Curt Doolittle

Source: Facebook

  • A DEFINITION OF THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY “Liberty is the freedom to do what you wis

    A DEFINITION OF THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY

    “Liberty is the freedom to do what you wish with yourself and the property that you have obtained by voluntary exchange or homesteading, where such use of your body and your property causes no involuntary transfers from others, either indirectly or directly by asymmetry of knowledge, fraud, theft, or violence, except for the single involuntary transfer we sanction in order to create the evolutionary market, and the evolutionary market’s benefits of increasing variety, and declining price: competition.”

    – Curt Doolittle

    This definition of the ethics of liberty is (I think) complete and correct. The Rothbardian definition of property is incomplete and therefore incorrect. It fails to account for the totality of demonstrated human behavioral preference regarding property. And that failure explains the rejection of Rothbardian Ethics as immoral. Rothbard’s error is similar to the reasons that Misesian Praxeology is incomplete and therefore incorrect when it claims apodeictic certainty. Mises failed to account for opportunity costs in praxeology. Possibly because doing so would have undermined his arguments. However, the only thing that changes if we complete Misesian Praxeology and Rothbardian Ethics is that we end up with Aristocratic warrior and the high trust society rather than the ethics of the Ghetto and Bazaar and the low trust society.

    (Reposted from a comment I made elsewhere)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-16 13:13:00 UTC

  • A FRIENDLY NOTICE TO RECENT FB FRIENDS Please understand what I do. I write poli

    A FRIENDLY NOTICE TO RECENT FB FRIENDS

    Please understand what I do. I write political philosophy. Conservative Libertarian political philosophy. This is not a game. It is not recreation. It is what I do. And I consider it the most important thing that I can do.

    Facebook is a scratch-pad. A notebook where I try ideas that I’m currently thinking about. And It’s how I keep in touch with the other people who do the same. An argument is a philosophical proposition structured in statements. You can think of them as math problems of a sort. Sometimes, you have to work those statements out. Just like you work out math problems. I don’t know sometimes how those arguments will work out until I make them. FB is a place where I can make them and where, if I make some big mistake, someone will point it out to me. Most of the time I’m making similar arguments but trying to make them more simple and easier to understand. I even succeed at it sometimes. 🙂

    I belong to organizations that are commonly called ‘think tanks’ that conduct a research program called “Anarcho Capitalism” in which we try to determine how to replace the monopoly we call the state and its bureaucratic government with institutions that are subject to competition and therefore less subject to systemic corruption. This is a noble cause. I am proud of my contributions to this cause. I am proud of what we accomplished over the past century.

    But you don’t have to agree with what I write, even on the odd chance you understand it. And I would never ask you to. It’s OK with me. I am not trying to create popular music or god forbid, run for office. I’m trying to find a solution to a pretty important problem that’s at least 2500 years old.

    But I value your friendship in real life, even if you are uncomfortable with radical political philosophy, and radical conservative philosophy at that. So please try to understand that there are some of us who think that our current system of government is based on concepts that are no more sensible than the religious mysticism it replaced. And that there are a few of us out here playing the role of Galileo, Hume, Darwin and Weber in the hope of finding rational solution to the problem of human cooperation that we call ‘government’.

    And so the only thing I’ll ask you to look at me and my work through that lens. Even if you think I’m wrong. Because I acknowledge that I might be. 🙂

    (It’s just unlikely) 😉

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 15:49:00 UTC

  • WHATS WRONG WITH UKRAINE: TAXATION “The tax laws are amended often and sometimes

    WHATS WRONG WITH UKRAINE: TAXATION

    “The tax laws are amended often and sometimes retrospectively. They are still characterized by lack of precise policy or explanation. A number of government bodies and different levels of the State tax authorities issue their own interpretations of tax legislation which may be contradictory. Many issues still remain open for clarification. All these factors lead to the risk of a different interpretation of tax legislation by the State tax authorities and taxpayers. A

    major recent development was the adoption in December 2010 of a consolidated tax code that aims to simplify and update the taxation system.” – Chadbourne, Kiev

    The justice department has had major reforms in 2010. And they’re intelligent reforms. The tax system had the same reforms. However, corruption is so rampant is difficult to determine how meaningful they are.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 13:06:00 UTC

  • WHATS WRONG WITH UKRAINE: SYSTEMIC ENDEMIC CORRUPTION The bureaucrats prey on th

    WHATS WRONG WITH UKRAINE: SYSTEMIC ENDEMIC CORRUPTION

    The bureaucrats prey on the citizens. Who despite this level of corruption are, from my subjective opinion, the finest people currently living on planet earth.

