Curt Doolittle

Source: Facebook

  • BRINSON: LIBERTARIAN. WEALTH MAGNET. Gary has been, through proxy, an investor i

    http://www.brinsonfoundation.org/whoweare/founder_statement.shtmlGARY BRINSON: LIBERTARIAN. WEALTH MAGNET.

    Gary has been, through proxy, an investor in one of my companies. A smart man from seattle who we all admire. If you read this biography, or read his book, you’ll love him too.

    BUT VIRTUE DOESN’T ROLL DOWNHILL

    Unfortunately, the fellow that works for him, and is on our board, is a dishonest lying thief who has systematically stolen from our shareholders. It is a blatant constructed effort to create conditions whereby any profits are directed not to shareholders equally, but to him alone.

    And I think, now that we have some clear evidence, it’s about time I did something about it. I couldn’t do it while CEO. But I can do it now.

    But I think Brinson beat me to it. From what I’ve just learned, he’s been released from his position.

    That’s good. Now all I have to do is prevent him from ever getting another one.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-07 06:14:00 UTC

  • “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST TOTALITARIAN JUSTIFICATIONIST WANTED” Well. That’s the pro

    “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST TOTALITARIAN JUSTIFICATIONIST WANTED”

    Well. That’s the proper translation of an ad I just recieved in my inbox. They’re seeking “German Political Theorists”.

    Sigh.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-07 05:40:00 UTC

  • PFS Friends That Didn’t Make It This Year: Hoppe succeeded. We have become a fam

    PFS Friends That Didn’t Make It This Year:

    Hoppe succeeded. We have become a family. And your PFS family misses you. So please try to save up a bit and come next year. OK?

    You know who you are. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-07 05:37:00 UTC

  • I met an orthodox priest (Decon?) a few months ago, walking down the street. Eld

    I met an orthodox priest (Decon?) a few months ago, walking down the street. Elderly. One cataract covered eye. Perfect english. And he had that magic that wise old priests used to have when they were our educated class.

    I wish the church had allowed marriage, and adopted to modernity by teaching all european history as moral lessons. But they took poverty as an intrinsic good, rather than as a necessary means of ensuring individual commitment to society which was during most of its history, poor.

    We left our church sure. But our church abandoned us in favor of developing nations.

    Now we have Academia, Totalitarian Humanism, Marxism. And the church is no longer our institutional opposition to the state. We no longer have an independent moral institutional framework to separate us from the judicial and military institutions.

    We destroyed that balance of power. Then the Feminists allied with the marxists and destroyed the family.

    Sad.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-07 04:24:00 UTC

  • Westerners are crazy. Russians and Ukrainians are wonderful people – both east a

    Westerners are crazy. Russians and Ukrainians are wonderful people – both east and west. Trust will develop more slowly. Commerce will spread slowly. But they will get it. If they didn’t use Cyrillic they’d be indistinguishable from the rest of us. But that they are distinguishable probably helps them resist us.

    Their the only sane Christians left. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-07 04:19:00 UTC

  • Is it just me, or did Microsoft taint the Metro style UI so badly that it’s dead

    Is it just me, or did Microsoft taint the Metro style UI so badly that it’s dead?

    I realize that flatness is fashionable (as resolution increases it’s only natural). But the metro UI, at least to me, reads as synonym for failure.

    I’m overly sensitive to this stuff. So maybe it’s just me.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-07 04:04:00 UTC

  • THE 150 YEAR BATTLE Hmmm… We won the battle over capitalism – property rights.

    THE 150 YEAR BATTLE

    Hmmm…

    We won the battle over capitalism – property rights.

    We’re in the middle of winning the battle over economics – a) the necessity of preserving the quality of the information system, b) the limit of credit and interest, and c) the restoration of the contract between the generations.

    We are very close to overturning a century of progressive anti-reason and anti-science.

    We have at least undermined the fantasy of universal democracy as a ‘good’.

    But we are just beginning to work on institutions and norms. And, of all of these. That will be the most difficult I think. I do not know if we can put destruction of the family by the feminists back in the bottle.

    (Which as a nerd, is what makes it an interesting problem. 🙂 )

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-07 03:44:00 UTC

  • HUMAN BEHAVIOR QUESTION: LOTTOCRATIC BUSINESS PROCESSES? If you have worked with

    HUMAN BEHAVIOR QUESTION: LOTTOCRATIC BUSINESS PROCESSES?

    If you have worked with me before, you know that I have a sort of personal commitment to eliminating overhead bureaucracy and empowering the people who actually do the work. I’ve found that it’s better to distribute management functions to a large number of people, each of whom does just a little bit of it.

    The side effects are fascinating. First, you educate a lot of people about how to run a business. If you rotate these duties you basically train most of your staff in how to operate the boring but necessary parts. Second, it makes it impossible for people to use their management duties to obscure information. Third, it prevents stagnation and encourages innovation. People want to eliminate these little process functions rather than expand them. So they tend to invent ways of making them go away.

    TIME CARDS AND EXPENSES AS LOTTOCRACY

    I have been toying with the idea of lottocratically assigning timesheet approvals around a services company. That is, anyone with one year of experience or more gets X randomly assigned timesheets and expense reports to review and approve. Most of what is accomplished by approvals is error checking. If accounting, upon entering and posting, approves it too, your score goes up, and if they reject it your score goes down.

    Now you might think this is crazy. But I’m pretty sure, that if I made it an option. Most people in any company would want to do it. Particularly the less experienced people. And the senior people would avoid it at all costs.

    People would want to do it because it increases Sovereignty. They are more in control, and participating more in their environment. And from my perspective, an informed and participatory employee is happier one, who brags about his or her job to others. Which helps recruiting. And customers ‘SENSE’ it. And that ‘sense’ sells.

