Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • Anarchists and Elitism?

    From The Liberty Defense League, an exceptionally intelligent posting on the weaknesses of anarchism.

    Some libertarian friends call for anarchy to prevail. While such a state of affairs may be offering momentary delights, we need to remember that if we stand for nothing, we will fall for anything. Anarchy is government of nothing, and is only a transitional period between different states of order. Order always arises from chaos, and anarchy is often a tool of leftists. I am sure true libertarians are well meaning in upholding individuals’ self-rule in looking to a utopian anarchy, but I believe they are being used, even misled, to merely be creating conditions for another tyranny to prevail. The libertarian anarchists are correct in stating why the current Federal Union of Criminals Unlimited gives us ample reason to secede. But to what goals do we truly aspire?

    (My comment posted from the site, copied below for recording purposes.) Exceptionally intelligent article. Thank you. A couple of insights for context.

    [callout]The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of Keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. [/callout]

    The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. (I realize that this is a mouthful, but it is the correct analysis.) Mises, Hayek, Parsons, Popper, Rothbard, Nozick, fall failed despite great minds, to provide a solution to the semi-rational tools provided by the above listed models. The conservatives from Kirk onward produced sentimental historical references, but no rational philosophical framework. Especially that could compete with the heady religious scripture, rational philosophy, and volume of production of marxism and marxists. They failed because government consist of both the associations you refer to, as well as the institutions that limit the use of free associations to become governments themselves, and therefore have the ability to project their will by edict, rather than the ability to advocate their will upon the desirous. From this viewpoint, the anarchic research program, when approached as a program of research in limiting government (as largely done by Hoppe), has accomplished more than all other freedom-driven intellectual programs. But as a practical political movement it will fail. It wil fail for the reasons you have stated. However, it has contributed greatly to the philosophical debate. We just do not yet know how to change our institutions to make use of the libertarian anarchist framework of privatization in order to balance the use of monetary policy and redistributive sentiments, with freedom. Libertarians figured it out. Most of it. And we should thank them for it. The primary change in the nature of government was that western government ceased attempting to increase economic productivity after the great war, and instead, emphasized expansion and redistribution. And this treat to our freedom was started by the Louisiana Purchase and our fate sealed with the civil war. Liberty is for small homogenous states. And as Federalist 10 states, any time you have a government over people with dissimilar economic and cultural interests, it’s not a government, it’s an empire, and as an empire, it’s oppressive. – a member of the anarcho capitalist research program.

  • Don’t Tell the Creative Department, but Software Can Produce Ads, Too

    Software That Produces Ads?

    September 4th, 2010 


    The NYT

    “BETC Euro RSCG, part of the Euro RSCG Worldwide division of Havas, has developed software that can produce elementary advertisements. The software is called CAI, pronounced Kay, for Creative Artificial Intelligence.”

    (Posted in NYT comments)

    In the late eighties I wrote a very complex set of software applications that took data and made legal arguments. It horrified people in the profession, who were, at that time, still addicted to legal pads and lofty self impressions. But we were able to increase a docket (the set of cases a lawyer could manage) from the tens to the thousands. Admittedly, this was procedural law, and not dramatic legal theater. But it was law and argument none the less.

    The number of federal judges that have seen, read and processed documents, and adjudicated cases based upon arguments purportedly written by lawyers, but entirely generated by machine, and only given a cursory review, is in the many hundreds, and the cases the tens of thousands.

    Ads are not much different. They are commodities. Visual and literary symbolism adds high permutations to those commodities. But that does not mean that they are not formulaic.

    Except for perhaps the top half-percent of ads, and except for brand symbols like logos, almost all advertising (impressions that is) relies upon a very limited set of visual compositions.

    Any sufficiently mature technology becomes clerical in nature. And 2D ads are a mature and fairly tired technology. It matters more that you can afford to insert it into the consumer’s environment a hundred times, than does the quality of it. And the quality of an ad simply decreases the cost of the number of impressions needed to stick an idea into the consumer’s head.

    The reality is the reality: advertising is a commodity and it is rarely interesting, rarely innovative, and almost entirely derivative. And if it wasn’t it wouldn’t work.

    Almost all current creative innovation is in the digital arena, simply because it’s a deeper technology that hasn’t been fully explored.

