Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • 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 Is Racism, Prejudice And Discrimination? Why Are They So Hard To Overcome?

    A postmodern attempt to demonize behavior that is universally demonstrated by all groups as an expression of kin selection.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-racism-prejudice-and-discrimination-Why-are-they-so-hard-to-overcome

  • Why Does Corporate Governance Emerge?

    Necessity of decision making under the pervasive influence of the principle agent problem.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-does-corporate-governance-emerge

  • Why Don’t Those With High Intelligence Or Those At The Top Of Society End Up Making The World Significantly Better?

    REALLY BAD ANSWERS, I’LL TRY TO DO BETTER
    1) How can the world be ‘significantly better’?
    2) If the world would be significantly better,  for whom would the world be ‘significantly worse’ in your interpretation of how the world would be ‘significantly better?’
    3) Before we took action on our hypothesis of, how would we know the world would in fact, ‘be significantly better?’.
    4) Isn’t the most scientific way to make the world significantly better, to experiment with small changes and see if they are successful?
    5) The reason the world is not ‘significantly better’ is not for lack of efforts. Aristotle, Aquinas, Smith and Hume, all made the world better by explaining how the real world works.
    6) When smart people have tried specifically to make the world ‘significantly better’ by telling us what we SHOULD do, rather than what we DO do, they have caused enormous bloodshed (Marx). 
    7) Smart people make the world better all the time.
    8) There is some truth to the fact that very, very, smart people do not engage in the social sciences (it’s the university discipline with the lowest IQ professors and students.) That is because very abstract problems are more interesting; and it is more interesting to convince other very smart people of the obvious, than it is less smart people of that which is not obvious to them. Secondly, unfortunate as it is, we tend to communicate well in a radius of about 15 points of IQ, and cease to be able to communicate across 30 points of IQ. So it’s the people who are above average, but not exceptional that tend to speak to the majority the best. 
    9) To make matters worse, morality increases above 100 points of IQ, and decreases rapidly below it. Furthermore, the ability to determine whether someone is attempting to deceive you or not decreases as well. This leads to the Dunning-Kreuger effect: where we become unconsciously incompetent and overestimate our abilities when we have insufficiently mastered a field of inquiry. Whereas people with higher trust, higher intelligence, and more general knowledge, and who learn by abstract problem solving rather than imitation or training, tend to be able to discern deception, verbalism and pseudoscience, from a truth candidate. So what happens is that smart people find that less smart people can’t discern fact from fiction, and treat them skeptically, and so it is just too much effort, time and frustration to try.  (Really. I work very, very hard at it, and people say I’m good at it, but frankly I think people just can tell that I’m honest, and so that’s why they listen to me, not because they understand what I say.)
    10) The underlying assumption is quite problematic, and only a northern european, a victim of the fallacy of **altruistic punishment** would ask that question. Most of the world does not want to make the world better, but better for them. The difference between warfare and commerce is merely that commerce is mutually constructive.  In both cases we are still competing.  In fact, given history, I am very concerned about anyone who thinks he or she is smart enough to recommend how the world WOULD be better, because it would require a great deal of violence to change it.  I think instead, it is better to state how the world *IS*, in the most scientific terms possible, so that we can make constant improvements to it through incentives.  Lots of marxists justified the murder of 100M people and the destruction of eastern european civilization. Lots of others spent the 20th century constructing pseudosciences and deceptions.  The cost of which we now bear.  As far as I know, science is the only way to make the world better. And even then, it takes a skilled mind to know the difference between science and pseudoscience.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-don’t-those-with-high-intelligence-or-those-at-the-top-of-society-end-up-making-the-world-significantly-better

  • Why Don’t Those With High Intelligence Or Those At The Top Of Society End Up Making The World Significantly Better?

