Juan Sebastian Ortiz
Good stuff.
You need to get in the habit of putting out a piece a day on your core idea. ‘Cause it’s good. Just riff off something in the news. Stay on message. Keep repeating the core argument from many different angles.
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 07:06:00 UTC
THE LIFESTYLE CONSTRAINTS OF THE CATHEDRAL
I hope I never have to live a social pretense like most professors do, where they must protect their legitimacy with public conformity. I’d rather live like picasso, and chase pretty girls, art, and experiences to my last dying breath.
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 07:02:00 UTC
ITS NOT ENOUGH TO SAY ‘WE’RE ALL THICK LIBERTARIANS’
It’s not enough to say that in the end we’re all ‘thick’ libertarians. That’s not honest. The ‘thin’ libertarians are wrong, and harmful to the cause of liberty. They’ve had 30+ years to test their theory, and it’s a demonstrated failure. It is a failure because it’s an unethical and immoral basis for cooperation in a polity.
So it’s not enough to say ‘we’re all thick. The purpose of thick libertarianism is to acknowledge the failure of thin “rothbardian” libertarianism. Not to expand it. Not to critique it. But to openly state that it is an unethical and immoral failure in both theory and practice.
Now, the criticism that ‘thick’ libertarians haven’t any answers is true. But having a WRONG answer (rothbardian ‘thin’ libertarianism) and having no answer yet are two different things.
Thin ‘rothbardian’ libertarianism is false. Thick Left-libertarianism is not yet articulated as more than an intuitive and non-rational supposition. Thick right- libertarianism is at least part of an answer. thick Aristocratic Egalitarian Libertarianism is the entire answer. But AEL is not for free riders. It says we must acquire liberty through direct action by insuring the property rights of all other property owners.
A lot of libertarians are trying to find a way to justify their claims for liberty at zero cost to themselves. That wont work. It hasn’t worked. Aristocratic Egalitarianism states that we must obtain our insurance against violations of our property by entering into an insurance contract with others, to employ organized violence against any and all transgressors and usurpers.
No magical, supernatural or fantasy origins for rights are necessary.
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 06:49:00 UTC
—“Out of life’s school of war, that which does not kill us, only serves to make us stronger.”—
You can love that statement or fear it. You can seek out those wars to make yourself stronger, or avoid them and remain weaker. Aristocracy like science only learns through testing and failure. Science runs tests – luxury goods, so that all of us may benefit. The wealthy run tests of consumption so that all of us may one day have luxuries as consumer goods. Aristocracy runs tests, so that other people do not have to, and can merely learn from imitation. The common law records our successes and prohibitions and society evolves without intent, every constantly to a ‘stronger’ state, than the one before it.
Curt
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 06:38:00 UTC
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/PROPERTARIAN ETHICAL REALISM: OPERATIONALISM, INSTRUMENTALISM, INTUITIONISM, EMPIRICISM
*Or, how to cure yourself of continental and cosmopolitan obscurantism*
We can only know enough to act, with the information at our disposal. We can only attest to the truth of statements that we can demonstrate operationally. By articulating a set of statements operationally, as actions in sequence, in time, we expose each statement to subjective tests of truth and rationality. As such, unless we have knowledge of construction, stated in operational language, for all concepts upon which we rely, we cannot honestly make truth claims. That this constraint is already held in the ethics of science, but not in ethics or politics, is the reason why false economic, political, legal, moral, and ethical arguments proliferate. There is no reason extant why we cannot constraint political speech to the same standards of truth as witness in court, or scientific testimony – other than to directly license deception. Our long semi-supernatural history with mathematics has provided false legitimacy to logic and argument for centuries. Operationalism ends this fallacy, and enables us to constrain politics just as we have constrained science, to a requirement for honest statements. It was not possible to levy this constraint until we understood that the unit of commensurability in all moral actions is that of property and fully informed, voluntary exchange. However, with that knowledge nothing prevents us from making universally moral and ethical statements, nor requiring individuals to speak in operational language in order to prevent deception and theft by obscurantist means.