    Current attempts at automating 2D ads are not all that impressive. But given a sufficient pool of images, a sufficient pool of phrases and quotes, and a sufficient influx of cultural symbolism, and a simple enough set of requirements, most ads are derivative and permutations rather than informative and persuasive, and as such most ads can be automated.

    And given the diverse quality of ads (impressions, not media) the median of the curve of quality of ad would undoubtably shift to the better, given automation.

    http://www.puretheoryofmarketing.com

  • A Political Movement Pretending To Be A Religion Replaces A Religion Pretending To Be A Political Movement

    From The Left’s Unlikely Alliance with Islam By Robert Eugene Simmons Jr.

    [callout]First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion.[/callout]

    Most fair-minded Americans have no problem with people who wish to practice their religion. In addition, most fair-minded Americans know of the difficult pasts of Christianity and Judaism and would demand of Islam what has been demanded of other religions. Americans don’t tolerate inquisitions anymore than they do Sharia courts. Americans realize that religious freedom is inherent in the melting pot that is America, but they also understand that all religions must exist under an umbrella of mutual respect and within the boundaries of common law. Americans would no more accept honor killings than they would accept a Catholic man killing atheists for the sake of his religion. The freedom of religion, in the end, is not a carte blanche to do whatever you wish and then yell “first amendment,” but rather a constraint to prevent the government from imposing a single religion, as Islamic governments do.

    I would add, that any religion that seeks dominion over temporal matters (to establish laws) is not a religion, but a political movement masquerading as a religion. And any religion that encourages its people to lie about their convictions, is incompatible with democratic government. Even worse, it’s incompatible with the western way of life. First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion. Islam and Marxism are the same. They are the totalitarianism of equality in ignorance and poverty. (In retrospect, Christianity wasn’t much better when it was brought into the empire. )

  • “Extend And Pretend”

    I lost the source of this quote, but thought it captured the sentiment correctly:

    The government has been playing “extend-and-pretend” based entirely on the idea that pent up demand in consumers would grow until it busted out and the recovery would be on – fueled by consumers. What has happened is the exact opposite. This is very serious. We are running into 3 years now, and 4 if you look at what commodity speculation did to consumers starting back in early 2007. Remember the prices for wheat and such that were even driving the price of pizza up 30% or more? And then we have such things as “staycations”. And so the concern should be whether or not we have a permanent shift in consumer behaviors. Three or four years is plenty of time to break old habits and establish new ones.

    1) People forget. Their forgetting follows a ‘forgetting curve’. Knowledge is perishable. Habits are perishable. Relationships are perishable. Even wants are perishable. 2) People don’t ‘unforget’. They have to learn new techniques, develop new habits, and form new relationships. And it takes time. 3) People school or swarm on opportunities. Demand is created by those people who invent ideas then bait people into swarming on them. Developing swarms, especially large scale swarms takes time. Months, even years, because people have to learn from the person closest to them, how they can participate in the swarm. Then as the swarm grows, they must learn enough to break off from the main body and find and exploit new niche opportunities.

    This last swarming behavior is the general problem with the Keynesian approach to aggregate demand. People are infinitely acquisitive as long as their acquisitions increase either their entertainment, security or status. But opportunities are not infinite. And the less knowledge, the fewer resources available for risk, and the fewer relationships they have, the less likely they are to identify and swarm new relationships.

  • Review: Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo

    “Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa.” We know: Aid is bad. It creates corruption. It harms the economy. It makes nice happy Christians, and nice happy DSH’s (( Democratic Secular Humanists )) feel good about themselves. But it is terribly harmful for Africans and their civilization. Because I agree with everything she says, I’d like to say something meaningful and supportive, but everything I read in the book is old news. In the Austrian school we’ve been talking about this problem forever. Other than the fact that the author is a successful woman of African origin, this book is a easy read that is very hard to criticize for having uncomfortable motives. Good book. Good cause. Smart woman. But nothing new. What I can say is this: there isn’t any difference between the problem of giving aid to Africa, the Spanish and Portugese import of gold from the new world, and easy credit for american citizens and their expansionist government. It’s all bad.

  • Secret Wars? Sure. They’re Cheaper. (And more effective.)

    Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents By SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/15shadowwar.html

    In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists. The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands. While the stealth war began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under President Obama, who rose to prominence in part for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States government have been publicly acknowledged.