    REALLY BAD ANSWERS, I’LL TRY TO DO BETTER
    1) How can the world be ‘significantly better’?
    2) If the world would be significantly better,  for whom would the world be ‘significantly worse’ in your interpretation of how the world would be ‘significantly better?’
    3) Before we took action on our hypothesis of, how would we know the world would in fact, ‘be significantly better?’.
    4) Isn’t the most scientific way to make the world significantly better, to experiment with small changes and see if they are successful?
    5) The reason the world is not ‘significantly better’ is not for lack of efforts. Aristotle, Aquinas, Smith and Hume, all made the world better by explaining how the real world works.
    6) When smart people have tried specifically to make the world ‘significantly better’ by telling us what we SHOULD do, rather than what we DO do, they have caused enormous bloodshed (Marx). 
    7) Smart people make the world better all the time.
    8) There is some truth to the fact that very, very, smart people do not engage in the social sciences (it’s the university discipline with the lowest IQ professors and students.) That is because very abstract problems are more interesting; and it is more interesting to convince other very smart people of the obvious, than it is less smart people of that which is not obvious to them. Secondly, unfortunate as it is, we tend to communicate well in a radius of about 15 points of IQ, and cease to be able to communicate across 30 points of IQ. So it’s the people who are above average, but not exceptional that tend to speak to the majority the best. 
    9) To make matters worse, morality increases above 100 points of IQ, and decreases rapidly below it. Furthermore, the ability to determine whether someone is attempting to deceive you or not decreases as well. This leads to the Dunning-Kreuger effect: where we become unconsciously incompetent and overestimate our abilities when we have insufficiently mastered a field of inquiry. Whereas people with higher trust, higher intelligence, and more general knowledge, and who learn by abstract problem solving rather than imitation or training, tend to be able to discern deception, verbalism and pseudoscience, from a truth candidate. So what happens is that smart people find that less smart people can’t discern fact from fiction, and treat them skeptically, and so it is just too much effort, time and frustration to try.  (Really. I work very, very hard at it, and people say I’m good at it, but frankly I think people just can tell that I’m honest, and so that’s why they listen to me, not because they understand what I say.)
    10) The underlying assumption is quite problematic, and only a northern european, a victim of the fallacy of **altruistic punishment** would ask that question. Most of the world does not want to make the world better, but better for them. The difference between warfare and commerce is merely that commerce is mutually constructive.  In both cases we are still competing.  In fact, given history, I am very concerned about anyone who thinks he or she is smart enough to recommend how the world WOULD be better, because it would require a great deal of violence to change it.  I think instead, it is better to state how the world *IS*, in the most scientific terms possible, so that we can make constant improvements to it through incentives.  Lots of marxists justified the murder of 100M people and the destruction of eastern european civilization. Lots of others spent the 20th century constructing pseudosciences and deceptions.  The cost of which we now bear.  As far as I know, science is the only way to make the world better. And even then, it takes a skilled mind to know the difference between science and pseudoscience.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-don’t-those-with-high-intelligence-or-those-at-the-top-of-society-end-up-making-the-world-significantly-better

  • What Are Some Cultural Differences Between Canadians And Americans?

    AN ANSWER THAT YOU WON’T LIKE: PRIVILEGE NOT CHOICE

    Humans justify. Justification is necessary for adaptation, and we are very good at justification.

    Canada is the world’s most privileged country, so Canadians can justify unprecedented luxuries.  

    Imagine, anywhere else in the world, a country of that size, with so few people, with that many natural resources, that did not have to defend that territory and resources from constant incursion by neighboring powers. 

    Ukraine and Siberia are two modern examples.  Ukraine has roughly the same population, is rich in resources, and has been the victim of perpetual struggle for self determination from  Mongols, Poland, Austria, Russia, the USSR, and now Russia again. Siberia is currently being occupied by Chinese intent on doing exactly what Russia did to Ukraine: fill it with people then justify taking it by force. 

    Canadians have the best of all worlds: a benevolent global empire on their border that cannot tolerate any instability in, or invasion of, Canada; oceans for all other borders; and therefore near immunity from the high cost of self defense, and the necessity of nationalism.

    Canada and Australia, like the UK are for all strategic intents and purposes, islands, that like the UK, rely upon island-people-ethics: no fear of outsiders. Little fear of conquest.  Little conflict over territory.  No conflict over sovereignty. 

    Having never experienced the divisiveness of slavery, Canadians have never experienced the problem of internal race conflict.  Slavery is the defining issue of american history and race and culture conflict remain unresolved and un-resolvable.  The immateriality of french divisiveness versus american urban and rural divisiveness, causes less conflict in Canada but is equally as damaging, since it again causes multiculturalism that harms the center and west.

