Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • Postcards From Hell: The Reason For Failed States

    Postcards from Hell

    A terrifying photo essay from Foreign Policy on the world’s failed states. Note that with just a few exceptions, the 60 or so states the magazine had determined to be “failed” are located in tropical climates. Someone recently sent me this fascinating video related to the new book by sociologist Philip Zimbardo (of the Stanford prison experiments fame–or infamy, I guess). The theme of Zimbardo’s new book is the way time is perceived among different cultures. Of relevance to the Foreign Policy essay is the idea that populations and cultures in northern climes have adopted a future-oriented timeframe, likely because it’s necessary for their survival. You have to stock food, fortify shelter, and so on to prepare for the winter months or you’re going to starve. Or freeze. Tropical populations have a more present-oriented concept of time. Food is available year round. There’s no winter for which they need to prepare. I’ve read some interesting commentary on how these differing concepts of time might explain why warmer countries have been slower to develop than cooler ones.

    The reasons for the under-development of Tropical States are as as follows: 1) Disease gradients are lower (safer) in the cold and higher (harsher) in the warm. 2) Physical effort is difficult in hot weather, which hampers the creation of built capital. (core body temp also affects iq during exertion) 3) Agrarian cycles in the north encourage cottage industry in winter, farming in spring and fall and war in summer. This creates certain social orders that foster human, built and technical capital accumulation. Compare to the brutal survival farming of the Chinese and their 360 day-a-year discipline of rice farming. 4) Rivers or seas, but rivers in particular provide safe, easy and low cost product transport. The opposite is true: some areas are simply geographically resistant to trade. 5) Unequal distribution of useful plants and animals favors certain regions. As well as agrarian productivity. 6) Access to trade means access to knowledge, and greater availability of resources and technology. This increases the probability of innovation, and the development of ‘virtues’ as we understand our commercial and moral code.

    [callout] The abstract thing we refer to as society, that ‘thing’ that is embodied in the accumulated habits that we call ‘social order’, are the most important and expensive forms of human capital. [/callout]

    7) The abstract thing we refer to as society, that is embodied in the accumulated habits that we call social order, are the most important and expensive forms of human capital. These habits define the unspoken normative goals that define cooperation and coordination. (The set of things that we don’t do: the opportunities we do not sieze. We pay for social institutions by forgoing opportunity, we pay for infrastructure and governance with the results of trade.) These institutions include our different definitions of public and private property, manners, ethics, morals and rituals. These require political institutions that perpetuate them one adopted. 8) General technical knowledge. (how to craft things) General systemic knowledge (how the natural world operates). We often confuse education with practical knowledge and scientific knowledge. ( the Muslim world is full of Islamic studies which do nothing except persist in resisting ignorance. the sub Saharan world is still in the embrace of magical thinking. ). Commerce not education (imitation of practice) is the primary means of knowledge transfer. 9) Concordant technologies. Civilizations need to accumulate a greatdeal of human capital in order to adopt certain technologies before they can adopt others, else these technologies are not disruptive, and do not increase the division of knowledge and labor. Otherwise tyrants simply use it to institutionalize corruption and profiteering. This isn’t any different from children but on a larger scale. If people do not forgo the opportunity to misuse a technology, they will never be able to gain its productive benefits. You don’t give a child a gun. 10) Social orders. The west was built by fraternal orders of city/market joint stockholders, partly because of the high cost of equipment and training. This is the source of our republican sentiments, as well as our tools of argument,reason and science. Other societies have not been so lucky. Now we get to how westerners hurt some cultures: 1) Creating political boundaries across tribes destroys their ability to create human capital because it over stimulates the need for group persistence and impedes the development of common market habits. Thievery and tribal banditry is much easier and cheaper than creating trade and infrastructure. Even today, there is no small sentiment among males that suggests civilization has limited their potential access to mates. 2) Colonialism under England was effective in creating stability. In fact the hallmark of the Anglo model is stability and stability fosters the accumulation of all forms of capital. If you were colonized by someone else, then you will suffer for it. Anglo social technology is as important as the development of Greek science and reason. That technology, unbenknownst to most of us, is the development of abstract principles that allow calculation and coordination. ( this is a very complex topic.). French colonies are a disaster. 3) Economic interference, and in particular the crime of Charity. Ths is a hotly debated problem. But individual and locals assistance by devoted people seems to make a difference, while insertion of capital is extremely harmful to developing economies that must transform from tribal to market economies. Unpleasant realities :