    …

    Special Operations troops under secret “Execute Orders” have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies. With code names like Eager Pawn and Indigo Spade, such programs typically operate with even less transparency and Congressional oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A.

    Why don’t we just exit these ridiculous occupations, invest heavily in these kinds of activities, and close as many bases as possible? We don’t need to hold LAND. Just air and sea – land is useless transport for tade. We need to spy and kill people. Not wage war. War is a western technology as it is practiced today. The “raider cultures’ will never surrender to western war. They have no civilization or leadership who can surrender. Oh, that’s right. Spec ops teams have been saying this since Vietnam. Martin Van Creveld has been saying this for decades. But the military bureaucracy reigns.

  • Krugman Watch: Barking Up The Wrong Tree

    Paul Krugman writes, in Permanently High Unemployment

    I really don’t think people appreciate the huge dangers posed by a weak response to 9 1/2 percent unemployment, and the highest rate of long-term unemployment ever recorded

    Paul, You will not get consensus on general liquidity (unbridled credit). You will not get consensus on government spending (expansion of the bureaucracy). You will not get consensus on redistributive infrastructure (city projects). But you will get consensus on investment in strategic competitive advantages if you can identify them. We are going to have long term structural employment. These people are not going to go back to work in their previous careers. You’re right that government can provide a solution. but that solution is to concentrate capital behind investments in competitive production that the market cannot create largely because of regulatory hinderances, or regulatory uncertainty, or regulatory competition. The greatest benefit to the country will be to invest in a new grid, triple the number of nuclear plants, and to convert as much infrastructure from hydrocarbons as possible. There is no mystery why this is a competitive advantage. It will create millions of jobs, especially in skilled trades. You’re just recommending the wrong platform for getting money into the economy. And no one is buying it.

  • High Unemployment, or Normal Employment? It Depends On The Scope Of History You’re Considering.

    Over on Questions and Observations, Bruce McQuain questions whether we’re having another “Great Depression” or just a very slow recovery. An unnamed visitor pointed to a graphic from The Atlantic and commented:

    “The median duration of unemployment is higher today than any time in the last 50 years. That’s an understatement. It is more than twice as high today than any time in the last 50 years.”

    Which is a true statement that leads to false conclusions. Instead, how about you increase the period of time you’re considering even further and say, that: “The unnaturally low rate of employment for the past century, and in particular the past fifty years, has been largely do to the combination of selling off north america to immigrants and their children, the increase in consumer products consumed by these people, the collapse of european war economies, followed by the results of the monopolization of the world monetary system. The current unemployment level is the natural consequence of the loss of the US’s temporary economic advantage, as europe caught up, and china, india, russia and other developing countries have developed similar economic models and levels of production.” That’s the analysis that has meaning. Not medium term unemployment. The monetary policy since Reagan was an attempt to revitalize american entrepreneurship and individualism by using the US’s unique position in world history to borrow against future production. However, the winning of the war against ideological managed-economies made that borrowing impossible to maintain. Furthermore, the unregulated use of that credit to fund unproductive investment (housing) rather than relative competitive investment (innovation) led to a bubble, which has now compounded the overall problem. This is not to say that we had an alternative to the revitalization of the country. Or that the european model would have yielded better results in the domestic american empire than it did in the homogenous nation states. But we are now headed toward the south american model : the exact opposite of what both the left and right desired.

  • The Economics Of Spies: What Spies Really Do

    via What Spies Really Do | Capital Gains and Games. Bruce Bartlett, in reference to the recent Russian spy case, uses an example from his past to pick on the behavioral economics of spying.  But I think, like anything else, there is more to be understood here than meets the eye. He writes:

    I remembered all this some years later when I was working at the Treasury Department and was on the distribution for some CIA raw material relating to economic issues. Almost all of it was worthless. It involved conversations some CIA agent had with a prominent foreign businessman or economist relaying information that could easily be gleaned from that day’s Financial Times.
    Suddenly, I understood what [the spy who had been interviewing me] had been up to. He could have written a memo to his bosses just regurgitating what was in the daily papers, news magazines and other public sources, but that wouldn’t have been very spy-like. It undoubtedly sounded so much better if he could relay the same identical information but say that it had been secured from a high-level congressional staffer. That’s what spies do.

