Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • John Adams on The Central Proposition of Christianity

    —“The fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion is the extirpation of hatred from the human heart. It forbids the exercise of it, even towards enemies.”—John Adams

    [J]esus ‘is’ love is pretty much all there is to it. And the purpose is to break tribal bonds: to extend familial trust to everyone (as a means of defeating Rome). The rest is just decoration and ritual (and best dispensed with).

    Truth(Testimony), Love(Trust), Excellence(Virtue), Goodness (Commons), and Beauty(Resources).

    —-“The natural hatred of the Mussulmen towards the infidels is in just accordance with the precepts of the Koran. “—-

    Which is entirely incompatible with our way of life.  

    Separation of gods commands (soul) and state’s commands (property).
    Costly Truth vs Justified Deceit. 
    Evolutionary  vs Static 
    Scientific vs Magical
    Deeds vs Words
    Results vs Beliefs
    Love and Tolerance vs Hatred, Intolerance and Forced Conversion.
    Outbreeding vs Inbreeding.
    Equality of gender rights vs inequality of gender rights. 




  • Bias: Is / Must / Should / Can

    [I]t’s really this simple, isn’t it?

    CAN: progressive (short) [consumption] [development of offspring]
    SHOULD: libertarian (med) [production] [competition of production]
    MUST: conservative (long) [saving] [competition of the tribe]
    IS: science. (Timeless) [existence] [stock of knowledge]

    Source: (1) Curt Doolittle

  • Bias: Is / Must / Should / Can

    [I]t’s really this simple, isn’t it?

    CAN: progressive (short) [consumption] [development of offspring]
    SHOULD: libertarian (med) [production] [competition of production]
    MUST: conservative (long) [saving] [competition of the tribe]
    IS: science. (Timeless) [existence] [stock of knowledge]

    Source: (1) Curt Doolittle

  • Corporations were, like Limited Monopolies (IP), and like Letters of Marque, Limited Duration Contracts in the Public Interest

    [A] Month of Quotes on Corporatism by Tom Reeves

    —“…how corporations came about — they were all one-off, special purpose and limited-duration monopolies created in the public interest, not charters that the government let you file that were just like limited partnership agreements.”— Tom Reeves

    The same is true for Intellectual property (which we need to constrain), and Letters of Marque (which we need to restore).

    What is interesting, is that if they are not one-off’s, that means that they are not rational and calculable, right?

    —“moral suasion is a meaningful way for people to check each other’s damaging behavior. Before governments started creating corporations “in the public interest,” business enterprises were all intimately tied to communities, their owners were not absolved of potential personal liability, and common law provided effective means of halting damaging behavior entirely.”—Tom Reeves

    Restated: moral suasion evolved to raise the cost of each other’s imposition of costs, and therefore preserve the value of cooperation, and incentive to cooperate.

    —“We are swimming in moral hazard, risk socialization and needless polarization and conflict — because governments and the corporations they [create] interfere with truly voluntary transactions, catallaxy, and defense of person and property (both private and commons).”—Tom Reeves

    —“[Police] act in out-of-control ways largely because they are unaccountable in the sense they have little or no personal liability for what they do (and their departments/politicians will protect them if they misbehave). They’re a lot like crony capitalists, politicians and bureaucrats (all shielded by the hand of government). To fight corruption, bad behavior, “mistakes” and pervasive risk-socialization, we need to alter our institutional structures to demand more skin in the game from everyone. Right now, we are just playing games with who’s fat is in what fire, in ways that systematically advantage some while oppressing others.”—Tom Reeves

    —“Corporations are creatures of government; that’s why we keep running to government to beg our politicians and bureaucrats to “fix” things, rather than going to out neighbors to ask them to knock off stuff that harms members of the community.”— Tom Reeves

    —“Do you realize that crony capitalism and the mega regulatory state both are fuelled by the dynamic of unaccountability, lack of transparency, moral hazard and risk socialization that have been set in motion by governments selling masks of limited liability etc. to shareholders and those who inhabit the corporations that then grow?—Tom Reeves

    —“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”—Frédéric Bastiat (By Tom Reeves)


