Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Why Is The Flynn Effect Of Rising Iq Scores Showing Signs Of Reversing In The West Instead Of Just Leveling Off?

    You know the answer and I know the answer – many of us know the answer – because it is obvious. We haven’t been importing underutilized human capital since ‘64. We have been importing human capital that cant be utilized.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Flynn-effect-of-rising-IQ-scores-showing-signs-of-reversing-in-the-West-instead-of-just-leveling-off

  • What Would You Consider As Basic Human Rights That Should Be Enforced On Everyone Without Exception?

    All human rights are just property rights. That is all that they can be. Why we should not force property rights upon people is very hard to imagine.

    Of course, the communists would say that their last few articles that were forced into the international declaration in order to get their signatures were also property rights , bt they cannot be, since they are demands for imposition on the property others, not demands that we forgo impositions upon the property of others.

    I’ve written extensively about this subject and there can exist no positive moral laws. All moral laws are prohibitions and prohibitions only. That is all it is possible for universal laws to be.

    https://www.quora.com/What-would-you-consider-as-basic-human-rights-that-should-be-enforced-on-everyone-without-exception

  • Would Everyone’s Salary Increase If The Minimum Wage Increased To $15/hour?

    Steve Doll does a good job of answering the question, but he also provides an opportunity to discuss the difference between the major schools of economic thought, and the class and cultural biases that they position as ‘scientific’ but which are really just cherry picking favorite ‘goods’.

    The schools of thought roughly correspond to class philosophies, just as all philosophies consist of class philosophies. And they describe a spectrum of increasing discretion from rule of law, to discretionary rule, to arbitrary rule.

    • The Rule of Law School (not rule BY law, but rule OF law of reciprocity) (Conservative Constitutional – Where the constitution merely codifies the natural law of reciprocity so that it cannot be violated) is the Conservative (Anglo-Saxon). Meaning the rules of the game are the same for all, and attempts to build optimum normative COMMONS. Rather than increase consumption.
    • The Discretionary Rule School (Chicago/Freshwater/classical liberal/Pragmatic/Libertarian) attempted to find means of insuring against shocks with the minimum interference in rule of law (and therefore planning).
    • The Arbitrary Rule School (New York/Freshwater/Left-Social Democrat/Authoritarian) seeks the maximum consumption possible without collapsing the market, and has no interest whatsoever in rule of law.

    Economics can easily be used to justify “you get what you measure”, and there to advocate what you measure, and ignore or deride what you do not. And the 20th century will be seen (as Hayek predicted) as a period of social pseudoscience (the used the term ‘mysticism’) because of what some of us term ‘innumeracy’ or “pseudo-rationalism”, if not outright deception.

    I think Steve’s broader point is made, but I don’t think it accounts for the following:

