Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • In View Of America’s Threat To Cut International Aid Over The Un Vote On The Jerusalem Issue, What Would Happen If The Rest Of The World Isolated America?

    It would cause a worldwide depression on a scale we have not seen since the combination of christian mysticism and arab expansion that destroyed the civilizations of egypt, north africa, the levant, persia, byzantium, rome, and europe. (the abrahamic dark ages.)

    No one is that stupid.

    https://www.quora.com/In-view-of-Americas-threat-to-cut-international-aid-over-the-UN-vote-on-the-Jerusalem-issue-what-would-happen-if-the-rest-of-the-world-isolated-America

  • How Can We Retain Our Culture?

    Revolt. Separate. Prosper. Speciate.
    Really, that’s the answer.

    The value of the continent-wide american empire, has outlived its usefulness, and at least for the past 70 years, has been destructive to our civilization.

    Therefore, it’s in our interest to divorce ourselves and let the ‘nine nations of north america’ prosper as they choose – not as others choose for them.

    https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-retain-our-culture

  • Why Is The Austrian School Of Economics And Economist Ludwig Von Mises Not Discussed In American Academia?

    Because in large part it is absolute nonsense.

    1. Mises Position in Intellectual History
    2. Rothbardian Fallacies
    3. Hans Hoppe’s Errors

    This is a very technical problem, but in the sense that you should be able to produce an individual, operational, description of any economic phenomenon in order to assert a truth claim ( trace the incentives), that’s true.

    In the sense that this technique is sufficient for the identification of all economic phenomenon it’s simply false – and we have many cases now.

    In other words, Mises tried, like Marx and Freud and Boaz, and Cantor to create a pseudoscience. And he failed. And he has been justifiably ignored because of it.

    You have also been the victim of propaganda as well, since it was very clear at the time, as it is very clear to any serious student of intellectual history, that there was a vast difference between the Mengerian (Polish-christian) wing, and the Misesian(Ukrainian-Jewish) wing of the Vienna school.

    And the findings of the Mengerian school (a) caused marx to stop writing about communism, (yep, really), and (b) have been fully incorporated into contemporary economics under the terms “mengerian”, “marginalism”, and ‘subjective value’.

    If you want to put these movements in context, here is the difference between the major schools of economic thought (The conflict between rule by discretion and rule by natural law).

    The Not-So-Austrian School in Context.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Austrian-School-of-Economics-and-economist-Ludwig-von-Mises-not-discussed-in-American-academia

  • What Should I Do About My Racist Family? When I Explain My Side They Twist It And Make Me Feel Stupid?

    Why do you think you are right and they are wrong?

    https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-about-my-racist-family-When-I-explain-my-side-they-twist-it-and-make-me-feel-stupid

  • What Is The Difference Between A Tribe And A Clan?

    (Michael Jacobs is close. I’ll play analytic philosopher for a few minutes:)

    Taxonomies:

    Kinship groups form in hierarchies under all human means of production:

    |MEANS OF PRODUCTION|: hunting and gathering > pastoralism > agrarianism > urbanism(crafts) > industrialism > consumer-capitalism > (? automated production ?)

    The reasons for hierarchies are (a) kin selection instinct (necessity) provides ‘insurance’. (b) lower risk and lower friction of trade across common norms traditions, status signals, and ‘laws’, (c) cheaper status signals in group than across group – except at the margins. (d) elites always evolve and ‘carry’ middle, working, and underclasses by providing group competitive advantage.

    This is why people live in, develop friendships in, work in, mate and marry in, and politically organize in, and compete in, racial, national, tribal, and clan groups worldwide with crossovers fairly limited (currently < 15%).

    |KINSHIP TAXONOMY|: Individual > Family(Various Forms) > Clan > Tribe > Nation > Race > Homo-sapiens-sapiens.

    Family structure is generally dependent upon inheritance structures, and inheritance structures dependent on means of production, and dependent upon the assets (“property”) that are required for intergenerational persistence, and dependent upon the intergenerational transfer (subsidy of children, and elderly).