    The data says that Canada is more conservative than the states, and that the only thing that forces Canadian policy differences is the french voting block. The french immigrants to Quebec were, unlike the Anglo immigrants to the other provinces, from the lower classes. So those  class, religion, culture, family structure, and language differences, of course skew the country a bit as well.  Unlike Canada, USA’s demographic blocks are not isolated but intermingled as horizontal bands reflecting the cultures that immigrated at different latitudes of the east coast. (See the “Nine Nations Of North America”.)

    Now, Canadians tend to look at this strategic privilege as a product of their high mindedness, but nothing could be further from the truth. Cultural differences and Political policy in all countries reflect that which people are ABLE TO implement as policy, and ABLE adopt as cultural preference.  People prefer luxuries that they CAN possess.  They CAN possess them for strategic, not cultural or political reasons.

    But as soon as Canada reaches the level of cultural competition that is present in the states, North and South Italy,  France, Germany, and the UK, west and east Ukraine, West and east Russia, Tibet, Mongolia and china,  conflict over cultural competition will increase there as well, and the long run of Canadian privilege to treat multiculturalism as a ‘good’ rather than as a profitable luxury in small doses, will end as it is ending in the rest of the world.

    Islands have the highest trust cultures for a reason.  They can afford to. They are able to.  Because homogeneity allows for political and cultural homogeneity. And homogeneity reduces political, economic, cultural conflict, and turns class differences into virtues because tolerance for redistribution increases with homogeneity of kinship.

    Canada is importing to its ‘island’ the promise of low-trust, high conflict, authoritarian polities, and thereby ending its island luxury.

    (So that is why we americans tend to see cultural self-congratulation of Canadians as the prancing and preening of spoiled children whose safety and luxury Americans pay for.)

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cultural-differences-between-Canadians-and-Americans

  • What Are Some Cultural Differences Between Canadians And Americans?

    AN ANSWER THAT YOU WON’T LIKE: PRIVILEGE NOT CHOICE

    Humans justify. Justification is necessary for adaptation, and we are very good at justification.

    Canada is the world’s most privileged country, so Canadians can justify unprecedented luxuries.  

    Imagine, anywhere else in the world, a country of that size, with so few people, with that many natural resources, that did not have to defend that territory and resources from constant incursion by neighboring powers. 

    Ukraine and Siberia are two modern examples.  Ukraine has roughly the same population, is rich in resources, and has been the victim of perpetual struggle for self determination from  Mongols, Poland, Austria, Russia, the USSR, and now Russia again. Siberia is currently being occupied by Chinese intent on doing exactly what Russia did to Ukraine: fill it with people then justify taking it by force. 

    Canadians have the best of all worlds: a benevolent global empire on their border that cannot tolerate any instability in, or invasion of, Canada; oceans for all other borders; and therefore near immunity from the high cost of self defense, and the necessity of nationalism.

    Canada and Australia, like the UK are for all strategic intents and purposes, islands, that like the UK, rely upon island-people-ethics: no fear of outsiders. Little fear of conquest.  Little conflict over territory.  No conflict over sovereignty. 

    Having never experienced the divisiveness of slavery, Canadians have never experienced the problem of internal race conflict.  Slavery is the defining issue of american history and race and culture conflict remain unresolved and un-resolvable.  The immateriality of french divisiveness versus american urban and rural divisiveness, causes less conflict in Canada but is equally as damaging, since it again causes multiculturalism that harms the center and west.

    The data says that Canada is more conservative than the states, and that the only thing that forces Canadian policy differences is the french voting block. The french immigrants to Quebec were, unlike the Anglo immigrants to the other provinces, from the lower classes. So those  class, religion, culture, family structure, and language differences, of course skew the country a bit as well.  Unlike Canada, USA’s demographic blocks are not isolated but intermingled as horizontal bands reflecting the cultures that immigrated at different latitudes of the east coast. (See the “Nine Nations Of North America”.)

    Now, Canadians tend to look at this strategic privilege as a product of their high mindedness, but nothing could be further from the truth. Cultural differences and Political policy in all countries reflect that which people are ABLE TO implement as policy, and ABLE adopt as cultural preference.  People prefer luxuries that they CAN possess.  They CAN possess them for strategic, not cultural or political reasons.