    • While it’s true that money is neutral, and all prices equilibrate over time. And that all benefits of the increases in minimum wages equilibrate over time. This is not necessarily true however, since an increase in minimum wages functions just like an increase in taxation – it affects everyone equally. Prices increase, and at least for some period of time, as the price increase works through the economy, the gains are real.
    • The public assumes that the increase comes out of owner’s pockets, but it comes out of increasing prices to customers. Which again, is a trade off between businesses and consumers of the goods of those businesses able to adjust prices. (My hometown of Seattle is still working through its experiment, and the data so far is mixed both directions.)
    • That the issue at hand is that it creates separate and divisive classes. Now, minimum wages can be used to intentionally create separate classes so that there is a clear line between those requiring subsidy (dependency upon the citizenry for support), and those who are self sufficient. Which decreases demand for universal redistribution and concentrates it. This has some benefit in that it tends to remove the underclasses from the job pool (as we see in Denmark). So that the man selling you tickets at the train station is competent, civil, and literate. As far as I know these are the only arguments we can make.
    • That minimum wage increases demand for family run businesses at the low end to skirt minimum wages and this tends to increase the number of ‘artificially small’ businesses that plague most of the world. The first world latin countries are notorious for having followed these policies and created two economies. the third world cannot produce organizations of scale for these reasons. And the social, economic, and political consequences of providing nepotistic rather than meritocratic organizations are profound.
    • That these small businesses, (as we see with asian-immigrant businesses in particular) because they incentivize nepotistic business, skirt both minimum wage laws and taxes (why they don’t accept credit cards).
    • That it raises the cost of entry into the market for businesses at the low end, and decreases the development of the primary means of obtaining financial independence: small business entrepreneurship. And worse, that small business entrepreneurs carry a disproportionate amount of the country’s economic risk – for which they are not compensated in tax leniency.
    • That it lowers the rate of rotation of people out of minimum wage jobs – the purpose of which is nothing other than to train entrants to participate in the economy. Minimum wage jobs function as paid apprenticeships, where in most of history, apprenticeship functioned as very near indentured servitude.
    • That while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands, it’s distortive to prices, and contrary to public moral and political intuition, we would be far better off with direct monetary redistribution than minimum wage increases – and that we are simply technologically backward in forcing businesses to act as agents.
    • that while there is evidence that raising the minimum wage does put more money in people’s hands – albeit with negative consequence – but that there is equal evidence that raising the minimum wage such that entry level (unskilled labor) is no longer a paid apprenticeship, that because the lifetime window for entry into the job market is fairly short, that we create permanently unemployable classes, and the economic, political, and social consequences of creating permanently unemployable classes. In america, as is the human standard, we have about three percent of the population that is unemployable because they are psychologically intolerable. We have an offensive percent of the population that consists of ex-convicts, we have imported a vast number of third worlders who caused employment displacement at the bottom (youth) and top (older citizens). This increases poverty among the young and old.
    • there is equal evidence that we create hazards with profound external consequences (longer term costs) in that we provide malincentives to immigrate, and each underclass person we immigrate plus the inflation necessary to create the illusion of employment, plus the capture in taxes of all wealth created by the addition of women to the workforce, plus the destruction of the family and expansion of households, explains where all our productivity has gone: to the subsidy of that which is bad for us. (Northern europe was eugenic for over a thousand years, and the church created dead capital everywhere. So when we imported northern europeans we were importing dead capital and putting it into motion. When we bring in the third world we are not bringing in capital that can be put into motion, but sunk normative political and economic costs. We have gone from importing middle classes (protestants), to importing working classes (catholics), to importing underclasses (third worlders).
    • That you get more of whatever you subsidize, and each school seeks to subsidize what they consider a good. Conservative – Families, Virtues, Commons, Excellences), Libertarian/Classical Liberal – Opportunities and Insurance. Leftist/Socialist/Social Democrat – Consumption. But we get more of whatever it is we solve for, which is whatever we measure, which includes the externalities we do not solve for. The only ‘honest’ left economist I’ve found is Karl Smith, and his (correct) presumption is that we are all gambling on futures. The conservatives gamble against risk and pushing costs down the timeline. The left gambles in favor of opportunity and to push costs down the timeline. And the Libertarian/Classical Liberal seeks to gamble only with what we can be sure we will obtain returns upon, without externalizing costs to the future.

    At present, all of this is lost both inside the discipline, and outside of it. And the vox populi are just confused. As far as I know, the conservatives and classicals are right, and the left is the worst thing to happen to humanity since marx, who was the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Abrahamic counter-enlightenment.

    You get what you measure, and cherry picking consumption is just pseudoscience, if not outright fraud.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

    Commentary

    If you haven’t been to France, outside of the center of Paris (like Vienna) where the very rich live, the Isle de’ France, is a donut shaped slum twenty miles across. Just like Los Angeles is largely a seventy mile long slum. Many french cities are as collapsed as Hartford, Baltimore, Detroit, St Louis, and Oakland – and europeans are much poorer in discretionary spending than we are in the first place – and it is spreading to Germany.