    So families follow a progression:

    |FAMILY TAXONOMY|: Consanguineous > Panaluan > Pairing (Serial Marriage) > Hetaeristic Monogamy (Marriage with ‘cheating’) > Traditional Family > STEM family (Authoritarian) > Nuclear > Absolute Nuclear > Post-Family, “Single Parent Family”, “Non-Family” or “State Family”.

    (You will probably need to Google some of these terms.)

    As far as I know humans have generally produced serial marriage whenever possible, and deviated from serial marriage only when necessary – just as humans will steal whenever possible, and deviated from stealing only when necessary. Hence why we produce norms (what to do), traditions(what to do), and laws (what not to do), and institutions (intergenerational persistence of these habits.)

    Humans seek loss avoidance at all times, and seek advantage (gain) wherever loss avoidance can be overcome. This applies to status signals (opportunity), security (risk reduction), and property (assets).

    NOW, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TRIBE AND A CLAN?

    We tend to use tribes for less advanced (hunter-gatherer and pastoralist) societies with less property, and clan in more advanced (agrarian and industrial) societies. The reason being that tribal differences are suppressed by the cooperation necessary under agrarian production, even if the value of clans diminishes.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-tribe-and-a-clan

  • Why Is There Such A High Degree Of Fascination Among Today’s Youngsters To Becoming An Entrepreneur?

    it is the only 100% guaranteed means of financial independence, and not having to work for someone ‘dumber’ than you are. 😉

    https://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-such-a-high-degree-of-fascination-among-todays-youngsters-to-becoming-an-entrepreneur

  • Is It Really True For A Person With Phd In Electrical Engineering Needs In Average 100 Job Applications To Get Accepted For A Job In Us?

    Electrical engineering has transformed from a profession to a ‘trade’ for the simple reason that the problems of electrical engineering at scale are for all intents and purposes solved (reduced to predictable algorithms that we call ‘code’), plus an oversupply of degrees. The other engineering disciplines still vary between profession and trade. I don’t track this discipline any longer but as far as I know, you need to scale up or scale down. Electrical is too ‘human scale’.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-it-really-true-for-a-person-with-PhD-in-Electrical-Engineering-needs-in-average-100-job-applications-to-get-accepted-for-a-job-in-US

  • “What are the best UX Design firms in the SeattleBellevue region?”— (From Curt

    —“What are the best UX Design firms in the SeattleBellevue region?”— (From Curt) It depends upon the function of your site and how much functionality it provides. UX, no question, it’s Blink in Seattle, and has been for years now. UX and IA, information Architecture, are slightly different functions, with UX for functionality and IA for content and organization. Frankly, these services are bordering on a science today. Their primary limit is the technology efforts you are willing to pay for. UI Design. The dirty secret is that it’s not the firm, it’s the individual designer that matters. Design is very much like fashion. Large firms are highly constrained by branding standards so there is very little design to be done. Firms that do not have standards can be more adventurous and trendy with design. Do no overdo it with design unless all you are selling is aesthetics. Marketers are generally best at empirical measurement of design, content, messaging, and positioning approaches for target audiences – which matters farm more than design. Creative Directors and Art Directors at larger firms are far better providers of those services. In general it’s the creative director you’re paying for at the agency. Bet solution (always), is to make screenshots of the different features of the sites of your top 20 competitors in the field (or 50 if you have the energy), and not from your area, but from everywhere, and pick the best features from all of them. And pick the best designs. The purpose of doing this is to educate you, more so than your agency, because this is what your agency will do, and then have to educate you. Then pay for the Tech or UX or IA or Messaging and Positioning(‘creative’) or Design, or Marketing and Media Buying – or any combination of those that you need. (I tend to build companies that are heavy on the back end of that (tech, ux, ia, because I traditionally serve the very big, consumer tech companies where creative is limited but message, content, and usability are complicated – but other firms tend to build companies that focus on messaging, positioning, and design. And this is pretty common in the industry. Design small, Tech big. In general, organizations pay for the size agency they can afford. Any agency with more than fifty full time people is probably legit. It’s easy to find independent designers – they are everywhere, and it’s easy to understand their work. It’s not hard to find UX and IA, but it’s hard to judge their work. It’s hard to find independent creative directors. For marketing and buying it’s best to use an agency. It’s just expensive.

