Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • 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

  • 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 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: Cronyism Or Collectivism?

    I’M GOING TO PROVIDE AN INTERESTING AND POSSIBLY NOVEL ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.

    Neither Capitalism (the voluntary organization of production, and distributed control of property) nor Socialism (the involuntary organization of production, and the centralized control of property) is possible.   Both systems result in totalitarian oligarchies.  Economic operation under socialism is impossible.  Economic concentration under capitalism is undesirable (by the masses).  The general argument is that capitalist oligarchies destroy each other in a constant process of creative destruction, and that socialist oligarchies do not.  This appears to be fairly obvious from both the logic and the evidence.

    Given the impossibility of either, the open question is the following:

    1) HOW DO WE MAINTAIN SYMMETRY OF COSTS OF THE SOCIAL ORDER NECESSARY FOR THE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION GIVEN THE ASYMMETRY OF ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY OF INDIVIDUALS
    Under agrarianism, when we developed political universalism, we were equally able to contribute to the economy, because human physical effort and human mental discipline were the only determinants of relative productivity.  However, increasingly, the ability to work with abstract ideas has evolved to become competitively advantageous, while labor and learning by observation and imitation have lost all value in the economy.  As such, some individuals are highly productive and others are not. And there is no evidence of this difference in productivity.

    Capitalism is the name we use for the distribution of property to individuals where they may voluntarily organize and participate in production, and where they possess the incentive to participate in production, even if their only property is their body, time, and effort.

    When we respect property: private, shareholder and commons, and when we respect norms : manners, ethics, morals, myths, traditions and rituals, we pay for access to society and the market, and the system of production.  Unfortunately,

    Conversely, respect for law, order, manners, ethics, morals, traditions and norms – all of which ask us to forego opportunities for gratification, fall increasingly on the unproductive classes.  So if the lower classes must both observe laws, order, property, manners, ethics, morals, traditions and rituals, while at the same time they are unable to participate in the economy, then it is no longer logical for them to continue to forgo all these opportunities and pay the high cost of deprivation, when they obtain only access to the market for good and services, but not the ability to participate in the voluntary organization of production that forgoing opportunities for gratification makes possible. 

    2) WHY MONOPOLY FORM OF GOVERNMENT?
    Then second question is whether a society, under an homogenous government, practicing homogenous manners, ethics, morals, rituals, and myths,  really needs to exist as it has in the past.  Why for example, cannot the upper classes make use of a libertarian government, while the lower classes make use of a socialist government?  There is no reason really.  Most of western history relied upon state (nobility) and church (laity), or aristocracy (farmers) and labor (slaves – in the old world not new world sense).  The idea that we must possess a single economic and political system for people with different needs was an artifice of the enlightenment and most of our wars, and in fact, the war that nearly ended western civilization (ww1+ww2) was largely caused by the attempt to create an ideology justifying a monopoly form of government over people with dissimilar economic and political interests. 

    For economic cooperation to be possible one must possess uniform individual property rights, or economic cooperation and calculation is not possible.

    However, individuals can choose to collectivize their property, and others to atomize it, as suits their interests, and then the lower classes can negotiate with the upper classes for access to the lower classes as a market, the way states with different economies conduct trade policy with states with higher or lower standards of living and therefore costs.

    The reason we are in conflict is artificial.  We do not need to choose between socialism and capitalism.  We do not need to blend the two.  We can make use of both as we desire. Monopoly is just another word for tyranny, if our interests are sufficiently dissimilar, because our abilities to engage in productivity are sufficiently dissimilar.

    https://www.quora.com/Capitalism-CRONYISM-OR-COLLECTIVISM