Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Liberty In Modernity Isn’t For Simpletons

    People who live in tents, ride animals, and shepherd other animals, talk about beliefs. People with fixed capital, who live in castles talk about laws. There is a reason for that.

    When you ask people to value something that’s an informal institution we call belief. When you tell people that property is a rule that you cannot violate, that’s a formal institution we call law.

    The first is religion. The second is government.

    Is your brand of liberty for goatherds living in tents (religion) that requires belief, or for engineers, builders and craftsmen, (government) that requires laws?

    People who live in tents have very simple property. They need very simple laws.

    Liberty in modernity isn’t for simpletons.

    Try not to think like one.

  • Is It Good To Do A Ph.d. In Theoretical Computer Science (e.g. Complexity) If You Intend To Go To Work In The Industry?

    As far as we know, a PhD does not increase you earning capacity or your credibility and demonstrably harms it. The value of a PhD is either entirely personal (and expensive) or necessary as entry into the teaching field.  In practice a PhD is certification by a board of specialists that they can treat  you as a relative equal in the field – of teaching.

    Nearly all problems in computer science are not complicated, but instead, are bounded by hardware costs tolerable by the end consumer of the application (the imputed price).  Most innovation takes place in either adapting to new hardware capacity (software generations) or adapting to new hardware capability (user interface improvements). But the number of ‘problems’ we solve in computer science is still a manageable set, small enough to roughly refer to as design patterns.

    Furthermore the value of your earning capacity (working in the industry) is determined by your ability to learn and dispose of ideas, not by your expanding specialization in ideas. 

    (Personally, I would do it anyway. lol)

    https://www.quora.com/Is-it-good-to-do-a-Ph-D-in-theoretical-computer-science-e-g-complexity-if-you-intend-to-go-to-work-in-the-industry

  • Why Is It Many Times Cheaper To Send Physical Mail Across The Ocean Than An Electronic Money Transfer?

    Because the government subsidizes and insures physical mail that is hard to steal, and less desirable to steal, using low skilled labor when handling mail, while private industry absorbs risks and the cost of semi-skilled manual labor to manually process wire transfers that are unprofitable, and easily fraudulent, and highly desirable to steal, but without which they cannot continue business operations. 

    In other words, wire transfers are both more desirable and easier to steal than physical goods, and once stolen are unrecoverable. And they don’t want to process them so they keep the cost as high as possible.

    The cost of wire transfers is due to the insurance cost of theft by retailers.  Imagine instead that the post office shipped and delivered envelopes of money, and how the behavior of the post office would change. 

    That is why it is cheaper to send hard-to-exchange goods, than exchange goods.  And why it is more cost effective to steal money than stuff you have to sell or pawn.

    This is why Bitcoin (BTC) are better and cheaper means of wire transfers.  The intermediaries in the chain of handling are not exposed to risk – just you.

    Everyone argues that BTC is helpful for the high end of the market, and I totally disagree. The primary virtue of BTC is in its application to solutions for the poor – who pay high costs because the marginal value of each unit of currency is more expensive for them than for everyone else.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-many-times-cheaper-to-send-physical-mail-across-the-ocean-than-an-electronic-money-transfer

  • Is It Good To Do A Ph.d. In Theoretical Computer Science (e.g. Complexity) If You Intend To Go To Work In The Industry?

    As far as we know, a PhD does not increase you earning capacity or your credibility and demonstrably harms it. The value of a PhD is either entirely personal (and expensive) or necessary as entry into the teaching field.  In practice a PhD is certification by a board of specialists that they can treat  you as a relative equal in the field – of teaching.

    Nearly all problems in computer science are not complicated, but instead, are bounded by hardware costs tolerable by the end consumer of the application (the imputed price).  Most innovation takes place in either adapting to new hardware capacity (software generations) or adapting to new hardware capability (user interface improvements). But the number of ‘problems’ we solve in computer science is still a manageable set, small enough to roughly refer to as design patterns.

    Furthermore the value of your earning capacity (working in the industry) is determined by your ability to learn and dispose of ideas, not by your expanding specialization in ideas. 

    (Personally, I would do it anyway. lol)

    https://www.quora.com/Is-it-good-to-do-a-Ph-D-in-theoretical-computer-science-e-g-complexity-if-you-intend-to-go-to-work-in-the-industry

  • Why Is It Many Times Cheaper To Send Physical Mail Across The Ocean Than An Electronic Money Transfer?