    [callout]IQs are unequally distributed in different races, and in clases within those races. And that all people are racist in that they prefer acting within and in cooperation with people of their race. And this will never change, ever … [/callout]

    And the one factual reality that the vast body of people will fail to accept in the face of universal, overwhelming and scientifically evidence: that iqs are unequally distributed in different races, and in clases within those races. And that all people are racist in that they prefer acting within and in cooperation with people of their race. And this will never change, ever, simply because of the imitative nature of man, his need to learn, and his desire to learn from those he most easily can imitate. And the consequential need for, conceptions of status in order to choose who to imitate.

    [callout]While economic classes are semi randomly plastic, social classes are decidedly inelastic.[/callout]

    When the hard reality is that women are hypergamic (marry up), while men have a wider iq variance than women, it presents men with the need to compete for mate selection. And this system requires a diverse economy of status symbols within each race and class that guarantee the eternal search for demonstrable differences in status in order to pursue both mates and opportunities for alliances.. Racism is permanent as is classism. The dirty secret of the human genome project is that class is genetically determinant. While economic classes are semi randomly plastic, social classes (which are readily evidenced in the postings on this and other blogs) are decidedly inelastic. (spoken as a member of the upper middle class). Furthermore IQs are different in consequence between groups. A white, Jew or east Asian with a sixty iq is perceptibly broken. A sub saharan African is not – he or she just has a higher barrier to the learning of abstractions. In general, To maintain machines requires a 105 IQ. To get a liberal education requires an IQ of 110. To design machines requires an IQ of 122 . To design abstractions requires an IQ above 130. To innovate upon a system of thought requires, it appears, above 140. Everyone else simply uses the tools created by others. It is demonstrably true that the top quintile has more influence on productivity of the society than all the rest combined. Since all societies are run by minority elites (even ours) the composition of elites in government, intelligence in the middle classes, and capable mechanics in the proletariat determine the competitive rates of innovation and change in a society. There are also ways to manufacture ignorance. Some religions are regressive. In fact it could be reasonably argued that many are simply dangerous. The reason one is out gunned out germed and out steeled, so to speak, is a function of a culture’s willingness to adapt disruptive technologies. Luddites perish. Most of the scriptural religions are Luddite systems of thought.

    [callout]… it does not take a genius to run a market economy. As our politicians demonstrate daily.[/callout]

    Despite these iq distribution differences, it does not take a genius to run a market economy. As our pliticians demonstrate daily. What is important is that in any sufficiently large body of people exist sufficient numbers to adopt the rule of law, the intitutions of trade, and some form of capital production. The problem is one of numbers: getting the barbarians and potential corrupt bureaucrats to forgo opportunities for personal gain in order to fund the development of their human capital. The problem of coordinating production in a division of knowledge and labor requires a great deal of sacrifice. It is the is a sufficient set of principles govern the progress and adaptability of cultures. As other readers have commented, colonialism is perhaps the greatest determinant today of the relative state of failed nations. I hope this was helpful in providing food for thought.

  • An End To Nato? A Different Form For The Monarchical Role

    An End To Nato, “Mike DiBaggio” from The Paleolibertarian Digest

    There was once a time when the US hated piracy so much they went to war over it, but that time has obviously come to an end. Israel’s attack on the Turkish aid ship has generated little obvious outrage in the US, but then again neither did the assault on the USS Liberty. Meanwhile the rest of the world is pretty upset, and Turkey especially. Supposedly, the Turks have vowed to send naval escorts with their ships in the future. The problem for Israel then is that Turkey is a member of NATO. If their ships are attacked again, they it stands to reason that they will try to invoke Article V and call for military retaliation against Israel.