    Bruce, You’re right in part. But there are other factors that might change your opinion of that experience: 0) Yes, a spy is often a bureaucrat, because he exists in a bureaucracy. Often with dismay, frustration and resignation. 1) Spies try a lot of trial-and-error relationship building. In fact, trial and error are a very important part of the business. 2) While Spies are largely from that social group we call ‘nerds’, US spies are usually amazing, wonderful, engaging, intelligent people. But they are, like everyone else, expressions of a bell curve. There are good spies and bad spies and smarter spies and dumber spies. 3) Being a spy is not necessarily doing interesting things and meeting interesting people. And these days, it is a lot more about using relationships to get access to data than it is about human opinion, which is fraught with eror and deception. When a spy talks to you, he is generally looking, like MOST ECONOMISTS ARE, for sources of data, not sources of opinion. And this is very important. Data is more valuable than opinion. They are looking for relationships that will give them access to data. So any conversational content is irrelevant. Your opinion is only a measure of the trustworthiness of the relationship.  The data on the other hand is the reward he is looking for. 4) The value in human intelligence on economic opinion, is not to be found in what you tell them. It’s to be found in the SET of ALL economic opinions found by ALL spies speaking to ALL contacts in any administration and by looking for POLITICAL patterns among the participants. It is not in what you tell them. In fact, a spy will NEVER ask you a direct question regarding his real intentions. This information is then fed to Analysts (Super nerds) who try to obtain value from it. This is a round-about way of saying that you were just a cog in a wheel. And spying is an art of subtlety. And you shouldn’t try to deduce too much about spying from your experience. A spy is, in general, engaged in the trial and error process of creating a large number of relationships while looking for opportunities to gain access to some sort of data. It is a very nerdy business. Forensic accounting and forensic communication data are considered valuable to the trade. By contrast, relationships that are valuable are ‘lottery winnings’. Sure, they target specific people and specific industries, but all the good data is actually in the private sector, and it’s far easier to get there than it is from “another bureaucratic wonk in another bureaucracy who is even more ignorant about that is going on in his country than I am”.

  • The Economist: Why Are Companies Hoarding Cash? My Answer: Uncertainty.

    THERE is a new question posed to our panel in the Economics by Invitation section:

    Much of the recent increase in private-sector saving comes from businesses. What explains the rise in corporate thrift? How long will it last, and what policies might reduce it?

    As an article in this week’s edition explains, the build-up of cash by the private sector can affect the recovery.

    If cautious firms pile up more savings, the prospects for recovery are poor. Economies will be stuck in the current—and odd—configuration where corporate surpluses fund government deficits. If firms loosen their purse-strings to hire workers and to invest, that will allow governments to scale back their borrowing.

    Economist Xavier Gabaix believes that the fear of another shock down the road is making firms cautious. Hal Varian thinks that firms are not investing because they see no signs of demand picking up anytime soon.

    Firms are not investing because they don’t see much demand for their products now or in the near-term future. And, of course, we end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy. One possible strategy would be to offer a temporary investment tax credit or accelerated depreciation allowance.

    They are hoarding cash be cause of uncertainty. Regime uncertainty. Economic Uncertainty. Even cultural uncertainty. There are so many layers of uncertainty that businesses don’t even know how to advertise. What products to bring to market. What trends can or might emerge if they help them.

    [callout]Big businesses are starting to spend BECAUSE they have cash. But recessions and job recovery are led by SMALL BUSINESS and small business cannot get credit. Credit for small business is speculative. It’s all speculative. And small business owners have nothing to borrow against. Nothing. Any hard asset is now questionable in value.[/callout]

    Big businesses are starting to spend BECAUSE they have cash. But recessions and job recovery are led by SMALL BUSINESS and small business cannot get credit. Credit for small business is speculative. It’s all speculative. And small business owners have nothing to borrow against. Nothing. Any hard asset is now questionable in value. To move the economy, consumers have to show that they’re spending. Companies have to show that they’re taking risks (investing). Any reference to demand is an antiquated method of looking at an economy. There isnt’ a demand problem unless there isn’t an uncertainty problem. Right now there is an uncertainty problem, so there isn’t room for a demand problem. To eliminate uncertainty, and to create jobs, we have to loan to small business despite their weak balance sheets. That’s the problem. In a nutshell. That’s the problem. Some of us are trying to figure out how to fund small businesses. But politically,, it seems impossible.