    I’M WONDERING WHAT YOU THINK?

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-07 01:19:00 UTC

  • ARTICLE: DOGS SHARE OUR EMOTIONS Which is pretty obvious really. They’re more li

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?pagewanted=allGREAT ARTICLE: DOGS SHARE OUR EMOTIONS

    Which is pretty obvious really. They’re more like us than most primates.

    Now, the author makes the assertion that personhood, and rights are properties of sentience. And I am not sure that I agree with that. Rights are a property of cooperation, not emotional or intellectual presence.

    We show compassion to other creatures. We show compassion to children. But we do not give children ‘rights’. They can’t make use of them. Nor can they understand them. Likewise, any human that would demonstrate a lack of compassion to a child, a dog, or a goat for that matter, is a threat to the rest of us either materially or normatively. Our ‘do not unto others’, rule (the silver rule) cannot be broken with any sentient creature, because it cannot be a choice. This is a normative, moral, requirement. Not a legal one. So it is not that animals have rights. It is that humans have duties of care. We regulate humans, because we can. And we punish humans because we can.

    We cannot go around throwing the term ‘right’ around as comfortably as liberals tend to. A right is a contractual property of voluntary exchange. An obligation is a property of a contract of voluntary exchange. A duty is an obligation that is part of the human contract for acceptance into any society. It is a tax. A fee. An insurance policy. Your personal commitment that you are safe to have and hold for the rest of us, and capable of having ‘rights’ by voluntary exchange.

    If you cannot hold your duties of care, then you are a threat not only to children and animals, but to the rest of us as well.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-06 16:17:00 UTC

  • A YEAR IN KIEV. THANKS FOR YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT. Just a short thank-you to all

    A YEAR IN KIEV. THANKS FOR YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT.

    Just a short thank-you to all my friends and family, Facebook and ‘non-digital’, who have supported me over the past year while building a startup abroad. You might think little things don’t matter. But they do. They matter a great deal to me.

    About a year ago, I’d come out of surgery after being pretty sure my latest health problem would be the end of me. In that state of mind, I was crazy enough to take my friend Max’s advice on building and taking a product idea to market. And smart enough to take my friend Roman’s advice on Ukraine as a place build it. So thank very much Max, and Roman. It’s all on you. 🙂

    Aside from adapting to a new environment, which isn’t that easy for my inner aspie, I had a whole host of problems. My cash flow was only half of what I’d anticipated, so I had to finance the business out of liquidating investments rather than just cash flow. I had a very hard time finding talent largely because I can’t speak the language. And the first few people we brought in, just couldn’t do the calibre of work we needed. And it’s not like I’m willing to do something mediocre. 🙂

    In May I started upgrading the staff, and in June I expanded it considerably. And since then it’s been a completely different experience. (Thank you for the great work guys.) We have a category-killer on our hands that will make every other product look antique by comparison, and give the analysts and us something fun to talk about. We are still in the middle of it. But I love not having to make compromises. And we’re not making them. 🙂

    As for living here. Any expat goes thru cycles. Of course, I share the silly parties, and crazy stuff a bit. But that was partly my “I’m still alive” phase nine months ago. I’ve tamed since then. Despite making all the right ‘connections’ here that would allow me to live a crazy life I dont live that crazy a life. I miss my family and friends of course. I miss ‘consuming’ a bit – it’s really hard to get anything good here. I miss driving. And movies. But the state of affairs in the world, and in the states in particular, is so exasperating I feel privileged to spend it in this culture, which is as beautiful as any culture can be. Thank you Veronika for taking care of me. 🙂 Thank those of you who helped me get started: Oksana Kavetska in particular. And thank those of you who think they didn’t matter: Alesiya, Elena and Valeriya. You’ve been like my family. 🙂

    Here in Kiev, I am closer to many of my European friends. Most of whom I feel more cultural kinship with than my fellow Americans. I can’t share time with them. But knowing that they’re at least REACHABLE is something that gives me comfort every day. (Aaron, Andy, Vincent, PT, Joakim, Paul and the rest. I can’t get claim hong kong is close tho. 🙂 ) So thank all of you (you know who you are) for your friendship. And seeing you at PFS recharged my batteries. I’d have to list thirty names here so I can’t. But if I say ‘The Bad Boys’ we all know who we are. Love all of you. 🙂

    Aside from my business, personal life, and health recovery, my intellectual work has progressed exceptionally well this year. And it’s just very hard to do this kind of thing without the people who nudge me along (Frank, Skye, Roman, Troy and dozens of others who are too many to list here.) Thanks in particular for my newest friends (David in particular. Darcy and many others. Frank. I’ll never stop thanking you. I would not have done this without your patience with teaching me to speak in simple direct language over a decade ago.) As for others, If I haven’t listed you here specifically please assume that I just thought of you – cause I did. I promise. (Yes. You too.) 🙂 I have an amazing long term memory. 🙂

    In Seattle a few old friends in particular always remain supportive (Tammey, Shannon, Todd, Emily, Apryl, Greg, Peter, Jason in particular). Thank you for every kind word.

    So another year. A year I wasn’t sure I had. And it’s one of the best years of my life. And it’s one of the best years, for the reason any year stands out: because of the people near and far who you can share it with.

    If you don’t have this same feeling. Try to get it before you think your interior lights are about to go out. Every day is better. Every person you interact with is more wonderful. Every achievement more joyful. Every failure, less important. Its one of our great tragedies that we fear death when there is so little to fear. But we take the time and people in our lives for granted. The clock ticks.

    My daughter, sisters, cousins, mother, friends, PFS friends, Seattle friends, Ukraine friends. Thank you for making this year possible, and enjoyable.

    Hopefully 2014 will be even better for all of us.

    Hugs and thanks.

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-06 15:36:00 UTC