    “The term ‘catallactics’ was derived from the Greek verb katallattein (or katallassein) which meant, significantly, not only ‘to exchange’ but also ‘to admit into the community’ and ‘to change from enemy into friend’. From it the adjective ‘catallactic’ has been derived to serve in the place of ‘economic’ to describe the kind of phenomena with which the science of catallactics deals. The ancient Greeks knew neither this term nor had a corresponding noun; if they had formed one it would probably have been katallaxia. From this we can form an English term catallaxy which we shall use to describe the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market. A catallaxy is thus the special kind of spontaneous order produced by the market through people acting within the rules of the law of property, tort and contract.”
    (Hayek, F. A., 1982, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2, pp. 108-109).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catallaxy

    —“Catallaxy” is just a term used to describe certain transactions (transactions where markets exist). It’s a tool, not a dogma, and has no tenets.I used the term the other day in a comment thread to point out that markets are destroying the environment, primarily because of property theft and risk externalization via government claims to own the oceans and indigenous resources and because government-made corporations are machines of risk-socialization. Austrian economics is quite useful to understanding how crony capitalism is destroying both society and our natural world.”—Tom Reeves

  • Corporations were, like Limited Monopolies (IP), and like Letters of Marque, Limited Duration Contracts in the Public Interest

    [A] Month of Quotes on Corporatism by Tom Reeves

    —“…how corporations came about — they were all one-off, special purpose and limited-duration monopolies created in the public interest, not charters that the government let you file that were just like limited partnership agreements.”— Tom Reeves

    The same is true for Intellectual property (which we need to constrain), and Letters of Marque (which we need to restore).

    What is interesting, is that if they are not one-off’s, that means that they are not rational and calculable, right?

    —“moral suasion is a meaningful way for people to check each other’s damaging behavior. Before governments started creating corporations “in the public interest,” business enterprises were all intimately tied to communities, their owners were not absolved of potential personal liability, and common law provided effective means of halting damaging behavior entirely.”—Tom Reeves

    Restated: moral suasion evolved to raise the cost of each other’s imposition of costs, and therefore preserve the value of cooperation, and incentive to cooperate.

    —“We are swimming in moral hazard, risk socialization and needless polarization and conflict — because governments and the corporations they [create] interfere with truly voluntary transactions, catallaxy, and defense of person and property (both private and commons).”—Tom Reeves

    —“[Police] act in out-of-control ways largely because they are unaccountable in the sense they have little or no personal liability for what they do (and their departments/politicians will protect them if they misbehave). They’re a lot like crony capitalists, politicians and bureaucrats (all shielded by the hand of government). To fight corruption, bad behavior, “mistakes” and pervasive risk-socialization, we need to alter our institutional structures to demand more skin in the game from everyone. Right now, we are just playing games with who’s fat is in what fire, in ways that systematically advantage some while oppressing others.”—Tom Reeves

    —“Corporations are creatures of government; that’s why we keep running to government to beg our politicians and bureaucrats to “fix” things, rather than going to out neighbors to ask them to knock off stuff that harms members of the community.”— Tom Reeves

    —“Do you realize that crony capitalism and the mega regulatory state both are fuelled by the dynamic of unaccountability, lack of transparency, moral hazard and risk socialization that have been set in motion by governments selling masks of limited liability etc. to shareholders and those who inhabit the corporations that then grow?—Tom Reeves

    —“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”—Frédéric Bastiat (By Tom Reeves)


    “The term ‘catallactics’ was derived from the Greek verb katallattein (or katallassein) which meant, significantly, not only ‘to exchange’ but also ‘to admit into the community’ and ‘to change from enemy into friend’. From it the adjective ‘catallactic’ has been derived to serve in the place of ‘economic’ to describe the kind of phenomena with which the science of catallactics deals. The ancient Greeks knew neither this term nor had a corresponding noun; if they had formed one it would probably have been katallaxia. From this we can form an English term catallaxy which we shall use to describe the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market. A catallaxy is thus the special kind of spontaneous order produced by the market through people acting within the rules of the law of property, tort and contract.”
    (Hayek, F. A., 1982, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2, pp. 108-109).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catallaxy

    —“Catallaxy” is just a term used to describe certain transactions (transactions where markets exist). It’s a tool, not a dogma, and has no tenets.I used the term the other day in a comment thread to point out that markets are destroying the environment, primarily because of property theft and risk externalization via government claims to own the oceans and indigenous resources and because government-made corporations are machines of risk-socialization. Austrian economics is quite useful to understanding how crony capitalism is destroying both society and our natural world.”—Tom Reeves

