Curt Doolittle

Source: Facebook

  • PROPERTARIANISM THIS YEAR? It looks like I will finish with Propertarianism – ex

    PROPERTARIANISM THIS YEAR?

    It looks like I will finish with Propertarianism – extending the work of Rothbard and Hoppe into institutions for heterogeneous societies – this year. I need, I think, about six weeks free, during the summer. And then it’ll be ready for an editor.

    This work will be limited to the system of ethics.

    Rewriting conservative and libertarian history as the history of Aristocratic Egalitarianism, and producing the time line, then documenting it, even in short form will take much longer. Easily a year or more.

    I will still need to produce the institutional framework and provide some empirical support for it. That’s the hard work left to do.

    Even then, I will still have another decade of work to do, if I live that long. (crossed fingers – ’cause I’ve put a lot of wear and tear on this collection of genes, water and chemicals ).

    But at least I’ll get the system of ethics out there in complete form.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-21 08:19:00 UTC

  • TIMES CHANGE. 🙂

    http://www.alternet.org/when-women-wanted-sex-much-more-menSEX : TIMES CHANGE.

    🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-21 02:00:00 UTC

  • MYTH OF CANCER AND THE ENVIRONMENT

    http://slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/03/cancer_cluster_in_toms_river_new_jersey_the_link_to_a_superfund_site_is.htmlTHE MYTH OF CANCER AND THE ENVIRONMENT

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-21 01:24:00 UTC

  • ARE THERE OBJECTIVELY MORAL STATEMENTS? (FROM ELSEWHERE) “There is no such thing

    ARE THERE OBJECTIVELY MORAL STATEMENTS?

    (FROM ELSEWHERE)

    “There is no such thing as objective morality only preferences and demonstrated preferences.”

    I’m not sure that’s true.

    In every society, the portfolio of norms consisting of maners (signals of fitness for voluntary transfer), ethics and morals (prohibitions on involuntary transfer), vary considerably. But all of them are signals of fitness, signals of contribution to a commons, and prohibitions on involuntary transfer.

    Some of these suites of property rights produce superior economic outcomes, and some inferior. That’s true. But they aren’t preferences. Norms are not preferences they are artifacts of the process of evolutionary cooperation according to prejudices (pre-judgements).

    Given that human beings universally eschew involuntary transfer, in every possible culture and circumstance, and will act twice as hard to punish it as they will for their own interest, its clear that it’s not a purely subjective phenomenon.

    And in fact it is a necessary phenomenon which genetics must eventually enforce. So while the arrangement of property rights and obligations in any set of norms may vary, the fact that humans observe norms out of prohibition on involuntary transfer is entirely objective.

    So, moral actions are only a preference in those cases where normative codes, like laws, are general proscriptions, and where for specific circumstances, one’s actions do not create an involuntary transfer.

    Moral codes may correctly or incorrectly constituted at any given moment (because they are intergenerational habits and must be constantly re-tested by each generation). But as long as they are prohibitions on involuntary transfers, then they are in fact, objective.

    If members of a group observe a set of norms, and by observing those norms, forgo opportunities for gratification or self interest, then they have in fact paid for those norms. If others do not pay for those norms, and constrain themselves to signaling, then that’s not an involuntary transfer.if however, others choose to sieze opportunities created by the normative sacrifice of others, then that’s theft, plain and simple.

    This is a quick treatment of one of mankind’s most challenging topics, but hopefully it will at least give you a few ideas.

    – Curt

    BTW: ALSO

    a) an action is a demonstrated preference.

    b) a preference is a demonstrated bias

    c) a bias may or may not be subject to cognition

    d) a habit is not subject to cognition, thats’ the value of them. They’re cheap.

    e) a normative habit is rarely understood, but almost universally practiced. Which is the reason we even have this conversation in the first place.

    f) a metaphysical bias is not subject to cognition, it’s almost never understood by anyone in any culture.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-20 15:49:00 UTC

  • PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE ONLY HONESTLY ACQUIRED BY ORGANIZED VIOLENCE Any attempt to

    PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE ONLY HONESTLY ACQUIRED BY ORGANIZED VIOLENCE

    Any attempt to state that rights are acquired other than by organized violence is an attempt to acquire them at a discount. In other words, it is an act of fraud. Any attempt at utilitarian justification then opens us to the utilitarianism of involuntary transfer, and undermines the entire libertarian argument that property rights are absolute.