    Our world is much larger (more populous) and economically diverse than the ancient world. So while the bronze age collapse ended all of the first generation of civilizations, and the Abrahamic age collapse ended the mediterranean civilizations but left china and india alone, in the current era, the Modern age, cities are collapsing one at a time, states one at a time, but almost as quickly as they did in prior eras. Russia collapsed in weeks. Rome largely collapsed in months but systematically over seventy years. And all civilizations collapse for the same reason: overconsumption without sufficient retained capital to adjust to and reorganize in the face of biological (Justinian Plague), Demographic (barbarian invasions), environmental (south american drought), and trade-route shocks (most of central eurasia).

    The leftist looks at today and tomorrow, the libertarian his lifetime, and the conservative across the centuries.

    And the markets for reciprocity under rule of law are the only possible means by which we calculate what is in our mutual intersets, rather than making pseudoscientific arguments to advance our class interests.

    https://www.quora.com/Would-everyones-salary-increase-if-the-minimum-wage-increased-to-15-hour

  • The State Of The Science

    The evidence exists, however, the causes are more obvious: 1) **the size of the underclasses. **and **2) neotonic(pedomorphic) evolution – meaning the retention of childhood features, **and 3)** transfer of female verbal acuity to males because of pedomorphic evolution.** Cold Climates, Agrarianism, Manorialism, and the raw Capital Costs of Tools (metals) needed to survive in those conditions, in addition to the aggressive hanging of the underclasses for more than a thousand years, allowed both upward redistribution of calories and reproduction, and the downward population of labor by the middle genetic classes. So by the time of the industrial revolution (if not the literacy revolution) europe (and west asia) had vast stores of underutilized human capital. However, both had to break free of the church and the bureaucracy which had made the vast majority of capital “dead” (static) and in support of rent seeking (church bureaucracy and chinese imperial bureaucracy). For the rest of the world, they have been unsuccessful at one or both of two factors: either (a) decimating the underclasses, and (b) developing deflationary grammars (methods) in the sequence math, logics, reason, empirical law (tort), and science. West europeans and east asians and ashkenazi were able to limit the size of their underclasses and to force upward redistribution of reproduction. East asians have the highest Neoteny, West Europeans, and then Ashkenazi. And less visible testosterone levels to equal more visible morphology(features). This is the primary difference between the races and subraces: Degree of neoteny, and distribution of male and female traits (brain structures) between the genders. Strangely enough, in the Ashkenazi they have nearly reversed it. Which is why they have such exceptional verbal (if not spatial) skills. So that’s the state of the science as I understand it. in other words, the greatest material differences are driven by the size of the underclasses, and therefore the median distribution in the gene pool, and therefore the language, norms, traditions, and institutions necessary or the persistence of such a gene pool with such a distribution. All of this is very simple. The marxist-postmodernist-feminist attempt at the second dark age – this time of pseudoscience – just made us lose a century and a half to their deceptions.