  • Answering Charles Murray on Legalizing Blackmail

    RE: http://www.aei.org/publication/charles-murray-asks-why-should-blackmail-be-a-crime-walter-block-makes-the-case-for-legalizing-blackmail/ [W]alter Block starts with the rhetorical position that property is a natural right rather than the result of a necessary contractual exchange of rights, agreed to in order to construct property rights that are adjudicable, in order to prevent retaliation for impositions of costs upon one another, by providing a means of restitution and punishment by the community rather than retaliation by the individual. His position is illogical. The first question of ethics is not one in which we assume the value of cooperation, but one in which we assume the value of predation. So cooperation must be preferable to predation. And it is only preferable if it is productive.

    Cooperation must be rational or it is irrational (obviously). For cooperation to be rational, it must be: – Mutually Productive, – Fully informed, – Warrantied to be fully informed, – Consisting of Voluntary Exchange or Transfer, – Free of negative externality (of the same criteria). If these are all true then there is no need for retaliation. Walter Block, like his mentor Rothbard, is attempting to restate Maimonides’ dualist ethics as if they are a universal good. Instead of a utilitarian tactic for a minority living at the behest of a tyrant attempting to minimize his costs of policing. But, the first logically necessary question of ethics is ‘Why don’t I kill you and take your stuff?’ Block’s position on blackmail is one in which it is preferable to kill the blackmailer and take his stuff rather than to cooperate with him. So, it’s not complicated. Dualist (and poly-logical) ethics cannot by logical necessity be advocated as a universal ethic – it’s a logical contradiction. Natural rights are used as a nonsensical justification for various spurious ends. We do not presume rights, nor are they ‘existent’ prior to contract. They are merely the necessary terms for rational political contract. Cosmopolitan ethics attempt to preserve ingroup parasitism on outgroup members, while at the same time prohibiting the formation of family organizations that suppress parasitism. Rothbardian anarchism (libertinism), is an expression of group evolutionary strategy that ‘games’ (circumvents) the defenses of western aristocratic, truth telling civilization. So, instead, the first rule of ethics is that one should not engage in parasitism. Blackmail is unproductive and parasitic, and therefore a violation of the agreement for non-imposition of costs that serves as the only rational incentive to cooperate. (Although this level of argument is probably a bit deep for even the interested and informed.) Cheers

  • Answering Charles Murray on Legalizing Blackmail

    RE: http://www.aei.org/publication/charles-murray-asks-why-should-blackmail-be-a-crime-walter-block-makes-the-case-for-legalizing-blackmail/ [W]alter Block starts with the rhetorical position that property is a natural right rather than the result of a necessary contractual exchange of rights, agreed to in order to construct property rights that are adjudicable, in order to prevent retaliation for impositions of costs upon one another, by providing a means of restitution and punishment by the community rather than retaliation by the individual. His position is illogical. The first question of ethics is not one in which we assume the value of cooperation, but one in which we assume the value of predation. So cooperation must be preferable to predation. And it is only preferable if it is productive.

    Cooperation must be rational or it is irrational (obviously). For cooperation to be rational, it must be: – Mutually Productive, – Fully informed, – Warrantied to be fully informed, – Consisting of Voluntary Exchange or Transfer, – Free of negative externality (of the same criteria). If these are all true then there is no need for retaliation. Walter Block, like his mentor Rothbard, is attempting to restate Maimonides’ dualist ethics as if they are a universal good. Instead of a utilitarian tactic for a minority living at the behest of a tyrant attempting to minimize his costs of policing. But, the first logically necessary question of ethics is ‘Why don’t I kill you and take your stuff?’ Block’s position on blackmail is one in which it is preferable to kill the blackmailer and take his stuff rather than to cooperate with him. So, it’s not complicated. Dualist (and poly-logical) ethics cannot by logical necessity be advocated as a universal ethic – it’s a logical contradiction. Natural rights are used as a nonsensical justification for various spurious ends. We do not presume rights, nor are they ‘existent’ prior to contract. They are merely the necessary terms for rational political contract. Cosmopolitan ethics attempt to preserve ingroup parasitism on outgroup members, while at the same time prohibiting the formation of family organizations that suppress parasitism. Rothbardian anarchism (libertinism), is an expression of group evolutionary strategy that ‘games’ (circumvents) the defenses of western aristocratic, truth telling civilization. So, instead, the first rule of ethics is that one should not engage in parasitism. Blackmail is unproductive and parasitic, and therefore a violation of the agreement for non-imposition of costs that serves as the only rational incentive to cooperate. (Although this level of argument is probably a bit deep for even the interested and informed.) Cheers