    “Ukraine suffers from widespread corruption throughout its economic and political system. Many businesses are subject to theft, extortion and fraud. The problem has been exacerbated by the existence of poorly paid police forces which have failed to combat the significant levels of organized criminal activity” – Chadbourne, Kyiv

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 12:58:00 UTC

  • WHATS WRONG WITH UKRAINE: “…financial reports are prepared for tax purposes ra

    WHATS WRONG WITH UKRAINE:

    “…financial reports are prepared for tax purposes rather than as a means of establishing their financial state.”

    You cannot trust any numbers here unless they are kept by a foreign national using western accounting standards. (GAAP).

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 12:56:00 UTC

  • WRONG WITH UKRAINE : ABSENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW Absence of the rule of law, is t

    http://www.chadbourne.com/files/upload/Ukraine_GeneralLegalConsiderations_BusinessUkraine_2011.pdfWHAT’S WRONG WITH UKRAINE : ABSENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW

    Absence of the rule of law, is the absence of property rights.

    “In short, Ukraine, like other former Soviet countries, suffers not only from a lack of suitable legislation and regulation and from considerable doubt as to how the courts will interpret the existing laws and rules, but from the concomitant absence of a belief in and respect for a “rule of law.” – Chadbourne, Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 12:53:00 UTC

  • LIDDEL-HART’S ORIGINAL “It is folly to imagine that the aggressive types, whethe

    LIDDEL-HART’S ORIGINAL

    “It is folly to imagine that the aggressive types, whether individuals or nations, can be bought off … since the payment of danegeld stimulates a demand for more danegeld. But they can be curbed. Their very belief in force makes them more susceptible to the deterrent effect of a formidable opposing force.” – Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart

    REVISED VERSION

    “It is folly to imagine that the members of the bureaucratic state can be bought off… Since the payment of taxes stimulates the demand for more taxes. But they can be curbed. The very belief in force makes them more susceptible to the deterrent effect of a formidable opposing force. “

    Let all men be armed.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 11:05:00 UTC

  • WAR IS COMMERCE BY OTHER MEANS? “While there are many causes for which a state g

    WAR IS COMMERCE BY OTHER MEANS?

    “While there are many causes for which a state goes to war, its fundamental object can be epitomized as that of ensuring the continuance of its policy — in face of the determination of the opposing state to pursue a contrary policy. In the human will lies the source and mainspring of conflict.”

    “War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.”

    “Inflict the least possible permanent injury, for the enemy of to-day is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future”

    – Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 10:38:00 UTC

  • A DEFINITION OF ANARCHO CAPITALISM: ANARCHO CAPITALISM: “A research program whic

    A DEFINITION OF ANARCHO CAPITALISM:

    ANARCHO CAPITALISM: “A research program which seeks to provide public services assumed to be necessary functions of a bureaucratic state, without the need for the artifices of state: politicians and bureaucrats in an organization with a monopoly on the definition of property and the means of violence with which to redefine property at will. This program has so far been successful in defining the first testable ethics (See Rothbard), and the first solution to the problem of small scale institutions in a homogenous state. (See Hoppe).” – Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 09:36:00 UTC

  • DEFINITION OF HBD: THAT RESEARCH PROGRAM WE CALL “HUMAN BIO DIVERSITY” HUMAN BIO

    DEFINITION OF HBD: THAT RESEARCH PROGRAM WE CALL “HUMAN BIO DIVERSITY”

    HUMAN BIO-DIVERSITY: “The study of heritable human genetic differences and the variation in distribution of those differences within human populations that show affinity for one another. And where those affinities express themselves as political, social, familial, and personal institutions, behaviors. abilities and preferences. And where those behaviors and preferences have economic, institutional, and normative consequences, and where those consequences cause economic and political competition and conflict. HBD is an attempt to understand the source of differences in modes and methods of human cooperation due to biological and normative differences.” – Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 09:30:00 UTC