  • “What are the best UX Design firms in the SeattleBellevue region?”— (From Curt

    —“What are the best UX Design firms in the SeattleBellevue region?”— (From Curt) It depends upon the function of your site and how much functionality it provides. UX, no question, it’s Blink in Seattle, and has been for years now. UX and IA, information Architecture, are slightly different functions, with UX for functionality and IA for content and organization. Frankly, these services are bordering on a science today. Their primary limit is the technology efforts you are willing to pay for. UI Design. The dirty secret is that it’s not the firm, it’s the individual designer that matters. Design is very much like fashion. Large firms are highly constrained by branding standards so there is very little design to be done. Firms that do not have standards can be more adventurous and trendy with design. Do no overdo it with design unless all you are selling is aesthetics. Marketers are generally best at empirical measurement of design, content, messaging, and positioning approaches for target audiences – which matters farm more than design. Creative Directors and Art Directors at larger firms are far better providers of those services. In general it’s the creative director you’re paying for at the agency. Bet solution (always), is to make screenshots of the different features of the sites of your top 20 competitors in the field (or 50 if you have the energy), and not from your area, but from everywhere, and pick the best features from all of them. And pick the best designs. The purpose of doing this is to educate you, more so than your agency, because this is what your agency will do, and then have to educate you. Then pay for the Tech or UX or IA or Messaging and Positioning(‘creative’) or Design, or Marketing and Media Buying – or any combination of those that you need. (I tend to build companies that are heavy on the back end of that (tech, ux, ia, because I traditionally serve the very big, consumer tech companies where creative is limited but message, content, and usability are complicated – but other firms tend to build companies that focus on messaging, positioning, and design. And this is pretty common in the industry. Design small, Tech big. In general, organizations pay for the size agency they can afford. Any agency with more than fifty full time people is probably legit. It’s easy to find independent designers – they are everywhere, and it’s easy to understand their work. It’s not hard to find UX and IA, but it’s hard to judge their work. It’s hard to find independent creative directors. For marketing and buying it’s best to use an agency. It’s just expensive.

  • All About Money: What Is Money, Good Money, Tolerable Money, Bad Money, And What Is Not Money.

    (DRAFT: it’s getting too late to finish, and I’ve been sick for the past few days, so Ill finish this – as promised – later or tomorrow) The main functions of money are distinguished as: – A Store of Time. … If I could educate people on just one idea, it would bet that our only existential commodity is time, and we are no wealthier than cave men, but through a continuously expanding division of labor due to property, money, prices, and contract, we produce more per moment of working life than ever before. So we are not wealthier than in the past, we have merley made everything vastly cheaper. Hard money is the result of saved time. Credit money is the result of anticipated savings of time. Fiat money is the result of gambling that in the aggregate will will save time. And so credit, and fiat money are only so valuable as there is opportunity to save time. This single idea is the basis of all of economics. Yet it is virtually unknown, and ever more rarely understood. – A Store of Value (Purchasing power) – with stability of value (Purchasing power) within dependent production cycles. – A Medium of Exchange – thereby satisfying the problem of “coincidence of wants”, and increasing the velocity of trade, by decreasing the friction (cost) of finding opportunities for trade, and performing that trade. Mediums of exchange save time. – A Source of Liquidity – A commodity of continuous demand. ( … ) – A Provisioner of Prices. ( … ) – A Unit of Account; ( … ) – A Standard of Deferred Payment – debt, credit, interest, ( … ) – A Scope of Utility – “Range” – A commodity of demand sufficient for imputation for production cycles ( … ) To fulfill those functions, money must possess the following properties: – Cognizable: its value must be easily identified. …. Stamping ‘coins’ serves as a ‘trademark’. …. Protecting that trademark serves to protect its value …. Trademarking is … increasingly inordinately expensive. ( … ) – Unitary (‘countable’) by object, weight, volume – (and now index.) ( … ) – Fungible: its individual units must be capable of mutual substitution (i.e., interchangeability). ( … ) – Durable: able to withstand repeated use. ( … ) – Portable: easily carried and transported in relation to their purchasing power. ( … ) MONEY AND IT’S SUBSTITUTES (DEPENDENCIES) ( … )