  • The State Of The Science

    The evidence exists, however, the causes are more obvious: 1) **the size of the underclasses. **and **2) neotonic(pedomorphic) evolution – meaning the retention of childhood features, **and 3)** transfer of female verbal acuity to males because of pedomorphic evolution.** Cold Climates, Agrarianism, Manorialism, and the raw Capital Costs of Tools (metals) needed to survive in those conditions, in addition to the aggressive hanging of the underclasses for more than a thousand years, allowed both upward redistribution of calories and reproduction, and the downward population of labor by the middle genetic classes. So by the time of the industrial revolution (if not the literacy revolution) europe (and west asia) had vast stores of underutilized human capital. However, both had to break free of the church and the bureaucracy which had made the vast majority of capital “dead” (static) and in support of rent seeking (church bureaucracy and chinese imperial bureaucracy). For the rest of the world, they have been unsuccessful at one or both of two factors: either (a) decimating the underclasses, and (b) developing deflationary grammars (methods) in the sequence math, logics, reason, empirical law (tort), and science. West europeans and east asians and ashkenazi were able to limit the size of their underclasses and to force upward redistribution of reproduction. East asians have the highest Neoteny, West Europeans, and then Ashkenazi. And less visible testosterone levels to equal more visible morphology(features). This is the primary difference between the races and subraces: Degree of neoteny, and distribution of male and female traits (brain structures) between the genders. Strangely enough, in the Ashkenazi they have nearly reversed it. Which is why they have such exceptional verbal (if not spatial) skills. So that’s the state of the science as I understand it. in other words, the greatest material differences are driven by the size of the underclasses, and therefore the median distribution in the gene pool, and therefore the language, norms, traditions, and institutions necessary or the persistence of such a gene pool with such a distribution. All of this is very simple. The marxist-postmodernist-feminist attempt at the second dark age – this time of pseudoscience – just made us lose a century and a half to their deceptions.

  • Don’t be ridiculous. (((Dr. Seuss))) wrote communist-socialist fairy tales becau

    Don’t be ridiculous. (((Dr. Seuss))) wrote communist-socialist fairy tales because western fairy tales teach honor, skepticism, and to be on the lookout for treachery. They do not celebrate infantilism. They warn us against it. Go to a children’s bookstore in Russia and Ukraine and you’ll find the books children used to read in germanic speaking countries. Kings, Princes, Princesses, Heroes, and Maids.

  • Don’t be ridiculous. (((Dr. Seuss))) wrote communist-socialist fairy tales becau

    Don’t be ridiculous. (((Dr. Seuss))) wrote communist-socialist fairy tales because western fairy tales teach honor, skepticism, and to be on the lookout for treachery. They do not celebrate infantilism. They warn us against it. Go to a children’s bookstore in Russia and Ukraine and you’ll find the books children used to read in germanic speaking countries. Kings, Princes, Princesses, Heroes, and Maids.

  • —”Is there something akin to a Law of Progress for systems of people or even the