    – Curt Doolittle : “Taking liberty out of the ghetto, and back to the aristocracy, one day at a time.” 😉

    (Libertarians should have fun with that one.) 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-20 14:59:00 UTC

  • COMPETITION AS VIRTUE The only moral duty I can be sure of, is to produce goods

    COMPETITION AS VIRTUE

    The only moral duty I can be sure of, is to produce goods and services for the market, that are free from involuntary transfer, and to do so at a profit.

    It’s the only empirical test that my ideas are proven beneficial to, and by, my fellow man.

    Everything else is fantasy. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-20 08:55:00 UTC

  • THE ONLY TEST OF ETHICAL STATEMENTS The only test of any ethical statement is wh

    THE ONLY TEST OF ETHICAL STATEMENTS

    The only test of any ethical statement is whether all transfers caused by any act, are voluntary transfers – including involuntary transfers of goods, actions and opportunity, and including both direct involuntary transfers by externality, asymmetry of knowledge, fraud, theft or violence (in that order), and including reverse involuntary transfers caused by impediment, free-riding, rent seeking, or privatization (in that order). There is no other test of any ethical statement. There isn’t. Period.

    – Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-20 06:44:00 UTC

  • ECONOMIST MAGAZINE IS WRONG ON OLIGARCHS: **FLAUNT IT. FLAUNT IT EVERYWHERE. ALW

    http://www.economist.com/news/china/21573606-rubber-stamp-billionaires-dont-flaunt-itTHE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE IS WRONG ON OLIGARCHS:

    **FLAUNT IT. FLAUNT IT EVERYWHERE. ALWAYS.**

    *That’s what a Republic is. A Natural Rotation Of Oligarchs.*

    Every country has an oligarchy. Oligarchies are NECESSARY and they are unavoidable.

    The question is which composition of people do you want to be governed by: (a) soldiers, (b) priests or (c) commerce?

    Why that list of three? Because there are only three forms of coercion avalable for humans to use in building organizations: (a) violence, (b) ostracization from opportunity and (c) exchange – or, technically, remuneration.

    If, as we have seen, people DEMONSTRATE that they UNIVERSALLY prefer to live under conditions of wealth, and only ONE of these three coercive sets CREATES wealth, then it is only logical, that china DUPLICATES the rise of the West’s aristocracy – which is the SOURCE of western prosperity – by having government run by people who udnerstaand commerce. And in particular, who understand nationalism as a commercial strategy.

    THEY DO IT RIGHT. WE DO IT WRONG NOW. Our leaders are priests of egalitarianism – who assume business will succeed and that they can simply plunder business at will. They are Not aristocrats responsible for the economic welfare of their citizens.

    China is doing it RIGHT. They’re doing it RIGHT by imitating the rise of the WEST. The rise that we were programmed by the left to believe was evil, colonial, oppressive, masculine. When in fact, we dragged all of humanity out of pervasive ignorance and poverty with our aristocratic christian ethics, technology, and culture.

    FLAUNT IT. FLAUNT IT EVERY DAY. AND CHEER THOSE WHO FLAUNT IT.

    (Reposted with edits)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-20 06:41:00 UTC

  • YOU WANT A LIBERTARIAN GEM FOR TODAY? The ethics of competition. From another pi

    YOU WANT A LIBERTARIAN GEM FOR TODAY?

    The ethics of competition. From another piece I’ve been writing.

    “Competition” itself, as we use the term, is the normative sanction of external involuntary transfer by an artificial, counter-intuitive, set of rules we call the market, consisting of voluntary transfer of goods and services, by fully informed consensual exchange, and insured as fully informed and consensual by warranty, at the cost of opportunity and investment to other producers of similar goods, in an effort to coerce producers to innovate in their use of resources, to produce goods for all at lower price, or higher quality, in an effort to produce goods and services at the lowest cost and highest quality for all consumers participating in that set of normative rules that comprise that market, and which we in turn call ‘a society’.

    -Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-20 06:35:00 UTC

  • ARISTOTLE ON DIVERSITY Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, a

    ARISTOTLE ON DIVERSITY

    Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be “a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants”. – wiki

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-19 12:06:00 UTC