

  • MOB RULE I’m not a Randian, but this quote via Libertarianism.org is worth shari

    MOB RULE

    I’m not a Randian, but this quote via Libertarianism.org is worth sharing:

    “A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort … is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence.” – Ayn Rand

    But institutionalizing private property rights appears to take a mob as well. and a disciplined and self interested mob at that. And once created, those private property rights cannot be held without the mob. So some group must forcibly create private property rights by prohibiting familial, tribal, or state property rights that maintain property as a commons. (A militia appears to be a mandatory requirement for maintaining private property rights.)

    Now, once any group that succeeds in institutionalizing private property rights within a territory, they may have made some redistribution of earnings per share warranted. That’s how our classical ancestors saw it. And It may be true that the purpose of government is to allow us to concentrate capital on common investments while prohibiting involuntary transfer of that capital via privatization – that’s what shareholder agreements do. Shareholder agreements are quantifiable systems that allow for exclusion, and constitutions and citizenship are non-quantifiable, and often avoid exclusion because of births and differing birth rates.

    But even if some redistribution of earnings is warranted, that does not mean redistribution is the purpose of creating the institution of private property. It means only that the proceeds from increases in productivity must be redistributed to shareholders, rather than consumed by the interests of the administration.

    Property, from the most individual to the most common, is instituted by mobs who apply violence. Aristocratic egalitarianism (libertarianism) evolved to create individual property rights out of its own self interest. is simply an accident.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-17 03:33:00 UTC

  • YOU SHOULD FIRE

    http://www.inc.com/steve-cody/5-customers-you-should-fire.htmlCUSTOMERS YOU SHOULD FIRE

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-31 13:19:00 UTC

  • QUOTE THAT WILL RING TRUE FOR EVERY MICROSOFT PARTNER IN THE WORLD “Its latest r

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f8630150-656d-11e2-8b03-00144feab49a.htmlA QUOTE THAT WILL RING TRUE FOR EVERY MICROSOFT PARTNER IN THE WORLD

    “Its latest round … shows an attempt by Microsoft to defend its castle. Like a feudal lord, it once milked a peaceful populace, collecting generous taxes from the industry that laboured to keep the Windows economy going. The farmers never starved, but it was Microsoft that grew fat.” – FT.COM

    I TRIED TO BUY MICROSOFT PARTNERS IN 2006-2007 AND LOOKED AT 200 OF THEM.

    I knew what would happen to the industry. I knew the change in the customer. I wanted to provide an alternative to Avanade for the marketing customer. But I couldn’t find more than single digits out of the lot who made more than six percent net, and had any scale. Why? Because Microsoft impoverished its community. They played begging small vendors for freebies they were successful enough to make requests. Then they repeated the game with someone else.

    The only way to defeat that tactic was not to depend upon them at all. To build your own (expensive) sales force.

    And what kind of partnership is that?

    It isn’t one. It’s feudalism.

    Bill understood the value of vendors. That’s when it was good to be a Partner. THe company is a ‘Rent Seeking” machine. And has been now for the better part of a decade.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-27 19:04:00 UTC

  • I’VE BEEN SAYING FOR EIGHT YEARS : MSFT IS DEAD AND TAKING SEATTLE WITH IT. -AN

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2013/01/20/sell-microsoft-now-game-over-ballmer-loses/LIKE I’VE BEEN SAYING FOR EIGHT YEARS : MSFT IS DEAD AND TAKING SEATTLE WITH IT.

    -AN ENTREPRENEURIAL CATHARSIS. A MANAGERIAL CONTRAST. AND THE VALUE OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS AND PRAXEOLOGY-

    Microsoft has created an absurd environment in seattle. It has given more of its profits to employees that any company in history.

    Those employees have spent that money in the local market. It has created an affluent and educated community in King County. It’s a beautiful place to live.

    I’ve been working with Microsoft since they intentionally recruited me along with other thought leaders from the Borland camp in 1992.

    I’ve been instrumental or built four companies in the Microsoft space. With the most recent being the largest privately held firm servicing Microsoft customers.