  • Q: How Do You Reconcile The Ideal of Property Rights, and Observable Reality: Corporatism, and Cronyism?

    —“Question for Curt: How does property rights fit into mixed economies, corporatism and cronyism? If a corporation has property rights is that for eternity? Who decides?”— Beauregard.

    Beauregard, [I]’m going to try to guess at what “fit in” means. I think you mean, “How do we reconcile the apparent conflicts between the logical ideal of property rights theory, and the existential reality of mixed economies, pervasive corporatism, and cronyism?” The problem I’m having is that I’m not really sure what you’re asking. So I’ll stab in the dark trying to reconcile as best I can. 1) Mixed Economies: Mixed economies are as simple as corporations with shareholders who receive dividends on their investments – whether those investments are in sweat equity (observing norms), acting in an employee capacity(participating in the market of production distribution and trade), or whether one is an investor (taxpayer). There is no difference between a mixed economy and a corporation. It’s an organization where different interests combine different resources, to produce, distribute, and trade. 2) Corporatism: Corporatism exists because the state wanted to give capital a free ride, and took upon policing corporations in the legislature by removing universal standing under the common law. This is a problem of representative democracy. The answer is to revoke the corporate privilege, restore universal standing, and eliminate shareholder voting which is meaningless. (This takes a lot of explanation but I know how to address it.) 3) Cronyism: Cronyism exists because of the combination of representative government policing corporations by rather than citizen policing under universal standing. And because funding choices (monetary, fiscal trade, and industrial policy) are made by representatives rather than held at auction, using modern technology. 4) Corporate ‘Rights’: As for corporate rights, I don’t know what you’re referring to. But if the current shareholders of a corporation purchased rights to their shares, and therefore to a share of some property or other, or that organization persists as a functional organizational entity then it is hard to see how those rights should terminate. But you could be referring to some strange exception like intellectual property rights or something, and I might not really be able to guess your question. [A]ll of these problems arise because of three simple problems. First, a technological problem of the pre-industrial era where time and the speed of communications were problematic. We are not challenged by these problems any longer. Second, by the conflation of law-making (the judiciary) with commons-creation (the government), into a law-making-body called the legislature. Instead, if the government could not make law, only contract enforcible under law, and so the legislature can only produce contracts and not laws, and contracts all expire with the people who wrote them, then there is a time limit on all relations between the public (commons) and the private sector, and laws cannot be constructed to favor corporations for the benefit of politicians. Third, there is no reason whatsoever for majority rule. Monopoly government is pointless. Law must be decidable, so the law must exist as a monopoly definition of property and rights. However, the construction of contracts under that law, for the production of commons, do not need universal approval. They need only prevent imposition of costs on non-participants under the rule of law which protects non-participants property rights from exactly those kinds of attacks. So as far as I know, all of the questions you’re asking are entirely compatible with property rights theory (or at least by Propertarianism), and in fact, they are only confusing in the absence of property rights theory. There are some interesting human cognitive biases in play in the populace but that’s another story for another time.. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Q: How Do You Reconcile The Ideal of Property Rights, and Observable Reality: Corporatism, and Cronyism?

    —“Question for Curt: How does property rights fit into mixed economies, corporatism and cronyism? If a corporation has property rights is that for eternity? Who decides?”— Beauregard.