    I agree in principle. However it appears that NATO is a parallel political organization that allows more stable relationships and stronger intelligence gathering and processing than do democratic societies and their fleeting party fashions. NATO functions as a weak imitation of monarchic relationships (which were military alliances) and NATO is providing the material value that was traditionally provided by monarchic relationships. There is no NATO, other than the US military. There really hasn’t every been a NATO other than the US military. The europeans are not capable of projecting power outside of their coastlines. The only material value nato has is to allow the US power in trade negotiations and to increase US debt capacity because of the demand that trade power places upon the dollar. So, while Mike’s logic is accurate given the NAME of NATO, it’s not quite right given the FUNCTION of NATO. The monarchic militaristic social order and social class still exists in the west. It is just nearly invisible because of the predominance of popular representative democracy. Just as the upper class is invisible to society, the military is in visible, and it’s very crucial, very useful, very capitalist relationships and culture are invisible. This is one of the benefits and dangers of democratic systems. They make the real problem of maintaining trade routes and enforcing contracts, and preventing shifts in power by military means, into the art, artifice and entertainment of redistributive government. This distracting entertainment makes the population entirely incognizant of what every poorer country’s citizens understand very clearly : that the purpose of the government, if there is any purpose at all, is to establish and pool investment within a geography so that citizens can compete in, or even participate in, the market. And that this is possibly the only legitimate purpose of government other than territorial defense, and the resolution of differences over property. And the demonization of the military is propaganda for taking political control from the monarchy and transferring it to the middle class under the system of classical liberal republican government. (Just as political control moves to the masses under the system of democratic socialist secular humanism.) Schumpeter didn’t go far enough. Socialism isn’t the only problem we must guard against. Its losing the entire reason why people coordinate in groups: to compete in the market. Or to fail to and return to poverty. Schumpeterian processes might not end in a slowly declining socialism, but a catastrophic end of a society, by ending its comprehension of the market.

  • Hubris, Regulation, Artificial Life and Zombies

    Mariam Melikadze at Adamsmith.org references the movie 28 Days in order to criticize irrational and premature regulation.

    “And so, much like of the opening scenes of an apocalyptic movie, science has reached a great milestone, … The era of bioengineered creatures has officially begun. … But in all apocalyptic movies the great invention inevitably goes wrong. The environmentalists seem to have picked up on this: only a few days have passed since the discovery was revealed and they are already demanding a ban on synthetic biology. Enter regulation, the obvious answer to all of mankind’s problems.”

    Of course, the sentiment expressed in these movies, and our greek myths, is a warning against hubris. In science, economics, politics, and any other personal vanity we engage in. She is right that we cannot unlearn technology. She is right that civilizations who do not adopt technology are conquered by those who out-gun, out-germ, and out-steel them. She is right that these technologies once mastered, tend to deliver material benefits to the survivors. However, that doesn’t mean we should not be cautious, experimental, and cogent of our potential for hubris. And to be cautious, we need to keep that particular mythology alive, lest we invent other technologies like eugenics, complex derivatives, communism and thalidomide. Or engage in other acts of hubris, like the belief that regulation solves mankind’s problems.