    —”Is there something akin to a Law of Progress for systems of people or even the individual? Closer to linear or exponential, incremental or rapid?”—** I assume we mean economic **growth** rather than **progress**. Or at least, that we should separate growth from progress so that we understand their causes, and then can reflect on those causes. In the professional vernacular (economics, and political economy) *growth* refers to **productivity**, and *progress* refers to upward **economic class rotation**. Productivity refers to an increase in the amount of goods and services produced per hour worked, (per head of the population) over a period of time – and therefore increases in consumption over time. But it does not differentiate between ‘good productivity’ (innovation and market expansion), fake productivity (results of immigration), fraudulent productivity (rents on transport) and ‘bad productivity’ (spending down assets). Progress provides discounts on consumption that we interpret as increase in income. In other words, when we are more productive we make better use of our time, in producing goods, services, (and now information), that people want. Money or money substitutes, (or any trade or barter good) represent (really) a store of **time** saved. That is why it has value – why any good has value. So money is in fact an exceptional measure of productivity. Progress is (often) the result of increases in productivity. Most increase in productivity occurs from discovery of means of harnessing energy. (fire, kiln, crucible, coal, steam, fluid hydrocarbons, electricity, gears, relays, transistors, software), and discounts on energy expenditure (pack animals, riding horses, Everything else that occurs in every era And uncomfortably, the best productivity return – and the one we never think of – is genetic (eugenic reproduction, or upward redistribution of reproduction). Progress is offset by underclass reproduction (malthusian limits), underclass immigration, or upper class under-reproduction. This is because every person at the bottom is six times as costly as each person at the top is over-productive. In fact, the unstated but obvious failure to increase american incomes after the mid 1960s is due to inflation and immigration. For most of european modernity we have been liberating dead capital (The Church) and distributing it to under utilized capital (european middle classes). But since 1965, we have been using debt to redistribute debt to underclass immigration. And as far as I know this is the entire reason for our condition. Inflation and Immigration creating a false economy. For all of human history, most people lived on what we call about a dollar a day today. Trade in the first enlightenment prior to the bronze age collapse (prior to 1177bc), and trade during the ancient enlightenment, prior to the Abrahamic and Plague collapse (300–700 ad), then trade after the enlightenment, and prior to the late 20th century (which appears to be either an inflection point or collapse), appears to have produced a great leap in each era which defeated for a time, the fertility of Malthusian underclasses. So, yes, is there a law of productivity. Sort of. As a rule of thumb, a person can produce about twenty percent more than he can consume, if he works at it. During periods under which we have captured a new form of energy, or a new discount on energy consumption, we can increase this. Otherwise the only means of increasing productivity is to increase the quality of the population (as did europe and china/korea/japan) because by doing so, a people decrease frictions on cooperation, and frictions on cooperation can easily fall into (almost universal) equilibrium with productivity – which is the condition of nearly all of human history. So, armed with that understanding, China is going through what europe did, and what all post enlightenment peoples did, in the modern(steel), ancient(iron), and early bronze ages – and from what I understand, the late paleo (copper) age expansions. Why is china different from brazil? Homogeneity of genetics and culture, A highly nationalist military, and a vast store of underutilized human capital. None of which brazil has to work with. All but very short term opportunities, all of human economic activity is just another extension of the laws of the physical universe. Energy and Time vs Entropy. Or stated more simply; all evolutionary systems grow continuously or they die. And if they grow, they will grow by punctuated equilibriums. (which Michael mentions as ‘graduated then suddenly’. At present we are having a bit of a debate as to whether we have captured all the low hanging fruit of the capture of hydrocarbon, steam, and electrical energy. And given declining rates of innovation, it appears so. (Information technology eradicates frictions like nothing before it, but does not produce new energy). We are closing in on if not having past, our ability to harness enough energy to advance physics. We have ‘finished’ chemistry. We have just begun biochemistry. And we are scratching the surface of sentience (which is the same problem of three different scales.) As far as I know the debates over keynesian economics vs the business cycle, and the fallacy of infinite growth (‘technology is our savior’), and the fallacy of are over. As far as I know we are beyond the unmanaged carrying capacity of the planet (which I think is something on the order of 1B people, if not 500M). So given malthusian underclass rates of reproduction, and given the near exhaustion of the political and economic change of the enlightenment and industrial revolution, and given the peak in everything we can see, it certainly appears that productivity will decline everywhere to or under the rate of inflation. Because there is no more underutilized human capital. If you understand this, then all economic, social, and political behavior today, and in all of history is quite simple. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • —”Is there something akin to a Law of Progress for systems of people or even the

