STIGLITZ SYNDROME ; UNACCOUNTABLE INTELLECTUALS
“Stiglitz Syndrome” after Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, referring to the phenomenon of public intellectuals being held utterly unaccountable for their bad predictions.
From Taleb
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 11:03:00 UTC
PROPERTARIANISM: WHAT IS “DEMONSTRATED PROPERTY”?
In economics we have the concept of ‘demonstrated preference’. This means that people tend to say a lot of things, but they they demonstrate by how they act, what their true preferences are, and those things are often very different from what they say.
We also have the concept of property. And, we tend to think of property as a legal concept, or a utilitarian concept. But the more interesting question is “What do people consider to be property as is demonstrate by their actions?”
That’s the interesting question. And, Propertarianism is based upon what people DEMONSTRATE by their actions that they consider their property?
It turns out, that they consider quite a few things to be property. And, with that observation, it turns out that we can explain all human action and emotion in terms of what people consider to be property.
So, with private property, we can, indeed, reduce all human rights to private property. But further, with DEMONSTRATED PROPERTY, we can reduce all human action, and perhaps, all human cognition and emotion, to statements of property.
And with that knowledge we can render different systems of economic preference into statements of a competition for the definition of property rights.
For example, using Praxeology, we can determine whether any proposed incentive is logical to the individual. With demonstrated property we can further explain why Praxeology was insufficient – because (besides the failure of ordinality) it failed to incorporate the full breadth of what humans considered to be property. And as such, could not explain their behavior.
Propertarianism, which relies upon Demonstrated definitions of property, is able, along with understanding of our cognitive biases, to complete Praxeology.
Cheers
Curt
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 10:32:00 UTC
IS IT JUST ME OR ARE SUPERCARS JUST GETTING SILLY?
You can’t actually drive them now without computer assistance, and certainly in other than a straight line. I mean, bespoke luxury interiors I appreciate. Agility I appreciate. Sure, the Diablo was just an amazing visual invention. But, really, it’s like some of these cars are the equivalent of Hubble Miniatures that my grandmother collected – silly expensive amusements for your shelf.
The new Jaguar two seater is probably perfect. Aston martin’s are mechanically weak but drivable works of art. The Porsche Cayman if it wasn’t nerf’d to protect the 911, is perfect. The smaller 355 and earlier Ferrari’s were’t good quality but they are visceral and drivable. And sure, except for terrible visibility I guess the Gallardo makes sense for flash. I can even sort of appreciate the 360’s. And the performance Bentley’s. But… I just don’t get the whole really-big-pretend-race-car thing. Sports cars I understand. GT’s I Understand. Luxury I understand. Performance cars I understand. But really ugly, loud BLING, I just don’t get. Must be a class thing… Just seems like incredibly bad taste to me.
Sigh.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 10:16:00 UTC
http://reason.com/archives/2013/03/24/how-debt-ruins-systemsTALEB ON HOW DEBT CREATES FRAGILITY
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 10:06:00 UTC
THE DEMOCRATIC HUMANITARIAN RELIGION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL MODEL VS ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM MASQUERADING AS A RELIGION.
(And aristocracy, liberty and reason a casualty of their mysticisms.)
“The many varieties of Socialism, Syndicalism, Radicalism,Tolstoyism, pacifism, humanitarianism, Solidarism, and so on, form a sum that may be said to belong to the democratic religion, much as there was a sum of numberless sects in the early days of the Christian religion. We are now witnessing the rise and dominance of the democratic religion just as the men of the first centuries of our era witnessed the rise of the Christian religion and the beginnings of its dominion. The two phenomena present many significant analogies.
…. The social value of both those two religions lies not in the least in their respective theologies, but in the sentiments that they express. As regards determining the social value of Marxism, to know whether Marx’s theory of “surplus value” is false or true is about as important as knowing whether and how baptism eradicates sin in trying to determine the social value of Christianity–and that is of no importance at all.”
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 09:51:00 UTC
PARETO ON THE “DEMOCRATIC HUMANITARIAN RELIGION”
“The weakness of the humanitarian religion does not lie in the logico-experimental deficiencies of its derivations. From that standpoint they are no better and no worse than the derivations of other religions. But some of these contain residues beneficial to individuals and society, whereas the humanitarian religion is sadly lacking in such residues. But how can a religion that has the good of humanity solely at heart . . . be so destitute in residues correlated with social welfare? . . .[Because] the principles from which the humanitarian doctrine is logically derived in no way correspond with the facts. They merely express in objective form a subjective sentiment of asceticism. The intent of sincere humanitarians is to do good to society, just as the intent of the child who kills a bird by too much fondling is to do good to the bird. We are not . . . forgetting that humanitarianism has had some socially desirable effects. . . . But . . . humanitarianism is worthless from the logico-experimental point of view. . . . And so for the democratic religion in general.”