  • Russia And Germany Instead Of France And Germany? One Can Only Hope

    Stratfor has released an article today that suggests that German and Russia have more to offer each other than does the rest of Europe. Russia has intelligent labor, and resources, but it has a terrible capital structure and little technology.  Germany has technology, a terrific capital structure, but needs resources and labor.  Better yet, the labor can stay where it is: in Russia, rather than immigrating into Germany and further burdening its infrastructure and creating additional civil unrest. France will have little chance but to follow germany into the relationship, because it is not powerful enough on its own to unify the Club-Med states (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (the Pigs). What I find most humorous about this pairing, especially given the pro-german position I’ve taken in the Anglo-German European civil war, is that despite being defeated by the Anglo coalition, Germany once again has proven that it is a more prosperous and hard-working and innovative culture than its local competitors.  It has risen from the ashes so to speak.   And left England in the distance. I can’t think of anything I find more attractive: a unified germany and russia.  After all, the south and west have contained Germany for two and a half millennia. The world wars were only the most recent instance of german containment. Now, this has broader implications for Byzantine civilization.  Germany and northern europe are protestant christian civilizations with a positive ethic.  Byzantine civilizations are nominally christian, but have a nihilistic ethic.    How will cooperation change either of these ethics?   How would europe change if the PIGS are left to their own devices? Stratfor has suggested in the past that Turkey is in the likely heir to islamic power, but not byzantine power.  A German-Russian alliance that built byzantine power would be superior at keeping the mandatory-ignorance of Islam at bay, and might resurrect Byzantine civilization, and restore Russia to a leadership position. This kind of talk would have been heresy during the cold war and the possibility of communism. But post-communism, in a world of universal capitalism,  it seems like a win for Germany, Russia, eastern Europe, the rest of Europe by consequence, and humanity by implication.

  • Payback Time? But what’s the fee?

    Entitled “Payback Time”, this NYT article by Steven Erlanger states that “Crisis Imperils Liberal Benefits Long Expected by Europeans” I’d like to clarify this argument a bit with the following points: 1) It will take somewhere between 3-5% of GDP to correct the retirement funding problem given the current ratio of prices and payments. 2) The problem with any policy is in determining the degree of uncertainty with regard to the future state of production (how much the productive people in any society will earn without the historical advantage that west has had in capitalist political and economic systems.) This means that the 3-5% number could be about the same, or it could be as much as twice that amount. 3) Most of the world, Europe in particular, will need to increase military expenses as the US loses it’s ability to project the power needed to police world trade routes, and it’s citizens lose the will to do so. We do not know what this cost will be. For european countries it will likely be on the order of 10% of GDP if history is any measure, that will mean roughly doubling the wealthier countries in europe, and quadrupling the spending of the eastern fringe countries.

    [callout]The fact that this economic instability is going to be caused by demographic changes, much of which will be caused by immigration of non-integrating subcultures, will remain the unspoken elephant in the room for years to come.[/callout]

    4) Most of the developed world will have to increase expenses on infrastructure due to aging populations. We do not know this number. Health care in particular will need to be rationed further as the cost of prolonging life continues to climb. 5) Cost of government is increasingly expensive and burdensome as productivity declines. 6) demographic changes underway, the increasing differences between american super-regions, and the lack of integration of immigrants, and the rising racial tensions, will lead to the increasing potential for political upheaval, somewhere in the 2015 – 2025 range, which would put extraordinary financial burdens on the world as regional power vacuums forced rapid reallocation of resources worldwide. The conservative position would argue that the world system is much more fragile than we assume, and that it’s prudent to cautious in our expectations of the future. The libertarian position would be to change from speculative policies that rely on growth and government, to calculable policies that rely upon saving and productivity, and in doing so, create both security and prosperity rather than worrying about the degree of risk we’re taking on. The likely cost then, is somewhere between a low of 3% assuming stability, and a high of 15% of GDP over the next ten years. The fact that this economic instability is going to be caused by demographic changes, much of which will be caused by immigration of non-integrating subcultures combined with aging dependent generations will remain the unspoken elephant in the room for years to come.

  • Krugmanism Of The Day: The Debt-Slaver Strikes Again.

    Latvia is often cited as an example for Greece as it undergoes a brutal internal devaluation while keeping its currency pegged to the euro….. Yes, that’s right: the oh-so-virtuous Baltics have done worse than Iceland. … But their money is sound.

    Well Paul, what do you recommend instead? If not unemployment, and social reorganization and price recalculation, then what? Destruction of what little concentrated capital that there is? Enslaving the population with debt in the false hope that these countries will be able to compete well enough on the world stage that they work their way out of it? Rapid redistribution rather than rapid reorganization? The answer is undoubtably the loss of sovereignty in exchange for security, without acknowledging that people value status and sovereignty as much as they do security. That is, unless your ambition is debt slavery. Which it is, I’m sure: to replace violence and militarism with fraud and slavery. But then, to understand this, one would have to have an ancestry that could hold land, and a culture willing to die for it, as a means of maintaining freedom. Debt-totalitarianism is no different from force-totalitarianism. Personally I find it simply the difference between the honesty of violence and the fraud of debt enslavement. This is the underlying problem with all Krugmanism – totalitarianism under the guise of a false economic equality. Watch what future discipline the Baltics develop versus the Greeks. The most important institutions are those of cultural habits: behavioral institutions are paid for by the accumulation of forgone opportunities: ie: discipline.