    —”Is there something akin to a Law of Progress for systems of people or even the individual? Closer to linear or exponential, incremental or rapid?”—** I assume we mean economic **growth** rather than **progress**. Or at least, that we should separate growth from progress so that we understand their causes, and then can reflect on those causes. In the professional vernacular (economics, and political economy) *growth* refers to **productivity**, and *progress* refers to upward **economic class rotation**. Productivity refers to an increase in the amount of goods and services produced per hour worked, (per head of the population) over a period of time – and therefore increases in consumption over time. But it does not differentiate between ‘good productivity’ (innovation and market expansion), fake productivity (results of immigration), fraudulent productivity (rents on transport) and ‘bad productivity’ (spending down assets). Progress provides discounts on consumption that we interpret as increase in income. In other words, when we are more productive we make better use of our time, in producing goods, services, (and now information), that people want. Money or money substitutes, (or any trade or barter good) represent (really) a store of **time** saved. That is why it has value – why any good has value. So money is in fact an exceptional measure of productivity. Progress is (often) the result of increases in productivity. Most increase in productivity occurs from discovery of means of harnessing energy. (fire, kiln, crucible, coal, steam, fluid hydrocarbons, electricity, gears, relays, transistors, software), and discounts on energy expenditure (pack animals, riding horses, Everything else that occurs in every era And uncomfortably, the best productivity return – and the one we never think of – is genetic (eugenic reproduction, or upward redistribution of reproduction). Progress is offset by underclass reproduction (malthusian limits), underclass immigration, or upper class under-reproduction. This is because every person at the bottom is six times as costly as each person at the top is over-productive. In fact, the unstated but obvious failure to increase american incomes after the mid 1960s is due to inflation and immigration. For most of european modernity we have been liberating dead capital (The Church) and distributing it to under utilized capital (european middle classes). But since 1965, we have been using debt to redistribute debt to underclass immigration. And as far as I know this is the entire reason for our condition. Inflation and Immigration creating a false economy. For all of human history, most people lived on what we call about a dollar a day today. Trade in the first enlightenment prior to the bronze age collapse (prior to 1177bc), and trade during the ancient enlightenment, prior to the Abrahamic and Plague collapse (300–700 ad), then trade after the enlightenment, and prior to the late 20th century (which appears to be either an inflection point or collapse), appears to have produced a great leap in each era which defeated for a time, the fertility of Malthusian underclasses. So, yes, is there a law of productivity. Sort of. As a rule of thumb, a person can produce about twenty percent more than he can consume, if he works at it. During periods under which we have captured a new form of energy, or a new discount on energy consumption, we can increase this. Otherwise the only means of increasing productivity is to increase the quality of the population (as did europe and china/korea/japan) because by doing so, a people decrease frictions on cooperation, and frictions on cooperation can easily fall into (almost universal) equilibrium with productivity – which is the condition of nearly all of human history. So, armed with that understanding, China is going through what europe did, and what all post enlightenment peoples did, in the modern(steel), ancient(iron), and early bronze ages – and from what I understand, the late paleo (copper) age expansions. Why is china different from brazil? Homogeneity of genetics and culture, A highly nationalist military, and a vast store of underutilized human capital. None of which brazil has to work with. All but very short term opportunities, all of human economic activity is just another extension of the laws of the physical universe. Energy and Time vs Entropy. Or stated more simply; all evolutionary systems grow continuously or they die. And if they grow, they will grow by punctuated equilibriums. (which Michael mentions as ‘graduated then suddenly’. At present we are having a bit of a debate as to whether we have captured all the low hanging fruit of the capture of hydrocarbon, steam, and electrical energy. And given declining rates of innovation, it appears so. (Information technology eradicates frictions like nothing before it, but does not produce new energy). We are closing in on if not having past, our ability to harness enough energy to advance physics. We have ‘finished’ chemistry. We have just begun biochemistry. And we are scratching the surface of sentience (which is the same problem of three different scales.) As far as I know the debates over keynesian economics vs the business cycle, and the fallacy of infinite growth (‘technology is our savior’), and the fallacy of are over. As far as I know we are beyond the unmanaged carrying capacity of the planet (which I think is something on the order of 1B people, if not 500M). So given malthusian underclass rates of reproduction, and given the near exhaustion of the political and economic change of the enlightenment and industrial revolution, and given the peak in everything we can see, it certainly appears that productivity will decline everywhere to or under the rate of inflation. Because there is no more underutilized human capital. If you understand this, then all economic, social, and political behavior today, and in all of history is quite simple. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • If you want me to analyze any people’s history I can find good in those who held

    If you want me to analyze any people’s history I can find good in those who held kinship territory, and not find good in those who didn’t. It’s really that simple. If your kin are not disciplined enough to hold territory they will not be disciplined enough to create competitieve commons. If they cannot create competitive commons there will be nothing to examine – no record of their existence – to comment upon. Commons create intergeneral capital. Kin groups (genes) create intergenerational capital. And to some degree you must trade off one against the other. Of course as always, the more eugenic your people the better their history.