    Because the government subsidizes and insures physical mail that is hard to steal, and less desirable to steal, using low skilled labor when handling mail, while private industry absorbs risks and the cost of semi-skilled manual labor to manually process wire transfers that are unprofitable, and easily fraudulent, and highly desirable to steal, but without which they cannot continue business operations. 

    In other words, wire transfers are both more desirable and easier to steal than physical goods, and once stolen are unrecoverable. And they don’t want to process them so they keep the cost as high as possible.

    The cost of wire transfers is due to the insurance cost of theft by retailers.  Imagine instead that the post office shipped and delivered envelopes of money, and how the behavior of the post office would change. 

    That is why it is cheaper to send hard-to-exchange goods, than exchange goods.  And why it is more cost effective to steal money than stuff you have to sell or pawn.

    This is why Bitcoin (BTC) are better and cheaper means of wire transfers.  The intermediaries in the chain of handling are not exposed to risk – just you.

    Everyone argues that BTC is helpful for the high end of the market, and I totally disagree. The primary virtue of BTC is in its application to solutions for the poor – who pay high costs because the marginal value of each unit of currency is more expensive for them than for everyone else.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-many-times-cheaper-to-send-physical-mail-across-the-ocean-than-an-electronic-money-transfer

  • When Might Apple Begin To Decline?

    When the profitability of the iPhone is sufficiently diminished that a new income stream must be developed, yet Apple execs are unwilling to conquer the desktop market that is sitting there for them to just take away from Microsoft on a scale not seen since Microsoft did the same to IBM.

    https://www.quora.com/When-might-Apple-begin-to-decline

  • If You Could Only Own One Libertarian Treatise, Which One Would You Choose: ‘human Action’,â  ‘man, Economy, And State’, Or ‘the Constitution Of Liberty’?

    Human action is a work of pseudoscience through chapter 15, and after 15 is fully integrated into mainstream economics.  So it is not useful.  Mises failed to discern that economics, like physics and mathematics was subject to an epistemic requirement for operational definitions. And while he intuited something close to correct, he was unable to solve it, and first cast praxeology as a ‘science’ without reliance upon the scientific method – which by itself is a definition of a pseudoscience, and second, stated that all of economics was deducible from the first principle of human action. Also demonstrably false, and solidifying his work as pseudoscientific.  The correct answer in operational terms is that if any empirical observation in economics cannot be reduced to a sequence of rational human actions, then it cannot in fact be ‘true’.   The first 15 chapters are an elaborate attempt to justify his fallacy.

    Man economy and state ignores, and like all of Rothbard’s works,  intentionally attempts to undermine the western competitive cultural advantage that northern europeans, by virtue of constructing the only high trust society, are the only people on earth capable of constructing commons.  So, this book is actually half correct – bureaucracy leads to despotism.  And half deception: that does not mean that the organized construction of commons and the prevention of free riding upon or consumption of those commons is not a strategic competitive advantage, or that commons cannot be produced through alternative means.  It is an elaborate fallacy on the scale, if not quality, of Freud’s psychology, Marx’s Capital, Cantor’s sets and Mises’ Praxeology.

    The Constitution of liberty is an historical and scholarly work demonstrating that the only known means of preserving freedom is through a constitution of private property rights and the organic evolution of the common law.   Hayek’s failure in his work, was his reliance on what was know in his day, and his insufficient emphasis on the scope of property rights, original intent,  and strict construction, nor the institutional means of maintaining those three constraints.  Unfortunately for all three authors, computer science would rescue the world from platonism, where logic, math, science, and economics had failed: the existence proof, and our ability to promise that we make true statements.

    Of these three the only book of value is the Constitution of Liberty.  The rest is simply

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine

    https://www.quora.com/If-you-could-only-own-one-Libertarian-treatise-which-one-would-you-choose-Human-Action-Man-Economy-and-State-or-The-Constitution-of-Liberty

  • How Do Family Relationships Differ Between Countries?