EMPIRICISM (VS RATIONALISM)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/
OPERATIONALISM
Only if we can describe a sequence of actions can we claim to know what it is that we say, and as such make truth claims about our statements.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/
KNOWLEDGE OF USE VS KNOWLEDGE OF CONSTRUCTION
Operationalism requires that we demonstrate knowledge of construction (causality) while knowledge of use merely demonstrates correlation
http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/02/15/knowledge-knowlege-of-construction-vs-knowledge-of-use/
CRITICAL RATIONALISM
We may make many true statements in the construction of our theories, but whether or not we have made the most parsimonious statements with the greatest explanatory power that is ultimately possible (“The Absolute Truth”) is not available to us. There are no quantifiable measurable denominators to knowledge. The exploration of theories is not tautological, and therefore not logically closed.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/cr-ratio/
MATHEMATICAL INTUITIONISM
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism/
LOGICAL INTUITIONISM
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intuitionistic/
ETHICAL INTUITIONISM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_intuitionism
NATURALISM
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/
REALISM
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/
SCIENTIFIC REALISM
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/
THE LIMITS OF REASON
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17841838-the-outer-limits-of-reason
OBSCURANTISM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscurantism
THE PRETENSE OF KNOWLEDGE
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 06:26:00 UTC
http://c4ss.org/content/23175ENDING THE DIBILITATING LIBERTARIAN DEPENDENCE ON ROTHBARDIAN LIBERTARIANISM AND THE NAP
All,
*Ending the debilitating libertarian dependence on Rothbardian Libertarianism and the NAP.*
There is a very great difference between a general rule of thumb, and the necessary basis for a body of law whose properties are reducible to property rights, that are sufficient for the resolution of conflicts between individuals, such that they do not desire an authority to resolve or prevent conflicts via means other than the law reducible to property rights. Furthermore, the means of violation of a persons’ property is not, as Hoppe has demonstrated, important, but instead, the definition of property regardless of how it is violated. To define property by aggression is to confuse cause and consequence. Aggression (NAP) against Intersubjectively Verifiable Property (IVP) as the basis for the law and resolution of disputes, is not only insufficient in the coverage of human disputes that require resolution, but NAP/IVP licenses deception and externalities, and prohibits retaliation for deception (unethical) and externalities(immoral). Meaning that objectively, the NAP/IVP licenses deception(unethical) and externalized (immoral) actions. The fact that very few human beings seem to be able to rationally articulate that NAP/IVP is immoral, or that Aggression is an insufficient prohibition for constraining unethical and immoral trade, or that defining property by means of prohibition rather than its origin as human action is non-logical, doesn’t seem to alter the fact, that the majority of humans simply intuit that something is ‘wrong’ with Rothbardian Libertarian Ethics.
Jan Lester has taken the logical route to define property as logically reflecting human actions, and quite nearly found the correct answer with ‘imposed costs’ – at least he has been closer than anyone else. However, as we have stated above, we must reduce imposed costs, up what precisely? We must have a definition of property to impose costs against. (He does, but it’s not sufficient either – and will clarify in a moment.)
So how do we define property that can be transgressed against; upon which we prohibit the imposition of costs; and limit legal transfers to and from, to voluntary, fully informed, warrantied exchange?
We can try to rely upon reason, or we can instead, look empirically at what is necessary for the elimination of demand for the state. My first question is, how do we eliminate the state, by eliminating demand for the state? It is not “what should we ask people to believe?” But what basis of organic law is sufficient for elimination of demand for the state as either a suppressor of unethical and immoral action, or a suppressor of retaliation for unethical and immoral actions, regardless of what people believe or desire.
Now, while It is difficult to imagine people wanting to enter into contracts that permit unethical behavior, if people want to enter into contracts that license various forms of immoral behavior, then that is entirely permissible – in fact it is desirable. It allows us to ‘trade’ immoralities between classes. It sets terms and limits on immoral behavior, gives contractual license, but does not redefine the fact that immoral behavior is in fact, the involuntary transfer, or consumption, of paid in capital, or the ‘imposition of costs’ upon others. As such contractual exchange allows us to conduct voluntary exchanges of ‘immoral behavior’ via market means. When no other such means of exchange is possible. So if you were to choose some normative violation, as long as you exchanged contractual terms with some other class, an exchange occurs, not a violation of property rights.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 05:47:00 UTC
http://c4ss.org/content/23175I’VE NEVER KNOWN TOM WOODS TO BE ‘CONFUSED’.
And he isn’t confused this time either.
Tom’s a rock solid intellectual. He doesn’t usually make claims he doesn’t understand. And if you take him out of context, well, you can always put an argument together against a straw man.
I riff off of Tom once in a while as an excuse to illustrate the distraction caused by Rothbardianism. But it’s never criticism of his thinking. It’s a criticism of the movement’s failure to affect change.
I probably think of Tom and Rod Long as the only not-crazy-people in that side of the movement.
Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 05:34:00 UTC
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-15 21:42:00 UTC
CHINESE EFFICIENCY : GETTING BUREAUCRATS TO COMMIT SUICIDE
—“In little over a year, close to 60 Chinese officials have died of unnatural causes, with most being suicides. The strong suspicion is that this epidemic of mysterious deaths among China’s elite is likely tied to the anticorruption campaign being led by Chinese president and party general secretary Xi Jinping.”—
Another thing the Chinese do well. Our corrupt people just hide for four years and come back for the next election cycle.
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-15 16:03:00 UTC
FIRE, BEER, MEAT, WEAPONS, EACH OTHER
Friend of mine used to say that all men really require to be happy is fire, beer, meat, weapons, and each other. Everything else is just an excuse to get the attention of women.
Source date (UTC): 2014-05-15 15:26:00 UTC