It’s not a surprise that I concur with his argument.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 09:45:00 UTC
http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/russians-easterneuropeans-runs-of-homozygosity-roh-and-inbreeding/LOW, LATE OUTBREEDING. RECENT SERFDOM. DIVERSITY.
The low trust in eastern europe.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-23 21:31:00 UTC
LETTER TO MATT B
(quite intelligent and literate fellow)
Matt…
Found you by accident. I was searching for comments on Veblen using google’s filter by advanced language. I suppose that is a compliment from Google on your writing.
I love your poetic language. I appreciate it. I appreciate it for its associations if not its imprecision. I have too scientific an understanding of man to agree with the actuality or possibility of what you write, but it does not mean that if it were possible I would not rather live in such a world. I would. But advocating for the impossible is not within my character or aspirations.
We have feelings for reasons. Most of them are positive toward plenty, cautious toward cooperation, negative toward scarcity, and vividly against involuntary transfers, by cheating, fraud or theft. In this sense, humans are rational creatures in so far as their abilities and cognitive biases permit them to be – and prospect theory seems to best describe our behavior.
But while nature guaranteed our progeny and perpetuation with oxytocin that provides us with good feelings from care-taking, that hormonal response is an insufficient method by which to provide people with incentives – in no small part because the distribution of sensitivity to these hormones varies considerably between individuals, groups and genders. The math is just against it.
That is the virtue of commercial consumption. In tribal society one set of stimuli evolved, and that is the one we naturally accomodate to. In early urban society, religions allows us to form uniform normative codes of action, across familial boundaries by relying on a non existent but allegorical family structure. In legal societies, these norms evolved into rules, where even some counter-intuitive rules can be enforced by threat of punishment. But neither care-taking, tribal, religious, or legal incentives provide us with sufficient incentive to act on risky ventures, and moreover, sufficient incentive to act in competition, and in the service of one another, in anticipation of long term benefit, as do credit and consumption. Further, consumption makes it possible for us to avoid the hard work of compromise that comes from the necessity of living in communal groups. This is why people choose spatial sovereignty – living independently with the ability to consume, instead of with others where compromise is necessary. In fact, we could argue that people demonstrate this preference at all times wherever it is economically possible – because they see the majority of human cooperation as rent-seeking, or free-riding not cooperation.
So I work in the world of *is* and *must* trying to solve political problems within those limitations. But that does not mean I wouldn’t rather live in your *ought* world if it were possible. I would.
Affections.
Curt
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-23 13:46:00 UTC
FEELINGS
We all have feelings about norms. Often feelings about habits. Possibly about processes. But can you have feelings about formula or calculations? Why?
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-23 12:14:00 UTC
PROPERTARIANISM (FOR WIKI)
Propertarianism is an ethical discipline within libertarian philosophy that is used to advocate and justify anarchic, private, and contractual models of government as replacements for monopolistic bureaucracies organized as states.
It is used more loosely to categorize all libertarian philosophy that gives ethical precedence to the voluntary transfer of property. The term propertarian refers both to practitioners of these ethical systems, and their arguments. Those opposed to private property may be referred to as non-propertarian or anti-propertarian.
The term “propertarian” was used originally by critics, to refer to the nearly exclusive reliance upon property rights and private property demonstrated by anarcho-capitalist libertarians in their ethical and political arguments, in order to distinguish them from the classical liberal disposition toward liberty in the American constitutional tradition.
In recent years the term has been used within the libertarian movement as a self-identifying label by those libertarians who rely on propertarian ethical arguments, but try to define practical political institutions in order to separate themselves from sentimental libertarians who rely on classical liberalism’s moral, allegorical, and historical arguments, as well as from members of the ideological anarcho-capitalist movement.
The propertarian ideologies can vary from those based upon the Propertarian canon consisting of Misesian Praxeology, Rothbardian Ethics, and Hoppian Private Government, to Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, to a variety of minor thinkers.
Libertarian philosophy, like Marxist philosophy that it was created to compete with, is a complex dogma dependent upon economic and philosophically analytical arguments that assert that voluntary transfer of private property is the only means of testing ethical arguments.
When libertarians apply this ethical technique to political philosophy, they express it as the principle that all human rights can be reduced to property rights. And further, that the only rights it is logically possible to possess are property rights. This principle rests in turn on the proposition that respecting property is the only right that people can equally grant to one another, since property rights only require that people refrain from doing something. And while people cannot all contribute actions equally because of their differences, they all can all refrain from acting regardless of their differences.
This line of argument is often difficult to master, and so many of the people with libertarian bias, simply resort to treating private property as sanctified, which allows them to rely upon more intuitive, emotionally loaded, and less complex moral arguments. The rise of “internet libertarianism” may reflect this simplification.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-21 16:46:00 UTC