    I”ve tried to save two products for Microsoft from outside the company, and in practice I am pretty sure that I’ve saved one (time will tell), and we know that we significantly improved the life of another.

    I spent half of 2005 working with senior people trying to implement change in how Microsoft marketed itself.

    What I learned, was that the incentives in the company made it impossible to change without a CEO who understood the problem, and would force the change, and a board that would back him.

    But interestingly enough. I had precisely the opposite problem. In our company we earned 40% of our revenues from Microsoft.

    So, I knew. I knew it was exit that dependency on Microsoft or die.

    My investor fought me. My management fought me.

    They fought me on the downturn in the economy that was inevitable.

    They fought me on the collapse of Microsoft spending that was inevitable.

    I lost the arguments. Because I could not produce evidence of a future that they could not sense on their own.

    That’s because there is no evidence of a future that they could sense on their own.

    And I had too little power to enforce such a change.

    I quit in May of 2009. They refused to accept it. And that was my mistake. Loyalty trumped wisdom.

    But nothing changes. The board over-invested in both Microsoft and TMobile, further extending our dependency.

    Microsoft constrained it spending. Then TMobile was ‘sold’. Business rapidly evaporated.

    I argued that the government would never, under any circumstance, allow the merger.

    That we should prepare campaigns for the duration of the dispute, and for the eventual failure.

    It was a tremendous gift. TMobile has great customer service. Customers love them. If you’re merger is rejected you have the best marketing opportunity in the world.

    With some significant gyrations, I saved the company in the fall of 2011 by a maneuver that is worthy of textbook inclusion.

    Then, I resigned again. This time for good.

    Am I happier today? Yes.

    Am I still angry about halving the size of the 100M company I built? Isn’t that obvious? Well, who wouldn’t be. It’s like someone kidnapped your child and sold her into drug slavery.

    Yes. I am happier today. I am also a little vindicated that the people who opposed me are humbled by it.

    Austrian Economics Explains Everything. If you are in business and do not understand Austrian Economics you are operating from a position of ignorance.

    Keynesian macro belongs to politicians and to investors who try to make money out of asymmetry of information in a complex economy.

    Macro policy is the system of creating lies in the economy so that people act as if those lies are truth, thereby reducing unemployment.

    Austrian economics is the system of understanding truths in the economy, despite the fact that the state creates systemic lies in order to reduce unemployment.

    The source of my predictive ability is due almost entirely to my understanding of Austrian Economics.

    Austrian Economics taught me to never be fooled by a trend. To look not at empirical evidence and extrapolate. That numbers describe the past but do not predict the future.

    It taught me to look at the INCENTIVES within any organization. The INCENTIVES that encourage consumers to buy a good or service.

    And the economic and social environment that enables the organization to serve the interests of consumers who REACT to that economic environment by changing their preferences in their signaling and purchasing.

    But with those incentives, do you know what really killed Microsoft?

    The US Government Killed Microsoft. They killed Bill Gates’ influence in the company. They killed his ability to execute in the company. The US Government killed Microsoft.

    They did because the government ignores Austrian Economics. We Austrians know that few if any companies hold more than a decade of dominance. It’s almost impossible to do so.

    We know that the only monopolies are created by government privilege and microsoft had no such privilege. It was vulnerable to the market. Which was precisely why it fought to win the browser war so hard.

    Organizations calcify around an existing market opportunity, the market changes, the organization is indebted so falls into the Innovator’s Dilemma. The staff develops rent seeking behavior and the company loses it’s advantage.

    Microsoft will change only when Ballmer leaves and one of the prior execs who understands the company and has experience working in the company under Bill Gates returns.

    Microsoft would have to acquire Dell just to keep pace with Apple in quality. But I would bet that the government will block it, and therefore put additional bullets into the company.

    But the culture at microsoft is ruined. internally it’s a government bureaucracy. The people are frustrated and disheartened by the bad management.

    A question? What portion of the USA’s increase in productivity from 1980 to 2006, and what percentage of the stock market profits created during that period, were from Microsoft?

    If you knew it would scare you.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-22 12:51:00 UTC