  • Krugman Watch: On The Right’s Level Of Agitation

    The right is very angry right now, even more angry than the early Clinton years. And they are only going to get more agitated. De -masculinizing the military was Clinton’s only real mistake, as the military fraternal order and its meme of group-persistence are conservative’s most agitating sentiment. Obama’s transfer of risk from the poor (unenfranchised risk creators) to small business owners and professionals (enfranchised risk takers), and his general attack in word and deed on the right’s social status and values, plus the sentiment that the ‘rules of the game’ (the constitution, which is the core value of The Classical Liberal wing of Conservatives) were violated to pass the healthcare bill over the will of the populace, have inflamed them. Furthermore, the right lives in a consciousness of the status-economy, which consists of accumulated sacrifices in order to achieve status, and status which increases the probability of opportunity, and opportunity which when combined with risk, create wealth and security. This status-economy is universal, permanent, and material, and vastly amplified in any heterogenous empire. (Conservatives don’t wear funny hats as identity symbols, everyone else wears Conservative hats in order to enter the conservative status-economy.) Just like taxes which are a cost, there is a maximum amount of wealth transfer that a group will tolerate. The political problem is no longer money. It has become a status problem in a heterogenous empire. Empires break because of such differences. (Empires break for two reasons: excess cultural heterogeneity and insufficient institutional calculability: religion and law are insufficiently marginal influences in heterogenous urban societies. No civilization has survived the transition from homogenous to heterogenous density, because it ceases to be in group interests to pay the opportunity cost of respecting institutions whose underlying causal pressure to conform to them diminishes with anonymity. And for your side, the left, it would help if one did not confuse preferences with truths. Because equality, as a value, is contra-logical to the status economy. There is no evidence that people are equal, nor that equality can persist for any period of time. There is a minimum interpersonal, and inter-class, status delta that is tolerable in any society, and the more diverse that society, the more exaggerated must be the delta. This is as much a law, as is supply and demand. And only silly people think otherwise. As for exemplary European models applied to the US, and perceived happiness thereof as a metric, the power-and-weakess discount must be applied to europeans, as demonstrated by the written record of migrants, almost all of which choose the USA model over the european simply because of decreased costs. The opinions europeans hold of their policies are not met by the opinion of european and american expatriates, who actually possess the information to make such a valuation. The popular opinion is nothing but the reversal of power and weakness postwar. Combined with the homogeneity of the germanic countries, this creates an opinion-bias that makes european opinion irrelevant to American policies. The problem for our nation, is that we are an empire that used to be 80% homogenous, becoming an empire whose cultures are increasingly at material odds. In particular the status-discount whites have been paying is reaching intolerable proportions. Why? Because there is a maximum cultural delta, not the least of which is driven by IQ variances. But primarily driven by the human preference for similar-looking and similar-acting people. That preferences is material because of the STATUS economy experienced by people who compete across racial and cultural boundaries. In other words, for the majority, there is a status advantage, and therefore an economic advantage to group identity. In other words – Cultures do not integrate when status deltas reach a cliff-effect. Instead, they hunker-down in tribes. The data is becoming quite clear that the american melting pot was a myth post-european integration. It is a myth here, and will be a myth here and everywhere. And when people do not integrate, they do not tolerate redistribution. It’s funding you’re opposition. This is the reality of human existence. As for the popularity of leftist sentiments versus conservative sentiments, the country is vastly center right. But our universities, are vastly left. Our business community is vastly right. One of these communities is an outgrowth of theology. The other operates using practical techniques. Conservatives never forget this. Liberals (the left kind) always choose to.