    But as soon as Canada reaches the level of cultural competition that is present in the states, North and South Italy,  France, Germany, and the UK, west and east Ukraine, West and east Russia, Tibet, Mongolia and china,  conflict over cultural competition will increase there as well, and the long run of Canadian privilege to treat multiculturalism as a ‘good’ rather than as a profitable luxury in small doses, will end as it is ending in the rest of the world.

    Islands have the highest trust cultures for a reason.  They can afford to. They are able to.  Because homogeneity allows for political and cultural homogeneity. And homogeneity reduces political, economic, cultural conflict, and turns class differences into virtues because tolerance for redistribution increases with homogeneity of kinship.

    Canada is importing to its ‘island’ the promise of low-trust, high conflict, authoritarian polities, and thereby ending its island luxury.

    (So that is why we americans tend to see cultural self-congratulation of Canadians as the prancing and preening of spoiled children whose safety and luxury Americans pay for.)

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cultural-differences-between-Canadians-and-Americans

  • Why Do We Keep Hearing That Production In America Is Now A Pipe Dream Since It Is So Much Cheaper To Produce Abroad? Wasn’t This The Case Throughout Much Of America’s History?

    Americans still produce. Since 1972 the cost per unit has been steadily increasing. And america still produces complex goods. And inly complex goods that require increasingly skilled labor. However, from the civil war onward, America produced cheap goods because of cheap land and labor – so much so that it caused the european depression if the 1870s as prices and labor collapsed in europe. So the rest of the world, by converting from communism to capitalism, has done to ameruca what ameruca did to europe. 

    As such, we cannot produce jobs for american laborers. And so our labor pool is increasing while our economic ability to create jobs for labor is decreasing. 

    The solution is autarkic. But that has ewually dangerous insequences.

    We won the battle with world communism.  We may or may not win the battle with world Islamism. Which is the same battle in different words.

    But in foung so we gave up our privileged position in the world economy.

    Had we retained our homogeneity our high trust woukd have been our advantage.  But that is dissipating as well. 

    The future doesnt look politucally positive even if it looks technologically positive.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-keep-hearing-that-production-in-America-is-now-a-pipe-dream-since-it-is-so-much-cheaper-to-produce-abroad-Wasnt-this-the-case-throughout-much-of-Americas-history

  • Why Do We Keep Hearing That Production In America Is Now A Pipe Dream Since It Is So Much Cheaper To Produce Abroad? Wasn’t This The Case Throughout Much Of America’s History?

    Americans still produce. Since 1972 the cost per unit has been steadily increasing. And america still produces complex goods. And inly complex goods that require increasingly skilled labor. However, from the civil war onward, America produced cheap goods because of cheap land and labor – so much so that it caused the european depression if the 1870s as prices and labor collapsed in europe. So the rest of the world, by converting from communism to capitalism, has done to ameruca what ameruca did to europe. 

    As such, we cannot produce jobs for american laborers. And so our labor pool is increasing while our economic ability to create jobs for labor is decreasing. 

    The solution is autarkic. But that has ewually dangerous insequences.

    We won the battle with world communism.  We may or may not win the battle with world Islamism. Which is the same battle in different words.

    But in foung so we gave up our privileged position in the world economy.

    Had we retained our homogeneity our high trust woukd have been our advantage.  But that is dissipating as well. 

    The future doesnt look politucally positive even if it looks technologically positive.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-keep-hearing-that-production-in-America-is-now-a-pipe-dream-since-it-is-so-much-cheaper-to-produce-abroad-Wasnt-this-the-case-throughout-much-of-Americas-history

  • Capitalism: Why Are Investors And Shareholders Profitseekers Alone?

    They are not.

    The data clearly demonstrates that companies operate at the minimum profitability that is tolerated by creditors, and that employees and management seek the highest extraction possible that creditors will tolerate. 

    Government bureaucrats demonstrate exactly the same behavior, but government, because it is a monopoly cannot be ‘corrected’ by the forces of competition, or in practice, by law, and therefore companies tend to have very short life spans, and even very big and successful companies have very short periods at the top, where governments can persist as corrupt enterprises indefinitely.

    https://www.quora.com/Capitalism-Why-are-investors-and-shareholders-profitseekers-alone