    INTERESTING QUESTION:

    The family structure determines:
    1. the amount of inbreeding
    2. the inheritance system
    3. the private property rights that originate with the inheritance system
    4. the degree of trust extended to non-family members, with inbreeding producing lower overall trust, and outbreeding higher trust.
    5. the degree degree of authority necessary to maintain order (prevent violence in retaliation for unethical and immoral actions.)
    6. the level of corruption demonstrated by members of the government, since they are merely members of society in a position to abuse authority.
    7. the mobility of labor, since the larger the family structure the harder it is to move it to capital.
    8. the economic velocity of the polity (wealth).
    Conversely increase in family size determines:
    • the degree of alienation and loneliness, since family members treat you almost always better than others will.
    • the stress of raising children, since sharing child rearing across generations is so much easier.
    • The redistribution family members provide each other with.
    • the insurance from the vagaries of the economy and life
    • the demand for the state to provide all of the above in the absence of the family that the state has destroyed in pursuit of economic velocity. 🙂

    LIST OF FAMILY STRUCTURES

    SMALL HOMOGENEOUS HIGH TRUST PRIVILEGED SOCIETIES CAN TOLERATE HIGHLY REDISTRIBUTIVE GOVERNMENTS
    • STATE FINANCED SINGLE PARENT FAMILY – Medium term and short term pairings with or without a marriage ceremony that produces offspring, whereupon the parents cease cohabitation, and state redistribution finances directly or indirectly the support of the mother’s household.

    HIGH TRUST SOCIETIES WITH HIGHER ECONOMIC VELOCITY, CAN TOLERATE LIBERTARIAN GOVERNMENTS

    • ABSOLUTE NUCLEAR FAMILY – The “absolute nuclear” family is liberal and non-egalitarian (that is, indifferent to equality). Children are completely free upon adulthood, founding independent families. Inheritance is freely distributed by will.
    • NUCLEAR FAMILY, EGALITARIAN NUCLEAR – The “egalitarian nuclear” family is liberal and egalitarian. Children are completely free upon adulthood, founding independent families. Inheritance is equally distributed, implying at least a vestigial necessary link between parents and children throughout their lives.


    MEDIUM TRUST MARGINAL SOCIETIES WITH MEDIUM ECONOMIC VELOCITY – REQUIRE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS

    • EXTENDED FAMILY, STEM FAMILY, AUTHORITARIAN FAMILY – The “stem” family is authoritarian and inegalitarian. Several generations may live under one roof, notably the first-born, who will inherit the entirety of property and family headship (and thus perpetuate the family line). Other children typically leave the home to get married or become priests/soldiers.

      A family that extends beyond the immediate family, consisting of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all living nearby or in the same household. The stem family is sometimes associated with inegalitarian inheritance practices, as in Japan and Korea, but the term has also been used in some contexts to describe a family type where parents live with a married child and his or her spouse and children, but the transfer of land and moveable property is more or less egalitarian. In these cases, the child who cares for the parents usually receives the house in addition to his or her own share of land and moveable property.

    LOW TRUST, POOR SOCIETIES WITH LOW ECONOMIC VELOCITY – REQUIRE  AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENTS

    • TRADITIONAL FAMILY, COMMUNITARIAN FAMILY – The “communitarian” family is authoritarian and equal. Several generations live under the same roof until the eldest die and the inheritance is divided equally.
    • HETAERISTIC MONOGAMY – Monogamy with frequent extra marriage sexual relations.
    • PAIRING FAMILY, SERIAL MARRIAGE – Medium term pairing of individuals either in patrilineal or matrilineal property systems.
    • CONSANGUINE FAMILY – three generations of interrelated individuals live together (pre-polynesian) without any prohibition on relations. Property is irrelevant in this system.

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-family-relationships-differ-between-countries

  • Why Is Gold Or Silver Precious In The First Place? I Would Say That Rice Is Precious.

    I will improve Paul Frank’s statement slightly:
    1) Scarcity
    2) Universal Utility.
    3) Non-perishability
    4) Volume and weight to value ratio (and therefore transportability)
    5) Nearly universal convertibility.
    6) Functional unit of account, store of value, and medium of exchange.

    Very few goods meet this criteria. Silver and gold are pretty much the only goods that do meet this criteria.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-is-gold-or-silver-precious-in-the-first-place-I-would-say-that-rice-is-precious

  • What Percentage Of New Questions On Quora Are Created By Software Bots?

    Enough that I don’t want to play this fking game much longer.

    https://www.quora.com/unanswered/What-percentage-of-new-questions-on-Quora-are-created-by-software-bots