  • Krugman Watch: Debt Totalitarian

    Default, Devaluation, Or What?

    Is there anything more to say about Greece? Actually, I think so.

    Krugman goes on to comment on the loveliness of more debt. Why? Because debt causes two systemic changes. First, it transfers power to the banking class and the state. Second, it replaces law, custom, and religion, as a means of social management. We have evolved three systems so far for managing society: first phase: religion and shared labor, second phase: law and taxation, and third phase: credit and debt. My Krugman wants us to enter the third phase without understanding the first: concentration of resources, the second: trade routes and markets, or escaping it’s claws. [callout title=Debt Slavery]Mr. Krugman your world view is full of debt slavery.[/callout] The truth is that we must keep each of these systems of social organization. Religion is a means by which we establish general goals for concentrating effort and resources. Soldiery and market making allow us to control land, trade routes, and to build markets and a division of labor. Credit and Debt let us build a more complex world of incentives and regulations on a more granular individual basis so that we may increase the division of knowledge and labor. But none of these systems is sufficient alone. A reader comments to this effect on Mr Krugman’s blog:

    Konstantin, New York, N.Y. May 4th, 2010 Mr. Krugman your world view is full of debt slavery. Greece should leave the tyrannical European Union and then if it wishes can devalue their currency but not too much.

    To which I responded:

    “Mr. Krugman your world view is full of debt slavery.” Quite true. But this strategy suit’s Mr Krugman’s desire to move society from upper class military control over trade routes for the purpose of creating markets, to working class bureaucratic control over individual lives for the purpose of creating the illusion of psychological certainty. In other words, from a growing to a dying society. Since we possess too little information to predict the future, we invariably make our judgements about the future according to our class and cultural metaphysical assumptions. We confuse these assumptions or ‘preferences’ for truths. But they are just ‘silly ideas’ writ large, whose silliness is obscured by ignorance, time and complexity.

    And unfortunately, it would be a full time job to criticize Mr Krugman’s silly logic. He complains elsewhere that the volume of criticism has increased of late, and that it’s from the Crazies. Crazies simply include a vast number of people in and out of the profession that see him as not an economists but a political hack. But I’m not sure that there is any better way of illustrating the foolishness of the left than to build a body of work that articulates one’s position by showing the consistency of errors in one’s opposition. And it’s entertaining as well as utilitarian. Unfortunately, I dislike the man.

  • Jefferson’s Virtue Of Violence

    Today, on United Liberty, the daily Jefferson quote was:

    “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” – Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush (1800)

    Freedom is created by, and maintained by, the use of violence, and a man’s capacity for violence is his political wealth. The promise he will use his violence to create freedom, is met with the lack of his need to use it for any purpose whatsoever. It is a wealth sparely spent with high returns.

  • Another Round On Paparazzi

    Peter Surda April 21, 2010 at 2:35 am

    However, it is still a person’s asset, regardless of price, because people ACT as if it is an asset, and that asset has material value to individuals, which we can determine by surveying the ACTIONS that people take, businesses take, regarding their reputation

    But this is valid with regard to anything, not only reputation. This does not help define property, it confuses. Any change has a negative effect on someone. Does that mean that any action whatsoever is a property right violation? This is one of the reasons why I reject the notion of immaterial trespass. Instead, I humbly propose that only those immaterial negative effects that are defined in contracts are to be prosecuted (i.e. contract violations). Furthermore…

    Property is a claim on an opportunity to make use of any object, material or abstract, upon which men can act.

    It is not necessary to own immaterial goods to make use of them, therefore from the existence of an opportunity you cannot imply ownership. As I said before, with immaterial goods, anything causally related is “making use of”.