    Beauregard, [I]’m going to try to guess at what “fit in” means. I think you mean, “How do we reconcile the apparent conflicts between the logical ideal of property rights theory, and the existential reality of mixed economies, pervasive corporatism, and cronyism?” The problem I’m having is that I’m not really sure what you’re asking. So I’ll stab in the dark trying to reconcile as best I can. 1) Mixed Economies: Mixed economies are as simple as corporations with shareholders who receive dividends on their investments – whether those investments are in sweat equity (observing norms), acting in an employee capacity(participating in the market of production distribution and trade), or whether one is an investor (taxpayer). There is no difference between a mixed economy and a corporation. It’s an organization where different interests combine different resources, to produce, distribute, and trade. 2) Corporatism: Corporatism exists because the state wanted to give capital a free ride, and took upon policing corporations in the legislature by removing universal standing under the common law. This is a problem of representative democracy. The answer is to revoke the corporate privilege, restore universal standing, and eliminate shareholder voting which is meaningless. (This takes a lot of explanation but I know how to address it.) 3) Cronyism: Cronyism exists because of the combination of representative government policing corporations by rather than citizen policing under universal standing. And because funding choices (monetary, fiscal trade, and industrial policy) are made by representatives rather than held at auction, using modern technology. 4) Corporate ‘Rights’: As for corporate rights, I don’t know what you’re referring to. But if the current shareholders of a corporation purchased rights to their shares, and therefore to a share of some property or other, or that organization persists as a functional organizational entity then it is hard to see how those rights should terminate. But you could be referring to some strange exception like intellectual property rights or something, and I might not really be able to guess your question. [A]ll of these problems arise because of three simple problems. First, a technological problem of the pre-industrial era where time and the speed of communications were problematic. We are not challenged by these problems any longer. Second, by the conflation of law-making (the judiciary) with commons-creation (the government), into a law-making-body called the legislature. Instead, if the government could not make law, only contract enforcible under law, and so the legislature can only produce contracts and not laws, and contracts all expire with the people who wrote them, then there is a time limit on all relations between the public (commons) and the private sector, and laws cannot be constructed to favor corporations for the benefit of politicians. Third, there is no reason whatsoever for majority rule. Monopoly government is pointless. Law must be decidable, so the law must exist as a monopoly definition of property and rights. However, the construction of contracts under that law, for the production of commons, do not need universal approval. They need only prevent imposition of costs on non-participants under the rule of law which protects non-participants property rights from exactly those kinds of attacks. So as far as I know, all of the questions you’re asking are entirely compatible with property rights theory (or at least by Propertarianism), and in fact, they are only confusing in the absence of property rights theory. There are some interesting human cognitive biases in play in the populace but that’s another story for another time.. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Rights of Limited Market Monopoly (Intellectual Property)

    [E]xcuse me in advance for the language of my analytic philosophy. That said, I tend to describe the grant of limited monopoly license under similar criteria to which we grant the license to property: “Transitus(transit), Usus(use), Fructus (fruits of), Mancipio(transfer), and Abusus(consumption)”.

    We can grant different rights to property. We can grant different rights to the market as well.

    In intellectual property I use: Innovatio(invention), Investimus(investment), Produco(requrement for production.) . We can grant these three rights as long as we maintain the corresponding requirements – of which time is actually a poor measure.

    1) ‘INNOVATIO’ : The practical utility of creating a lottery effect as a means of encouraging innovation.
    – In which case, one must maintain a product in production in order to maintain the original intent. In other words, there can be no patent protection per se, merely a patent serves as prohibition on competition for the resulting products and services.

    2) ‘INVESTIGATIO’ : The practical utility of creating a limited monopoly as a means of funding off-book research and development for goods not possible for the market to produce otherwise at current incentives. This is probably a much better solution to basic research than is the grant system.
    – In which case it is possible to set a limited return on the limited monopoly – not just in time but also in income.

    3) ‘PRODUCO’ : The moral prohibition on free riding*, and a requirement for production in order to participate in the commons (market).
    – In which case the prohibition must be limited to profiting in the broadest sense, not to personal copying, for personal use. (Creative Commons for example).

    *The prohibition on free riding (imposition of costs) that we evolved to prevent ‘cheating’ in parallel to our evolution of cooperation might require some explaining. We retaliate, at cost, against the imposition cost, whether it be obvious violence theft and fraud, less obvious free riding, or imperceptible violation of moral norms.

    REPAIRING EXTERNALITIES
    Now, some side effects are perverse and obvious:

    But some externalities are less obvious:

      Curt Doolittle
      The Propertarian Institute
      Kiev, Ukraine.