    We can create representations of abstracts, can’t we? We’ve created plenty of them. I can stake a claim on land. I can form an abstract entity called a joint stock corporation, and then sell shares. I can marry someone and get a marriage certificate. I can get a receipt for a deposit. I can sign a contract. I can buy an option. I can wager a bet. Why can’t I stake a claim on a formulae? Or a brand or trademark? Or a design or patent? Simply because they require uniqueness against a broader pool of people, because are treated as first-come first-serve exclusivity, rather than an auction model, and because the market cannot expand to provide better and more accurate service than does the state. These registries try to prevent copying and bypassing investment (theft) rather than parallel innovation, which is in the market interest. Under the Hoppian property scheme land registries are maintained and protected by insurance companies and private firms instead of the state. But to limit the scope of property is to limit the competitive ability of groups to compete against other groups. The problem is that the government owns the registry and terms by which abstracts are registered, while denying the purpose for which we enact the registry: to encourage capital investment so that goods and services can be rapidly brought to market at lower risk rather than through direct subsidy. But in turn these devices can be used to prevent products and services from entering the market, and in particular, products and services that do not require capitalization, and that they too often endure long enough to create artificial monopolies. Book protections that persist beyond one generation of offspring of the author. Banks regulate their own ‘market’ of loans. Each stock market has regulations. Why can’t we have markets for other claims? Why can’t we auction off uses of a design, rather than simply deny competitors to the market. it’s the state monopoly that’s the problem. Material trespass and immaterial trespass are simply conventions driven by the ease of registry. In a man’s mind he can know his physical property, and know that any other object is not his physical property. If we could catalog ideas just as easily, would we not treat them as such? We do. We create ‘pointers’ to externally reference memories. They’re real world representations of abstractions. Is the purpose of the libertarian program to create a platform for cooperation and trade, to minimize the potential for government corruption, interference, theft, bureaucracy, waste, violence, class warfare, and exploitation using the evidence of how men actually act? Or is to create another silly religion that is contrary to the behavior of human beings, or is it just another absurd metaphysics like Marxism? A libertarian society must be one by consent – or we need to abandon the principle of non violence and implement it by force. And if it’s to be a society of consent, then it must reflect human behavior in order to gain consent. Human behavior, and the evolution of our knowledge, dictates that we leave the system for definition of property and the registry thereof open to innovation. Not closed, and limited to material constructs. The general body of arguments on this topic are reductio and illusory because of it. The real issue at hand is that in the division of labor, specialized knowledge is required to in order to innovate, and innovation in all but the black swan areas requires capital concentration, and markets are best served by their own division of labor in the act of policing fraud and theft, or even of registrations of claims against property. Government is not an innovative organ, and it is a corrupt and slow moving one. The issue instead, is to adopt a Hoppian division of labor and competition rather than a Rothbardian Luddite program, or a government-run monopoly program that by it’s very nature is expressly counter to the innovation, division of labor and specialization of knowledge needed to keep pace with our innovations, almost all of which, are currently ABSTRACTIONS. In this EXPANDING WORLD, the Hoppian model of privatization and risk management using insurance schemes rather than the monopoly of government is a superior answer than that of the Rothbardian Luddite model, which artificially Harrison-Bergeron’s” the civilization – to a man. If we can protect several property so that it can be invested in. We can protect abstract property so that it can be invested in. The institutional problem is registration and regulation. Not Rothbardian abstinence. And not to get a population to adhere to an absurd metaphysics. But to create institutions wherein real human beings can interact using real human innovations, almost all of which are abstractions, and most of which are now beyond individual comprehension. ( Property requires memory. Institutions are a form of social memory. Institutions educate indirectly. Memory becomes behavior. Behavior becomes normative.) Our problem is institutions, not beliefs. Actions not words. And any libertarian, and anarchic program that would simply force people to prefer to resort to violence to resolve differences, or which would impoverish the greater body of people by making them less competitive against other groups (which Rothbardian property would do) is simply to exchange the prosperity of the market for abstract registry of opportunities for the poverty of the bazaar society. It is regression. It is to limit man to the industrial age. It’s a Luddite philosophy. The anarchic research program’s undermining of the historic legitimacy of the state is separate from the use of non-state (insurance) institutions to maintain both real and abstract property. Focus on the right problem. Private, competitive, market institutions that divide knowledge and labor and provide service over government monopoly institutions that provide corruption, theft and incompetence.